Pictorialism

Pictorialism was a popular art/aesthetic movement beginning around 1869, developing from Henry Peach Robinson’s book Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints on Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers. The book focused on ideas of chiaroscuro, the ancient Italian practise of using dramatic lighting to convey mood, similar to the literary device pathetic fallacy. Photographers following the movement would often use pictorial techniques to alter and distort the images they took creating the basis of what we now digitally use as photoshop.

• Bromoil process: This is a variant on the oil print process that allows a print to be enlarged. In this process a regular silver gelatin print is made, then bleached in a solution of potassium bichromate. This hardens the surface of the print and allows ink to stick to it. Both the lighter and darker areas of a bromoil print may be manipulated, providing a broader tonal range than an oil print.
• Carbon print: This is an extremely delicate print made by coating tissue paper with potassium bichromate, carbon black or another pigment and gelatin. Carbon prints can provide extraordinary detail and are among the most permanent of all photographic prints. Due to the stability of the paper both before and after processing, carbon printing tissue was one of the earliest commercially made photographic products.
• Cyanotype: One of the earliest photographic processes, cyanotypes experienced a brief renewal when pictorialists experimented with their deep blue color tones. The color came from coating paper with light-sensitive iron salts.
• Gum bichromate: One of the pictorialists’ favorites, these prints were made by applying gum arabic, potassium bichromate and one or more artist’s colored pigments to paper. This sensitized solution slowly hardens where light strikes it, and these areas remain pliable for several hours. The photographer had a great deal of control by varying the mixture of the solution, allowing a shorter or longer exposure and by brushing or rubbing the pigmented areas after exposure.
• Oil print process: Made by applying greasy inks to paper coated with a solution of gum bichromate and gelatin. When exposed through a negative, the gum-gelatin hardens where light strikes it while unexposed areas remain soft. Artist’s inks are then applied by brush, and the inks adhere only to the hardened areas. Through this process a photographer can manipulate the lighter areas of a gum print while the darker areas remain stable. An oil print cannot be enlarged since it has to be in direct contact with the negative.
• Platinum print: Platinum prints require a two-steps process. First, paper is sensitized with iron salts and exposed in contact with a negative until a faint image is formed. Then the paper is chemically developed in a process that replaces the iron salts with platinum. This produces an image with a very wide range of tones, each intensely realized.

The images were often of people but not natural and usual always staged. The movement connotes the era of the romantics but with a focus on people rather than nature.

Pictorialist Photographers

Wayne Albee, famous for his portraits of iconic prima ballerina Anna Pavlova was a key figure in the pictorial movement. Considering the blurry soft look of this portrait, it is likely Albee used a visual technique of either applying vasine to his camera lens or perhaps the oil print process explained above

Pierre Dubreuil was a key individual of the Pictorialism movement, embracing the technical effects that many classic artists and photographers criticised. His work was much forgotten about until the late 1970s when Californian collector Tom Jacobson discovered his work and set out to collect the photographers remaining work which was unfortunate mostly destroyed in bombings in Belgium during the second world war. Jacobson later produced widely successful exhibitions on Dubreuil, successfully re-introducing him to the photographic world and making him a celebrated and esteemed photographer. Le Figaro, praised Jacobson’s exhibition at the prestigious Musee National d’Art Moderne, acknowledging him for discovering “this treasure which was believed to have been lost.”^[5]