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Pictorialism in Spanish Photography: ‘Forgotten’ Pioneers

Article in History of Photography · January 2015

DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2005.10441354

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1 – Much has been written concerning the
close relations between photography and
painting, beginning with by P. Henry
Emerson, in the introductory chapter to
Naturalistic Photography, London: Gilbert &
Rivington Ltd. 1889. See also Coke Van Deren,
The Painter and the Photograph, University of
New Mexico, 1964; Otto Stelzer, Kunst und
Photographie. Kontakte, Einflüsse, Wirkungen,
Munich: R. Piper & Co. 1978; V. M. Rodríguez
Meza, Fotografía y pintura 1839–1939,
Pamplona, 1990 (Doctoral thesis, Universidad
de Navarra); Dominique Baqué, La photogra-
phie plasticienne. Un art paradoxal, Paris:
Editions du Regard 1998.
2 – Joan Fontcuberta, ‘Imágenes de la Arcadia’,
pamphlet of an exhibition in the Ruiz Picasso
gallery, Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid,
February and March 1984.
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Pictorialism in Spanish
Photography: ‘Forgotten’ Pioneers
Jorge Latorre
This article examines the work of Pictorialist photographers in Spain, making
particular reference to the photographs of Jose Ortiz-Echagüe, the Count of
Ventosa, Santa María del Villa and Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (known as
Kaulak). These photographers have been largely ignored, in part because of a
restricted view among historians regarding the nature of photography, and in part
because of ideological opposition to the style engendered by the perception that it
was associated with dictatorship of General Franco. These political and aesthetic
prejudices have until now prevented a proper understanding of this exceptional
body of work in the history of Spanish photography. Pictorialism in fact
represented the avant-garde in Spain, and the fact that it was so widely accepted
for so long should be recognized as a sign of its validity and vigour.
Keywords: Pictorialism, Spanish Photography, Jose Ortiz-Echagüe (1886–1980),
Santa María del Villar (1880–1976), Antonio Cánovas del Castillo (Kaulak)
(1874–1933)
España es muy triste y muy hermosa en su paisaje. A los turistas no les agrada
mi obra porque dicen que España es muy alegre y en mis libros aparece muy
triste… tal cual es.
Spain is very sad and very beautiful in its landscape. The tourists don’t like my
work because they say that Spain is very cheerful and in my books it seems
very sad … just as it is.
Jose Ortiz-Echagüe
To speak about Pictorialism is to speak about artistic photography and,
indirectly, about the relationship between painting and photography. It has
been acknowledged that Pictorialist photographers imitated painters in the
hope of elevating the prestige of photography, giving it an aura to overcome its
mechanistic and impersonal aspects. While generally true, this statement
requires many qualifications, for this type of photography embraces widely
varying styles and techniques. Moreover, the utilization of pictorial resources in
photography is not the exclusive domain of Pictorialism, since this practice
goes back to the very origins of photography and endures to this day.1
As Joan Fontcuberta maintained in the 1980s, when detractors of the
movement criticized the Pictorialists’ works as ‘artificial’ and ‘not photo-
graphical enough’, they failed to realize that such criticism presupposed that
photography had a predetermined essence, at once fixed and immutable.2 The
Pictorialists did not share that view, because of its inherent limitations and
because the a priori nature of it would have been a hindrance by proscribing
History of Photography, Volume 29, Number 1, Spring 2005
ISSN 0308-7298 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) 04
certain modes of photographic expression. Adherence to this limited definition
of photography would have been an obstacle to expanding the expressive limits
of the photographic medium, as it was not so much a matter of discerning what
photography was but what it could be—somewhat analogous to the
questioning of Moholy-Nagy’s concept of the New Vision in the 1930s or
Otto Steinert’s Subjective Photography in the 1950s. In fact, these photographers
gave creative inspiration the main importance, something quite current in the
attitude of artists of the time, but which, in the case of photography, come
across as a novelty. In addition, they gave a value to the image in itself (picture
in English, hence the term Pictorialism) rather than to what the image is. These
are some of the imperative reasons that such photographers situated themselves
among the avant-garde of their time and opened the doors to the consideration
of photography as an art.3
In the light of these propositions, one must analyze the paradox of
Pictorialism in Spain. This stylistic current has been denigrated, or at least
ignored, until very recently, in most part as a result of being incorrectly
understood by photographers and historians of Spanish photography. These
individuals were too narrowly allied with the photographic vision of the
historic Avant-garde or with that other vision of a documentary photography,
more concerned with social and political compromises than with beauty. It is
telling in this respect that the first serious study of Spanish Pictorialism was
published in 1989 by an American scholar, S. Carl King, and, unfortunately, has
not yet been translated into Spanish.4 King pointed to a combination of historic
and aesthetic circumstances that partially explained the rejection of pictorial
photography. The inability to understand a kind of photograph that differed
