Lenore 19th-20th century

Joseph Keiley made this photograph called 'Lenore' sometime around the turn of the century. The image evokes a sense of loss and mourning. It's difficult to separate this aesthetic mood from the Pictorialist movement that Keiley belonged to. Pictorialism emerged in the late 19th century as a movement to establish photography as a fine art. Its practitioners rebelled against the prevailing view of photography as a purely mechanical and objective process, instead emphasizing the photographer's ability to manipulate the image and create a desired aesthetic effect. As you can see here, soft focus, darkroom manipulation, and painterly effects were all part of that. When art academies excluded photography from their ranks, photographs like this became the movement's way of staking a claim to high culture. To understand Keiley's art more deeply, we need to consider the institutional and artistic trends of his time. Researching the history of photography, the Pictorialist movement, and the debates surrounding art photography can give us insight into the social meaning of this image.