The Birth of Art Photography

Pictorialsim was a style of photography practiced in 1860 through 1940. It was characterized by narrative content, genres studies, and soft-focus, impressionistic images. It was promoted by the Linked Ring and Photo Secessionists. Pictorialism championed photography as a fine art in its own right.



Oscar Gustav Rejlander , Two Ways of Life, 1858



Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858

Early art photographs mimicked styles and genres popularized by painting. For example, after he returned from the Crimean, Roger Fenton's art photography borrowed aspects from European painting, specifically Dutch and Flemish. In the mid-1800s, art photographers, like Rejlander and Robinson, promoted manipulated, handcrafted images. In fact, Robinson maintained that a successful art photograph exhibited as much handcraft and finesse as any other popular art medium, such as painting and sculpture. Robinson and Rejlander practiced multiple exposures, combination printing, and photographic staging. For example, Robinson's Fading Away (pictured above) was photographed in six separate negatives that were individually printed, cut out, and pasted to a single background. Next, the joinery was retouched, and the entire photo-collage was re-photographed, thereby ensuring a seamless print. Indeed, Robinson proved the most popular art photographer of the day.



Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Ryan, 1866

Julia Margaret Cameron was another popular, early pictorialist. Her soft-focus portraits, which often incorportaed Biblical symbolism have earned her a place within photo history.



Peter Henry Emerson, Coming Home From the Marshes, 1888



Peter Henry Emerson, Taking Up the Eel-Net, 1885 (platinum print)

In response to early Pictorialists, like Cameron, Rejlander, and Robinson, Perter Henry Emerson developed his own philosophy, which he coined "Naturalism." Emerson believed that true art photography should exploit the medium for the thing that it does best, picturing "the real". Hence, Emerson advocated for “realistic” non-manipulated photography, which pictured real people, not actors, and utilized soft focus (which he argued was closer to how people actually saw). In addition, Emerson praised photographic processes, such as photogravure and platinum, and promoted the concept of the photographic salon.



Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal, 1892 (platinum print)



Alfred Stieglitz, Winter on 5th Avenue



Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907

By 1890, Emerson declared Naturalism over, but before he put an end to his short-lived art movement, he deemed Alfred Stieglitz the next aficionado of art photography. Stieglitz, who was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, had recently returned to New York City from Germany where he studied engineering and photography. Upon his return to the States, he adopted Pictorialism and became a major figure in the New York art world.



Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou among Women, 1899



Edward Steichen, Brooklyn Bridge, 1907



Clarence White, Master Tom, 1900

In the late 1800s the Dry Plate Process had replaced the popular Wet Plate, and the amateur photographer (as opposed to the commercial/professional) became a prominent force within the photographic art world. One advantage of the dry plate was that it was pre-packaged, thereby making photography less cumbersome and allowing for more hobbyists. In addition, by 1888, Kodak introduced the first handheld camera model, called Kodak #1. In 1902, in order to distinguish himself and his practice from the mass of amateur photographers, Stieglitz brought together like-minded artists and formed a group called the Photo-Secessionists. That year the group published its objectives:
• To advance photography as applied to pictorial expression
• To draw together those Americans practicing or otherwise interested in the art.
• To hold from time to times, at varying places, exhibitions not necessarily limited to the productions of the Photo-Secessionists or to American work.

The group included popular photographers such as Gertrude Kasebier, Edward Steichen, Clarence White, and Alvin Langdon Coburn.



Steichen, Little Galleries of the Photo Secession, 1903 (platinum print)

The Photo Secessionists had a small gallery space, called 291 (after its address, 291 Broadway). At 291, Stieglitz exhibited, not only Photo-Secessionist work, but also other work by photographers and painters, including Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse. Indeed, Alfred Stieglitz was not only responsible for bringing modern art to New York City, but he also helped make New York a major force in the art world.

Nineteenth Century War Photography

The earliest known war photographs were taken in 1847 during the Mexican-American War. Charles J. Betts, a daguerreotypist with the American army in Veracruz advertised that he would visit homes for two weeks to photograph the dead and wounded. The 60 surviving photographs from the war picture people, buildings, and troop movements. No images of battle remain.




Roger Fenton, The Valley of the Shadow of Death


Roger Fenton, Portrait

One of the most famous nineteenth century war photographers is English born Roger Fenton whose Crimean War photographs picture large barren landscapes and intimate portraits of army generals and war officers. Fenton was born in Lancashire, England in 1819 and commissioned by publishers Thomas Agnew and Sons to documents England's war efforts in the Crimean Peninsula. When Fenton left for the Crimean, public opinion on the war was divided. Rumors that English soldiers were dying from starvation and poor living conditions spread rapidly throughout London's streets. Hence, Queen Victoria encouraged Fenton to capture "tasteful views of picturesque scenes," rather than imaging violence and warfare. Indeed, there was both a commercial interest (from the publishers) and a national interest (from the Queen) in Fenton's photographs. Although his images are striking and bold, they are be no means neutral; rather, they represent a contemporary agenda.



