Emerson and Naturalistic Photography in Peter Henry Emerson

1899 Photographer Peter Henry Emerson published a paper entitled "Naturalistic Photography" in view of the weakness of painting creation, criticizing painting photography as fragmented photography, and advocating photographers to return to nature and seek creative inspiration. He believes that nature is the starting point and end point of art, and only the art that is closest to and most like nature is the highest art. He said that no art reflects nature more accurately, meticulously and faithfully than photography. "Emotionally and psychologically, the effect of photography hobby lies in the unadorned lens scenes recorded by photosensitive materials." Another master of this school, A·L· Pacho, put it more clearly: "Art should be left to artists. As far as our photography is concerned, there is nothing to rely on art, and we must engage in independent creation. "

It can be seen that this artistic concept is a reaction to painting, which urges people to liberate photography from the shackles of academic school and promote the full play of their own characteristics.

The creative themes of this school are mostly natural scenery and social life.

Because naturalistic photography is satisfied with describing the surface truth of reality and the absolute truth of details, it ignores the excavation of the essence of reality and the refinement of surface objects. In a word, it does not pay attention to the typicality of artistic creation and artistic image, so it is essentially the vulgarization of realism. Sometimes it leads to a distortion of reality.

The famous photographers in this school are Dwieson (1856- 1930), Wilkinson (1857- 192 1), Geer (? -1906), scratch music (1856-? ), Sutcliffe (1859-1940), etc.