product of an intellectual act that the French word carries." (p. 146) Other texts and Clement Greenberg's theory of medium specificity also cover this topic. The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic according to Chevrier are, firstly: They are designed and produced for the wall. summoning a confrontational experience on the part of the spectator that sharply contrasts with the habitual processes of appropriation and projection whereby photographic images are normally received and "consumed" (p. 116) By this, Chevrier notes that scale and size is obviously important if the pictures are to "hold the wall". But size has another function; it distances the viewer from the object, requiring one to stand back from the picture to take it all in. This "confrontational" experience, Fried notes, is actually quite a large break from the conventional reception of photography, which up to that point was often consumed in books or magazines. The photographic has its roots not in the theatrical , but in pictorialist photography, such as that of Alfred Stieglitz, a movement with its roots in Aestheticism, which already made heavy use of the as a non-theatrical visual art style. Pictorialism, according to Jeff Wall could be seen as an attempt by photographers to imitate painting (perhaps unsuccessfully): Pictorialist photography was dazzled by the spectacle of Western painting and attempted, to some extent, to imitate it in acts of pure composition. Lacking the means to make the surface of its pictures unpredictable and important, the first phase of Pictorialism, Stieglitz's phase, emulated the fine graphic arts, re-invented the beautiful look, set standards for gorgeousness of composition, and faded. (p. 75) However photography did have the ability to unpredictable and spontaneous. This was achieved by making photographs related to the inherent capabilities of the camera itself. And this, Wall argues, was a direct result of photojournalism, and the mass media and pop culture industries. By divesting itself of the encumbrances and advantages inherited from older art forms, reportage, or the spontaneous fleeting aspect of the photographic image pushes toward a discovery of qualities apparently intrinsic to the medium, qualities that must necessarily distinguish the medium from others and through the self-examination of which it can emerge as a modernist art on a plane with others. (pp. 76–78) The argument is that, unlike most other art forms, photography can profit from the capture of chance occurrences. Through this process – the snapshot, the