A PHOTOGRAPHIC QUARTERLY * EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY*
ALFRED STIEGLITZ NEW YORK
CAMERA WORK
NUMBER XXXIIII
MDCCCCXI
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[pgbrk] CAMERA WORK: An illustrated quarterly magazine devoted to
Photography and to the activities of the Photo-Secession. Published and edited by Alfred Stieglitz. Associate Editors: Joseph T. Keiley, Dallett Fuguet,
J. B. Kerfoot, Paul B. Haviland. Subscription price Six Dollars and Fifty Cents (this includes fee for registering and special packing) per year; foreign postage, Fifty Cents extra. All subscriptions begin with current number. Back numbers sold only at single-copy price and upward. Price for single copy of this number at present, Four 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. 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. Address all communications and remittances to Alfred Stieglitz, 1111 Madison Avenue, New York, U. S. A. The Plates in this number by F. Bruckmann, A. G., Munich, Germany. Arranged and printed at the printinghouse of Rogers and Company, 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. 33, is dated January, 1911.
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[pgbrk] PLATES
HEINRICH KUEHN
I. Portrait—Meine Mutter II. On the Shore
III. Windblown
IV. Harbour of Hamburg V. Portrait
VI. Portrait
VII. Portrait—The Mirror
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[pgbrk] HEINRICH
KUEHN
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[pgbrk] THE EXHIBITION AT BUFFALO
WHILE the recent International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery was not the first of its kind, it proved to be, so far as my experience enables me to judge, the most distinguished. In point of representation it was the most comprehensive; highest in its average of quality and far and away the best displayed. More-
over, it not only presented a historical survey, beginning with the work of D. O. Hill in the 40’s, but also brought the subject up to the actual present. It was at once a retrospect and a panorama of existing conditions.
To one who, like myself, has watched the development of pictorial photography closely for over twelve years, and shared some of the knocks which have fallen on those who ventured to believe in it as a medium of artistic expression, the exhibition was not so much a surprise as a satisfaction. And it was so, not because it corroborated one’s own convictions, which have long been grounded too firmly even to be disturbed by the shortcomings of some of the experiments in photography, but because it was calculated to bring assurance to any mind not hopelessly biased in the opposite direction, that the pictorial capabilities of the medium had been established beyond dispute. The denial of this fact has already been petering out and the late exhibition gave it a final quietus. To all future objectors who may seek to draw one into controversy, the first question should be: “Did you see the Buffalo show?” If the answer is “No,” one can retort: “That is a pity, for then you would have been in a better position to know what you are talking about. As it is, you are rather in the state of a man who should argue dogmatically about Venetian painting without ever having been to Venice.” No doubt my friend’s rejoinder would be that he has seen plenty of photographs and also, maybe, has attended divers photographic salons. And so have I, for which very reason I should be obdurate. Of course he would not understand me because—he had not been to Buffalo.
This implies, among other things, that the conditions under which the prints were displayed had a great deal to do with the impression received. This is true. Sometimes one has seen the exhibits hung in double-deck arrangement to economize space at the expense of the prints; or they have been displayed on a single line in a few galleries of some big building, forming only an incident in the total impression. But the Albright Art Gallery is comparatively small, and almost its entire range of picture galleries was given over to the photographic exhibition. One received a suggestion that the exhibition represented not an incident, but for the time being the purpose of the building’s existence. It was increased by the apparent harmony of scale between the prints and their environment, largely due to the excellence of the hanging which created the illusion of an organic unity. In fact the exhibition was so incorporated into its surroundings that it gained from and added to their dignity, and became a detailed expression of their choiceness. I have never seen an arrangement more generally persuasive and at the same time better calculated to emphasize the individuality of the component parts.
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[pgbrk] For the excellence of the impression could not have been maintained unless there had been this pointedness of individual interest. On the present occasion I had an eye not so much for the prints individually, since I was already familiar with most of them, but for the individual groups; for the way in which each summarized the point of view and methods of the particular worker and compared with those of others. One great advantage of this group display was that it emphasized the versatility of the medium; that it demonstrated how, notwithstanding the mechanical basis of photography, the process is susceptible of endless personal response to the worker’s mental approach and manipulative ability. It is a method of expression practically as inexhaustible as the demands that can be made upon it by variety of knowledge, purpose and temperament. Another advantage obtained by thus emphasizing by groups the versatility of the medium was the evidence it gave of technical accomplishment in the several workers. In certain cases one may not have been attracted by the individual’s motive, as it had affected the choice of subject and the character of its treatment; but, even so, one could appreciate both the seriousness of the technical effort and the skill and feeling with which it had been wrought out.
Next to the resourcefulness of the medium there was nothing more abundantly demonstrated in this exhibition than the high level of technical excellence, whether one studies what has been aimed at or what has been accomplished. For many years the watchword of this body of workers has been “quality.” It is a pervasive and evasive word; but, without troubling themselves to define it these photographers have practically applied its principle to getting all the excellence possible out of the process and all the expression possible into the print. When I say “possible” I mean, of course, possible to them; what they individually deemed desirable and were capable of rendering. For the possibilities of the medium itself, one ventures to believe, are far beyond what has hitherto been explored.
For the most part, the basis of technical endeavor has been, and still is, “spotting” and tone. On the other hand, the motive of form in its structural and plastic capacity has had few adherents among these photographers. It is form as a silhouette, as a feature of patterned composition, that has attracted the majority; perhaps because they have been influenced by the more obvious qualities of a Japanese print. At any rate, the bulk of these photographs offer no stimulus to the plastic sense; they appeal to the pleasure one takes in decorated surfaces, and it is along this line that they have attained so high a level of excellence. In the patterning or spotting of the composition they exhibit on the whole a welcome inventiveness of design; in the securing of an ensemble by means of adjustment of values, they represent a feeling for tonality and skill in attaining it that are quite remarkable. Moreover, in the best examples, the blacks and greys involve qualities of depth, transparency and colorfulness which are full of aesthetic suggestion. In fact, within the limits of what they have proposed to themselves, these photographers have reached an average of technical accomplishment which is as high as the present day average in any other medium of picture making.
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[pgbrk] This result is due to a comparatively small number of workers, most of whom were represented in the recent exhibition. As a body they have recognized that they were dealing with a new medium, the resources of which had to be explored without the aid of traditions. Thus the most conspicuous of these workers have been constant experimenters, from whose example the rest have profited. The movement has had to contend with the ridicule not only of painters, but also of other photographers who were satisfied to jog on as mere caterers to trade conditions. The brunt of this has been borne by a few workers of assertive personality, whose spirit has infused the remainder of the group and made itself felt outside. To all this turmoil the late exhibition came as a fitting climax. It established the worth-whileness of the fight by the best of evidence, namely, by the quality of the work which has resulted from its inspiration. This is of a character to silence all defamers, whether inside or outside the ranks of the photographers. Criticism is still in order, but indifference to the artistic possibilities of photography is now only another word for ignorance. Charles H. Caffin.
THE BUFFALO EXHIBITION
THE impression left by this exhibition was so subtly deep that after the first complete view of it, one was not immediately conscious of any impression other than a curious sense of intellectual quiet and satisfaction. That one could come away from an exhibition of pictures with such a feeling was in itself a unique experience. The mind at once began to endeavor to analyze the effect, in its effort to arrive at the cause. What was it that had produced this result ? Through the entire exhibition everything bespoke a quiet earnestness and sincerity of purpose. There had been no clap-trap, no appeal to the hyperemotional, no melodramatic touches, no effort at pictorial climaxes and crescendoes. The whole was pervaded with a curiously rare sense of harmony; the individual parts were complete and harmonious in themselves; harmonious in their relation to each other; harmonious in their combined results as a whole. Everything was exquisitely refined and well balanced down to the smallest setting of the exhibition. Then, as one analyzed and gave thought to it, one began to understand that it was the very bigness and perfection of the exhibition that seemed to fail to create an impression by the very bigness of the impression that it did create through so entirely lifting one out of the customary exhibition atmosphere as to take away all standards of comparison.
II
The modern pictorial exhibition, with few exceptions, has, by those familiar with the subject, come to be regarded as a possibly necessary evil, and, in most cases, as the corruptor instead of the educator of public taste. Admirable in their original purpose, academic and art-organization exhibitions, with few exceptions, have degenerated into being conservators of aesthetic snobbery or of the commercialization of art. The academy exhibi-
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[pgbrk] tions have grown to be high-class marts for artistic wares, and are but a few degrees removed from the art dealer’s gallery. By “making” certain artists and creating a demand for a certain class of work, they have educated the public along certain popular lines, and often shut the doors of recognition and success in the face of originality and progress. It is always unfortunate when an artist is dependent on his art for his living. It is degenerating when an artist’s inspiration finds incentive in cupidity. It is vulgarizing, the longing for academic honors. The real artist is so much bigger as a man when he stands alone than he is as an academician, when he becomes one of a crowd. And yet it is all this that the modern academies and exhibitions have largely fostered.
When there are recognized exhibitions, held at stated times, for which artists prepare special pictures for exhibition purposes, the real cause of art and beauty is too often lost sight of in the ardency of the desire to produce a picture that the jury will be likely to approve. It is this underlying motive that has killed the most promising of all of the recognized photographic exhibitions. It killed the “Joint Exhibitions”; it killed the American Institute Exhibition; it killed the Philadelphia Salons; and, finally, it killed the London Linked Ring Salons. They all began well. They all prospered for a while. They all fell away from the verity of their purpose, in the byways of envy, vanity and cupidity. They all refused to take warning when the warning note was sounded, and, as a result, they one and all died, because the element of beauty is ever a vital force that ever seeks its own level, and ever retaliates on those of its professed votaries who seek like beavers to dam its current for their own betterment and satisfaction.
It may surprise some readers when the assertion is made that this exhibition has been over a quarter of a century preparing. Yet such is the fact. For over twenty-five years I have watched exhibitions come and go and their wrecks as monuments to much wasted and misdirected endeavor. But, through it all, like a coral island being built up slowly, surely, under the surface has grown the spirit that finally unveils itself in its full ideality in this exhibition. It is said that whatever is good is worth fighting for. Every step of the way has been fought. The same elements that in the past made the old “Joint Exhibitions” impossible, and that diverted the Philadelphia Salons from their original high purpose into a sort of County Fair photoshow, where vulgarity vied with vanity to be classed as artists with Rembrandt and Rubens, these same elements sought by every means to pull down this exhibition as they had others, and failing in that, to misrepresent it afterwards through dishonest misrepresentation. But the days of the power of these elements for mischief were passed. They had faded into mere shades, whose thin crackling voices were all that was left of them.
