It can be argued that with the closure of Camera Work in 1917 that pictoralism was dead as a movement but this is far from the case. Through the 1920's it declined in importance with the people we now regard as the masters of photography (for example Paul Strand) turning to Modernism but it increased in popularity through the rise of amateur photo clubs.
 
Clarence White founded the Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1914 that gave a grounding in techniques and styles to many of the key American photographers of the period between 1920 and 1950. He was instrumental in founding the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916 an organization that still continues. Although Clarence White died in 1925 the school was continued by his wife and son until 1942. Over the last ten years the influence of the school has being reassessed through exhibitions and books and this should not be surprizing with students like Margaret Bourke-White, Anne Brigman , Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, Karl F. Struss and Doris Ulmann.
 
A cursory inspection of the annual reviews of photography through the 30's, 40's and 50's shows that Pictorialism was a dominant style and the new objectivity of the 1920's did little to diminish its popularity. An example of this continuity would be Audrey Bodine who was born in 1906 and took up photography after pictorialism should have ceased but during a long career at the Baltimore Sun in Maryland (USA) his photographs continued to reflect the soft muted tones of the pictorialists.