Cleveland Museum of Art

Marsh Weeds

Peter Henry Emerson

Date

before 1891, published 1895

Medium

photogravure

Culture

England

Department

Photography

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Emerson’s early photographs emphasized naturalism, but his late works such as this one demonstrate influences from Japanese art, French Impressionism, and the painting and graphic art of Whistler, who was a personal acquaintance. This looser, more expressionistic, and emotional late style helped lay the groundwork for Pictorialist photography (for example, see 1980.141), the movement that succeeded in getting photography more widely accepted as a fine art. Around the time Emerson made this image, one of his most artistic, he wrote that he no longer believed photography to be an art form.

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