Karl Struss was a member of the Photo-Secession—a dynamic group of fine-art photographers that sought to assert the artistic soul of the medium at the turn of the century under the leadership of photographer, gallerist, and publisher Alfred Stieglitz. The Photo-Secessionists built their aesthetics off traditional artistic media and pursued technical mastery of photographic processes. Photographing the island Capri, off the Sorrento Peninsula in Italy and home to Roman ruins, Struss alludes to the landscape’s classical past and depicts a subject in line with the artistic ambitions of the Pictorialist movement.