Has there really been progress in photography? Reflections upon viewing the works of Käsebier, Stieglitz, and Steichen.

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Luis, sorry to reply very late but thanks for the links (on page 10); I only had a brief look so far, but surely that peeked my interest. I've seen too little so far to answer your questions, but I'll quite sure will take a longer look.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Lannie,<br>

Sorry to respond slow, but discussion went very fast the last day....I did not ask about the comparison between physics and photography. I responded to it, and in my response attempted to get back to your original question. But thanks for the answer.<br>

What gets you into the fly bottle, in my view, is jumping on any notion that seems interesting to you, and starting to look for an answer with that. Throughout this thread, I continue to get the feel you loose track of your actual question, and you are too wanting to see an answer to it. None of us can get you out of that bottle, only you can. Take a step back, look at the sub-discussions that came up as parts to the answer of your question. And accept that there will be no conclusive conclusion either. Maybe I got it all wrong, but this is my perception.</p>

<p>Luckily, along the way some really good points were raised and some posts expressed good food for thought magnificently. There is a lot of good in this free discussion, but one has to accept that it's not really leading to an answer. I don't mind, I come out with things to ponder, wonder and investigate. Can't really wish for more.</p>

[AJHingel]

<blockquote>

<p><strong>Ultimate Meaning of Beauty</strong>.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>In the very old days the answer was simple: getting nearer to the kingdom of God. Nowadays beauty probably just fulfills our need of escaping reality.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I continue to be interested in the individual's trajectory/path/development in his own work.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes I know <strong>Luis.</strong> I happen to believe however that this Philosophy of Photography forum as its rules says, "encompasses ethical, aesthetic and sociological aspects of the subject" and should not always turn into yet another Casual photo Conversations on "me and my photography" as we see them so frequently here. Lannies question on "Progress in photography" was an occasion to go a little away from navel looking exchanges. I might be wrong, of course. <br>

Anyway, I'm traveling, so I'm out of in-depth discussions on anything, for some time. Have fun !</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Luis,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I continue to be interested in the individual's trajectory/path/development in his own work.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It warrants a seperate thread. Not surprisingly I think given my osting history, but it's a question that's been on my mind for a long long time. Despite that, I continue to find it hard to describe, since much of it also comes down to how I experience things myself, based on small hopes and fears - things that can be hard to convey to others.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> Do you think your own development is linear or cyclical? Do you believe you are improving continuously, getting better in some respects, receding in others, or getting worse? </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Personal development is a tricky beast, in the sense that most people who are serious in trying to develop themselves will set goals and targets. Internally, this translates to measuring it as progress, with value-statements on worse and better results. This makes it rather difficult to have a reasonably objective view on one's own personal development, I think. Also considering I try to raise the bar for myself, so I'm in essence always negative. When somebody twists my arm, I may admit some photos are quite OK, but I'm looking for where to improve, not looking for complacency.<br>

So, within this limit.... I see it as a combination of lineair and cyclical. If it'd be a graph, there would be a trendline pointing up, but the zoomed-in look is much more up and down. On a grand scale, hence, I think I improve continuously, but at a given moment, this may be entirely invisible. In errors, getting stuck, periods of total lacking inspiration, and other sorts of setbacks, there is a lot to be learnt obviously. Finding the dedication to get out, and to reformulate your goals, aspirations and targets. Which may give a renewed clarity of mind that allows a next good step up.<br>

The goals do (and can) change, though. I do not believe they're fixed for life. One reason they also change is because you learn and either find it is your thing or not, and whether it really fits your competencies or not.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Or do you improve every time a new box from B&H arrives on your doorstep or take a trip?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I never ordered at B&H, I cannot answer that one ;-)<br />Seriously, wrong as it may sound: yes, I actually think it does. Not because of pure gear-lust (though I am not free of that) or materialism, but as a reward to oneself, a nice shiny new toy can do wonders. And it invites to go out, test and play. In a way all the wrong reasons to go out and make photos, but it works for me. A second part, new gear can open new options. I am contemplating getting a short macro-lens, for example, it'll open new views on things.</p>

