Pictorialist Gertrude Kasebier

[gbogatko]

Go here:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html

And type in "Gertrude Kasebier" in the search box.

Now get a copy of "Camera Work -- The Complete Photographs"

CW contains the prints, and the LOC site contains the originals.

Wonderful to compare.

gb

[Toyon]

Can you post the two side by side?

[gbogatko]

Can you post the two side by side?

Only one. These are link-thrus to the library of congress collection. One, apparently, is a scan from a photogravure, the rest are the glass negatives of the originals. The thing to note is that the originals are not out of focus. One uses a "fuzzy" lens, but the rest are straight. It was in making the print that the artist introduced the "pictorial" look. The print of "Blessed Art Thou..." is from Wikipedia.

You'll need to borrow a library book about the photo-secessionists and "Camera Work" to see prints. These are famous photos, so examples of prints should be easy to find.

[MIke Sherck]

I'm going to stop whining about dust on my negatives now...

[Dave Wooten]

Good post. Sharp lens of the Pict era. Did'nt many of the now popular "soft" "pictorialist" lenses arrive on the market after the Pict era? The sharp neg and or print was modified to interpret impressionist/pictorialist techniques and expression.

[Jim Galli]

Good post. Sharp lens of the Pict era. Did'nt many of the now popular "soft" "pictorialist" lenses arrive on the market after the Pict era? The sharp neg and or print was modified to interpret impressionist/pictorialist techniques and expression.

Dave, the pictorialist era never ended. It was only silenced slightly by the f64 fad.

[Toyon]

Thanks George, wonderful example. The photogravure process smoothed things out considerably as well as adding that ineffable texture.

[Andrey Vorobyov]

Indeed, it is astonishing, almost shocking to me.
I could never believe before that that these famous prints are made from such sharp negatives. Softening in post-processing inherent to photogravure process... What a surprise!...

[Mark Sawyer]

The gravure process has a softening effect of its own, also evident on Edward Curtis' photogravures.

Forman Hanna often used his Pinkham and Smith lens closed down for depth-of-field, then reintroduced a different kind of softness in the enlarging phase, with a thin layer of cheesecloth below the lens.

And some early converts from pictorialism to "straight" photography kept using their pictorial lenses, but well stopped-down. This very sharp self portrait by Alma Lavenson was made after she'd moved away from Pictorialism, but the lens is a Cooke f/3.5 Portric at a small f/stop. (It's clearly visible in the original, which was hung at the CCP a couple of years ago.)



And having seen quite a few original pictorialist works, some seem simply out-of-focus, with not even a hint of clear rendering anywhere in the image. They could have been made with almost any lens.

[Jim Galli]

The gravure process has a softening effect of its own, also evident on Edward Curtis' photogravures.

Forman Hanna often used his Pinkham and Smith lens closed down for depth-of-field, then reintroduced a different kind of softness in the enlarging phase, with a thin layer of cheesecloth below the lens.

And some early converts from pictorialism to "straight" photography kept using their pictorial lenses, but well stopped-down. This very sharp self portrait by Alma Lavenson was made after she'd moved away from Pictorialism, but the lens is a Cooke f/3.5 Portric at a small f/stop. (It's clearly visible in the original, which was hung at the CCP a couple of years ago.)



And having seen quite a few original pictorialist works, some seem simply out-of-focus, with not even a hint of clear rendering anywhere in the image. They could have been made with almost any lens.

Dang it! You mean in spite of having most of the holy grail silver bullet lenses on earth hoarded in Tonopah, I'm actually going to have to find something interesting to photograph and think about light and such.