from the purist image mentioned above was accentuated by the special
characteristics of Spanish art during the first quarter of the twentieth century.
The avant-garde manifested itself very late in Spain, and this in itself influenced
photography, since, with few exceptions, the modern vision was hardly
represented until the time of the Republic and soon became truncated by the
Civil War, as well as by the special conditions imposed by Spain’s post-war
isolation.
As a result, the Pictorialist movement faced hardly any opposition, and its
influence was felt longer in Spain than elsewhere. The survival of Pictorialism,
known as ‘el tardopictorialismo’ (late-Pictorialism), during the specific historic
circumstances of the dictatorship of General Franco, also provoked an
ideological opposition to the movement. King speaks of two concurrent social
reactions at the roots of this attitude. On the one hand there was ‘a sentiment
of alienation’, inherited from the aforementioned situation, and on the other
there was a ‘proletarian disdain for the bourgeois origins of Pictorialism’. As
was the case in the rest of Europe and the United States, the pioneers and best
known representatives of the movement in Spain were amateur ‘aficionados’ of
the middle and upper classes.5
It is still common to read in recent publications that the subject matter of
the Spanish Pictorialists was closely bound to a conservative ideology, proper to
the ruling classes, afraid to confront an uncertain future, in which power would
pass into the hands of the working and lower middle classes.6 Also the
characterization as ‘dilettanti’ would be taken for granted and applied to
Pictorialist photographers without distinction, for only these types, free from
financial worries and with time at their disposal, could dedicate themselves to
the complex and expensive procedures of Pictorialistic photography.7
In effect, especially among members of the Real Sociedad Fotográfica de
Madrid, these photographers were generally well-educated men of means—
aristocrats, military officers, scientists, professors. But there were also
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3 – ‘For the amateur, artistic photographer, the
key word is expression but not representation
or record’. See Peter Bunnell, ‘Pour une
photographie moderne’ in Nouvelle Histoire de
la Photographie, ed. Michel Frizot, Paris:
Bordas, 1994, 31. We should recall that it was
from the ranks of ‘pictorialismo’ that there
arose some of the great masters of contem-
porary photography, such as Stieglitz and
Steichen, the founders of the American Photo-
Secession. For this reason, Anthony Bannon
affirms that Pictorialism established the basis
for photographic exploration characteristic of
the twentieth century, whether this was by the
negation of or the extension of its principles.
Any photographic conquest that followed
could not fail to look towards Pictorialism.
Anthony Bannon, The Photopictorialists of
Buffalo, Buffalo: Media Study 1981, 29.
4 – S. C. King, The Photographic Impressionists
of Spain. A History of the Aesthetics and
Technique of pictorial Photography, Lexiston/
Queenston/Lampeter, 1989.
5 – Ibid., 109–110.
6 – See Publio López-Mondéjar, Las Fuentes de
la Memoria II, Madrid: Ministry of Culture,
1992, 31. In ‘Fotografía y Sociedad en la
España de Franco’, Las Fuentes de la Memoria
III, Barcelona: Ministry of Culture, 1996, 16,
this author affirms that the Pictorialists were
photographers anchored for the most part in a
decorative and evasive preciousness which
went very well with a regime that was trying to
hide the dramatic reality of the country
through an art —photography—to which a
ceremonial and dissembling role was ascribed.
In this sense, late Pictorialism was the
contribution of photography to autocracy just
as it had been a product of the same.
7 – The distinctions between the professional
and the ‘aficionado’ are real, but they do not
serve to distinguish between Pictorialists and
non-Pictorialists, since both types—and within
each group, all the possible grades—are
abundantly represented in Pictorialism.
8 – King, Photographic Impressionists of Spain,
17, affirms that pictorialists suffered persecu-
tion and censorship after the War, as is shown
by the Bulletin of the Agrupació Fotografica de
Catalunya, edited in Spanish from 1936.
04
9 – This is the first collection of his photo-
graphs, which appeared in Berlin under the
professional photographers from the very beginning, especially in Barcelona,
title Spanische Kopfe. This first published where a less homogeneous type of society existed than in Madrid. These
version was expanded in the Spanish version, professionals saw no incompatibility between their commercial work and the
published in 1933 by the author himself under
the title España: tipos y trajes. From 1916 to presentation of ‘artistic’ work in a competition. In time, the latter type of
1933, the prestige of Ortiz-Echagüe was being photographer would come to dominate.
consolidated abroad where he received various
prizes: in 1924 that of the Frederick and Nelson An exclusively amateur attitude is not, therefore, an attribute of Spanish
Competition, in Washington; in 1925 that of Pictorialism. Nor is the representation of an anachronistic mentality and
the American Photographic Competition in
Boston; in 1931 that of the British Empire aesthetic in opposition to the avant-garde. Pictorialism was in fact the avant-
Championship of Dublin. His individual exhi- garde in Spain, and the fact that it was so widely accepted at the time should
bitions also began. In 1928 he held one in
Turin by invitation of the Piamontés club, and
not be a cause of criticism, but, on the contrary, a sign of its great validity and
the next year in Berlin where his works had force.8
