Pictorialism Images

[Jim Fitzgerald]

You are welcome. I think it explains a lot.

[sanking]

Our personal understanding of Pictorialism often fails to take into consideration its multiplicity of manifestations over a time period of 150+ years. The use of soft focus (or flou as the French called it), while a strategy of some pictorialists, is definitely not the only strategy, and in most cases not even the most important one. I have an article on Pictorialism that attempts to convey the core characteristics of this style.

http://www.sandykingphotography.com/...n-pictorialism

Sandy

[Mark MacKenzie]

Thats a great article, Sandy. Thank you.

Seems pictorialism has struck a resonant chord here.

[Steven Tribe]

"It's a popular misconception to equate pictorialism with soft focus images (and vice versa)."

Agreed - but my personal comment about the paper butterfly was based on image choice, the background textures and the rather distracting shadow, not it's sharpness.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Sandy, nice article. Great read andlove the website.

[Ken Lee]

Agreed - but my personal comment about the paper butterfly was based on image choice, the background textures and the rather distracting shadow, not it's sharpness.

Excellent - Thanks

[Mark Sawyer]

Agreed - but my personal comment about the paper butterfly was based on image choice, the background textures and the rather distracting shadow, not it's sharpness.

There were quite a few styles within Pictorialism, influenced from many different styles of art. Some were heavily influenced by Japanese print making or ink drawings. I think this is where the origame bird qualifies in subject and design.

[Mark Sawyer]

Pictorialism was a movement away from commercial, scientific and industrial photography...

...although Mortensen was quite commercial and the standard bearer for Pictorialism vs. Adams' Straight Photography philosophy. And Emerson's Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads was as much an ethnographic document as a work of art, even though it's considered a pioneering work in Pictorialism. Edward Curtis' The North American Indian opus is the same, combining scientific documentation with a very Pictorialist style.

Just goes to show...

[MrJim]

Not to kick a hornets nest, but some of the ideals of form and aesthetics in Sandy's article I can kind of see in some digital prints that rely heavily on a tablet and Corel Painter, or that topaz plug in (don't know which one, never used it). Should that kind of digital image be considered, "pictorial?" I've defended some of those images, as photographs in a local club I belong to because they were at one time a reality, but the process the the photgrapher used changed the reality to add emotion or vision the photographer felt at the time, or about the image. Of course the counter being, that's not what was really there. Mind you most of them shoot color, and man did I get blasted for bringing up interpolation, bayer filters, and the technology that records "reality," you blindly trust your in camera JPEG processing or, software?

bleh, not sure what I'm really asking. I was going to ask about forms, and aesthetic but I got myself confused... if I rerail my thought process I'll add in again..

[Ken Lee]

...although Mortensen was quite commercial and the standard bearer for Pictorialism vs. Adams' Straight Photography philosophy. And Emerson's Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads was as much an ethnographic document as a work of art, even though it's considered a pioneering work in Pictorialism. Edward Curtis' The North American Indian opus is the same, combining scientific documentation with a very Pictorialist style.

Just goes to show...

Indeed. Terms like these can help us categorize and classify, but under close scrutiny they can blur, overlap or break down altogether.