Straight photography

Straight photography presents subjects directly, emphasizing sharp focus, tonal detail, and the camera-made image rather than painterly effects or extensive manipulation.

Pictorialism: An artistic photography movement that used soft focus, manipulated prints, and painterly effects to evoke fine art. Straight photography defined itself against Pictorialism’s painterly techniques.
Large-format photography: Photography made with cameras using large film or plate formats, often permitting precise control of detail and perspective. Large negatives supported the crisp detail associated with many straight photographs.
Ansel Adams: An American photographer known for sharply detailed landscapes and technical control of black-and-white printing. His landscapes exemplify straight photography’s emphasis on tonal range and precise detail.
Photojournalism: The practice of reporting news through photographs, often combining images with captions and text. Photojournalism prioritizes reporting events, while straight photography names an aesthetic approach.
Photo-Secession: An American organization founded in 1902 to promote photography as a fine art, initially through Pictorialist work. Its changing artistic aims helped set the stage for a turn toward direct photographic seeing.
Zone System: A photographic exposure and development method that relates scene brightness to tonal values in the final print. It offers precise control over tonal detail without requiring painterly manipulation.
Edward Weston: An American photographer known for sharply focused studies of natural forms, nudes, and landscapes. His close studies show how direct description can make ordinary forms visually compelling.
Photomontage: An image made by combining photographic elements from multiple sources into a composite. Its constructed images depart from straight photography’s emphasis on the camera-made image.
Alfred Stieglitz: An American photographer and editor who championed photography as an art and helped shape modern photography. His career connected Pictorialism’s institutions with the rise of modernist photographic practice.
Contact printing: A photographic printing process that exposes paper directly beneath a negative, producing an image the negative’s size. Contact prints can preserve the negative’s fine detail and straightforward rendering.

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