Romantics, Pictorialists and the Photo Secession.

Romantics, Pictorialists and the Photo Secession

Pictorialism was an international style and aesthetic movement which dominated photography during the later 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Although there is no standard definition of the term it generally refers to a style in which a photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of ‘creating’ an image rather than simply recording it. Typically in a pictorial photograph there would appear to be a lack of sharp focus, it would be printed in one or more colours rather than black and white and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation on the surface. For a pictoralist, a photograph, like a draeing, engraving or painting, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewers realm of imagination.

Pre-Raphaelite’s was a group of English painters, poets and critics founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, they were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Colinson, Frederic George Stephans and Thoman Woolner, they then formed a seven member ‘brotherhood’. The groups intention was to reform art by rejecting what is considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists. The members believed that the classical poses and elegent compositions of Raphael in particular has been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art.

Julia Margaret Cameron – The Mountain Nymph Sweet Liberty 1866.

Cameron was influenced by the pre-raphaelites. Nymph was a mythological term for a young attractive woman who was innocent living in the forest. Greek myths would include plenty of morals and ethics and the Victorians were big on morals and I believe this would draw in the attention. Friends and family would play out roles for Cameron for her photographs.

Sir John Everett Millais – Ophelia 1851 – 1852
Photograph is based on Shakespeares play Hamlet.

Secessionism

From the official politics, the first secession occurred in France when in 1890 the ‘Salon au Champs-de-Mars’ was established. The years following artists in various European countries took up this impulse which seceded from traditional art movements and embraced progressive styles. The bst known secession movement was the Vienna Secession formed in 1897 which included Gustav Klimt, who favoured the ornate Art Nouveau style over the prevailing styles of the time.

Foreign Travelers and English Naturalists

Frederick Scott Archer (1813 – 1857) invented the wet collodion process which was introduced in the 1850’s. This photographic process made it possible for portraits to be taken indoors. The process has to be done quickly and must have a darkroom available to produce an image. The wet collodion process required the photographic material to be coaed, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, meaning that a darkroom would be needed. Collodion was normally used in a wet form but the material could also be used in humid (preserved) or dry form, but doing this would greatly increase the exposure time. Professional photographers who mainly shot portraiture couldn’t use the dry form therefore it was landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.

Advantages of the wet collodion process:

-         It produced a negative image on a transparent support (glass)

-         Combination of the calotype (ability for the photographer to theoretically make unlimited number of photographs from a single negative) and daguerreotype (clarity and sharpness which could not be achieved by paper negatives)

-         Faster process, only seconds for the exposure

-         Relatively inexpensive.

Disadvantages of the wet collodion process:

-         The entire process, from coating to developing, had to be completed before the plate dried. The photographer had about 10 minutes to complete the process.

-         Inconvenient for field use as the process requires a darkroom.

-         The plate dripped silver nitrate solution, causing stains and troublesome build-ups in the camera and plate holder.

Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alices Adventures in Wonderland’

‘Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy- chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.’

Alice Liddell photographed by
Charles Dodgson.

 Photographic connotations in Alice in Wonderland.

-         The white rabbit talks about time, this could relate to the lengthy process for photographs to be taken, how they would take minutes and now seconds.

-         The whole in which Alice falls down could be a connotation for the aperture in the lens on the camera.

-         Cameras were quite abstract at the time and very different, wonderland could refer to the inside view of a camera.

-         The book as a whole speaks about pictures.

Carte-de-visite

Andre Adolphe-Eugene Diseri patented the carte-de-visite in 1854. It was a type of small photograph and usually made of albumen print, this was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. Disderi also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate, this reduced the production costs. The side of the photograph was that of a visiting card, these photographs became enormously popular and were traded among friends and visitors. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

Victorians started to become preoccupied with death due to the high mortality rate. In photography deaths began to be staged and photographs of dead children became common, it was a way of the family having a lasting memory of their loved ones. This then lead onto operation theaters being photographs and physicians photographing their work. It also lead to spirit photography, where a living person would be photographed, but before they would bring in photographs of the loved one they wished to get in contact with, the photographer then merged the two photographs together making it appear the deceased was in the photograph.

Henry Peach Robinson - Fading Away 1858. Made of several negatives using the wet collodion process.

Before Photography

Painting - Joseph Wright of Derby. ‘A philosopher lecturing on the Orrey’ 1766. Oil painting.
Location: Derby Museum and Art Gallery
The light in this painting could represent knowledge, hope, daylight or the sun.

