Impressionist Camera

Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888 - 1918 was published to coincide with an exhibit of the same name at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2006.  The exhibit had traveled to that institution after first having appeared at  the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in 2005.

The history of pictorialism has always been inextricably linked to that of the Photo Secession and its founder Alfred Stieglitz.  This may have partly been due not only to Stieglitz' preeminence but also to the influence of the organization's publication Camera Work which offered to its readers superb reproductions by a number of important pictorialist photographers, including Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Frank Eugene and Clarence White.  In the magazine's very first issue, Stieglitz declared his commitment to the pictorialist cause:

"Only examples of such works as gives evidence of individuality and artistic worth, regardless of school, or contains some exceptional feature of technical merit, or such as exemplifies some treatment worthy of consideration, will find recognition in these pages. Nevertheless, the Pictorial will be the dominating feature of the magazine."

What is often overlooked in all this is that the pictorialism actually originated in Europe (in 1869 when its principles were first promulgated by Henry Peach Robinson) and that some of the best examples were by European photographers.  Impressionist Camera is one of the few histories that detail the development of pictorialism as an art movement in Europe and trace its progress from one country to the next.  Not surprisingly, the two countries which contributed most were England, where the Linked Ring flourished and established strong ties with the Photo Secession, and France, home to the great Robert Demachy who wrote passionately on photography as art while at the same time producing a series of stunning gum bichromate prints.  Nevertheless, there were clubs and photographers working in many other countries who created magnificent bodies of work.  The interaction among them was one of the factors that the gave the movement its vitality.

Today, pictorialism is considered pretty much a dead issue.  If its purpose was to convince the public that photography should be considered a legitimate art form, the argument runs, that has long ago been accomplished and there is no longer any need to manipulate photos in order to achieve such an end.  This, at least, has been the prevalent school of thought since the ascension of straight photography and the Group f64 school in the early 1930's.  Such an argument, however, fails to take into account photographers' continued interest in alternative processes such as gum bichromate, bromoil, and platinum printing.  It should also be noted that the fifth highest price ever paid for a photographic print was $2,928,000 at a 2006 auction at Sotheby's for Steichen's pictorialist masterwork The Pond - Moonlight (1904).  This fact alone should be sufficient to validate the pictorialist aesthetic.