Mailing 2: Pictorialism - a pluralistic environment

wilson hurst

““In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” - Alfred Stieglitz

The Photographic Fix

Work from the “Floating Elements” project, anti-copyright wilsonhurst © 2011

Ever since the first photographic images were fixed on a substrate, the question of legitimacy has been debated. This takes two forms. The first considers the scientific and mechanical aspects of photography and postulates these characteristics negate any claim to art. The second consideration attempts to define photographic purity and condemns any process not adhering to this strict designation. Pictorial photographers operating at the dawn of the twentieth century recognized logical problems associated with compartmentalizing “drawing with light” operations. Exactly how one worker can establish a distinction between photographic and non-photographic processes is complicated and arbitrary. The doctrine that the end justifies the means seems to be most applicable. The artist is free to define his own limits. The “Floating Element” project directly addresses reflexive questions about the nature of photography. My primary goal is to critically consider photogenic appearance, while moving my creative efforts specifically towards the disaffected dimension. Photography physically functions as an optical mediator of reality. This intermediary link has positioned the medium uniquely both culturally and historically as an unbiased purveyor of truth. Sharp detail delineation of refracted converging radiation is one defining characteristic. As a way to explore demarcation, the subject of these new images is optics itself. Here, I am literally focusing on the unfocused. Yet the surface of the floating element is sharply defined, hovering in a smooth abstract field of amorphous color, absolutely dependent on optics for its creation. Referencing optical refractive lens construction, on-axis geometry is critical. Initially, I thought that all images in the “Floating Element” series should therefore place the objective dead center. However, on further reflection, I decided to approach the work in a distinctly lyrical and poetic fashion, and allow the lens element more space to float. “Floating element lens groups move independently in relation to others providing a higher level of correction at all distances.” - Nikon What is a photograph suppose to look like anyway? The operative word here is look, which therefore posits the experience in absolute terms to a radiant energy function. This requirement defines the

perimeter margin. Within any delimited arrangement, there are infinite gradations of differentiation that establish the functioning creative field. Working with reality to place inherent camera characteristics into a “pure straight image,” I exploit concepts of optical theory. Transforming the linear discourse into tangible surfaces, the floating element definition is legitimized by the presence of dust particles and other surface manifestations. A whole series of complex symbolic encodes are available. The effectiveness of any specific “Floating Element” image remains inexplicable, but with engagement experience, the variety of iterations within the field becomes increasingly clear. Settling on the Olympus 50mm f3.5 macro lens as the preferential capture optic, I am still shooting a variety of different hovering lens elements positioned within the abstract color field environment. This multi-leveled exploration of focus interrogates the essential delineation issue intrinsic to photographic expression. I believe the history of art provides ample evidence that aesthetic expression and appreciation are not explicit. Rather they depend on individual taste and preference, as governed by the general mental development of both the artist and audience, necessarily dynamic over time. No two human minds are precisely alike, and as the Pictorialist photographer, Paul L. Anderson said about his work in 1919: “This work will have a certain effect on those minds which resemble my own sufficiently to receive from external objects the same impressions that I do, or impressions similar to mine.” An important aspect of creative intent is to work beyond conventions. The ultimate goal is to create new work that does not simply rehash the past, but rather breaks new ground. It seems rather obvious this cannot be achieved without comprehensive knowledge of the archive. Of course, as the archive expands, the difficulty of operating outside its content containment boundary becomes increasingly arduous. There is no universal or standard definition of art; but narrowed down art must be measured as a synthetic abstract concept. The archive seems to indicate that since the inception of human existence, man has engaged in aesthetic concerns. Thus, this aspect of life functioning is powerful and essential, resident in the core of our spirit.

