>>3842085Sharpness as an aesthetic - and I mean overall “realistic” clarity which your picture has, not the minute differences between lenses - was not the aesthetic that established photography as an art form and it wasn’t even the dominant aesthetic for another 50+ years.
The role of pictorialists was instrumental in photography being taken seriously in art circles. And it was about actually soft focus lenses, manipulations, “air brushing”, etc. .
And it never vanished completely, even in late 90s MF systems were releasing soft focus lenses (Mamiya RZ and Fuji GX680 180mm). Or even now with Leica Thambar.
Then you have all the diffusion tricks and filters, like Vaseline/pantyhose/etc. on lens. You have work like David Hamilton’s which is very strong and distinctive. Or work with practical refractive effects (crystals/prisms/wrinkled cling film/etc.) like the Bruno Arveillan’s work which is mesmerising .
Or And I n the case of milder filters they’re pretty much used all the time in cinema.
