Pictorialism vs. Lartigue

Pictorialism: A school of artistic photography that emphasized using photography to mimic certain styles of contemporary painting; it flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I typed ‘photography in the 1900s’ into Google and hit enter, trying to size up the similarities and differences between other photographers work and that of Jacques Henri Lartigue’s. What I found were photographs mimicking the style of Romantic Era paintings; these photographs had such influences as painters Casper David Friedrich, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, among others who produced work in and around the Late 18th Century to Mid 19th Century. These paintings are filled with landscapes, nudes, and working class scenes; the very scenes mimicked in the photography of Peter Henry Emerson, Robert Demachy, and Alfred Stieglitz; photographers from the 1900s. Even in the works of Paris photographer Eugene Atget who shot images of empty streets and looming Paris architecture, you rarely see any idea of progression. This idea was also hidden in the Romantic-style pictures of landscapes and farms. The photographers just listed are those who desired to capture the same essence as the painters who painted only a century before; these photographers created the pictorialism movement.

Left is an image painted by John Constable entitled Boatbuilder. This image is painted of a very natural scenario, incorporating technology (boats) that use a natural source to create. There is no idea of progression, but rather an attentive eye for detail and a peaceful presence; nothing in this image is, to me, very exciting, although it is extremely realistic. These feelings of calm and peace plus an attention for the un-extraordinary and detail (like the exquisitely precise painting of the trees and clouds,) are the recognizable features of a Romantic-era painting. These recognizable features are also the inspiration for Pictorialism photography, as seen on the lower right in an image by Peter Henry Emerson entitled Gathering Waterlilies.

The subjects of the boats in both images are not the only similarities. The photograph holds much of the same composition as the painting. They are both natural scenarios out in the wilderness where lighting is not artificial. Both are images of simple tasks probably performed often by these people throughout their everyday lives.

The painting and the picture seem to be taken in around the same time period, content-wise. This is because both hold the same peaceful calm and the idea of a simple life. The painting, though, shows life for the average person, where a boat was to be made through skill and natural supplies, for there were no mechanized engines around. The picture, however, and other pictures of the pictorialist movement, show simple life without including the technological advances made since the time period of the Romantic's. This is where Jacques Henri Lartigue becomes different. Whereas his older and learned photographers (also producing images around the time that Lartigue was) lacked in including motorized vehicles and other advances in not only technology, but also in society (it is difficult to find an image from either Emerson or Demachy where women aren't acting as statue-esque models,) Lartigue jumped on the exciting advances.

The image on the left is one of the many pictures from Lartigue where nature and 'simple life' are not the subject. In this image entitled Grand Prix de Circuit de la Seine, Lartigue has captured the infatuation with speed that during his life people have begun to develop. The noted differences between this image and the one above and to the left are extraordinary, especially when it is taken into consideration that both come from the same time period. The image by Emerson leads one to believe that all life is this peaceful and simple calm. Lartigue captured movement and speed while Emerson clung to the past style of Romanticism. It is interesting how an amateur photographer such as Lartigue had already begun to defy his more 'learned' photography rivals by only trying to capture the moments that he most enjoyed (and for a little boy it seems obvious that he would most enjoy capturing those exciting and speedy ones.)