<P> Group f / 64 was a group founded by seven 20th - century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp - focused on and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western (U.S.) viewpoint . In part, they formed in opposition to the pictorialist photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century, but moreover, they wanted to promote a new modernist aesthetic that was based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects . </P> <P> The late 1920s and early 1930s were a time of substantial social and economic unrest in the United States . The United States was suffering through the Great Depression, and people were seeking some respite from their everyday hardships . The American West was seen as the base for future economic recovery because of massive public works projects like the Hoover Dam . The public sought out news and images of the West because it represented a land of hope in an otherwise bleak time . They were increasingly attracted to the work of such photographers as Ansel Adams, whose strikingly detailed photographs of the American West were seen as "pictorial testimony...of inspiration and redemptive power ." </P>

What were the aims of the f.64 group