> The whole Pictorialism movement (dating from the 1880's) was > all about > manipulating images to obtain "painterly" effects. > [...]
That's a popular fallacy. The early pictorialists were aiming for a scientific naturalism which used differential focus in imitation of the way the eye is supposed to work. They were in reaction against the prevailing style of art photography which really did try to imitate painting. This is exemplified by the work of photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Rejlander who produced montages in the style of grand academic paintings - very much the way Photoshop is used now for so much. P H Emerson and his followers rejected this in favour of getting out and about in the real world and photographing work using supposedly naturalistic techniques - as far as they were concerned they were shooting straight photographs. Pictorialism degenerated into cliche and was rejected in turn by people like Steiglitz who also thought they were shooting straight. There's a fascinating book about P H Emerson called The Old Order And The New, which accompanied an exhibition. I highly recommend it. http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/emerson/ Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
