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natural human vision. He declared hand cameras a tool
for amateurs and condemned enlarging, retouching,
and, most vehemently, combination printing. He recom-
mended printing in platinum—the Platinotype Company
had introduced commercially prepared platinum papers
in 1880—or in photogravure—an ink-based printing
process. Both had the potential to produce a very long
scale of contrast and soft tones with a delicacy of ef-
fect that was particularly suited to natural vision and
differential focus.
Emerson positioned his theory of a photographic art
based in science and true to the inherent qualities of both
the photographic process and nature in opposition to the
practice of art photography proposed by Henry Peach
Robinson in Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869).
Robinson stated that photography in order to attain the
status of an art must combine both the real and the ideal,
and that in the pursuit of this standard the photographer
must compose as did painters. In practice, this meant
planning and organizing the picture through sketches
and studies, and translating the pictorial ideas into pho-
tographs through the use of subjects posed and lighted
to emulate paintings. Frequently the results were large,
complex prints built up from a number of negatives.
Robinson’s vision of photographic art was highly con-
structed and artifi cial. Emerson articulated his theory—in
lectures, articles, and his book, and in a series of com-
bative letters to photographic journals—as diametrically
opposed to a bankrupt and ill-considered practice that
had no artistic merit. Although Emerson’s position on
photographic art is generally presented as oppositional
to Robinson’s, it should be recognized as a continuation
of contemporary discourse on naturalism in art. Ideas of
naturalism in painting had been articulated by Francis
Bates, “The Naturalistic School of Painting,” in 1886 and
by Thomas Goodall with whom Emerson collaborated
on Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.
Illustrating his theory of naturalistic photography,
Emerson produced a number of photographically illus-
trated books and folios in platinum and photogravure:
Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads (1886);
Pictures from Life in Field and Fen (1887); Idyls of the
Norfolk Broads (1888); Pictures of East Anglian Life
(1888); Wild Life on a Tidal Water (1890); On English
Lagoons (1893); and Marsh Leaves (1895). In his
work, he returned again and again to the watery fens
of eastern England, recording scenes of ancient rural
rhythms. Emerson’s use of differential focus in photo-
graphs printed in soft Platinotype or as photogravures
captured a very personal visual experience of a natural
order uniting land and people. In point of fact the fens
were changing under the pressures of drainage and land
recovery schemes and the onslaught of modern tour-
ism. The self-professed proponent of an equivalently
scientifi c and artistic view of nature in photography
created a romantic and nostalgic record of a vanishing
way of life.
In 1891 Emerson reversed himself and acknowledged
that one could not attain in photography the degree of
expressive control necessary for it to be defi ned as an
art. In 1895 he published a pamphlet the title of which,
set on a black bordered page, proclaimed The Death of
Naturalistic Photography: A Renunciation. His reading
of recent scientifi c studies on the chemical processes in
photographic development had convinced Emerson that
the photographer could not control the tonal values of
a print through the development process to the extent
that he had assumed. He concluded that the degree of
chemical determinism meant that photography could
not be an art.
The limitations of photography are so great that, though
the results may and sometimes do give a certain aesthetic
pleasure, the medium must always rank the lowest of all
arts....Control of the picture is possible to a slight degree,
by varied focusing, by varying the exposure (but this is
working in the dark), by development, I doubt (I agree
with Hurter and Driffi eld, after three-and-a-half months
careful study of the subject), and lastly by a certain choice
in printing methods. But the all vital powers of selection
and rejection are fatally limited, bound in and fi xed by
narrow barriers. (Emerson 1895, n.p)
Despite his rejection of the scientifi c basis of pho-
tography as an art, he continued to make and publish
photographs. On English Lagoons and Marsh Leaves
were both released after his repudiation of photography
as an art. In 1898 he published a third and revised edition
of Naturalistic Photography which was substantially
the same as earlier editions—the same description of
the technique for and justifi cation of differential focus,
the same stipulations regarding equipment, the same
prohibition on enlarging and darkroom manipulation,
the same guidelines for photographic printing. The most
signifi cant change was in the fi nal chapter now titled,
“Photography—Not an Art.”
Despite Emerson’s rejection of his position, Natural-
istic Photography had a lasting effect. He had articulated
a position for photography as an art form based on the
inherent attributes of photography and its intimate con-
nection with the natural world. If he had disavowed his
insistence on the scientifi c basis of his theory of photo-
graphic practice, he had not disavowed his pugnacious
criticism of previous practitioners of art photography.
His stipulation to adhere to photographic principles
and to use the camera in the natural world infl uenced
succeeding generations. His luminous prints stood as
exemplars of what could be achieved with the direct
depiction of visual experience.
Kathleen Stewart Howe
See also: Robinson, Henry Peach; and Hurter,
Ferdinand, and Driffi eld, Vero Charles.