PICTORIALISM

A style of photography from 1860 until about 1940 characterized by narrative content, genre
studies, and soft-focus impressionistic images. Promoted by the Linked Ring and Photo-
Secessionists, Pictorialism championed photography as a fine art in its own right.

Oscar G. Rejlander, The Two Ways of Life, 1857, combination albumen print.

“The Two Ways of Life” is a marvel of combination printing. During a six-week period Rejlander
did sketches, hired models, and made thirty separate negatives which he masked, printed on
two pieces of paper, and connected. This work was rephotographed, and editions were
reproduced. The photograph’s unusually large size, 16 x 31 inches, made people stop and
notice, enabling it to hold its own on a gallery wall.

-Hirsch, p. 125

Henry Peach Robnson, Fading Away, 1858, combination albumen print.

Fading Away

A sketch was made.
The figures, the foreground, and the backround were photographed in 6 separate negatives.
Separate prints were made and the figures were cut out.
The cut outs were pasted to the separately photographed foreground and backround.
The joinery was retouched.
The whole piece was then re-photographed.

Gains great popularity

The combination prints of Rejlander and Robinson challenged the belief that painters alone had
the right to create scenes while photographers could never be more than mere mechanical
extensions of their equipment.

Once audiences overcame the shock of the combination print, they accepted it, realizing that
Robinson’s fundamental ideology embraced their notions of art. This made Robinson the most
popular, emulated, and well-to-do photographer of the second half of the nineteenth century.

He believed that combination printing gave “much greater liberty to the photographer and much
greater facilities for representing the nature of nature.”

- Hirsch, p. 127

The book Pictorial Effect in Photography; Being Hints On Composition And Chuariscuro
For Photographers To Which Is Added A Chapter On Combination Printing, by Henry
Peach Robinson, contained formalized instruction in the making of art photographs based on
academic rules of design and composition. He illustrated these theories with simple drawings
and actual albumen prints of his own work. He advocated the proper manner to get the best out
of a sitter and described his own photographing technique which was strongly theatrical.

The book was the most widely read photography textbook of the nineteenth century.

Henry Peach Robinson, When the Day’s Work is Done, 1877, combination albumen print from six negatives.

SALONS

Similar to academic painting, the pictorial photographers soon established a group of
individuals whose work appeared and reappeared in the crowded the Photographic Salons of
the time.

These groups were usually made of independently wealthy or professional studio
photographers.

Their social connections and financial position often meant more than the quality and originality
of their work. Independent workers and thinkers were annually excluded from the Salons.

INDEPENDENTS and "AMATEURS"

Although these independent amateur photographers were prohibited from entering the inner
circles of the Salons, their numbers and their enthusiasm continued to grow and gain
momentum. A new feeling about the essential qualities and power of photography began to take
shape. The amateurs began to organize.

Perhaps the first significant step in this direction was the publication by A. Horsley Hinton, in
1884, of The Amateur Photographer magazine. This new movement was seen by its founders
as a means of reinstating the creative integrity of photography as a medium of expression.

The word amateur was becoming an accolade, a word equal to artistic. Hinton selected the title
of his publication to distinguish it from the other photo publications aimed at professionals which
concentrated more on technique and manipulation than on visual aesthetics.

JULIA MARGARET CAMERON

Julia Margaret Cameron, Untitled, ca. 1867, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth, 1867, albumen print.

Cameron brought her camera close to her subjects, fashioning a close-up portrait that brought to
the forefront the subject’s distinctive intellectual and psychological qualities. Her head portraits
were made on large plates (about 11x14 inches) with a giant 30-inch focal length lens.

Although Cameron’s exposures averaged about five minutes, she did not use a headrest,
instead allowing the sitter’s natural motion to add spiritual life to the picture. The idea that the
blur could be used as a strategy was a conceptual break from the portrait ideal in which a sitter
was rendered absolutely still.

