Pictorialism

Pictorialists took the medium of photography and reinvented it as an art form, placing beauty, tonality, and composition above creating an accurate visual record. Through their creations, the movement strove to elevate photography to the same level as painting and have it recognized as such by galleries and other artistic institutions. In the 1880s, photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings e.g. manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus, blurred and fuzzy imagery based on allegorical and spiritual subject matter, including religious scenes.

Influences on Pictorialism: Allegorical painting

Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates it’s message through symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.

Peter Henry Emerson 1856 -1936

In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson 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 black and white contrast of the commercial print. Emerson soon became convinced that photography was a medium of artistic expression superior to all other black-and-white graphic media because it reproduces the light, tones, and textures of nature with unrivalled fidelity. He decreed that a photograph should be direct and simple and show real people in their own environment, not costumed models posed before fake backdrops or other such predetermined formulas.

Hugo Henneberg

Hugo Henneberg was an amateur photographer originally trained in the sciences. Henneberg came to the medium from his study of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics. His knowledge of the technical aspects of photography served his aesthetic interests particularly well, as he created gum bichromate prints that involved multiple stages of development. The resulting prints possessed a rich, engaging texture that augmented a satisfying spatial sense, as in this landscape-Henneberg’s favourite genre.

Gum Bichromate

Gum bichromate is a 19th-century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromats. It is capable of rendering painterly images from photographic negatives. Gum printing is traditionally a multi-layered printing process, but satisfactory results may be obtained from a single pass. Any colour can be used for gum printing, so natural-colour photographs are also possible by using this technique in layers.

Realism / Straight Photography

Realism photography grew up with claims of having a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned. This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who
rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.

Straight Photography were photographers who believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers strove to make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’, they did not want to treat photography as a kind of monochrome painting. They abhorred handwork and soft focus and championed crisp focus with a wide depth of field.

Alfred Stieglitz

In 1907 Stieglitz took this picture, The Steerage and thereby rejected Pictorialism’s aesthetics and became in favour of what Paul Strand called ‘absolute unqualified objectivity’ and ‘straight photographic means’. Stieglitz and Strand was also influenced by European Avant Garde art movements such as Cubism and Fauvism and some of their pictures emphasised underlying abstract geometric forms and structure of their subjects.

Modernism

Modernism led to progress in many spheres of life by changing the approach of mankind towards culture, modernism attempted to free humanity from its historical baggage through the use of philosophy and science.

Early modernity is characterised intellectually by a belief that science could save the world and that a foundation of universal truths could be established. The common trend was to seek answers to fundamental questions about the nature of art and human experience. Modernity imbue all aspects of society and are apparent in its cultural forms including fiction, architecture, painting, popular culture, photography.

By the beginning of the 20th century, with the diffusion of illustrated magazines and newspapers, photography was a mass communication medium. Photojournalism acquired authority and glamour, and document-like photographs were used in advertising as symbols of modernity.

Surrealism

Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924, by the poet Andre Breton and continued Dadaism’ exploration of everything irrational and subversive in art. Surrealism was more explicitly preoccupied with spiritualism, Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism. It aimed to create art which was ‘automatic’, meaning that it had emerged directly from the unconscious without being shaped by reason, morality or aesthetic judgements. The Surrealist also explored dream imagery an they were an important art movement within Modernism involving anything from paintings, sculpture, poetry, performance, film and photography.

Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

René Magritte was a Belgian-born artist who was known for his work with surrealism as well as his thought-provoking images. In the 1920s, he began to paint in the surrealist style and became known for his witty images and his use of simple graphics and everyday objects, giving new meanings to familiar things. With a popularity that increased over time, Magritte was able to pursue his art full-time and was celebrated in several international exhibitions. He experimented with numerous styles and forms during his life and was a primary influence on the pop art movement. Magritte’s handiwork is bold and illustrative, it’s playful and mysterious: you’re never left wondering what is pictured, but you are often left wondering why.

Post – Modernism

Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism and was influenced by disenchantment brought on by the second world war. It refers to the state that lacks a central hierarchy and one that is complex, ambiguous and diverse. Grand narratives like freedom, societal progress, scientific progress were criticized by post modernists, who instead emphasized that difference should be celebrated, rather than forced unity. Post modernism represented a loss in faith in human reason, it provides a bleak prognosis of the human condition and offers no real solution.

Postmodernism also explores power and the way economic and social forces exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures. Unlike modernists, postmodernists place little or no faith in the unconscious as a source of creative and personal authenticity. They value art not for universality and timelessness but for being imperfect, low-brow, accessible, disposable, local and temporary. While it questions the nature and extent of our freedom and
challenges our acquiescence to authority, Postmodernism has been criticised for its pessimism: it often critiques but equally often fails to provide a positive vision or redefinition of what it attacks.

