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<div type="front"><ab>
Camera Work
A PHOTOGRAPHIC QUARTERLY EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY
ALFRED STIEGLITZ NEW YORK
Number V MDCCCCIV</ab></div>
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[pgbrk] CAMERA WORK: AN illustrated quarterly magazine devoted
to Photography. Published and edited by Alfred Stieglitz. Associate Editors: Joseph T. Keiley, Dallett Fuguet, John Francis Strauss. Subscription for four issues, in advance Five Dollars. Price for single copy of this number at present, Three Dollars. The right to increase the price of subscription without notice is reserved. All copies are mailed at the risk of the subscriber; positively no duplicates. Registering and special packing, Fifty Cents extra. The management binds itself to no stated size or fixed number of illustrations, though subscribers may feel assured of receiving the full equivalent of their subscription. While inviting contributions upon any topic related to Photography, unavailable manuscript or photographs will not be returned unless so requested and accompanied by required return postage. Address all communications and remittances to Alfred Stieglitz, 162 Leonard Street, New York, U. S. A. Gravures in this number by The Photochrome Engraving Company, New York. Arranged and printed on the presses of Fleming & Carnrick, New York. Entered as second-class matter December 23, 1902, at the post-office at New York, N. Y., under the act of Congress of March 3, 1879. This issue, No. 5, is dated January, 1904.
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[pgbrk] ROBERT DEMACHY
I. In Brittany.
II. Street in Mentone.
III. Severity.
IV. On the Lake.
V. Contrasts.
VI. Struggle.
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[pgbrk] ROBERT DEMACHY.
€[ THE DEVELOPMENT of any movement or cause is materially influenced or brought about through the conflict of positive and negative forces, just as the development of the individual is in like manner accomplished. The development of the pictorial movement in photography was no exception to this rule. In it the negative forces have been many and powerful the world over, more than once bringing it to the verge of ruin; yet, to be entirely just, it is a question whether without those forces it would stand where it does to-day. The conflict crystallized ideas and plans that otherwise might have remained nebulous. It tempered the positive forces as a good sword is tempered for the hand of the conqueror. Yet had those positive forces been less powerful or less masterful than they were, pictorial photography could not have risen with the rapidity that it has displayed to the convincing position it now occupies. In France, as elsewhere, positive and negative forces were at work. There was probably a greater number of negative forces there than elsewhere. Paris, long considered the home of progressive art, of untrammeled literary aspiration, of such freedom of progress in all things belonging to intellectual development that license too often was confused with liberty, was in the beginning narrow and bigoted in its attitude toward pictorial photography. With its annual painters’ salon, its many art exhibitions, and its countless studios, it was intolerant with the academic pride of brush and pencil, and it could not bring itself to believe that with the camera any expression could be given to original pictorial conception. It was blind to the fact that in the hands of the artist the photographic processes were pliant tools for the production of individual ideas. Even to-day Paris, as represented by certain of its academic art cliques, is narrow and bigoted toward this movement. Because it did not know it would not admit the possibility of believing or knowing. While other centers of thought have thrown off the trammels of convention and recognize possibilities, Paris is still half asleep. But France, and especially Paris — dainty, beauty-loving, sunny Paris — could never remain asleep to anything truly related to art, and already there are signs of the splendid awakening soon to come. It was simply another phase of the old, old story of the staid and ancient contending for mastery with the progressive and new—custom blocking process. Other countries whose art-traditions were less strong were not dominated by prevalent opinion as was France. France, in consequence, whose name has ever been associated with art and pictorial matters, boasts of very few pictorial photographers. Yet among these few there stands out one whose name will ever rank among the most powerful and successful of the leaders and pioneers of the pictorial movement — Robert Demachy. It is all the more to his credit that despite the narrow attitude of the art-leaders of France, despite the opposition to the demand for serious recognition of pictorial photography and the sneers and ridicule showered upon its pretentions, he nevertheless preserved and helped so materially to place it upon the pedestal upon which it stands
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[pgbrk] to-day. In him, as in all the photographic workers, both positive and negative forces were at work. Those familiar with his productions can trace the conflict in them. The positive forces were the more powerful and his artistic individuality, as expressed in the creations of his camera, has developed and expanded till it has given us some of the finest work that the photo-pictorial world possesses to-day. Easily it towers over all the work of France; naturally it takes its place with the foremost work of the world. No serious student can afford to neglect its careful study. The historian of pictorial photography can not pass it over if he be conscientious, but must accord it considerable place in his annals. And the art-lover in general, the man who takes a real interest in the development of the beautiful, will find himself amply repaid for the time he may give to it. Not only has Robert Demachy, almost unaided, won for France a foremost place in the pictorial photographic world, but to that photographic world he has given, perhaps, its most pliable and responsive medium for the expression of its feelings and ideas—the gum process. While he is not the inventor or discoverer of the use of the gum-bichromate for photographic printing purposes, he is indisputably the originator of its present use. Taking up an almost forgotten process, his knowledge and genius pointed out its possibilities, and he it was who by his experiments and results blazed out that photographic trail along which so many have followed, at first like Indians, single file, to-day in broad and ever-extending ranks, like a modern army. A man of independence and culture, speaking and writing English with the fluency of his native tongue, in each language he has written articles and criticisms that have helped materially to shape the course of photographic progress; ever alert to the interest of pictorial photography, diplomatic, genial, vigorous, Robert Demachy is justly one of the greatest leaders and most popular men in the pictorial world. Those who differ from him, as well as those who agree, recognize entirely that the photographic world owes him a great debt, and it was with approving gratification and a sense of personal pleasure that they lately learned that he had recently been honored with membership in that distinguished association, the Legion of Honor. The honor is well earned, and it is sincerely hoped that he upon whom it was conferred will live long to enjoy it and still further to enrich the pictorial photographic treasure-house with greater and more splendid productions.
Joseph T. Keiley.
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[pgbrk] WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
“A recipe for the indefinable quality that distinguishes the true artist is not supplied in the text-books of the State.”—George Egerton.
C| THE WHITE chrysanthemum is my favorite flower. There are other flowers, I grant, perhaps more beautiful, which I can not help admiring, but the white chrysanthemum somehow appeals to me more than any other flower. Why? That is more than I can tell. The unconscious movements of our soul activity can not be turned into sodden prose. What would be the use of having a favorite flower if one could give any reason for liking it? It merely reveals that part of our personality, not to be logically explained, which rises within us like the reminiscences of some former soul existence. There are colors and certain sounds and odors which affect me similarly. Whenever I gaze at a white chrysanthemum, my mind becomes conscious of something which concerns my life, and my life alone; something which I would like to express in my art, but which I shall never be able to realize, at least not in the vague and, at the same time, convincing manner the flower conveys it to me. I am also fond of displaying it occasionally in my buttonhole; not for effect, however, but simply because I want other people to know who I am; for those human beings, who are sensitive to the charms of the chrysanthemum, must hail from the same country in which my soul abides, and I should like to meet them. I shouldn’t have much to say to them — souls are not talkative—but we should make curtesies and hand the white chrysanthemums to one another.
Whistler was busy all his life painting just such white chrysanthemums. You smile? Well, I think I can persuade you to accept my point of view. C| You are probably aware that Whistler was opposed to realism. The realists endorse every faithful reproduction of facts. Also, Whistler believed all objects beautiful, but only under certain conditions, at certain favored moments. It is only at long intervals and on rare occasions that nature and human life reveal their highest beauty. It was Whistler’s life-long endeavor to fix such supreme and happy moments, the white chrysanthemums of his esthetic creed, upon his canvases. Have you never seen a country lass and thought: she should be dressed up as a page — her legs have such a lyrical twist, as George Meredith would say—she should stand on the steps of a throne, and the hall should be illumined with a thousand candles? Have you never met a New England girl and thought that she was ill-suited to her present surroundings, that she would look well only standing on the porch of some old Colonial mansion, in the evening, when odors of the pelargoniums and gladioluses begin to fill the garden? Have you not noticed that a bunch of cut flowers which looks beautiful in one vase may became ugly in another ? And how often has it not happened to all of us that we were startled by a sudden revelation of beauty in a person, whom we have known for years and who has looked rather commonplace to us ? Suddenly, through some expression of grief or joy, or merely through a passing light
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[pgbrk] or shadow, all the hidden beauty bursts to the surface and surprises us with its fugitive charms. Whistler’s “Yellow Buskin,” “At the Piano,” “ Battersea Bridge,” “ The Ocean,” are painted in that way. Could you imagine his Yellow Buskin Lady in any other way than buttoning her gloves, glancing back for a last time over her shoulder, as she is walking away from you into gray distances? That peculiar turn of her body reveals the quintessence of her beauty. And that is the reason why Whistler has painted her in that attitude. Thus every object has its moment of supreme beauty. But in life these moments are as fugitive as the fractions of a second. Through art alone they can become permanent and a lasting enjoyment.
The ancient Greek believed in an ideal standard of beauty to which the whole universe had to conform. The modern artist, on the other hand, sees beauty only in such moments as are entirely individual to the forms and conditions of life he desires to portray. And as it pains him that his conception of beauty will die with him, he becomes an artist through the very endeavor of preserving at least a few fragments of it for his fellow-men. With Whistler this conception of beauty was largely a sense for color, the realization of some dream in black and silvery gray, in pale gold or greenish blues. Color was to him the island in the desert which he had to seek, unable to rest until he had found it. He saw life in color visions and his subjects were merely means to express them. In his “ Lady Archibald Campbell,” he cared more for the black and gray color than for the fair sitter. The figure is, so as to speak, invented in the character of the color arrangement. Whistler once said, he would like best to paint for an audience that could dispense with the representation of objects and figures, with all pictorial actualities, and be satisfied solely with the music of color.
C| And why should we not profit by his lesson, and learn to look at pictures as we look at the flush of the evening sky, at a passing cloud, at the vision of a beautiful woman, or at a white chrysanthemum ?
Sadakichi Hartmann.
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<div type="poetry"><ab>
CREATION.
From life created doth creation come.
The quick beget the quick; love springs from love.
So art from art renews its vital form;
Passes but does not pass; brings flower and seed,
Then flower again ; changes, but never ends.
Dallett Fuguet.
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<div type="articles"><ab>
[pgbrk] ON THE VANITY OF APPRECIATION.
€| NEARLY EVERY art-worker has occasion to complain about lack of appreciation. “Genuine appreciation—i. e., the capacity for poetic insight into another man’s work—amounts almost to genius.” And that is the reason why it is so rarely met with. It is almost nonexistent, and not merely because we live in a mercenary age in the most mercenary country of the world. The evil roots deeper.