The force of purpose behind the “Secessionistic Idea,” and the truth of the great principle it sought to shape into definite being—like all high and sound ideals when backed up by uncompromising, fearless truth—slowly but surely conquered, and set a standard of beauty that must eventually influence the world of modern art.
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[pgbrk] The pursuit of pure beauty is the aim of the soul of the world. There are few lives in which it does not play some part, from the greatest master in music or painting to the dirty little vagrant children of the slums who beg for a flower of the pedestrian who chances to pass amongst them with a bunch thereof, or who on a summer night find strange joy in dancing shadow dances under an electric light to the music of a hand-organ.
To open up a new way to give expression to the individual feeling for the beautiful adds a new avenue to the common goal, and hence to the resources of the race. Twenty-five years ago photography was not generally regarded as a possible medium of original pictorial expression. The real artist who welcomed any medium that would aid him in his quest for the beautiful appreciated at once the value and possibilities of photography, and used it to give expression to his ideals without further question. Of such was Hill, the Scotch painter and sculptor, whose work, done half a century ago and exhibited in the Buffalo collection, formed one of the finest groups in the exhibition. The general public as well as “artists,” however, for long scoffed at the idea that an exhibition of photographic pictures could be shown in an art gallery such as the Philadelphia Academy, the Carnegie Gallery in Pittsburg, and others, for their beauty and originality as pictures. Nevertheless, there were those who grasped the real possibilities of photography as a means of original expression, and who set to themselves the task of overcoming conventional prejudice and opening the eyes of the world to the possibilities of this new medium of giving expression to the beautiful.
Largely to one man does the success of the Buffalo Exhibition, with all that that implies, belong. Over twenty-five years ago he recognized the possibilities of photography. He realized that there were many persons who, if they came to regard photography seriously as a possible means of original pictorial expression, would give to the world individual conceptions of the beautiful that could be produced through no other medium and for which the race would be richer; and that through a medium with which the general public was more intimately familiar than with any other, the public taste could through understanding be trained to a keener and truer and more catholic perception of beauty in all fields of artistic expression; and, furthermore, through such education of artistic perception to emphasize the principle that a large class of paintings—many of which are even housed in art galleries— will be superseded by works produced more beautifully and less mechanically through the medium of photography. This was the germination of the Seces-sionistic idea. Through writings and exhibitions the battle was begun and tirelessly waged with this end in view; and so it has gone on tirelessly for a quarter of a century, to be finally crowned with this splendid achievement— the Buffalo Exhibition.
The attendance at the art gallery shows quite convincingly that the general public of today has begun to understand what Hill and a few others knew to be the fact years ago.
As I have already stated, the impression made by the exhibition is so subtle as to be not at first felt. Only on revisitation and after close analytic
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[pgbrk] study of the exhibition in its entirety and its detail, does one begin to realize how deeply it has indented itself on the memory; how strongly it has appealed to the taste and imagination; how vitally it has stirred thought, and satisfied, while inviting analysis, in the freedom from all vulgarity, affectation and insincerity, of the exhibition as a whole. It is a masterpiece in exhibitions among modern exhibitions of any sort in that it presents its subjects at its best, while mirroring the individual exhibitors at theirs through the comprehensive character of each individual group, which displays very accurately the artistic psychology of its creator. Here we find gathered under one roof, within the enclosing walls of one building, the best work of the foremost workers in this particular field of mental and aesthetic activity; those who have been gathered into one movement, and who through the combined results of their labors have been instrumental in bringing the art they espoused to its present place of advancement. Each of these is seen at his or her best; fairly, fully, convincingly represented; not merely by their latest best work, but in most cases, by the best examples of their different periods of development, resulting in an admirable composite picture of their minds at their complex best.
And, as a whole, the exhibition was in harmony with and looked entirely at home in the Albright Art Gallery, one of the handsomest galleries in the country both without and within. As one approached this beautiful building one felt that only that which was finest could stand the test of such an elegant and dignified environment, and that the collection was in such complete harmony with its exacting setting was of itself best of proof of its high standard and fine perfection as an exhibition.
III
The charm and interest of this exhibition was so engrossing that it was only after several visits that I found myself able to regard it from the purely critical standpoint. It is the one complete presentation of the development (anabasis I was almost tempted to say, as it has been very like a military advance) of photography as a means of pictorial expression as an art. It is such an exhibition as will never again be gotten together, and might almost be said to be the final word, for, while new and beautiful work will continue to be created through this medium, no higher standards of expression will ever be reached.
In saying that it is complete, I do not overlook the fact that the exhibition did not include examples of the works of Mrs. Cameron and some others; but what Mrs. Cameron did in portraiture was more than done by Hill, whose work today after nearly fifty years represents the finest portraiture ever done by aid of photography. The Hill collection is splendid, vital, virile and by comparison, some of the finest of the modern portraiture shown in this collection seems thin, anemic and over-conscious. The exhibition afforded a rare opportunity for a comparative study of the work of the different exhibitors. The delicate poetic charm of White left the impression of the music of line, and the soft singing whisper of tone with only the ghost of a shadow
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[pgbrk] of the personality behind their making. While the almost brutal strength of Steichen with its high-light accentuation carried the mind directly to the dominating personality of Steichen himself—big, rugged, full of activity, emotional, a veritable Danton among pictorialists, a mind whose mental horizon is very broad and whose convictions are very strong and eager to force themselves on others—a man certain to make staunch friends and bitter enemies, and with all, a good fighter and one free from petty jealousies. In the fine collection of Eugene’s work, which in certain aspects possesses some of the characteristics of Hill, one feels the painter, the man who loves rich color for itself, who loves life, beautiful, jovial, healthy, full-blooded life, and glories in portraying it—a very meistersinger of the joy of living. Strongly and curiously did the pictures of Seeley contrast with those of Eugene— striking in composition, flat in treatment, decorative in character, and suggestive of the dreamy sadness of living ghosts. Coburn, on the other hand, dealt with neither the joy of living nor the sad dreams of living ghosts, but the problems of compositions as suggested by city scenes and streets. Here was the very evident influence of Japanese art in which there was little suggestion of feeling or color—but strong feeling for urban pictorial possibilities— that contrasts curiously with the purely architectural sense of Evans. The work of De Meyer proved one of the most attractive groups in the exhibition. Refined to a degree in both conception and treatment, at times quaint, at times piquant—always vivacious, finished and delightful, always showing exquisite taste and a masterful knowledge of technique, everything he displayed was of interest and his “Silver Skirt” was one of the most attractive pictures of the exhibition. How marked the contrast between this and the exhibition of Gertrude Kasebier, with its artistic irresponsibility and indifference to mere technique; its curious impulsiveness; its inner blind groping to express the protean self within—that finer, bigger self that cannot always find voice and that resents any seeming lack of appreciation on the part of others; of the respect that she feels is the due of the muse she worships. Annie W. Brigman, on the other hand, seems to have sought to grasp the very soul of nature, and her entire collection is rhythmic with the poetry of nature, its bigness, its grandeur, its mystery. It is reminiscent of the Ovidean metamorphoses, and the “Mid-Summer Night’s Dream”—pervaded with a certain bigness of feeling that the splendor of our Western nature seems to infuse into the soul. In this collection we quite lose sight of the personality of their maker in the poetry and charm of the themes portrayed.
By all odds the most complete and finest in every respect were the collections of D. O. Hill, J. Craig Annan and Alfred Stieglitz. The Hill collection was largely confined to portraiture. Those of Annan and Stieglitz covered a wider range and showed finely artistic perception and masterly technique, together with an unswerving sincerity of purpose. Both marked by a curiously keen sensitiveness, of which Annan’s was perhaps the more poetic and gentle, Stieglitz’s the more symphonic and aggressive, but both sure of touch and fertile of fancy. Amateurs in the real sense of that word, they represented at its best the work of their several countries, and I derived from the study
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[pgbrk] of their work much the same pleasure that I enjoyed in going over the collection of original prints of some of the master etchers in the British Museum. As I enjoyed those etchings for their individual charm and beauty, for the sheer pleasure that their contemplation gave me, so did I enjoy these prints.
In studying the French and Austria-Germany collection it was instructive to note how strong the impression left by the latter as compared with the former—the latter showing a greater sincerity of purpose and deeper belief in the artistic worth of the medium. The French collection, of which Demachy’s prints far outranked those of the rest (I have never seen Demachy so completely and splendidly represented, and it was his work that gave France the right to a serious consideration), while dainty and full of a light charm, was not convincing and left the feeling that as a whole the French took their work with but half-hearted seriousness, and had not realized “the importance of being in earnest.” Le Begue displayed several pleasing nudes; and Captain Puyo, whose exhibition was well selected, showed one particularly pleasing landscape.
The Austria-Germany collection, as represented by Henneberg, Kuehn, Watzek and the Hofmeisters, while lacking the lighter, daintier touch, showed power and conviction.
Among the other exhibitors whose work showed distinct merit were Malcolm Arbuthnot, whose work, while lacking something of certainty, possessed a delicate charm and a promising ambitiousness, his “Whither” being rather big in conception; Walter Bennington, whose “Fleet Street” and “Lambeth Bridge, Twilight” show him to be a worker of distinct individuality and feeling; Archibald Cochrane, whose “Night Summons” and “Bonne Bouche” attracted special attention; George Davison, whose “Harlech Castle” still holds its own and wears well; Frank Read, whose landscape and river bits cannot fail to awaken pleasant memories in any one who knows and loves English landscape; Wm. B. Dyer, John Bullock and Edmund Stirling, whose little prints have lost none of their charm through the lapse of years; Frederick H. Pratt, whose “House in Mist” was rather poetic; Paul Anderson, Mrs. Chas. Byron Bostwick, Robert Bruce, Luella Kimball, Karl F. Struss, who displayed some remarkably interesting examples of the pictorial possibilities of New York and Pittsburg, as did Pierre Dubreuil in his pictures of Paris. Arnold Genthe’s work was full of fine feeling and originality, while that of Paul Haviland was marked by quiet refinement and force. His “Girl Reading” had a deal of the simple bigness of the Dutch school and was one of the finest things in the open section. Wm. J. Mullin’s delightful group of little landscapes were perfection of their sort, dainty, exquisite, charming. Wm. B. Post’s snow studies were gems, as beautiful as anything of his that I have ever seen. About the work of Augustus Thi-baudeau there was a fine simplicity and depth of feeling that was refreshing. One of his prints “Santa Lucia” possessed a curious haunting charm. Of the prints shown by W. and G. Parrish, the one entitled “The Haunted Room” was one of the most striking things in the exhibition. It was well composed and full of feeling, action, mystery. The works of F. Holland Day, while
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[pgbrk] characteristic of the best work of that gifted artist with which I am familiar, did not embrace his later work which he seems to prefer not to exhibit.