Jeff Wall

The most famous practitioner of “staged photography”, camera artist Jeff Wall is one of Canada’s greatest photographers of the 20th century. Challenging the notion of photography as a medium that records the “real”, Wall has been producing carefully staged photos since the end of the 1970s. Largely involving everyday scenes conveying an iconographic link to classical painting, they are often presented as large-format back-lit cibachrome photographs. His lens-based tableaux often feature a mixture of natural beauty, urban decay and industrial wasteland as their backdrop.

Pictorialism

1880s-1920s

Pictorialism came from people who wanted to prove photography as an art form. Pictorialist photographers were heavily influenced by artists of the time and would manipulate their images after to make them look more like art.

To make the photos look more handmade they would use techniques like Vaseline on a camera lens to get a more blurry effect, scratching negatives to create a brush stroke effect and mixing chemicals.

Examples of Pictorialism in photography:

Pictorialism was also the first signs of staged photography, where photographers got models to pose for the image in the way the photographer wanted. Julia Margret Cameron (above) is a prime example of this as she got members of her family to model for her.

Realism/ Straight Photography

Started in 1915

Realism or straight photography came from people who did not like pictorialism and wanted to take photos as they were, no manipulation, providing records of the visual world. Photographers would take photos of shapes and forms, abstract in nature.

Examples of Realism/Straight Photography:

Pictorial photographers did not take photos of the urban environment or rural areas with poor communities. Danish immigrant Jacob Riis published a book ‘How the Other Half Lives’ about the slums and living conditions in Manhattan and this sparked a new kind of realism with a socialist perspective. Photographers Dorothea Lange and Lewis W Hine started to photograph the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on working class Americans. This new photographic response brought up the issue of housing and labour to legislators and the public , which was the beginning of photojournalism.

Modernism

20th Century

Modernism was a reaction to enlightenment, the new discoveries in technology and science. Technology was improving and there was a clash between science vs religion and more intellect within society. It was also a rejection to realism and a move towards abstract photography and modern times. People were questioning freedom from leaders. Modernism also makes references to the art of the work itself like composition, material, skills and process, it is heavily critiqued and people who admire the art from modernism often look for originality, what makes something unique, seeking for the new.

By the start of the 20th century photography was a way of mass communication, being used in magazines and newspapers and photographs were being used in advertising.

Examples of Modernism in photography:

Post-Modernism

Late 20th Century

Post-modernism was a reaction to modernism and was heavily influenced by what was going on in the world. It started after the impact of the technology in WW2.

A heavy influence to post modernism as a movement is relativism which means no society or culture is more important than another. Not all postmodern artist are relativists but they often explore ideas of the way society is constructed and question traditional hierarchy of cultural values. They also explore power of economic and social forces use that power by manipulating peoples’ identities and cultural identities.

Architects did the most for the start of post-modernism, they rejected the modernist style of architecture as it was too formal and simple. They wanted more playful and dynamic buildings.

The art of postmodernism are admired for the imperfect, accessible and temporary aspects rather than being perfect and technically good like modernism. Postmodernism is more about examining a subject.

Examples of Post-Modernism in photography:

Straight Photography

The term, ‘Straight photography’ was first used in 1904 by critic Sadakichi Hartmann in the magazine, ‘Camera Work’ to describe a more ‘pure’ version of Pictorialism but the movement really began in the 1930s with the decline in popularity of Pictorialism and the rise of the west coast photographic movement. Straight Photography accentuated detail in photos by engaging with the camera’s own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus. Unlike Pictorialism the photos are generally not manipulated but are instead depict the image as the camera and photographer initially sees it. This movement pioneered photographic techniques taken for granted today such as depth of field, focus and use of shutter speed. The photographic society and group of friends f/64 was founded in 1932 as a response to the Pictorial movement and became known for their straight photography specifically surrounding the bay area.

 Ansel Adams was an American photographer and founder of iconic photography group F/64. Adams was renowned for his pure (straight) photography of the American west. Adhering to the conventions of straight photography, his images were sharp and focused. Initially he started his photographic career firmly working to the standards of pictorialism, using methods such as the bromoil process. Adams friend Paul Strand gave him a lot of insight into new methods of straight photography, showing him that using glossy paper over normal would help to intensify tonal values. Straight photography was very important to Group F/64. In their official manifesto it is stated that “Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.”

modernism-

Modernism in the arts refers to the rejection of the Victorian era’s traditions and the exploration of industrial-age, real-life issues, and combines a rejection of the past with experimentation, sometimes for political purposes. Stretching from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, Modernism reached its peak in the 1960s; Post-modernism describes the period that followed during the 1960s and 1970s. Post-modernism is a dismissal of the rigidity of Modernism in favor of an “anything goes” approach to subject matter, processes and material.

he shift to modernism can be partly credited to new freedoms enjoyed by artists in the late 1800s. Traditionally, a painter was commissioned by a patron to create a specific work. The late 19th century witnessed many artists capable of seizing more time to pursue subjects in their personal interest.

