Pictorialism

A photographic movement called pictorial started in the late 19th Century. The purpose was for photography to imitate etching or oil painting and thus achieve legitimacy through that path rather than being thought of as 'snap shots'. Here is a good article with illustrations from the WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism Alfred Stieglitz was probably the most famous of its practitioners although he was an American and the movement started in Europe. The movement ended or was greatly reduced in influence with the pure photography of Ansel Adams and his allies who insisted that photography was a fine art in and of itself. It didn't need to imitate anything. Here's your chance to enter a photograph in the pictorial style.