Their goal: looking sharp

Why would a group of photographers — let alone so talented a group — feel the need to declare their devotion to depth of field and sharpness of image? Isn’t that what photography is supposed to consist of? Not according to Pictorialism, the dominant school in art photography during the first decades of the last century.

Pictorialism was the genteel tradition with a viewfinder, the intersection of spiritual high-mindedness and aesthetic propriety. If all photography is prose (which isn’t to say prosaic), then Pictorialism was prose whose authors arranged it on the page as poetry. Anne Brigman could title a photograph of a glass of water on a shelf “The Glory of the Commonplace.’’ Not every title can be both self-congratulatory, “glory,’’ and condescending, “commonplace.’’ That duality gets at the heart of Pictorialism.

A goodly chunk of “Debating Modern Photography,’’ a show that manages to be informative and intelligent without ever seeming pedantic, consists of Pictorialist work. This gives a sense of what Group f/64 was up against and where it came from. Inevitably, the f/64’ers started out as Pictorialists. That’s one reason for the steeliness of their opposition. The fiercest anti-Communists have always been former Communists; the harshest anti-clericals, lapsed Catholics.

Perhaps the best way to think of Pictorialism is as the pursuit of painterliness by other means. Photographers employ, and rely on, light. Pictorialists wanted to give it an approximation of impasto. Their pictures weren’t just gauzy, soft-focus, and self-consciously “artistic.’’ They were proudly so. If photography couldn’t be the work of brush or pen, photography’s artistic betters, at least it could look like them. William Mortensen’s “Untitled’’ and “Jascha Heifetz’’ uncannily resemble charcoal drawings. The effects are impressive, so much so that you’re aware of them as just that, effects.