been presented and popularized in the book
mentioned above, Spanische Kopfe. See Isidoro
More serious are the misinterpretations that associate Pictorialist subjects
Coloma, La Forma Fotográfica, Málaga: with ‘Francoism’, without distinguishing between the different generations of
Colegio de Arquitectos, 1986, 205. See also photographers. This erroneous focus has affected the reception of some of the
Ortiz-Echagüe, fotografías 1903–1964, Madrid:
Tf. Editores-La Fábrica 1998. The most recent most recognized masters who continued working after the war. One example of
work on the aesthetic photography of Ortiz- this is Jose Ortiz-Echagüe. Although there are points of contact with the subject
Echagüe and his relationship to the Generation
of ’98 is Asunción Domeño, Fotografía de matter defended by many intellectuals of Franco’s traditionalist regime, it must
Ortiz-Echagüe: la técnica, estética y temática, be remembered that Ortiz-Echagüe’s earliest well-known photographs date
Pamplona: Príncipe de Viana 2000.
10 – See J. Tussell, ‘La ‘‘cuestión Zuloaga’’: el
from 1903, when his work began to appear in Photographs of the Year, and that
debate inicial’ and ‘Una pintura regeneracio- his first illustrated work—a pioneering work in the history of Spanish
nista’ en Paisaje y Figura del 98, Madrid 1997,
50–60. I dealt with this theme in the paper
photography—was published in Germany in 1929.9 As it has been studied
‘Fotografía del ‘‘98’’’, Oviedo: Twelfth recently, Ortiz-Echagüe’s work resembles a folklorist aesthetic that finds its
Congress of the CEHA, 1998, 281–292. inspiration in the vision of the writers and painters of the so-called ‘generation
11 – It was not only the traditionalist regime of
Franco that showed itself favorable to a type of of ’98’, who were more praised outside Spain than within.10 The fact that this
photography with ‘regenerationist’ roots. aesthetic was used ideologically afterwards says nothing about the artists who
During the Civil War Ortiz-Echagüe’s house
was sacked, his photographic equipment, and had developed it decades earlier.11
his work stolen; after a long search once the The denigration of Ortiz-Echagüe’s aesthetic has also been very much tied
war was over, they were found in offices of the
Libertarian Youth. This anarchist group had
to the rejection of his technique—the direct carbon print—in which this
used Ortiz-Echagüe’s photographs to illustrate photographer was an undisputed master.12 With the triumph of the modern
publications about the low income strata. See.
J. A.. Vidal-Quadras, ‘Semblanza de José Ortiz-
attitude, which perceived the photograph as a record, an aesthetic that
Echagüe’, in José Ortiz-Echagüe, fotógrafo San permitted the manipulation of the print was bound to be condemned.
Sebastian: catalog of an exhibition celebrated However, in the bulk of Ortiz-Echagüe’s work the informative aspects are much
by the Photographic Society of Guipúzcoa,
1996. These are the same photographs that more notable than those that are hidden, thus producing a masterly balance
years later were associated with an opposite between dramatized conception and documentary presentation (figures 1, 2).13
ideology. This shows quite resoundingly that
Pictorialism was foreign to partisanship and Political and aesthetic prejudice has therefore prevented a proper
ideologies and that it was susceptible to being understanding of a body of work that has no parallel in the history of
used by any ideology that wanted to make use
of it. Spanish photography.14 The case of Ortiz-Echagüe was not isolated. There were
12 – See Louis Nadeau, History and Theory of also photographers of landscapes and of regional customs and manners with
Carbon Processes. Fredericton: Atelier Luis similar outlooks, but with a sense of spontaneity, which looks forward to
Nadeau, Montreal 1982.
13 – See Asunción Domeño, Fotografía de modern photography. For instance, in 1920, the Count of Ventosa published
Ortiz-Echagüe: la técnica, estética y temática, his Viaje por España (A journey through Spain) (figures 3, 4, 5) as an early
Pamplona: Príncipe de Viana 2000.
14 – Ortiz-Echagüe’s photographs appeared in attempt at a more documentary style of photography. This was also the
Photographs of the Year from 1907 to 1959, photographic aesthetic of Santa María del Villar. Moved by a pioneering
with the exception of the war years. His work
was exhibited in 48 museums and galleries in
vocation for tourist promotion, he took lively pictures in every corner of Spain,
the United States and many expositions were including the most remote regions and villages (figure 6).15
held in his honor, such as the famous ones
celebrated at the Royal Photographic Society of
London in 1935, 1946, and 1959. In Spain
close to a quarter of a million copies of his four
Pictorial versus academic photography
books of photography have been printed …
and, in the words of King, Photographic As yet, there is no common accord among Spanish experts as to the limits and
Impressionists of Spain, 190 ‘in spite of these defining characteristics of the photographers comprising this movement. Some
credentials, his work has been systematically
ignored or denigrated by the majority of
authors trace Pictorialism back to photographic depictions which, from the late
contemporary photohistorians and he is still to 1850s, were inspired by academic painting, with its generic and illustrative
a great extent unknown outside of Spain’. scenes, late-romantic landscapes and imagery of the pre-Raphaelite type. The
15 – See Jorge Latorre, Santa María del Villar,
fotógrafo turista, Pamplona: Príncipe de Viana
principal representatives of this genre are the Englishmen, Oscar Gustave
1999. Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. In his book Pictorial Effect in

