Chapter 9 Pictorialism in the American West and Regionalism Writ-Large
In: Picturing AmericaSearch for other papers by Rachel McLean Sailor in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
The photographic style of pictorialism in the United States is most often associated with the Photo-Secession of the Stieglitz circle that existed from the late nineteenth through the first decade of the twentieth century. In recent years, however, scholars have shown that pictorialism was a more widespread and long-lived aesthetic that was broadly practiced across America until at least the end of World War Two. This essay argues that much of that populist, pictorial expression was driven by the era’s attending interest in political and cultural regionalism. The American West was a particularly important region for pictorialists as they recognized and engaged the formidable photographic heritage that began almost immediately with the invention of the medium and the Euro-American migration west. Not only was western landscape pictorialism a regionalist expression in the interwar years, it carried with it the legacy of frontier era, as well.