Photography
(1900-1920)
   Soon after photography had been born in the early 1830s, endless discussions whether photography was an art or a technique began. For some, the birth of photography foretold the end of painting, drawing, lithography, engravings and prints, but many artists maintained that a machine could never produce a work of art.

   Throughout the 19th century, photography was used for many different purposes. Photography was used for the first time for the photographic police files after the overthrow of the Paris Commune (1871). Scientists Muybridge and Marey used photography to break down movement. Painter Degas made use of photographs for his paintings. A great number of unknown photographers set up their shops and produced posed portraits, and explorers compiled albums of pictures taken in distant lands. Photography was ideally suited to recording the problems of modern life. One who contributed importantly to its rich documentary tradition was Eugene Atget.

   But photographers consistently espoused the idea that photography was an art. They shared the belief that photography was a set of physical and chemical operations in which the artist played a key part by measuring, filtering and softening matter, shade and light, and specially by choosing subjects and settings. In the 1890s in Europe and the United States, these photographers were known as pictorialists - they were retouching their works with brushes.

   In the early years of the twentieth century, the American photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz responded to this movement of pictorialists by advocating a return to a pure form of photography, with no interference other than framing the subject. The magazine Camera Work contributed to the dissemination of photographs in this school, such as the pictures of Paul Strand.

   Soon, photography embraced the pictorial codes of modern painting. The Bragaglia brothers were at the root of Futurist photodynamic, sought to capture and illustrate the life force. The Russian Constructivists opted for surprising compositions. In France, Germaine Krull worked in this vein by photographing metal constructions. The Dadaists produced photomontages made of cut-outs and collages of several photographs that could then be perfected by Man Ray. A little later, Man Ray accidentally discovered the effects of solarization. Using this technique, he made many of his most famous portraits and photographs.