Pictorialism - Defining Pictorialism

Defining Pictorialism

In 1869 English photographer Henry Peach Robinson published a book entitled Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints On Composition And Chiaroscuro For Photographers. This is the first common use of the term "pictorial" referring to photography in the context of a certain stylistic element - chiaroscuro ‒ an Italian term used by painters and art historians that refers to the use of dramatic lighting and shading to convey an expressive mood. In his book Robinson promoted what he called "combination printing", a method he had devised nearly 20 years earlier by combining individual elements from separate images into a new single image by manipulating multiple negatives or prints. Robinson thus considered that he had created "art" through photography, since it was only through his direct intervention that the final image came about.

Robinson continued to expand on the meaning of the term throughout his life. In a lecture and then in an article in 1886, entitled Photography: A Pictorial Art, he recommended photographers adhere to the artistic aesthetics of contemporary painting. He wrote "The same laws which govern painters govern photographers.

Other photographers and art critics, including Oscar Rejlander, Marcus Aurelius Root, John Ruskin, echoed these ideas. One of the primary forces behind the rise of pictorialism was the belief that straight photography was purely representational ‒ that it showed reality without the filter of artistic interpretation. It was for, all intents and purposes, a simple record of the visual facts, lacking artistic intent or merit. Robinson and others felt strongly that the "usually accepted limitations of photography had to be overcome if an equality of status was to be achieved.

Robert Demachy later summarized this concept in an article entitled "What Difference Is There Between a Good Photograph and an Artistic Photograph?". He wrote "We must realize that, on undertaking pictorial photography, we have, unwittingly perhaps, bound ourselves to the strict observance of rules hundreds of years more ancient than the oldest formulae of our chemical craft. We have slipped into the Temple of Art by a back door, and found ourselves amongst the crowd of adepts."

One of the challenges in promoting photography as art was that there were many different opinions about how art should look. After the Third Philadelphia Salon 1900, which showcased dozens of pictorial photographers, one critic wondered "whether the idea of art in anything like the true sense had ever been heard or thought by the great majority of exhibitors."

While some photographers saw themselves becoming true artists by emulating painting, at least one school of painting directly inspired photographers. During the 1880s, when debates over art and photography were becoming commonplace, a style of painting known as Tonalism first appeared. Within a few years it became a significant artistic influence on the development of pictorialism. Painters such as James McNeil Whistler, George Inness, Ralph Albert Blakelock and Arnold Böcklin saw the interpretation of the experience of nature, as contrasted with simply recording an image of nature, as the artist's highest duty. To these artists it was essential that their paintings convey an emotional response to the viewer, which was elicited through an emphasis on the atmospheric elements in the picture and by the use of "vague shapes and subdued tonalities… a sense of elegiac melancholy."

Applying this same sensibility to photography, Alfred Stieglitz later stated it this way: "Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture."

Paul L. Anderson, a prolific contemporary promoter of pictorialism, advised his readers to that true art photography conveyed "suggestion and mystery", in which "mystery consists in affording an opportunity for the exercise of the imagination, whereas suggestion involves stimulating the imagination by direct or indirect means." Science, pictorialists contended, might answer a demand for truthful information, but art must respond to the human need for stimulation of the senses. This could only be done by creating a mark of individuality for each image and, ideally, each print.

For pictorialists true individuality was expressed through the creation of a unique print, considered by many to be the epitome of artistic photography. By manipulating the appearance of images through what some called "ennobling processes", such as gum or bromoil printing, pictorialists were able to create unique photographs that were sometimes mistaken for drawings or lithographs.

Many of the strongest voices that championed pictorialism at its beginning were a new generation of amateur photographers. In contrast to its meaning today, the word "amateur" held a different connotation in the discussions of that time. Rather than suggesting an inexperienced novice, the word characterized someone who strived for artistic excellence and a freedom from rigid academic influence. An amateur was seen as someone who could break the rules because he or she was not bound by the then rigid rules set forth by long-established photography organizations like the Royal Photographic Society. An article in the British journal Amateur Photographer stated "photography is an art ‒ perhaps the only one in which the amateur soon equals, and frequently excels, the professional in proficiency." This attitude prevailed in many countries around the world. At the 1893 Hamburg International Photographic Exhibition in Germany, only the work of amateurs was allowed. Alfred Lichtwark, then director of the Kunsthalle Hamburg believed "the only good portraiture in any medium was being done by amateurs photographers, who had the economic freedom and time to experiment."

Over the years other names were given to pictorialism, including "art photography" and Camerawork (both by Alfred Stieglitz), "Impressionist photography" (by George Davision), "new vision (Neue Vision), and finally "subjective photography" (Subjektive Fotographie) in Germany after the 1940s. In Spain pictorial photographers were sometimes called "interventionists" (intervencionistas), although the style itself was not known as "interventionism".