TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945
Peter Henry Emerson. Cantley: Wherries Waiting for the Turn of the Tide, c. 1884. Platinum print, c. 1886, by Valentine and Sons. George Eastman House Collection. Gift of William C. Emerson.The title of the show sums it up nicely. "TruthBeauty" refers to John Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn," 1819, which ends:
- Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
- Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Almost from the very beginning of photography, which dates to 1839 with the invention of the daguerreotype, there have been roughly two ways of looking at photographs. One is that it is a record or document—truth (Let's leave aside how photos "lie.")—or a vehicle for artistic expression—beauty.
Baron Adolph de Meyer. Still Life, c. 1907. Photogravure print. George Eastman House Collection.As an organized movement, the Pictorialists were committed to the latter and to having photography accepted as a fine art. The introductory panel (one of several that lead the viewer through the exhibition and with excellent wall labels provide the "back story") describes their goals, starting with making "expertly crafted, one-of-a-kind prints characterized by romantic themes, soft focus, atmospheric suggestion and the suppression of detail."
The exhibition is divided into six sections, which appropriately blur together: "Precursors," "The Rise of Pictorialism," "Pictorialism's Favorite Subjects and Second Wave," Women in Pictorialism," "The Pictorialist Print," "Pictorialism into Modernism," and a panel devoted to "The Autochrome Process," an early attempt at color photography.
"The Rise of Pictorialism" describes the aesthetic environment of the late 19th-early 20th century. Pictorialists stood in direct and vocal opposition to hobbyists who were enticed by a smaller and easier to use camera in the 1880s—thank you Mr. Eastman. With the advertising tagline, "You Press the Button, We do the rest," the Kodak camera was the 19th-century equivalent of today's "point-and-shoot." The hobbyists aimed for "truth" in their snapshots while the Pictorialists were seeking self-expression and "beauty" through their heavily manipulated prints and elevated fine-art subjects, such as landscapes including cityscapes and architecture, figures (portrait and allegorical) and genre scenes from daily life.
Elias Goldensky. [Portrait of three women], c. 1915. Platinum print. George Eastman.Women always played an important role in the movement, starting with the early adapter Julia Margaret Cameron (English, 1815-1879). She bluntly stated, "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and ideal and sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to Poetry and beauty."
Active from 1864 to 1875, she enlisted family, friends, and even household help to sit for portraits and sometimes costumed them to create sacred and Arthurian narratives, a strategy embraced by the Pictorialists and late 20th century photographers like Cindy Sherman. Sherman's career has been based on creating elaborately costumed self-portraits that are heirs to photographs like Frederick H. Evans' (English, 1853-1943) portrait of fellow Pictorialist F. Holland Day in Arab Costume, 1901.
Sandy Skoglund's obsessive installations made for the camera carry on the Pictorialist tradition of staging photographs. In just one example, Day (American, 1864-1933) made 250 negatives from June to September 1898 of sacred subjects, including seven of himself re-enacting the crucifixion for his The Seven Last Words series of the same year. The focus is on Christ's face and neck with His shoulders and torso so washed out as to be nearly nonexistent. The corporeal body has been transcended.
Alfred Stieglitz. Reflections, New York, 1896. Photogravure print. George Eastman House Collection.Charles and Anna Taft did not collect photography but their obvious affection for the landscapes of the Barbizon School painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875) might have made them receptive to photographer Robert Demachy (French, 1859-1936). His untitled oil print, c. 1900, depicts a clump of trees in a composition similar to Corot's Evening: The Festival of Pan, 1855-60, oil on canvas in the museum's collection.
The sentimentality of the mid-19th-century British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters is seen in full force in precursor Henry Peach Robinson's (English, 1830-1901) Dawn & Sunset. On the left a young mother cradles her baby while on the right a stooped man sits, his canes against the chair. Not much is left to the imagination.
Edward Weston. [Attic, Glendale, California], 1901. Platinum print. George Eastman House Collection, Ex-collection Brett Weston.The same sentimentality might be found in the leader of the Photo-Secessionists, Alfred Stieglitz's (American, 1864-1946)1889 photograph, Paula, Berlin. It shows a young woman seated at a table writing a letter, perhaps a farewell. In the background, photographs are pinned to a wall, suggesting this is an artist's studio, perhaps even Stieglitz's. Shutters filter the light entering from the upper left, creating distinct diagonal stripes. The composition and the handling of the light evoke Vermeer to my eye.
Some women who were attracted to photography as hobbyists by the introduction of the gelatin dry plate in the 1870s went on to establish professional studios. In the Gilded Age, they were seen as sensitive and intuitive—the perfect temperament for a Pictorialist. The movement's painstaking printing techniques related to traditional women's work such as embroidery and china painting.
Instead of portraiture and the genre scenes that many female Pictorialists preferred, Anne W. Brigman (American, 1869-1950) was more daring. She composed photographs featuring nude women, often in suggestive poses, out of doors. In The Heart of the Storm, 1902, under the shelter of a tree, a nude woman with a "halo" of light comforts another woman clothed in a diaphanous gown.
An even more suggestive work is Edward Weston's (American, 1886-1958) 1922 portrait of his son Neil. A winsome curly-haired towheaded eight-year old stands in an exaggerated contraposto pose. He's nude and Weston shows his entire torso, stopping just short of his genitalia: a Robert Mapplethorpe precursor.
Johan Hagemeyer. Gasoline Tanks, 1925. Gelatin silver print. George Eastman House Collection, Gift of 3M Company, Ex-collection Louis Walton Sipley.In "Pictorialism into Modernism," the case is made that elements ascribed to Modernism—sharp focus, high contrast, angular compositions and industrial subjects—also appear in Pictorialist works.
The graphic Gasoline Tanks, 1925, by Johan Hagemeyer (American 1884-1962) echoes the crisp Precisionism practiced by his contemporary Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1964), a painter and photographer known for industrial subjects. Much later the German photographers Bernd (1931-2007) and Hilla (1934- ) Becher would concentrate on straightforward and unromantic records of similar subjects, including Water Towers, Blast Furnaces, and, in 1993, Gas Tanks.
In California in the early 1930s, seven photographers including the Pictorialists Weston, Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) and Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) began moving away from Pictorialism toward Modernism. They took the name Group f/64, which alludes to the size of the camera's aperture needed for sharp focus, when they exhibited as a group in 1932 at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. Although outside the scope of "TruthBeauty," it would have been helpful if some of the Modernist images by these defectors from Pictorialism had been included for comparison.
"The Pictorialist Print" section illustrates some of the effects Pictorialists achieved with different techniques. There are five versions of Paul Anderson's (American, 1880-1956) Vine in Sunlight, 1944, each using a different printing method. The chlorobromide print is the most detailed and closest to being a straightforward record of the scene. The gum print becomes what the wall label describes as "a graphic rendering of highlighted forms." In the silver print "place and form simply dissolve into a vaporous light that envelops the entire print."
Alvin Langdon Coburn. The Great Temple, 1911. Toned gelatin silver print. George Eastman House Collection, Gift of Alvin Langdon Coburn.After Pictorialism's moment passed, photography became more documentary in nature, pursuing "truth" as well as artistic expression—"beauty." In the battle for acceptance as a fine art, it took until late in the 20th century for the medium to succeed. (The Cincinnati Art Museum declared photography a legitimate art form in 1973 when Director Millard Rogers came to town.) This exhibition with its many well-chosen examples shows the beginning of the campaign.
"Truth/Beauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945", Taft Museum of Art, 316 Pike Street, Cincinnati. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday. Through August 8.
This article will also be featured in the July edition of EXP Cincinnati.
