Pictorialism

Description - what you see

I see a black and white picture of an Native taken by Gertrude Käsebier. In the picture this man is wearing his typical clothing. The foreground in this image is just out of focus which brings a great amount of detail to the subject’s facial expression.


Intention - what you think the photographer intended

As per the web site wikipedia, pictorialism was a photographic movement from the nineteenth century. Their main idea was that photography needed to imitate the paintings of that period. The images produced were black and white or of a sepia tone. They also expressed the artistic point of view of the artist in question.

I think that Käsebier wanted the subject in her image to convey a sensation of enormous self-control. She depicted in her image a noble man of great status by gently blurring the borders of the image and leaving into focus her principal subject. She was able to enkindle that feeling.

Do you see any relationship between the work of the Pictorialist photographers and that of the contemporary photographer Joyce Tenneson?

I think that Joyce Tenneson’s photographic portraits from the “Photo Technologies Resource page” look like old paintings. From looking at the images I get the impression that her models stayed in their poses for a long period of time. Her use of black and whites and sepia tones gives the images a vintage look. I consider Tenneson as a pictorialist photographer.