When photos looked like paintings: 27 frames by Leonard Misonne

Belgian photographer Leonard Misonne was trained as an engineer before he discovered photography. He was born in 1870 and grew up in the Belgian city of Gillies. The photographer traveled a lot in his native Europe and beyond its borders, taking pictures of landscapes and people. His works are distinguished by soft, picturesque images in the style of pictorialism — a movement in photographic art that emphasizes in photography those features that bring it closer to painting and graphics. This effect was achieved by a special printing technique using oil and bichromate.

Misonne said that the sky is a key detail of the landscape. And this philosophy can be clearly seen in his works, filled with billowing clouds, morning fog and piercing rays of the sun. Also, Misonne loved inclement weather, close to stormy, and filmed, often wandering the streets under an umbrella or struggling with powerful gusts of a winter blizzard.