F Holland Day was born in Boston in 1864. He was an American photographer and publisher who was the first to advocate photography as a fine art. His life and work have long been controversial, his photographs often focused on the nude male form, and pseudo-religious subject matter. His commitment to the advancement of fine art photography and also his interest in composition and form established Day as one of the great early American photographers. His signature soft focus technique and modernist approach to photography established him into the pictorial generation of photographers. The height of his career was his exhibition of photographs at the Royal Photographic Society in 1900. Day became disinterested in photography when platinum became unobtainable after the Russian Revolution.