The exhibition was wonderfully well hung—a task the difficulty of which long experience has taught me. And the manner of the hanging as well as the excellent wall arrangement of the gallery added greatly to the advantageous display of this very remarkable and admirable exhibition which the Albright Gallery was fortunate in being able to show.
IV
My last visit to the Albright Art Gallery was on a dark, stormy day when snow and rain kept most people indoors. There were not many people there at the time and the overcast weather left the gallery interior in a semi-twilight. After I had wandered round in final review, I sat down for a while to rest. In the quiet and semi-dusk of the nearly deserted gallery I fell open-eyed into a dream that metamorphosed all about me into vitally palpitating life. Out of each frame there seemed to flow a vital current of life, which commingling created a complex living, swirling, revolving miniature world. Visible to me were the creative forces behind all of these pictures—the lives that had gone into their making. Many of these forces were warring with themselves, warring with each other, seeking violently to rend the whole asunder. Many of them, apparently, if left to themselves, would have destroyed their own work. Clouds of jealousies from time to time obscured the whole. But all the while some central force held the mass together, drawing out and sometimes shaping the best work, helping those who stumbled and uniting all the complex, imaginative energy into one purposeful whole towards a definite end. This central observing, guiding mind appeared to see and understand the evolving minds about him, and to be endeavoring to evoke from each that which was finest and best, to be endeavoring to make each bigger and finer and immortal. And as he worked and planned a great structure seemed to be growing under his building—and all the while his eyes were fixed on a distant horizon from behind which shone a soft beautiful light, which was the glow of Beauty. And as this complex structure on which he worked expanded, grew, was raised up above the earth, slowly it became enveloped in the golden glow of this soft light. And somehow that for which this exhibition about me stood, that which it represented, seemed to be the structure that had been raised by the tireless watcher out of the combined energy of these evolving, complex, divergent forces, which, left to themselves, would have wrought only destruction; and, votaries of beauty though they were, learned but slowly and imperfectly the great lesson of beauty.
Joseph T. Keiley.
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[pgbrk] WHAT REMAINS
THE photographic exhibition at the Albright Art Gallery is a thing of the past. There are many rooms in that white marble mansion and they will be devoted as heretofore to the display of art in all its varied aspects. But its hospitable doors may never swing open again for a similar array of photographic prints. It was not an ordinary exhibition, this November show at Buffalo. It was a conquest, the realization of an ideal. Its triumph will rarely be repeated and even if repeated will assume a different aspect. It is not my intention to dwell upon any official reports of this successful venture. It is not a question of favorable comments or the number of visitors that availed themselves of the intellectual treat. They fail to tell the story. May it suffice to say that the general consensus of opinions agreed that pictorial photography had never been presented to the public in so effective, comprehensive and beautiful a manner. I endorse this estimate with absolute sincerity. I have seen numerous exhibitions, photographic and otherwise, but I do not remember any which excelled this one in clarity and precision of presentation. This is now a matter of history and its harmony of lines, the charm of its individual exhibits, and the artistic excitement which was evident in assembling them, is merely a memory.
After hearing a symphony the score remains. After seeing a play the text remains. An exhibition, as soon as it is dispersed, leaves nothing but the general impression and a few cherished recollections, that we may realize again only according to their original sensitiveness and strength.
What is it that remains of the exhibition ? Of what significance is photography artistically in these days of eclectic art expressions ? This, I maintain, is what interests the true lover of photography most of all. Questions like these have nothing to do with the style of presentation, of mounting, hanging and the exquisite proportions of the exhibition halls. It is the print itself, stripped of all embellishment, and the eye, brain and hand behind it which must tell the story.
I believe the old cry “art for art” has become meaningless. That some pictorialists have fashioned for themselves a personal mode of expression is an established fact. The victory over the photographic bureaucracy has been won long ago. It needs no further argument. We have learnt that a photographic print can be a thing of beauty aside from reference to any subject it portrays. The high average of excellence throughout the exhibit was astounding as it was exquisite.
Now, as heretofore, the pictorial army is divided in two camps, the Demachy-Eugene-Steichen camp who favor painter-like subjects and treatment, and the Stieglitz-White-Craig-Annan class who flock around the standard of true photographic themes and texture. The camp of the former, true evidently, becomes more and more deserted, the old flag hangs limp and the fires burn low—only the dense and indifferent public, which is always behind the time, begins to patronize what was popular ten years ago. But in the rank and file the old feuds are forgotten. The artist who rose at dawn and measured
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[pgbrk] swords with his critics has acquiesced. Each man went his way, made his own audience, and challenged it for his own specific purposes.
The contention has become a much subtler one. What we would like to fathom is what photography can do better than any other monochrome medium, not what it may do eventually, but what it has done. This is strictly a matter of technical consideration, as the aesthetic satisfaction derived from an art is in exact proportion to the public’s knowledge of that art’s technique. We know more about photography, and consequently are more deeply interested in the intricacies of the process. Photographic draftsmanship commands three technical preferences which are always evident when photography is at its best.
1. The image is actually drawn by light, and no other black and white medium can compete with this conveyance of the actual flow and shimmer of light, as it flits from object to object to the deepest shadows, still capable of preserving a degree of delicacy in the most solid black. Prints like White’s “ Portrait of Mrs. White,” Laura Armer’s “ Mother and Child” and Kasebier’s “The Manger,” to mention but a few, brought this out distinctly. As soon as the light is manipulated it loses its greatest charm, and often becomes dull and chalky.
2. Line is invariably suggested by the gradation of tonal planes. Precise, or blurred, it is drawn entirely by the differentiation of values. This absence of actual line is possible also in other mediums but achieved only with great difficulty, while it is natural to photography and consequently one of its powerful characteristics. All prints excepting those of the extreme tonalists express this quality.
And 3. As it is impossible to emphasize line except by juxtaposition of values, that tone (a subtle variation of hues within one tint) is one of the most favorable formulae of photographic picture-making (viz.: Craig-Annan and De Meyer still-lifes). Tone in this sense has never been produced with equal perfection except by American wood engraving.
In subject matter the studio print and landscape photography have advanced but few new themes if any have been brought out. They are borrowed largely from the other arts. It is the men who have preferred the city streets, the impressionism of life and the unconventional aspects of nature to costuming and posing, who have occasionally enriched our wealth of pictorial impressions. In many instances they have discovered and subdued new and unusual motifs and improvised upon the laws of composition with the skill of true virtuosos. I refer in particular to Stieglitz’s skyscrapers and dock scenes, and some of Coburn’s interpretations of city views.
One can hardly say that photographic picture-making up to this day has revealed much of spiritual gravity. It is mobile and complete, but not splendidly audacious conceptionally. Only in rare instances does it reflect actual mentality, as in the work of Steichen and the Viennese. Perhaps this is a limitation of the pictorial print of portfolio size. Its masterpieces may be defined as perfect beauty of visional appreciation joined to perfect beauty of technical expression. Elaborate figure compositions belong rather to the domain of snapshot photography. It is the single image, the attitude of a
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[pgbrk] figure, the tonal fragment, a glass among shadows, a fleeting expression or some atmospheric condition, which adds something to our consciousness of beauty.
These reflections in a way are the result of my visit to the Albright Art Gallery. No doubt, any student of photography bent upon analysis of its aesthetic significance, has arrived at similar conclusions, but it was never brought out more clearly, more convincingly than at Buffalo. The photographer had a chance to realize the possibilities and limitations of his medium.
But there was something else which could not be seen, but only felt, which emanated as it were from the walls, and which pervaded the entire exhibit. It is difficult to express it in words. An ensemble so exceptional, aside of all actualities, teaches a lesson of deeper significance. It was combined in the spirit which provoked it. I sit at my desk and wonder how such a refined sensation of visional joy mingled with an appreciation of the mind so deep and true, as I experienced walking through these large peaceful galleries, could have ever been conjured up in this diffident commerce-sodden community. It can only be the result, I mused, of the natural exaltation of a mind free from prejudices (except it were directed against insincerity), solely as the pursuit of some lofty ideal. And I must confess that I have never met a group of men who have taken their vocation more seriously and disinterestedly than these pictorialists. Art today in many instances is so mechanical and imitative, so time-pleasing and coin-of-fact that one greets these workers with exceptional feelings of sympathy and appreciation. Not that they are necessarily visionary and fanatic. No, they are practical enough, for it demands a peculiar temperament to be a successful pictorialist. There enters into his make-up a certain amount of patience and scientific calculation which is foreign to the average artist’s nature. But they possess the vital spark. Their art expression is germinal, not mimetic. They have put themselves at the service of a new medium, and they endeavor to conquer it. No matter how eclectic they may be, they at least freshly comprehend, reassimilate, readopt accepted principles of beauty to a new virile condition. And thanks to these finer artistic faculties and sensibilities, to their subjective process of taste and ideality the success of the exhibition was due. These workers realize that their art instincts must blossom forth into wholesome consciousness as natural expansion before their medium of expression can take its proper and its fullest meaning.
And it was this spirit which made the Albright Exhibit of November, 1910, memorable in the annals of photography and art.
Like the delicious odor in some mirrored cabinet that lingers indefinitely for years, this spirit will not fade. It will be remembered long after individual efforts have lost their immediate usefulness. The few masterpieces will remain, the rest will be forgotten, but the spirit will continue to remain an active force, and produce fresh impressions of light and tone, of form and grace. Sadakichi Hartmann.
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[pgbrk] CONCEPTION AND EXPRESSION
"WHAT language do you think in?” is a question often asked
people who, besides their mother tongue, have mastered another language. The answer is generally given after some hesitation, “Why, both.” The answer might more truthfully be, “Neither.” We do not think in words, but translate our thoughts into words to communicate them to our fellow men. How often we hear, or say ourselves, “I know what I want to say, but can’t find the word for it.” What language are we then thinking in ? Our thoughts are not words but images, revivals of old impressions received by the brain, which are frequently brought into new combinations, and can be classified into five groups, according to the one of the five senses through which they were originally perceived. Other so-called abstract ideas correspond to general physical sensations which we do not consciously locate. Joy will be accompanied by the relaxation of certain muscles, pain by the contraction of certain muscles,—sleep means the absence of conscious sensation, and so on.
