1128
Photographic Almanac for 1881 listed 20 societies,
all in large cities in England. By 1891, this number
had risen to 172 and, by 1901, had risen again to 229.
Societies were also founded in towns and suburbs. The
spread of clubs and societies throughout Europe and
the United States meant a proliferation of art interest
among amateurs, so the serious art photographers had
to become much more exclusive.
Exclusivity could be achieved by being knowledge-
able about art. Many ideas in art, such as aestheticism
and naturalism, already had long histories in the 19th
century, but the pictorialists tried to see their relevance
to contemporary art. They studied recent versions of the
arts of “ism”: aestheticism, naturalism, impressionism,
Japonisme, and symbolism. Pictorialists rummaged in
these varied art styles for prescriptions and justifi ca-
tions to create for themselves an art movement that was
primarily aesthetic.
Though satirized in the 1820s, aestheticism survived
into the 1890s as the affected and extravagant cult of the
beautiful that characterized the “Aesthetic Movement.”
In his conclusion to The Renaissance (1873), Walter
Pater claimed that those with “sensibility” would fi nd the
most precious moments of life in “the desire of beauty,
the love of art for art’s sake.” In Britain, aestheticism in
art was fi rst ridiculed because of its dandyism and then
tainted by its association with the perceived decadence
of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. Nonetheless,
an enthusiasm for “art for art’s sake” was important in
dislodging Victorian moralizing and anecdote from art
and photography.
Naturalism was chiefl y concerned with representing
an idealized country life, as if it actually existed and
could be shown directly, seemingly without mediation
or manipulation. The countryside and country folk ap-
peared to be both natural and heroic. The art movement
developed in Europe and the United States from the
1820s. Towards the end of the century naturalism was
continued in Britain in the paintings of George Clausen,
who was a friend of Peter Henry Emerson. During the
same period in the United States naturalism fl ourished
in the paintings of Albert Bierstadt, and in the photo-
graphs of Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr., and in Arthur Scott’s
photographs for John Coleman Adams’s Nature Studies
in Berkshire (1899).
Even as it developed, Impressionism was the most
famous of all French art movements. Although contro-
versial in the 1870s, “impression” was quickly (and
loosely) adopted as a way of viewing the world. The
term was not confi ned to one style of depiction, but
described an attitude to art that had already been made
famous by Emile Zola in 1866, when he remarked that
a work of art was “a corner of creation seen through a
temperament.” Photographers latched onto that idea
even more than the methods of Claude Monet or Edgar
Degas. The word “impression,” as long as it was associ-
ated with artistic temperament, became the most widely
used term—sometimes of abuse—in fi n de siècle art
photography. Part of the problem in Britain, at least,
was that the word was linked with James Abbot McNeill
Whistler, whose impressionistic “Nocturnes” had been
so controversial in the 1870s, but who was feted by the
time he died in 1903. A particularly rich example of his
infl uence can be seen in Edward J. Steichen’s “Flatiron”
(1907). Steichen achieved his effect by making a print
from a complex mix of blue pigment gum bichromate
and platinum salts, which required considerable techni-
cal mastery.
Pictorialists liked the decorative pattern and order of
Japonisme. It is characterized by a pronounced fl atness
of the picture, high skyline, or the abstract nature of the
overall image. It was made popular in the United States
(among others) Arthur W. Dow’s Composition (1899).
Japanese woodcut design is common in pictorial pho-
tography, as in James Craig Annan’s “The White House”
(1905) and Alvin Langdon Coburn’s “Wapping” (plate
10 from London, 1909).
Symbolism was a highly charged, eroticized art form
in Europe. The pictorialists translated it into something
gentler. It had a pronounced mystical air, as in George
H. Seeley’s “Glowworm” (1903/08), Clarence Hud-
son White’s “The Bubble” (1898/1905), and Anne W.
Brigman’s “Spirit of the Glacier” (1906). In Britain,
Alvin Langdon Coburn was captivated by the mystery
religion of Rosicrucianism and illustrated the mystical
poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Intel-
ligence of Flowers (1907).
Though fraught with ambiguity and conflict in
their practice, art photographers nevertheless modeled
themselves on the art establishment. They held annual
“salons,” put their prints up for sale, judged each others’
work, and awarded medals. They kept up a continuous
fl ow of critical opinion and confi rmatory acts. They
took portraits of each other, wrote reviews, and formed
alliances. An accumulation of opinion and reputation
fl owed within and across continents. Their activities
created a “hothouse” atmosphere, designed to keep out
what they felt to be the enemies of art. The density of
material fl owing in the system appealed to the Romantic
standards of truth and beauty, which was opposed to the
banal and manufactured.
This clamour for prestige among art photography
has been harshly judged by historian Ulrich Keller.
However, what is important about his work, and perhaps
suggests why it has been somewhat overlooked in the
standard books on the pictorialists, is that he moves away
from taking them entirely on their own terms as artists.
He insists not only on examining their contradictions,
but also on placing them in the contexts of art produc-
tion and consumption and business.