Open your eyes
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Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) - Checklist |
Contextual notes:
Peter Henry Emerson was a highly motivated, argumentative and talented amateur photographer in Victorian England who attacked head on the staged portraiture of Henry Peach Robinson and Julia Margaret Cameron. He argued in his 1889 book Naturalistic Photography for Students of Art for naturalism in photography that took the actual world that was in front of the camera. The image should imitate what the eye actually saw and this was not hard edged but soft and slightly out of focus - this approach had outcomes - firstly it heralded in a type of photography that was distinct from the over sentimental paintings that were in vogue at the time and secondly the softer prints had a profound effect of the pictorialists that followed him.
Emerson changed his views on photography the following year and published the black bordered pamphlet The Death of Naturalistic Photography (1890) that shocked the community by stating that "Photography is a very limited art". |
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