TruthBeauty : pictorialism and the photograph as art, 1845-1945
"The hauntingly beautiful photographs created within the Pictorialist movement are among the most spectacular works of art in the medium's history. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, renowned artists sought to elevate photography - until then seen largely as a scientific tool for documentation - to an art form equal to painting. Adopting a soft-focus approach and utilizing dramatic effects of light, richly coloured tones and bold technical experimentation, Pictorialist artists opened up a distinctly new world of visual expression in photography - an aesthetic that continues to be highly influential more than a hundred years later." "TruthBeauty showcases the artworks from a major exhibition organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. This book contains reproductions of 121 photographs, tracing the evolution of Pictorialism over the three decades in which it predominated. It marks the first time that Pictorialist photographs by artists from North America, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Japan and Australia are shown in a single publication, providing an overview of this first truly international art movement. It includes scholarly essays on Pictorialism worldwide as well as a selection of historic texts by Pictorialist artists."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2008
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, ©2008