Define your understanding of "Pictorial Photography"

[cowanw]

Dr. Young,
Thank you so much for posting your thesis for all to read, a very generous gesture indeed! I've already started reading and it is quite enjoyable.


This thread has inspired me to take the following photograph.


8x10 X-ray film/ palladium print

I too like this shot and I think it is very appropriate for this thread as it is reminiscent of the links between Clarence White's pictorialism and the modernism that his school of photography produced. I cant find the photo of Kichen taps that is in Margaret Watkins recent biography but these give you the idea of turning common place household items into madern photographic art
This picture of yours puts you firmly in the Pictorialist/moderist camp

http://www.robertmann.com/artists/watkins/about.html

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...en-us%26sa%3DN
Regards
Bill

[Brian Bullen]

Bill, glad you liked the photo and thanks for the links.

[cjbroadbent]

I got knocked around for being pictorial in the eighties so I took the black stocking off the lens and moved the widow light away from the side to just behind my shoulder and from then on I was left alone. Illustrative photography - where you set things up for the shot - gets tarred with the pictorial brush. But I think it has more to do with image structure and light than subject matter.

[billschwab]

Thank you for your kind remarks regarding the dissertation.

Thank you Russ for making it available!

Excellent. A very refreshing thread.

PS. ... how about "the Softies"

[Chauncey Walden]

Just found the thread! As for the tee shirt, f/4 won't work for me; my "pictorial" lens is f/11. After all that has been written here, how about "fuzzy about the concept" on the tee? It also appears that some folks have not seen Ansel's beautiful early pictorial images - fuzzy and all. And, Emerson, being trained in medicine (which, being independently wealthy, he fortunately didn't have to practice) pushed the concept of selective focus. He said the eye did not see both its foreground subject and the horizon in sharp focus at the same time. With some long lenses from his friend, Dallmeyer, he made his images look that way, too. But, I'm not sure his plane of focus got fuzzy at the edges. That link to the 1921 publication on pictorial photography is nice. Look at the portrait by Laura Gilpin on page 31. Looks like she focused on the foreground lower right corner and left the rest up to really nice bokeh, no special lens required (except for one with really nice bokeh!)

[Jim Galli]

...no special lens required (except for one with really nice bokeh!)

Which brings up a good point. In 1921 I doubt if you could find a lens that we would consider bad Bokeh. All apertures were round and lenses were simple. Good and bad bokeh became an issue with all the super corrections required for 35mm slr cameras and apertures getting cheapened to 5 blades or worse, six. With large format it's mostly good, better, and best.