The Art of Photography: Exploring Historical Techniques and their Relevance to Modern Practice

A famous image that I want to bring up is Frank Burkett's "Water Rats", created in 1886. This is often cited as one of the first examples of an image using depth of field to create composition, where the subjects in the foreground are blurred while those in the background remain sharp. However, I'm not entirely convinced by this claim. Any image has some degree of depth of field; it's not a novel technique that was pioneered by Burkett or any other photographer. Nevertheless, he is indeed one of the great Pictorialists, and his work embodies the spirit of experimentation and innovation that defined this movement.

As we explore the history of photography in context, I want to emphasize the importance of understanding the techniques and processes used by early photographers. The Pictorialists, in particular, were known for their emphasis on artistic expression and their willingness to push the boundaries of what was possible with the medium. By studying their work and techniques, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the art of photography and learn from their experiences.

One technique that I think is worth revisiting is gun gum by chromate. This process, which involves using a combination of chemicals to create unique effects on film, is largely unknown to photographers today. However, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the innovative spirit of early Pictorialists, who were always looking for new ways to express themselves through their work.

As we explore these historical techniques, I want to emphasize that they are not just about creating a particular look or style; they are about understanding the underlying principles and processes that underpin photography. Many modern photographers assume that photography is simply a matter of applying filters or effects in post-processing software. However, this approach neglects the fact that photography is a medium that requires a deep understanding of light, chemistry, and technique.

One of the key takeaways from studying historical photography is that it offers a rich source of inspiration for modern photographers. While many of these techniques may not be directly applicable to our own work, they offer a wealth of ideas and approaches that can inform our practice. By exploring the history of photography, we can gain a broader understanding of what is possible with the medium and discover new ways to express ourselves through our work.

In addition to revisiting historical techniques, I also want to emphasize the importance of experimenting with different processes and approaches. As photographers, we have access to a wide range of techniques and technologies that were not available to earlier generations. From alternative processes like cyanotype and van dyke brown to modern digital tools and software, there are countless ways to create unique and expressive images.

However, I think it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that these techniques are simply about applying filters or effects in post-processing software. This approach neglects the fact that photography is a medium that requires hands-on experimentation and manual manipulation. Many of the Pictorialists, for example, spent hours mixing chemicals, loading film, and developing their own prints. By embracing this kind of hands-on approach, we can tap into the same creative energy and innovation that drove these early photographers.

Finally, I want to emphasize the importance of understanding the bigger picture of what photography is about. As photographers, our goal should not just be to create aesthetically pleasing images but also to explore new ways of seeing, thinking, and expressing ourselves through our work. By embracing historical techniques and approaches, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the art of photography and discover new ways to push the boundaries of what is possible.

In upcoming episodes, we'll be exploring some of these ideas in more depth, including revisiting darkroom processes like gun gum by chromate and examining alternative methods for creating unique effects. We'll also be looking at how historical techniques can inform our practice as photographers and offering practical tips for incorporating these approaches into our own work.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography I'm your host Ted Forbes and in the last episode we started talking about pictorialism and I want to continue with that today because there's a lot to discuss uh and I also find it fascinating as I mentioned last time mainly because this is one of the first movements in photography um of of extreme significance that changed really what people did and if you recall I mentioned this last time but in the early days you know you have photography that's invented and people are looking at this and people are starting to experiment with it and you have photographers that are coming along they're really dedicating their craft to it and there's kind of an argument that starts to come up of whether or not still exists a lot today uh but definitely at that time is okay well you have the system of taking a camera and being able to document visually a scene by recording what the light looks like is that art or is that just simply a scientific Gizmo for you know documentation purposes and a lot of these early photographers really start setting out to prove that no in fact it did require not only a technical skill and a knowledge of the chemical side of photograph but also um the artistic side the shooting side uh a lot of these guys studied painting a lot of them uh were former artists themselves and we're going to Great Links to do remember as I mentioned last time one of two things which was to either create the composition in a way that was not necessarily documentary like so you had more of these fantasy types of subjects or owed to Past Masters or illustrative kinds of things and you also had the actual physical manipulation of the process itself so whether this is a bromoil thing or it's gum by chromate or something like that a lot of these earli pictorials would go through and actually you know make it so you could see the brush strokes and they would artistically try to manipulate that print of what they were doing um is more of an art form and I want to continue on with this today and I want to talk about the camera clubs that came out about this time and again for the same reason because we have a number of people that are trying to make photography more legit as an art form and knowing that to separate it out is something that's unique and I think we all feel like this today because there is a technical side to photography and there also is that artistic side and a lot of these early