Art

William Mortensen: A Forgotten Master of Pictorialism in Photography

Champion of a Fading Artform Amid the Rise of Modernism

23 October 20243.1k Views

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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Dorothea Lange

William Mortensen (1897-1965) was one of the most renowned photographers in America during the 1930s working mainly in Southern California as a Hollywood and studio portrait photographer.He later passed on his methods to younger generations through teaching. Mortensen’s relative obscurity today stems largely from his advocacy for Pictorialism, a movement in photography that emphasized artistic techniques like retouching, hand-worked negatives, and chemical washes to achieve a painterly quality. However, with the rise of Modernism, Pictorialism soon fell out of favor. The influential photography periodical Camera Work (1903-1917), founded by Alfred Stieglitz, became a platform where the debate over “photography as art” took place, weighing the principles of Pictorialism against Modernism. When Camera Work published the photographic work of Paul Strand in its final issue, it marked the dominance of “straight photography”—an approach that emphasized sharp, unmanipulated images, especially with the development of faster lenses, reportage photography, and compact cameras.

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As Modernism overtook Pictorialism, Mortensen remained a passionate advocate, keeping the tradition alive through exhibitions, publications, and teaching, despite being viewed as an outsider by his contemporaries. Ansel Adams, a champion of the straight photograph, even described Mortensen as “the devil” and “the anti-Christ.” Over time, photographic history largely favored Adams’ perspective, leading to Mortensen’s marginalization. For Mortensen, photography, like any art form, was a form of communication. He believed art should be clear in its message, that it communicated ideas rather than objects, and that it relied on symbolic language to convey meaning.

William Mortensen’s work occupies a fascinating, if controversial, space in the history of photography. As a champion of Pictorialism during a time when Modernism was gaining dominance, his artistic approach was often at odds with the photographic trends of his day. Mortensen’s use of heavily retouched negatives, theatrical compositions, and imaginative, sometimes grotesque subject matter, positioned him as an anomaly in an era that began to favor realism, clarity, and unmanipulated imagery. While his techniques may have seemed out of step with the emerging ethos of “straight photography,” Mortensen’s mastery of craft and his distinct vision demand closer reconsideration.

One of the most striking aspects of Mortensen’s work is his insistence on photography as an interpretive, rather than purely documentary, medium. His images are rich with symbolic content, evoking allegory, myth, and fantasy. Mortensen’s portraits, in particular, exhibit a keen sense of drama, employing carefully arranged lighting and set design to heighten emotional intensity. Rather than striving for photographic realism, he embraced the artificial, the theatrical, and the surreal, turning photography into a medium of illusion and storytelling.

However, Mortensen’s reliance on hand-worked techniques and elaborate retouching was, for many of his contemporaries, precisely the problem. Critics argued that his methods, which blurred the line between photography and painting, undermined the mechanical purity of the camera as an objective tool. Ansel Adams, a vocal critic, derided Mortensen’s work as excessive and outdated, viewing it as a distraction from the “truth” that modern photography could reveal through unaltered images.

Yet, to dismiss Mortensen as merely a relic of an earlier era would be a mistake. His commitment to craft, his exploration of psychological depth, and his willingness to challenge the boundaries of what photography could be—long before the digital manipulation we see today—make him an artist ahead of his time in some respects. Mortensen’s vision, while not universally accepted, reflects a broader understanding of photography as an art form capable of conveying ideas, emotion, and mystery, rather than merely recording reality. His legacy, often overshadowed by the rise of Modernism, is deserving of renewed appreciation for its boldness and originality.

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