The End of Fact? Pictorialism

The structure of photography after the first 50 years:

the product:

the subject: the process: The handheld camera and the invention of film threatened this structure in large part because anyone could now be a photographer.
As Hirsch points out, in addition to the change in the nature of photography as having become something that anyone could do, there was a change in the nature of what people believed and wanted from their cultural environment.  In both Europe and America, positivism was increasingly challenged by subjective, phenomenological approaches to knowledge and science.  In art, symbolism was the movement to make this challenge but it was not limited to art and it was not limited to those artists who called themselves symbolists.
But if we let the symbolist response stand for part of the wider response to the end of the century, we find a new interest in looking within in search of personal response to the world.

George Barker, an east coast businessman/photographer whose work either precedes or develops simultaneously with pictorialism, in some ways seeks a solution to the same issues that they do.  Barker, who had thrived on a business of making views of Niagara Falls, demonstrated a new attitude toward the landscape which was beginning to emphasize picturesque views, rather than dramatic survey views. His Luna Island in Winter (1888), an albumen print which is not manipulated, is a psychological manipulation in that the reality of winter was a good deal more harsh and rigorous than the enchanted landscape presented in his photograph.  This effect is comparable to his transformation of the Florida landscape into a series of stage sets for the tourist–the scenery is not faked; nor is the photograph.  What is faked, however, is the prominence of the view and the suggestion that the landscape comprised only these picturesque and sublime moments.  Manipulation does exist in these photographs–not manipulation of technique but of the view.
 

Barker: Luna Island in Winter (alb. silver print, 1888) Barker: Oklahoma River, Florida (alb.-silver print, 1886)

Pictorialism: Photography as art but not an anti-photographic art

In the United States, the pictorial movement emerged in direct response to changing social and economic conditins along with the changes in photographic technology.  Pictorialism centralized a goal of restoring or, more accurately, asserting the artistic merit of the photograph. It might seem to be a contradiction in terms that people who were calling for unions were simultaneously calling for increased signs of individuality and uniqueness in crafts, but these were the goals of numerous end-of-the-century movements such as the Art Nouveau movement in France and Belgium, the Viennese Secession movement, and the less symbolist but in other respects comparable counterpart in the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and the U.S.

Pictorialism’s response to the increased number of photographers, the belief that one had to do little more than press a button to take a picture, and the consequent belief that accuracy and documentation were inherent or latent aspects of the photograph was to assert that a photograph could be both: objective record and subjective response. In some respects, this attempt to assert both the science and the art as being the unique quality of the photograph was an attempt to redefine the qualities of the photograph as being actual or natural and yet constructed and manipulated at the same time.  Manipulation, however, did not mean the "anti-photographic" manipulation of Rejlander or Robinson and others who engaged in composed photographs. Pictorialists were almost unanimous in their condemnation of this form of manipulation.
 

Rejlander: Ways of Live, 1857
Robinson: Fading Away, 1858

Peter Emerson calls for a naturalist photography--a photograph in which nature speaks for itself, but speaks for itself when the photographer uses the camera in a manner that approximates human vision.  He opens and anticipates a modern debate of the twentieth century about the meaning of vision.
 

P. H. Emerson: Throwing the Cast Net, Norfolk Broads, c 1886 (platinum print, 9-7/8 x 11-1/2)

Most of the pictorialists chose a different path from that of Emerson, deliberately choosing hand manipulation of the print, not uniformly choosing an anti-photographic aesthetic so much as an attempt to find a truer means of self-expression and to individualize the photograph, to give the photographer a signature style.  Certainly, this veers dangerously close to being anti-photographic and one of the often repeated criticisms of pictorialism is that much of the work was little more than an imitation of other art.  And even those photographers who did not manipulate the photograph (Evans, for example) shared the rejection of the photograph as science or fact.

Platinum process, photogravure and gum-bichromate process: ennobling the photograph

Stieglitz: Flatiron Building, 1903, photogravure on vellum, 12-7/8 x 6-5/8 Coburn: Flatiron Building, 1912, platinum print, 16 x 12-3/8 Steichen: Flatiron Building, 1904 (neg.), 1909 gum bichromate print with blue-green pigment, over platinum, 18-3/4 x 15-1/8

These definitions are based on Hirsch with additional clarification from Photospeak:

platinum process: contact printing process, partial printing out with ultraviolet radiation; then chemical development;  no post-camera manipulation.  Produces a wide range of tonal variation; popular with "naturalist" and "straight" photographers until the 1920s.

photogravure: a negative is etched into metal plate which is then inked and used in an etching printing process; the basic process of producing a steel plate from a negative had been developed by Talbot--although this involves hand manipulation, because of its origin when multiple reproductions could not be made, it was thought of by some as being unmanipulated but the pictorialists liked it for its ability to produces results that were impressionistic and similar in some cases to the woodburytype

gum-bichromate process (photo aquatint): the negative is placed on top of something coated with a pigmented gum arabic and a light-sensitive chemical; exposed to UV radiation; some areas of the gum arabic become hard and insoluble, depending on density of the negative; other parts are washed away; pigments may be added, different exposures and pigments may be combined, and paper surfaces all affect the outcome; especially popular with Demachy, Steichen and Kuhn

The Pictorialist Subject

Heinrich Kuhn: Schmitterin (The Harvester), 1925, photogravure, 11 x 8 Clarence White: The Orchard, 1902/1907; platinum print
John Bullock: Young Anglers, 1896, plat. print F. H. Day: untitled (Crucifix with Roman Soldiers), 1898, plat. print
Gertrude Kasebier: The Picture Book, 1903, photogravure
Stieglitz: Weary, 1890, gel.-silver print
Anne Brigman: The Bubble, 1905, photogravure, 6-5/16 x 9-5/16

What common threads link the pictorialists, whether European or American?
Is it technique or subject, both or neither? Is it a philosophy or aesthetic?

Attempting to summarize pictorialism presents a challenge because of the contradictions and ambiguities inherent to them movement.  Pictorialism:

How does the pictorialist resolve these contradictions?  The pictorialist did not reject manipulation, but manipulation applied rather specifically to things that were done after the photograph had been taken.  To the extent that the image was manipulated before the photograph was taken, this was manipulation by the eye, as it were--what was the photographer choosing to look at and when was the photographer choosing to take the picture.