C[| Of whom can the artist expect appreciation ? Of the profession ? Many artists seem to be of that opinion. They believe that a painting can be appreciated only by painters, and that it is always the profession that puts the first stamp of approval on a man’s work. The latter is true, as the artists—even though a feeling of their own possible superiority may at all times be rankling in their breasts — can appreciate the technical accomplishments, which always remain a terra incognita to the laymen. But the painter, as a rule, is taken up so much by his own work, and narrowed to his own school and line of thought, that he finds it extremely difficult to contemplate another man’s work with absolute liberality and impartiality. The more individual he is, the less can he escape his ego, as another man’s convictions can never mean to him as much as his own.
Equally unreliable is the practice of self-criticism. Of course, we know whether we have really put our very best into a work or not. But strange, our latest work always seems the most important to us. And often years have to elapse before the mist of self-delusion, obscuring our mental vision even to the beauties of our own creations, is finally dissolved. No, we can not rely on ourselves, no matter how anxious we may be to gain the just valuation of our merits we all are craving for. It is, after all, the public whose approbation we most care for, although we realize at the very start that it recognizes only the value of precedent, that it is always biased and absolutely incapable of accurate perception and of the independent estimation of a work of art. It is the everlasting tragedy of the artist that, in order to keep his genius from starvation, he is forced to beg for every mite of praise, with doglike servility, from the very public which he despises beyond expression.
€J The public finds gratification only in the workmanship as a whole, apart from any consciousness of the actual skill displayed. And therefore only the art and poetry which have become an organic part of our life and thought, the so-called classics, are readily understood. Innovations of any kind are generally condemned, simply because people are not used to them. The general public objects to artists who do not conform to the usual and customary forms. It lacks absolutely the gift of discernment, and will take no pains to enter into the significance of works which treat new themes, or old themes in a new and startling manner. It finds unusual action of the mind painful, and far from ever blaming itself, the public simply declares that there is nothing in such artists, and either abuses them or treats them with indifference.
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[pgbrk] There are, overmore, in every branch of art men and women who, because they are utterly devoid of genius, avenge themselves by making a practice of their mediocrity at the public expense. This clan of parasites composed of the average critics, teachers, connoisseurs, of the vulgar middlemen and boastful art-promoters, makes it its trade to submit from generation to generation, theoretically or mechanically, certain fixed laws of the beautiful, to convert nature into a theme of scholastic babble, and to lay down accurate rules, as one might set rules for measuring pieces of silk or mending shoes. In this way the chain of masters and disciples extends back into the remotest centuries; and this interminable series of people, repeating and imitating one another through ages, we term tradition. It is infinitely respected, this tradition. It has its schools, its organs, its regular administration, and the entire social organization does duty in its service, watching sharply over its continuance, recompensing it, and guarding it from any possible accident that might break the remarkable chain.
IJ It is the tyranny of conventional and prescribed estimates in artistic matters which stands father to so many of the shams, confusing and injuring honest and healthy appreciation. Honesty is the beginning of all pleasure in art and literature as in life, and the only fruitful method of studying masterpieces is to judge them by what they do for us. Art is no exact science, and there is always room for a robust personal opinion. If it should happen that some lover of art had no use for Whistler’s nocturnes, Monet’s fragments of nature, or Rodin’s melodies in marble or bronze, while it isn’t at all necessary for him to cry the fact from the house-top, it is necessary for his own salvation to remain firm and not to feign admiration for something he does not appreciate. It implies no idiocy to take that attitude, but only a different idiosyncrasy, education, environment, taste from that of the lovers of the above-named masters. He should be broad-minded enough to allow that they may be right, but not weak-minded enough to make an effort to agree with them. As Stendhal said, all that the layman in the enjoyment of art requires is to dare to feel for himself.
C| The critics could do much to create what is called a public opinion. They should possess “the leisure to be wise.” But as it is, the majority of critics write from hurried glances and in the abundance of their ignorance, and should not be honored with any consideration at all. Such criticism reveals nothing so much as the incapacity of the writer and judges him more than the subject of his criticism. Even great men often miss the mark. The unfavorable comments of Voltaire and Goethe on the “Divine Comedy” of Dante showed that neither the philosopher of Ferney nor the sage of Weimar was able to bring his mind into sympathy with the grand epic of smoke and flames and human suffering. Heine and Borne in turn were incompetent to appreciate Goethe’s “Faust.” Criticism nearly always consists of blaming the artist because his idea is not clearly expressed. It forgets that clearness is always relative and dependent on certain conditions. When the subject is profound and demands close reasoning, subtlety of sentiment, and delicacy of expression, it is impertinent for the critic to say
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[pgbrk] it is not clear. If the artist has failed to express his idea in the best possible way, he may do well to heed the judgment of competent critics. But the lack of clearness need not be entirely his fault. His creation may be luminous and only the critic opaque. The artist has a right to demand some labor of mind and heart from his admirers. He does not profess to work for those to whom it is painful to “gird up the loins of their minds.” €] The condemnation of critics and the indifference of the public should not disturb the art-worker in the least. So long as he feels sure that they merely misapprehend his efforts, his attitude should be one of perfect indifference. No artist has a right to work with the standard of even his best critics in his conscious view, for the essence of art must ever lie in its spontaneity. The true artist far removed from the noise, the coteries, the sham estheticism and hideous jealousies of the profession knows that the eternal spirit of art is of more significance than any customary or momentary form. He must calmly abide his time, till he finds his audience “fit though few,” till the masses learn the secret of his aim and purpose, and the sneering amateurs of yesterday are honored by the possession of one of his pictures and willing to lay down gold for it instead of coppers. Millet and our George Inness received recognition only “at the eleventh hour,” but calmly and successfully bore silence, neglect, blame, misunderstanding and the frequent laughter of fools.
Yet as “the time to wait is long,” it is not astonishing that some artists, who can not bring their life into harmony with such frugality and martyrdom, should try to force the appreciation of the public by indulging in the art of self-advertisement and assuming a pose. Whistler probably owes his world-wide reputation more to The Gentle Art of Making Enemies than to his Leyland House and Luxembourg triumphs. He had the personality to back his eccentricities and his methods were pardonable, perhaps even recommendable from a practical point of view.
We all are human, and praise and appreciation are welcome to all of us, but this weakness does not hinder us from realizing that Browning’s “Pictor Ignotus” is, after all, a more ideal type of artist than that represented by the cynic of the rue de Bac. The true artist — should wealth and fame not come his way — has ever preferred to worship his lofty and often narrow ideals in poverty and obscurity, rather than to waste his genius on the vain world, which has but little in common with his dreams and aspirations.
Sadakichi Hartmann.
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[pgbrk] THROUGH GATES OF HORN.
AND, LO, I dreamed a dream. And among those present were a primordial protoplasmic cell, and an amoeba, and a pterodactyl, and a primitive man, and an untutored savage, and a thoughtful citizen, and an art critic.
And, behold, there spake a voice in my dream. And it said, “ What is Art?”
I| And the primordial protoplasmic cell answered, “Art is life.” And they all smiled.
And the amoeba answered, “Art is motion.” And they all smiled but the cell. And the cell said, “What is motion?”
And the pterodactyl answered, “Art is strength.” And the cell and the amoeba looked puzzled. But the rest smiled.
And the primitive man answered, “Art is cunning.” And, behold, I looked, and the primordial protoplasmic cell and the amoeba had gone to sleep. Aud the pterodactyl sneered. But the rest smiled.
€| And the untutored savage answered, “Art is the consciousness of mystery.”
C| And the thoughtful citizen answered, “Art is the interpretation of the ideal.”
And the art critic, whose patience was nearly exhausted, answered, “What shall I say? How convey to the vulgus that it is not in the nuances of the plastic that virtuosity inheres? That neither the quality of surface nor the tenderness of texture is all there is of symbolism? Nay, that the mysticism of tonal juxtaposition, the alternating allegro and andante of unchromatic color, the very contrasting masses of motif and technique themselves, neither singly nor in their sum, compose even the half-tone of feeling? The mere statement is rococo. And yet, alas, the renaissance of chiaroscuro is here the basic medium of the obvious. Can I hope, in fine, by posing an esoteric impressionism against the background of this Philistine atmosphere, to give perspective to my conception of the sensuous manifestation of that synthesis of the ego and the non-ego which alone is Art?”
€J And I awoke. And behold, I had dreamed a blasphemy!
J. B. Kerfoot.
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[pgbrk] ODDS AND ENDS.
ARISTOCRACY.
I| THE PRESENCE of an aristocracy, in the radical sense of the word, when it is a natural creation and not a hereditarily acquired nonentity, is a very comforting one: for, to each of us who strives earnestly to achieve something definite, and to whom one of the most pregnant sayings of modern wisdom is Carlyle’s “ Produce, in God’s name, man, produce! ” there is ever present the thought, the belief, that the real aristocrat is he who produces something great, and the more final of its kind it may be, the higher up in the ’ocracy is he.
It is your genuine worker attaining genuine success who is, or should be recognized as the real aristocrat; they who work but achieve nothing true, or good, or new, but who always keep on the low level of the mediocre, they are the bourgeois, the great middle class, the average, “the usual thing.”
How interesting it is to prove and work this out in the field of art, even in our own, as yet juvenile department of photographic art! There will always appear certain works, that, on sight even, are acclaimed as good; they carry a sense of distinction; one realizes the presence of a compelling genius behind; the thing is high-born, finely bred; one feels secure and full of joy in its presence, and lingers to complete that joy by a patient analysis that shall deepen and fix it. There is an absence of that dubiety, hesitancy, reluctance of accepting, that a feebly felt and imperfectly worked-out impression, however good in its inception, always conveys, and annoys, and disappoints one with.
€jj This it is to have an aristocracy in art, and how terribly ambitious it makes one, if, by our much striving, we may but some day come to be reckoned as members of it! And yet, there are only too many to whom it must not only be forever impossible to be acclaimed as one of that favored band, but to whom even its ways and works and desires are also doomed to be from the beginning a sealed vision, a land of unknown desire. How grateful should not we be who instinctively feel that the good of this land is ours, that we may and do enter in and enjoy, even if we may not share in the highest order of creative ability; to appreciate and enjoy to the full is almost as large a measure of bliss, perhaps more, as one is freer from the obsession that mere making compels! How much wiser is the good old text, “To him that hath shall be given,” than the proverb, “Much would have more and so lost all,” which, of course, should run, “Much would have more and so got all,” for it is surely the measure of wanting to compass a thing that implies and makes possible its achievement.
