tutional notions. The French author Hippolyte
Taine challenged people to look—reallylook—at
their surroundings:
Give up the theory of constitutions and their mechan-
ism, of religions and their system, and try to see men in
their workshops, in their offices, in their fields, with their
sky, their earth, their houses, their dress, tillage, meals,
as you do when landing in England or Italy, you remark
faces and gestures, roads and inns, a citizen taking his
walk, a workman drinking
(Linda Nochlin,Realism: Style and Civilization1971, 23)
Thus, fidelity to reality, despite the problematic
nature of what exactly constitutes a truthful per-
ception of reality, became a primary aspect of the
realist endeavor.
Similar to realist painters, impressionist artists
were also guided by the notion of fidelity to reality.
As did their predecessors, impressionists dedicated
themselves to the representation of scenes as imme-
diately perceived. This insistence on contemporary
subject matter observed first hand functioned for
both realist and impressionist artists as an objec-
tion to established and institutional artistic conven-
tions. Yet, the impressionists significantly differed
from the realists in their understanding of fidelity
to reality and the artistic techniques employed to
render that reality. Rather than abide by the realist
tendency to create seemingly objective and detailed
reproductions of a scene, impressionists focused on
representing an actual experience derived from the
fleeting moment of observation. Furthermore, as
was Emerson a few years later, impressionists were
likewise influenced by scientific discussions of
human vision and perception. They too recognized
that the human eye does not see colors and objects
as distinct entities, but rather perceives them with
respect to the colors and objects with which they
are juxtaposed. In addition, ever-changing atmo-
spheric qualities of light and air, not to mention the
motion of the subject, affect the overall image of
any given scene. With these issues in mind, impres-
sionists focused on capturing the play of light and
color that activated an image, not reproducing an
exact likeness of the objects in that image. The
resulting aesthetic involved the hazy and somewhat
imprecise representation of the scene as the painter
had experienced it during his act of creation. Thus,
more so than crisp delineation of detail, impressio-
nist painters attempted to accurately convey the
subjectively perceived essence of a precise moment.
The impressionists’ emphasis on the perceived
essence of a scene was somewhat similar to Emer-
son’s prescriptions for naturalist photography. It is
not surprising, then, that impressionism also had its
photographic adherents. George Davison (1854–
1930), a young devotee of the concepts of natural-
ism, took Emerson’s suggestions for ‘‘differential
focusing’’ to another level. Emerson never intended
for a photograph to be completely out of focus; yet,
Davison recognized the aesthetic potential inherent
in the unfocused image. In 1890, Davison delivered
a lecture entitled ‘‘Impressionism in Photography’’ in
which he argued that the degree of focus of a photo-
graph should be determined by the photographer’s
intent. If the goal of the photographer was to objec-
tively record his subject, then clarity of detail neces-
sitated total focus. If the photographer had more
artistic intentions, he was then free to render his
subject at will in order to achieve an aesthetically
pleasing outcome. As an example of an artistic
image, Davison offered his own award-winning
photograph,The Onion Field(1890), a blurred and
imprecise representation of an old farmstead cap-
tured with pinhole photography.
Such out-of-focus photography, often in repli-
cation of impressionist painting, quickly became
popular, due in part to its ability to convey a
romantic and ephemeral atmosphere. To achieve
impressionistic representations of their subjects,
generally natural landscapes, ambitious photogra-
phers adopted a variety of techniques. In pinhole
(essentially lense-less) photography, the camera lens
was replaced by a small hole through which light
could shine on light-sensitive material, resulting in a
more diffused and less precise image. Another tech-
nique involved the use of a soft-focus lens; blurring
resulted from the exploitation of imperfections in
the camera lens itself, providing a ‘‘softer’’ repre-
sentation of the subject or scene. To achieve impres-
sionistic images, other photographers printed their
images on rough-surfaced paper or even fabric, and
employed diffusion filters during the printing pro-
cess. In addition, the introduction of the gum
bichromate process in 1894 allowed photographers
to physically manipulate their images, using a vari-
ety of methods to both erode and/or layer upon a
light sensitive gum arabic mixture that coated the
photographic paper. All of these techniques, used
alone or in combination, aided photographers in
the creation of impressionist photographs, pictures
that were often consciously modeled on the works
of impressionist painters.
Not all were thrilled by the pictorial effects of
impressionist photography; Emerson, for example,
lambasted Davison as an untrained amateur and
accused him of misappropriating the original con-
cepts of naturalism for the development of a ‘‘fuzzy
school’’ of photography. Yet, the denouncements of
critics did little to stop the spread of impressionistIMPRESSIONISM