The term emerged in the 1880s to mean simply an unmanipulated photographic print, in opposition to the composite prints of Henry Peach Robinson or the soft-focus painterly images of some pictorialist photographers. At first, straight photography was a viable choice within pictorialism, as, for example, the work of Henry Frederick Evans. Paul Strand's 1917 characterization of his work as ‘absolute unqualified objectivity’ described a change in the meaning of the term. It came to imply a specific aesthetic typified by higher contrast, sharper focus, aversion to cropping, and emphasis on the underlying abstract geometric structure of subjects. Some photographers began to identify these formal elements as a language for translating metaphysical or spiritual dimensions into visual terms. This emphasis on the unmanipulated silver print dominated modernist photographic aesthetics into the 1970s.
— Patricia Johnston