guys were trying to do that and so the Camera Club started and originally it was just you know a couple then it became a couple hundred and later on a couple thousand and it's really interesting because I think this movement in some ways mirrors what we have today with the internet uh instead of clubs necessarily you have things like flicker or 500px but there are ways for photographers to group together to exchange ideas and I think this was really important and I want to talk about some of the very early famous significant ones that were really professional caliber um when you say Camera Club it makes it sound like a couple guys in their backyard and I suppose there were those uh but the big one in the US was the photo secession was a it was a club that was started with mainly Edward Sten and Alfred stiglet who were two major name photographers and what this was is it it was a way of okay if we need to get photography accepted as as a legitimate art form um it was a way of organizing that and what these what these people would do as groups I mean they had founding members you had to be elected into the Camera Club so to speak and so it really was the best of the best that were driving these major clubs at the time uh the most wellknown obviously being the photo secession which was in the United States um but actually it was the third of kind of this um you progression of large camera clubs the first one being out of Paris which was the photo club dupar which started I believe in 1888 which was afterwards another really big one was the one came out of London in England which was uh the Brotherhood of the linked ring or sometimes just referred to as linked ring and uh the photo secession didn't come along till 1902 but they were all within basically 5year period of one another and all very influential and they produced uh they did research on Art they did a lot of writing um on the subject of Photography as an art form they bonded together and had meetings and they would exchange ideas and most importantly they would actually put on their own exhibitions these photo salons they would do at least annually uh if not more and they became a big deal and I think it's really interesting that they took this route because it's like okay if people aren't going to take photography seriously at this point we've got to bond together take it seriously ourselves and then what we'll do is if Galleries and salons aren't going to show photography work as art then shoot we're going to go ahead and do our own exhibitions and so I I really find this a fascinating time and if you look at a lot of the photographers that came out of this era um you know I guess you could say that pictorialism is a aesthetic medium to a point there are common threads that you see in images like we looked at last time we're going to see again today but I think it's a little deeper than that and I think that's the point I want to make today is that really what it is is it's it's a foundation of coming together to exchange ideas and there's a huge social component to to this of strength and numbers and that kind of thing so what I want to do is I want to look at some various Styles because I also mentioned not only do you have the camera clubs the world becomes a smaller place Global Travel is more possible people are starting to uh be able to get imported magazines and books even prints and so the world is much like the internet has done more recently become a smaller place and so I want to look at kind of stylistically and nationally how this has impacted certain things so let's go ahead and and um we're going to go over and take a look at some images here and uh check out some more on pictorialism okay so what I want to do is go over to Pinterest now and I've got a board set up for our topic today and we're going to talk about pictorialist camera clubs and what I want to do is show you guys some work by some of the the well-known pictorialist practitioners of this era who uh you know were prominent members of some of these clubs on a global level and what I hope to do is to introduce you to some photographers you're not familiar with and show you some new work kind of like what we did in the last episode and these have been a lot of fun to to do my research on so I hope that you know maybe I can translate some of that passion and get you guys interested as well um well I'm going to start here a little bit out of order I want to start with Edward Sten who you know was one of the bigger names on here he and stalets who I'm also going to show you some work of uh started the US club which was the photo secession and the photo secession literally the name meant if you take the word to secede from something it was to separate yourself or distance yourself or divorce yourself from the norm or so there's kind of a punk rock attitude with some of this where these guys did not want to do what was being done they were trying to push the limits and do something entirely new with photography so hence the name the photo secession and what I really love about this early stets work that was definitely steeped in pictorialism whereas his later work shows a wide range of Versatility and he clearly is a modernist at some point and moves Way Beyond that but these early works are really interesting to me because they're very limited in tonal range uh in the technical specifications of what you could do with photography and rather than use that as a limitation I think Sten viewed it as a challenge and love these early images you know this bridge they have a haunting kind of dreamlike you know memory type quality to them a hint of nostalgia this is another beautiful one this uh silhouette that was made it says 4 a.m. 1908 uh you know famous image of the flat iron building but he kind of used this crudeness to his advantage and created a style that I think in a lot of ways still holds up I mean you can definitely tell their older images but I don't think they look dated in a way that maybe some things from the 70s end up looked 0 or something like that there's a Timeless quality to these um this is an interesting portrait of AUST Rodan which I've shown on the show before this one of my favorites and what I really like about this image is you know limited tonal Range dreamlike quality you know all the Hallmarks of this pictorialist style that Sten was working in but you also have rather than this being a straight- on facial portrait of Rodan you have what's starting to be an environmental portrait which you really don't see until Arnold Newman makes a big deal about this 60 70 years later and so this is this is pretty early and so I think it's just really interesting that there's a parallel between those two things um Saget's famous photo this is Hand of man which is the famous train stas is a wonderful Americana kind of