Nineteenth & early twentieth century photographs

Robert Demachy (1859-1936) was a French photographer, artist, and writer associated with Impressionistic photography (a French classification, I think) and the Linked Ring, a largely English organization with several important American members. He is especially known for his work in the gum bichromate and oil processes, which he manipulated heavily as in the above portrait. He was promoted and exhibited by Alfred Stieglitz and 16 examples of his work appeared in Stieglitz's Camera Work. Demachy claimed he was particularly influenced by the French impressionists and in 1914 he gave up photography to concentrate on drawings. He continued to exhibit his photographs, however, and was considered among France's foremost photographers for several decades.

     
Portraits

This portrait of an unknown woman was titled Severity when in was published in the January 1904 issue of Camera Work. The background has been extensively manipulated in the negative, but Demachy was not reluctant to work on the main subject as well.
     A profile always emphasizes the line of forehead, nose and chin. Demachy has made the nose more prominent by touching up the negative there; the underside of the chin, on the other hand, has been obscured either in the lighting of the subject or perhaps in the negative.