Pictorialist 19th century
Alvin Langdon Coburn was an American photographer and artist who was best known for his pioneering work in the field of pictorial photography. He was a member of the Photo-Secession movement, which was a group of photographers who sought to elevate photography to the status of fine art.
Coburn was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in England. He began taking photographs when he was just eight years old and later studied photography in New York City. He went on to become one of the leading photographers of his time, and his work was exhibited widely in Europe and the United States.
Coburn is perhaps best known for his innovative use of the "vortograph," a technique he developed in 1917 that involved photographing objects through a triangular arrangement of mirrors. The resulting images were highly abstract and geometric, and anticipated the work of many later artists, including the Surrealists.
In addition to his work in photography, Coburn was also an accomplished painter and printmaker. He continued to work as an artist throughout his life, and his work is now held in the collections of many major museums around the world.
Carl Christian Heinrich Kühn was an Austrian–German photographer and photography pioneer.
Heinrich Kühn is regarded one of the forefathers of fine art photography, the movement that helped photography to establish itself as an art on its own. His photographs closely resemble impressionist paintings, with their frequent use of soft lighting and focus. Kühn was part of the pictorialist photographic movement.
Kühn mainly used the gum bichromate technique, applied in several layers, and thus allowing for previously unseen color tonalities.
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.