History of Photography hph52054.3d 22/11/04 17:31:21

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 Figure 1. José Ortiz-Echagüe, ‘Escopeta,
vinazo y centeno’ (Ávila), direct carbon on
Fresson paper, 1916. Fondo Fotográfico
Universidad de Navarra, Fundación
Universitaria de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Figure 2. José Ortiz-Echagüe, ‘Alcaldesa de

Zamarramala’ (Segovia), direct carbon on
Fresson paper, ca 1916, Fondo Fotográfico
Universidad de Navarra, Fundación
Universitaria de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

History of Photography hph52054.3d 22/11/04 17:31:22

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 Figure 4. Count of Ventosa, ‘La Plaza de Escalona (Extremadura)’, from
Viaje por España (A Journey through Spain), 1920, 21B, photogravure.
Fondo Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra, Fundación Universitaria de
Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Figure 3. Count of Ventosa, ‘Castilian

shepherd’, from Viaje por España (A Journey
through Spain), 1920, 11, phototype. Fondo
Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra,.
Fundación Universitaria de Navarra,
Pamplona, Spain.

Figure 5. Count of Ventosa, ‘Regreso de una

barca del Bou-Playa de Cabaña (Valencia)’,
from Viaje por España (A Journey through
Spain), 1920, 62B, photogravure. Fondo
Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra,
Fundación Universitaria de Navarra,
Pamplona, Spain.

History of Photography hph52054.3d 22/11/04 17:31:28

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Photography, published in 1869, Robinson first used the term that has given a
name to the movement.
Contributing to this view is the fact that Robinson was also linked to the
Pictorialist movement at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of
the twentieth, due to his participation as a charter member of the group known
as The Linked Ring. However, the reason that carries most weight in not
distinguishing between the aesthetic of the pioneers and the new pictorial
photography, rests in the praise that the Pictorialists directed to those they
considered the masters and pioneers in the re-vindication of an artistic status
for photography. In the case of Spain, this argument is supported by the fact
that both types of photography ran concurrently and mutually influenced one
another until well into the twentieth century.16
The most widely accepted current view uses the term Pictorialism to
designate the international photographic movement that developed between
1890 and 1910.17 For earlier types of photography with artistic pretensions,
other names more in accord with their theoretical and technical peculiarities
are employed. Thus, ‘academic photography’ would define any work that is
similar in style to the compositions of Robinson and Rejlander, the type of
photography against which Peter H. Emerson railed during his lecture of 1886,
entitled ‘Photography; a Pictorial Art’, given at the London Camera Club.18
This English photographer propounded a kind of photography interested in the
immediate visualization of the real, without any artifice or montage, very much
in line with scientific theories about human perception, current at that time,
espoused by the impressionist painters. Hence, this type of photography
preferred to call itself ‘naturalistic’.
Although Emerson in 1891 rejected his own earlier theories with his book
The Death of Naturalistic Photography, his followers would spread throughout
Europe a type of photography that adopted unconditionally the then-dominant
style of Impressionism. G. Davison is perhaps the most renowned of these.
With his famous pinhole photograph of 1890, The Onion Field, he popularized
a style throughout Europe in which the formal value of the textures
overshadowed the content of the picture. From this point on, photographers’
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Figure 6. Santa María del Villar, ‘Almadía
por el río Esca’ (Pirennees of Navarra),
bromure paper, 1916. Courtesy of the
Archivo General de Navarra, Pamplona,
Spain.
16 – See, for instance, Marie-Loup Sougez,
Historia de la Fotografía, or Publio López-
Mondéjar, Las Fuentes de la Memoria II y III,
Madrid 1996 and 1997, respectively.
17 – See Jean Claude Lemagny, and André
Rouillè, Histoire de la photographie, Paris:
Bordas 1987; Beaumont Newhall, Historia de la
Fotografía desde sus orígenes hasta nuestros días,
Barcelona: G. Gili 1983; Michael Frizot,
Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie. For the
Spanish case, See Joan Fontcuberta, Estética
Fotográfica (a selection of texts), Barcelona,
1984, King, The Photographic Impressionists of
Spain, and Cristina Zelich, El pictorialismo
1900–1936, (catalog of the exhibition held in
the hall of the Banco Herrero), Oviedo, 1998.
These are also the conclusions of the sympo-
sium held in Edinburgh in September 1992.
See Ray McKenzie, ‘Introduction: Pictorialism
and its Malcontents’, in Photography 1900,
Edinburgh: National Museums and Galleries
of Scotland 1994, 13ff. A long biography
supports this posture outside of Spain. See
Pictorial Photography in Britain, 1900–1920
(Hayward Gallery), 1978; A Photographic
Vision: pictorial Photography 1899–1923, ed.
Peter Bunnell, Salt Lake City, 1980;
Photography as Fine Art, Thames and Hudson:
London 1983, I Pittorialisti. Fotografie francesi,
1896–1930, Florence: Alinari 1989; Michel
Poivert, Le pictorialisme en France,
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: Hoêbeke 1992;
Le Salon de la Photographie: les Ècoles pictor-
ialistes en Europe et aux Etats-Unis vers 1900,
Paris: Musèe Rodin 1993.
18 – Peter H. Emerson, ‘Photography, A
pictorial Art’, The Amateur Photographer 3
(1886), 138–139.
04