national pride kind of feeling to a lot of his work um you know basically shooting what he saw and I think a lot of these photographers that you're going to see today there there definitely is a a nationalist uh type sensibility to some of the some of the images that you see but anyway stas is amazing um if we move to some other parts of the world um I want to look at Spain for a second we're going to kind of start over in Europe and actually let's go up here um a couple images I found and it was really interesting because Spain was known for being very prominent at this time and it's really kind of hard to find work by a lot of these people and I don't know why that is about the best I could research is that you know a lot of these guys were doing uh doing work for publication and not printing as much which would make some sense that maybe the Publications are just gone and because they didn't print uh just it was something different about it but anyway the two big practitioners that I found from Spain that I think are simply just mind-blowingly amazing uh first off we have Juan vioba and viat toa's work again for that time you know it's got all the Hallmarks of what you're seeing with pictorialist work um different poses artistic uh qualities of you know if you look at some of the the textures and materials that in the the clothes that people are wearing um different poses of the figures very artistic very inspired by sculpture paintings things of the sort um here's another interesting one uh and I I don't know much about this image this is just simply one I was able to track down um it was common in the 19th century for people to commission it's a little bit Mor o but basically death portraits and so what you would have is is a family photo with a deceased and kind of this way of remembering him uh I'm not sure whether this is actually that or not or if this is set up to just look like that but you either way you have the either sick or deceased child with the morning mother over the top um looking down looking fairly draw uh for obvious reasons but anyway um very very interesting work and just a little bit of the sign of the time so that would be uh vioba another interesting Spanish photographer that I found um this guy kind of went around and only went by the name k DEA ventrosa and which basically means count of the cup so kind of odd nobody knew his real name was but some amazing work and very different um than you know each one of these per people have their own style you know here it's the swirling glass and the swirling uh folus the you know of the early crude camera that's being used but a really nice simple portrait of this woman standing next to a wall so anyway some wonderful work um you know this is kind of an eye opener in that sense um another we're going to move over to the Netherlands now because there's several people who kind of worked within a group that was basically their version of the photo secession their Camera Club which was the photo um this is Adrien Burr one of the things I love the most about this is look what he's doing with the light in here it's almost this fantasy type quality or dream like type structure to these people in the woods with this you know blinding light coming from behind them uh just simply stunning work this is Adrian bur as well but a very different portrait um just a more conservative portrait of a woman uh with a String of Pearls uh very beautifully done very very uh very gorgeous um this is another one of my favorites this is another photographer from the Netherlands another Dutch photographer this is Bernard isers and this image actually if you look closely this is taken in troger square London you can see the uh the silhouette of the uh the lion back here but in in a way of you know kind of paralleling the work that Sten was doing early on you have this same dreamlike quality this very limited tonal palette this this uh lack of focus on anything specific it's very blurry but in a very different style than I mean it was not the same as what sten was doing this this almost feels more like maybe impressionist painting but maybe even early American painting for that matter you know just the way it really looks like it's done with ink um even though it's a photo anyway some just amazingly beautiful stuff and to jump around really crazily um we haven't copy we haven't covered uh much of the uh Japanese aesthetic on here and Japan had their contributions as well again what you're starting to see is more of the Oriental costume the way of dress traditional um as like I said these nationalistic things you know stets there's a an Americana thing that really comes through his work and obviously with we're looking at Ogawa kazumasa who was probably the leading Japanese artist at that time or Japanese photographer and what's really cool is that you start to see with the Japanese work particularly with um with kazum masa's work is hand tenting the photographs so you know making your photos in monochrome uh using whatever process there is and then actually going in and hand painting them so you start to definitely get an artistic sense from these and you know kind of an art validation because there is a lot of handwork involved on this but anyway some very very beautiful work this is another famous photo that you probably seen around this is ichiki Shiro and you know again damaged negative which adds to some of the vibe but uh you know that image is like it's almost like there's a layer of ice or something floating between you and and the the Asian figure back here it's just stunningly beautiful so you know that's some of the work that was coming out of Japan at that time uh we're going to move around this is uh Canadian photographer this is Sydney Carter who was a big name in Canada at that time and really did a lot for the Canadian effort of bringing you know photography into the Fine Art world and later he was Toronto born but uh you know did there were several art exhibitions in Montreal once he became you know fairly successful love this image this is another one where the the the person kind of floats behind some kind of material between you and the subject um I just find that fascinating and interesting um this is a uh one of my favorites this is Austrian photography this is hun I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of K's work in when I was in New York last summer and one of the things I really love about his work is there is a real weird surreal quality almost painting like uh nothing's quite in Focus but it's not quite blurry and it's not quite soft focus and the color is just simply gorgeous and there's this kind of Haunting quality to these the compositions are very much like you were seeing a painters at the time so again that nod to to you know making art um but you know it's just some of