Straight Photography Movement and Pictorial Photography Movement 

The Pictorial Movement 

Pictorialism, an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality, they  tried to make their they made images look similar to romanticism painted which tended to be very fantasy/ dream like. To create this effect pictorial photographers would often smear Vaseline around the lens of the camera to make the image distorted, the height of pictorialism was around the 1800s – 1910.

Characteristic of the Pictorialism 

• Pictures that look similar to paintings in  the same era
• Many images featuring the female body as the many subject matter
• The use of shadows and darkness to obscure some of the frame
• Out of focus images
• Blurry and fuzzy images

Pictorial Photographers 

Emerson’s Naturalistic Photography – In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) expounded his theory of Naturalistic Photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art rather than science. Their handcrafted prints were in visual opposition to the sharp b/w contrast of the commercial print

Examples of Pictorial photography 

Straight Photography 

Pure photography or straight photography is a photography movement which began in reaction to the Pictorial photography movement. Straight photography emphasizes and engages with the camera’s own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail. The term generally refers to photographs that are not manipulated, either in the taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes, but sharply depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it. The movement began around the same time that pictoralism began to die out, so around 1910.

Straight Photographers 

Paul Strand – born 1890 New York City.The iconic photographer Strand redifined the medium through his portraits, city scenes, and abstract compositions that helped define modernist photography in the twentieth century.

Ansel Adams –  His signature style was characterized by a sharp, high-resolution focus and stark contrasts of light and shadow. Adams co-founded Group f/64, a collective of Western-American photographers.

László Moholy-Nagy. He was influential in promoting the Bauhaus’s multi- and mixed-media approaches to art, advocating for the integration of technological and industrial design elements.

Examples of straight Photography