Rather than concealing the nature of the photographic process, Cameron exults in it, even
allowing processing drips to remain visible in the final image, thereby establishing a direct visual
connection between the process and the product.

She let the viewers know that what she accomplished was done through the agency of
photography, paving the way for the formation of an inherent, rather than imitative, photographic
language.

- Hirsch, pp. 128-129

Julia Margaret Cameron, Days at Freshtwater, ca. 1870, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth, 1867, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth as Julia Jackson, 1865-66, albumen print.

The issue of focus was critical in defining serious nineteenth-century artistic practice. During the
1860’s Cameron’s work helped establish the issue of selective focus as a criterion of peerless
practice.

The making of “out of focus” photographs was considered an expressive remedy that shifted the
artificial, machine-focus of a camera towards a more natural vision.

Cameron stated that “my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say,
that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped
there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers
insist upon.”

- Hirsch, p. 129

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Mother, 1867, albumen print.

My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High
Art by combining the real and ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion
to Poetry and beauty.

I believe in other than mere conventional topographic photography - map making and skeleton
rendering of feature and form without that roundness and fullness of face and feature, that
modeling of flesh and limb, which the focus I use only can give.

As to spots they must I think remain. I could have them touched out but ... artists
for this reason amongst others value my photographs.

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron, Circe, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Alice Liddell, n.d., albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Sir John Herschel, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Sir J.F.W. Herschel, 1867, albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Ryan, n.d., albumen print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Taylor as Rembrandt, 1865, carbon print.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Ellen Terry at Age Sixteen, 1864, carbon print.

CARBON PRINT PROCESS

The carbon print process was perfected in 1864 by Joseph Wilson Swan. Prints made using this
process came in any colour, and were permanent. The sensitising solution consisted of a
mixture of carbon, gelatin, the colouring material, and potassium bichromate.

A negative was printed onto a tissue of pigmented gelatin and potassium bichromate that, when
washed and transferred to a second sheet, produced a durable, rich, shiny print.

Carbon prints retain their rich tones. For this reason, some photographers offered carbon prints,
in preference to albumen. Carbon printing was also used for printing onto
surfaces other than paper.  Prints on opal glass could look particularly attractive.

Adolph Braun, Still Life of a Hunting Scene, 1860, carbon print.

PETER HENRY EMERSON

Peter Henry Emerson, Gathering Waterlilies, 1886, platinotype, from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

Emerson had begun to question the verisimilitude of photography by separating scientific truth
from artistic truth. He noted that the photographers should be faithful not to objective, scientific
facts, but to the appearance of reality.

Emerson advocated the absolute importance of the straight, or as he called it, the pure
approach to photography. He believed that marring the photograph in any form, from flattering
retouching to imitations of painting, drawings or other handiwork was an abomination. Emerson,
and his growing number of followers, believed that straight photography was the most severe
challenge in all the arts.

He believed that the responsibility of the artist was the representation of the effects of nature on
the eye.

Emerson's research into the optical theories of Herman von Helmholtz, expressed in Helmholtz's
book Physiological Optics, helped Emerson establish his most important ideas.

Helmholtz stated that the accurate rendition of nature was impossible, since the scale of
pigment is infinitely less than the scale of light.

The conditions of picture making could only be relative.

They were an impression. Emerson extended this Helmholtzian idea of "vision as impression" to
photography.

He believed that the impression must be absolutely faithful to Nature.

Nothing must be altered, added or subtracted. Every nuance of light and atmosphere must be
faithfully recorded.

The painter becomes a type of lens, more or less perfect, through which Nature is transferred to
a two-dimensional picture plane.

Emerson thought the painter's hand inferior to the photographic lens and the painter's canvas
inferior to the light sensitive photographic plate.