Bunnell, Peter C. A Photographic Vision: Pictorial Photography, 1889-1923. Santa Barbara: P. Smith, 1980. Print. This work is a compilation of historical essays about Pictorialism and offers a wide-ranging examination of the movement as debated during its development and reign. Initiated at the end of the nineteenth century as a conceptual approach to photography, the pictorial goal was to differentiate products derived from an optical machine as interpretive rather than mere topological records. Central to this issue are the perceived polemic relationships of science versus art and automation versus human intervention. By the beginning of the 20th century, photographers functioned in a multifaceted environment of thoughts and activities. In fact, photography is constantly evolving towards increased diversity in method and intent. Although the result is an extensive multiplicity of images and concerns, many believe that all photographs are similar and originate from analogous motivations. This view, still widespread today, is a fabrication. Another inaccuracy, perpetuated mainly by critics rather than practitioners, is the derisive analysis that the primary intent of Pictorialism was to imitate works of art in other media. A more accurate understanding places their concern with aesthetics and emotional image impact. Early practicing proponents realized that a photograph could be more than a record. “A picture functions in the realization of interpretation and reflects its creator more than its subject. A picture has meaning central to human experience.” Strategies in this effort involved subject matter selection and creative use of all available photographic manipulations. These manipulations included hand actuated tonal shifts, coating photographic sensitive emulsions on different substrates, and exploiting diverse actinic chemistries each with unique characteristics. The results moved photography away from the documentary record, which deploys still significant, but fewer manipulations. The concept of the beautiful is another important issue addressed by Pictorialism. For guidance, they turned to the archive and considered aesthetics in terms successful in other existing activities. Approached as artistic photography, Pictorialism functioned within current art styles, such as impressionism, and these styles are thus reflected in their work. To this interest the Pictorialists added the model of naturalism. Since photography responds to external energy patterns, nature became synonymous with truth. This implied a close observation of natural appearances, as interpreted by an individual exercising good taste. A new vocabulary and a rising standard of cultivation became a photographic constituent. Like all art movements that reject the past, Pictorialism opposed all preceding photography modalities. As the movement advanced, the goal was not to refine ideas or conventions presently held, but to enlighten them in ways previously unconsidered. Photographers came to believe that contemporary life could be a personal exploration. Accepting responsibility for philosophical and aesthetic intent, the Pictoralists held it possible to reshape the vision of culture. The following are critical annotations from relevant essay selections from the text, exploring “A Photographic Vision.”

P. H. Emerson 1889 Science and Art

The two disciplines of science and art must be understood as distinct opposites. Art appeals to emotion, eliciting an emotional response. Science appeals to intellect, adding to knowledge. Extreme detail in photography thus is scientific, nothing more than a topographical record devoid of all artistic qualities. Photographic art, on the other hand, is the selection, arrangement, and recording of certain facts with the goal of giving aesthetic pleasure. “We cannot record too many facts in Science: the fewer facts we record in Art, and yet express the subject so that it cannot be better expressed, the better.” George Davison 1891 Impressionism in Photography

This age of scientific inquiry affects every branch of knowledge, including art. The impressionist painters moved in this direction by abandoning all previous artistic conventions and consulting only their impressions of natural scenes. The naturalistic school is concerned with light, color, and atmosphere in the manner seen by the eye. Photography can express our impressions of natural scenes as well as any other media. Minute definition of detail may be one distinctive quality of photography, but is not the distinctive characteristic of seeing. Alfred Stieglitz 1892 A Plea for Art Photography in America.

American photographers have technique, but what is missing? What is missing is taste, sense for composition and tonalities, atmospherics, innovative subjects, and simplicity. Too much sharp detail is untrue to natural vision and “an abomination to the artist.” A. Horsley Hinton 1895 A Blind Leader of the Blind

Those who denigrate photography as an art form are ignorant. They contend that photography is purely mechanical, producing nothing more than a record. Supporting this contention is the fact that most photographers have no artistic training, and thus are aesthetically unaware. However, in fact the camera does not make the picture, the photographer does. In addition, a skilled photographer can control the process to render a scene as desired or imagined, by purely photographic means. Hector E. Murchison 1895 The Photography of the Future

Photography started as an optical and chemical process. The mechanical nature of the process asserted itself far beyond the artistic. However, the artist capability is latent, so the future of photography is art, although the materials are less plastic than those of the painter or etcher. The question is how far may the methods of the user of the brush be combined with those of the user of the lens? Whether photography will fully expand or not depends on the application of liberal ideas. H.P. Robinson 1896 Digressions. Imitation

“Before the discovery of photography, there was not much danger of getting to close to nature in any art; but photography soon showed that it was possible to make a picture which more nearly represented the facts of nature than anything that had ever been dreamed of, and yet having no art at all.”

Joseph Pennell 1897 Is Photography Among the Fine Arts?

Photographers that claim to be fine artists are amateurs, who pursue photography only in their spare time. They do not train or study seriously. A person who cannot draw with unaided hand is not an artist and never will be considered one. “Has photography accomplished anything? Yes, it has cheapened art greatly.” [Joseph Pennell (July 4, 1857 – April 23, 1926) was an American artist and author, working as an original etcher and lithographer, and notably as an illustrator.] A. Horsley Hinton 1897 Methods of Control, and Their Influence on the Development of Artistic Photography

“...the man employing photographic means for the production of a picture is free to take whatsoever liberties he chooses with the performance of his tools and materials, and is justified by so doing if he can better fulfill his intention...” This manipulation merely constitutes the exercise of control over the formation of the photographic image; it is control that that elevates photography from just a mechanical craft. “The exercise of such control requires no small degree of artistic instinct...” A. Horsley Hinton 1899 Individuality - Some Suggestions for the Pictorial Worker

“No greater error ever existed than that by putting the image out of focus, printing it on rough surface paper, or even the selection of a certain class of subject, or choosing a particular type of model, advances that man’s work artistically one iota.” Photography has fallen into“grooviness.” It has been traveling in grooves because the few successful have many imitators, persistently travelling in the same deep ruts. The previously unconventional is growing conventional. To counter this, strive for a “personal artistic feeling,” conveying ideas. Gertrude Käsebier 1898 Studies in Photography

Imitation leads to certain failure. Artists must experience creativity through their own intellectual perceptions and emotions, and must guard against artificial influence. Before arriving at a legitimate judgment, it is necessary to consider an issue from all sides. Something should always be left to the viewers imagination, and only as much detail need be expressed as essential to support the communication. Do not worry if unique ideas are rejected. If a thing is superior, it will endure. F. Holland Day 1898 Art and the Camera

Because art is old and the camera is new, the relationship between them is undefined. But the tool does not create the creative expression. Sadakichi Hartmann 1898 A Few Reflections

“An over-production is at present noticeable in all branches of human endeavor; and at no point in time have the various art professions suffered from overcrowding as at present.”

Alfred Stieglitz 1899 Pictorial Photography

Artistic originality refers to imagination of subject and method of expression. Significance comes from how and what is said. Processes and tools are subordinate to the elaboration of ideas. Pictorial photography is virtually unlimited. J. K. Tulloch 1900 Thirty Years of Amateur Photography

Likeness to nature is unattainable in photography. A. Horsley Hinton 1900 Naturalism in Photography

Published ten years ago, Emerson’s Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art did much to advance photographic ideas above convention. Nevertheless, the book confused optical focus and mental focus. “Optical focus, the vision of the normal human eye, within certain limits and subject to inconsiderable variations, is as fixed and ascertainable a quantity as mental focus is variable and beyond the reach of rule and measurement, and the impression we carry away of a scene is a mental impression.” It is possible to represent nature more intelligible than nature itself. The artist is an interpreter, not a reproducer. J.C. Warburg 1901 Pure Photography

What is legitimate and illegitimate in photography? Various processes might be identified as pure, but their choice is always arbitrary. Photography means drawing by light. So perhaps exposure of the plate and contact printing are pure, while development and fixing are not. They are chemical processes, so pure photography must be restricted to printed-out and unfixed images. To those who claim to be pure photographers, answer the following questions: How do you define pure photography? Why is it pure to expose sensitized paper under a negative but not without a negative? Is it pure:

To develop a negative in the ordinary way in a bath? To differentially develop the negative? To develop the negative by applying developer with a brush?