Enlightenment Movement. (Also known as Age Of Reason)
The purpose of Enlightenment was to reform society using reason and advanced knowledge through science, rather than before when it was tradition and faith. It started challenging the Orthodox Church in Britain, prompting science and ending superstition, prior to enlightenment, things were based on superstition rather than fact. In the enlightenment movement, modern science was born.

Painting - Joseph Wright of Derby. ‘An experiment on a bird in the air pump’ 1768.
Location: National Gallery, London.
Both paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby were produced during the part of the Enlightenment movement, they show the beginning of science being taught and how people had started to experiment. Both paintings also have a feeling of hierarchy, the philosopher going down to younger men and women to children. With these type of paintings, Wright invented a new subject which was scenes of new machinery and experiments, and also showing the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Philosophers John Locke (1632 - 1704), Pierre Bayle (1647 - 1706), Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677), Voltaire (1694 - 1778) and physicist Isaac Newton (1643 0 1727) sparked the movement which originated about 1650 - 1700. The intellectual leaders of the movement regarded themselves as elite and courageous, they saw that they wanted to lead the world out of a long period of doubtful tradition, full of irrationality and superstition and towards progress. For the French and American revolutions, the Latin American Independence movement and the Polish constitution of May 3, it provided a framework, it also lead to the rise of Capitalism and the birth of Socialism.
It is matched by the high baroque and classical eras in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts, it receives contemporary application in the unity of science movement which includes logical positivism.

Photography was born in an era of classicism, which harked back to ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Classicism.
In the arts, classicism set standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate, and referred generally to a high regard for classical antiquity. The art typically seeks to be formal and restrained. Classicism is often present in post-medieval European and European influenced traditions. Some periods, however, felt that they were more connected to the classical ideals than others, particularly the Age of Enlightenment. Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) rejected supernatural ideas and focused on nature as experience by humans (humanism) which enabled closer measurement and to be experimental. Georgian houses in the classicism era all had symmetry, balance and proportion, which was what it was all about.
Joseph Hayden Symphony ‘Le Matin’ - Adagio - Allegro (circa 1761). The music is almost a metaphor for Enlightenment, awakening. Enlightenment is a kind of awareness.
Classicism, the art movement, is founded upon aesthetic attitudes based on the art, literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Proportion, simplicity, form and restrained emotions are emphasized in the movement. During the Renaissance the first major revival of Classicism happened resulting from a fresh interested in Roman and Greek culture, the interest was once again sparked in the 18th Century by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, this period is defined as Neoclassicism which is also considered as the first phase of the Romantic movement.

Camera Obscura.

The camera obscura literally means dark room, camera - dark, obscura - dark. It is a device which makes use of an optical phenomenon, this happens by light rays passing through a small aperture and they reverse themselves onto a screen which is parallel to the aperture.

Georg Brander Table Camera Obscura. 1769. Engraving. Gernsheim Collection.

The table camera obscura became a very early tracing device used for artists. Camera obscuras became portable boxes in the 16th century as technology improved. Mirrors and lenses were incorporated into the camera obscura, making the reflected image view-able onto a viewing surface, visible outside of the box. Draftsmen and painters would use portable camera obscuras as aids for their work.

Reinerus Gemma-Frisius, Camera Obscura 1544. The illustration is depicting an eclipse using a camera obscura.

Jan Vermeer - Officer and Laughing Girl. 1658, Oil on canvas.

There is no documentary evidence that Vermeer used a camera obscura for this painting, the only source of information is the painting itself. In the 17th century it was unusual for human figures to be unequal in size in a similar composition of this kind. The officer is disproportionately larger than the seated girl, but the perspective of Vermeer’s painting is correct in geometrical sense. Today we are familiar with foreground objects appearing larger than those behind. If Vermeer did in fact use an optical device to create this painting, he didn’t recreate it exactly, the architecture is still constructed to the laws on linear perspective.

The word photography is derived from the Greek words photo (light) and graphein (to draw). The word was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W Herschel in 1839.

Joseph Nicephore Niepce was the first person to fix a photographic image using a camera obscura in 1827. To create the photograph, Niepce placed an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen and then exposed it to light. The whiter areas let light react with the chemicals on the plate where as the shadowed areas of the engraving blocked the light. He then placed the metal plate in a solvent and gradually an image appeared until it was then invisible. The photograph took eight hours of light exposure to create, and as soon as it appeared it would fade away.

