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| Edward Steichen, Pond, 1904 |
Above is the most expensive photograph auctioned so far, by American photographer Edward Steichen (Pond, New York City, 1904), which sold for 2.9 million in February 2006. At some point photographers deliberately made their photographs look like productions of other graphic media, most often prints.
There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white (ranging from warm brown to deep blue) and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface (from Wikipedia).
This superficial similarity to the representational quality of accepted media was a direct appeal to artistic tradition: the photograph had the look of an etching; an etching is art; so the photograph was art.
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Alfred Stieglitz, Portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1918
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Clarence White, The Watcher, 1906
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| Julia Margaret Cameron, Sadness (1864), a portrait of Ellen Terry, the American actress |
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Heinrich Künh (1907-10)
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Pierre Dubreil, L'Opera, 1909
Frederick Evans, portrait of Aubrey Beardsley, 1894 |