the most beautiful images you've ever seen uh particularly interesting too and you're not going to get this by watching it on a video or seeing it online but um if you are able to see some of these prints in person um a lot of times they've done on things like Japanese tissue paper and and there's a real delicate tactile quality to the fysical work itself that you don't get from a JPEG so um you know just make a note if you're able to ever track this guy down it's the work is stunning um this is an Australian photographer this is John Kaufman uh what you're seeing here is something very different these these Australian landscapes and there's a real Beauty to these um there's a you know this kind of strange pastoral quality that you know it's it's a little bit Haunting in its own way but I wish I had a bigger image of this but these sheep grazing it's just simply beautiful and then almost a infrared type quality of some of these at times uh we looked at a lot of the American photographers um bounce around this is gertude caspir and gerud is very interesting because she represents one of the early women photographers who was achieving success and she was associated with not only the linked ring which was the the English Club but also with the photo secession as well um she was very well known for her time again very painter likee quality I think it's really interesting to see the different styles of some of these people um this is her uh portrait once again AUST Rodan we looked at uh Saget's interpretation of this earlier so anyway some some amazing work um very you know iconic imagery of that that era I love this portrait too Indian and the dog anyway amazing stuff um another guy I'm going to end with some of the linked ringed people here this is Frederick Evans from 1903 and what's amazing is like you're starting to see with Evans uh you know this this early take on architectural photography and his subject mainly being older buildings um usually of religious type uh Cathedrals Etc um and one thing I really love you're going to notice there's a real Timeless quality to some of these I mean they could have been made yesterday they could have been made 1903 you and it was really interesting to see an early Transcendence of some of that I also found this image and this is Frederick Evans as well but this is in context and you don't see a lot of this stuff uh this is actually a lantern slide and that's exactly what it was for it's for projection and this one was owned by The jpul Getty Museum but I think it was very interesting to to actually see what this looked like they were fairly small um or this wasn't a print this was actually a slide that was meant to be you know projected um which you know again with photography you're talking about this is an art form you know what a way of validating it you know when you when you can do you can't do that with a painting you know for instance um this is an interesting photographer as well this was another linked ring uh member this was James Craig Anan and Anan is very interesting um blow this stuff up research it online you're going to see kind of this weird sketch-like quality to this and Anan came from a family um very artistic in general his father was a print maker and he dealt with you know techniques like carbon transfer fairly early on and was one of the first people who became a big practitioner of photog GRA process which if you're not familiar with it we haven't talked about it on the show yet but it's an early process of reproduction which actually involved making an etching uh plate like a metal plate and then doing the prints that way and the quality on photograph is actually fairly amazing and there's a handful of people still doing it today um but he was one of the early practitioners of that and one of the um you know guys who really got a lot of that going and I think James Craig Anan is just his photos are amazing but also in you know this this kind of if you look towards the bottom of this image where the the figures kind of fade off and you get these brush Strokes that come in which is really kind of hard to do with photographier but possible and again making it part of his style making this art and the last image I want to show because I think it it leads us to another discussion for another day but uh this is Frank M Sutcliffe and this is a famous image that he did called water rats this is fairly early this is from 1886 I'm not sure I agree with this or not but this is commonly known as probably the first example of an image where somebody was using depth of field to create the composition and the whole idea was that you know shallow depth of field was used these boys that are the quote unquote water rats that are jumping off the boats and into the water in the foreground are blur or are sharp in the background is blurred I'm not sure I can agree with that statement because any image has depth of field it doesn't make any sense are we talking about the field large dep field but I will certainly let Franken Sutcliffe have its moment right here because uh I think he was one of the great pictorialists and uh we will debate the depth the field thing in another episode okay so a lot of stuff we've covered today and I want to conclude um by saying a couple words um and and kind of talk about how I see you know talking about pictorialism in historical context and how that applies to maybe you as a practicing photographer today and I feel the need to say this because I had some email this week from a couple people who said hey you know a great episode how do we apply these techniques and okay I want to clarify and I think there's some different ways of looking at this one thing I would like to do is I would like to we're going to go do some dark room stuff again in the episodes to come uh we haven't done that in a long time we've done a lot of looking and a lot of talking uh and so I want to revisit that and we can look at some historical processes I think gun gum by chromate for instance is a really interesting one because most people today aren't familiar with that so we'll look at some alternative process and actually some of the processes that a lot of these early pictorials use but don't just think that it's a look or a style or an effect and I think that's a common mistake that people in our generation or our lifetime tend to think because the world is different today than it was then and we have some similarities to a lot of this pictorialist movement uh you know because we've got the internet we've got uh you know this Global consumption of ideas um things come to us faster we're exposed to more and we're also over a hundred years later than a lot of these early pictorials so we have this huge history of photography in the end to draw on and while I do think it's important to look at some of these