Movements in photography

Learning goal

You will be able to recognize the great transformations photography has gone through as an art, and ask, when looking at a photo, what thinking it draws on. You will tell apart pictorialism, which at the end of the nineteenth century tried to get photography accepted as art by making it resemble painting; then straight photography and modernism, which championed photography's own sharpness and clarity; documentary photography, which aimed to record the conditions of society; and contemporary approaches that construct the image to convey an idea. You will see how each movement was an answer to the one before it, and how technical choices, soft focus, sharpness, the absence of staging or staging itself, carry a way of thinking. You will know that the history of photography should be read together with the question of who took the photo and who was photographed, that film and printing processes were long calibrated for light skin, and how this affected the visibility of dark skin.

The question

The older club member puts a thick album on the table. The photos on the first pages are hazy and soft; a woman in white by a lake, her edges dissolving like a watercolor painting, the texture of the paper mixed into the image. As the pages go on, the images harden: a pepper, a shell, a factory chimney, all razor sharp, their shadows and lines flawless. Further on there are people in the streets, people working in fields, the faces of poverty and war. And on the last pages, carefully constructed images, lit like a stage set, designed to convey an idea.

Your friend from the club asks why the photos at the start of the album are so blurry, whether the cameras of that period were inadequate. The older member smiles: they say the blur was a choice. How did the art of photography change? Why did the same tool produce completely different images in every period?

Context

In the intentional camera movement lesson we discussed that blur can be not a flaw but a means of expression (Lesson 22.9), and in the compositing lesson, when combining more than one image is honest and when it is misleading (Lesson 21.11). None of these debates is new; the question of what photography is and what it should be has been asked since photography was invented, and every period gives this question a different answer.

This module deals with photographic thinking, art and personal style. Its opening lesson goes in turn through the lines of thought that have shaped photography for more than a hundred years. Knowing these movements makes it possible to ask, when looking at a photo, not only "is it good?" but "what does it stand for?", and shows that the photographer's own choices are also in conversation with a tradition.

Simple explanation

Why did photography try to resemble painting?

A photographic movement is a tendency in which, in a certain period, photographers share a common idea about what photography should be and make this idea visible with similar formal choices. Movements are often born as a reaction to the one before them.

In its early years photography was often seen as a recording tool, a scientific or commercial instrument; many circles didn't accept it as an art. Pictorialism is the movement, influential from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the first years of the twentieth, that tried to show photography was an art by bringing it closer to the art of painting. Pictorialists used soft-focus lenses, worked prints by hand, and turned to textured papers and printing methods that demanded handwork. The hazy lakeshore on the album's first pages comes not from the camera's inadequacy but from this deliberate choice. The subjects, too, are often romantic and idealized: misty landscapes, allegorical figures, portraits in soft light.

How did photography return to its own language?

In the early twentieth century a group of photographers began to argue that photography was valuable not by imitating another art, but through its own qualities. Straight photography is the approach that prints photographs without handwork, with sharp focus, high detail and distinct tones, and brings forward photography's own particular clarity. In a broad sense this approach is photography's counterpart of modernism: it turns toward form, line, texture and light; it shows an everyday object, a shell or a machine part, as an abstract form in sharp light. The razor-sharp frames in the middle of the album come from this outlook. These photographers worked with large negatives and took care to preserve the finest detail by making prints directly from the negative, without enlarging or enlarging little; they looked for a photo's value not in how much it resembled a painting, but in how intensely it showed a real surface, a light or a form.

Documentary photography is the approach to photography that aims to record, by bearing witness, the real conditions of society and people, and often to contribute to a change. In the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the years of economic depression and war, photographers recorded poverty, migration, working conditions and the effects of war; these photos, in newspapers, magazines and the archives of public institutions, let society see itself. The people in the street and the workers in the field in the album come from this tradition. The strength of documentary is that it bears witness to reality; but every documentary also chooses a frame, decides what enters the frame and what stays outside.

What does photography question today?

From the second half of the twentieth century on, photography became a full part of art in museums and galleries, and contemporary photography began to ask the questions of earlier movements again. Staged photography is the approach to photography that deliberately constructs light, space and people to convey an idea, a narrative or a feeling, and designs the image like a stage. Contemporary photographers work with large color prints, series, text and digital compositing; they question how far photography reflects reality, who shows whom, and how an image gains meaning. The carefully constructed frames on the album's last pages come from this period. Movements don't erase each other: today, too, there are photographers who shoot hazy, painterly photos, who chase sharp forms, or who document a neighborhood. What has changed is that these choices are now read not as a necessity but as a deliberate preference.

