5 things to know about Pictorialism and the birth of fine art photography

After the announcement of the invention of photography in 1839, in Paris, the remainder of the 19th century saw unrivalled innovation and experimentation in the new medium. While scientists and professionals employed photography for documentary purposes, the century’s final decades spawned a generation of hobbyists. Thanks to George Eastman’s invention of the user-friendly Kodak camera in the 1880s, the masses could capture memories like never before.

While photography’s functional benefits were irrefutable, a group of image-makers in the late 19th century known as the Pictorialists argued for the medium’s artistic merit as well. Although the exact origins of the movement are still debated (it’s commonly believed to trace back to the Vienna Camera Club in 1891), Pictorialism became a powerful international phenomenon that forever changed art history. Thanks to the efforts of the influential gallerist and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the movement flourished in America through the early 20th century.

Discover more about the movement’s mission, distinctive style, robust practitioners, and profound legacy.

The Pictorialists were the first photographers to strive to be identified as artists, elevating the medium as a vehicle for personal creative expression. The movement is identified with the genesis of fine art photography, as well as the first widespread international photographic movement.

Artists like Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Karl Struss, Heinrich Kühn, F. Holland Day and Clarence H. White were some of the foremost American photographers of the turn-of-the-century. They were well-versed in the pictorial and Impressionist language of the era, producing compositions with familiar subject matter that was directly in line with their non-photographic artist friends.

The emphasis on beauty and atmospheric imagery associated with Pictorialism was the result of heavy mediation and intervention in the darkroom. For the Pictorialists, it was critical that each resulting image and print show the hand of the artist. By utilising various complex hand-application darkroom techniques, oftentimes combined, they could achieve painterly effects in their work.

A slew of 19th-century photographic processes was employed — bromoil, gum-bichromate, carbon and platinum prints, along with photogravure printing techniques at times with the additional variety of coloured inks and pigments. The surfaces of the images could be built up — dense and inky — or reduced to a simple wash, all applied by brush and enhanced by deep or flattened contrast in the darkroom. Bromoil and bromoil transfer, as exemplified in the work of George Seeley, incorporates another kind of solution with an oil-based ink, resulting in very rich surfaces. These processes, along with a wide range of printmaking papers, lent themselves perfectly to the air of painterliness that was desired.

The precious metals, such as silver, platinum, palladium and selenium, were employed beyond Pictorialism, to a greater degree than gum or bromoil printing, and remained popular long after the movement waned. A wash of light sensitive platinum salts was often used with fine printmakers’ papers, yielding a rich tonal range. Karl Struss was known as a master of the platinum printing process. The Pictorialists also celebrated finely crafted books and printing techniques, especially the photo-mechanical photogravure, finding ways to manipulate the ink for great artistic effect.

Stieglitz coined the term ‘Photo-Secession’ to describe the broader movement of photographers who prioritised the artistic crafting of an image to achieve their creative vision, rather than simply shooting whatever was in front of the camera. The Photo-Secessionists were, therefore, actively seceding from established photographic practices as merely a functional or hobbyist tool in favour of photography as fine art. Pictorialism was the particular style of photography that many embraced to challenge traditional modes of image making.

As Stieglitz wrote in a statement in 1903, fiercely defending the group: ‘Its aim is loosely to hold together those Americans devoted to pictorial photography in their endeavour to compel its recognition, not as the handmaiden of art, but as a distinctive medium of individual expression. The attitude of its members is one of rebellion against the insincere attitude of the unbeliever, of the Philistine, and largely of exhibition authorities. The Secessionist lays no claim to infallibility, nor does he pin his faith to any creed, but he demands the right to work out his own photographic salvation.’

Stieglitz was a major promoter of Pictorialism not only as a photographer himself, but also as a gallerist, dealer and magazine editor. Having created and edited two earlier photographic publications, he launched Camera Work, a quarterly journal that ran between 1903 and 1917. The sumptuously produced and pioneering journal predominantly featured a close-knit circle of writers and photographers, charting the rise of Pictorialism and other photographic movements. The reproductions were primarily as photogravures, a rich, ink-and-plate photo-mechanical process that was favoured by Stieglitz. Camera Work remains one of the most impressive and influential photographic journals of all time.

Pictorialism succeeded in establishing photography as an art form, in the early years of the 20th century during a period of immense social and artistic upheaval. As the century progressed and modernism dawned, many photographers began to reject the movement’s emphasis on darkroom manipulation. Rather than striving to emulate painting and drawing, there was a global interest in what was seen as uniquely photographic, in what it could achieve that other media could not.

The metaphoric, soft-focus scenes the Pictorialists favoured gave way to precisionist images that were starkly black and white and filled with specific details. Artist like Edward Weston and Paul Strand found their images presented in the final issues of Camera Work, celebrated by an aging Stieglitz who also embraced the evolution of the medium.

Instead of seeing photographic realism as soulless and mechanical, the pendulum had swung towards an embrace of the critical and unbending eye of the camera in portraying the beauty of the natural world and the foibles of humanity.

Ultimately Pictorialism’s arc led to its evolution which became the groundwork for Modernism in the broader arts. Avant-garde and Surrealist photography challenged all photographic norms and brought photographers back into the darkroom to produce uncanny works made purely of the imagination. Without the experimentation and innovation of the Pictorialists, the breadth of photography — its infinite moods and possibilities for transmitting emotion and imagination — in the 20th and 21st centuries would never have come about.