If these are not all pure, what is their essential difference? If they are pure, then is it pure to obtain the same result by masking methods? It is impossible to draw logical distinctions in these matters. Sadakichi Hartman 1904 A Plea for Straight Photography

Certain photographers overstep all legitimate boundaries and deliberately jumble techniques of photography, painting and the graphic arts. Many of them have no drawing or painting skills or knowledge. These people are doing injustice to photography. A photographic print should look like a photographic print. Brush marks and lines are not natural to photography.

E.J. Constant Puyo 1904 Synthetic Photography

Too much of the photographic process is automation, lacking decisive artistic intervention. The photographic lens is essentially an analytic instrument, just as the photograph is itself an analytic work. Art is expression of temperament, interpretation of nature, and systematic and deliberate. All the graphic arts work towards synthesis as their natural goal, since they exist to suggest as much as to describe. Furthermore, artistic progress proceeds in the direction of increasing synthesis. At all stages of the photographic process, the pursuit of a more synthetic product continues, especially in the creation of aesthetic rather than documentary images. Alfred Stieglitz 1905 Simplicity in Composition

The ratio of difficulty varies directly as the square of the simplicity. The problem is one of elimination - to include only what is necessary and exclude everything that is unessential. Robert Demachy 1907 On the Straight Print

A straight print must be made from a straight negative, produced by normal development during which no control is possible, with no subsequent retouching. The print also must be exposed normally with no local shading. If the print requires development, it must be done normally with no local adjustment. This is akin to a mere copying of nature. A copyist may be an artist, but his copy is not a work of art. A work of art must be a transcription, not a copy of nature. Frederick H. Evans 1907 What is a Straight Print?

There is no such thing as described by Demachy. Retouching is always required. Nevertheless, a straight print means the handwork is undetectable, and the photographic gradations are not impaired nor manufactured by pencil or brush. Roland Rood 1908 Is Photography a New Art?

Photography is photography, neither more nor less. Marius DeZayas 1913 Photography and the aArtistic-Photography

Photography is not art, but photographs can be made to be art. Photography is using the camera without any preconceived idea of results. It attempts to penetrate the objective reality of facts, to acquire a truth, to represent without emotional representation. The artist photographer uses nature to express his individuality, putting himself in front of nature without preconceptions. With the free mind of an investigator, with the method of an experimentalist, he tries to get out of nature a true state of conditions. Kendrick Chamberlin 1914 Atmosphere in Photography

Photographers are divided into two classifications. Those who wish to accurately reproduce existence, and those who wish render an emotional impression. The appreciation of suggestion, as opposed to presentation, is the result of cultivation. The goal of pictorial photography is expression.

“The man who takes a special interest in photography usually arrives at a place where he asks more of a photograph than the mere presentation of a subject.” Alvin Langdon Coburn 1916 The Future of Pictorial Photography

An artist tries to express the inexpressible. This is a struggle as it is impossible to realize a perfect ideal, but occasional moments of ecstasy are enticing. Nothing is final in art, always progressing and advancing, as man’s intelligence expands in the light of increased understanding. “And it is my hope that photography may fall in line with all the other arts, and with her infinite possibilities, do things stranger and more fascinating that the most fantastic dreams.” Paul Strand 1922 Photography and the New God

It is time for a necessary revaluation of the idea of the machine, establishing a deeper understanding of the camera. Science and expression both are vital manifestations of energy which by joining together can integrate a new aesthetic impulse.

