Tate Modern's 'Light and Magic' Traces Pictorialism's Global Reach

Key facts

• 'Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography' is on view at Tate Modern, London, until 21 February 2027.
• The exhibition positions pictorialism as a transcontinental movement, addressing its previously little-known impact on image-making in south-east and south Asia.
• Liu Bannong took his 1927 photograph after returning from studying linguistics in Paris, where pictorialism was pursued through artists' salons and art-photography magazines.
• Henry Peach Robinson's 1869 book 'Pictorial Effect in Photography' first theorised pictorialism, urging image-makers to follow painting's order and composition rather than merely documenting reality.
• Liu Bannong's text 'Bannong tanying' drew on traditional Chinese painting's aesthetic discourse to argue for photography as an expressive medium revealing inner emotion.
• Long Chin-San's 1955 essay 'Photography and Chinese Painting' advised 'choosing' the good parts of a photograph, emulating traditional Chinese art.
• The Photographic Societies of Bombay (1854) and Bengal (1856) conducted ethnographic studies, while the Photographic Society of India (1937) was co-founded by mill-worker Dhirajlal R Mody and the Photographic Society of Ceylon (1935) by Lionel Wendt.
• Charmaine Toh, senior curator of international art (photography) at Tate and curator of the show, says contemporary photographic art owes its place in fine art to pictorialists' efforts.