Peter Henry Emerson, Poling the Marsh Hay, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

It is you, facing yourself. You are the lens, the camera and the film. You can't hide behind the
sensuous appeals of the other arts; the brushstroke, the impasto, the glaze, the tyranny over
time in music, the weight, thrust and soar of architecture and sculpture. If these are felt in your
photographs they are reflections of what you feel.
- Peter Henry Emerson, 1889.

Claude Monet, Impression-Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas.

Peter Henry Emerson, The Haunt of the Pike, 1888. Platinotype.

Peter Henry Emerson, The Old Order and the New, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

Life and Landscape of the Norfolk Broads, published in 1886. Ten years in the making, he
co-authored this book with his good friend, T. F. Goodall, the landscape painter and naturalist.
This exquisite monograph was published in a deluxe edition of 100. Each book was bound in
green Moroccan leather and contained 40 original platinum prints.

The visual qualities inherent in platinum prints were of critical importance to Emerson's
aesthetics. He stated,

For low tone effects and grey day landscapes, the platinotye process is unequalled. Every
photographer who has the good and advancement of photography at heart should feel indebted
to Mr. Willis for placing within his power a process by which he is able to produce work
comparable on artistic grounds with any other black and white process. . . . No artist could rest
content to practice photography alone as art, so long as such inartistic printing processes as the
pre-planitoype process were in vogue. If the platinotype process were to become a lost art, we
for our part, would never take another photograph.

THE PLATINOTYPE

1831 -1844 Early researches into the use of platinum as a photographic medium
by Herschel, Talbot, and Hunt.

1872 - 1878 Research and development by William Willis of the first viable platinum photographic print process, known as the Platinotype.

1878 Willis founds the Platinotype Co. to manufacture platinotype paper for use by photographers.

1888 - 1916
Platinotypes become a prominent photographic print medium, with millions of prints being produced during this period.

Peter Henry Emerson, Throwing the Cast Net, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

Peter Henry Emerson, A Rushy Shore, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

Peter Henry Emerson, Coming Home from the Marshes, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

Peter Henry Emerson, Cantley Wherries Waiting for the Turn of the Tide, 1886, platinotype,from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

FRDERICK H. EVANS

Frederick Evans, York Minster: Into the North Transept, ca. 1902, platinotype.

Frederick Evans, one of the most prolific members of the Linked Ring, worked exclusively with
the platinum process. He chose this technique because it was capable of reproducing the rich
tonal range of his negatives.

His initial work was in the field of portraiture, particularly of his literary and artistic friends, but his
most famous work dealt with the splendid interpretations of English and French cathedrals. With
the inherent qualities of the platinum print, Evans was able to capture the brilliant shafts of light
and subtle shadows of the great cathedrals.

His earliest cathedral studies were the photographs of Yorkminister, begun about 1894 and
followed by photographs of Lincoln Cathedral in 1896. Throughout the late 1890's and the early
1900's his photographs were exhibited in England and America and published in Camera Work
from 1903 to 1907.

Evans brought sensitive interpretation to architectural photography and elevated that branch of
the medium to art. In 1900, Edward Steichen called Evans' work the most beautiful rendering of
architecture ever known; and in 1903, Stieglitz wrote, He (Evans) stands alone in architectural
photography.

Frederick Evans, West End of the Nave, Wells Cathedral, 1903. Platinotype.

The whole of the soaring interior of Wells Cathedral could not be contained within the frame.

The verticality of the space is emphasized throughout, but the piers in the foreground especially
shoot up from the floor with such force that they become abstractions, thick lines brushed in
rather than solid forms in a three-dimensional space.

The soft tonality of the platinum print that Evans preferred shades the contours of the space,
and the even illumination throughout flattens the plane of focus, diminishing the viewer's
perception of depth so that the space appears compressed.

