by
Michele C.Pure Photography: The Black and White of a Fleeting Artistic Movement
Established in 1932, the Pure Photography movement boasted a palette with a maximum of two colors. Pure photography was defined as being completely free of any other artistic movement. That meant it had to be free of qualities of technique, composition, and objective. Due to its strict requirements, the possible body of work was severely limited. That's why the visual poet Geof Huth calls Pure Photography "one of the shortest artistic movements of all time." As it is such a narrow school of art, Huth was able to complete all the possible works of the genre in a single day. He explains: "A black & white photograph might look like it is made out of grays, but it is made out of bits of black organized on the surface of a white sheet, so in its purest form it is either all black or all white."
Huth's technique was simple: "The black photograph must be exposed to uncontrolled light, so I turned on the lights in the darkroom, exposed the paper & then developed the photograph. The white photograph must never be exposed to light; it is fixed so that it never changes from its white beginnings. I framed one of these photographs in a bright metal frame, but I don't know where it is anymore."
[Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]
Jeff writes:
I'd never even heard of the Pure Photography movement, but freedom from the "qualities of technique, composition, and objective" is intriguing, particularly in the context of photography. It just doesn't get much more minimalist — I especially love that strict black and white palette! And in 1932 no less!
I loved this, too: "Due to its strict requirements, the possible body of work was severely limited." Ha!
Thanks for the enlightening (and entertaining) article!