Modernism reached its peak with Abstract Expressionism, which began in the late 1940s in the United States. Moving away from commonplace subjects and techniques, Abstract Expressionism was known for oversized canvasses and paint splashes that could seem chaotic and arbitrary.

POST-MODERNISM

Post-modernism, as it appeared in the 1970s, is often linked with the philosophical movement Poststructuralism, in which philosophers such as Jacques Derrida proposed that structures within a culture were artificial and could be deconstructed in order to be analyzed.

Post-modern work in the 1970s was sometimes derided as “art for art’s sake,” but it gave rise to the acceptance of a host of new approaches. Among these new forms were Earth art, which creates work on natural landscapes; Performance art; Installation art, which considers an entire space rather than just one piece; Process art, which stressed the making of the work as more important than the outcome; and Video art, as well as movements based around feminist and minority art.

Post-modern art has since become less defined by the form the art takes and more determined by the artist creating the work. American artist Jenny Holzer, who came to prominence in the 1970s with her conceptual art made from language, embodies this model.

modernism and postmodernism were both movements that emerged from an analysis of events within the modern period from the perspective of the values of the Enlightenment.

Pictorialism is an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality. This occurred from the 1880s and onwards when photographers strived for photography to be art by trying to make pictures that resemble paintings. Pictorialism has several key features which consist of using substances such as Vaseline on the camera lens to create a blur effect. Additionally another key characteristic is that photographers used to scratch the negatives to manipulate their photographs. Common themes within the style are the use of soft focus, colour tinting, and visible manipulation such as composite images or the addition of brushstrokes. The pictorialism movement led to great innovation in the field of photography with a number of the photographers associated with it responsible for developing new techniques to further their artistic vision. This therefore created the foundations for later advances in colour photography and other technical processes.

Above is a photograph taken by Henry Peach Robinson which represented pictorialism in several ways. This composite print, combining five different negatives, focuses on an intimate scene of a very sick young woman, surrounded by three family members. Robinson pioneered the composite image, which became a foundation of Pictorialism. To his contemporary audience the photograph was controversial, as many felt that photography was too literal a medium to portray such an intimate and painful scene.

Straight photography / Realism 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. Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz pioneered Straight photography in New York around the 1910s which is still continuing within the current decade. Realism / straight photography continues to define contemporary photographs, while also being the foundation for many relevant others areas of photography. These consist of documentary, street photography, photojournalism and even later progressed to abstract photography. Straight photography is a process and time-based approach. It represents immediacy, the passing of time as in history, or the freezing of time as in a snapshot. In a photograph, time is described by the movements of the subject. Each photographic style adapted the approach to emphasize its own treatment of form, sensory experience, or the changes in the social and cultural environment.

The photograph above was take by Paul Strand who was an American photographer and filmmaker. Although the photograph in which he has taken may come across as simple and minimalistic, it shows a clear close-up view of regular kitchen bowls that are used to study the effects of light and shadows. Paul Strand said that his “abstract” studies were a matter of clarifying “for me what I now refer to as the abstract method, which was first revealed in the paintings of Picasso, Braque, Léger and others… .”

Modernism is when photographers created sharply focused images, with emphasis on formal qualities, exploiting, rather than obscuring the camera as an essentially mechanical and technological tool. Modern Photography encompassed trends in the medium from the early 1900s through to the 1960s. The move from early photography to Modern Photography is distinguished by a departure from the language and constraints of traditional art, such as painting, and this change in attitude was mirrored by changes in practice. The invention of photography was part of the process of modernization of the means of production that too place during the industrial revolution.

Post-modernism is arose in the second half of the 20th century, and it encompasses a variety of themes. First and foremost, postmodernism builds on the themes and conceptual ideas that began during the modernist period. Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism and was highly influenced by the second world war. postmodernism refers to the state that lacks a central hierarchy and one that is complex, ambiguous and diverse. It also represented a loss in faith in human reason as well as provides a bleak prognosis of the human condition. Overall modernism and postmodernism were both movements that engaged from an analysis of events within the modern period from the perspective of the values of enlightenment.