to write a series of articles that first appeared in
the magazine in January 1934, Camera Craft
acknowledged the emergence of a forceful new
attitude in photography, and its pages hosted a
new chapter in the debate over the true nature of
photography. The program of Group f/64 si-
multaneously shifted from the studio and the
gallery to the printed page; as the exhibition of
f/64 work tapered off, its aesthetic doctrine was
being formulated, transcribed, and disseminated
for posterity.
Debates over what is authentically ‘‘photo-
graphic’’ did not originate with Group f/64 and
Pictorialism. Even within the Stieglitz circle, argu-
ments about what deserves to be called a photo-
graph abounded. In 1904, Sadakichi Hartmann,
one of the Photo Secession’s leading exponents,
wrote an article titled ‘‘A Plea for Straight Photo-
graphy.’’ Hartmann took a number of highly
regarded Secessionists to task for excessive manip-
ulation of their photographs. Unlike Mortensen,
Stieglitz never positioned himself as the spokes-
person or leader of a particular school of photo-
graphy. During f/64’s lifetime, correspondence
between Stieglitz, Adams, and Weston suggests a
cautious, nuanced respect developing between the
writers, though Stieglitz did not rush to exhibit
and, thereby, publicly endorse the new, hard-
edged work from the west. Ultimately, Adams
was the only Group f/64 photographer to show
with Stieglitz; his 1936 exhibition in New York
was Stieglitz’s first show of photographs since a
Strand show nineteen years earlier.
Straight Photography and the Great Depression
The Group f/64 photographers were not all born
straight. Many began making photographs in the
dominant Pictorialist style. In the early 1920s, both
Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston were
making soft-focus photographs of nudes, set in
groups or singly in natural scenes with the lighting
and dramatic effects characteristic of a painterly
attitude. But by the middle of the decade both
had made sharply focused, full-range prints that
were clearly committed to modernist goals. Ansel
Adams took a bit longer to foreswear the Pictori-
alist label; his 1931 exhibition of atmospheric prints
at the Smithsonian,Pictorial Photographs of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, marked the end of his
soft-focus period.
While often rigidly applied as the signal criterion of
straight photography, the term ‘‘purity’’ actually has
varying interpretations in regards to Group f/64’s
approach to photography. While the group was phi-
losophically opposed to extensive manipulation
resulting in images resembling paintings more than
photographs, they were not, individually or collec-
tively, opposed to more subtle corrective measures
within the photograph. Dodging, burning, cropping,
and enlarging were permitted and practiced. Imper-
fections resulting from chemicals or particles on
negatives could be retouched and removed from
prints. Adams used filters in front of his lens, as
well as underexposure and overdevelopment, to
ensure negatives rich in detail and tonal range.
Edward Weston regularly arranged vegetables and
shells to create a pleasing still life arrangement for
his photographs. In general, the goal was to remove
traces of the photographic process that would inter-
fere with direct communion with the objects and
scenes pictured.
This principled commitment to clarity and to
the information-bearing capacity of photographs
linked them, technically at least, to the social
reform mission of the Farm Security Administra-
tion and its massive documentary photography
project. Though the economic hardships of the
Depression were slow to reach California, by 1935
the severe conditions had taken hold in the west.
Group f/64 photographers faced a dilemma, which,
while related to realism, could not be resolved with
debate or darkroom work. Only individual levels of
social consciousness could resolve the question of
photography’s role in the face of overwhelming
social problems. Prior to this challenge, f/64’s
images had revealed only passing interest in social
issues. Consuelo Kanaga’s close-up portraits of
young, beatific black faces were notable for their
beauty as richly toned prints; Kanaga, however,
was interested primarily ‘‘in the way black-and-
white photography could make social statements,
and only in passing did she consider photography as
a fine art’’ (Heyman 1992, 29). This tension began
to unravel the sense of purpose shared by the Group
f/64 photographers.
After witnessing Willard Van Dyke’s evolving
commitment to social activism, developing as a
result of Van Dyke’s connections to Dorothea
Lange, Ansel Adams wrote to Edward Weston
that Van Dyke was becoming more ‘‘a sociologist
than a photographer. His photography seems to be
turning into a means to a social end, rather than
something in itself.’’ Although Adams admired
Lange’s emotional imagery and her ability to
make evocative images that truly recorded the
time (and would later collaborate with her on a
project documenting the Japanese internment
camp in Manzanar), he could not abide her unwill-GROUP F/64