Fellow member Candida Franklin sent me the following article, which I recommend and pass on to you: https://petapixel.com/2022/03/10/computational-photo-pioneer-no-such-thi...
I completely agree with the author of this article, but what I find most interesting in the debate between "pure" photography and "pictorialism" are Ansel Adams' positions on the matter. He started as a pictorialist and then went on to condemn it in his later years. However, it seems to me that Adams and others in the purist movement weren't all that "pure" themselves. It's true that they didn't go to the extremes that some of the pictorialists did in creating their art. But they did employ the full use of the photo enhancement tools available at the time: "push and pull" processing of their film and the extensive use of dodging and burning when making a print.
Yes, their goal was to produce photos that showed the subject in all its finest detail and realism (aside from the fact that a full-color subject was rendered in black and white!), but they also knew that camera and film weren't going to capture what they saw, and that they would have to work like mad in the darkroom with all the tools available to produce the look they strived for.
Gerry