One more question should be asked when reading the history of photography: who was taking photos and who was being photographed? For a long time the camera was also a tool of a gaze that showed people in other parts of the world as exotic or foreign. Technique wasn't neutral either. From the middle of the twentieth century on, photo labs calibrated the color of prints with reference cards showing a light-skinned woman; in the industry these cards were known by a woman's name, as the Shirley card. Researchers have documented that film chemistry and printing processes long took light skin as their basis, and that dark skin therefore often lost its detail; later, reference cards including different skin tones came into use. This history is also behind every lesson in this course attending to skin separately.

Visual evidence

You open the album from the start. The woman by the lake and the sharp shell on the next page side by side: in the woman's frame the focus is soft, the light diffuse, the texture of the paper mixed into the image; in the shell's frame every line is sharp, shadow and light separated by firm edges. Both frames were made with the same tool, but one tries to make photography resemble painting, and the one beside it to show photography's own clarity.

A few pages on is a frame of workers bent over in a field. Neither soft focus nor abstract form; the aim is to make these people's conditions visible. And on the last page, a family photo constructed in a kitchen like a theater set: every object placed, the light designed to convey an idea.

Your friend looks at the faces in the album one by one. They notice that in most of the dark-skinned faces on the old color pages, detail is lost in the shadows, while the light-skinned faces in the same frames stand in the right tone. The older member explains that this comes from that period's film and printing settings. Each of the movements gave an answer about what photography is; but the question of who would look how always stayed on the table.

Common mistakes

Summary

Photographic movements are the different answers periods have given about what photography should be: pictorialism at the end of the nineteenth century tried to get photography accepted as art by bringing it closer to painting with soft focus and handworked prints, straight photography and modernism championed photography's own sharpness and form, and documentary photography bore witness to the conditions of society. Contemporary photography questions reality and representation with staged images, series and digital compositing; the history of photography is read together with the question of who shows whom, and with film and printing processes having long been calibrated for light skin.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will relate the photographic movements to your own way of seeing.

1. Find at least one photo from each movement in a library, on a museum page or in a reliable online archive, and note its source.
2. For each photo, write which movement you find it close to, and from which formal choices you understood this: focus, sharpness, subject or staging.
3. Choose one of your own photos and shoot or edit it again in the spirit of one of the four movements; compare the two frames.
4. In one of the historical photos, note who took the photo and who was photographed, and, if present, how different skin tones look.

Check yourself

• Can you tell apart the answers the four movements gave about what photography should be?
• Can you read from a photo's formal choices what thinking it draws on?
• Did you ask the question of representation and skin about a historical photo?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is the soft focus in pictorialist photos the result of?

• A) A deliberate artistic choice aimed at bringing photography closer to painting
• B) Cameras being unable to focus
• C) The film deteriorating
• D) A printing error

2. What idea does straight photography champion?

• A) That photography should imitate painting
• B) That photography should always be in color
• C) That photography should be hand-painted
• D) That photography is valuable through its own sharpness and clarity

3. Which is true of documentary photography?

• A) It makes no framing choices
• B) It bears witness, but also decides what enters the frame and what stays outside
• C) It is always staged
• D) It shoots only landscapes

4. What is one of the reasons dark-skinned faces in old color photos often lose detail in their shadows?

• A) Dark skin can't be photographed
• B) Cameras being black and white
• C) Film and printing processes having long been calibrated with references based on light skin
• D) All photographers being amateurs

Answers

1. A — Pictorialists deliberately used soft focus and handworked prints to show photography as an art.
2. D — Instead of imitating another art, straight photography brought forward photography's own particular clarity.
3. B — Documentary is a form of witness, but every frame is a framing and a choice.
4. C — Labs calibrated prints with light-skinned reference cards; dark skin therefore often lost detail.

Summary card

• Movements are a period's answers about what photography should be.
• Pictorialism: painterly, soft, handworked.
• Straight photography and modernism: sharp, focused on form and light.
• Documentary: witness; but every frame is a choice.
• Contemporary and staged: an image constructed for an idea; always ask the question of representation and skin.

Bridge to the next lesson

Among the documentary pages of the album, the older member opened a small book. On its pages were black-and-white frames taken in streets, stations and on pavements, at moments when everything fell exactly into place: a man leaping over a puddle, a glance in the very middle of a crowd. The book belonged to Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer who gave these moments the name of the decisive moment. Your friend asked whether these moments were luck or a way of seeing. How did Cartier-Bresson find "the decisive moment"? The next lesson tells about the masters who caught the moment.