Pictorialism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A school of artistic photography that emphasized using photography to mimic certain styles of contemporary painting, that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    Any artistic use of photography to imitate painting, especially using pictorial conventions. countable, uncountable

    "The black-and-white portraits and landscapes […] fall somewhere between photojournalism and pictorialism."

  3. 3
    The theory that mental imagery is visual rather than based on language-like description. countable, uncountable

Example

More examples

"The black-and-white portraits and landscapes […] fall somewhere between photojournalism and pictorialism."

Etymology

From pictorial + -ism.

Related phrases

pictorial convention

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.