- The Getty Museum

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: From the Castle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Ely Cathedral: Octagon Into Nave Aisle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: Nave, to East. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Ely Cathedral: Doorway to North Choir Aisle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, In Redlands Woods: Surrey. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Angers: Prefecture, Sculptured arches of 11th-12th Century. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, “A Sea of Steps,” Wells Cathedral: Stairs to Chapter House and Bridge to Vicar’s Close. Platinotype

The Sea of Steps

… The beautiful curve of the
steps on the right is for
all the world like the surge
of a great wave that will presently
break and subside into smaller ones like
those at the top of the picture. It is
one of the most imaginative lines
it has been my good fortune
to try and depict, this superb
mounting of the steps…

Frederick H. Evans, 1903

Frederick H. Evans, Westminster Abbey: South Nave Aisle to West. Platinotype.

Frederick H. Evans, Wells Cathedral: Chapter House Interior. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: The Angel Choir. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Bourges Cathedral: The Double Aisles. Platinotype

Frederick Evans, In the Attics, Kelmscott Manor, 1896, platinotype.

Frederick Evans's architectural study of the attic at Kelmscott Manor, a medieval house, part of
which dates from 1280, is a visual geometry lesson.

The composition is all angles and intersections, formed not only by the actual structure but also
by the graphic definition of light within the space.

Soft illumination bathes the area near the stairs, while the photograph's foreground plunges into
murky darkness.

The sharp angles of intersecting planes are mediated by the rough-hewn craftsmanship of the
beams and posts, almost sensuous in their sinewy imperfection and plainly wrought by hand.

The platinum print medium favored by Evans provides softened tonalities that further unify the t
riangles, squares, and diagonal lines of the dynamic composition.

- The Getty Museum

Frederick Evans, West End of the Nave, Wells Cathedral, ca. 1900. Platinotype.

The whole of the soaring interior of Wells Cathedral could not be contained within the frame.

The verticality of the space is emphasized throughout, but the piers in the foreground especially
shoot up from the floor with such force that they become abstractions, thick lines brushed in
rather than solid forms in a three-dimensional space.

The soft tonality of the platinum print that Evans preferred shades the contours of the space,
and the even illumination throughout flattens the plane of focus, diminishing the viewer's
perception of depth so that the space appears compressed.

- The Getty Museum

... We must find out our pictures for ourselves; and the only advice I would offer is, to
try for a record of emotion, rather than a piece of topography. Wait till the building
makes you feel intensely, in some special part of it or other; then try and analyze
what gives you that feeling, see if it is due to the isolation of some particular aspect
of effect, that subject. Try and try again, until you find that your print shall give not
only yourself, but others who have not your own intimate knowledge of the original,
some measure of the feeling it originally inspired in you - greater or less, according
to the success you have attained.
- Frederick Evans, 1907.

.
ROBERT DEMACHY

Robert Demachy, Etude, ca. 1895, gum bichromate.

GUM BICHROMATE

In the gum bichromate process a contact size negative is placed over a support material that
has been coated with gum arabic containing a pigment (watercolor or tempera) and with a light-
sensitive chemical (ammonium or potassium dichromate.)

The negative is then exposed to UV radiation. Gum arabic is hardened by such exposure and
made insoluble in direct proportion to the density of the negative.

The areas that are not hardened remain water soluble and are washed away, along with the
unneeded pigment. The hardened areas are left intact and bond the pigment to the support.

Control of the final image can be exercised through choice of paper and pigment, by localized
development, by recoating the support with a different color, or by using different negatives for
additional exposures.

It can also be combined with other processes, such as platinum, to create greater visual depth.
Brushstrokes are often left visible, giving the print a hand-worked look that can replicate the look
of a watercolor painting.

-Hirsch, p. 190-191

The gum process was introduced in 1894. A gum bichromate practitioner could alter the tones,
get rid of details, and using a brush, pencil or rubber, could change an image so much that it
looked more like a painting than a photograph.

Gum bichromate prints have little detail, but may sometimes appear almost like charcoal
drawings.

Robert Demachy, Academie, 1900, gum bichromate.

Robert Demachy, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1900-10, gum bichromate.