When we communicate our thoughts to our fellow men, we rely on their having had similar sensations to ours, and we use a medium which will awaken or recall these sensations. What do the words blue or red mean to a blind man, or C sharp to a deaf man ? No two individuals have had identical experiences, so that response to our communication can never be more than approximate. It is doubtful if there exists a human being of whom it may be said that he is perfectly balanced in every respect. Especially among artists some one sense has attained a higher development than the others. In the musician the sense of hearing; in the painter the sense of form and color; in the cook the sense of taste may become so highly developed that their thoughts are almost entirely auditive, visual, or through the sense of taste, and when their delicate perceptions are translated into the medium in which they have chosen to express themselves most directly, they can only be imperfectly understood by those whose senses are more rudimentarily developed.
The medium most commonly used to express our thoughts, the most easily understood by the majority of people, is through the use of words— literature. That is why so many people, failing to grasp the message of the artist through another medium, ask to have it transposed into the medium which they can best grasp, and ask to have music, painting, explained to them—that is, to have form, color, sound sensations transposed into words. The difficulty of such a task is clearly apparent when we consider that, although words are capable of calling up visual and auditive images, they do so by appealing to memories based on original impressions, different for each individual; and that is why so many explanations of art explain nothing. The artist’s thought inevitably loses a great deal when expressed through the medium best suited to it, on account of the limitations of the medium. How much more must it lose when translated from this imperfect medium into a still more remote and imperfect method of expression ? The painter’s message must be understood through the eye, the musician’s through hearing,
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[pgbrk] and when Mr. Nadelman explains his drawings by saying that they are based on the use of curves, his explanation gives us no more idea of his work than we can get of Debussy’s music when we are told that he uses an Oriental scale of eight intervals of full tones instead of the European scale of two tones, half a tone, three tones, half a tone.
I have purposely avoided the words art or work of art throughout this article because I have looked upon the artist’s work merely as a language, a means through which he expresses himself. The graphic artist thinks not in words, but in terms of visual images, tones, values, lines, color, division of space, and expresses those ideas through the means which enable him best to translate them into visible signs. The most glowing description of a painting will never make us see the painting. If, therefore, we wish to really appreciate painting, sculpture, music, we must break away from literature and cultivate our sense of sight, space and hearing. In that way only can we ever hope to get into sympathy with the works we wish to understand.
Paul B. Haviland.
TO XOCHIPILLI,* LORD OF FLOWERS
Thou art a flower, tender of attitude yet virile of form.
Oh, lord of flowers, Xochipilli!
Of clay art thou made;
But thy maker thee embodied With spirit vibrating and filling.
Thou starest with an all seeing, all penetrating eye.
Thou fillest boundless space,
Watcher of endless time,
Speaker of the universal tongue.
Thou art more living than
Ten thousand others made of flesh.
’Tis because of thy maker That thou art thus.
Max Weber.
Xochipilli, primitive Mexican sculpture
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[pgbrk] PLATES
HEINRICH KUEHN
VIII. Landscape IX. On the Dunes X. Study
XI. Winter Landscape
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[pgbrk] THE GAME AT THE “LITTLE GALLERIES”
THERE is a fine old game that has been playing in the world (in one shape or another) for a million years.
It is called “Simon says, ‘Thumbs Up!’
You’ve played it, have you not?
“You believe you do remember playing it as a kid,” did you say?
Now my dear fellow, just stop and think.
Have you never played it in recent years ?
At the theatre, say, when you glanced slyly round before you quite knew whether to applaud ?
Or you, madam, when you purchased that hat that I see you wearing ?
Or you, Reverend Brother in Christ, when you selected the text for last Sunday’s sermon ?
Or you, sir A.R.A., when, the Fall Exhibition coming on apace, you set your palette and stretched a virgin canvas ?
But let me reverse the question.
Have you ever tried to pull out of the game ?
If so, perhaps you have discovered that among all the eleemosynary foundations of altruistic modernity there seems to have been provided no single refuge (without grilled windows and a warden) for the entertainment of those who, if they had a playhouse, would like to play that other game that is so unpopular as to be nameless, but that we may call “/ say, ‘Thumbs Wiggle-waggle!’”.
And when you have discovered this omission you will partly understand the “Little Galleries” of the Photo-Secession.
For here, beneath the mysterious symbol of the pale golden disk, come freaks-in-fustian and angels-unawares to twiddle thumbs in the face of Great Simon—the Jester.
“O Ho then!” I hear you say. “So the ‘Little Galleries’ are a charitable institution ?”
Friend, you forget.
I said that you would partly understand.
In order to understand fully, you must understand the symbol of the Golden Disk.
Somewhere in his gospel of repudiation and of hope one of the mad wise men has said:
“ In our sun-whirl there is one planet which has a moon which is turning the other way. And if it be strong enough, and last long enough, sooner or later the whole mighty Wheel of Light will return and follow that one little moon.”
The Golden Disk of the Secession is the symbol of that satellite.
J. B. Kerfoot.
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[pgbrk] PHOTO-SECESSION NOTES
ALTHOUGH the Photo-Secession has had little to say about pho-tography in the recent issues of its organ, Camera Work, its interest in the medium has not waned, and the Buffalo Show of Pictorial Photography, about which more is to be read through the pages of this number, is evidence of the work that has been quietly but steadily accomplished by the champions of pictorial photography. The endorsement of the work and attitude of the Photo-Secession by the Albright Art Gallery as printed in the catalogue is significant. Its importance warrants our reprinting it in these notes:
“In pursuance of the intentions and expressed desire of the late director of the Gallery, Dr. Kurtz, the management of this exhibition was put into the hands of the Photo-Secession, with whom the directors of the academy and Miss Sage, the present director, have co-operated in fullest sympathy.
Buffalo Fine Arts Academy Albright Art Gallery.”
The directors of the Albright Art Gallery further decided to purchase twelve of the prints from the exhibition to form the nucleus of a collection which is to be housed in one of the galleries, which as a memorial to the exhibition is permanently to be devoted to pictorial photography.
The season at “291” opened with a mixed exhibition of lithographs and drawings by different artists, and some paintings and sketches of Emile Rousseau. Among the lithographers, Cezanne, Renoir, Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec were represented by choice examples of their work. Drawings by Auguste Rodin were also shown. Reprints of press comments on Rousseau’s work will be found on the opposite page of Camera Work. The following reprint of the note written by Mr. Max Weber, a friend of Rousseau, for the catalogue, will give an idea of the spirit of this painter who, if little known by the public, was much loved and appreciated by his fellow painters.
“The work of Henri Rousseau, who died September 5 of this year, is shown here for the first time in this country. For many years his work was of a most interesting character in the Salon des Artistes Independents of Paris, in which he steadily exhibited since 1886, and for whose existence he fought from the beginning. The few pictures in this exhibition are loaned by Mr. Max Weber, who was a devoted friend of Henri Rousseau. He began his career in the customhouse service of the French government, but, gifted with artistic instincts, he eventually sought to express himself in plastic art. His work greatly interested the younger group of painters and critics in Paris, known as Les Fauves, who were his greatest friends and admirers up to the last. He was truly naive and personal, a real ‘primitive’ living in our time. He loved nature passionately and painted as he saw it. His larger work is very fantastic and decorative, and recalls Giotto and other primitives. He lived a life of simplicity and purity, the spirit of which dominates his work.”
Following this exhibition, there were shown drawings and etchings by Gordon Craig, the first exhibition of this artist’s work in America. The drawings made some five years ago represent a style which he has since abandoned. His more recent work, as exemplified in his etchings, is inspired
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[pgbrk] by his views on stage-setting, which, according to his idea, should be suggestive rather than realistic. His series of the “Twelve Movements” is illustrative of his theory that art should translate “Movement” through the medium of immobile lines and masses.
We herewith reprint, as a matter of record, some of the press comments on the Henri Rousseau pictures:
Mr. James Huneker, in the N. Y. Sun, wrote as follows :
Occasionally bobs up that ancient conundrum (?): Would Raphael have been a painter if he had lived on a desert isle ? The answer is negligible. But if he had been born armless—what then ? As some Americans abroad buy the canvases of persons who perform with their toes—• whether from pity or love of lowly art, we can’t say—the armless hypothesis may also be dismissed. Let us suppose, however, that Raphael was absolutely ignorant of draughtsmanship, color, design, would he have been then il divino Raffaelo ? This question is perfectly sane when you consider the case of Henry (not Henri) Rousseau, several of whose productions may be seen at the gallery of the Photo-Secession nowadays.
Henry Rousseau was for many years in the employ of the French customs. He was an excise man (gabelou) and a man with a fanatical passion for art. He died last September. His death was the occasion for some pleasant and unpleasant obituary notices; unpleasant in the critical sense, for the old chap was much beloved and had few enemies. Mr. Stieglitz tells us that he “lived a life of simplicity and purity, the spirit of which dominates his work.” Many roisterers, gay boys and swashbucklers of pencil and brush ought to take heart at this; there is hope for their work. It would have been far better if Henry Rousseau had spent his nights in drinking and gaming and his days under the eye of the dreariest pedant of a drawing master (even at Julien’s academy) than leading his simple life. As an artist he is a joke; as a joke, a mild one, to be sure, he was regarded in Paris by people who refused to take his earnest caricatures seriously. And while we are on the subject let us admit that too much stress is laid upon the cardinal virtues as an aid to art by idealistic writers. Some of the biggest blackguards painted the noblest pictures. Isn’t it dangerous to search too closely into the private lives of painters, composers, poets ? If a painter drinks too hard his work will soon deteriorate. That is a physiological fact. Even chess and billiard virtuosi are not benefited by alcohol. Any of the vices may lead to ruin. But to expect that because a man doesn’t drink, chew gum or swear or indulge to excess in the seven capital sins he will paint better, compose musical master works or indite lofty poems is, aesthetically speaking, to return to the days of Little Rollo or to the precepts of that unhappy madman, the late Leo Tolstoy.
How lovely it is to dream that no base imagination ever conceived a magnificent work of art. Painters, poets, composers must work when at white heat with their respective materials and only at the veritable top notch of their temperament and imagination if they would produce masterpieces. In their everyday habits they may be monsters of immorality, and often they have been, though in their art their noblest side is shown, for all great art is essentially moral; that is, not in the pettifogging, puritanical sense, but artistically moral. Art hath her codes of purity as well as the Lesser Catechism and other guides to spiritual health.
