Mission Tower, Santa Cruz, N.M.

Silhouette of a church tower topped with a cross and branches of a tree.

In the 1890s, developments in photographic printmaking and the widespread influence of impressionist painting came together to lead to the development of a style called pictorialism. Photos in this style are characterized by soft focus, which gives them an atmospheric quality and sets them apart as art, and not scientific documents or news.
Thanks to the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, the memory of Colorado's place in the pictorialist movement has been preserved by the gorgeous work of the late R. Ewing Stiffler, who lived in Colorado in the early twentieth century. The last major exhibition of his work was in 1935, when his photos were presented at the Denver Art Museum.