Pictorialism and Photo Secession
Late 1800’s – Early 1900’s
Invented 1839
Is it art or is it science?
William Henry Fox Talbot
“Impressed by natures hand”
Louis Daguerre
“Chemical and physical property which gives [nature] the
power to reproduce herself.”
Neipce
“Spontaneous reproduce, by the action of light …”
These inventors, or founders of Photography, unknowingly laid a
foundation of this perception that Photography could not be art or
self expression. This may have led to the movement we know of as
Pictorialism.
An early photograph produced on a silver or a silver-covered copper plate.
Positive images produced directly onto the plate, could not be reproduced.
Developed with warm mercury vapour.
The earliest reliably dated photograph of a person, taken in spring 1838 by Daguerre
“… the idea occurred to me... how charming it would be if it were possible to cause
these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper."
Henry Fox Talbot called his work the 'art of photogenic drawing’. His process produced
prints on paper that were coated with silver iodide (salt and silver), which made it light
sensitive. This process was called calotype - 1841. First to produce a negative that you
could get prints from. Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of
photography: developing, fixing, and printing.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
1826 - Niépce experimented with bitumen on pewter or
zinc plates
Lady Filmer – 1864
Lady Hawarden 1860
Wet Plate &
Albumen Prints
Gustave Le Gray 1859
Oscar Rejlander 1857
1888 – Kodak Camera
Eastman Dry Plate Company – Made the
Kodak camera – first handheld “instant”
camera.
Dry plates that were exposed by
photographer and sent back to the
company for development.
The snapshot was born!
Anyone could be a photography now …
“You push the button, we do the rest!”
http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Our_Compa
ny/History_of_Kodak/Milestones__chronology/1878-1929.htm
George Eastman selling his
camera on ocean liner –
1890
Art photographers were
trying to get photography
recognized as “Art”!
This snapshot emergence
from Kodak didn’t help
their case! How could it be
art if everyone could do it!
Pictorialism
• Mimicked Painting
• Born as a reaction to the point and shoot approach to Photography made possible
by Kodak.
• Art Photographers wanted to make a distiction:
• Make it a hard process! Not point and shoot!
• Relied on labor intensive processes that showed the human hand in the
process
• Emphasized photographer as craftsman
• Heavily worked negatives: Retouched negatives; printed on textured paper
Gertrube Kasenbier, 1903
American Photographer
Founding member of photo secessionists
Heinrich Kuhn, 1898 Austrian
First photographer to do unique “above” perspective
Used Autochrome
Kodachrome later replaced Autocrome
Clarence White American Early 1900’s
Self taught
Opened first Photography School – Modern Photography
Edward Steichen – 1904
Trained painter/drawer
Editor of first photography publication –
Cameraworks Magazine
Opened first gallery, NYC
1st Fashion Photograph
Military Photographer WWI & WWII
Founded Photo Secession Movement
First and highest paid fashion photographer
Film maker
Head of Photography Dept at MoMA
Alred Stieglitz 1892
Grandfather of Art Photography
Formed photography collection
American camera club
Advocate to push photograph as art
medium
Showed photography next to painting
in his art gallery
Equivalents
“Are these clouds?”
“I DON’T SEE WHY THAT MATTERS?”
“What do you see? What does it make you
feel?”
“Equivalents idea or emotion attached to it
by the viewer or photographer.”
Pushed the way people that about
photography and what it could be.
Photo Secessionists