From: Kate Mahoney (kateb@paradise.net.nz)
Date: 10/09/03-07:16:38 PM Z
Steve sSapiro said:
Weston and the gang were nothing more than a group of punks doing photography very, very well. The original group, the Brennan Group that met in Berkeley were mostly [women] photographers employed to illustrate books of poetry and epic poems, classics of the kind rarely read today. These photographs were referred to as a genre, "Pictoralism."
Steve, I think the pictorialsm label extends beyond the Brennan group and in fact predates it - you find exponents all over the world in the late 19th- early 20th century. i think the ethos behind the movement is more relevant than any group label. Steichen, for instance and definitely Demachy were both pictorialists in the broad sense of the word. They tried to reproduce the effects of painting in photography rather than go for the sharp, f64 look, in an attempt to emphasise the artistic possibilities of the new medium. Pictorialism is particularly associated in many texts with gum bichromate and other (as we say nowadays) alt-processes, and has in fact been responsible for the reputation gum has for fuzziness.There is no doubt in my mind that this technique was deliberate, and NOT the result of poor lenses or any technical problems..... what you say applies to America (certainly California), but certainly it wasn't the case in the wider world.
Kate Mahoney
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