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Picture this

The era of American pictorialists 

by Leon Nigrosh

AFTER THE PHOTO-SECESSION: AMERICAN PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY, 1910-1955 at the Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, through October 19.

It is difficult to conceive of a time when an individual could control and direct the artistic interests of anentire nation. But it was only a few decades ago that Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946), and his Photo-Secessionists, held much of America in his aesthetic grasp.

During the early 1900s, Steiglitz and his coterie of photographers attempted to distance themselves from the scientific, technological, and journalistic modes in which photography was rooted. The group pushed for photography to be on equal footing with sculpture and painting. Steiglitz admonished his followers to use a painterly approach when they worked and to "seek to make art, not money, with your pictures."

The Photo-Secessionists was such an elitist group (members spent most of the time photographing each other) that it was destined to an early and somewhat rancorous demise. But after the group broke up in 1910, several members, including Edward Steichen and Gertrude Käsebier, went on to influence photography with their dreamy, soft-focus pictures, the basic elements that set pictorialists apart in their photography.

Steiglitz's magazine, Camera Work, was the most influential photography periodical of the time. And it urged others to adapt his well-defined aesthetic philosophy to their own picture-taking efforts. Amateur photographers followed the Photo-Secessionists and almost overnight a groundswell of enthusiasm emerged. During the next 40 years more than 6000 camera clubs formed; nearly a quarter-million photo buffs spent hours in their darkrooms; and photo exhibitions, or "salons," sprung up in major US cities and small towns across the country. Pictorialism was a phenomenon.

Unfortunately, even with their enthusiasm, camaraderie, and quest for things beautiful, few people and even fewer institutions collected or saved examples of the thriving hobbyist enterprise. The current exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum attempts to reexamine this long-overlooked period of American photographic history.

Because the overwhelming majority of pictorialist photographers were true amateurs, there are few famous names in the more than 50 examples on display. In fact, one of the leading proponents of art photography, Max Thorek, was actually a world-renowned surgeon, who was such an avid hobbyist that he had a darkroom built in his office to use after surgery. His facility in hand-drawing and manipulating paper negatives can readily be seen in Despair, an ethereal nude study.

For many others like Thorek, pictorialism was an escape. By immersing themselves in the intricacies of paper negatives, hand-tinting, multiple negative sandwiching, and chemical-and-paper manipulation, hobbyists could forget about World War I, the Depression, and World War II. They sought to make images that were "pleasing to the eye, not disturbing to the mind."

The WAM gallery walls contain only soft, warm images of classic nudes, landscapes, cityscapes (like Roger Kinnicutt's smoky depiction of the Worcester skyline), the occasional stylized portrait, and pictures of exotic lands. Because camera clubs wished to be as democratic as possible, they often made allowances for photographers like Axel Bahnsen, whose work was decidedly not pictorial but Salvador Dali-like in its surreal content. They could also appreciate commercial work by industrial photographers such as Fred G. Korth, who easily adapted pictorialist concepts to his images, such as his dynamically composed Galvanized Sheets.

The advent of 35mm cameras, color film, and portable motion-picture cameras gave many would-be amateur photographers new toys with which they could play, and interest in pictorialist photography waned. In the '50s when television invaded every living room, even diehard hobbyists were lured from their darkrooms, leaving only a few hearty souls to carry on the tradition. By this time, a whole new generation of photographers came along, following on the coattails of so-called "straight" artistic and documentary photographers such as Ansel Adams and Minor White. The half-century-long chapter on pictorialist photography had come to a close.

The Worcester Art Museum is open Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 799-4406.