Pictorialism is an international aesthetic movement that characterized photography between 1890 and 1914 approximately. It followed the spread of a new photographic process called “dry plate” or “gelatin-silver bromide” invented by Richard Leach Maddox in 1871
Various techniques were used to produce these images: important manipulations in the darkroom, special filters (including soft-focus), unusual treatments during development, use of special papers.
Pictorialism is above all opposed to the verism of the photographic technique. It does not claim to compete with painting but seeks aesthetic links with it in the claim of photography as an art