Photography as a technical process to make images emerged in the early 19th century, with the forerunners of early photographic prints coming into prominence in the mid-1800s. Soon after, painters and photographers began to debate over the artistic possibilities of the new medium. These debates peaked during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the emergence of a style of photography that was simultaneously “a movement, a philosophy, an aesthetic, and a style”. This movement was called ‘pictorialism’, after pioneering British photographer and author Henry Peach Robinson’s 1869 book ‘Pictorial Effect in Photography’.

Pictorialism was defined by a distinctly personal photographic expression that emphasised the medium’s ability to create visual beauty by way of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than simply documenting reality. Drawing inspiration from the works of artists such as J.M.W. Turner, the painters of the Barbizon school, and the Impressionist painters, pictorial photographers attempted to recreate atmospheric effects in their images by manipulating focus and tonality.

Photographer Sanal Kumar aka Inkan’s photoseries ‘The Lost Romance and Dances’ for Indian-born, London-based artist and designer Harri draws heavily from pictorial aesthetics to abstract the line between fashion editorial and fine art photography. A blur of models against the breath-taking landscape of Seven Sisters chalk sea cliffs in East Sussex, England, Inkan’s images — both black and white, and in colour — are at once playful, light, and spontaneous. They remind me of the evocative works of early pictorial photographers like George Henry Seeley and Jacques Henri Lartigue, and contemporary street photographers like Olga Karlovac who use movement to create a sense of wonder and mysticism in their work.

This sense of wonder and mysticism is a recurring theme in Inkan’s work. In his personal work, the photographer shoots a lot of portraits with masked people. Using literal masks and directional light, the introverted photographer hides the faces of his subjects, reflecting on the hidden mysteries of the human face — in the way most people mask themselves, physically and emotionally. In ‘The Lost Romance and Dances’, the graphic designer-turned-photographer continues this exploration by obfuscating the models’ faces using colour, light, contrast, and blur, elevating the series from a fashion editorial to fine art.

Follow Inkan here.

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