Now all this sounds perilously like a Sunday morning sermon, indifferently preached on an absurd text. However, as no one that paints is alien to us, let us consider the case of Henry Rousseau. He was 42 years old when he began his “artistic career.” He had no training. He had a hot enthusiasm. He also painted shop signs. An Italian admirer asserted in a recent issue of La Voce (quoted in Mercure de France) that, commercial value apart (thrift Horatio!) he would exchange Raphael’s “Marriage of the Virgin” for a certain sign painted by Rousseau! Here is a critical Curtius for you, leaping into the gulf of ignorance to demonstrate the sincerity of his callow opinion. Naturally all this is profound blague. No matter how frightful or how puerile a man’s work may be he seems able to originate a school in Paris. Paul Adam has recently described America as a hotbed of fake religions. In Paris, that immortal home of the muses,
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[pgbrk] humbug reigns as in no other place on the planet. Nor have the Yankees the monopoly in bad art. That superb Montmartre jackass—literally—Boranali (wasn’t that the name given him by the farceurs ?) had a following, and it wouldn’t be surprising if a school known as the Master of the Jackass had sprung into existence, tail and all. And when writers can speak of Henry Rousseau’s work as “virginal, candid, ingenuous,” then it is time to ask yourself if the younger men aren’t more humorous than their granddaddies. Virginal fiddlesticks! Candid twaddle! Ingenuous stupidities!
The examples of Rousseau at Mr. Stieglitz’s bandbox gallery are pathetically ludicrous, especially as they are hung in company with such masters as Rodin, Renoir, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec. How wonderfully solid and savant are the Cezanne drawings! The Renoir is not particularly appetizing, and the Manets are in nowise distinguished, though a Manet is always a Manet; and the Toulouse-Lautrecs are marked with the febrile power that signifies the marsh light of his genius. Rousseau’s admirers speak of a terrific production of his entitled “Le Reve d’Yadwiglia,” which must resemble in equal proportions the dream of a maniacal cheesemonger and the waking thoughts of a tomcat. Yadwiglia is a young Polish maiden; she lies extended upon a velvet canape, the color violently sanguinary and the surrounding a tropical forest. The flowers are ghoulish, the lady is without raiment. What it all means doesn’t much matter, we have seen compositions of admired symbolists and revered Academicians that didn’t mean much. But they were well painted. Rousseau’s ideas of paint, design and composition are rudimentary. (And he bears the august name of the great landscapist of French art!) To deify his ignorance smacks of the silly or the hysterical. He is hailed by some as a modern Primitive. So are the students on Fifty-seventh street West when they give their annual fakir’s exhibition. There is too much gush over “divine awkwardness” and “inspired amateurship.” Oremus!
Mr. Tyrrell, in the N. Y. World:
Alfred Stieglitz, the Mystery of Picture Lane, has appeared again at 291, the tiny and intimate little gallery up aloft where no 200-pound Philistine ever penetrates, because the toy elevator is not big or strong enough to carry him up. The occult name of “Photo-Secession” is on the signboard, though photographs are never taken and but rarely exhibited here, and Mr. Stieglitz personally is about the gentlest-mannered art rebel that ever defied dull conventionality or harbored conspiracies against the commonplace.
A pleasing all-round paradox is Stieglitz — a dreamer who is so wideawake that he sees genius coming years before it arrives, or maybe it never does arrive; a picture connoisseur who is always putting up a fight for the recognition of somebody or something, and yet is bored by success — who is a loyal lover of Rubens, and at the same time gives the glad hand to Matisse—who delights in showing things that nobody wishes to buy or would accept as a gift, and when he does occasionally trot out something that people would pay any price for, it is not for sale!
There is a little of both these kinds in the present show at the Photo-Secession Gallery— surely one of the most extraordinary, for its size, that has ever been seen in this town, where anything and everything is possible. It will be on until Dec. 8, and probably by the beginning of next year people will be talking about it emphatically in the past tense.
It consists of a loaned collection of modern French lithographs by Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec; a few precious though fragmentary documents (they cannot be called drawings, nor even sketches, in the ordinary understanding of these terms) by the great Rodin; and some small paintings by the late Henri Rousseau, a Parisian “primitive” whose work is said to have seriously interested that younger group of painters and critics known as les Fauves, or, as you might say, the Wildcats.
Here is antithesis for you—the faintly shadowed dreams of the titanic sculptor and the crude dabblings of an untrained child—for poor Rousseau, a simple and lovable personality no doubt, was a primitive in art merely because, like Peter Pan, he never grew up and never learned to paint, or even to see intelligently the nature which he is said to have “passionately loved.” But Rodin and Henri Rousseau!—it is like Jove’s thunder and lightning and a kid letting off firecrackers.
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[pgbrk] Miss Elizabeth Luther Carey in the N. T. Times:
The exhibition of lithographs by Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, drawings by Rodin, and little paintings and drawings by Henri Rousseau, which is at the Photo-Secession Gallery until Dec. 8, will interest those rare minds which not only are concerned with the established art of the past, but curious regarding the art of the future. None of the younger painters can very certainly be heralded as a master of the art of the future, but they make an admirable appearance together, and the progression is nicely modulated from the now almost classic Manet and Rodin to the more revolutionary Cezanne, whose vast primitive talent seems to promise a fame even more enduring than that of the others; to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who went mad after fifteen years of brilliant mocking accomplishment, and who already looks less strange than Forain, and much more normal than Rodin in these great, swinging, vital sketches on the Photo-Secession walls, to Henri Rousseau, whose “dernier cri” is already an echo and whose paintings like the “Vice” of the poem, we “first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
The “Post-Impressionists” are at present having their day in London, and we may consider the fortifications of the enemy successfully stormed if they carry the huge, stubborn town of the Philistine. Are they entitled to victory ? Time will show, but only a pusillanimous critic will keep back the expression of his conviction, and we may as well admit straightway that Cezanne’s powerful white bathers lifting their big, gleaming bodies against a background suffused with color by a few marks of blue and green chalk has to us every appearance of superb, vital, normal art, sound and vigorous as that of the early Greeks. Renoir’s fat blonde woman with a baby flush on her plump cheeks and a silly, drooping baby mouth has nothing of Cezanne’s noble authority of vision and treatment, and belongs, of course, to a somewhat different tradition, but how the blood zips under that thin skin!
It is when we come to the “naive and personal” Henri Rousseau that we feel that we are old, and that the muscles of our mind must rebel a bit at such a leap as he asks us to take into the unknown. If we had come upon him unprepared and in worse company it might very well have been that we should have thought these childish canvases as much like the music of true art as the croaking of frogs is like an Italian melody—yet the frogs, we may assume, chanted musically enough for Aristophanes, and in the little brown sketches of a Paris quay, daintily worked out as for an old copybook, we get a suggestion of the kind of charm exercised by this art upon its followers. We get much more than a suggestion from the beautiful little vase, as rich as a piece of old majolica, which the painter decorated, and we end by assuring ourselves that the man who could get such color relations as that rather touching old vase reveals, was an artist born perhaps out of his due time, but with the “gift.” So we close our eyes to the hideous “Mother and Child” and faithlessly shirk that issue.
The next exhibition given in these enterprising galleries will be of drawings, etchings, and wood-cuts by Gordon Craig, whose work will be seen publicly for the first time in America.
Mr. B. P. Stephenson in the Evening Post:
It was one of the French post-impressionists who remarked that in art there were only plagiarists and revolutionists. Whether to describe the late Henri Rousseau, a few of whose works are on exhibition at the Photo-Secession Gallery, No. 291 Fifth Avenue, as a plagiarist or a revolutionist, we scarcely know. We are told of him by Alfred Stieglitz that “he began his career in the Custom House service of the French government, but gifted with artistic instincts, he eventually sought to express himself in plastic art. His work greatly interested the younger group of painters and critics in Paris known as “Les Fauves,” who were his greatest friends and admirers up to the last. He was truly naive and personal; a real “primitive” living in our time. He loved nature passionately, and painted as he saw it. His larger work is very fantastic and decorative, and recalls Giotto and other primitives. He lived a life of simplicity and purity, the spirit of which dominates his work. We do not know his larger work, so cannot say whether it recalls Giotto or not, but from what we saw of his paintings at the Photo-Secession Gallery we should say he was a plagiarist of all that was poor in primitive art. If he really loved nature and painted as he saw it, he must have been satisfied with a remarkably ill-looking mistress. It seems impossible to believe that any man of artistic sense could have seen a villa and its grounds as Rousseau painted it; there is neither color, form, nor atmosphere in the picture. Even less like any nature that normal
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[pgbrk] man has seen is his little painting of a woman in a black dress who is kneeling or standing—one cannot tell which—behind a little girl in a pink dress seated on a camp stool. The nose of the woman occupies a good half of her face; that of the child takes up nearly two-thirds of hers. Even Stieglitz had to confess he did not quite comprehend the picture, but some of the post-impressionists discovered color in it. We are even forbidden to criticise the post-impressionists, for, we are told by one of their great admirers, if they have done nothing else, they have proved the futility of art criticism, which is founded on the formulas that they have discarded, and is always a day later than the art criticised. The next exhibition at the Photo-Secession Galleries will be devoted to a collection of drawings, wood-cuts, and etchings by Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry.
Mr. J. Edgar Chamberlin in the N. T. Mail:
The Photo-Secession starts out its exhibitions of the year with a quaint and highly different collection of drawings by Rodin, lithographs by Manet, Cezanne, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, and some small paintings and drawings by one of the French ultra-modern primitives, Henri Rousseau.
The Rodin drawings reveal the well-known miraculous quality of that master of the plastic form, and they are strangely and weirdly beautiful. They shiver with insight and originality.
Can anything be said of Lautrec except that he is Lautrec ? Look at the profile of that satanic female, Yvette Guilbert. It is the Witch of Endor embodied in a hag-like but fascinating profile.
Among the Renoir lithographs there is a beautiful nude sketch in which the pink flesh seems to be alive.
Henri Rousseau is too primitive by far for ordinary consumption. A little portrait of a woman and child is of unbelievable ugliness. But there is something seizing in a city landscape in which the telegraph poles are considerably bent by the wind. Telegraph poles do not ordinarily bend in the wind, but it somehow warms and comforts the imagination to see them doing it in a picture. And in Rousseau’s color there is something extremely fresh, quaint, delightful.
The Photo-Secession will soon have an exhibition of the drawings, wood-cuts and etchings of Gordon Craig, of London.