<p>Trips I find a strangely difficult 2-edged sword. Being in a new place sure stimulates me, but I do find my photos are better when I really know a place. For simple reasons as knowing the place to be to realise the best point of view in my experience, but also for an understanding of the subject, and feeling right with how I depict it. Trips give me tourist photos I like for the remembrance, while the "local" photos make me train on a vision and (hopefully) a certain depth in my photography.</p>

<p>As I said on earlier occassions, I'm still much in change. When we discussed street photography in a recent thread, I basically found (with good help from this forum!) that I can go two ways there: overcome the limits I feel are inherent to my character, or accept the limit as one that will taint my photography. The jury isn't out yet. Either decision will surey impact how I develop from here on. More importantly, what it forces me to do, though, is define clearer for myself what my photography should be about. It's one of the cyclical returning questions.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>What gets you into the fly bottle, in my view, is jumping on any notion that seems interesting to you, and starting to look for an answer with that. Throughout this thread, I continue to get the feel you loose track of your actual question, and you are too wanting to see an answer to it. None of us can get you out of that bottle, only you can. Take a step back, look at the sub-discussions that came up as parts to the answer of your question. And accept that there will be no conclusive conclusion either. Maybe I got it all wrong, but this is my perception.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Wouter, the "fly bottle" is for Wittgenstein a linguistic conundrum. I am actually making fun of Wittgenstein here (that is, in making reference to being in the fly bottle), and his attempt to reduce almost all of philosophy to linguistic analysis. He thereby managed to avoid substance. When all is said and done, what has been the legacy of logical positivism and its repudiation of metaphysics?</p>

<p>The legacy has in fact come down to this: "Metaphysics doesn't matter." That claim itself is metaphysical to the core. The great Wittgenstein refuted himself.</p>

<p>I went through my Wittgensteinian phase not too long after my Nietzchean phase, both back in the seventies. I'm not sure which phase I am in right now, but it doesn't matter too much. By tomorrow I will likely have changed philosophical schools again.</p>

<p>Even so, my first premise is, as it has always been, "I could be wrong."</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Lannie, I missed the Wittgenstein link, does not change what I tried to say there though. Your response does not address that, and well, that was a bit exactly the point I tried to make.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p> the essence of the beauty --LK</p>

<p>A kind of hollow, romanticized and superficial articulation of the process and the result. Based on what I see in the works of people like Käsebier, Stieglitz, and Steichen, they were real, they addressed their subjects, addressed their process, their photos, and found and created magic by getting to work. --Fred G.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, you are back on the arts and crafts forum. I have no objection to discussions of the craft of photography here, of course. I just think that you jumped categories on me, and I am not sure why. Are all metaphysical allusions now anathema for you, or has the one-line "rebuttal" simply come back into fashion?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Anders,<br>

While you have a point it may end up being about "me and my photography", isn't that ultimately up to ourselves? Personal development as a subject holds more than enough potential to give us all something to learn from one another; to dismiss the personal experiences in it would be a waste. Sure one has to be able to step away from it too at a point and recognise the ethical, aesthetic and sociological aspects we're asking ourselves and others, in the pursuit of improving ourselves and our views on photography.</p>

<p>Frankly, a discussion on whether or not a certain epoch yielded better photos than the present runs the high risk of becoming "me and my taste" - same problem there.<br>

But we've butted heads on this before. I could be wrong too. And we could also both be wrong.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>the question of the existence of God keeps popping up</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It does not. People either believe or they don't. Some philosophers may wonder, but few others do. It's not a question I let concern me. If asked to answer it, I simply say "No" and move on. When asked for more info. I say, I mean "No" in the same sense I mean "No" when I say the tooth fairy doesn't exist. But beyond that, I know and have to live with the fact that a great deal of the people in my world think otherwise. Being Jewish and gay, I'm used to being in the minority . . . and actually like it.</p>

<p>_____________________</p>

<p>I wouldn't reject Plato's <em>Republic</em> even though it has more than hints of totalitarianism (because it's so rich with important insights, despite its flaws) just as I wouldn't reject Wittgenstein's <em>Philosophical Investigations</em> as reducing everything to language (because it's so rich with important insights, despite its flaws). The early Wittgenstein was a logical positivist. The Wittgenstein who wrote the <em>Investigations</em> was not. He has to be seen as two different philosophers. Usually, the later Wittgenstein is taken to be more pivotal. He rejected logical positivism.</p>

