Introduction
I the following essay I am going to be looking at what I believe to be the key characteristics of Pictorialism as well as this I will also be looking at the people I believe to of had the most impact on Pictorialism as a movement by analysing there works and ideology’s, by doing this I hope to answer the question ‘What are the characteristics of Pictorialism?’ in a fulfilling and informative way whilst giving my biased and cynical British views on certain aspects, characters and events within the movement.
The phrase Pictorialism was first coined within the context of photography in Henry Peach Robinson book entitled ‘Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints On Composition And Chiaroscuro For Photographers.’ Written in 1869 an age when ‘’9 out of ten photographers are ignorant to art’’ [1] and the photographic proses was seen by most as something scientific opposed to something that can in the right hands be art. In many ways Pictorialism came about as a reaction to the small minded and bigoted nature of the art world of this time (its still pretty much the same today), it is because largely of Pictorialism that photography is accepted in the art world today.

Naturalism and Peter Henry Emerson
There are many characteristics in Pictorialism one of its most notably being it’s out of focus style. This is something that evolved as a characteristic of Pictorialism when it was still only a baby and was developing from its distant cousin naturalism, this now famous characteristic was originally pushed by someone who would have, in the early 1880’s made only stunning sharp pictures of nature, this was Peter Henry Emerson, a photographers whose roots lye within Naturalism and bird watching. Emerson later became one of the key figures in having photography accepted as an art form writing 8 books on photography and a manuscript entitled a history of artistic photography (1936), He originally pushed the id...