Mr. James Townsend in the American Art News:
A loan collection of some lithographs by Manet, Cezanne, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, a few drawings by Rodin, and some smaller paintings and drawings by Henri Rousseau, are on view at the Photo-Secession Gallery, 291 Fifth Avenue, through Dec. 8. This little display gives to the lovers, students and enemies of the progressive and aggressive movement in Paris of French art, another of the opportunities which Mr. Stieglitz has furnished, and proposes to furnish, for discussion and education of and in the work of the band of young and older Frenchmen who have caused such a stir in the art of Europe the past few years. The drawings of Rodin are very fragmentary, but thoroughly representative. There is a little nude by Renoir, charmingly drawn and delicate in color, and three strong and typical lithographs by Cezanne. The sketches by Toulouse-Lautrec are also representative, but presumably the interest of visitors will center most in the three little pictures by the late Henri Rousseau, who died last September. These are loaned by Mr. Max Weber, who was an intimate friend of the dead artist. Rousseau first began his art career as a sculptor, and his work was taken up by the group of painters and critics in Paris known as “Les Fauves.” He was an eccentric genius and Mr. Stieglitz calls him a “real primitive living in our time, who loved nature passionately and painted as he saw it, whose larger work is very fantastic and decorative and recalls Giotto and other primitives, and who lived a life of simplicity and purity, the spirit of which dominates his work.”
While it is difficult to credit Mr. Stieglitz’s last assertion, if one is familiar with the life of the Parisian “Fauves,” who were Rousseau’s close associates, and while one may not entirely endorse the suggestion of Giotto in Rousseau’s work, he certainly was original and virile in his work. The little landscape shown, while painted in almost flat tints, has undoubted strength and charm. It will require some study and education to appreciate the figure work, “Mother and Child,” and it is always puzzling to know why Rousseau and his school thought and think it necessary to pick out ugly types.
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HEINRICH KUEHN XII. Venice
XIII. Lotte and Her Nurse
XIV. Sailing Boats XV. Landscape
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[pgbrk] THE EXHIBITION AT THE ALBRIGHT GALLERY-SOME FACTS, FIGURES, AND NOTES
THE International Exhibition, recently held at the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, was of unusual importance in the annals of pictorial photography and consequently a few facts and figures concerning it are of interest.
The Catalogue stated: “In pursuance of the intention and expressed desire of the late Director of the Gallery, Dr. Kurtz, the management of this exhibition was put into the hands of the Photo-Secession, with whom the Directors of the Academy and Miss Sage, the present Director, have co-operated in fullest sympathy.
Buffalo Fine Arts Academy Albright Art Gallery.”
The Foreword read: “The aim of this exhibition is to sum up the development and progress of photography as a means of pictorial expression. The Invitation Section consists largely of the work of photographers of international reputation American and foreign, whose work has been the chief factor in bringing photography to the position to which it has now attained. It comprises a number of ‘one-man’s shows/ and in many instances these exhibits include a number of prints executed quite recently. The prints in this entire section have been selected because of their intrinsic quality; while many have also the additional interest of marking special stages in its development. Many of these prints could be included only through the kindness of private collectors. In view of the comprehensiveness of this historical survey, the excellence and scope of the work of each individual represented here, and the evidence of the present-day vitality of Pictorial Photography, this exhibition at the Albright Art Gallery aims at something more thorough and definite than ever has been attempted heretofore in any previous exhibition, either in America or abroad.
The Open Section was added to this exhibition to give all American photographers an opportunity of being represented; and such of their work was selected as proved to be of a sufficiently high standard to link it with the spirit and quality of the Invitation Section.
Owing to the peculiarities of our Custom-house system, it was impracticable to open this section officially to foreign contributors. Some foreigners, however, submitted their prints on their personal responsibility.”
LIST OF EXHIBITORS
In the Invitation Section, Great Britain was represented by D. O. Hill with 40 prints; J. Craig Annan, 26; Malcolm Arbuthnot, 7; Walter Bennington, 7; Archibald Cochrane, 7; George Davison, 12; Frederick H. Evans, 7; J. Dudley Johnston, 5; Frank H. Read, 8; France, by Robert Demachy, 22; Celine Laguarde, 1; Rene Le Begue, 7; C. Puyo, 8. Austria-Germany, by Hugo Henneberg, 5; Heinrich Kuehn, 19; Hans Watzek, 1; Theodore and Oscar Hofmeister, 1; Baron A. de Meyer, 25; America, by Annie W. Brigman, 16; John G. Bullock, 3; Alice Boughton, 6; Rose Clark, 2; Alvin
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[pgbrk] Langdon Coburn, 25; F. Holland Day, 9; W. B. Dyer, 4; Frank Eugene, 28; Gertrude Kaesebier, 22; Joseph T. Keiley, 22; Frederick H. Pratt, 4; Harry C. Rubincam, 1; George H. Seeley, 23; Ema Spencer, 5; Katharine S. Burgess (Stanbery), 1; Eduard J. Steichen, 31; Alfred Stieglitz, 29; Edmund Stirling, 1; Clarence H. White, 34.
In the Open Section there were represented: Charlotte S. Albright, 3; Paul L. Anderson, 6; Charles T. Archer, 1; Laura Armer, 1; Jeanne E. Bennett, 7; Elizabeth Buehrmann, 3; Mrs. Chas. Byron Bostwick, 4; Robert Bruce, 2; Francis Bruguiere, 4; Sidney Carter, 2; Pierre Dubreuil, 6; J. Mitchell Elliot, 1; Arnold Genthe, 8; Paul B. Haviland, 7; J. P. Hodgins, 1; R. S. Kauffman, 1; Marshall R. Kernochan, 1; Luella Kimball, 2; Wm. J. Mullins, 12; W. and G. Parrish, 3; W. B. Post, 3; Karl F. Struss, 12; Augustus Thibaudeau, 8; Charles Van DerVelde, 4; Amy Whittemore, 2; Myra Wiggins, 3; Eleanor W. Willard, 2; F. C. Baker, 3.
SECESSIONISTS AND NON-SECESSIONISTS
Of the 37 workers included in the Invitation Section, 17 were members of the Photo-Secession and 20 were not. Of the 497 prints catalogued in this Section, 259 were by Photo-Secessionists and 238 by others.
In the Open Section, 12 exhibitors out of 28 were Photo-Secessionists. Of the 108 prints, 47 were by them.
NEW AND OLD WORK
Of the 584 prints hung in the exhibition, 217 were never before publicly exhibited in America, and of these 101 never before exhibited anywhere at all. These figures are particularly interesting when one remembers that it has been universally supposed that the exhibition consisted virtually of “old work.”
VISITORS
Buffalo has a population of but half a million inhabitants and, although the exhibition was open but three days over four weeks, it was visited by over fifteen thousand people. The attendance on pay-days as well as free broke all records for the Gallery.
SALES
The exhibition contained about 280 prints on which prices had been placed. Sixty-five of those prints were purchased by art collectors and by the Albright Art Gallery for the sum of approximately fifteen hundred dollars. One hundred dollars was as much as any print brought.
THE ALBRIGHT GALLERY BUYS PRINTS
As far back as 1894 the Brussels Museum bought a few pictorial photographs, and since then several European art galleries have occasionally done likewise. But amongst art galleries it has been left to the Albright Art Gallery to give pictorial photography its first genuine recognition and whole-souled support. As a memorial to the recent exhibition, the Trustees of the Albright Art Gallery not only purchased twelve prints to form the nucleus of a permanent collection but have reserved one of the galleries for the collection. The pictures have been hung and not filed away.
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[pgbrk] The prints purchased by the Gallery were: “The Bird-Cage” and “Portraits—A Group,” by D. O. Hill (gravures by J. Craig Annan); “Lombardy Ploughing Team,” by J. Craig Annan; “Still Life,” by Heinrich Kuehn; “The Fan,” by Baron A. de Meyer; “Cadiz,” by Alvin Langdon Coburn; “Arthur and Guinevre,” by Frank Eugene; “The Manger,” by Gertrude Kaesebier; “Garden of Dreams,” by Joseph T. Keiley; “The Painter,” by George H. Seeley; “Moonlight Impression from the Orangerie, Versailles Series,” by Eduard J. Steichen; “The Street, Fifth Avenue,” by Alfred Stieglitz; “The Chiffonier,” by Clarence H. White.
THANKS
The Photo-Secession herewith wishes to thank all those who, whether represented or not, have helped make the exhibition what it was. It was a triumph for photography and not of individuals. Special thanks are due to the Trustees of the Albright Art Gallery and to its Director, Miss Cornelia B. Sage, for their tireless and enthusiastic efforts on behalf of the exhibition.
The following article on Buffalo, written by Mr. Alvin Langdon Coburn, appeared in Harper s Weekly:
The Albright Gallery of Buffalo, one of the most important art institutions in America, has at present within its walls the finest exhibition of pictorial photographs that has ever been held. This exhibition was originally planned during the directorship of the late Dr. Kurtz, but his wishes have been ably carried out by Miss Sage, the present director, who has done much to contribute to its success.
The selecting and hanging were intrusted to that body of workers that has done so much toward the advancement of photography—the Photo-Secession; and without the indefatigable labors of its leading spirit, Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, this exhibition would not have been possible. Mr. Stieglitz began to use the camera in the year 1883, and his exploits and successes since that time would need more space than I have at my disposal to do them justice. He regards this show at Buffalo as his greatest achievement and as the culmination of the work of twenty years. In all there are no fewer than 584 prints, representing four national groups and sixty-five exhibitors, and out of this collection I should say, although I have not definitely counted them in the catalogue, that rather more than half are of American origin.
To many people it will come as a surprise to learn that the so-called “modern photography” movement had its beginning as long as sixty-seven years ago. In 1843 David Octavius Hill, a Scotch painter, made photographic portraits that few have equalled and none surpassed in excellence to this day. Now Hill worked with the most cumbersome of apparatus, with silver sensitized paper for his negatives requiring an exposure of five minutes in sunlight to secure a result. In fact, his technical difficulties were enormous, so great that it is almost impossible for the amateur of to-day to understand or appreciate them, spoiled as he is with the perfection and “fool-proof” character of modern methods. But in spite of this, Hill had one great advantage: he was not troubled by what my friend Mr. Bernard Shaw calls “the infuriating academicisms which already barnacle photography so thickly”. He did not have to decide whether he would belong to the “Fuzzy School” (I am pleased to say he did not) or to the still worse “Sharp and Shiny” contingent. He simply used the apparatus that was there to his hand, because in fact there was no other. Many of his unusual effects of light are more easily understood when one knows that he frequently employed a concave mirror to flash sunlight during his long exposures into his otherwise too deep shadows. This is one of the things that he thought out for himself in his necessity, and it is a great wonder to me that this device has been discarded, for I have quite recently been making experiments in this direction with the most interesting results, using Hill’s original mirror, of which I am the proud possessor.
