The word “photography” which is derived from the Greek words for “light” and writing”, was first used by Sir John Herschel in 1839, the year the invention of the photographic process was made public. Almost from the moment of its birth, photography began staking out claims in areas that had long been reserved for painting. Some artists refused to accept photography as an art form. In 1862 a group of French artists formally protested that photography was a soulless, mechanical process, “never resulting in works which could ever be compared with those works which are the fruits of intelligence and the study of art” On the other hand, the invention of the photography caused considerable concern to many artists, who saw their means of livelihood coming to an end. Some even claimed that painting was dead. Many artistic, artist, art turned to photography, while some used photography as an artistic aid.

From 1850s through the 1870s there was a rage for illustrative photographs similar to a storytelling style of painting popular at the time. The most famous and commercially the most successful of those intending to elevate photography to an art was Henry Peach Robinson. Robinson produced many illustrative and allegorical composite photographs, and became a leader of a so called “High Art” movement in 19th century photography, which advocated beauty and artistic effect no matter how it was obtained.

Pictorialism is a style of photography in which the actual scene depicted is of less importance than the artistic quality of the image. Pictorialists would be more concerned with the aesthetics and, sometimes, the emotional impact of the image, rather than what actually was in front of their camera. Because pictorialism was seen as artistic photography, current styles of art were reflected in the works of pictorialists. This impressionist movement developed from naturalistic painting, particularly landscape, a central feature of 19th Century art. In May 1874 a group of French artists began to exhibit impressionistic photographs at the studio in Paris. The group continued in being for the next twelve years, and work was exhibited by, among others, Cezanne and Gaugin.

Another photographer who was influenced by the impressionists was George Davidson, who contended that a sharp photograph was not always to be striven for. In “The Onion field” (1889) he used rough-surfaced paper and a soft focus technique.

The leader of the naturalistic movement in photography, which emerged in 1880s, was Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936). Emerson’s main claim was that one should treat photography as a legitimate art in its own right, rather than seek to imitate other art forms; imitation was not needed – it could confer its own legitimacy without it. Emerson claimed that true photographic art was possible only through exploiting the camera’s ability to capture reality in a direct way.

The rules of naturalism were: no “faking” by means of lighting, posing, costumes or props; no retouching. A so called “scientific focusing” technique was promoted, which imitated the way the eye perceives a scene: sharply focused on the main subject, with the foreground and the background slightly out of focus.
Although Emerson later became convinced that photography was not an art form at all but only “a handmaiden to science and art”, his earlier ideas had already influenced a new generation of photographers who no longer felt the need to imitate painting but began to explore photography as an art form of its own right.

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