Robert Demachy, Portrait of a Child, ca. 1900-10, gum bichromate.

Robert Demachy, Oude Rijn, Holland, 1900-10, gum bichromate.

Robert Demachy, Canal Scene, Amsterdam, ca. 1900, bromoil print.

BROMOIL PRINT PROCESS

This process was introduced in 1907 by E.J. Wall, and consisted of a positive image on a paper
support. It was based on the principle that oil and water do not mix.

Once an enlargment on silver bromide enlarging paper was made, it was bleached in a solution
of potassium bichromate. to remove the black silver image.

This left it in a condition in which it was possible to apply greasy inks of various colors to
pigment the surface of the gelatin, using special brushes.

The inked print could be used as a matrix to transfer the ink image to a sheet of fine art paper
for greater permanence.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ AND THE PHOTO-SECESSION

Alfred Stieglitz, Watching for the Return, 1894, photogravure.

Alfred Stieglitz, A Bit of Venice, 1894, photogravure.

Alfred Stieglitz, Flatiron Building, 1902, photogravure.

Stieglitz, an American photographer, probably did more than
any other individual to promote photography as an art at the
same level as other arts, and has been dubbed the "patron
saint of straight photography."

He studied mechanical engineering and photography at the
Polytechnic of Berlin.

In 1883 Stieglitz saw a camera in a shop window in Berlin,
bought it, and photography in earnest began.

Many years later he wrote "I bought it and carried it to my
room and began to fool around with it. It fascinated me, first as
a passion, then as an obsession."

From 1892 he was becoming famous for his photographs of
everyday life in New York and Paris. There is a tremendous
atmospheric quality in many of his outdoor scenes.

In 1902 he became one of the founders of the Photo-
Secession, a group of talented avant-garde artists.

In 1905 he also founded and directed the Photo-Secession
Gallery in 291 Fifth Avenue, New York, a gallery which came
to be known as the "291", and which exhibited not only the
work of contemporary photographers, but also works of
Picasso, Rodin, Matisse and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Alfred Stieglitz, Spring Showers, New York, 1900, photogravure on vellum.

In 1903 Stieglitz launched, edited and published Camera
Work - a magazine which became world famous and
continued publication for a number of years.

Alfred Stieglitz, Sun Rays - Paula, Berlin, 1889. Platinotype.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Hand of Man, 1902. Photogravure.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, photogravure.

In 1907, it was during a trip to Europe that one of his most well-known photographs was taken It
is called "The Steerage":

"There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage.... I longed to
escape from my surroundings and join them.... A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the
stairway leaning right.... round shapes of iron machinery... I saw a picture of shapes and
underlying that, the feeling I had about life..."

There were two stages in his life: at first he produced somewhat romanticised pictures of an
Impressionistic style, then later moving over to realism of a high order.

- Robert Leggett, A History of Photography

THE PHOTOGRAVURE PROCESS

Invented by Karel Klí in 1879, photogravure is a photomechanical process (heliogravure in
French) using an etching method to reproduce the appearance of a continuous range of tones in
a photograph.

A copper plate dusted with fine granular resin is heated, covered with a sheet of bichromate
gelatin tissue, and contact-printed with a positive transparency.

The gelatin, which hardens on exposure to light, protects certain areas. After the soft gelatin is
washed away, the plate is then etched to varying depths in an acid bath, according to the
tonality of the original image.

Thus the highlights are protected from the acid, whereas the shadow area becomes deeply
etched. When printed, the ink fills the etched area and the tonality and details of the original
positive transfer onto paper.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, Self-Portrait, ca. 1908, photgravure.

PHOTO SECESSION

Group of mainly American Pictorialist photographers founded by ALFRED STIEGLITZ in New
York in 1902, with the aim of advancing photography as a fine art.

Stieglitz, who chose the organization’s name partly to reflect the Modernism of European artistic
Secession movements, remained its guiding spirit.