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[pgbrk] The prints from a photographic negative vary in quality to a much greater degree than the impressions of an etching, for there are so many more factors to be taken into consideration. It requires a very fine connoisseur to appreciate the subtle beauties of a fine platinum print, but the time will come when a selected example of the work of, say, Clarence White will be as eagerly sought after and as difficult to obtain as the work of certain old masters is to-day. When people begin to realize more fully that nearly every print in this Buffalo exhibition is unique (and it is this quality of uniqueness that is so important), that the show includes carefully selected examples of practically every photographer of international reputation, and extends back in time to the days of Hill, the scope of this show will be easily seen. If anyone is considering the advisability of starting a collection of photographic prints (and even from a commercial point of view it is an excellent investment), this exhibition offers the finest opportunities, for in the days to come the fact that a print was shown in the Buffalo Exhibition of 1910 will give it a place in the history of photography.
Two outstanding facts, quite apart from the pictures themselves, give this exhibition especial distinction. The first is the splendid setting of the Albright Gallery, and the second is the method adopted in hanging the collection. Hanging an exhibition is really a fine art in itself, an art more akin to architecture than to any other, and it is difficult to imagine a more perfect expression of this art than that which has been given us in this instance by Mr. Max Weber, the painter secessionist. The work of each exhibitor has been hung in a panel which has taken into consideration the character of the prints, the size of the panel, and the general harmony of the room. If you simply regard the pictures as the spots of a pattern against the background the effect is so pleasing that it seems a tragedy that in a short few weeks this collection will be dispersed to the four corners of the earth, and that nothing will be left of this wonderful frame pattern but the memory of it in the minds of such of us as have seen it. That it should not be entirely lost, I have made a number of photographs of the chief groupings, and in them I have tried not so much to indicate each individual print as to give some idea of Mr. Weber’s beautiful pattern.
The catalogue is in thorough keeping with the spirit of the exhibition, from the picture of the gallery in essence on the cover, to the historical descriptions of the prominent workers, which are of the same direct character, and it will be a most valuable document as time goes on and the importance of this exhibition in the history of photography is realized. Those interested will do well to secure a copy, as it contains much information of an interesting and reliable character.
In Hill’s time there was not the multiplicity of printing methods that are now at the command of the workers in photography. The catalogue mentions thirteen methods employed in prints shown and each year adds to the number; yet, strangely enough, in spite of the greater number of complicated processes that are invented, the prints of the best workers seem to be growing simpler, more direct, and more free from what is vulgarly termed “faking” as time goes on. If one wants to produce the effect of a wash drawing or a mezzotint, it is better to work in these mediums and very much easier. Photography has not obtained its recognition by any such cheap method as masquerading as some other art. It is in giving us the liquid quality of water, the delicate beauty of clouds, and the subtly seen and rendered expression in portraiture that photography has its greatest field of activity and where its finest qualities are to be found.
Great Britain is represented by nine men: Hill, to whom I have already referred; Craig Annan, who has been connected with photography since the early nineties and has been one of the chief factors in its development; George Davison, who was a worker at an even earlier date and one of the founders of the “Linked Ring”; Frederick Evans, of architectural fame; and five of the younger workers: Malcolm Arbuthnot, Walter Bennington, Archibald Cochrane, Dudley Johnston, and Frank Read.
France is represented by Robert Demachy, the champion and defender of “manipulation” in photography, and three of his confreres. Austria-Germany is a most interesting section, as it contains the large gum-bichromate prints of the “Viennese Trifolium,” which, more than any other exhibits, compete directly with painting, as is their evident intention. It is very curious to see these prints at this stage of the development of photography; and to think that of the three workers that produced them Watzek is dead, Henneberg has become a painter because he considered photography too difficult, and Kuhn, perhaps the strongest of the three, has come under the influence of the American school and practically abandoned his earlier methods. Baron de
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[pgbrk] Meyer, while he is catalogued in the Austria-Germany section, is hung with the Americans. This is as it should be; for, although he is a German subject, he has the American point of view in his work, and he and Kuhn are the only two foreign members of the Photo-Secession.
And now I come to the largest and undoubtedly the most vital section: the American, which Mr. Nilsen Laurvik, in his able lecture delivered at the gallery, describes as America’s greatest contribution to the modern art of the world. When I say that such names as Brigman, Day, Eugene, Kasebier, Keiley, Seeley, Steichen, Stieglitz, and White are to be found in the catalogue, and that these photographers are represented in most cases by their best, it is hardly necessary to say more to any one who has followed the movement. I could tell you many things concerning the beauty of their work and many amusing things about their fight for recognition, but to talk of my colleagues is not the object of these notes.
The open section is a very interesting one and shows that there is plenty of new talent. I was particularly impressed with the prints of Paul Haviland and Karl Strauss.
Photography is a medium of expression that requires a dual sort of mentality; it is a marriage of science and art. That is why there are not more great photographers.
As I steamed up New York harbor the other day on the liner that brought me home from abroad I felt the kinship of the mind that could produce those magnificent Martian-like monsters, the suspension-bridges, with that of the photographer of the new school. The one uses his brain to fashion a thing of steel girders, a spider’s web of beauty to glisten in the sun, the other blends chemistry and optics with personality in such a way as to produce a lasting impression of a beautiful fragment of nature. The work of both, the bridge-builder and the photographer, owes its existence to man’s conquest over nature.
The following article on, “The Accomplishments of Photography and Contributions of the Medium to Art,” by Paul B. Haviland, is reprinted from the official organ of the Albright Art Gallery, Academy Notes:
When in 1885 Alfred Stieglitz’s fighting blood was stirred up by the patronizing of attitude artists towards photography, he declared that he would not rest satisfied until he had forced official recognition of photography as a fine art on an equal footing with some of the other so-called pictorial arts. This unqualified recognition has just been given by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy when they turned over their rooms of the Albright Art Galleries for an International Exhibition of Photographs, which is to remain during the month of November, 1910.
Twenty-five years have elapsed since the beginning of the fight, and victory has been gained in spite of all opposition on the part, not only of workers in other media, but of men for whose cause the Photo-Secession was fighting; in spite also of defection in the ranks of his early followers.
The exhibition now given at Buffalo under the auspices of the Photo-Secession is presented as representative and comprehensive of the best work done in the medium, and for this exhibition no excuse or apology is offered. It is claimed that photography is represented at its best, and on this showing its cause must stand or fall. We feel, therefore, that we have in hand all the documents necessary for a fair judgment, and as we walk through the galleries, we can ask ourselves whether photography deserves the recognition it has been given and what it has accomplished.
After studying the work of the different men represented, we cannot escape the conclusion that it is a pliable medium well adjusted to individual expression. In the rendering of light and atmosphere and modeling, it has at its command more subtle variations of values than any medium in black and white. In portraiture we can seize the momentary expression which reveals character and which the painter could not preserve through the long sittings required by his medium. Through photography also, it has been possible to render fleeting outdoor effects which have made the despair of artists who felt themselves handicapped by the slowness of the medium they had mastered. In composition, spotting, chiroscuro, the best workers show a knowledge which many a painter or draughtsman might well envy them.
As decorative spots on a wall photographs can well stand their own next to pictures in any other medium.
Painters, while maintaining a protective attitude towards the infant art, have helped themselves to many suggestions from photographers that beauty could be found in many places where
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[pgbrk] they had never looked for it. It is worthy of record that Childe Hassam began painting views of New York after Alfred Stieglitz’s “Fifth Avenue” had shown the possibilities of street work. The German pictures of railroad yards followed closely the dissemination through magazines of Stieglitz’s “Hand of Man.” For photography has been the one original contribution of America to art, the one field of art where this country has been a leader, not a follower of Europe. And it may be said of American work that it has developed along absolutely independent lines and owes nothing to the influence of painters, while most of the prominent European workers have studied too closely perhaps the works of painters, etchers, mezzotinters, lithographers, and have thereby lost some originality, and hampered themselves in the search for the best results to be obtained from straight photography. They have tried to make photography a follower of the other arts instead of opening a new field through the development of qualities which are peculiarly photographic.
To the general accomplishments of photography as they stand today each worker represented in the historical or Invitation section has contributed his share through originality of point of view or through technical improvements of the medium.
Beginning with the father of pictorial photography, the work of D. O. Hill, who worked between 1840-1845, stands in a class by itself, and in the qualities which attract us has not been surpassed by any of the later workers. Despite the fact that the possibilities of the medium were little known and that he had at his disposal tools far more rudimentary than those at the disposal of the modern pictorialist, he shows beyond question that the true artist can express his individuality through this medium. As Mr. Craig Annan rightly says in a recent paper read before the Edinburgh Photographic Society: “Only a big mind could conceive these pictures.”
In the same room with the D. O. Hill’s hangs the work of Alfred Stieglitz. An advocate and practitioner of straight photography, he has from the start established a standard in hand camera and snapshot work which it is doubtful will ever be surpassed or even attained. Depending more than in any other field of photographic endeavor on fortuitous circumstances to obtain composition and light effects, he has shown what can be done by indomitable perseverence, patience, artistic ability and a thorough knowledge of the mechanics and chemistry of the medium. Quoting the catalogue, “He popularized platinum printing in America, as well as photogravure, in which medium only many of his prints exist. He was the first to choose his subjects in city streets under various aspects, such as those of rain and snows—considered at the time, impossible to render successfully with photography. Simultaneously with Paul Martin, in London, he was the first to successfully experiment with night scenes.” Each print is a masterpiece of composition and technical achievement.
In the work of Eduard J. Steichen we have an example of the result of mixing brains with one’s chemicals. Whether in his masterful and characteristic portraits, in his landscapes or in his compositions and studies, one feels a forceful personality at work. No photographer probably has a more thorough knowledge of his medium or has done more experimenting along so many lines. The faults in his pictures, of which he is probably as fully aware as his critics, are due not to ignorance or inability, but to a deliberate sacrifice of certain qualities made necessary by the limitations of the medium in order to obtain a certain result which under the present knowledge of photographic possibilities has never been rendered better by anyone than by this great artist.
