Just Pictorialism, without Steiglitz and the NY times

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From: Sandy King (sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu)
Date: 02/13/01-08:11:08 AM Z


Lukas wrote:

>>In a message dated 2/11/01 8:25:52 PM, sstoney@pdq.net writes:
>>
>><< In fairness to the teachers at my university, I think they do know that
>>modernism is dead, but Pictorialism is even deader. (snip)
>

>"The" pictoralists had their own aims in their time, which cannot be
>repeated. But historically conscious quoting means of expression is, for
>all I know, a fruitful, creative, and frequently used method in art.
>
>Lukas

If we are to equate pictorialism only with its two major movements or
schools, the first championed by Henry Peach Robinson from the 1860s to the
end of the 19th century, the second the new Pictorialism that began with
Peter Henry Emerson in the 1880s and spread from English to the photo clubs
in France and Germany, and eventually to the US, then it is certainly
correct to state that Pictorialism is dead, as is Modernism and even
Post-Modernish (or so exhausted it should be dead).

If on the other hand we were to list several of the most essential
characteristics of pictorial photography we would find that many, if not
all, continue to play a major role in contemporary photographic aesthetics.
Which of the following qualities, for example, which I consider to be the
most essential characteristics of pictorial photography, are absent from
the contemporary aesthetic?

1. presentation of the picturesque
2. a concern with making art, as opposed with making a record
3. the concept that the work reveals the subjective of the maker through
signs of conscious manipulation
4. an interest in the effect and patterns of natural lighting
5. landscape as one of the major themes
6. overall effect of an image considered more important than the detail therein
7. the use of non-silver printing processes, particulary carbon, gum,
platinum, oil and bromoil.

Anyone who seriously believes that pictorialism is dead and longgone
should reacquaint themselves with the true tenets of the movement and take
a wider look at some of the current manipulative manifestions in
photography, manifestions prompted in part prompted by the new digital
technologies, but which also date back to the re-emergence of alternative
printing processes that began in the 1970s. What if not Neo-Pictorialism
are we to call the photograhs of Ed Freeman, featured on pp. 42-49 of the
October/November 1999 issue of Camera Arts. How if not pictorial are we to
label the cyanotype images featured in the article by Ken Boyd and Heathe
Kyatt in the January/February issue of View Camera?

Sandy King


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