more stylized approach. (Courtesy Syracuse University Art Col- lection)
What makes a photograph a piece of art? Must it be manipulated and stylized to deserve the word, or can it simply be a realistic image?
It’s a dilemma that’s sparked raging debates in the art world since photography’s inception in the early 1800s — but a question that, in an era of Instagram, Snapchat, and today’s general overabundance of photos, continues to remain relevant.
Hillsdale College students will have a chance to re-examine that dilemma afresh when the Daughtrey Gallery in the Sage Center for the Arts hosts the exhibition “Pure Photography: Pictorial and Modern Photographs” from Sept. 13-Oct. 2. The collection, borrowed from the Syracuse University Art Collection, contains photographs from the 1880s through the 1940s, and, according to Lecturer in Art Doug Coon, captures an important period of transition in the development of modern photography.
As Coon puts it, today’s society is “bombarded with images.”
“We live in a post-language era,” he said. “And it just didn’t get that way out of the blue.”
This exhibition provides a glimpse of the genesis of that bombardment — a look at how photography got to be where it is today.
According to Coon, after the first photographers tired of the initial novelty of the camera, they began asking whether the new medium could truly produce art.
“They began wondering, what is the purpose of this?” Coon said. “Is it just to record reality? And if so, is it really worth bothering with in terms of art?”
Associate Professor of Art Barbara Bushey said questions like these engendered a movement termed “pictorialism” around the end of the 19th century — a movement that attempted to make photography mimic painting.
You have this new technology, photography, now how do we make art with it?” she said. “So they put Vaseline on their lenses, they printed on really soft paper, or they moved the camera a little.”
The photographs from this time period are airy, dreamy, and atmospheric, often with heavy use of tonality and models in fantastic poses. As Coon explains it, “You’re not just recording reality, you’re enhancing it.”
But as time went on and technology advanced, photographers began asking whether photography shouldn’t be more realistic and “true to itself,” in Bushey’s words. They started what’s known as “pure” or “straight” photography.
“After pictorialism, there’s a great move toward straight photography,” Bushey said. “That’s even a greater interest in just the forms and the crispness.”
Pure photographers — and most modern photographers today — no longer imitated painting, but simply tried to capture reality.
The art exhibit captures that fascinating transition period between pictorial and pure.
“It’s this weird time frame where these two sides in a way are almost fighting it out,” he said. “Which is really the true nature of photography? I think largely speaking, the modernists (or the pure photography) won out.”
Pure may seem to have won the day, but as Oscar Wilde once quipped, truth is never pure — and rarely simple.
“The interesting part is, things like this never get settled,” Coon noted. “Even if you’re not necessarily an art major or minor, I think it’s a good way to maybe analyze how we got to where we are,” he said, explaining why Hillsdale students might have an interest in the show. “There’s a reason photography got to be so dominant. And this is sort of the beginning of it.”
But why should non-art majors make an effort to get over to Sage and stroll through the exhibit?
“You get to just walk in here and there’s all this groovy stuff!” Bushey said. “Because it’s there — it’s free.”
The exhibit kicks off with a reception in Sage from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, Sep. 13.