{"id":1493,"date":"2026-03-17T16:41:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/negativnacestach.cz\/?p=1493"},"modified":"2026-07-23T12:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:31:06","slug":"when-did-photography-go-soft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/negativnacestach.cz\/en\/when-did-photography-go-soft\/","title":{"rendered":"When did photography go soft?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Clarence White Family in Maine \u2014 Gertrude Ka\u0308sebier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Prologue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Originally, I intended to build this article as a survey of pictorialism; once and for all to attempt to locate its birth, to split apart the already disheveled history of photography and then glue it back together more neatly. But it was starting to resemble an Excel spreadsheet and a dry historiographical dissertation far too much. So I'll take a different route and begin with a paradox: how the pursuit of technical refinement created an aesthetic of imperfection. In my previous article<\/a> I dealt more with general description and the practical side of things; here I would rather, instead of a broad introduction and skating over the surface, develop the damn why<\/em> and the hell how.<\/em> Stretch your menisci, get the vaseline ready, crack open a cold one and let's get to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might not immediately think that lenses suitable for photography existed long before the invention of photography itself. Optics and lenses had been drawing images for centuries and millennia before that, and this principle was used across fields and disciplines. If I leave aside astronomy (telescopes), naval navigation (spyglasses, sextants), science (microscopes, magnifiers), and the military (sights, periscopes), and focus on art and entertainment, we would find them in plenty of places:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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