<p>When I reject some formulations about beauty, I am not necessarily rejecting metaphysical inquiry. I'm rejecting moves away from specific and coherent argumentation and thinking about photography. The statement (or so-called thesis) "If the photo captures the essence of the beauty that one sees . . ." is vague, unexplained, and meaningless. It's simply hollow philosophical hyperbole. It's throwing out meaningless and unconsidered platitudes as a substitute for actual ideas. It couldn't reasonably be challenged because you could come back and say that "essence" means just about anything, "beauty" means just about anything, and "essence of beauty" is even further removed from anything making any sort of sense.</p>

<p>What I tried to do is not only bring in the arts and crafts part of progress and what drove these men and how we often evaluate photographs (and a case could be made that it's much more often on how it is crafted and what kind of statement it makes than on anything as vague as how beautiful it is), but I find myself constantly trying to bring certain discussions back to Earth, as Wouter's been trying as well.</p>

<p>It's not that I'm rejecting aesthetics for craft. It's that I'm rejecting the Ideal in favor of the Real. "Essence of beauty" and "perfection" are ideals. They're in the speaker's head alone. Photographs, evaluation, the photographers you introduced this thread with deserve more than ideals, superlatives, and platitudes. They deserve honest discussion, tangible consideration, and detail, not abstraction and avoidance through philosophical vagary.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p><strong>God:</strong></p>

<p>Fred, the question of the existence of God keeps popping up over and over in my own mind and in that of every intellectuallly honest person whom I know who also claims to be a believer. (I want to phrase that so that it is obvious that I am not calling you intellectually dishonest simply because we disagree.)</p>

<p><strong>Wittgenstein</strong> (referred to by Moore as "God" at one point):</p>

<p>Wittgenstein was a great thinker who still lives in my mind--he does not sit idle on my shelves. He is hard to categorize, and I would not want anyone to think that I was besmirching his reputation by saying that he did not always get it right. I do personally believe that the differences between the <em>Tractatus </em>and the <em>PI</em> are vastly overrated, although it is surely true that the <em>PI</em> is the more profound and mature work. Wittgenstein was an incredibly complex man and thinker, and I do not want to do violelnce to his heritage in my casual toss-off remarks above. (Sometimes I get like that in my philosophical frustrations. Please try to ignore me if I overstate during such fits.)</p>

<p><strong>Truth and Beauty:</strong></p>

<p>As for metaphysics, truth, and beauty, I have nothing new to say. . . . I was rereading part of Plato's <em>Republic</em> earier this week. Every worthy philosopher whom I have ever read or met was or is both flawed and useful. Anyone who makes me think is useful to me. You are therefore useful to me, Fred. I wonder how far apart we really are, since, in spite of <em>positing</em> the existence of God, I am probably as much the skeptic as you.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Wouter, with most artists, I see personal cyclical development, though as Wouter remarked, from a low level of resolution it would look linear. What I mean by this is a series of concatenated "S" - like steps. The lower flat part of the "S" is (except at the beginning, maybe) flowing out of the top of the prior "S". It is at first what some photographers would call a "block", others a gestation period. Then one emerges from it, onto another (not necessarily new) series, idea, subject, project, refinement, etc. at first slowly, increasing towards an asymptotic frenzy, which eventually peaks and dissipates once again towards the flat part. The intensity of these stages varies greatly among and within individuals. Sometimes a cycle can take years, others, much, much less time, or it could be said that at a higher level of resolution, we can see the process is of a fractal nature, with ever smaller and larger "S"es involved.</p>

<p>__________________________________________</p>

<p>Lannie, I don't think Fred's rejecting aesthetics or even metaphysics (not totally) in favor of craft. In my opinion, Fred has a holistic view on this, which is what makes it Real, although -- and this is better saved for a future thread -- craft , as we see on PN and a zillion other places, can, and often does become an Ideal. I think we keep a toehold on the Real by asking "why?", and the answers don't even have to be rational or logical. The question/answers and ensuing exchanges help to keep us connected and grounded, and by that I do not mean chained to something, but in touch, sometimes indirectly, through each other, or through dialogue with other work.<br>

