Selection of pictures and an article about Mortensen Best site
Short article about revival of interest in Mortensen
article on Metalchrome process Article about his unique color process
To put it simplistically, when photography began, many of its practioners believed that it had to resemble painting or other 19th century art forms to be legitimately considered art. Art, on the other hand, realized that the instant accuracy of the photographic image negated much of the graphic artists' craft, and reacted with Impressionism and other concepts of graphic arts that emphasized the special contribution the artist could make over and above the image of record. Through the first half of the 20th century, photo saloons were dominated by pictorialists who tried to make their photographs like paintings. In the 1950s (and it may have been earlier), Beaumont Newhall (the god king bufu of making photography a recognized art form to be cherished by museums and collectors) helped establish a coterie of photo practitioners who emphasized the realistic, un manipulated photograph, exemplified by Ansel Adam's landscapes and the erotic sensuality of anything toward which Edward Weston pointed his camera . They were pretty close to a religious movement, one to which I have always been drawn. Their mortal enemy was William Mortensen whom Ansel Adams characterized as nothing less than the antichrist. Anyone an old stick in the mud like Adams would call an antichrist can't be all bad.
Mortensen was a master of the constructed image. He began in Hollywood, and his photo illusions parallel the synthetic realities of cinema. He wrote a great deal about the theory and practice of photography up until his death in 1965, and was highly influential, but slipped into obscurity with the triumph of Adams et. al. Now he is being rediscovered.
