What is was the Pictorialism Movement in photography?

Pictorialism was an early 20th-century photography movement that argued photography should be seen as a fine art,

not just a tool for documentation.  Pictorialists made their photos look like paintings or etchings. They used soft focus, special printing processes, and hand-manipulation in the darkroom to create dreamy, emotional, and artistic images, often with romantic or symbolic subjects. Their goal was to emphasize the photographer’s artistic intent over simply recording reality.

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  • How have Edward Weston and Aaron Siskind (above) been influenced by the Straight Photography Movement?

Both Edward Weston and Aaron Siskind were deeply influenced by Straight Photography’s core principle:

using the camera’s own sharp clarity to reveal the subject’s essence, without manipulation.

Edward Weston became a pure master of the style. He used extreme sharp focus and perfect lighting to find abstract, sculptural forms in natural objects like peppers and shells, celebrating the pure beauty of the subject itself.

Aaron Siskindused the sharp, detailed technique of Straight Photography to flatten his subjects (like peeling paint or graffiti). He transformed them into abstract, graphic compositions of shape and texture, shifting the focus from documenting a scene to creating a new abstract image from reality.