early techniques as something that you know photography is not just phone photography or digital photography I mean you have a whole breadth of Imaging techniques that are at your disposal and some of them are there some of them don't exist So Much Anymore some of them are harder to get to but if you look at the work some of these early photographers had to do I mean a lot of these guys they didn't sell film it wasn't like you know staks could go down to the store and buy it you had to mix up your own chemicals you had to largely do your own process almost entirely yourself and a lot of these techniques we've talked about so that's one thing and I think it's really healthy to become interested in what this history is and what techniques there are available what I think the mistake is is starting to look at them as a look and I know I'm going sound kind of like an old crow here but you know these things aren't a push button filter in Instagram or they're not something you want to go into Photoshop and manipulate even though I guess the hand manipulation was what a lot of these people were doing originally but trying to copy that look I think is missing the point um I think what it's the the point is is to take what a lot of these people were doing these men and women that were these early practitioners at photography and they were really pushing their limits and they had this this desire to become accepted is is being art and what do we have available at our Disposal today that's not just a push button or photoshop filter that's a really narrow way of thinking about it but what is the bigger picture of what we're trying to do as photographers and what is available to us so hopefully in the next coming months we can start to gear some episodes to start exploring that a little more and I have time Ted on that especially in some of the Vlog episodes that we did last summer U but anyway some things to think about and I think these things when you do consider them and think about them that's what makes us better as photographers anyway so anyway once again this has been another episode of The Art of Photography we'll see you next time and thank you for watchinghey everybody welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography I'm your host Ted Forbes and in the last episode we started talking about pictorialism and I want to continue with that today because there's a lot to discuss uh and I also find it fascinating as I mentioned last time mainly because this is one of the first movements in photography um of of extreme significance that changed really what people did and if you recall I mentioned this last time but in the early days you know you have photography that's invented and people are looking at this and people are starting to experiment with it and you have photographers that are coming along they're really dedicating their craft to it and there's kind of an argument that starts to come up of whether or not still exists a lot today uh but definitely at that time is okay well you have the system of taking a camera and being able to document visually a scene by recording what the light looks like is that art or is that just simply a scientific Gizmo for you know documentation purposes and a lot of these early photographers really start setting out to prove that no in fact it did require not only a technical skill and a knowledge of the chemical side of photograph but also um the artistic side the shooting side uh a lot of these guys studied painting a lot of them uh were former artists themselves and we're going to Great Links to do remember as I mentioned last time one of two things which was to either create the composition in a way that was not necessarily documentary like so you had more of these fantasy types of subjects or owed to Past Masters or illustrative kinds of things and you also had the actual physical manipulation of the process itself so whether this is a bromoil thing or it's gum by chromate or something like that a lot of these earli pictorials would go through and actually you know make it so you could see the brush strokes and they would artistically try to manipulate that print of what they were doing um is more of an art form and I want to continue on with this today and I want to talk about the camera clubs that came out about this time and again for the same reason because we have a number of people that are trying to make photography more legit as an art form and knowing that to separate it out is something that's unique and I think we all feel like this today because there is a technical side to photography and there also is that artistic side and a lot of these early guys were trying to do that and so the Camera Club started and originally it was just you know a couple then it became a couple hundred and later on a couple thousand and it's really interesting because I think this movement in some ways mirrors what we have today with the internet uh instead of clubs necessarily you have things like flicker or 500px but there are ways for photographers to group together to exchange ideas and I think this was really important and I want to talk about some of the very early famous significant ones that were really professional caliber um when you say Camera Club it makes it sound like a couple guys in their backyard and I suppose there were those uh but the big one in the US was the photo secession was a it was a club that was started with mainly Edward Sten and Alfred stiglet who were two major name photographers and what this was is it it was a way of okay if we need to get photography accepted as as a legitimate art form um it was a way of organizing that and what these what these people would do as groups I mean they had founding members you had to be elected into the Camera Club so to speak and so it really was the best of the best that were driving these major clubs at the time uh the most wellknown obviously being the photo secession which was in the United States um but actually it was the third of kind of this um you progression of large camera clubs the first one being out of Paris which was the photo club dupar which started I believe in 1888 which was afterwards another really big one was the one came out of London in England which was uh the Brotherhood of the linked ring or sometimes just referred to as linked ring and uh the photo secession didn't come along till 1902 but they were all within basically 5year period of one another and all very influential and they produced uh they did research on Art they did a lot of writing um on the subject of Photography as an art form they bonded together and had meetings and they would exchange ideas and most importantly they would actually put on their own exhibitions these photo salons they would do at least annually uh if not more and they became a big deal and I think