Project: Pictorialism

"Pictorialism is only an exaggeration of what the photograph thinks of itself" (Bartnes 1982 p31)

Some early photographers believed that whilst it had its practical applications, photography also had potential as an expressive medium, and that is was possible to conceive of photographs not just as images that rendered an objective, optical analogy of an object or a scene, but as subjective impressions - as pictures. Some painters, such as Oscar Rejlander (1857-75), saw the potential offered by photography and adopted it as their principal mode of expression. This debate came to a head in the 1890's when the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring, founded by Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901), split from the organisation that would become the Royal Photographic Society, arguing that the organisation was too preoccupied with the scientific rather than the artistic side of photography. Ironically pictorialism, which was the style and approach of the Linked Ring, was soon adopted by the RPS and remains a strong element of the institute.

This image is an example of the work of the Linked Ring, by Henry Peach Robinson, it depicts a dying young woman, with family looking on, helpless.
Dying woman

The Linked Ring considered photographic prints could be considered as a work of art, the pictorial approach was not necessarily to do with the apparatus and related chemistry, the central element lay in the printing process, which left brush strokes using the photo sensitive coating to the surfaces of the prints, revealing to the viewer the unique hand and artistry of the maker. Alternative processes rendered images with less clarity and imposed a more atmospheric aesthetic.

"like Talbot's images, they depend upon a known visual language and convention, as found in the work of contemporary painters like Millais and Holman Hunt. They are, as much as Talbot's work, examples of the photography as a painting' Rejlanders 'the two ways of life (1857)

Rejlander and Robinson's photographs were met with scornful distain by contemporaries such as Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936), who strongly believed in a purer photographic way of seeing. Emerson accumulated a large body of work on traditional rural practices around the Norfolk broads.

Coming home from the marches - Peter Henry Emerson 1996

Justin Pertyke made a similar large body of work around East Anglia, which has been related to Emerson's work, it give a view of the hard work in a rural environment with pieces of modern day life which are easily recognised.
Justin Partyka - field work in Norfolk

The norm withing pictorialism remains the production of singular, one-off pieces, designed to convey the maker's mood at the moment it was made and to satisfy the eyes of the viewer. The singular image tradition as apposed to working with series or sequences of images.