Pictorial Photography

I liked Stieglitz's piece about Pictorial Photography because he accentuated the amount of subjectivity involved in the produciton of a photography. He argued that photography is definitely a "plastic" art because of the many different ways a photographer can develop a print from a negative. "instead of being purely mechanical, the printing processes were distinctly individual, and that the negative never yielded the same sort of print." The photographer has complete control over his subject because he can choose what he wants to photograph, and then the "Lens, camera, plate, developing baths, printing process, and the like are used by them simply as tools for the elaboration of theor ideas, and not as tyrants to enslave and dwarf them." Stieglitz argues that there is an abundance of subjectivity in photography, comparable to painting. Only the photographer has control over how much to develop or fix the photograph and he "requires a knowledge of and feeling for the comprehensive and beautiful tonality of nature...so that the whole may be harmonious in tone...The turning out of prints likewise is a plastic and not a mechanical process." Each print has unique characteristics alike to a fingerprint, because each print is made a little differently. It is close to impossible to develop the same negative in exactly the same way, making photography plastic in nature due to the many influences the creator has. The photographer must know nature as well as, if not better, than a painter. "The photographer must be familiar not only with the positive, but also with the negative value of tones." I like that Stieglitz is such a big advocate of photography as art. he mentions that the basis of photography is art, because it portrays many of the same styles and qualities as other art of the period. "photographs could be realistic or impressionistic jsut as their maker was moved by one or the other influence." We have looked at blurred photographs and collages of photos that scream their views on politics. These photographs parallel the paintings adn sculptures of the time. It is somewhat a sadness that it took a monetary value of the photograph to influence the public that the medium was worth the while. "The significance of this will be the more marked when the prices paid for some of these pictures are considered." But photography was accepted, for both its artistic value and its utility. We have looked at its utility in past essay with examples such as the mug shot, but now we focus on the artistic side of the photograph. Stieglitz reminds us that there is much more to a photograph than just mechanical reproduciton. A photo is an expression of the artist's emotions through their choice of subjcet, contrast, focus, and nowadays color.