Background:
British photographer Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) insisted "in the modern world, sicience was the only authentic basis for art and photography.
German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) studied human eye's range of focus he took as instructive for photography. His idea, "perfect artistic painting is only reached when we have succeded in imitating the action of light upon the eye."
Photographers were making sharper pictures. Emerson argued "that the artist should translate exactly how the eye sees, concluding that the photographer should focus on the main subject of a scene, allowing the periphery and the distance to become indistinct. Called differential or selective focus, this approach varied from William Newton's earlier idea of making the entire image slightly out of focus."
Pictorialism
Pictorialism gained popularity in the mid-1880s peaking in the 1900s and persisted into the 1920s. Pictorialists adopted Emerson's disgust with industrialization and mass produced goods and his belief that photography as an art form.
Pictorialists overlaid large parts of a picture with shadow and fog and tried for tonal complexity using techniques such as platinum printing to yield soft, middle-gray tones. The preferred handworking both negatives and prints and frequent use of textured papers to resembel watercolors and evoke the earlier Victorian photographs. [ie Julia Margaret Cameron] They valued symbolic control over industry and sense of superiority over snapshooters.
Henry Peach Robinson was probably was more responsible for popularizing the word "pictorial" than Emerson by his book Pictorial Effect in Photography, first published 1869, still read at turn of Century.
British photographer, George Davison (1854-1930) expanded Emerson's theories and promoted an imprecise notion of impressionistic photography. Impressionism, French art movement 1870s-1880s, capture momentary visual imprint of a scene. Change from Emerson's main subject in focus to the entire surface indistinct. Davison shifted photography from science to art. "Fuzzygraph" as they were mockingly called fostered the photographic industry with soft-focus lenses and textured photographic papers for amateurs.
Movements and Magazines
Wiener Kamera Klub (Vienna Camerra Club) 1861
British association Linked Ring 1892 opposition to the Photographic Society of Great Britian. Links members thought themselves members of a spiritual and aesthetic fellowship.
The gravure process allowed photographs to be printed by using copper plate that was etched by chemicals, then inked, and printed on hand-turned printing press.
Clarence H. White (1871-1925) American photographer member of Linked Ring was influential in American photography – taught at Columbia University in NYC and found his own photography school in 1914. [Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Paul Outerbridge]
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) launched Photo-Secession in February 1902 and sponsored the Photo-Secession sponsorsored exhibition of "American Pictorial Photography" with works of 32 photographers. Camera Work magazine published 1903-1917 with covers designed by painter-photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1972).
Images from National Gallery of Australia collection search website
http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=141991&View=LRG
INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
1864 Hoboken, New Jersey, United States of America – New York, United States of America 1946
- Karlsruhe, Germany Berlin, Germany (//1882) Germany, Switzerland, Austria (//1887) United States (//1890)
Two towers - New York photogravure from an original negative Edition: 50 regular issues and 3 special nos.
19.5 h x 15.9 w cm
Purchased 1976
Accession No: NGA 76.333.45.2
http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=155478&View=LRG
AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY
1889 Australia – 1971
Snorky 1924
gelatin silver photograph printed image 22.7 h x 19.0 w cm
Purchased 1991
Accession No: NGA 91.90
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