I was lately enjoying some studies by Robert Demachy, and again, as always with this master’s works, I had the delightful sense of their being right; conscious that, after the first joyful glance, a further study and analysis would but make it the more certain that they were, essentially and
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[pgbrk] inherently, good aristocrats all of them, things that would last, defy mere fashion.
IJ It is comforting to feel that our art will even now yield a few good works already sealed as of permanent value.
GROWTH IN POWER OF OBSERVATION.
C| How instructive a check on one’s conceit it is to find that some other worker has seen and made a finer thing from a subject that we ourselves had dealt exhaustively — or at least exhaustingly — with! I have more than once had that unpleasant jolt of the artistic sensibilities at sight of a something I ought to have seen, but had not; a picture made, a composition worked out, an effect patiently tracked, that, as soon as seen thus recorded by some one else, one recognized should have been our special property.
C]J Every fresh building that I purpose studying suggests to me at first, as does, indeed, every fresh place where one seeks to study nature, that here at least is but little to do—one will soon get done here. And yet how inevitable is the sequel after a day or so! The possibilities grow until after a few weeks the melancholy as well as rejoiceful feeling arises that one will never get done here — the chances of stuff are so endless that to record them all and properly is hopeless. It is then that one’s collapse is most painful, if some one else comes along and sees something fresher and richer than we, for all study, have done.
(J It is well, therefore, not to fatigue one’s self by too long a bout of work in one place or building. A change of work is very beneficial to mind and eye alike. On my last visit to York Minster, after a week’s hard work, I had a free morning for the last one; cameras were packed up so that it was no good thinking of them; and I was for once free to wander and enjoy without attempting to "do ” any one of the good things I might see. I was free from that obsession a couple of cameras, large and small, at work in different parts, implies, and which prevents the quite free-minded study of further effects to be recorded. I never enjoyed the building more, and perhaps in consequence of that enjoyment I observed over a dozen fine things which I determined to make mine at my next visit. These I noted, of course, for I could not free myself from the habit of note-book and pencil. €j| All this suggests that a best and first rule would be to devote the first few days in a cathedral to a serious, leisurely study, free from that preoccupation the knowledge of a camera being at work in a distant part always imposes on one, and so preventing the quite free and unshackled power of fresh observation. But of course this is after all but a mere counsel of perfection, as I for one shall certainly never get advanced enough to put in force so self-denying a restriction. For, even on a first visit, there will be certain to appear so many entrancing things that simply must be got down in case they never happen again, that to propose an empty-handed walk round instead is too cold-blooded and impossible to endure.
C| One has often to wait so long for a second happening of an effect due to an atmospheric condition that will not recur when wanted, that not to try
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[pgbrk] for it then and there is simply suicidal. Though the sun, if it shines at all, will infallibly peer through that particular window at that particular time of the day, and reproduce that particular effect, how is one to be sure he will be gracious enough to do so with just that right amount of intensity and continuity that will again give us the effect that so ravishes us now ? Set up the camera forthwith, therefore, and do your best, let who will wait, and welcome!
On two occasions have I lost forever records of fine things in this way, by the over-persuasion of a companion that “it will do to-morrow”; but that to-morrow never comes; on no succeeding day of the visit did it happen again, and I at least am the poorer, though a plate the richer maybe. On two other occasions that I can recall did I have to wait over a week for a special effect to recur, as I was not satisfied on development with my first exposure. But then how great is one’s satisfaction when at last one does get what one wants! There is more joy over that one lamb than over ninety and nine of the other sort.
PORTRAITURE.
It is a continual question with me when reviewing my numerous failures in portraiture, and when gloating over my few successes, that, granted that the failures are not technical ones, are they not in every other sense more valuable or worthy than a failure — if a failure, even relatively, can ever have a value — in a painted portrait? This latter, if bad, if a failure, means that it is false, not a likeness, and therefore of no value in any way; unless possibly it be a masterpiece of paint, of color, and thus of value independent of the likeness. But it is hardly likely that an artist capable of making a masterpiece in paint should be so deficient as to altogether fail in likeness-recording.
IJ The failures in photographic portraiture, however deficient they may be in pleasantness, accustomedness, acceptance of likeness, are still indubitable likenesses and therefore of some value. But to make our successes (and how numerous they actually and relatively are!) should be a source of much satisfaction to us; it will surely come to pass some day that photographic portraiture at its proper greatness will be valued equally with the best of painted portraits, though for different reasons. With the latter at their finest we are under a double spell, that of a true, spiritual, and physical likeness, and the glory of fine paint in addition. And of these it is the latter that is the crowning joy, the more abiding and possessing power, as most of us, not knowing the subjects in the flesh, have to take the likeness on trust.
€J But taken on their most serious side, that of veritable likeness, the photographic portrait scores heavily, is essentially more valuable. Here is no question of the doubtful translation of a man’s characteristic presentment by and through an artist who, however sympathetic, works through a possibly far less efficient and answering medium; or who, having a very complete control over his tools, lacks the vision to elicit the portrait that shall be
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[pgbrk] really like. But here we may have the same sympathetic appreciation of characterization, and the result be controlled by an equally trained intelligence, but expressed by and through tools that are rigidly accurate, and so independent of the physical condition of their user, that, given the idea is right that they are set to record, it is infallibly done.
C| The great successes in painted portraits are due to the rare alliance of great vision, sympathetic appreciation, alertness in seizing upon the characteristic elements to best reveal the sitter, with the genius of great draughtsmanship and painting. If we can get these same powers of observation, etc., in the photographic artist, who has also the full control of the tools at his command in lighting, lenses, etc., the portraiture resulting will, I take it, be fully as valuable, from the point of view of the personality of the sitter, which in the case of our great men and women is what we chiefly want and what we want to pass on to posterity.
C| Of course, this entails a like seriousness of point of view on the part of the sitter: he must be content to give the required number of patient sittings, even to the undergoing of say two or more dozen exposures; and also, it may be added, to value the artistic result from the cash point of view, on the same scale he willingly extends to the painter. The latter easily persuades his sitter to the painful ordeal of many hours of uncomfortable sittings, to the extent in some cases of thirty or forty even; and he exacts, and gets cheerfully paid, a huge fee for what may even then be but dubious as a likeness, however excellent as a piece of painting—which, after all, to the sitter, or friends, or relations, is not the first consideration. It is too often the fashion to scoff at the worker who proposes so many photographic exposures being made; our art is thought to be so facile that the merest minute or so is supposed to suffice where hours of sitting would not be grudged to a painter. But to the serious artist it is not so, and it may well be that many a dozen exposures may be demanded ere the result is gained that is so vital a presentment as to be impossible of attainment by any other method.
CJ This subject of portrait-making reminds me that you have, or lately did have, a very accomplished artist from our shores visiting your country for the purpose of making etched portraits after the manner of Holbein. I allude to Mr. Strang, a master in fine, pure, strong, etched line, and more than occasionally a master in seizing a likeness, though to my thinking there is always more of the artist evident than the sitter; a defect inseparable, I suppose, from any really strong genius in this work. Take Holbein himself, Mr. Strang’s exemplar in these works of his; we always have the inescapable feeling that it is Holbein’s work and not another man’s, and we have of course no clue as to the quality of likeness he achieved, convinced though we may rightly feel that these are the veritable people themselves. The longer one studies these immortal works the more strongly one feels that as likenesses they must be absolute. Of course it is understood that they must be studied in a photographic facsimile reproduction (here again does condemned photography score heavily) when we
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[pgbrk] can not get to Windsor to rejoice in the originals; and certainly we must have nothing to do with Bartolozzi’s watering down of them into the pretty-pretty.
C| This enterprise of Mr. Strang’s, in which I venture to wish him the completest artistic success he can desire, suggests how fine a thing it would be if we photographers could be making a serious effort toward the founding of a collection of really great portraits of our great contemporaries. The artists are with us who could begin this important work, though doubtless few in number; but the means are unfortunately lacking, as well as the belief on the part of the sitters that this is their best chance of being sent effectively down to posterity “ in their habit as they lived.” Present fees will not do it, as no one will pay enough just yet to properly reimburse an artist of the requisite capability to give up sufficient time to its accomplishment. We have not at present a multi-millionaire, with a craze for photographic art, sufficiently mad to be tempted to endow a studio for this noble purpose! Yet how good it would be; it might even be made a National work, did we but see its importance.
C| What more interesting collection have we in London, for instance, than our National Portrait Gallery? Yet who does not go through it but with fear and doubt as to the reality of the likenesses? Even our greatest contemporary in this work, G. F. Watts, does not achieve always, indeed very seldom, that instant sense of physical as well as spiritual likeness that appeals as necessarily true. And that is why I air my anxiety to see the good work begun of a collection of great photographic portraits, to have equal honor in a National collection with the painted portraits; not necessarily side by side — that might be invidious — but to have equal value as records.
A DREAM.
€| I lately dreamt that I had the overseeing of a huge National Photographic Record of current life, buildings, people, types, etc., as a Department of History-making for Posterity. I had such autocratic authority that I was able to deal at will with persons, or buildings, or even with street life, by having the police to stop all traffic at the point and at the moment of my required picture. In buildings, even in our conservative cathedrals, I had the Governmental right to remove benches, pews, chairs, wherever I listed; to erect a scaffold where I chose, for the record of a bit of precious detail otherwise invisible. I had also the right to call on any person, public or private, to sit for his portrait, either as a celebrity or as a type of the current life. My small army of workers were as enthusiastic as myself, and adequately trained; and my only sorrow was that I could not live to witness the satisfaction of posterity over this veritable history-making. Imagine such a series of Elizabethan or Tudor times, to go no further back.
It is not the current but the past that delights and charms us most; we have the present, like the poor, always and too much with us; it is only the exceptionally enthusiastic student who sees in it what will have the like interest and value for posterity that the past has now for us.
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[pgbrk] CJ Yet a more enthralling piece of work can hardly be imagined, or a more valuable record be made, if done from the point of view of art as well as technical efficiency. The mere collection of mere photographs would be too depressing a burden to inflict on poor posterity; we might in that case alter Sir Boyle Roche’s apostrophe, and say, “What has posterity done that it should suffer this ? ”
CJ But it is all but an empty dream, and one that will end in this mere adumbration of it.
Frederick H. Evans.
A QUESTION OF TECHNIQUE.
NO QUESTION has given rise to more discussion, none has been more misunderstood than that which comes to the mind of the photographer at the mere mention of Focus and Definition. All the disputations were needless could each of those holding different opinions but realize that his opponent is at least entitled to an independent opinion, and that it takes all sorts to make a world, and, moreover, that such differences of opinion are necessary to avoid a condition of intellectual monotony.