it's really interesting that they took this route because it's like okay if people aren't going to take photography seriously at this point we've got to bond together take it seriously ourselves and then what we'll do is if Galleries and salons aren't going to show photography work as art then shoot we're going to go ahead and do our own exhibitions and so I I really find this a fascinating time and if you look at a lot of the photographers that came out of this era um you know I guess you could say that pictorialism is a aesthetic medium to a point there are common threads that you see in images like we looked at last time we're going to see again today but I think it's a little deeper than that and I think that's the point I want to make today is that really what it is is it's it's a foundation of coming together to exchange ideas and there's a huge social component to to this of strength and numbers and that kind of thing so what I want to do is I want to look at some various Styles because I also mentioned not only do you have the camera clubs the world becomes a smaller place Global Travel is more possible people are starting to uh be able to get imported magazines and books even prints and so the world is much like the internet has done more recently become a smaller place and so I want to look at kind of stylistically and nationally how this has impacted certain things so let's go ahead and and um we're going to go over and take a look at some images here and uh check out some more on pictorialism okay so what I want to do is go over to Pinterest now and I've got a board set up for our topic today and we're going to talk about pictorialist camera clubs and what I want to do is show you guys some work by some of the the well-known pictorialist practitioners of this era who uh you know were prominent members of some of these clubs on a global level and what I hope to do is to introduce you to some photographers you're not familiar with and show you some new work kind of like what we did in the last episode and these have been a lot of fun to to do my research on so I hope that you know maybe I can translate some of that passion and get you guys interested as well um well I'm going to start here a little bit out of order I want to start with Edward Sten who you know was one of the bigger names on here he and stalets who I'm also going to show you some work of uh started the US club which was the photo secession and the photo secession literally the name meant if you take the word to secede from something it was to separate yourself or distance yourself or divorce yourself from the norm or so there's kind of a punk rock attitude with some of this where these guys did not want to do what was being done they were trying to push the limits and do something entirely new with photography so hence the name the photo secession and what I really love about this early stets work that was definitely steeped in pictorialism whereas his later work shows a wide range of Versatility and he clearly is a modernist at some point and moves Way Beyond that but these early works are really interesting to me because they're very limited in tonal range uh in the technical specifications of what you could do with photography and rather than use that as a limitation I think Sten viewed it as a challenge and love these early images you know this bridge they have a haunting kind of dreamlike you know memory type quality to them a hint of nostalgia this is another beautiful one this uh silhouette that was made it says 4 a.m. 1908 uh you know famous image of the flat iron building but he kind of used this crudeness to his advantage and created a style that I think in a lot of ways still holds up I mean you can definitely tell their older images but I don't think they look dated in a way that maybe some things from the 70s end up looked 0 or something like that there's a Timeless quality to these um this is an interesting portrait of AUST Rodan which I've shown on the show before this one of my favorites and what I really like about this image is you know limited tonal Range dreamlike quality you know all the Hallmarks of this pictorialist style that Sten was working in but you also have rather than this being a straight- on facial portrait of Rodan you have what's starting to be an environmental portrait which you really don't see until Arnold Newman makes a big deal about this 60 70 years later and so this is this is pretty early and so I think it's just really interesting that there's a parallel between those two things um Saget's famous photo this is Hand of man which is the famous train stas is a wonderful Americana kind of national pride kind of feeling to a lot of his work um you know basically shooting what he saw and I think a lot of these photographers that you're going to see today there there definitely is a a nationalist uh type sensibility to some of the some of the images that you see but anyway stas is amazing um if we move to some other parts of the world um I want to look at Spain for a second we're going to kind of start over in Europe and actually let's go up here um a couple images I found and it was really interesting because Spain was known for being very prominent at this time and it's really kind of hard to find work by a lot of these people and I don't know why that is about the best I could research is that you know a lot of these guys were doing uh doing work for publication and not printing as much which would make some sense that maybe the Publications are just gone and because they didn't print uh just it was something different about it but anyway the two big practitioners that I found from Spain that I think are simply just mind-blowingly amazing uh first off we have Juan vioba and viat toa's work again for that time you know it's got all the Hallmarks of what you're seeing with pictorialist work um different poses artistic uh qualities of you know if you look at some of the the textures and materials that in the the clothes that people are wearing um different poses of the figures very artistic very inspired by sculpture paintings things of the sort um here's another interesting one uh and I I don't know much about this image this is just simply one I was able to track down um it was common in the 19th century for people to commission it's a little bit Mor o but basically death portraits and so what you would have is is a family photo with a deceased and kind of this way of remembering him uh I'm not sure whether this is actually that or not or if this is set up to just look like that but you either way you have the either sick or deceased child with the morning mother over the top um looking down looking fairly draw uh for obvious reasons but anyway um very very interesting work and just a little bit of the sign of the time so that would be uh vioba