George H. Seeley 1880-1927

Seeley was first introduced to the possibilities inherent in pictorial photography by F. Holland Day, whom he encountered while a young art student in Boston.  Thereafter, working in and around his native Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Seeley produced a body of work that met and exceeded Pictorialism’s requirements.  Like Edward Steichen, with whom he was often compared, Seeley worked extensively with different photographic processes, modifying these to suit his vision, and experimenting with different paper types and finishes. 

Although he worked in isolation from the photography center of New York City, Seeley was nonetheless courted by Stieglitz to be a member of the Photo Secession.  In the groundbreaking 1910 International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in Buffalo, Seeley was one of a select group of entrants to be represented by as many as twenty photographs.   While Seeley was a true Pictorialist, the best of his work embodies a kind of atmospheric abstraction -- very present in the positive and negative variants offered here – that presages certain elements of Modernism in photography.