There are those who elect to use the camera as a means of recording facts; there are those who use it as a medium of exploiting the chemical and other scientific advancements that have been made in that complex organism we call photography.
Both these sections of the community are more than justified, and are probably engaged in more useful work than he who elects to employ his camera-craft for the production of that, which for want of a better term, we may call a picture. But, like wholesome food and quiet living, the more useful side is to most of us the least pleasing and attractive, and the pursuit of pictorial photography because of its inherent difficulties has all the fascination of hunting an ignis fatuus; moreover, the fact remains that with more or less vagueness of purpose the majority of photographers at the present time do aspire to produce something which, to say the least, bears a resemblance or possibly a relationship to that which within the strictly limited or artistic sense is called pictorial.
Now, the means to be employed and the manner of its usage depend directly upon the motive, and none can blame him who would produce an exhaustive record if his delineation be replete to the utmost degree with facts and details. Again, the scientific experimentalist may play all the tricks he pleases; his motive, that of experiment and investigation, justifies his acts; but, assuming that the pictorial worker understands what he is about, his motive at once necessitates his utilizing his process in a very different manner. To begin with, it should hardly be necessary to attempt to convince the reader that a picture in the artistic sense is not a transcript of nature, nor does it attempt to imitate or reproduce nature. I have said that it should not be necessary to explain this, but my acquaintance with the rank and file
3°
[pgbrk] of the present-day photographers makes me doubt if such is really the case. I should avoid as far as possible the term Art, for it has become a hackneyed one and familiarity has given it a false significance, if not actually bringing it into contempt. But the photograph which aims at being pictorial necessarily aspires to be artistic. The artistic has to do with the ideal and imaginative, whereas nature is real and her faithful representation is realism. Let it be at once understood that the photograph which is intended to be pictorial seeks not to remind its producer of scene or incident. If such reminiscence be aimed at, then the motive is not pictorial, but rather topographical.
€| A moment’s consideration will show that there is a wide difference between the effect of a scene upon the eye and upon the mind when in its presence, and the impression of that same scene when we have left it. That distance lends enchantment has become proverbial, and remoteness in point of time, no less than distance in space, lends beauty. Distance of time makes our impression of things what we would wish them to have been; there is a charm in memory, as well as in anticipation, more sunny and more fair than attaches to their presence. Little wonder then that the faithful photograph is strangely disappointing, when its accuracy to the spirit of the scene is judged by a gilded memory instead of by actual comparison.
It comes then to this, that the motive, which, as has been suggested, will decide the means and direct the method chosen, is to produce something which will accord with our recollection, and will awaken again in ourselves and others like feelings and emotions as were kindled by the impression created in the presence of the original.
Grant that for the present the artistic rendering does not seek to copy nature and you will find no difficulty in realizing that there is much in the scene which is unessential to conveying a harmonious impression. The attention once riveted upon a scene (for what reasons we may hereafter discuss), we are conscious of certain forms, certain contrasted lights and shades which are essential, whilst there are many other objects of the presence of which we are hardly conscious, unnecessary objects and details which, if we stayed to record them, would interfere with the directness of the appeal made by the more important features. As a general principle, the fewer the facts the more powerful the impression. Thus, a single tree upon a barren plain produces an image which lives longer in the memory than the many which go to form the shady grove. The multiplicity of details only serve to dilute the strength of the impression, and in the representation their omission will leave an impression less interrupted. The photographer commonly talks of breadth, and softness, and diffusion, as if they in themselves were cardinal virtues, whereas there is no more virtue in diffusion than there is in sharp definition, except in so far as it may help the photographer to eliminate or subordinate into insignificance those unessential matters which would interfere with the conveyance of a simple and direct impression. If this be so, then the impression which the original scene makes upon us is inseparable from the exercise of the imaginative faculty, which, it is much to be
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[pgbrk] feared, many photographic practitioners entirely lack, or possess in a latent form.
To the imaginative man the scene selected for the picture appeals in a particular way. He sees the entire view at once, and to him each separate item borrows beauty from its surroundings, so that at each point on which his eye rests he sees, or imagines he sees, greater beauty than is actually present. And yet, because this fairer scene of the imagination is so closely connected with physical fact, only that picture which is so like nature that in appearance it may be mistaken for an actual transcript will satisfy the mind which looks to have its first impression revived. Now, as the imagination dwells upon the scene; seeing the whole as it would wish it to be rather than as it is; seeing a sweeter light where sunshine touches leaf and stem than is really there; seeing a deep shadow because it feels the need of it where a darker passage is broken by unessential detail; seizing upon certain forms and giving them emphasis; heeding not, and therefore suppressing mentally, other forms which compete with it; thus momentarily building up an ideal composition in the presence of the real, dreaming of a fairer scene than nature presents. Yet notice that whilst the attention is focused upon one point (and I think visual focus and mental focus must here go hand in hand) we are conscious of the distinct existence of all the other objects in the view, although they are not defined to us until the attention is directed thereto; so that I think we may conclude that certainly not on the principal objects, and probably not on the surroundings, does the imaginative view or the general impression depend for its vividness or indistinctness.
Whilst suppression of focus may be justified on the ground of its being a reaction from the opposite extreme, it should not, I think, be regarded as a high road toward artistic achievement; though it may be, that in the eyes of some its presence is preferable to that excessive sharpness and clear-cut definition, of the revolt from which it is the sign. This reaction, however, was probably caused not so much from the abuse of the lens’s defining power, as the treatment of the sensitive plate. In those photographic representations, the redundancy of details in which prove irritating to many, it is not so much the detail as the crispness of its rendering which creates dissatisfaction. To put it briefly, sharp detail means detail which has been underexposed. Between each tiny dot of light and shade there is something approaching the same degree of black-and-white harshness, which, when present in the larger features of the picture, would not be tolerated even by the advocate of sharp definition.
I have endeavored to suggest that there is a mental or imaginative reason for the omission of unessential detail, and might now support such attitude by pointing out that although on close inspection of the scene the eye may be able to fill every space with mental detail, yet those details are for the most part softened and blended so as to be perceived only when purposely looked for, but in the sharply focused photograph the detail clamors for attention by its brilliancy and crispness.
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[pgbrk] Yet it is only a minor matter. The merit of the picture is not determined by the fidelity with which it reproduces what the eye saw, but by the vividness with which it produces that mental impression which was the offspring of nature and imagination. Only to this end is the picture a means. It is but a pretence, an arbitrary representation, which pretends to imitate flower and leaf, rippling water, and drifting vapor, by means of brush-marks, pencil-strokes, needle-scratches, or the deposited molecules of metallic silver. Therefore, with whatever means the picture-maker works he must use his wits how best to humor memory and coax imagination.
From this point of view, then, we are led to conclude that most negatives which have heretofore been put forward as the standard type for students’ emulation are really underexposed, or have been so developed as to give the light details too great a density, the adjacent darks being left too transparent. It seems to me that the maximum lens definition procurable with F/64 is not necessarily inimical to pictorial effect, provided there be that degree of softness which deprives each minute factor of irritating insistance. I think I noticed this first when using color-corrected plates with suitable light-filters, which leads me to suppose that it is not merely underexposure, but the unintentional elimination of the subtler gradations of color and intermediate tints that has something to do with the unpleasantness of the old-time sharply focused photograph made upon a slow landscape-plate and a small lens-aperture.
CJ There is one other form of suppression of detail which it seems necessary to regard as distinct from mere general diffusion, and that is the creation of vacancy either in light or shadow; and it is no common thing to have a work, in the production of which little imagination is called into activity, which yet leaves room for the action of the imagination of the beholder. Probably all great pictures do this to some extent, but it is easy to see that undue merit may be attached to a work by the beholder peopling the vacancy, the gloom, and the mystery with his own imagery; but that empty space which is deliberately intended by the artist is there by reason of the fact, that having produced his subject with all the power of which he is capable, he is unwilling to fill further space for the sake of mere execution.
€J In such case a number of separate beholders will have no difference of opinion as to the meaning and purpose of the vacancy; whereas, in the former instance, each may place his own meaning thereon. Whether now the photographer, acting with deliberate purpose, is justified in obliterating that which in the case of the painter the artist would stop short of producing can hardly be questioned, and I have in my mind a number of examples of the newer American work which have been thoughtlessly condemned on account of their broad masses, attributable, rightly or wrongly, to underexposure. But it matters not the means employed if we were sure there was an honest motive in omitting detail lest it interfere with the pith and power of the subject; but to leave empty spaces without deliberate intention, trusting to the beholder to fill them from his own imagination, is to shift and forswear the responsibility of the work, and
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[pgbrk] to place it upon the shoulders of the sympathetic public, who, each to his own fancy, fills the vacancy which the producer lacked ideas to fill.
IJ To return to the previous train of thought, it should be remembered that sounds and scents are longer remembered than visible objects. So also it may be are those indefinable appeals which light, air, and natural beauty make to the sensitive temperament, and if we are to reproduce an impression rather than produce a graphic catalogue of physical facts, we must resort to some other means than mere prosaic representation. What those means may be each worker must perhaps decide for himself. Meanwhile, the recognition of such necessity may form the justification of method and manners which seem strange and unconventional. Personally, I resent neither etching on the negative, nor penciling, nor other work on the print, so long as the end is gained; yet should I resort to neither, for let us profess to scorn ever so the means as being base as compared with the inspired motive, there is dignity in the mastery of technique, a mastery which slips further and further from our grasp as we yield to the easier course of introducing alien means.
€| Mr. Day may pride himself upon the photographic purity of his results with neither more nor less artistic justification than has Mr. Eugene for scratching the film.
It has been urged that to suppress sharp definition is to sacrifice one of photography’s characteristics which has made it so precious. But indiscriminately sharp focus is not a necessary attribute of photography, but an optical curiosity, which the photographer has been deceived into believing he required by the lens-maker, who equally guilelessly, exerted himself to achieve. There can be no fixed standard of technical excellence, but the photographic print is technically good in proportion as the photographer has, to attain his end, used all those qualities and technicalities with which a highly perfected process has been splendidly endowed by unsympathetic but well-meaning people.
A. Horsley Hinton.
</ab></div>
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O life, how paradoxical!
Of two, each a “ professional,”
The one took her full face And found a ready sale for it;
The other only took her purse And had to go to jail for it.
Dallett Fuguet.
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[pgbrk] PLATES
I. ’Midst Steam and Smoke.
By Prescott Adamson
II. La Cigale.
By Frank Eugene
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[pgbrk] A DISSERTATION ON INSTRUCTION.