Other leading members included: ALVIN LANGDON COBURN, GERTRUDE KÄSEBIER,
EDWARD STEICHEN, and CLARENCE H. WHITE

The Secession also exhibited and published work by Europeans, for example Robert Demachy,
Frederick H. Evans, Heinrich Kühn, who shared the Americans’ attitude that photography was a
valid medium of artistic expression.

James MacNiel Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, ca. 1872-75, oil on canvas.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Kyobashi Bridge - Takegashi Wharf, 1856 - 1858. Woodcut.

Edward Steichen, Flatiron Building, 1907, cyanotype - gum bichromate - platinum print.

Edward Steichen, Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette, 1902, gum bichromate.

Edward Steichen, The Pond, Moonrise, 1905,gum-bichromate - platinotype.

Edward Steichen, The Little Round Mirror, 1902, gum bichromate - platinotype.

Edward Steichen, Rodin - the Thinker, 1902, gum bichromate.

Edward Steichen, The Big White Cloud, Lake George, 1903. Carbon print.

Edward Steichen, J. Pierpont Morgan, 1903, gelatin silver print.

AUTOCHROME

Autochrome was a photographic transparency film invented by Auguste and Louis Lumiére in
1903.

It employed the additive method, recording a scene as separate black and white images
representing red, green and blue, and then reconstituting color with the help of filters.

To do this on a single plate, the Lumiéres dusted it with millions of microscopic (avg. size 10 to
15 microns) transparent grains of potato starch that they had dyed red, green and blue.

This screen of grains worked as a light filter to interpret the scene when the light passed through
them exposing a panchromatic B&W emulsion.

The exposed plate was then processed reversal resulting in a transparency.

Like film today, their's was a composite construction, comprised of four distinct layers in addition
to the glass support.

Edward Steichen, Auguste Rodin, ca. 1908, autochrome.

Arnold Genthe, Portrait, ca. 1910, autochrome.

Arnold Genthe, Helen Cooke in a Field of Poppies, 1907, autochrome.

Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Still Life with Fish, ca. 1905, autochrome.

Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou among Women, 1899. Platinotype.

PICTORIALISM – A SUMMARY
- by Sarah Greenough, from On the Art of Fixing a Shadow, pp 145-147

Artists of the 1880’s and 1890’s came to believe that their work, through the expression of
subjective and abstract states of being, could reveal a higher and more universal reality than
that which could be discovered by any scientific method of investigation. This faith in the ability
of art to make known the formidable unknown unites the work of both symbolist and art nouveau
painters and sculptors with that of the pictorial photographers.

In an age that saw the invention of X-rays and with that the ability of photography to reveal
things invisible to the human eye, it was, perhaps, not too large a step to the assumption that
the camera could not only show man's bones, but also his psyche.

For photography, however, a lack of confidence in science cut to the heart of the medium and
seemed to contradict much of what had been understood to be essential to the process.

Photography had been perceived to be, as Alfred Stieglitz wrote in 1899, the bastard child of art
and science; as such, the attributes of science, including accuracy, precision, and most of all
verisimilitude, had been considered to be inherent characteristics.

As photographers began to refute the scientific heritage of the medium, so too did they deny
these attributes and call into question the whole notion of intrinsic properties.

Gertrude Kasebier, Widow, ca. 1905, platinotype.

Emerson had begun to question the verisimilitude of photography by separating scientific truth
from artistic truth. He noted that the photographers should be faithful not to objective, scientific
facts, but to the appearance of reality.

By the late 1890s, however, truth in pictorial photography was understood to be not a fixed or
quantifiable entity, but something relative and subjective; it was defined as the verification of all
things through human consciousness, and their statement through human feeling.