___________________________________________</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Lannie,</p>

<p>What's the difference between "beauty" and "the essence of beauty" when considering the (e)valuation of a photo or photos?</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>I think we keep a toehold on the Real by asking "why?", and the answers don't even have to be rational or logical.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Agreed, Luis. We are often back to emotions, intuitions, etc., on ultimate valuations. I think. As for any attempts to categorize Fred or his beliefs, I would never even think about trying--and I think that he knows that. (I hope so!)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>What's the difference between "beauty" and "the essence of beauty" when considering the (e)valuation of a photo or photos?</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I knew that you would call me on "essence," Fred. <em>I just knew it.</em> I thought about leaving the word out, since I do not know what it means, but I thought that it sounded nice, fuzzy, and warm--and therefore not too logical, and I did not want any statement about beauty to rely too much on logic--emotion, intuition, whatever, anything but cold, hard logic. </p>

<p>I think that I am getting too flippant in my old age. I have fought too many of these battles elsewhere, more than once.</p>

<p>When in trouble, I tend to dump things into the residual category of "<strong>THE METAPHYSICAL</strong>." That way I am philosophical invulnerable, even if also philosophically irrelevant. ("What is God?" "God is a spirit!" Oh, yeah, that helps me a whole lot! Thank you so very much.)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>When I talk about craft, I'm talking about something other than (more than?) technical skill and knowledge. Having technical skill, being able to get a "perfect" exposure or even the exposure you desire, knowing how to maintain detail in shadows, not blow highlights, knowing how many pixels your camera has, how sharp your lens is, how different lenses act, knowing the zone system in and out is still not craft.</p>

<p>"Craft," as defined in several dictionaries I took a look at, includes:</p>

<p>manual dexterity<br>

artistic skill<br>

(and can include) deception (in a particular sense of the word)</p>

<p>When I talk about craft, I am talking about dexterity with technical information and knowledge, the skill in using that dexterously and understanding all the permutations that can arise as opposed to viewing technical matters and techniques as formulas, rules, or ends unto themselves. So, it's one thing to know how to expose, it's another to know how to expose for the desired look or result you want. The concept of "good exposure" comes to mind. A good exposure is not inherent in the scene or the camera or the photographer. It will be the exposure that allows the photographer to realize his vision, not necessarily the one that achieves a very specific and particular-looking histogram. Exposing is not necessarily working toward a standard. In terms of craft, it is using shutter speed, aperture, and light to get the look you want. Craft is being in tune with what exposure will provide what sort of mood, what use of the zone system will make a photo look formal or more casual, spontaneous or more deliberate.</p>

<p>And, regarding photographs, I do think craft can often have a sense of deception. I regularly refer to artificiality, but deception goes a step further. I once called some parts of photography, including my own, lying. I still kind of like that formulation. Craft can be the creation of illusion.</p>

<p>As Luis noted, and as the dictionaries seem to suggest, one almost has to approach this holistically, since craft is often part of the definition of art and art is often part of the definition of craft.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Luis, "<em>a series of concatenated "S" - like steps</em>" - agreed.<br>

I must admit that saying the 'trendline' of these concatenated sinus-shapes is upwards is saying I progress. That is of course nothing else but my own projection. I used earlier the example of Picasso's early drawings, which I like. He later entered another "S", with a distinct other style. Would I like that period less, it would be easy to say the trendline went down from there on. Realistically, it's "just" another cycle. Comparing one to another in terms of better/worse is something I reacted against in the very beginning of this discussion....<br>

So, the trendline is a matter of opinion. The cycles, I think, are more visibly (or audibly, or readibly) present in the work of an artist.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Stieglitz speaks to the question posted eight days ago:</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stieglitz-Snapshot1.jpg</p>

<p>I cannot refute an "argument" such as that.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/The_Steerage_1907_Stieglitz.jpg">Steerage, by Stieglitz</a></p>

