Exhibit featuring 51 works by the Pictorialists––photographers who worked around 1900 and were a part of the first international movement in the history of the medium. Their mission was to prove the artistic merit of photography by strengthening its connections with the fine arts. Figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Frederick H. Evans, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier, and Clarence H. White made spectacular images influenced by current art trends, including Impressionism, Symbolism, and the Arts and Crafts movement.

This exhibition celebrates the MFA’s recent acquisition of four major works related to the Boston leader of the movement, F. Holland Day. His photograph, "The Seven Last Words" (1898), purchased in 2013, is one of the most important images of the time, and will be prominently featured. A number of significant loans from private collections will also be on view.