As truth took a secondary role to the expression of personal sentiment, photographs could no
longer be accepted as a priori statements of visual facts. Something more is required than truth
to nature, wrote William Murray in 1898 in the American publication Camera Notes,

and A. Horsely Hinton went so far as to state that photographers could willfully distort the truth
in order to express more forcefully their idea the photograph may even be less pleasing to the
public: less truthful to nature, and at the same time be more a work of art. I would rather have
the photograph not just exactly as the scene was, but as the artist would have liked it to be, or
imagined it might be.

Gertrude Kasebier, Manger, ca. 1905, platinotype.

A loss of faith in science also meant that pictorial photographers sought to banish from their art
all references to scientific objectivism and literalness. The line was clearly drawn: As Emerson
noted, when a work presented facts, it was a science; when it presented ideas, it was an art.

Also clear was the understanding that facts were precise whereas art was suggestive. This
desire to be suggestive and elusive accounts for the indistinct and at times blurred quality of
pictorial photographs.

It has often been assumed that the pictorialists’ softly focused images were an attempt to make
their photographs look less like photographs and more like paintings or the other graphic arts,
but while this may have been the result, it was not the intention.

Believing that the aim of their art was not to copy nature, but to appeal to the imagination, the
pictorialists, like the symbolist artists and writers, thought that the imagination was most
profoundly stimulated by suggestion rather than delineation

It may be given as a principle, wrote Hinton in 1900, that the feelings prompted by nature are
more perfectly re-created in something which suggests than by accurate representation.

“To name an object”, Stephane Mallarme had written only a few years before, “is to suppress
three-quarters of the enjoyment to be found in the poem .. . suggestion, that is the dream.”

Clarence H. White, Untitled (Nude Study), 1906-09, platinotype.

For these reasons, the pictorialists chose subjects that were not clearly linked to a specific time,
event, or place in the external world, but were vague and elusive, like Edward Steichen's The
Pond, Moonrise.

They sought the nameless view, the anonymous model on which to project their ideas and
associations. Even their titles—A Study, Landscape - Morning, Pastoral-- gave few clues about
who, what or where they were photographing.

Avoiding the use of established symbols whose references were understood rationally, the
pictorialists tried to construct a more immediate art that relied on universal experiences to
convey meaning.

They played on photography's ability to recall memories and associations, yet they also
recognized that such memories are rarely sharply defined but more often dreamlike and
indistinct, composed of nothing more than a small incident or passing glance.

As in Steichen's “The Pond, Moonrise”, they built their compositions around the expressive
potential of light and form, noting that these entities in their purest state often evoked the
strongest emotions.

And they made an effort to understand the meanings of` line and light in order, as Aurier wrote
of the symbolist painters, to use those elements like letters of an alphabet to write poems of
their dreams and ideas.

Clarence H. White, Raindrops, 1902, platinotype.

The pictorialists envisioned an emotive photography that would appeal not to reason or the
intellect, which were the properties of a scientific inquiry, but to intuition.

Defying discursive explanation, this photography would engender experience and symbolically
communicate the abstract thoughts and subtle feelings which language is inadequate to
express.

In this way, the pictorialists thought they would become truly creative artists, for their images
would not simply revive corresponding thoughts and memories in the mind of the viewer, but
create new ones; they would employ the image of concrete things to create abstract ideas.

For practically the first time in photography, the specificity and individuality of the objects in front
of the camera were of no importance, but were only a vehicle for the expression of an idea.

By divorcing photography from its scientific heritage, pictorial photographers also divorced it
from reality.

Working with the more plastic world of allusion rather than the sharp truths of reality, the
pictorialists freely manipulated their prints.

They favored printing processes such as carbon, platinum, gum-bichromate, and bromoil, as
well as exotic combinations, which either in their initial application or in development allowed for
considerable reinterpretation of the negative.

Clarence White, Untitled (Woman in Bed), ca. 1907, gum bichromate - platinotype.