Roger Fenton, Fenton's Photographic Coach

Roger Fenton's success in the Crimean was due in part to his extensive planning and preparation. A few English photographers had left for the Crimean prior to Fenton's arrival, but all their negatives had been destroyed at sea or improperly fixed. Fenton's photographic caravan included 5 cameras, 700 glass plates (in three formats), lab Materials, and a bed. Nineteenth century war photography was not for the feeble. Fenton, who practiced the Wet Collodion process, had to travel in foreign terrain with an entire darkroom set-up and several large, bulky cameras.



Matthew Brady, From "The Brady Civil War Collection"



Matthew Brady, From "The Brady Civil War Collection"

When the American Civil War broke in 1861, the then famous portrait photographer, Matthew Brady, saw an opportunity to document history. In fact, Brady called himself the "eye of history." He received little support from the War Department but, nevertheless, managed to obtain the proper paperwork to place professional photographers in the fields alongside soldiers. Brady's team consisted of ten men, including Timothy O' Sullivan, Alexander Gardner, George N. Bernard, and George Cook. Brady and his team managed to shoot over 8,000 negatives, the majority of which can be found today in the National Archives under the "Brady Civil War Collection." Although Brady's photographers were present at most of the crucial battles (including Gettysburg, Antietem, and Petersburg), most of the photographs depicted the battle site before of after the fight. Exposure time and Nineteenth century aesthetic still prohibited photographers from successfully capturing warfare.



Alexander Gardner, From "The Brady Cilvil War Collection"

Historians have speculated that some of the Brady Civil War pictures were, in fact, staged. Like the Gardner photograph pictured above and the O’ Sullivan photograph pictured below, dead bodies were sometimes moved and repositioned in order to capture a more compelling image. Debates about the difference between psychological and physical truth have stirred many Civil War photo enthusiasts.



Timothy O' Sullivan, Harvest of Death, From "The Brady Civil War Collection

Frustrated that Brady did not credit the individual photographers for the pictures that they made, Alexander Gardner published a book in 1866 called Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of The War. In his book, Gardner included many of the great photographs of the time and attributed each photograph to its proper maker. In addition, Gardner wrote a text that accompanied the pictures. In response to O' Sullivan's image at Gettysburg, Gardner wrote, "Slowly over the misty fields of Gettysburg-- as all reluctant to expose their ghastly horrors to the light-- came the sunless mourn, after the retreat by Lee's broken army. Through the shadowy vapors it was, indeed, a "harvest of death" that was presented... such a picture contains a useful moral: it shows the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity falling upon the nation!" Indeed, Gardner's text comments on the idea of psychological truth.

The Landscape and the American Tradition

Thomas Cole, Oxbow


The tradition of American landscape images grew out of The Hudson River School, a collection of painters, led by Thomas Cole, who pictured scenes along the Hudson River in New York State. Their paintings were almost always atmospheric, bold, and they represented light and shadow in rich and beautiful ways. The Hudson River artists were inspired by Transcendentalism, an important concept in philosophy and literature that began as a reform movement in the Unitarian Church. Essentially, Transcendentalists believed that the soul of the individual is identical to the soul of the world and, hence, both souls encompass each other. Therefore, the Hudson River School's paintings combine a psychological sentiment of man and the awesome wonders of nature. It is as if the landscapes both picture the outside world as well as a human interior. And indeed, during the mid-nineteenth century, the American landscape was an uncharted territory, powerful and mysterious, a place full of potential and possibility.



(left) WIlliam Henry Jackson (right) Thomas Moran

The Hudson River Artists inspired young landscape photographers who were sent out West on exploration campaigns or geological surveys. The landscape photographers, like the Hudson River School painters, were simultaneously wowed and struck by the American Landscape. In fact, photographer William Henry Jackson (his photograph pictured above) actually worked alongside Hudson River School trained artist, Thomas Moran. Together Moran and Jackson created American desert views that seemed too large for any human life.



Wet Plate Collodian Illustration

Landscape photography in the late Nineteenth Century was cumbersome. Ambitious photographers practiced Wet Plate Collodian, a complicated procedure that was invented by the British scientist, Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. The Wet plate process, like the Calotype process, produced a negative, rather than a positive, but unlike the Calotype, it rendered remarkable detail. Unfortunately, the plates needed to be prepared, exposed, and developed while wet. Hence, field photographers, like Jackson, O'Sullivan, Muybridge, and Watkins, traveled with caravans packed full of chemistry, plates, darkroom supplies, light-tight tents, and cameras. Wet Plate photographers carefully coated their glass plates in makeshift field-darkrooms. The Collodian solution was a thick, viscous material, which was made from combining cotton gun, alcohol, and ether. The solution was then poured over the plate until it was tacky. Next, the plate was plunged into a light sensitive silver. Once exposed, photographers made positive prints, called Albumen Prints. The Wet Plate process was popular from the 1850s through the 1880s.



Timothy O'Sullivan

In the late Nineteenth century, photography became of popular exploration tool. Americans were still trying to understand their country and their identity. The United States, not yet one hundred years old, was not fully developed. The American west was still mysterious and new. Photographers made pictured to document the land, aid geologists and explorers, record railroad development, and archive the history of western expansion. Although most photographers at the time did not intend to make "Art," their pictures often exhibit keen sensitivities to form and aesthetic.



Carlton Watkins, Sterioscope (popular 3-D image card)



Muybridge, Yosemite Valley



William Henry Jackson