lways dreamed of publishing and editing his own independent magazine, Camera Work. In choosing the title Stieglitz felt that he could form a growing belief in any medium. After publishing Camera Work Stieglitz became widely recognized as an international leader in the photographic world. Stieglitz and others who were making photographs of the cultured merit at the turn of the century generally termed their work pictorial rather than artistic (Norman 45). Pictorial photography meant precisely artistic photography in their minds, but the phrase was used in part because it was less threatening to an established artist. Despite this approach, pictorialists were intent upon making pictures with their cameras, by which they meant images of pleasing value. The word pictorial implied an association with pictures, a class of visual phenomenon that was largely made up of fine paintings, prints and drawings. Pictorialists worked with a narrow range of subjects, in part because they wished to downplay the importance of the subject matter. They would later flourish into painter photographers. At the turn of the century, a new class of creative individuals, called painter- photographer emerged. This group fulfilled Stieglitz' s dream for pictorial photography. Its presence provided the movement with individuals who were trained in the established arts and who legitimized the artistic claims of pictorial photography by the fact that they were willing to use the photographic medium. The very term painter photographer was ...
