Sommertag

The Viennese photographer Heinrich Kühn was among the leading European Pictorialists at the turn of the century, remarkable for his intimate portraits and large, colorful, and painterly landscapes reminiscent of Impressionism. Kühn used gum bichromate, a pigment process that yields prints that often resemble paintings, pastels, or drawings in red chalk or charcoal. At a time when the Kodak sales slogan promised amateur snapshooters “You press the button, we do the rest,” and when photography already seemed to permeate all aspects of life, photographic artists such as Kühn sought to prove that their medium could rival the scale, beauty, and expressiveness of the traditional arts.