Pictorialism is a style that was popular in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. It was part of the effort on the part of photographers to make a case the photography was an art form. Until then it had generally been regarded as pictorial documentation. Working with soft focus and other darkroom manipulations the goal was to create something "painterly" having visual affinities to work by contemporary painters, especially the Impressionists.
Pictorialist photographers found themselves in the turmoil of World War I with its soulless mechanized warfare and slaughter of millions. Many of them served in some capacity on battlefields whether as a photographer, soldier or other role. Coming away from that experience the pictorialist approach lost meaning being regarded as superficial affectation. A new visual language emerged with a greater emphasis on visual and formal clarity. Today we call that Modernism.
The question for me is whether that 100+ years of history from the point of "disillusionment" permanently rendered the pictorialist style as permanently irrelevant or at best a quaint superficial anachronism. I think it still has things to say in tone, mood and psychology even from a modern perspective. It's a rhetorically viable mode of expression. Whether you want to look and listen is up to you. I respectfully offer a few examples.
Memorial Arch, Valley Forge
Sunset in Autumn, Nelson Dewey State Park