Anderson, Paul. The Fine Art of Photography. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1919. Print. In this book, the author and fine art photographer attempts to establish art principles as applied to photography. The uniqueness of photography is its requirement of both scientific knowledge and artistic sensibility. In this regard, the primary postulate is that an artistic impulse is purely of the mind, dealing with intangible things. Artistic feeling results from the following: Observation - Meditation - Logic - Imagination In western cultures, predigested information is favored. In reaction to this predilection, a functioning artist must apply individual mental powers to seeing and thinking. Understanding comes only from observation and logical correlation of empirical phenomena. There are no rules in art. Any medium of expression permitting abstract idea communication of emotion can be fine art. By this definition, merely indifferent images are not fine art. This is why many artists work under conditions of emotional tension. This said, art must go beyond aesthetic gratification. The photographer is not limited to records of fact, but is free to express his artistic impulses. The worker can modify at will the outlines and values of his subject, to convey an idea or stimulate an emotion. Art must possess an intellectual quality. Straight photography means that significant process stages are not subject to the voluntary modification by the artist. So for example, all plates must be developed alike, for modifications in development are control. Also all prints must be made precisely the same. This perhaps is too restrictive. An expressive artist must always be willing to modify either the print or the negative to secure the desired effect, bearing in mind that too much modification may be worse than none at all. The artist is under no restriction as the mode of securing a result. There is a great difference between the emotional expression sand emotional stimulation. The second is the substance of art. Those that desire to produce pictures that evoke an emotional response will not

care whether their methods are called legitimate or not, they will look only to the result. It follows that the appreciation of a work of art demands a certain audience mental level. Therefore, any work of art must be adapted to those who are to view it. People should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. There is no such thing as truth of appearance, be on guard against excessive sharpness and excessive diffusion. Factor in suggestion, persuade the spectator to imagine they are viewing actual objects rather than pictorial representations No one part of photographic expression is more important than another. Pre-visualization is important, post-visualization is draughtsman-ship rather than photography. Exposure and development control is used to realize pre-visualized results, relating tonality to emotion. Choice of lens provides desired control of detail. Subject and intention can dictate a different printing process. For example, snow-covered winter landscapes are best printed in platinum. So material characteristics are mated with artistic intent. The author primarily works in bromoil, prints with any necessary modification made at the time of inking, a method which precludes duplication of prints. It is doubtful if any artist can ever have enough technical knowledge; problems are constantly arising which demand acquaintance with various processes other than the accustomed one, and the worker of limited knowledge must leave such problems unsolved or e only partly successful in their treatment. However, the worker that devotes his entire attention to technical processes must necessarily ignore the studies requisite to full artistic expression, and each must determine where the balance lies. It is a widespread error to suppose that knowledge can be taught. No person living can teach another anything whatever; all knowledge, wisdom, and skill must come through a voluntary effort on the part of the student. The most that the teacher can do is to stimulate, to suggest, and to point out errors, and this is most conspicuously the case where the faculties of reason and imagination are called upon to function. The teacher can make statements to be memorized by the student (even here the latter must exert himself) but when it becomes necessary for the student to employ his logical powers of observation, or to acquire manipulative skill, he must travel alone. There is one rule in art: an evident mixture of mediums is a hybrid and an abomination. The effort to produce photographs resembling drawing, etching, lithography, etc. is doomed to failure. Art above all else is sincere.

Work from the “Cyanotypes” project, anti-copyright wilsonhurst © 1982

Wall, Jeff. "Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as Conceptual Art" from Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2007. Print. Conceptual art decisively changed the definition of modernist art photography and its relationship to other arts in the 1960 to 1980 period. Additionally, this change evolved explicitly through the dynamics of self-criticism. Up until this point, photography was too comfortably rooted in the modern art pictorial tradition. It was irritatingly serene and distanced from intellectual drama. Artists desired to disturb this in radical ways. Conceptual artists collectively established photography as an institutionalized modernist art form. All western art before 1910 was grounded in the “regime of depiction.” Without depiction, art is in need of an alternative validity. Photography is still searching for this alternative validity because the physical nature of the medium is to depict things. Therefore, photography cannot find alternatives to depiction. The tradition of “avant-garde” art is identified closely with self-critique. One of its primary tenants is the necessity for deconstruction, the process of taking concepts apart and putting them back together again sideways or inside out. Up until 1960, photography was not yet “avant-garde,” as its required deconstruction was absent. Reflexivity is mandatory for modernist art. Because photography as sheer picture making was worn out, conceptual art tried to illuminate this inherent condition. This took several forms:

