If in the early days of photography, the mechanical difficulties of producing even a mediocre photograph prevented the uninitiated from muddling the issue, technical innovations soon meant that anyone could, and would, make a picture. Pictorialism, then, arose at the turn of the last century as a response to the tawdry democracy of the Kodak. Meltingly soft focus, dreamlike emanations full of artifice and dripping with sensibility: Let’s see you try that with your disposable!

Adam Fuss is an unabashed Pictorialist who emphasizes the medium’s expressive qualities. His retrospective at Boston’s