Fine Art Photography’s Beginnings
As the creator of the allegorical image titled, "The Two Ways of Life," Oscar Gustave Rejlander is considered the father of fine art photography. His image was assembled from thirty-two separate photographs, seamlessly blended together, to create one complete, unique, and expressive image. Of course, today, Photoshop could be used to create such an image in a few minutes, but in 1857, it took Rejlander six weeks.
"Two Ways of Life"
Prior to this, photography was seen only as a tool to capture reality accurately. What made ‘The Two Ways of Life’ unique was that the process of creating it was more akin to painting than to photography. Why? Because it was created with the intention of expressing a concept: the choice between vice and virtue. Yes, it uses single images accurately captured, but combined, they create a unique imagined world. The whole added up to more than the sum of the individual parts. The image was created with an objective, and method, similar to those of a painter mixing paints on a palette. A new medium of artistic expression was born: photography.
The original image of ‘Two Ways of Life’ is held, and owned, by The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum in Bradford, United Kingdom.
Around the time Rejlander worked, other photographers were beginning to explore photography’s expressive potential. An example is Julia Margaret Cameron.
Her photographs were, deliberately, slightly out of focus, scratched, and often intentionally smudged - all done to produce an image expressing something beyond the surface of the thing being photographed. Below is an example, where the image is slightly out of focus, and bathed in heavy dark shadows.
Subject is Annie Wilhelmina Philpot (1854-1930). Albumen print,
Lewis Carroll, (of "Alice in Wonderland" fame), took a series of photographs of the child, Alice Liddell, believed to be the inspiration for his famous surreal children's book, 'Alice in Wonderland'. These were more than straightforward naturalistic portraits. The image below, as an example, is theatrically staged, the little girl dressed almost as an Elf-like character.
Model - Alice Liddell by Lewis Carrol
Images these three photographers produced, transcend the immediate surface of whatever they were photographing. The foundations of fine art photography were being laid.
It wasn’t until 1883, however, that fine art photography truly began to be solidified. This is when photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, became profoundly interested in, and further exploited, the full photo-chemical potential of the field. Below is his photography of ‘Grand Central Station New York.
Grand Central Station - by Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz is also, considered the first serious collector of photography in the world. In 1905, he opened The Little Galleries in New York. It had four rooms, two of which can be seen in the photographs below, taken when a photographic exhibition was in progress.
This humble gallery played an important role in establishing American fine art photography - but fine art photography internationally - as having significant artistic aesthetic value.