Realism and straight photography was a movement of photography that came around in the early to mid 1900’s. Pictorialism was phasing out of popularity and photographers had begun a new style of photography. Paul Strand was a pioneer of the realism and straight photography genre of image making. In the early 1900’s pictorialism was still popular, artists and photographers would use techniques such as putting vasaline on the lenses to make the images soft and and scratch the negatives to make the images look like painting. The emphasis on pictorialism is to make the images not look like photographs and look more like art, pictorial images soften featured stage scenes or actors posing for the camera rather than documenting. Paul Strand wanted to get back to the true meaning of photography and the roots of why image fixing was invented. He wanted to document the world exactly as he saw it. This meant not post processing the images in the darkroom and not affecting the image making process in any way.

Key characteristics/ conventions: Go back to the qualities of photography as it recreates accurate and sharp images. They wanted to take photos of what they actually saw. They took things the way they were and not manipulated in the darkroom. Trying to emphasise and focus on shape. The art came from the skill of the photographer

Artists associated: Paul Strand transitioned into and pioneered straight photography. Walker Evans, Ansel Adams. Group f.64 – A group that were interested in capturing the amazing natural landscapes.

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Photographers interested in the genre of straight photography would use a very small aperture to get everything in focus. A group was formed called group f.64. This represents the smallest aperture a large format camera can go to on the lens. This became a trademark and a common feature of photographers like Paul Strand and Ansel Adams