Severity 1904

Robert Demachy made this portrait, called "Severity," sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century using gum bichromate, a kind of early photographic process. The process feels almost painterly. I love the way the shadows take over in this image; the face feels like it's emerging from the darkness. You can almost feel the texture, like charcoal or soft pastels smudged across the surface, and the way the light glances off the nose and brow is gorgeous. It's very suggestive of the symbolist painters from the time, like Khnopff or Redon. There's a kind of quiet drama, a sense of mood that speaks to something beyond just a likeness. The overall effect is less about clarity and more about atmosphere, which aligns with the Pictorialist movement’s ambition to put photography on par with painting, embracing subjectivity and artistic expression over mere mechanical reproduction. It makes me think about how we use photography today and what we think of as real!