80
would be pertinent to impressionism; the relationship
between psychology and aesthetic experience, and an
awareness of the power of individual temperament to
affect the reception of sensation were argued by James
Sully and Émile Zola, among others.
The emphasis on art as dependent on individual,
subjective inspirations extended Romanticism and
heralded the symbolist movement in literature and art.
Symbolism was oriented towards mysticism and meta-
physics; it correlated sensory and spiritual resonances
between different art forms, and embraced allegorical
subjects and simplifi ed, organic motifs. In the 1890s,
photographers such as Alfred Horsley Hinton and the
critic Sadakichi Hartmann discussed these ideas in
relation to photography. Symbolism recast traditional
subjects in the Swedenborgian elements of Frederick H.
Evans’s architectural views, the close intimacy of seeing
in Carine Cadby’s still-lifes (Brotherhood of the Linked
Ring) and Eva Watson-Schütze’s portraits (Philadelphia
Photographic Salon and Linked Ring). Many of these
works used diffusion and grain to isolate the object from
its material context, paring down detail to describe the
essence rather than the facts of a subject; rather than
mirroring exterior reality, the photographs suggested
an interior world. Compositional devices included
asymmetrical framing and fl attening of pictorial planes,
elements in modern painting that were seen as inspired
by Japanese art (Richard Muther 1896), while in art
photography, they were identifi ed with contemporary
art and snapshot photography (Gleeson White 1893).
The snapshot camera used a short-focus lens whose
wide depth of fi eld compensated for the lack of focus-
ing adjustments, but tended to fl atten the picture planes.
Equally, the box camera’s absence of a viewfi nder made
framing a matter of guesswork, which could result in
unconventional framing. The effect was appreciated as
evocative of the lively jumble of modern life, already
found in stereoscopic views of the 1860s and seen also
in impressionist painting.
The Arts and Crafts movement held that a valid
aesthetic experience could be realized through the
making of a work of art. Photographers were recep-
tive to such possibilities; photographic materials were
already discussed in terms of taste and sensibility, and
formal, aesthetic, and even moral values were ascribed
to characteristics such as colour and surface fi nish. For
example, the neutral image colour and matt fi nish of
developed-out silver calotype positives and platinum
prints were compared with engravings and drawings,
and seen as more elegant than albumen prints, whose
more brilliant fi nish and brown hues were by now ubiq-
uitous. Tonal rendition was also compared: the platinum
process produced a longer tonal range as compared with
silver printing, and gave a superior rendition of detail in
shadow areas. This was in keeping with the increasing
interest in the faithful replication of natural luminance
through the broadest range of tonal values, which de-
veloped out of the tenets of naturalism in painting and
was taken up by photographers in the 1880s.
The monochrome subtlety of platinum prints was set
against hand-tinted photographs. Restraint in the treat-
ment of colour was an established issue in academic
painting, and carried some urgency at a time when
bright, aniline dyes were widely used, and glaringly
visible, in mass-produced commercial goods. The same
prejudices applied to the characteristics of surface fi nish;
glossiness was associated with vulgar commercialism,
and the sheen of albumen prints compared with var-
nished academic paintings, both described as showy
and common. In fi ne art, there was a movement towards
fl atness in treatment and fi nish, a tendency in impres-
sionist painting equated with a refusal of the artifi ce
and conventions of the Salon. Likewise, at a time when
the most typical, commercially acceptable photograph
was glossy, a matt surface would look unconventional
and uncommercial, and hence, artistic. Many wished for
photographs with a rough surface like that of drawing or
watercolour paper, but contact papers like platinotype
and silver printing-out paper needed a relatively smooth
fi nish to provide a good contact with the negative and
a reasonable resolution in the resulting print. Not until
the 1890s were more highly textured surfaces made for
the new enlarging papers.
A rough surface also communicated a certain tactile
animation. This was particularly advantageous with
regard to photography, for in contrast to the marked
surfaces of hand-made artefacts—paintings, drawings,
intaglio prints—the photograph had a very consistent,
uninfl ected surface, especially from the later 1880s,
when manufactured printing papers were more uni-
form.
Photography also coopted, from etching, an idea
of artistic intent in print-making, especially in terms
of the printer’s control over differences between suc-
cessive proofs of the image. In 1889, Peter Henry
Emerson described photogravure as “the fi nal end and
method of expression in monochrome photography,”
and imagined a time when “every artist who expresses
himself by photography will also bite his own plates and
make his own blocks, and the prints will be published
by print-dealers as etchings are now” (Emerson 1889,
207, 212). From 1888, Emerson’s portfolios and books
were illustrated with photogravures, which appeared
fi rst in the Photographic Journal (1886-88). By the
1890s, the process accounted for almost one-third of
printed illustrations, and even half-tone plates imitated
the tipped-in presentation of gravures, complete with a
tissue cover paper.
A similar impulse towards the crafted object con-
tributed to a revival of hand-made photographic papers,