Pictorialism

Toward the end of the 19th century, with the rise of a movement called pictorialism, photography became interesting beyond the technical. This movement introduced the photographer as more than a mere technician because he (and at the time it was usually a he) was expected to manipulate the image to get a more artistic result.

Some of the methods used were soft focus, alternative hues such as browns or blues, and visible brush strokes, all of which allowed the photographer to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. It is hard to imagine now just how much of a breakthrough this represented.

Pictorialism was at its peak from around 1880 until the beginning of the First World War. It was certainly still being promoted into the 1940s. I frequently make the argument that although the name pictorialism may have fallen into disuse, the underlying philosophy has never disappeared and is, in fact, as strong as ever. Pictorialism follows the lead set by painters, especially those such as the impressionists, and much photography still does this. Think of how many images use a narrow depth of field to blur the less important part of the image. This technique is firmly rooted in pictorialism, even though gelatin on the lens or some other strategy may have been used to achieve the end result.

It is interesting that the two main downturns in pictorialism, that is, the end of its major period and the time when the name itself ceased to be commonly used, coincided with the beginnings of the two world wars. At its heart pictorialism is a romantic movement. It is all about the photographer as an artist, imparting emotion to the viewer via the photograph, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that something as cataclysmic as a world war made the soft lines and dreamlike blurs of pictorialism wrong for the time. A starker, more brutal aesthetic probably seemed more fitting.

Various groups were formed with the intent of promoting the pictorialist ethos. One such group was the photo-secessionists, formed by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day. Stieglitz is, arguably, the most influential artist of the 20th century, which I will further discuss later in this chapter. The biggest question regarding the photo-secessionists was what exactly they were seceding from. Pictorialism was already taking hold, and the group’s stated aim that the photograph was the vehicle for the artist to achieve his subjective vision was exactly in line with pictorialism. But there is no doubt that this group did a lot to promote the idea of photographer as artist, which lies at the root of pictorialism.

The British counterpart to photo-secession was the Linked Ring, or to state its full title, Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, a group that seceded from the Royal Photographic Society. The Linked Ring was created by Henry Peach Robinson, George Davidson, and Henry Van der Weyde in 1892 to further the idea that photography was as much an art as a science. As an aside, there appears to have been a strong Masonic influence in this group because their logo was three rings chosen to represent the Masonic ideals of Good, True, and Beautiful.

It is important to note that although painting and photography have their separate histories, there has always been a cross-fertilization of techniques and ideas. Many photographers started out or at least trained as painters, and many painters took photographs. It has to be said, however, that the painters, including Manet, Degas, Gauguin, and Cézanne, seemed to use the camera as a means of recording and as a technical tool, rather than as a creative one.