CJ PERHAPS ONE of the greatest drawbacks to photography — but I believe I have said that before. Candidly, I can not keep track of the number of times I have said it; but the fact of the matter is that there are so many stumbling-blocks in the way of photography and each one considered separately seems so particularly aggravating, that I am very apt to view each one as the greatest enemy — until I think of the others. But this one that occurs to me now is the most ridiculous ineptitude displayed by the writers of technical photographic instruction. I have more than once asked why some one with a head that grew something other than hair did not write a general book of photographic instruction; but the same has not come within the field of my mental binoculars up to this date. There seem to be two favorite courses of procedure for writing instructions: one is to assume that the reader is a technician of such rare attainments that it is only necessary to give meagre outlines of highly technical phenomena and they will be absorbed intuitively, and the other is to go into such minor detail as to create the impression the writer intended the thing for a lot of blithering idiots. When a writer says one should use “a little semi-aqueous and alcoholic solution of purified inspissated ox-gall,” the tottering seeker of photographic knowledge is dazed to a frazzle, and when another one tells him “a good way to find what field the camera covers is to remove ground glass and lens, reverse camera, and look through bellows” he is surely justified in calling for help. And then we can not pass the long and learned discussions, as to whether it is best to use 372^ grains of sulphite of soda or 371 2/5 grains, and the blithe and easy comparison of the respective merits of imported and domestic Castile soap as a lubricant for burnishing silver prints. These are not only entertaining but highly instructive to the absolute amateur, particularly when the writer winds up by saying, “ from my own experience I was unable to judge with any degree of certainty the superiority of one over the other, but I am sure the reader can profitably pursue experiments along this line.” At a recent convention of physicians, one doctor wanted to read a paper on the function of the appendix as an adjunct to the circulatory system, and when they asked him on what experiments and observations he based his theory he said, “None. I just thought of it.” Now that is the way with most of this photographic instruction. Some fellow just thinks of it and so he writes it out and has no trouble finding a journal to publish it, providing they do not have to pay for it. The other day I met a fellow who once wrote an article on gum-bichromate printing. With all the caution of a savant he weighed the questions of papers and sizing, the gums and sensitizing solution and pigment. And with the deft hand of an adept he carried the reader through the intricacies of printing and developing and manipulation. Well, when I talked to him the other day the conversation drifted to gum prints. He remarked that it was a very unsatisfactory process and that he had never been able to work it successfully.
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[pgbrk] €| “ But,” I said, “ I thought you once wrote of a method of your own.”
CJ “So I did,” he replied; “but after that was published I tried it one day and it would not work, and I have never yet in all my experience succeeded in getting gum coated so I could even get an image.”
CJ Now what do you think of that? Does not your sympathy go out to the deluded amateur who pored over paper, and gum, and pigment, into which he had already poured his hard cash, in vain efforts to get results from that process ?
Then there was a fellow who wrote about lantern-slides. Let me see; who was that? “Somebody on Lantern-slides.” Well, anyhow, there is a friend of mine who one day got a letter from this fellow, in which he admitted that his first lantern-slide was made about thirty days before the treatise was published and that most of it was “culled” from other works. Can any of you now understand why those last lantern-slides you made did not come out just as you thought they should ?
CJ But that is not the worst of it. These same fellows start in to write about artistic photography. And when they start to delve into the mysteries of foregrounds, and side-lines, and massing, and composition, they certainly do flounder around at a great rate. They always remind me of a story my father was fond of telling. An old darky parson was requested by his congregation to preach on the “ecclesiastical laws,” and urged to a point of necessity. So one Sunday he arose in the pulpit and said: “ Bredren an’ sistahs! Ah will now deliber a disco’se on th’ fundumental principles ob ecclesiastical laws. If you all knows what dat is you know mo’ dan ah do, but ah’ll stick es close to de subjick es possible.”
CJ How is photography, artistic or otherwise, to advance steadily with such impediments as these fellows who are always seeing things and dreaming dreams—regular spectres and nightmares of misinformation? What wonder a man becomes disgusted with photography when half the problems propounded by alleged “ authorities ” will not work out!
CJ Now, I propose that we band ourselves together in a secret, blood-tied organization that will make the Philistine’s idea of the Photo-Secession seem like the openness of a Methodist camp-meeting, when it comes to a comparison of exclusiveness, and let us call it the “ Society for the Suppression of Misdirected Energy on the Part of Misinformed Photographers Who are Seized with a Mania to Write Instructions (Inc.).”
CJ Then, when some fellow comes along and tells the amateur never to use more than four ounces of devoloper for an 8x10 plate because more (say 4 1/2 or 5 ounces) will invariably fog the plate, or “instructs” the amateur in art by saying, “Is that artistic photography? Call that artistic
photography? Well, if THAT is artistic photography!--------------------------xx
x ? ?----------!-----------?----------!” we can make a concerted effort to
open his skull and “inspissate” his gray matter sufficiently to make him realize the advisability of seizing his last opportunity to desist and live.
Harry C. Rubincam.
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[pgbrk] AN IMPRESSION OF THE LONDON PHOTOGRAPHIC SALON.
THE ELEVENTH Annual Exhibition of the Linked Ring opened on the seventeenth of September, with the usual private view, which function steadily grows in popularity, and this year was almost uncomfortably crowded between four and five in the afternoon.
CJ The decorations are the same as last year, and the valerium sheds a gentle, diffused light over the photographs, and accelerates the visitor’s departure, for while it hides the ugly roof and improves the look of the whole room, it almost asphyxiates those who have the temerity to linger longer than an hour.
€| The first impression on entering the gallery this year is one of delight, thanks to the harmonious hanging; the next is one of slight disappointment during the first casual glance round, as there are fewer large striking pictures from Vienna. But the third and lasting impression, with the writer at least, was one of reassurance and satisfaction that the show was well up to the average. Clever, cultivated, thinking workers are palpably on the increase, and there is more diversity in individual expression than heretofore.
€| Personally I feel that the gap caused by the total absence of pictures by Steichen, Clarence White, Mrs. Kasebier, Joseph Keiley and Stieglitz is an irreparable one, and that there is nothing new that will take their place. (Mrs. Kasebier's work arrived after the hanging was completed and the catalogues printed.) But although irreparable as regards the present exhibition, it is, I am glad to be able to assert, only temporary, and next year we can hope to see these strongest of American camera-men again represented at the Dudley Gallery.
The bare fact of the absence of the above-mentioned names from the catalogue, necessitates a small and a weak collection from the States in comparison with last year. But even as it stands, there is some very interesting work sent.
There can be no doubt that Alvin Langdon Coburn has made most distinctive progress. Knowing the man personally, it is not difficult to recognize the influences that are making themselves felt on his plastic personality. For instance, I take it that Steichen’s Rodin is directly responsible for the portrait of Sidney Allan (170) and that his sojourn with Mrs. Kasebier is not unconnected with the style of his portrait of that lady and of the picture of Joseph T. Keiley. But these are good influences and I look forward to the time when Coburn’s originality, enriched by his early and very fortunate surroundings, will thoroughly assert itself, for he is already taking a prominent place among American pictorial workers.
CJ Yarnall Abbott’s treatment of Japanese indoor life is fascinating, but the models seem to lack the essential characteristics of the far eastern physiognomy, at least to one who is familiar with the land of the chrysanthemum. Mrs. Sear’s portraits always possess a strong attraction for me and she strikes a new note in the atmospheric mystery attained in her low-toned
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[pgbrk] picture called Mary. Mrs. J. E. Bennett’s soft and broadly treated interiors possess a spirit of conscientious conviction, and one found a purchaser during the private view. Miss Devens’ European tour has given us work of a kind quite different from that which we were led to expect by her work of former years. All her present photographs are representative of “between the lights,” and in the print At Varna she shows a fine sense of feeling for this sort of work. Of Mr. Dyer’s pictures, Master K. held me longest. It is a convincing example of the beauty and the truth of diffusion and suppression. If Mr. Dyer will forgive me for comparing his work to that of another craft, I would say it seemed like a clever sketch in color, in which the artist had devoted himself to getting quality into the face and had simply suggested the body by a darker tone than the background. The face is as solid and real and like living flesh as one of Carriere’s paintings, and one happily forgets the medium of expression in the thing expressed. R. Eickemeyer, Jr., again shows his affection for and keen appreciation of Nature in his delicate and decorative snow- and seascapes. Edmund Stirling’s three portraits are refined and convincing. It is with a feeling of disappointment that one finds there are only two of Mrs. Watson-Schutze’s pictures here, one of which, The Rose, is not very inappropriately hung between two of Mrs. Carine Cadby’s flower subjects. A mention of Miss Weil’s striking portrait, Lenore, brings me to the end of the American pictures.
€J The English exhibitors are distinctly stronger this year. This is particularly marked among the exponents of landscape work. There are a number of prominent British photographers who devote almost all their energies to the portrayal of landscape. Although each one’s work has the distinct individuality of its author stamped upon it, there is a certain generic resemblance that leads me to call them, collectively, The English School of Landscape. There is nothing like it coming from any other country, and it is more readily appreciated — if red labels are a test — than anything else at our exhibitions. In Fleeting and Far, we have a typical “Horsley Hinton.” His favorite materials, a flat country, water, and sky are pictorially composed, and we almost feel the “breezy morn.” David Blount’s sepia landscapes, with weird, drooping trees and dripping skies, bring to one’s mind in a far-off way the work of Conder.
C| Charles Job’s impressions of rural England are high in quality and most pleasurable to look at. In Surrey Woods, Charles Moss gives us a keen and subtle impression of a difficult subject. Alexander Keighley’s work this year is of a peculiarly refined and sensitive description. Alert to the poetical spirit in Nature, he has succeeded in giving a glimpse of some of her rare and illusive moods. This is particularly the case in his picture called Peace. Walter Bennington, a comparatively new man, has one of the finest things at the gallery in his view (across the house-tops) of St. Paul’s. He has mixed his gum-bichromate to the color of a London haze, illuminated by the setting sun, and it admirably suits his subject. George Davison has a number of good things, two of which are printed in
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[pgbrk] ozotype. But his best picture is North Sea Trawlers, in which the atmosphere well suggests a coming squall, while a feeling of movement in the receding boats is cleverly given. Craigie’s group of the directors of the Bank of England has much of the quality of an old engraving. It is a difficult subject carried out with much skill. Hollyer’s one picture, a large, strong portrait, loses quality by being hung in a comparatively dark corner. F. Evans has five portraits and four cathedral subjects, which, good as they are, do not surpass those that were reproduced in the last number of Camera Work. Two portraits of the king, by Baron A. de Meyer, have attracted a good deal of attention. Unlike most public photographs of royalty, they are original and unprofessional, suggesting a dignity of bearing that is natural. Craig Annan’s engraving-like portrait is full of that masterly restraint indicative of so much of his work.
CJ Space alone forbids detailed mention of much English work that is well worth notice. Miss Ellis, Mrs. Barton, J. Warburg, Mrs. I. Taylor, Ward Muir, and Furley Lewis have all increased their reputations.
CJ And now I come to Demachy. Well, Demachy is Demachy, and his work seems to need an adjective coined on purpose. As usual, his exhibits are purely individualistic; one can pick them out at once. His subjects are presented to us exactly as he sees them — audacious, yet truthful, and possessing above all “that subtle sense of texture.” He has two charming little landscapes: Autumn, a row of poplars reflected darkly in a stream, and one called, An Impression of the Exhibition. These seem to leave in completeness and sensitiveness of touch nothing to be desired.
M. Puyo, always diverse, has this year proved his many-sidedness afresh, as well as his grasp and decision. Whatever hesitancy there may be among modern workers, it is certainly not shared by the author of Liseuse. The lines of the girl leaning over a book are most cleverly managed. The whole technique has a boldness one can not but admire. And if, as one turns away, one gives a sigh for the modern Frenchwoman, of the long waist and short legs, that has, after all, nothing to do with the man’s splendid work. Puyo in La Statuette, a strong portrait with a statuette, rendered in gum-bichromate, has — as well as Demachy in his contrasts — introduced this fresh element into his work. One can guess how this complication of motif, as with a statue or bust, must attract the complex French mind, which always remains acutely modern.
CJ The only picture from Vienna is Dr. H. Bachmann’s, Am Parkthor. Strong in mass and outline, its solid blots of color make it decoratively attractive. Indeed, it is in its right place on an exhibition-wall.
CJ As last year, the hanging of the pictures was carried out by Mr. Evans, who has somewhat sacrificed individual pictures by skying and flooring to the general effect of the gallery.
Will. A. Cadby.
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[pgbrk] THE JUBILEE EXHIBITION AT THE HAMBURG ART GALLERIES.
[Herr Ernst Juhl, who has kindly sent us this review of the Hamburg Exhibition, is the President of the “ Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Amateur Photographie,” and the man who, though not himself a photographer, has done more for the advancement of pictorial photography in Germany than any other individual. His interest, appreciation, encouragement, and unceasing labors have been the stimulus that have made possible the important International Annual Exhibitions in Hamburg. While editor of the “Photographische Rundschau” he directed the influence of this magazine to the encouragement of the best interests of pictorial photography.—Editors. ]
THE LAYMAN seldom realizes the great difficulty of arranging an exhibition consisting solely of masterpieces; only the committee of selection can know how hard it is to exclude the mediocre. Beginners and the less gifted are generally convinced of the excellence of their own work, and its rejection often incurs their bitterest enmity. Men, inclined to please and be pleased, do not make desirable jurors, and yet the making of enemies must be avoided as much as possible, because every photographic exhibition finds itself dependent on many elements, including such as are not in sympathy with the new movement. The Hamburg Society has succeeded for ten years in arranging a high-class annual exhibition, without allowing itself to be influenced by personal interests or in making harmful concessions. To exclude inferior work is in itself a most difficult task, and the bringing together of the best work of all countries is only possible when the efforts of a society are endorsed, as is the case of Hamburg, by an institution as influential as the Kunsthalle, and are patronized by some administrative body like the Hamburg Senate. The hundred exhibitors invited represented the foremost artistic photographers of the world, and there were but few mediocrities among the five hundred prints on its walls. Germany, Austria, the United States, England, France, and Belgium were well represented; Russia and Denmark each by a single exhibitor. In those countries not exhibiting there is a lack of artistic photographers, largely due to the want of stimulating exhibitions, and hence there was nothing of theirs that could be contributed. €J The Hamburg group of the “ Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Amateur Photographie” was represented by twenty exhibitors, the most prominent being Dr. Arning, Dachwitz, the Hofmeisters, Dr. Kirstein, H. W. Müller, and Troch. All these exhibited principally vari-colored gum prints of large dimensions. The work of the Hofmeisters will be reproduced and criticized in a future issue of Camera Work. The endeavor of the Hamburg artists to create large wall-pictures, strong in color and light in tone, capable of producing a true outdoor effect when hung in interiors and viewed at a distance. The work of each is entirely individual. The most powerful colorist is Dachwitz; the best sunlight effects are produced by Troch; Müller has the greatest facility in the selection of pleasant motives; but the Hofmeisters remain this
46
[pgbrk] year, as heretofore, the most versatile of all. The Viennese group, including Dr. Henneberg, Kuehn, and Watzek *, exhibited in conjunction with Dr. Spitzer, a pupil of Henneberg. The effects attained by these Viennese with gum are well known, having revolutionized artistic photography dating from 1896. Their pictures hung this year are as fine as ever. In technique the Hamburg group owes Vienna everything, and artistically this Austrian work has been a continuous source of inspiration. In spite of this influence, the Hamburg group has remained entirely original, and it is not my intention to subordinate the work of its members to the others. Both are equally efficient. German professional photography was represented by Perscheid, Leipzig; Duhrkoop, Hamburg; Raupp, Dresden; and Hilsdorf, Bingen. Prior to our first exhibition in 1893, and for several years thereafter, there existed no German professional photographer whose work was on a plane with the requirements laid down in our invitation of 1893. fj The public at large has not as yet an appreciation for a simple, honest reproduction of the individual ego, but that that appreciation is growing is proven by the rapid increase in the number of such professional photographers as now share our views. So long as the public is pleased with sentimental conventionalities and the unnatural process of retouching, artistic photography can not entirely come into its own. Therefore it should be the first aim of every German society to further reform in this particular direction. We see in the case of Hilsdorf that even in so small a town as Bingen, with a population of 10,000, there is a field for a modern photographer. But the German societies, with few exceptions, are so occupied with technical matters, which naturally are everywhere the same, that there is little opportunity for artistic development. Then, too, German societies are so busy making sarcastic criticisms of pictures they do not understand. They criticize without studying the subject; they do not visit our exhibitions; they won’t buy or look at our publications; but they fall upon us and all our endeavors with jeers and invectives. No wonder, then, that the rest of Germany has only produced but few artistic photographers, and these as a rule are affiliated with no society. Such are Hauptmann Bohmer, Otto Scharf, and Rector Bandelow, all of whom were represented at the Hamburg exhibition.
The well-known Frenchmen, Demachy, Dubreuil, Puyo, Le Bègue, and Buc-quet were represented by a large collection. The most important contributors from England were Craig Annan, Mrs. Barton, Cochrane, Craigie, Page Croft, Crooke, Evans, Horsley Hinton, Mrs. Jennings, Keighley, and Warburg, of whom Keighley and Cochrane were the most original. The Cercle d’Art Photographique l’Effort, of Brussels, founded a few years ago, contributed prints by Adelot, Dewit, Gaspar, Leys, Mathy, Stouffs, Sneyers, and Willems. C| The collection of the Pnoto-Secession (U. S. A.), arranged by Alfred Stieglitz, included the work of twenty-six exhibitors, and was not only the largest of all the collective exhibits, but was also artistically preeminent. Young America can indeed boast of artists of individuality in Steichen, Stieglitz, Kasebier, White, Mathilde Weil, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Rud. Eickemeyer, Eva Watson-Schütze, Stirling, and Mary Stanbery. Steichen, whose work
47
[pgbrk] is greatly valued by the competent connoisseurs of Germany, was represented by twelve distinctly different prints. His Auguste Rodin was the most interesting. Like all his work, it is impressed with an individuality which is met with only in the fine arts. Steichen’s prints are the most imaginative yet produced in artistic photography. He realizes his effect by peculiar and ever-varying light-contrasts. Sometimes, as in his Rodin, the source of illumination is found back of the subject and sharply concentrated, and sometimes a very low and even tone is realized by front illumination, as in the portrait of Duse. In both cases he has accentuated the leading characteristics of his idea by a manipulation of light. He has followed the same method in his Nude. He gives us of the models only those portions which appeal to him because of their harmony of lines; all the rest is suppressed. Steichen has in his pictures, as the initiated will readily recognize, more painter-like qualities than any other photographer. Just because he is so different from others he is very often not understood; and one often hears opinions on his work which badly compromise his critics.
The work of Alfred Stieglitz, as well as that of Mrs. Kasebier, has been much admired in Germany for years. Their versatility seems inexhaustible, and we are continually surprised by their new productions. The variety of conceptions in Mrs. Kasebier’s portraits is perfectly astounding. I am familiar with a large number of her prints, but never found her inclined to repeat herself. Her portraits and studies of women are exquisitely delicate and replete with charm, in severe contrast to her strong portrait of Alvin Langdon Coburn. In the more difficult field of imaginative composition she offers us in The Bat a beautiful piece of work. In the background we see a finely formed nude, lightly suggested, holding out behind her a dark cloak extended like the wings of a bat. The picture impresses us like a fairy-tale, in which there are no disturbing details. f| Stieglitz has enjoyed the reputation for many years in Germany of being one of the first and most successful exponents of artistic photography, and his exemplary publication, Camera Work, is considered the best in the whole field of artistic printing. He is remarkable for his excellent taste and his astonishing versatility, never becoming one-sided, but giving us the happy solution of many problems. Who would have imagined, before seeing The Hand of Man, that so prosaically realistic a scene as a railroad-depot could be invested with so much poetic feeling ! Who, looking at one of our factory districts, with its waste of car-tracks and telegraph-poles, would believe it capable of such artistic treatment as that displayed by Stieglitz in this picture ! And if there were no other results in photography than to render its exponents susceptible to the beauty that is everywhere manifested around us, even in those commonplace things generally considered ugly, enough would be gained. But in addition we are opening the eyes of others to such things and disclosing to them the possibilities for artistic conception. Whoever is acquainted with the illustrating of modern French novels with photographs from life will realize their utter lack of artistic merit when they see White’s picture “Beneath the Wrinkle.” In White’s picture we
48
[pgbrk] are not disturbed by any trickery; he is faultless in his simplicity, in the natural pose of the model, in the fine balance of masses, and in the lighting and spacing. White’s pictures have been known to us for years for their delicate tonal qualities. We are impressed with his well-calculated light-effects, and admire that artistic acumen that has made him one of the leaders of photography. Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edmund Stirling are new stars on the photographic horizon. The portraits of the former, especially those of Mrs. Kasebier and Alfred Stieglitz, are delightful for their originality of conception. In his so tastefully arranged portraits we see that the unretouched photographic plate is capable of the highest expression of art. Edmund Stirling’s work has been known to us only through reproductions. His is the representative of the genre-picture, but not of the anecdotal kind that has made genre-painting so repulsive. The Drawing Lesson is a bit of real life. There is something very sweet, though not sentimental about his pictures. His models seem unconscious of the fact that they are observed; far different from the old-fashioned genre-pictures, in which the characters posed for the benefit of the audience. Germany is lacking in women photographers of the class of Mrs. Kasebier, Miss Weil, Miss Spencer. This is the main reason why we have no artistic photographs of children like those produced with such happy results by the American women photographers. The ladies in question are entirely independent in their work, and what appears most amazing to us in Germany, they are in no way influenced by their male colleagues. Our first acquaintance with Miss Weil’s children-studies dates from last year’s exhibition. She is a close observer of children at play, and she knows how to arrange a group to such purpose that a carefully planned composition looks like a lucky accident, which should be the case with every work of art. Mary Stanbery’s Lady with Cup is a delightful little print which appeals to us with all the reticent charms of the work of an artist of a bygone period. C| In order to do justice to all, I would be obliged to devote a chapter to each one of the exhibitors of the American Secession; but that is impossible. I am not well informed as to the development of artistic photography in America; but it seems to me to have been, as in our case, a movement which started with the amateurs and is gradually spreading to the profession. The difference between European and American photography is an important one, however. Professional photography in America is more independent than in Germany, because we lack artistically developed personalities like Steichen and Mrs. Kasebier. The sale of American prints left much to be desired, only the more moderately priced ones being sold, with the single exception of Steichen’s portrait of Eleonore Duse, which brought two hundred marks. Our Hamburg amateurs did not sell more than four of their large prints, of which one by Hofmeister was purchased by Queen Margheritha of Italy, who spent an instructive hour at the exhibition. We had great hopes of selling many prints, a requisite to the encouragement of our art-photographers. Besides this we feel that each picture sold will make new friends in its new home for the art of our time. Ernst Juhl
(Translated by Mrs. S. H.)
49
[pgbrk] PHOTO-SECESSION NOTES.
THE SAN FRANCISCO SALON.
REPORTS FROM every hand indicate that the Salon recently held in San Francisco was a huge success and that the Photo-Secession Loan Collection materially aided in this result and met with a hearty reception. We can not help extending our heartiest congratulations to the authorities for the punctual and conscientious manner in which they met all their obligations— so unlike most photographic bodies who take their promises in too light a spirit — as well as upon the ambitious and tasteful effort displayed in their catalogue. We have found that it is a safe generalization to infer the character of an exhibition from the taste or want of taste displayed in its catalogue.
ST. LOUIS.
As far as the Photo-Secession is concerned, there is still “nothing doing” in St. Louis. We are informed by our friend, Mr. A. Horsley Hinton, that the British Government has appointed him its envoy to the St. Louis Exposition, and that he will visit this country early in 1904 for the purpose of supervising the hanging of the collection of photographs which is to represent Great Britain. Please note the difference in the ways of governments. Mr. Hinton comes here in a representative capacity, with full authority, and at the expense of his Government. The United States some time since appointed Mr. Alfred Stieglitz Commissioner for the American Photographic Section in the Exposition at Paris, without delegating any definite authority to him, and upon the assumption that the honor of the appointment was so great that he would be only too glad to gather together the American pictures at his own expense as well as to pay all costs of the trip. What happened is history.
It seems a pity that all pictorial photographers are not united in the attitude adopted by the Photo-Secession towards St. Louis. The fight it is making, we must repeat, is one of principle. Great Britain, the undoubted birthplace of pictorial photography, may be satisfied to hang its collection in any part of the building of its Government, but the Photo-Secession represents no government; being, in fact, synonymous with the fight for recognition that has been waged here for years past. If such pottery, tapestries, decorative glass, furniture, silverware, etc., as show the evidences of the artist are to be displayed in the Arts Building —which will include the paintings and sculpture—is it not manifest that such pictorial photography as evidences these same qualities is entitled at least to the positive assurance of having one of these prints hung in this company, regardless of what may then be done with the other photographs which ought also to be hung there, but for which there will probably be no room available ? The Photo-Secession demands but the guarantee of space for a single print in the Arts Building, it being immaterial whose picture secures the recognition for which it is fighting. This has been the ultimatum sent to the St. Louis authorities in reply to their latest request to the Photo-Secession.
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[pgbrk] ST. PETERSBURG.
C| The Secretary of the St. Petersburg International Photographic Exhibition has sent word that the Photo-Secession Loan Collection, in its entirety, has been awarded the highest honors — the gold medal — in the Pictorial Section of the exhibition. It thus seems that American photography, as represented by Secession ideas, is appreciated quite as highly in Russia as in Italy. The list of individual awards has not, as yet, been announced.
THE CHICAGO PHOTOGRAPHIC SALON. i| After having made preparations to send at least one hundred and fifty frames to Chicago comes the word that the authorities of the Chicago Society of Amateur Photographers are unable to live up to their agreement to give the Photo-Secession the requisite amount of space. This is unfortunate, as it is impossible to compress the collection without destroying its scope and importance. We are sorry to be compelled to disappoint the Chicago Society and feel much disappointed ourselves.
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN DEVOTING the major part of the illustrations in this issue of Camera Work to Mr. Robert Demachy, of Paris, we are but following the plan of presenting to our readers in each number the work of some world-figure in pictorial photography. Mr. Demachy devotes himself solely to the gum process, and is recognized not only as the father of gum, but also as a past-master in the technique of this most elastic of photographic printing mediums. The examples of his work herein reproduced are but a few of the hundreds of pictures produced by this most fertile of photographers, and are mainly of recent origin. In past years Demachy was fond of using reds and browns as his pigments, but his more recent work is all done in black. His later products show a decidedly greater breadth of handling and a development of his undoubted artistic temperament. He was one of the first to understand and appreciate the modern American work, and out of it drew some inspiration, as he himself admits. Excellent as our reproductions are, they can not adequately convey the subtlety or the texture to be found in the originals; the quality of Demachy gum prints being inherent in the medium and incapable of reproduction by any other process.
€| It is surprising to us that the growing use and abuse of gum by the members of various photographic organizations have not led these societies to purchase a few of his originals to serve as exemplars to the struggling gummist, for Demachy’s gum prints, more than any others, will lead the beginner along the proper path.
€| ’ Midst Steam and Smoke by Prescott Adamson, of Philadelphia, and La Cigale by Frank Eugene, of New York, are two well-known American pictorial photographs which, unlike the Demachys which were reproduced from the original gum prints, were made in photogravure directly from the negatives. Editors.
51
[pgbrk] FROM WHISTLER’S “TEN O’CLOCK.”
CJ In the beginning man went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women and traced strange devices with a blunt stick upon a gourd.
CJ This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren, who cared not for conquests and fretted in the field, this designer of quaint patterns, this deviser of the beautiful, who perceived in Nature about him curious curv-ings, as faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart was the first artist.
CJ And when from the field and from afar there came back the people, they took the gourd, and drank from out of it.
CJ And presently there came to this man another, and, in time, others, of like nature chosen by the gods, and so they worked together; and soon they fashioned from the moistened earth forms resembling the gourd. And, with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase was born in beautiful proportion.
CJ And the toilers tilled and were athirst; and the heroes returned from fresh victories to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the artists’ goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the craftsman’s pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other! And time, with more state, brought more capacity for luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in large houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables; whereupon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion and lovely to look upon.
CJ And the people lived in marvels of art, and ate and drank out of masterpieces, for there was nothing else to eat and to drink out of, and no bad building to live in; no article of daily life, of luxury, or of necessity that had not been handed down from the design of the Master and made by his workmen.
CJ And the people questioned not, and had nothing to say in the matter.
CJ Nature contains the elements in color and form of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science these elements that the result may be beautiful, as the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.
CJ To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
CJ That Nature is always right is an assertion, artistically, as untrue as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely
52
[pgbrk] right, to such an extent even that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all.
THINGS WE HAVE LOOKED INTO.
€| THE BAUSCH & LOMB Quarter-century Competition, out of which our editor has drawn the Grand Prize of three hundred dollars. Many thanks to the Judges—Abbott, Eickemeyer, and James—whose task must have indeed been gigantic. That they judged most fairly, we verily believe. Why shouldn’t we? But, seriously speaking, the whole competition was a grand success. Those winning first prizes in each class were: Eduard
J. Steichen, Mrs. W. W. Pearce, Mrs. Myra A. Wiggins, H. C. Myers, Joseph N. Pearce, Curtis Bell, H. G. Ponting, Joseph R. Iglick, Miss Nellie Coutant, Louis Fleckenstein, and Wm. E. Blossfeld. In all there were eleven classes and sixty-one prizes. The Bausch & Lomb Optical Company have prepared an elaborate souvenir of the occasion, in which are reproduced the winning pictures. This can be had by mailing twenty-five cents to them.
Duty well performed
€J The Eastman people, with their accustomed liberality, have opened a competition with five thousand dollars in prizes for pictures made with their new Kodoid Plates and Non-curling Films. Full particulars may be had from all dealers and directly from Rochester.
Another competition
A crying need of the pictorialist is a lens which will give an equal and proper diffusion without loss of texture and too great a sacrifice of speed. The lenses made to meet this need by Pinkham & Smith, of Boston, have our highest recommendation. Many Photo-Secessionists consider them as indispensable to their outfits as the best of anastigmats. The firm will also make any special lens to order and, as we know, at a very reasonable rate.
Special lenses for Pictorialists
C| Photographic chemists have vied with each other to simplify and make more convenient the chemical operations of photography, and offer to the amateur their developers in tablet form in lieu of solutions. The Farbenfabriken of Elberfeld Company now puts up in this convenient way its already very popular Edinol Developer.
Some more comforts
In offering to the public The Tourist, a light-weight Graflex, the Folmer & Schwing people have again proven that they are thoroughly alive to the. needs of the heavily burdened photographer. This camera is built upon the same first-class lines as its older brother. It also relieves you of less cash, which is of no disadvantage in these times.
Loss of weight
C| Although nothing new, the Dallmeyer-Bergheim lens seems never to have had a fair trial in this country. This is the more surprising as more and more photographers are striving for just such results as can be so readily achieved with this special lens.
