The Origin and History of Impressionist Photography

The first person to accept the concept of Impressionism was Emerson, a British naturalist photographer mentioned earlier. Emerson put forward the theory of focus photography at that time, which once thought that the visual boundary of human beings was unclear, the middle part was clear and the edge part was blurred. In order to make the camera achieve the effect of human visual reproduction, he suggested that the photographer should not take the most clear image, but clearly show some complete details of the scene, so as to obtain a more natural effect. Although Emerson's "differential focusing" caused fierce opposition from the conservative British illustrated photography school, to Emerson's surprise, a photo can even completely lose focus on the picture, and this radical concept became the basis of later impressionist theory.

1890, George Davidson (1856- 1930), who later became the manager of Kodak co., ltd. in London, England, insisted in a lecture on "Impressionism in photography" that although sharpness and clarity are essential for some photos, they may be completely usable in other cases. He believes that the decisive factor is the photographer's artistic concept. In order to illustrate his point of view, he exhibited a classic photographic work "Onion Land" which later became the history of photography. This unfocused photo, which looks completely "impressionist", was actually taken with a pinhole on the metal sheet instead of a lens.

Davidson's approach immediately attracted the interest of a large number of young photographers. They use pinhole lenses and special soft-focus lenses to give a completely hazy impression on photography, or use diffusion filters in printing, and even begin to dramatically repair negatives or directly apply brushes to photos to achieve a hazy effect. Generally speaking, impressionist photography has created a romantic style, which is completely different from traditional photo photography.

Impressionist photography is mainly influenced by British photographer John Dudley Johnston (1868- 1955) and French photographer Robert Demachy (1859- 1936). In addition, impressionist photography has caused quite a stir in the United States. Many members of the photographic separatism mentioned later, such as Edward Steken and Alvin Langdon Cobain, held an exhibition of "New School of American Pictorial Photography" in London in 1900. Although it was also a hazy picture, unlike the British, they did not apply impressionist techniques to landscapes and portraits, but sought inspiration from daily life.

Of course, impressionist photography does not always win applause. Some critics mercilessly satirize these "schools of photographic blurred images", and even writers who sympathize with photography like Bernard Shaw admit that they don't like these new "distorted photographers" very much. In the past ten years, with the rapid change of photography concept, many impressionist photographers abandoned this style and re-explored the possibility of uncontrolled and "direct" photography, thus laying the foundation for the emergence of direct photography.