19 – Rafael Areñas, ‘Fotografía pictorial’, El
Progreso Fotográfico (January 1926), 2.
20 – Juan Naranjo, La Vanguardia Fotográfica
en España, Barcelona 2000. Elisabet Insenser,
La fotografía en España en el periodo de
entreguerras, 1914–1939, Girona: Biblioteca de
la Imagen 2000.
21 – King, Photographic Impressionists of Spain,
122.
22 – Publio López-Mondéjar has done an
extensive report on the best known authors
and works of this genre, which he treats very
critically. Thus he cites as the most represen-
tative titles in this photography: allegory,
mythology, pompous and, irritatingly,
Pompier. The series Bucólicas, Místicas,
Modernistas, Fantasías, Orientales, Sensuale,
which Casas Abarca exhibited in 1907 in the
Parès gallery of Barcelona and in the Casa de
Vilches of Madrid; very famous at the time also
was a photographic re-creation of Don Quijote
de la Mancha which a member of the Sociedad
Fotográfica de Madrid, Luis Ocharán pub-
lished in 1905, fifty years after Lake Price
produced his well-known work Don Quixote in
his Study. Illustrated by another member of the
Society, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
(Kaulak), and the well-known portraitist
Christian Franzen, there appeared in 1904 the
work of the Marquis of Valdeiglesias, titled
Tres fiestas artísticas, conceived in the style of
the Tableaux Vivants of the Victorian period.
See Publio López-Mondéjar, Las Fuentes de la
Memoria I, 26.
History of Photography hph52054.3d 22/11/04 17:31:36
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preferences would be for a general diffusion of theme and for the use of an
extra-thick textured paper, as well as for complex chemical methods.
The new formalism found great acceptance with end-of-century
Modernism, which was so taken with the synthesis and interconnectedness of
the Arts. Already in the summer of 1891, Maskel was introducing these types of
images to Vienna, where, thanks to the development of the different
associations fostering the movement, they were extended to other parts of
Europe and to the United States. That same year saw the Vienna Camera Club’s
first exhibition. London’s Linked Ring Brotherhood emerged in 1892, to be
followed quickly by the Photo Club of Paris and the Belgium Association of
Photography, with personalities of such influence in Spain as Alexander
Keighley, Robert Demachy and Leonard Misonne.
Nevertheless, in Spain the acceptance of International Pictorialism came
very late. The lecture given towards the end of 1925 to the Agrupaciò
Fotografica de Catalunya, by Rafael Areñas, one of the most renowned
Barcelonan photographers of the time, is commonly mentioned as a proof of its
definitive introduction. It was in this talk, published afterwards in El Progreso
Fotográfico, that Pictorialism was presented as the truly artistic form of
photography since it permitted the expression of the individual’s talents, thus
differing from the other types of photography inherited from the nineteenth
century tradition, where the vision of the medium was a merely mechanistic
and ‘recording’ one:
Photography can be divided into two classes or types, which are: the classical
and the pictorial (or artistic). The pictorial is that which, without ignoring
those rules, brings with it some of the spirit of the artist, and in so doing,
transmits the feelings of the photographer.19
These were impressionistic ideas that had already been superseded
throughout the rest of Europe and America, and which perfectly illustrate
the absence of a true Avant-garde in Spanish photography prior to the
Republic.20 Yet, the acceptance of Pictorialism at the time as the principal
photographic style, does not rule out its much earlier existence, albeit against
the current.
As King demonstrated, the first generation of Spanish photographic artists,
arising from the Real Sociedad Fotográfica deMadrid, founded in 1899,
adopted very quickly the methods and techniques of International Pictorialism
but remained archaic in stylistic and thematic approach.21 Actually most of
these photographers were not Pictorialists but ‘academicians’.22 But the
explanation for the persistence of this vision in Spanish photography is not to
be found in the imitation of nineteenth-century photographers such as
Rejlander or Robinson, but ought to be sought in the backwardness of Spanish
art, including the painting of the Official Exhibitions—‘Salones’—which these
photographers were imitating. Thus, one can understand that the pure vision of
natural landscapes did not attract the Spanish photographers as much as those
in other countries, and that the modern schools of painting were initially
received with hostility by the most influential photographic critics, including
Kaulak.
Kaulak, whose real name was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, was the most
influential photographer and critic in the first decades of the century, and the
arrival of International Pictorialism in Spain was due to him and to the
magazine la Fotografía, which he published between 1901 and 1913.
Nevertheless, his antiquated tastes were to impede the natural development
of Pictorialism, causing Spanish photography to remain stuck in subject matter
that was not well suited to an impressionistic aesthetic, in which the formal and
conceptual aspects have as much importance as the merely representative ones.
Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) 04

