The period of Pictorialism represents a milestone in the history of photography. The new photographic trend developed almost simultaneously in the 1890s in England, Austria, France and Germany.
In the discourse on the artistic value of photography the advocates of Pictorialism sought to achieve the autonomy of photography through imitating painting styles, with their artistic paragons being the impressionists.
This catalogue of an exhibition which ran from March to July 2012 presents perhaps the most interesting forty years of photography, seeing it through its greatest changes. Besides over two hundred celebrated photographs, by artists including Karl Blossfeldt, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Robert Demachy, Frantisek Drtikol, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Andre Kertesz, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, László Moholy-Nagy, Constant Puyo, Aleksandr Rodchenko, August Sander and Alfred Steiglitz, this lavish over-size production includes eight studies exploring the key moments of this diverse era and biographies of all the artists.