<p>The Stieglitz photo Lannie linked to in the post above this is from 1910-11, a transitional period but still very much a pictorial photo. It beautifies but we already see the move toward action, what's happening in the moment, and a change in the immediacy and import of content. It is looking at the world still through a lens of gauze and a painterly kind of <em>romanticized</em> beauty.</p>

<p><em>Steerage</em> takes us further into Modernism, its content, its point of view, its photographic approach and style. It is much less romantic and more uniquely a photograph rather than trying to accomplish or look like what paintings had been accomplishing or looking like.</p>

<p>If we are talking about development, it is important to consider not only the development of artists and their art and the photographic trajectory that artists created and followed, but the sensibilities and expectations of audiences and viewers as well. They, too, have moved out of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in terms of their photographic tastes and understanding and their expanded appreciation of all that the medium has to offer.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>When I say "expanded," I mean it. As viewers, and especially when we have the luxury to look back, we don't have to reject romanticism in order to appreciate modernism, surrealism, dadaism, and the rest. But it may be that the artists and viewers of the time did have to do some visceral rejection. Stieglitz obviously appreciated painting and the pictorial movement he helped establish and make accessible through his exhibitions and support of other artists. But the quote below shows his need to reject <em>passionately</em> (at least in some significant ways) what he and others had been doing. That's because he was caught in a moment in history and felt the need to break free of something, of the constraints that history can sometimes bring to the moment. Looking back as viewers with a distanced perspective, we may have the luxury of accepting what's come before us and what is new as well. Artists may not have that much luxury, as they may be compelled to break free and move history forward (or move forward along with the politics, culture, and other influential doers and thinkers of the times).</p>

<p>Ultimately, I think art history moves with overlapping appreciation for and rejection of what came before, and in so many varying degrees. And looking back as viewer-historians is very different from looking ahead as artists.</p>

<p>Stieglitz: <em>"It is high time that the stupidity and sham in pictorial photography be struck a solarplexus blow. Claims of art won't do. Let the photographer make a photograph."</em></p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Thanks, Fred, for situating all of this discussion in the historical context of Stieglitz's own struggles (for lack of a better word). This is all very useful and well-done, Fred, and I hope that you will forgive me if I defer trying to write a serious response right away. The end of this week has been a bear--and tomorrow promises to be even worse.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Where are the art historians when we need them? I am not in Fred's league when it comes to art history.</p>

<p><strong>Calling urgently for reinforcements here! Murph, where's that tank?<br /></strong></p>

<p>Over.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>In the meantime, here is a little "Art History for Dummies" (like me) from <em>Wikipedia</em>:</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism</p>

<p>Here is yet one more example of this type of work:</p>

<p>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Alice_Boughton-Dawn.jpg</p>

<p>Thanks for going a bit more into all this, Fred. I have seen the allusions to these terms and movements, but I am still a novice on all this.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Julie H]

<p>" ... after he made the leap from pictorialism to modernism in the early 1910s he fully explored and exploited the almost unparalleled opportunity photogrpahy gave him to return to his negatives made ten, twenty, or even more than forty years earlier and reinterpreted them, often significantly. When he reprinted his early negatives in the 1920s and 1930s, he used gelatin silver paper with a crisp, often cool tonal range that was quite different from the softer and more colorful effects of the carbon, platinum, and gum bichromate papers he used in the 1890s. And, whereas in the 1890s and early 1900s he insisted that uncropped prints had "little value," by the 1920s he presented most, if not all, of the negative. When he reprinted <em>Scurrying Home</em> in the 1920s or 1930s, for example, he was no longer eager to create a study of the supposed simplicity of rural life and included, instead, a large, fashionable house or hotel to the left of the old church, testifying to his new found fascination with change and conflict as fundamental aspects of contemporary life. By reformulating his imagery and its syntax, Stieglitz reinterpreted this and other earlier photographs in light of his newer understanding of modern American art and culture, and conferred on them the motivaation of his later work.</p>

