"The very popularity of the medium and the ease with which the new technologies made photography accessible contributed to the rise of a pictorialist movement to counter a perception of photography as a purely mechanical medium practiced without skill. It was the goal of this progressive, or New School, movement to demonstrate the artistic possibilities of photography. Influenced by a number of other movements within the traditional arts, such as Impressionism and Symbolism, photographers in Europe and the United States arrived at a pictorialist aesthetic often characterized by soft focus, a massing of highlights and shadows, and highly manipulated printing techniques meant to demonstrate control by the photographer over his or her work and at times to mimic the appearance of traditional artistic media of painting and print-making."