Toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the
early decades of the twentieth century, the pictorial tradition in American
photography was divided between the East and West Coast contingents. The hub of
activity surrounding the Photo-Secession in New York, led by Alfred Stieglitz,
initially overshadowed the efforts of the West Coast Pictorialists who were
considered less daring and polished. Eventually West Coast Pictorialism
developed its own flavor and was set apart by its magnificent landscapes and
decidedly "Western" subjects.

Arthur F. Kales was an active West Coast American
Pictorialist and a Fellow of the British Royal Photographic Society who lived
and worked in California. Between 1922 and 1936 he wrote articles on Western American
Pictorialism for the English annual, Photograms of the Year. Kales
graduated with a degree in law from the University of California at Berkeley in
1903, but had been interested in photography from a young age. He experimented
with alternative processes that produced the atmospheric, hazy effects admired
by Pictorialist photographers, and became interested in gum and platinum
printing in college. In 1920 Kales learned the bromoil process, and thereafter
produced almost exclusively bromoil transfer photographs. Kales first exhibited
at the London Salon of 1916, and continued to show his work with the Los Angeles
Camera Pictorialists, the Pictorial Photographers of America, and other camera
clubs internationally. Despite his success publishing articles and exhibiting
photographs, Kales remained an amateur photographer, in keeping with the
principles of many camera clubs who frowned on the commercial aspects of
photography. In 1928 Kales exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C., and in 1930 Pierrot Forlorn-Ted Shawn was included in
a show at the New York Camera Club.

By creating shimmering light effects and achieving
subtle gradations of silvery tones, Kales epitomizes the ethereal, atmospheric
effect popularized by the Pictorialists in his portrait of the
famous dancer and choreographer
Ted Shawn (Edwin M. Shawn, 1891-1972). In keeping with Pictorialist standards
of the idealized subject, the photograph actually portrays Shawn's
interpretation of the theatrical character, Pierrot. Derived from a stock
character of the Italian commedia dell’arte, Pierrot became tremendously
popular in the French pantomimes as a pathetic, but appealingly naive and
eternally unsuccessful suitor. The glowing figure of Pierrot emerges
from profound
darkness, an isolated mourner who dreams longingly of his unrequited love,
Columbine.