Neither Pictorialism nor Documentary Photography: The Camera's Uses and the Struggle for Self-Expression in Industrial Cities, ca.1857–1907

Abstract

Can the regional contexts of photography help us better understand the medium's uses and aesthetics? This article shows that while nineteenth-century art photographers in the capitals applied academic theories of painting in their work (a movement called Pictorialism), regional photographers in the industrial cities of Britain and France showed much less interest in Pictorialism, focusing their attention more on an array of local, commercial, and municipal activity. Regional amateurs and commercial photographers began combining formal and candid techniques in the field decades before “documentary photography” found favor among the metropolitan avant-garde. These photographers' creativity in the second half of the century flourished not in the salons or artistic circles, but in the context of town surveys, industrial commissions, and construction projects. Operators such as Augustin Boutique, James Mudd, and Samuel Coulthurst, all scarcely mentioned in the great surveys of nineteenth-century photography, saw an aesthetic potential in the industrial environment, which their metropolitan colleagues mostly scorned. Incorporating archival sources from Manchester, Salford, Lille, Douai, and Roubaix, and images from the history of industrial, commercial, and amateur photography, this article shows how regional photographers were able to express themselves and show technical mastery over the medium independently of metropolitan models.