After 1907, moved by his new professional dedication, Kaulak defended a
‘purist’ mentality, which went against the pictorialist global vision—attained by
‘flou’ (soft focus) and pigmentary procedures—in favor of sharpness. For this
reason, he renounced the manipulation of the photographic print and sought
in the composition of the elements, before the photographic shot, the source of
artistry, thus falling prisoner to academic subject matter (figure 7).23
The detallistas (from the Spanish detalle, meaning detail) accused the
flouistas (from the French flou, meaning soft focus) of forgetting the subject in
favor of formal textures, with the consequent loss of the documentary values
proper to photography. Although this attitude could seem close to
photographic purism as it is understood today, it was actually the contrary.
The flouistas were a minority who believed in the artistic possibilities of
photography, with its own formal values independent of reality. However, the
detallistas, far from demonstrating a modern attitude, remained prisoners of an
inhibited vision of photography, in which the image was identified with the
human vision and the lens was no more than an extension of the eye.24 In this
context, in which the detallistas were a majority, one has to interpret the
constant predictions of the decadence and death of ‘modern’ photography, a
victim of its own extravagance and presumptuousness.25 These declarations
illustrate perfectly the sense of inferiority these academic photographers had,
for whom photography was only a way of representation auxiliary to painting, a
mechanical and servile instrument in which there was no room for creativity.
Luis de Ocharán was one of the most famous of the ‘purists’, and his collection
of photographs illustrating Don Quixote was celebrated by the Real Sociedad
Fotográfica de Madrid and published in Graphos Ilustrado in 1906–1907 and
again, in 1916, in La Esfera, the most popular Spanish magazine of the time
(figure 8).26
It is notable that these critics of the so-called ‘modern photography’
extended their criticism to modernist painting, which the advanced Pictorialists
imitated.27 On occasion, Kaulak even argued for the superiority of photography
over painting, especially when this modern painting, referring to Joaquin
Sorolla, ‘came down from the heights’ and tried only to copy the ordinary,
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23 – Marie Loup Sougez claims that Kaulak’s
new profession of esthetic faith was animated
by fundamentally practical reasons:
Pictorialism was not proving viable for
photographers, who, like Kaulak himself, had
become professionals and wanted to combine
bourgeois aesthetic pretensions with commer-
cial viability. From his photographic studio on
the Calle de Alcalá, Antonio Cánovas (Kaulak),
was popularizing a type of portrait that was
very carefully done, at times dramatized, but
which eliminated the complicated and not very
marketable ‘impresiones nobles’. Marie-Loup
Sougez, Historia de la Fotografía, Madrid:
Cátedra 1994, 268.
24 – Purism in photography originated in the
third decade of the twentieth century, with the
help of the writings of photographers such as
Edward Weston and Renger-Patzsch, who
participated in the general trend of contem-
porary art in defense of creative simplicity and
the specification of the essential language of
each art form. A. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier
were its initiators in 1918, although its
precedents go back to the work of Gottfried
Lessing, in the eighteenth century. The ‘purist’
reaction that we are analyzing is related,
nevertheless, to the nineteenth-century
polemic between the partisans of a pictorial
photography—imitating the effects of paint-
ing—and the defenders of photographic detail.
This latter mentality has its origins in the essay
‘The Art of Photography’ by Francis Frith,
published in The Art Journal of London on 1
March 1859, which attacked the use of flou,
affirming that photographic technique is
perfect in itself and does not need such shoddy
assistance.
25 – See Hipo, ‘La Secta de los flouistas’ La
Fotografía 10 (January 1910).
26 – Riego, Bernardo ‘Luis de Ocharáns
photographic ‘‘Quixote’’: between the Spanish
historical Pictorial tradition and the new
cinematographic aesthetic’, Photography 1900,
69–73.
27 – ‘Inutilidad de la pintura y la fotografía
modernistas para la historia’, La Fotografía,
(April 1909), 91.
Figure 7. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
(Kaulak), ‘¿Quién supiera escribir?’ (from
the series for Las Doloras de Campoamor).
From La Fotografía, II, February 1903.
04
Figure 8. Luis de Ocharán. ‘Don Quixote’,
from La Esfera, 1916.
28 – ‘Superioridad de la fotografía sobre la
pintura en muchos casos’, La Fotografía (June
1909), 94.
29 – Gerardo Bustillo, ‘¿Flouismo?’ La
Fotografía (October 1909), 26.
30 – Ibid. We should recall that this is how the
impressionists defined their painting, and this
coincided with what was then referred to in
Spain as modern taste. See Carmen Pena,
Pintura de paisaje e ideología. La Generación del
’98, Madrid: Taurus 1983, 92–93.
31 – The intellectuals of ’98 were profoundly
interested in ‘living reality’. They detested the
rhetoric, the false tinsel of the art and literature
of the nineteenth century, the phase of self-
deception with panoramic visions of a glorious
past totally opposed to the sad realities of the
present; men who were moved above all by a
zeal for truth and simplicity, for simplification
and synthesis, a desire for style and for the
ennobling of the work of art. Enrique Lafuente
Ferrari, ‘La pintura española y la generación
del ’98’, in Arbor 11:36 (September–December
1948), 454.
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something that was within the reach of anyone and that photography did much
better than painting.28
Gerardo Bustillo is undoubtedly the most lucid theoretician of photo-
graphy previous to the definitive importation of Pictorialism. He defended
unhesitatingly the imitation of the synthetic vision of Impressionist painters.
To him we owe the conclusion of the polemics between the detallistas and the
flouistas, when he affirmed that the argument was badly put and the names
were erroneous, since the only detail that was not interesting to the flouistas was
the unnecessary. According to Bustillo:
The detallistas apply to themselves the truth in nature and accuse the flouistas
of putting the execution above the subject, when what happens in reality is
precisely the opposite … the words realism or naturalism should be
substituted for ‘flouism’. What the flouistas are seeking is the natural, not as
the natural is in itself, but as the eyes see it and as it should be in art: we see the
water and not the organic matter that it contains.29
He goes on to say that detail is necessary in a type of photography, the
purposes of which are different from the artistic, as might be the case with the
scientific or documentary (of works of art or monuments), but never in a type
of photography that seeks to reproduce, beyond the objective, ‘nature seen
through temperament’.30
In this context, one can perfectly understand the valiant defense that he
made of the Impressionist work of Sorolla and understand also that he
disagreed with the academic themes ‘of subject and composition’, then in
vogue among the majority of artist photographers in Spain. As we will see
below, these statements are not very different from those that the writers and
painters of the so-called ‘generation of ’98’ launched against academic painting
of historical and mythological themes, which abounded in the official
exhibitions or ‘Salones’ of Madrid, and in favor of a living reality which
showed a rich infinity of movement and life which was still unexplored.31
The‘ generation of ’98’
It is interesting to consider another criticism that Gerardo Bustillo made in the
article analyzed above concerning the subjects that were most popular among
