utilitarian benefits in photographs—as a source of
visual references from which to paint, for instance,
and as a means to make reproductions of works of
art widely available to the public—but did not
accept that photography itself could function as a
plastic, expressive medium within the umbrella of
the fine arts. Indeed, most people in the nineteenth-
century who took up photography thought they
were using a machine that could record reality in
accurate detail, and saw their photographs as doc-
umentary records. Nevertheless, artistic interac-
tions between photography and painting have
been widespread, significant, and symbiotic, even
if not always recognized or acknowledged.
The subset of nineteenth-century photographers
who saw artistic potential in photography (many of
this group had trained as artists) concentrated on
the aesthetic qualities of their images, and typically
chose iconography, compositions, and approaches
to light, shadow, and space that emulated various
kinds of painting, including traditions that pre-
ceded their own era as well as evolving styles of
modern painting. For instance, a landscape photo-
grapher such as Camille Silvy, who had absorbed
the classical landscape painting paradigm, would
compose a scene within a horizontal rectangle twice
as wide as tall, frame the idealized vista with fore-
ground trees or other elements, and organize space
to emulate linear perspective; a portrait photogra-
pher such as Andre ́Disde ́ri, who had studied the
pictorial conventions of academic painters, would
copy their poses, props, and lighting. At the same
time and paradoxically, various innovative nine-
teenth-century painters appear to have borrowed
from photographic effects that ran counter to aca-
demic traditions in order to produce novel effects
in their paintings, ranging from Edouard Manet’s
use of exaggerated chiaroscuro to Georges Seurat’s
interest in halation (an effect of glowing light seen
in a photograph around a bright object against a
dark background), to the casual poses, tilted per-
spectives, and cropped compositions that Edgar
Degas borrowed from amateur photography. Cer-
tainly the instantaneous photography that became
possible with faster exposure times influenced
Impressionist painters to adopt approaches such
as effects of blurring and flickering light that sug-
gest a sense of the present moment.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the reigning
direction in art photography in Europe and the
United States was Pictorialism, an international
movement that lasted from the late 1880s until the
1920s. As the name suggests, Pictorialists (a small
group of art photographers outside the worlds of
both commercial photography and amateur snap-
shot photography) claimed to be producing aes-
thetic ‘‘pictures’’ that resembled the scenes of
traditional painting. They formed their own clubs,
including the Linked Ring Brotherhood in London
and the Photo-Club in Paris. The Pictorialists were
particularly influenced by Barbizon School pain-
ters, as well as painters involved in Impressionism,
Tonalism, and Symbolism. The adherents of Pic-
torialism, among them Gertrude Ka ̈sebier, Hein-
rich Ku ̈hn, Clarence H. White, Robert Demachy,
and Anne W. Brigman, photographed poetic genre
themes, romantic landscapes, and nudes, and
experimented with various kinds of manual pro-
cesses, including gum bichromate and bromoil, to
further their claims to be working in an expressive,
plastic manner similar to painting. The Pictorialists
were partial to soft-focus effects achieved with spe-
cial lenses and to printing with processes such as
platinum printing that enhanced tonal effects.
After World War I the dreamy subject matter
and impressionistic effects of the Pictorialists
seemed old-fashioned and irrelevant to the modern
world. For a while, it seemed instead as if painting
and photography had parted company. The influ-
ential American photographer and gallery dealer
Alfred Stieglitz advocated the independence of
photography from other visual arts, particularly
painting. Proponents of ‘‘straight’’ photography,
sometimes called Purism,believed that photogra-
phy had certain intrinsic qualities that should be
emphasized in order to maintain its purity, includ-
ing sharp focus, clarity in recording details of visual
reality, and a smooth texture on the surface of the
print. Although the connection was downplayed at
the time, straight photography between the world
wars related closely to Purism in painting, and
Purist photography and painting both connected
to the machine aesthetic of the era. American
photographers closely associated with straight
photography included Paul Strand, Imogen Cun-
ningham, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams. The
straight-photography aesthetic greatly influenced
documentary photography in Europe and the Uni-
ted States between the wars, which was assumed to
produce objective records. Realism was seen as the
special province of photography. Writers, who vig-
orously supported straight photography and its
independence from other mediums, included Beau-
mont Newhall beginning in the 1930s and John
Szarkowski since the 1960s.
In fact, photography has never been a completely
autonomous medium. Not only has photography
always interacted with other visual media, but photo-
graphers, painters, and other artists of a given time
and place respond to similar cultural influences;PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING