Define your understanding of "Pictorial Photography"

[Jim Galli]

From a discussion in another thread, I thought it would be worthwhile to have many of the folks here weigh in on how you would define the parameters of a Pictorial Photograph. Images are useful.

I think the distinction has to be made between "portrait" lenses with a sharp to moderately sharp center and fading edges (and possibly on to "swirly" corners) and the classic "pictorial" lens with overall sharp softness such as the early series Smith's (of P&S), such as the series I of F. Holland Day and the series II and III of Alvin Langdon Coburn. It seems to me that the later P&S series (Visual Quality etc.) fall more into the "portrait" category. Anyone else share that thought? Through the years, I went through a lot of old brass lenses looking for that pictorial effect. Most were just sharp, some had the swirly corners, but only one had the near pinhole pictorial effect. Unfortunately, it is unmarked and, for all I know, one of a kind. It is definitely on my schedule to give it a good workout whenever an opportunity presents itself.

"Pictorial" is not quite so easily defined and can bring something completely different from your interpretation to mind for someone else. This is near blasphemy but Coburns images leave me pretty cold. I do like Karl Struss' work from the same era. Pictorial work is an acquired taste. I lean towards the semi-sharp core with pronounced diffusion that the Visual Quality exemplifies. This might be a fun horse to beat for a while, perhaps I'll move this over to a new thread.

I'll start us off with a classic lens at (I feel) it's best;

La Salle

Wollensak Verito 18" at f4 on 7X11 film

[Ken Lee]

As a point of reference, here is a definition of Pictorialism from Wikipedia.

"...Pictorialism largely subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time. Most of these pictures made were black & white or sepia-toned. Among the methods used were soft focus, special filters and lens coatings, heavy manipulation in the darkroom, and exotic printing processes...."

[Benno Jones]

In my mind, pictorialism is to photography as impressionism is to painting. Does this make sense?

[Jim Galli]

I've been enjoying After the Photo-Secession: American Pictorial Photography, 1910-1955 by Christian A. Peterson. The much broader definition of pictorialism was simply a photograph set apart from the snap-shot that is intentionally made to be beautiful or pleasing to the eye. Edward Westons early work with Margrethe Mather easily falls into this broader category. In fact he was one of the founders of a Southern California Pictorial Salon group. I don't have the exact name in front of me. The Salon photographers didn't limit themselves to soft lenses, in fact many of the photos in the above treatise are quite modern and sharp. It has broadened my perspective some but I still lean toward the more classic definitions.

[Darryl Baird]

Pictorialism grew from 1) a need to compete with painting, 2) a need to distinguish art photography from that of the Johnny-come-lately amateurs (thanks to Eastman's Kodak and Brownie cameras), and 3) as results from a competition of ideas about photography. The Linked Ring (UK), Photo-Session (German and USA), and others saw photography as able to express moods and ideas, but the times were changing rapidly and modern life introduced a rapid and structural quality to the cities not seen before, especially the introduction of skyscrapers in the USA. Many of the photographers shunned this view and went into the "natural" world for their inspiration and images. Stieglitz, Coburn and especially Struss embraced the city (I love Struss' work) and what it offered, but back in England the views of prominent photographers, especially Peter Henry Emerson, were still the mainstream influences. Emerson believed in a "natural" view, which meant a sharp center with a progressively softer edge, which is the way the human eye actually works. His views were dominant well into the turn of the 20th century. Clarence White's school for photography was an important influence in American photography through the 1930s. He split with Steiglitz over a disagreement about A.S.'s changes towards a sharp focused aesthetic (Struss went with White).

I think Pictorialism is hard to define with any great precision, but to me it has to have a softness to the image, even if the subject matter is hard.

[Mark Sawyer]

Let's also define the "portrait lens" category...

There have been three distinct definitions of "portrait lenses" through the years. The first designated "portrait lenses" were the portrait Petzvals, and were designated for portraiture simply for their speed. Earlier lenses were so slow that on the slow plates of the time, portraiture was impractical. And while those Petzvals had soft and swirly outer edges, those were outside the plate area, and portraits from those lenses were quite sharp. (Ever seen a vintage daguerreotype, tintype, CDV, or ambrotype showing the "Petzval personality" so many of us look for today?)

The next generation of "portrait lenses" was the soft focus lenses. The earliest ones I know of are the Dallmayer Portrait lenses. These were Petzvals, but the two rear elements had variable spacing between them to introduce a "soft focus" effect. Still, it was nearly thirty years before the soft focus aesthetic really started to catch on. Personally, I regard about 1900 to 1940 as the "Golden Age" of soft focus photography and lenses. And while these are now the "portrait lenses" we sometimes equate with pictorialism, pictorialism was not particularly about portraits.

In modern times, (about 1960-onward), "portrait lens" seems only to refer to a focal length that's long enough to flatten the 3-dimensional perspective of facial features slightly.