the photographers of the International Pictorialist Movement, especially the
French and Italian:
Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) 04
 Could there be anything more affected, insubstantial and perverse than the
prolonged compositions of Puyo, in which the same engaging girls walk
through humid meadows in such a foolish way with their eccentric bonnets?
The figures dressed ‘en plain air’ of Le Beque, very flous of course, set up so
that the lens of the photographer catches them, aren’t they the prototype of
walking bad taste? And what can we say about the indoor scenes of the Italian
artist? About his coiffeurs, his clavichords, his crochet works? Let us cover it
up, my dear friend, let us cover it up.32
The ‘modernity’ of the Spanish Pictorialist photographers did not consist
exclusively of a ‘pictorial’ technique under Impressionists schemes, affirmed
against a common tendency favorable to detail and academic composition. It
was mainly a defence of the subject linked with the reality of the Spanish
folkloric intrahistoria (inside-history), as Unamuno used to say.
With time, this emphasis on regional customs and manners, inherited from
the influence of the generation of ’98, erupted with such force that, together
with landscapes, it ended up occupying first place among the themes of Spanish
Pictorialism.33 This is how it was seen by Kaulak in his comments on the
photographs of the first Salón Internacional, organized in 1921 by the Real
Sociedad Fotográfica, the Photographic Division of the Círculo de Bellas Artes
and the Sociedad Peñalara:
From the first glance that we cast at the Exposition with the natural and
forgivable haste of seeing it all at once, we deduced one conclusion. And that is
that in each country photography, unconsciously, aspired to follow the path
that the painters marked out for it. … Thus the great professors and
aficionados in Germany were distinguished by the force and vigor of their
compositions, by the strength of the conception and form of their pictures. In
the same way, the most artistic among the Spaniards liked to think, see and
execute their photographs in the manner of the melancholy school of modern
painters who have created the aesthetic of the ruined and the frightening. … It
was bad to select so much as they used to select in the past, refusing to paint
anything except the most attractive of humanity and of nature, exalting it. But
from that extreme we have gone to a worse one: that of selecting the most ugly
and disagreeable, even proclaiming the blasphemy that only the ugly, the
depressing and the deformed is the truth. And this latest aesthetic has wreaked
havoc among us, we Spaniards, with our southern propensity to exaggera-
tion.34
Antonio Cánovas continued to admire works ‘that smile, that please and
make life lovable’, and for this reason he praised the more academic work of
Joan Villatobá and other Catalonian photographers, who, under the influence
of ‘Noucentism’ (art of 1900 in Catalonian language), continued to represent
pleasant themes of figure and composition in Spain.35 But among the
photographers who were active in the Real Sociedad Fotográfica de Madrid, a
type of photography of anthropological document was making itself felt, which
was distinct from the dominant currents of the rest of Europe and America and
was instead linked to the traditions of Velázquez, Goya and Zuloaga. It was this
direction that the writers of the ’98 Generation defended. This is especially
notable in the photographers directly influenced by Ortiz-Echagüe—Tinoco,
Andrada and Susanna—who, like Ortiz-Echagüe himself, prolonged these
influences beyond the post-war era.36
The fact that this emphasis on Spanish regional customs and manners was
maintained for so long—they speak of an ‘accumulative generation of ’98’ in
Spain—possibly had much to do with the fact that, in its shade, Pictorialism
was prolonged as the principal photographic genre in Spain long after it had
gone out of fashion in the rest of the world.37 While the processes characteristic
of Pictorialism ceased to be used, its subject matter continued and eventually
became mixed with the new anthropological and documentary photography of
the fifties.38 This indicates clearly how profound was the esteem that the great
10
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32 – Gerardo Bustillo, ‘Mesa revuelta’, La
Fotografía (January 1910), 102.
33 – King points out that from 1921 on, once
photographic impressionism had imposed
itself, Spanish photographers were moved by
the same esthetic categories as the other
European and American photographers,
although there remained some significant
national differences, among which stands out
the enormous attention given in Spain to
landscapes and scenes of everyday life. King,
Photographic Impressionists of Spain, 151–152.
34 – Antonio Cánovas, ‘Primer Salón
Internacional de Fotografía’, Unión Fotográfica
(15 January 1921), 8.
35 – Antonio Cánovas, ‘La Exposición de
Fotografías del maestro catalán Juan Villatobá’,
Unión Fotográfica (November 1919), 4–5. Some
of the Pictorialists with the best reputations
were to perpetuate this aesthetic until the
decade of 1930, especially in Catalonia. We
might especially point out the early work of
such professionals as Josep Masana y Antoni
Campañá, or the portraitist Joan Villatobá
Figols. Even Pla Janini himself was noted for
compositions of this type such as Las Parcas of
1915, published in 1922.
36 – As Bustillo, Ortiz-Echagüe always refused
to be considered pictorialist, when this name is
used in the English meaning that was common
for the works of the most famous international
photographers. His disciples did inherit these
ideas and will prolong them to the future. For
instance, in 1931, in The Royal Society
Photography of Madrid’s bulletin, Andrada
advised the Spanish photographers to keep the
folklorist subjects of their tradition (praised by
the international critics as a powerful school)
as something representative and different from
the Avant-garde photography (Cubism,
Futurism, etc.) that had so many adepts in
France and Germany. See ‘Campeonato brit-
ánico de fotografia’, Boletín Oficial de la Real
Sociedad Fotográfica, 26, 1931.
37 – The phrase ‘Accumulative generation of
’98’ originated with Vicens Vives and most of
the specialists have identified with it. See José
Carlos Mainer, La Edad de Plata (1902–1931).
Ensayo de interpretación de un proceso cultural,
Cátedra: Madrid, 1981, 192; F. Calvo Serraller,
Del futuro al pasado. Vanguardia y tradición en
el arte español contemporáneo, Madrid: Alianza
1988, 35; Carmen Pena, ‘Proyección y perma-
nencia de un paisaje’, in Pintura de paisaje e
ideología. La Generación del ’98, Madrid: Taurus
1998. Julián Marías says in this respect that 1936
did not put an end to the epoch that began in
’98 (see ‘España ante la historia y ante sí misma
(1898–1936)’, in La Edad de Plata de la Cultura
Española (1898–1936); identidad, pensamiento y
vida. Hispanidad, Historia de España de R.
Menéndez Pidal, V. XXXIX-1, Madrid, 1993,
57).
38 – These are the conclusions of a study carried
out by Yáñez Polo and Ortíz Lara about the
subjects of late Spanish Pictorialism, also adding
that there were on many occasions, boundary line
situations that seem to be looking towards
changes in the direction of social realism, and
other tendencies. M. A. Yáñez Polo, Historia de la
Fotografía Española, 1839–1986, Seville: Sociedad
de Historia de la Fotografía Española 1986, 365–
368.
04
Figure 9. José Ortiz-Echagüe, ‘Castillo de Montearagón (Huesca)’, direct carbon on Fresson paper, 1932, Fondo Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra.
Fundación Universitaria de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Figure 10. Count of Ventosa, ‘Cañaveral (Extremadura)’, from Viaje por España (A journey through Spain), 1920, 48, phototype. Fondo Fotográfico
Universidad de Navarra, Fundación Universitaria de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

