martin davidson


 

PICTORIALISM
Alfred Stieglitz first published "Camera Work", a New York quarterly journal, in 1903. Rather than providing simple technical advice, the first few issues emphasised intellectual or visual content and introduced it's subscribers to the ideas of expression inherent in the thinking of the French Impressionists. The journal, unusually for the time, published illustrations of Impressionist art alongside images that later came to be known as Pictorialism.

Pictorialism was an aesthetic movement that flourished from around 1885 until the Great War. There's no widely accepted definition, other than to say, it emerged in response to a debate about whether photography was an entirely mechanical medium or genuine fine art. The argument centred on the intervention of the camera and if it impeded, or assisted, personal expression.

Ironically, Pictoralists rejected precision, preferring rich subtly toned hand made fine art images, soft focussed, embodying the ideals of Impressionism to convey emotion, nostalgia or whimsy.

The Pictorialists employed ingenuity and imagination with a dangerous mix of chemicals to produce rich painterly images.

I see my images as being in the tradition of Pictorialism – minus the toxins!

Ten Images

 

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faded flowers


searching for illumination

     

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