I believe you may have underestimated the importance of imitation in
the development of Pictorialism. The very early pictorialists (George
Davidson, Alfred Maskell, etc.) based their brand of photographic impressionism on the theory of tonal compression in Emerson's platinum prints as seen in
his work Life and Landscapes of the Norfolk Broad, while Emerson in turn was
greatly influenced by the school of Impressionism in painting. Indeed, he
might very well have entitled his major work, Naturalistic Photograhy for
students of the Arts, by another name, i.e. Impressionistic Photograhy for Students of the Arts, but for the fact that the terms was linked to the work of
a number of very controversial artists of the period, among them his
close friend Whistler. In this case, as in many others, the case for
imitation is very persuasive in that a similar stye can be traced from
painting to Emerson to the early pictorialists to the later pictorialists.
Since as you suggest platinum is in fact capable of a much longer tone scale
than that seen in the work of most pictorialists, how were they "exploiting
the technology and working around its limitations," if not for the purpose of
of imitating a pre-existing style?
Sandy King
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