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Jorge Latorre

Pictorialists enjoyed among the new generation of young photographers up to

the seventies, when the definitive rupture with the earlier period occurred.39 39 – I have dealt with this subject in depth in
my work Santa María del Villar, fotógrafo
Both the Madrid School and the AFAL group defended a type of turista.
photography of a social character in accord with the new-realism current that
emerged in the postwar period. However, they insisted on Spanish themes, with
notes of humor, which at times verge on the grotesque.40 After the 40 – See Grupo AFAL, 1956–1991, Almería,
1991.
parenthetical period of experimental photography in accord with the
international currents of the seventies, this anthropological and popular
line—represented by Cristina Garcia Rodero, Cristobal Hara and Koldo
Chamorro—began to be praised as one of the great contributions of Spanish
photography to the international scene.41 Now it only remains to recognize the 41 – See Pere Formiguera, ‘De la Quinta a la
Cuarta con un abrazo a destiempo’ in
paternity of this bitter-sweet vision of Spanish landscape and folklore, less Fotógrafos de la Escuela de Madrid, Madrid
critical than straight documentary, the bearer of a strange love, which is the 1988. See also Joan Fontcuberta, Historia de la
heritage of Unamuno’s me duele España (My love for Spain pains me) Fotografía Española, Summa Artis, Madrid:
Espasa Calpe 2001.
(figures 9, 10). Then we will also be able to understand in their paradoxical
brightness declarations like the following, by Ortiz-Echagüe:
España es muy triste y muy hermosa en su paisaje. A los turistas no les agrada
mi obra porque dicen que España es muy alegre y en mis libros aparece muy
triste… tal cual es. […] Yo que lo puedo ver a vista de pájaro viniendo del
jardín de Francia, que fotográficamente no me interesa nada, lo he podido
comprobar en mis lentas correrías. ¡Esas provincias de Soria y Guadalajara,
Valladolid y Zamora! ¡Esos pueblos de bello nombre -Medina del Campo,
Madrigal de las Altas Torres- con mujeres que todas se llaman Angustias,
Dolores, Soledad! Con esas viejecitas negras y ese color de tierra y miel en las
casas.

Spain is very sad and very beautiful in its landscape. The tourists don’t like my
work because they say that Spain is very cheerful and in my books it seems
very sad … just as it is. I can corroborate this point every time I return from
the ‘garden’ of France, which does not interest me photographically in the
slightest …. I prefer those lost provinces of Soria, Guadalajara, Valladolid and 42 – Interview with Pedro Olave, sometime
between 1950 and 1953, inJosé Ortiz-Echagüe,
Palencia! Those villages with poetic names—Medina del Campo, Madrigal de fotógrafo, catalogue of the exhibition celebrated
las Altas Torres—with old women called Angustias, Dolores, Soledad! With in San Sevastián during September and
their sparkling black dresses and the earth and honey colours of their houses!42 October 1995

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