Pictorial Photography

Hi! I'm new to this group, and thought I'd share some titles of research I did last semester when I was researching the genre of pictorial photography (which got me more into photography overall ngl!)

If you didn't already know, pictorial photography was this photography movement that had its height from around the 1880s to the 1920s. There were a ton of different techniques and ways to do it that photographers argued for, but overall it had an emphasis on photography being used for art, instead of the preconceived notion of it being used for scientific documentation. This was the first time photography started to be seen as art, and people used different effects and altered the print making process in different ways to achieve a painterly sort of feel to their photos.

If you want to learn more about the topic, here are some books!:

In Nature's Image by Washington Irving Lincoln Adams (1898)

A Photographic Vision: Pictorial Photography 1889-1923 edited by Peter Bunnell - This is a really good collection of articles from the 1880s-1920s that talk about the genre as it is happening

Practical Pictorial Photography by Alfred Horsley Hinton (1898) - This one is very good as it explores a lot of theory, and its second part has some insight on the print making process too. I found this one more useful than In Nature's Image. The author for this is also very opinionated so it's very funny at times, though forewarning I do think there is one instance of a racial slur being said so that did sour my feelings about the book (it is said in quotes as if someone else is saying the word, but i still feel it is necessary to mention its presence).

TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945 by Alison D. Nordstrom and J. Luca Ackerman (2011). - A nice book from an art museum, with a collection of different written pieces by different authors I think?