After the Photo-Secession American Pictorial Photography, 1910-1955

by Peterson, Christian A.

• ISBN13: 9780393041118
• ISBN10: 0393041115
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Much has been written about Alfred Stieglitz and his role in establishing photography as an art. Little attention, however, has been paid to the pictorial photographers who followed Stieglitz, among them Imo Jean Cunningham, Edward Weston, Clarence H. White, and a host of others -- those who, in a widespread movement, approached photography in a painterly fashion, creating beautiful images through the use of careful lighting, manipulated tones, soft focus effects, and artistic compositions. In this important volume, Christian A. Peterson finally gives the pictorialists of the first half of the twentieth century their due. He describes the backgrounds of the movement, their methods, the photo clubs they belonged to, and their work, illustrated here with ninety-three stunning reproductions. The movement seemed to die out, Peterson suggests, with the rising popularity of 35mm photography in mid-century, when the care and slow working procedures required by large-format cameras became unpopular.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	7	(2)
Introduction	9	(4)
I. The Photo-Secession: Homogeneous and Elitist	13	(5)
II. The Pluralism of Pictorialism	18	(83)
III. The Populism of Pictorialism	101	(50)
IV. The Demise of Pictorial Photography	151	(14)
Bibliography	165	(4)
Biographies	169	(42)
Index	211