To intensify the expressive and tactile quality of their images, they often hand-coated their own
paper, which : had been carefully selected for its size, weight, and tooth. The pictorialists'
manipulation of their prints was one of the most controversial aspects of the movement and it
served many purposes

First, and most obviously, the size, tonal scale, print quality, and variety, even the texture,
clearly separated pictorial work from that of the Sunday snapshooter. But the pictorialists'
photographs also represented a rebellion against the growing standardization of photography by
large, commercial manufacturers.

Like other participants in the arts and crafts movement, pictorial photographers were faced with
an increasingly mechanized and regularized industry. To reassert their integrity and
craftsmanship and to reclaim their field from commercial control, the pictorialists resurrected
older processes that allowed for more individualistic expression.

Reinforcing the idea of a singular masterpiece, they manipulated their images so extensively in
the darkroom that, often, the result was a unique image that could not be duplicated.

The pictorialists' prints attacked on other fronts too, with their ability to suppress unwanted
details, intensify others, alter tonal scale, even add color, and combine negatives

As was clearly expressed by Steichen in his Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette the act of
translation became just as important as that of composition.

No longer obligated to construct a window on the world or render a depiction of external,
scientific truths, the pictorialists continually interjected their presence, their individuality, between
the viewer and the original scene, further negating the importance of what was in front of the
camera.

These large, manipulated prints were not just an attempt to construct more beautiful, elaborate,
or even painterly images, but to unite form and content, to make style the physiognomy of the
spirit.

In this way, the very substance of the photograph-- its surface, color, and form--is its subject.
The pencil of nature became the pencil of man as pictorial photographers, according to the
English pictorialist George Davison, fulfilled the literal meaning of the word photography--to
draw or paint by light.

- Sarah Greenough, from On the Art of Fixing a Shadow, pp 145-147

Heinrich Kuhn, Still Life, ca. 1904, bromoil transfer print.

Heinrich Kuhn, Walter Kuhn, ca. 1905, gum bichromate.

Heinrich Kuhn, On the Hillside, 1910, gum bichromate.

George Einbeck, The Swan, 1898, gum bichromate.

Malcolm Arbuthnot, Reflections,1909, gum bichromate - platinotype.

Theodor and Oskar Hofmeister, The Siblings, ca. 1901, gum bichromate.

George Seeley, Untitled (Winter Landscape), 1909, gum bichromate.

Alvin Langdon Coburn,The Octopus, 1912. Platinotype.

Frederick Evans, West End of the Nave, Wells Cathedral, 1903. Platinotype.

The whole of the soaring interior of Wells Cathedral could not be contained within the frame.

The verticality of the space is emphasized throughout, but the piers in the foreground especially
shoot up from the floor with such force that they become abstractions, thick lines brushed in
rather than solid forms in a three-dimensional space.

The soft tonality of the platinum print that Evans preferred shades the contours of the space,
and the even illumination throughout flattens the plane of focus, diminishing the viewer's
perception of depth so that the space appears compressed.

- The Getty Museum

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: From the Castle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Ely Cathedral: Octagon Into Nave Aisle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: Nave, to East. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Ely Cathedral: Doorway to North Choir Aisle. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, In Redlands Woods: Surrey. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Angers: Prefecture, Sculptured arches of 11th-12th Century. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, “A Sea of Steps,” Wells Cathedral: Stairs to Chapter House and Bridge to Vicar’s Close. Platinotype

The Sea of Steps

… The beautiful curve of the
steps on the right is for
all the world like the surge
of a great wave that will presently
break and subside into smaller ones like
those at the top of the picture. It is
one of the most imaginative lines
it has been my good fortune
to try and depict, this superb
mounting of the steps…

Frederick H. Evans, 1903

Frederick H. Evans, Westminster Abbey: South Nave Aisle to West. Platinotype.

Frederick H. Evans, Wells Cathedral: Chapter House Interior. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Lincoln Cathedral: The Angel Choir. Platinotype

Frederick H. Evans, Bourges Cathedral: The Double Aisles. Platinotype