another interesting Spanish photographer that I found um this guy kind of went around and only went by the name k DEA ventrosa and which basically means count of the cup so kind of odd nobody knew his real name was but some amazing work and very different um than you know each one of these per people have their own style you know here it's the swirling glass and the swirling uh folus the you know of the early crude camera that's being used but a really nice simple portrait of this woman standing next to a wall so anyway some wonderful work um you know this is kind of an eye opener in that sense um another we're going to move over to the Netherlands now because there's several people who kind of worked within a group that was basically their version of the photo secession their Camera Club which was the photo um this is Adrien Burr one of the things I love the most about this is look what he's doing with the light in here it's almost this fantasy type quality or dream like type structure to these people in the woods with this you know blinding light coming from behind them uh just simply stunning work this is Adrian bur as well but a very different portrait um just a more conservative portrait of a woman uh with a String of Pearls uh very beautifully done very very uh very gorgeous um this is another one of my favorites this is another photographer from the Netherlands another Dutch photographer this is Bernard isers and this image actually if you look closely this is taken in troger square London you can see the uh the silhouette of the uh the lion back here but in in a way of you know kind of paralleling the work that Sten was doing early on you have this same dreamlike quality this very limited tonal palette this this uh lack of focus on anything specific it's very blurry but in a very different style than I mean it was not the same as what sten was doing this this almost feels more like maybe impressionist painting but maybe even early American painting for that matter you know just the way it really looks like it's done with ink um even though it's a photo anyway some just amazingly beautiful stuff and to jump around really crazily um we haven't copy we haven't covered uh much of the uh Japanese aesthetic on here and Japan had their contributions as well again what you're starting to see is more of the Oriental costume the way of dress traditional um as like I said these nationalistic things you know stets there's a an Americana thing that really comes through his work and obviously with we're looking at Ogawa kazumasa who was probably the leading Japanese artist at that time or Japanese photographer and what's really cool is that you start to see with the Japanese work particularly with um with kazum masa's work is hand tenting the photographs so you know making your photos in monochrome uh using whatever process there is and then actually going in and hand painting them so you start to definitely get an artistic sense from these and you know kind of an art validation because there is a lot of handwork involved on this but anyway some very very beautiful work this is another famous photo that you probably seen around this is ichiki Shiro and you know again damaged negative which adds to some of the vibe but uh you know that image is like it's almost like there's a layer of ice or something floating between you and and the the Asian figure back here it's just stunningly beautiful so you know that's some of the work that was coming out of Japan at that time uh we're going to move around this is uh Canadian photographer this is Sydney Carter who was a big name in Canada at that time and really did a lot for the Canadian effort of bringing you know photography into the Fine Art world and later he was Toronto born but uh you know did there were several art exhibitions in Montreal once he became you know fairly successful love this image this is another one where the the the person kind of floats behind some kind of material between you and the subject um I just find that fascinating and interesting um this is a uh one of my favorites this is Austrian photography this is hun I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of K's work in when I was in New York last summer and one of the things I really love about his work is there is a real weird surreal quality almost painting like uh nothing's quite in Focus but it's not quite blurry and it's not quite soft focus and the color is just simply gorgeous and there's this kind of Haunting quality to these the compositions are very much like you were seeing a painters at the time so again that nod to to you know making art um but you know it's just some of the most beautiful images you've ever seen uh particularly interesting too and you're not going to get this by watching it on a video or seeing it online but um if you are able to see some of these prints in person um a lot of times they've done on things like Japanese tissue paper and and there's a real delicate tactile quality to the fysical work itself that you don't get from a JPEG so um you know just make a note if you're able to ever track this guy down it's the work is stunning um this is an Australian photographer this is John Kaufman uh what you're seeing here is something very different these these Australian landscapes and there's a real Beauty to these um there's a you know this kind of strange pastoral quality that you know it's it's a little bit Haunting in its own way but I wish I had a bigger image of this but these sheep grazing it's just simply beautiful and then almost a infrared type quality of some of these at times uh we looked at a lot of the American photographers um bounce around this is gertude caspir and gerud is very interesting because she represents one of the early women photographers who was achieving success and she was associated with not only the linked ring which was the the English Club but also with the photo secession as well um she was very well known for her time again very painter likee quality I think it's really interesting to see the different styles of some of these people um this is her uh portrait once again AUST Rodan we looked at uh Saget's interpretation of this earlier so anyway some some amazing work um very you know iconic imagery of that that era I love this portrait too Indian and the dog anyway amazing stuff um another guy I'm going to end with some of the linked ringed people here this is Frederick Evans from 1903 and what's amazing is like you're starting to see with Evans uh you know this this early take on architectural photography and his subject mainly being older buildings um usually of religious type uh Cathedrals Etc um and one thing I really love you're going to notice there's a real Timeless quality to some of these I mean they could have been made yesterday they could have been made 1903 you