Around 1900 portrait photography freed itself from the dictates of painting and the latter's representational function. The photographer's dialogue with his models determined the makeup of a picture. Portraits in Germany and Austria eloquently attested to the middle-class's evolving definition of self while powerfully demonstrating the rise of photography as an independent artistic force.
The salon portrait, with its refined and elaborate composition, slowly transformed itself. A new sense of individuality and spontaneity began coming to the fore as early as the fin de siecle. Yet it was the trauma of World War I that brought about a truly undreamt-of radicalization of the human portrait: extreme close-ups, experimentation with light and shadow, and the game of ever-changing masks.