An excellent, though little-known instrument
53
[pgbrk] Another new lens
€| The new Voigtlander Heliar, announced some time ago, will be ready for the market in January, 1904. It works at F 4.5.
A lens with moving focus during exposure
The Stark Lens, invented by Ferd. Stark, of New York, and which will be ready for the market by the time this number reaches our readers. The peculiarity of the lens is its mounting. Through a very simple mechanical device, the focus of the lens moves during the exposure. The speed of this motion is at the will of the operator. In our opinion this invention is an important one for all photographers, especially the pictorialists, and probably all manufacturers will sooner or later mount some of their lenses on the Stark principle. We shall have more to say about the lens as soon as we shall have given it a thorough trial.
The 1904 Times Annual
Upon looking through the advance sheets of the Photographic Times Annual of 1904, we discovered no radical departures, though there was apparent a decided improvement in the average of the pictures. The series of articles, too, seemed to be interesting. Strange to say, the statistics and tables are not what they should be. Nevertheless, we honestly recommend the book.
A new edition
The new edition of Madame Butterfly, recently published by the Century Company, is illustrated by photographs made by Mr. C. Yarnall Abbott. Mr. Abbott certainly displays much talent, and some of the illustrations are decidedly charming. Taken all in all, we feel that the repetition with slight variation which runs through some of the illustrations undoubtedly preserves the Japanese spirit of the text. It is indeed gratifying to note the growing use of photography in illustrating fiction. The excellent work of Messrs. White and Abbott in this particular field, so far superior to the inartistic French efforts in this direction, ought to encourage publishers.
A new book
Cjf “ Winter,” as illustrated by Rud. Eickemeyer, Jr., and published by R. H. Russell, will certainly add to the popularity of Mr. Eickemeyer’s work, being of a kind to appeal to the general taste. It is indeed a pity that publishers as a rule do not exercise a little more care in printing their half-tone plates.
Photograms, 1903
€| An advance copy of Photograms of 1903 has reached us. Tennant & Ward are the American agents for this publication.
A new catalogue
A new and complete catalogue of the stock of the Obrig Camera Company can be had for the asking.
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is a perfect film
and is made in all standard sizes and lengths to fit all standard makes of film-cameras.
Ansco Films are daylight-loading and may be developed in the McCurdy Developing-box, lately advertised under the registered trade-mark, “Kodak.”
THE ANTHONY & SCOVILL COMPANY
122-124 Fifth Avenue, New York Atlas Block, Chicago U. S. A.
[pgbrk] The SEED
NON-HALATION ORTHO PLATE
PORTRAIT AND LANDSCAPE
A HIGH-GRADE PLATE, ABSOLUTELY UNIFORM IN QUALITY
THE SEED Non-halation Ortho Plates are daily gaining new adherents. Given a trial no other brand will again satisfy.
These claims are substantiated in the following:
“For three years I have used the Seed Non-halation Ortho Portrait-plate for virtually all my serious work, including so-called snapshots. In my opinion it is the most perfect all-around plate in the American market to-day. For that reason—together with its absolute reliability—I am using it as the standard by which I test all other plates.
Alfred Stieglitz.”
New York, Nov. 1, ’03.
[pgbrk] Photographing children at home and snapping out of doors in dark and dreary winter weather necessitates the use of a very rapid lens. There is none quite as good for the purpose as
THE GOERZ
Series I B. f 4.5-f 5.5
For Particulars and Catalogue, address
C. P. GOERZ OPTICAL WORKS 52 Union Square, New York
[pgbrk] A NEW GRAFLEX
“ The Tourist”
Smaller Lighter in Weight Less in Price
Equipped with the IMPROVED MODEL "B” Graphic Focal-plane Shutter.
A concentration of the ideas that made the GRAFLEX world-renowned.
Pictures as you see them, while you see them, and at the desired moment. NO GUESS-WORK.
Graphic Cameras, Graphic Focal-plane Shutters, Crown Tripods, Graphic Specialties. Used extensively by the United States Government Departments. By comparison the best.
Special cameras for the novice or scientific worker.
ASK YOUR DEALER FOR CATALOGUES AND BOOKLETS, OR WRITE TO
The Folmer & Schwing Mfg. Co.
407 BROOME STREET, NEW YORK CITY
[pgbrk] Any
TEN
COOKE
LENSES
are of equal excellence. Ten other anastigmats are not. The reason is as simple as the Cooke Lens itself, which has three thin glasses uncemented, instead of six, eight, or nine cemented together.
Write for Cooke booklet “P.”
Taylor.Taylor.&Hobson.Ltd.
ST JAMES BUILDING,
BROADWAY AND 26th STREET,
NEW YORK.
FOR SALON AND EXHIBITION WORK
THE MOST ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE USING
Helios Patinotype Products
MRS. KASEBIER says: “The Helios Paper
holds all the quality I get in the proof and combines it with that which is most desirable in the Platinum Process, giving any degree of detail and incomparable richness of color in the masses. I have found no other paper with so wide a range. ’ ’
June 11, 1903. 273 Fifth Ave.
Our Coated Japan Vellum and Japanese Tissue are Always in Stock
Helios Photographic Paper Company
154 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET, NEW YORK
[pgbrk] Bausch & Lomb Quarter-century :competition. Packages of Prints Ready for the judges.
[pgbrk] 60 Prize Pictures
reproduced as nearly as possible in the original colors of the photographs, in half-tone, bound in an elegant Souvenir Portfolio of 64 pages, on heavy plate paper, with Ten Papers on Ten Phases of Photography, by ten of the most prominent photographers,
25 Cents
These 60 pictures received the Judges’
Awards in our $3,000.00 Competition just closed. They are the pick of the thousands of prints from every part of of the world and represent the highest attainments in every line of photography. Every one interested in photography should not fail to have this elegant portfolio, as, aside from its artistic value and the pleasure of owning such a collection of pictures, it is a symposium of good lighting, good composition, good pictorial photography.
It contains no advertising matter. We simply want our friends to see the work the best photographers are doing with our lenses in all parts of the world.
Send 25 cents, Stamps or Coin
Bausch & Lomb Optical Co.
Rochester, N. Y.
[pgbrk] HALF
HALF
METOL
HYDROKINONE
half METOL AND half Hydrokinone PRODUCE THE EFFECTS OF BOTH DEVELOPERS : SPEED, DETAIL, INTENSITY, PURE BLACK AND WHITE AM OVERDOSE OF HYDROCHINON KILLS METOL QUALITY.
USE "half and half" AND LET YOUR hydrochinone be hauff's.
SOLD BY ALL DEALERS G. GENNERT TRADE AGENTS NEW YORK AND CHICAGO
GROUP MADE WITH COLLI NEAR LENS
583 Heads—one verdict: “The Collinear Lens is a wonderful group-lens.”
Send for catalogue to the
Voigtländer & Son Optical Co.
137 West Twenty-third Street NEW YORK “
[pgbrk] INITIATION INTO THE SECRET
HOW OFTEN have you not admired the charm of soft focus in one of the modern pictorial photographs and asked yourself: “Wonder how he got that focus? There’s nothing fuzzy about it—it seems sharp and still it isn’t.”
THE
DALLMEYER-BERGHEIM
LENS
will let you into the secret.
Made in three sizes, varying in price from forty to ninety-six dollars.
For full particulars send to
The Anthony-Scovill Company
Sole American Agents
122-124 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
[pgbrk] Pictures Mounted Wíth
HIGGINS' PHOTO MOUNTER
Have an excellence peculiarly their own. The best results are only produced by the best methods and means—the best results in Photograph, Poster, and other mounting can only be attained by using the best mounting paste—
HIGGINS' PHOTO MOUNTER
(Excellent novel brush with each jar.)
At Dealers in Photo Supplies, Artists’ Materials and Stationery.
A 3-oz. jar prepaid by mail for thirty cts. or circulars free from
CHAS. M. HIGGINS & CO., Mfrs.
NEW YORK—CHICAGO—LONDON Main Office, 271 Ninth St. Brooklyn, Factory, 240-244 Eighth St. N. Y., U.S.A.
LINING-BEVELERS are intended to do that perfect work on a Photo-engraved plate that the brain can conceive, but the hand can not execute. They will carry out the idea of the artist in framing or making a finished border that completes the lines of the picture.
Those made by JOHN ROYLE & SONS of Paterson, N. J., are perfected machines in every respect, and will do this work most reliably and in almost endless variety.
If you are interested in Photo-engraving or kindred work, send to them for full information.
Book-binding of every grade and description. Portfolios for photographs. Photographs mounted for album purposes. Prompt and reasonable.
OTTO KNOLL
743 LEXINGTON AVE., NEW YORK, N. Y.
TELEPHONE CALL, 2114 PLAZA Out-of-town customers will kindly send their books and photographs by express.
[pgbrk] Use double weight, Special Rough
VELOX
for your best work.
Mat the margins and no mount is necessary. Unique, artistic.
All DEALERS.
Nepera Division,
EASTMAN KODAK CO.
Formerly Nepera Park. Rochester, N. Y.
[pgbrk] Established Telephone
1873 GEO. F. OF 2533 Madison Square
MAKER OF FINE FRAMES
Original Works of Art and Reproductions Framed with Artiistic Judgment 3 East Twenty-eighth Street, New York
Back Numbers of Camera Work
No. 1. The Käsebier number, single copies . . Six Dollars each
No. 2. The Steichen number, single copies . . Six Dollars each
No. 3. The White number, single copies . Four Dollars each
No. 4. The Evans number, single copies . . Three Dollars each
Bound in board, with original cover-design, One Dollar additional per copy.
Complete set of first year, bound in limp leather, with special cover-design, Twenty-five Dollars.
The above prices are subject to change without further notice.
FOR CAMERA WORK and all
Work pertaining to the Camera a full line of apparatus and supplies is carried by
The Obrig Camera Co.
A. C. WILMERDING W. E. WILMERDING
165 & 167 Broadway, New York
Just below Cortlandt St. Telephone: 4704 Cortlandt
Kodaks Premos Enlargements Lantern-slides
Graphics Pocos Printing Framing
Centuries Reflex Developing Stereopticons
Catalogue for 1904 gratis. Send name for our little photo-paper, “Down Town Topics. Goods delivered in
New York free of charge.
[pgbrk]
[pgbrk] EASTMAN
If it isn't an Eastman it isn't a Kodak
THE KODAK WAY IS TO LOAD, UNLOAD, DEVELOP AND PAINT - ALL BY DAYLIGHT. BETTER THAN THE OLD WAY TOO.
EASTMAN KODAK CO., ROCHESTER, N.Y.
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