and it was really interesting to see an early Transcendence of some of that I also found this image and this is Frederick Evans as well but this is in context and you don't see a lot of this stuff uh this is actually a lantern slide and that's exactly what it was for it's for projection and this one was owned by The jpul Getty Museum but I think it was very interesting to to actually see what this looked like they were fairly small um or this wasn't a print this was actually a slide that was meant to be you know projected um which you know again with photography you're talking about this is an art form you know what a way of validating it you know when you when you can do you can't do that with a painting you know for instance um this is an interesting photographer as well this was another linked ring uh member this was James Craig Anan and Anan is very interesting um blow this stuff up research it online you're going to see kind of this weird sketch-like quality to this and Anan came from a family um very artistic in general his father was a print maker and he dealt with you know techniques like carbon transfer fairly early on and was one of the first people who became a big practitioner of photog GRA process which if you're not familiar with it we haven't talked about it on the show yet but it's an early process of reproduction which actually involved making an etching uh plate like a metal plate and then doing the prints that way and the quality on photograph is actually fairly amazing and there's a handful of people still doing it today um but he was one of the early practitioners of that and one of the um you know guys who really got a lot of that going and I think James Craig Anan is just his photos are amazing but also in you know this this kind of if you look towards the bottom of this image where the the figures kind of fade off and you get these brush Strokes that come in which is really kind of hard to do with photographier but possible and again making it part of his style making this art and the last image I want to show because I think it it leads us to another discussion for another day but uh this is Frank M Sutcliffe and this is a famous image that he did called water rats this is fairly early this is from 1886 I'm not sure I agree with this or not but this is commonly known as probably the first example of an image where somebody was using depth of field to create the composition and the whole idea was that you know shallow depth of field was used these boys that are the quote unquote water rats that are jumping off the boats and into the water in the foreground are blur or are sharp in the background is blurred I'm not sure I can agree with that statement because any image has depth of field it doesn't make any sense are we talking about the field large dep field but I will certainly let Franken Sutcliffe have its moment right here because uh I think he was one of the great pictorialists and uh we will debate the depth the field thing in another episode okay so a lot of stuff we've covered today and I want to conclude um by saying a couple words um and and kind of talk about how I see you know talking about pictorialism in historical context and how that applies to maybe you as a practicing photographer today and I feel the need to say this because I had some email this week from a couple people who said hey you know a great episode how do we apply these techniques and okay I want to clarify and I think there's some different ways of looking at this one thing I would like to do is I would like to we're going to go do some dark room stuff again in the episodes to come uh we haven't done that in a long time we've done a lot of looking and a lot of talking uh and so I want to revisit that and we can look at some historical processes I think gun gum by chromate for instance is a really interesting one because most people today aren't familiar with that so we'll look at some alternative process and actually some of the processes that a lot of these early pictorials use but don't just think that it's a look or a style or an effect and I think that's a common mistake that people in our generation or our lifetime tend to think because the world is different today than it was then and we have some similarities to a lot of this pictorialist movement uh you know because we've got the internet we've got uh you know this Global consumption of ideas um things come to us faster we're exposed to more and we're also over a hundred years later than a lot of these early pictorials so we have this huge history of photography in the end to draw on and while I do think it's important to look at some of these early techniques as something that you know photography is not just phone photography or digital photography I mean you have a whole breadth of Imaging techniques that are at your disposal and some of them are there some of them don't exist So Much Anymore some of them are harder to get to but if you look at the work some of these early photographers had to do I mean a lot of these guys they didn't sell film it wasn't like you know staks could go down to the store and buy it you had to mix up your own chemicals you had to largely do your own process almost entirely yourself and a lot of these techniques we've talked about so that's one thing and I think it's really healthy to become interested in what this history is and what techniques there are available what I think the mistake is is starting to look at them as a look and I know I'm going sound kind of like an old crow here but you know these things aren't a push button filter in Instagram or they're not something you want to go into Photoshop and manipulate even though I guess the hand manipulation was what a lot of these people were doing originally but trying to copy that look I think is missing the point um I think what it's the the point is is to take what a lot of these people were doing these men and women that were these early practitioners at photography and they were really pushing their limits and they had this this desire to become accepted is is being art and what do we have available at our Disposal today that's not just a push button or photoshop filter that's a really narrow way of thinking about it but what is the bigger picture of what we're trying to do as photographers and what is available to us so hopefully in the next coming months we can start to gear some episodes to start exploring that a little more and I have time Ted on that especially in some of the Vlog episodes that we did last summer U but anyway some things to think about and I think these things when you do consider them and think about them that's what makes us better as photographers anyway so anyway once again this has been another episode of The Art of Photography we'll see you next time and thank you for watching\n"