[ageorge]

Pictorialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pictorialism was a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism.

Pictorialism largely subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time. Most of these pictures made were black & white or sepia-toned. Among the methods used were soft focus, special filters and lens coatings, heavy manipulation in the darkroom, and exotic printing processes. From 1898 rough-surface printing papers were added to the repertoire, to further break up a picture's sharpness. Some artists "etched" the surface of their prints using fine needles. The aim of such techniques was to achieve what the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica termed, in discussing Pictorialism, "personal artistic expression".

Despite the aim of artistic expression, the best of such photographs paralleled the impressionist style then current in painting. Looking back from the present day, we can also see close parallel between the composition and picturesque subject of genre paintings and the bulk of pictorialist photography.

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica noted that: "as a distinct movement pictorial photography is essentially of British origin", although in its later phases there was a strong influence on American photography. The Linked Ring and The New American School were notable organised U.S. tendencies in Pictorialism around 1900. An American circle of photographers later renounced pictorialism altogether and went on to found Group f/64, which espoused the ideal of unmanipulated, or straight photography.

The contemporary American portraitist Sally Mann revisited the pictorialist style in her 2003 book What Remains.

One of the most important publications that promoted Pictorialism was Alfred Stieglitz's "Camera Work" 1903 - 1917. Each publication had up to 12 plates that were reproduced in Photogravure,Halftone or Collotype. These plates are now collected and very sought after in the art world. Most of the photographers that made up the issues were members of the Photo-Secession, a group that promoted photography as art and soon moved away from the ideals of pictorialism.

By the year of 1910, when Albright Gallery bought 15 photographs from Stieglitz' 291 gallery, a major victory was won in the battle for establishing photography as art. Pictorialism, which had served to open the museum doors for photography, was now already regarded as a vision of the past by the spearheading photographers of that time. Stieglitz, always craving for the new, was quoted alround 1910 saying "It is high time that the stupidity and sham in pictorial photography be struck a solarplexus blow." and "Claims of art won't do. Let the photographer make a perfect photograph. And if he happens to be a lover of perfection and a seer, the resulting photograph will be straight and beautiful - a true photograph."[1]

The new and proceedingly modern America needed a new representation in art. This necessarily meant the end for pictorialism as major form of art.

[Mark Sawyer]

Regarding "Pictorial" photography, Julia Margaret Cameron could probably be credited as the earliest pioneer of the aesthetic, although she probably acheived it more out of sloppiness and ignorance in using the wrong lens on the wrong plate size, deciding to print slightly-out-of-focus or slightly-moving subjects anyways, and getting a lot of flare from backlighting some of her subjects.

the term was coined by Henry Peach Robinson in his 1869 treatise, "The Pictorial Effect in Photography, Being hints on Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers." He also included information about combination printing, which is what he is best known for today. His take on the matter was that to be an artist, a photographer must assume full control of and responsibility for his work, including lighting, composition, and the acting and poses of the models, even if it meant making multiple negatives and combining them into one print, if that's what it took to get the control and effect desired. But that "Pictorial Effect" had nothing to do with soft focus...

The first "Impressionistic" photography could probably best se credited to Peter Henry Emerson ("Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads") who in 1889 wrote "Naturalistic Photography". His thjought was that a photographer should be open to nature's impressions and "surprises", but the term "Impressionism" was a bit too controversial in the artworld at the time.

Pictorialism as most of us think of it started evolving into being in the mid-1890's with an onslaught of "aesthetically aware" photographers trying to find acceptance in the art world, where photography was thought of as factual documentation and snapshots. Quite a few, but not all, of these photographers took to soft-focus lenses. But by the time the soft focus aesthetic became popular in the early 1920's, most of its early advocates had already moved on to "modern photography".

Sorry, I write too much...

[Jim Galli]

Sorry, I write too much...

No way. Thanks. I think after the 1903 - 1908 "revolution" of anastigmat lenses and cheap Kodak's (you push the button --- we do the rest) pictorialism was a knee jerk reaction not so different from it's revival 100 years later. Perhaps we're drawn away from the clinicalism of billions of perfect over-sharp over-saturated digital snaps very much like the 1908 crowd was.

[Mark Sawyer]

Hard to tell what set off the soft-focus revolution, Jim. I tend to think that at some point, a few aesthetically-inclined photographers noticed that the images made by those lenses were just so darned beautiful...

The soft-focus lenses were out for a long, long time before "artists" began taking advantage of them. I suspect they were used almost exclusively by commercial portrait photographers for decades before someone decided to "compete with impressionist painting" or "create an artistic vision" with them...

Which leads to something I've long wondered about... If Dallmeyer patented the first deliberately-soft-focus lens in 1866, why do we see no soft-focus photography until the 1890's? (Or have I missed them? Can anyone think of a photographer making soft-focus images in the 1860's? 1870's? 1880's?)