2-732-740 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Julia Hall McCune, c. 1897. White was a pioneer of the American pictorialist vision. For more than 25 years, he helped shape the style and, by extension, the direction of 20th-century photography through his work as a practitioner, leader, teacher, and mentor. He was primarily a photographer who enjoyed posing his family and friends in intimate interiors against a window or outdoors at dawn or dusk. He enhanced his negatives soft quality by printing on platinum paper, a medium that renders the middle tones of a print with great sensitivity. In this image White posed one of his favorite models, Julia Hall McCune, a family friend and student, seemingly lost in thought beneath an arbor. The soft light diffuses her full-length pose and illuminates the quiet, meditative mood of the scene.