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787 - 1851) is recognised for his invention of the Daguerreotype process of photography. Daguerre became known as one of the fathers of photography. The Daguerreotype is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate. The surface of the Daguerreotype is like a mirror, with the image made directly on the silvered surface, this makes it very fragile and can be rubbed off with a finger, the finished plate has to be angled to reflect some dark surface to view the image properly, the photo can change from a positive to a negative. Cases that were provided to house the Daguerreotypes have a cover lined with velvet or plush to provide a dark surface that reflects into the plate for viewing.

The French Government acquired the rights of Daguerre in exchanged for a lifetime pension for Daguerre and Niepce's son, and on 8th August 1839 the French presented the invention as a gift 'free for the world' and complete working instructions were published. Daguerre's agent in England applied for a British patent just days before France announced the invention free to the world. Because of this, Britain was uniquely denied France's free gift and became the only country where the payment of licence fees was required. The Calotype method, or talbotype method, was an early photographic process introduced by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841. The term calotype come from the Greek (kalos) 'beautiful and (tupos) 'impression'. Calotype method:

1. Paper would be soaked in sodium chloride solution.

2. It would then be soaked in silver chloride.

3. It would then be placed in a camera obscura and be exposed to light.

4. The photograph would then need to be fixed in sodium chloride.

The first negative was produced by Talbot which was 'The Latticed Window at Laycock Abbey' August 1835. The negative still exists today and is locked away in a vault in a museum and has only been brought out 2 or 3 times.

Post war years – The last 25 years

Post war years – The last 25 years

Joseph John Rosenthal was an American photographer, renowned for his iconic World War II photograph in 1945 Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The image itself displays a sense of determination and pride as the flag is hoisted up.

During the Second World War George Rodger was a war correspondent for life magazine in 1945 he became the first photographer to enter Bergen – Belsen concentration camp. As a photojournalist he understandably became traumatised by the horrors of the camp which no one should have to see. 

In the 1950’s a photographer called Robert Frank moved to America from Switzerland. Robert Frank's The Americans is widely celebrated as the most important photography book since World War II. Including 83 photographs made largely in 1955 and 1956 while Frank travelled around the United States, the book looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a profound sense of alienation, angst, and loneliness.

In the 1950s and 60s Diane Arbus, writer and photographer, photographed people seen to be on the edges of society or of people whose normality seemed ugly or surreal.

Born in New York in 1923 Richard Avedon was one of the most prominent photographers of his generation as he revolutionized fashion photography. He reinforces the impact of the subject by removing anything extraneous from the photograph. By using a white backdrop for his portraits he allows the figure, or sometimes just the face, to dominate the space.

Romantics, Pictoralists and the Photo Secession

The 18^th century saw the emerging feelings of people wanting to go back to a pre industrial era. This photograph of Alice Liddell, the girl which inspired the creation of the classic novel Alice’s adventures in wonderland starts to define the feelings of wanting to go back to older times. The pre-Raphaelite movement also shared this notion influencing the writing and painting of the era.

These photographs by a British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron titled ‘the mountain nymph, sweet liberty’ (left) and the ‘echo’ (right) display themes of mythology and innocence as the two gaze out of frame. ‘With her particularly piecing yet absent gaze, and pale skin she almost resembles a corpse, the title referencing Greek mythology and perhaps also the inherently reflexive nature of the photographic medium’.

During the late 19^th century photography began harking back to nature during the romantic period. Photography was seen as a way of expressing emotion. A photograph by Alexander Keighley a British Pictoralist photographer depicts this idea well. ‘Early morning light envelops the scene from above, cradling the viewer in warmth and the soft vegetation of the woodland surroundings. Such strong emissions of mood are the hallmark of Keighley's photography, which earned him a leading position and much adulation in the Linked Ring Brotherhood.’

During the 19^th century a movement emerged called the impressionist movement. Impressionism was all about capturing a fleeting movement and also looking upon emotion and feeling. This image by Claude Monet the founder of French impressionist painting is one of the iconic impressionist paintings. 

Toward the end of the 19^th century there was an emergence of a new movement. Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art. It was inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants but also in curved lines. Architects tried to harmonize with the natural environment. Casa Batlló is a building restored by Antoni  Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol, built in 1877 and remodelled in the years The local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), as it has a visceral, skeletal organic quality.

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen was an American photographer. His photograph of the flatiron building in New York shows the emergences of artificial light within photography.