Questioning reportage Context defined by culture industry De-skilling and re-skilling of the artist

Questioning reportage

Pictorialism ended approximately 1920, after which art photography began to explore the utilitarian picture. This takes the form of reportage, with associated characteristics including immediacy, instantaneity, and an evanescent emergent moment. Photography was in search of a unique identity, and moved away from painting as a model and looked back to the documentary. Defining a vernacular of their own medium, photographers adopted the principle of spontaneity demanded by modern aesthetics. Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, all created art by imitating photojournalism. To be valid, planned spontaneity must exploit only those qualities intrinsic. Responding to the jittery flow of events unfolding, photojournalism forced photography to a modernistic dialectic. Reportage evolves in the pursuit of the blurred parts of pictures. Composition is only a dynamic of anticipatory framing, a kind of “hunter’s consciousness.” Context defined by culture industry

Critical art is emancipatory, dialogical and dissenting. It is recalcitrant and unmanageable. A critical art is a politicized art and therefore concerned with the current condition of liberal democracy. Pictures need to be valid reports, socially effective, and put forth a new picture model. “Photo-conceptualism” led the way toward the complete acceptance of photography as art by virtue of insisting that this medium might be privileged to be the negation of that whole idea. One strategy, to legitimate an object as art, is to interrogate its legitimacy, to demand an imitation of the non-autonomous to become autonomous. “The idea of an art which provides a direct experience of situations of relationships, not a secondary, representational one, is one of abstract art’s most powerful creations.” 156 The experience is more like an encounter with an entity than with a mere picture. Paradoxically, photography as art could only be accepted as such when its aesthetic presuppositions were effectively attacked. De-skilling and re-skilling of the artist

In conceptual art content is its own idea of itself. An important critique in contemporary art is questioning aestheticism. In this line of reasoning, art based on skill, craft, and imagination of practitioners is discredited. To be modern is to eliminate the essential, proving it is not essential. Thus, photography must be subject to reductivism that emphasizes extreme simplification of form and color. However, photography has no dispensable characteristics. Therefore, we come back to the notion that photography must depict. “Photography constitutes a depiction not by the accumulation of individual marks, but by the instantaneous operation of an integrated mechanism. All the rays permitted to pass through the lens form an image immediately, and the lens, by definition, creates a focused image at its correct focal length. Depiction is the only possible result of the camera system, and the kind of image formed by a lens is the only image possible in photography.” So in the 1960’s photographic reduction came on the level of skill, as defined as “Anti-art.” This anti-aesthetic is transformed as art, but along the fracture-line of shock.”160 This leads to the idea that

picture-making skills are of minor importance in making significant pictorial art. The notion of “high art” must be negated. “Every man an artist.” Joseph Beuys Reductivism is central to conceptual art. Therefore, photographic images can be dull, boring, and insignificant, representing the negation of experience. The philosophical content of aesthetics is the content of conceptual art. However, because photography must depict, it cannot provide the negation of experience. This structural failure meant that by 1974 it was photography’s task to turn away from conceptual art and reductivism.

Continuously revise historical judgments

Unable to image anything better, photography for many years languished as an imitation of high art and uncritically recreated its esoteric worlds of technique and “quality.” To counter this, deconstructive radicalism applied to photography became the imitation of amateur picture making. The mimesis of amateurism emerged around 1966, endorsing limited competence as desirable concept for investigation. It became a subversive creative act for a talented and skilled artist to imitate a person of limited abilities. This tactic was one of the last gestures that could produce avant-garde shock. The conceptual photographer Edward Ruscha is an example: “Only an idiot would take pictures of nothing but the filling stations, and the existence of a book of just those pictures is a kind of proof of the existence of such a person.” However, this person is an abstraction, conjured up by the product he produces. The artistic boundary emerges through the construction of this phantom producer, making visible the “marks of indifference.”

Work from the “Leveraging the Archive” project, anti-copyright wilsonhurst © 2011