Pictorialism Essay

Photography as a Form of Art

Pictorialism emerged as a style of photography in the 1910s and was considered the first photographic movement. Artists were trying to prove that photography could be an art form and not just used for documenting portraits, families, or scientific concepts as it had mainly done in the past. The pictorialism movement was building off of the impressionist painting movement of the 1860s-1880s and it displayed that the fog, low light situations, mist, and strong contrast between lights and darks of impressionism could be accomplished through photography as well (Borda).

            Before pictorialism, photography was seen as pristine and crisp, generally done in studios or with snapshot cameras. Pictorialist artists such as Doris Ulmann (1882-1934) brought photography into the real world by using rural people in their homes as subjects.  Nature was also commonly photographed by artists such as John G. Bullock (1871-1933), who especially liked to capture reflections in water and tree limbs and shadows. The emphasis in pictorialist images wasn’t the subject though, but rather the mood or emotional impact shown by the photographs. (Borda).

            My pictorialist images were taken around the Stirling area with a digital pocket camera and handmade filters. Images 6-8 in my series remind me of Bullock’s work because they are of trees, bridges, and the reflections they make in the water. Bullock’s Beech Trees near Pebble Beach (fig. 1) reminds me of my image #7 because trees, water, and hills in the background are the subject matter in both. In both, the image reflected into the water is blurrier than what is seen on land. Although the placement of the trees is very different in the two photographs, I think the overall message is the same. Both images convey tranquillity and a feeling of being comforted by nature’s surroundings.

            Image #9 in my series was shot on the Stirling Bridge and the detail in the bricks and how they fade as the eye travels further back into the photograph reminds me of authentic pictorialist images from that were using a shallow depth of field to mimic the way lines blurred together toward the back of some impressionist paintings. Joseph Kiely’s A Garden of Dreams (fig. 2) is similar to my #9 because both have water on the left side and a winding overpass on the right side of the frame. They both feature a blobby, faded look on the trees, yet sharper detail on the paths. Both photographs also show subtle differences in the colours of the sky but a strong contrast between the darkest and lightest tones of the images overall.

            Artie Van Blarcum’s Train Station (fig. 3) and my image #2, shot at Mar’s Wark Ruins, share many similarities. Both images show brick arches and detailing in the surrounding iron gates and barriers. There is a strong contrast between the light reflecting off of the higher up bricks and an ominous darkness happening in the bottom of the frame in both photos as well. Although my picture uses sunlight and Van Blarcum’s uses artificial lighting, the fact that the light is coming from the top in both gives the feeling of being in a confined space and having to look up and rely on the lighting to find a way around. Compositionally, another similarity is that the highest part of the top arch barely fits within the top of the frame in both images. Both were shot with portrait style orientation as well.

            One of my favourite images from this group is my image #3, which was shot at Old Town Cemetery in Stirling at about 6pm. I shot this image from the top of a hill overlooking the cemetery and placed the grass and lower parts of the cemetery in the bottom third, the buildings, trees, and majority of the cemetery in the middle third, and the sky in the top third of the image. The buildings in the background are relatively in focus in comparison to the graves in the centre of the photo. The graves look like they are very much alive and moving and remind me of a city scene of people that would be moving about, captured with a slower shutter speed to make them blur. Marsh (fig. 4) by Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) has a similar aesthetic because the tree branches in the top of the frame are in focus but the branches and grass in the bottom third aren’t, and look like they could be blowing in the wind.

            Before this assignment, I never knew what pictorialism was and now that I have practiced on a digital camera, I think it would be interesting to try and recreate these effects with a film camera and some adjustments of filters in the darkroom. It was a beautiful time for photography and unfortunately with the smartphone and digital camera craze of today, images like these are rare to come by in modern times.

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REFRENCES

Borda, Sylvia. "Pictorialist Photography ." Urban Image Fotography. University of Stirling , n.d. Web. 24 June 2015. <http://urbanimagefotography.blogspot.co.uk/p/pictorialist-    photography-overview.html>.

Borda, Sylvia G. "Session 2: Pictorialism." University of Stirling. Stirling. 22 June 2015.   Lecture.