Pictorialism Compared to Photorealism

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Pictorialism compared to Photorealism

This research is to make a comparison between Pictorialism and Photorealism. To start with the research, it is useful to introduce some background knowledge for both of them according to the information given in my first reading (see reference 8). In the late 19th and early 20th century, photography wasn’t considered serious art and what photographers were looking for was to be taken seriously as artists so they made images that looked like paintings. A whole range of techniques, equipment and manipulation were used. They often made photos by using soft focus lenses, and sometimes painting on emulsion to change the texture or using textured paper to get a painterly effect. These art movements were referred to Pictorialism and Photo-realism.
In the first case, definition will be given about Pictorialism based on what we have studied in class that Pictorialism was aesthetic and thus it was different from realistic photography. There were a lot of pictorialists in the nineteenth century tried to produce their photographs similar to painting. Their work was appreciated as a beauty of ancient photography. Further information was introduced about Alfred Stieglitz as one of the best pictorialists (from reading articles in reference 4 and 7). New spirit of photography revolution has appeared in American life in the early twentieth and Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was the first forerunner for that revolution. Alfred was an American photographer who has spent fifty-year career in making photography appeared like an art form alongside painting and sculpture. In 1881, he and his family moved to Germany. And right here, he was first exposed to photography when he travelled through the European countryside and captured many images of peasants working on the Dutch Seacast. In 1893 he returned to New York and became a

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