Group f/64: The Photographers Behind Art Imitating Life
In 1932, in the face of the Great Depression, a group of photographers came together with a shared vision and a common philosophy. As the American public looked to industrial developments in the West to restore prosperity to a struggling nation, these photographers of the day sought a new style of imagery. Their new style, influenced by the Modernist movements changing the landscape of European art, would serve as a departure from the currently en-vogue Pictorialism. Instead, group f/64 reflected the ambition of public investment in technology with what they considered to be greater honesty and integrity than the work of their predecessors.
f/64 Formed in Opposition to Pictorialism, so What was Pictorialism?
Pictorialism was a trend that dominated photography internationally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The theoretical aim was for photography that should be considered an art form, equal to any other. In practice, this frequently meant doctoring photographs in the post-production process with manual techniques that meant the photographs more closely represented paintings or works in more traditional media. In the USA, Pictorialism was championed by Alfred Stieglitz, who published the influential quarterly photography journal, Camera Work, from 1903 – 1917.
Lot 113: Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) & Clarence White (1871-1925), a small format photograph from Camera Work, realized £3,120 via Christie’s London (May 18, 2005)
Pictorialists used a wide range of techniques in their efforts to imitate other mediums and make their work stand out. Some tell-tale signs of photographs by adherents to Pictorialism include chiaroscuro, a term more frequently applied to painting, that refers to the use of extreme contrast in an image. Photographers would often employ soft-focus lenses to imbue an image with a dream-like, magical haziness, intended to remind the viewer of the impasto brushwork of romantic and symbolist painters like Munch and Whistler.
How Did the Modern Approach of f/64 Differ?
“Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.”
—Group f/64 Manifesto, August 1932
Contrary to Pictorialism’s heavily worked images, the photographers of f/64 worked to present the camera’s view in as unbiased a way as possible. They advocated the use of aperture f/64 (the smallest aperture available on the large-format view cameras used by photographers at the time. This would provide the greatest depth of field, allowing as much as possible of the picture to be in sharp focus. This aided the group’s determination to celebrate photography’s ability to capture the world ‘as it is’, rather than disguising it with romance and brushstrokes. According to the group’s members, because the camera did not project human prejudice onto the subject like a painting, the camera was able to see the world more clearly than the human eye, and to depict it with greater honesty.
“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”
Instead of tweaking and defining in post-production, the group’s members used contact printing (a method of printmaking whereby photographic paper is placed directly in contact with the negative) rather than using an enlarger to project the negative image onto paper. They also chose glossy paper over the matte or artist paper chosen by the Pictorialists.
This new approach revolutionized photography, transforming the photographer from artist into a selector of scenes or a curator of sorts.
Lot 385: “Drink Nehi”, Van Dyke, Willard & Petersen, Rolf, realized $1,500 via Swann Auction Galleries (December 13, 2007)
Key Members of f/64
f/64 was made up of some of history’s most influential American photographers. The group was founded by Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke. The latter established a gallery in his home, 683 Brockhurst, Oakland, which was simply named 683 as a challenging echo to Stieglitz’s Pictorialist gallery, 291, in New York.
Lot 51: Ansel Adams landscape photograph, realized $56,250 via Sotheby’s New York (December 11, 2014)
The group also demonstrated a greater gender distribution than previous artistic movements, with a high proportion of women working successfully as photographers. The exhibiting photographers at 684 included Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Edward Weston, Preston Holder, and Alma Lavenson.
Although in its early days, the group’s ethos created an East Coast versus West Coast confrontation, before too long the style of the day began to reflect their approach. Even the likes of Stieglitz, who had formerly had championed pictorialism, moved over to the documentary style of f/64.
Subject Matter
The photographers of f/64 focused heavily on the landscape of the American West. In many cases, chosen subject matter was worn by weather or time, be it natural (still lifes) or unnatural (the remains of buildings). Natural forms and found objects feature heavily in the work of the members of f/64.
Lot 2036: Imogen Cunningham – Magnolia Blossom, Est: €5,000 – €7,000 via Grisebach, Berlin, Germany (December 2, 2020)
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