Stage Craft: Pictorialist Photography and Performance explores how Pictorialist photographers at the turn of the twentieth century transformed photography into an artistic medium. Rejecting photography’s purely documentary or commercial functions, these artists created staged scenes inspired by literature, mythology, history, and imagination. Through collaborations with models, actors, and dancers, they employed dramatic lighting, soft focus, innovative printing processes, and unconventional compositions to evoke mood, emotion, and narrative. The exhibition also examines how Pictorialism influenced early cinema and how photographers drew inspiration from the theatricality of early Hollywood.
Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr., The Dance, 1901. Photogravure. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Michael G. Wilson and the Dana and Albert R. Broccoli Charitable Trust.
Other visuals
- Karl Struss, Consolidated Edison from the Second Avenue Elevated, New York, ca. 1912, printed 1977–78. Platinum print. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by PhotoFutures in honor of Wm. Brian Little, 2001.47.5.