<p>"In some cases, he recropped and reprinted earlier photographs that he had previously printed, but in other instances he printed work that he had hardly considered before. By studying the prints themselves and their exhibition and publication histories we can see that Stieglitz did not include <em>Sun Rays -- Paula, Berlin</em>, which has come to be thought of prescient, in either of his one-person shows at the Camera Club of New York in 1899 or his gallery, 291, in 1913, but most likely, first presented it in his 1921 exhibition at the Anderson Galleries. And, although he wrote in the 1920s that <em>The Terminal</em>, 1893, "stood the test of upwards of thirty years" -- and is now one of his most celebrated works from the 1890s -- in fact he only exhibited it twice before 1910 and did not reproduce it until 1911. These are but a few examples, yet they suggest the importance of understanding his work habits and of examining the histories of the photographs themselves. Only then can we begin to ask the more compelling questioins of when and why he resurrected older work. And, only then will we begin to recognize how Stieglitz, by including later printes of earlier negatives in publications and exhibits from the 1910s through the 1940s, folded them into his canon and thereby significantly altered and reread his artistic evolution." -- <em>Sarah Greenough</em>, "The Key Set" (2002)</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>A <em>prima facie</em> look at what you have offered us, Julie, seems to suggest that his own conception of his "development" was hardly a simple linear "progression" or "development" (take your pick) away from pictorialism toward modernism.</p>

<p>Someone more knowledgeable than I will have to sort all this out. Earlier posts indicate that the painter Max Weber saw more in "Steerage" than Stieglitz did at the time, and, as I recall, their differing opinions as to the direction of his work led to some tension between the two. At stake, perhaps, was his own conception as to what was truly valuable in his photography. (I want to say "what he saw as <em>progress</em> in his photography," but the "p" word now seems tainted to the point that one dare not use it--even as a descriptor that he might--or might not--have used to describe the trajectory of his own work.)</p>

<p>I am left wondering if we have danced too lightly around this word "progress" in our desire to avoid being seen as value imperialists. I wonder if Stieglitz himself ever used the term or not. At stake here is how he conceptualized his own "development," "evolution," "progress," "movement" or whatever term(s) he might have used to evaluate and compare his own work across his own epoch, not so much between his epoch and another epoch (the latter comparison seeming to have been implied in my original attempt to set the question).</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Sarah points out that an artist's (or photography's) development isn't necessarily something that is just affected by or shown in the photographs. The development itself can <em>affect</em> the photographs that have already been taken and even that have already been developed. Those photographs that Stieglitz or any of us look back at from a later vantage-point or re-work based on where we are now were never fixed objects. They were always free to be what we might make of them. Seen in one context (surrounded by a particular style of photo and art world) they <em>seem</em> one thing. Seen in another context, they seem another. Not only that, but the photographer himself may see and develop* his own photos differently at different times and stages of his pursuit. As a pianist interprets Chopin or Rachmaninoff, a photographer interprets his negatives or files.</p>

<p>*Develop may be a key word here (thanks again, Luis) because it also ties in so intimately with the actual photographic process. We develop photos. And photography develops.</p>

<p>Artists often show foresight. And so, we have the strains of Romanticism already in some of Beethoven's earlier, Classical, works. Stieglitz's foresight is certainly evident in that even some of his Pictorial photos (painting-like, romantically-oriented) already show the movement into Realism, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stieglitz-Snapshot1.jpg">the photo Lannie posted</a> shows. With Stieglitz, as someone pointed out to me yesterday, the medium itself led to non-Pictorialism, so a non-Pictorialist approach, since photographs ARE NOT paintings (which Pictorialism was emulating) was kind of lurking there already, even if not yet realized. Once photography as a unique medium was "discovered" by Stieglitz and others, it was kind of easy to go back and look at prior work differently, to see not where it emulated painting but where it differed. Many of these differences had to be already there, since photographs were NOT paintings, even when they were trying to look like them. This could now be emphasized both in the viewing of prior photos (in the individual and collective consciousness we now brought to those photos) or by actually re-interpreting previous photos by emphasizing in post processing the uniquely photographic elements in photos that could now be seen and accepted.</p>

<p>How many of us discover or re-discover things in older photos as we go through past rolls and files that we never saw before, or at least never saw from THIS perspective? Was it actually there all the time or not? Our photos are not separable from how we look at them.</p>