A master of composition, a master in the handling of lines and masses, Clarence H. White charms us with his “studies in light” indoors and out of doors. His sympathetic rendering of figures in the diffused and reflected lights of the home have led many critics to connect him with the little Dutch masters, while his outdoor studies connect him with the best masters of the open-air school of painters. His work is delightful and refreshing, the kind of work by which one would like to live surrounded.
A. L. Coburn’s work reflects the enthusiasm of youth, a quick and clear vision for the pictorial, a preference for strong contrasts, and much of his work, of which boldness is the chief characteristic, gives an effective poster-like effect. By his use of double printing in the medium known as gum-platinum he has been able to secure a richness in his blacks which is not obtainable by any single printing process. This process has since been used by a number of his followers in England and America. He has also shown that it was possible to obtain good modeling and soft lighting effects by flash light, and many of his successful portraits of theatrical people have been made in that way.
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[pgbrk] Joseph T. Keiley so modified and developed the glycerine process as to make it peculiarly his own. Many of his best known prints are unique, and the collector of photographic prints who owns an example of Keiley’s early work may well feel assured that his possession is valuable as well as an historical document as through its refined artistic merit and the scarcity of this sensitive artist’s work.
Frank Eugene was the first of pictorial photographers to take liberties with his negatives, using the etching needle where he felt it necessary to correct the values given by “straight development.” He has since discontinued this practice, and his present work is as free as any of any intrusion of a non-photographic medium. His example, however, may be responsible for the direction in which certain workers have been developing.
The Frenchman, Robert Demachy, probably owes to Eugene’s influence* his early efforts to make his prints look like lithographs, etchings, or works in other media, which led to his adoption of the gum-bichromate process of which he is a master, and later to the oil process on which his interests have been concentrated during the last few years.
In the Austrian-German school of photography, Hugo Henneberg of Vienna, Henrich Kuehn of Innsbruck, and Hans Watzek of Vienna, known as the “Trifolium,” were undoubtedly the leaders. The multiple-gum printing method, now used so extensively by the Austrian-German pictorial photographer, enabled them to so control their work as to introduce the distinctly Teutonic philosophical attitude in their unique and masterful prints. For, to quote the eminent New York critic, Mr. Christian Brinton, “There is not a single important movement in German painting which does not find its equivalent, and usually its inspiration, either in philosophy or fiction. At each artist’s elbow has stood a prophet and a preacher ready to lay down the immutable canons of composition and design.”
It is a matter of keen regret to note the breaking up of that powerful factor in the development of pictorial photography, the “Trifolium.” Watzek met his untimely death in 1902, Henneberg, finding the photographic art too difficult, gave it up for painting, and Kuehn has succumbed to the influence of the American school and has adopted the methods of platinum printing and photogravure, of which some interesting examples were shown side by side with some of the early examples of himself and his associates.
In Mrs. Brigman’s work we have a good example of a literary and poetic attitude towards art, and these notes should not be brought to a close without mentioning Craig Annan, who has probably brought the process of photogravure to its highest technical perfection.
The Buffalo Exhibition of Photography is a tribute and a memorial to the individual achievements, which when brought together have proved beyond a doubt the right of Photography to take its place among other media of personal expression.
Mr. F. Austin Lidbury, an aspiring photographer of Buffalo, described the exhibition at the Albright Gallery, as he saw it, for the readers of the December American Photography:
That one of the most important and largest Art Galleries in America should, for the space of a month, to the complete exclusion for the time being of all minor and Preshavian forms of art such as painting, sculpture, and etching, show a collection of six hundred pictorial photographs, is a most unequivocal and significant recognition of the place which pictorial photography has come to hold. Yet the Albright Gallery International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, regarded in this light, is no spontaneous “recognition” extorted by the sheer and irresistible merits of pictorial photography. It is primarily a monument to Alfred Stieglitz. Working with and for a group of photographers (some of them experimentalists, some craftsmen, some artists, some of them all three), gradually spreading their influence until he had built up under the name of the Photo-Secession a wonderful and devoted organization with ramifications and connections extending all over America and Europe, this Napoleon of pictorial photography has put into the movement for internal progress and external recognition the fanaticism of a Mad Mullah, the wiles of a Machiavelli, the advertising skill of a P. T. Barnum, the literary barbs of a Whistler, and an
* It is only in his later work that M. Demachy occasionally shows the influence of Frank Eugene. His earlier prints were made without any knowledge of the work of Eugene. I owe it to both gentlemen to correct the unintentional inadvertency of my article as originally printed.—P. B. H.
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[pgbrk] untiring persistence and confidence all his own,—a confidence that could remove mountains, to say nothing of the mere prejudiced conservatism of artistic persons. Recognition simply had to come—and be mighty quick about it; twenty-seven years being a vanishing quantity in the equation Ars longa, vita brevis. “This,” he tells you, “shows the whole history; it is a summing up of the whole business—from the beginning.” Here, you see, is the key-note of the whole exhibition; it appears, somewhat amplified by the concentrated mental efforts of eleven men, in the short and carefully drawn foreword to the catalogue. The Occasion is the long fought-for Attainment; let the Celebration, it seems to say, narrate the History of the Fight. To Alfred Stieglitz the congratulations of all pictorial photographers; and in double measure from those who have not been enrolled under his banner; for his present success, in the long run, means the success of the whole pictorial movement.
As will have been gathered, this is no ordinary exhibition; not merely because of its size (there are nearly five hundred prints in the Invitation Section and another hundred in the Open Section), or on account of the extreme care and taste in its hanging (no show was ever better hung), or even on account of the fact that it contains a great deal of the very best pictorial work that has ever been done. It differentiates itself by being essentially a historical epitome. It is not and does not claim to be the best collection of pictorial work that could be brought together. It purports rather to show the history of a movement; not the history of pictorial photography in general, but the history of that militant branch, the Photo-Secession. It is well to bear this in mind, so, when you come across collections of prints that would to-day be rejected—and rightly so— at any respectable exhibition, you will understand that their makers were once, say about ten or fifteen years ago, at any rate on the outskirts of the battle. Or perhaps you may learn from your catalogue that certain prints represent the first experiments in some then new and epoch-making, now discarded, process (hear the parable, you oil-painters!). Some of these workers have fallen by the wayside; some have found their powers waning and been discarded; but in the hour of triumph there is properly a commemorative laurel for the helot as well as the hoplite. At any rate there are the prints—dozens of them; and a receptive attitude, based on a knowledge of Secession history, is at least desirable in surveying them; much in the same way as, before hearing “ Parsifal,” the thing to do is to saturate yourself with the proper religious atmosphere; even then, of course, you may be grievously disappointed, but it is your only chance. So, if one only gets a proper attitude of mind, all these rather weak-looking performances fall properly into place as Milestones in the Path of a Movement. One has, however, little need of these precautionary measures at first; for the exhibition has been arranged with consummate skill and taste and a most unusual eye to general effect. The uniform mounting of most of the sections, the appropriate grouping in panels, the avoidance of glass-reflections by hanging at as low a level as possible, give a most pleasing appearance to the exhibition as a whole, and the skill here shown is again exemplified by the cunning device of hanging Steichen’s three striking moonlights of Rodin’s “Balzac” on a screen visible from the sculpture court, so that curiosity draws the visitor at once into gallery 17, the “big” room of the show; in which, among seventeen prints by de Meyer, and from twenty to thirty each by Steichen, Coburn, and Seeley, there is scarcely one which is not of large dimensions and corresponding size of conception and execution. A strong, bold, and effective group, they hit the eye at once, and are altogether the most popular collection in the exhibition. Some there will be who prefer to linger in the other galleries over, say, the photogravures of Annan or Eugene; but this is the gallery designed to catch the eye and draw the admiration of crowds. The Steichens are particularly striking; besides the Balzacs he shows portraits of Lenbach, R. Strauss, Rodin, Maeterlinck, J. P. Morgan, Roosevelt, Taft, and Lady Hamilton; three nudes (of which “In Memoriam” is not only the most effective but possibly the best print in the show, with its wonderful modeling and color, and the strength and delicacy of both conception and execution); as well as a few landscapes and miscellaneous prints. Wonderfully effective, striking, and strong as his prints, almost without conception, are, owing to his incomparable technique and the broad simplicity of his effects, it may be doubted whether the cumulative effect of the group is a correspondingly strong one. Nearly all of his examples are based on one particular mannerism—the flinging of a mass of light against a background of luscious but impenetrable depth; and the constant repetition of this unusual but limited scheme of tonality is a source of weakness to the general effect of his collection. On the other hand, if the grouping together of the
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[pgbrk] Steichens raises doubts, the collection of de Meyer’s prints which face them gives an overwhelming impression which is increased by the presence of almost every print he shows. A wonderful assortment of portraits and character studies; a handful of inimitable still-life prints of glistening puppets and shimmering vessels of flowers; each one of wonderful conception, exhibiting a rare originality of view, and carried out with an extraordinary mastery of tone, light, and texture. Here is a worker whose prints are stamped with an unmistakable individuality, quite undisguised by his uncommon variety in subject and treatment, and which cannot by any amount of analytical labor be resolved into a compound of mannerisms. A great artist; and a great collection of prints! It is of interest to observe that his most recent work is also his best. The same cannot, I think, be said of the other two artists whose work completes this room. Coburn is represented by his Rodin, Shaw, and William Nicholson portraits, as well as a few other old friends, including “Notre Dame,” “Wier’s Close,” and that brilliant bit of bravura “El Toro.” The majority of his prints are, however, more recent; and while they show not only no falling off" but even a decided advance in his handling of wide and striking printing scales, he seems to be entirely losing grip in construction. At least half a dozen of his recent examples have little beyond their wonderfully extended tonal expression to recommend them; and this is the more surprising since Coburn at his best is unexcelled in originality and force of composition. On the whole, he is not shown at his best. The same remark applies also to Seeley, who is represented chiefly by quite recent work in which he has chosen to develop schemes consisting of patterns in masses of almost unmodulated light and dark tones rather after the manner of stencil work, in which the delicate play of tone-nuance, which is so charming a feature of his earlier and smaller work, has been thrown over for, as far as I can see, no corresponding compensation.
Surrounding gallery 17 are a number of smaller rooms in which other collections are hung, separately or in groups. One is devoted to what Mr. Stieglitz is fond of calling the “old masters.” Here you can learn, from thirty-eight prints by D. O. Hill or from his negatives, that pictorial photography is not very much younger than photography itself. You can note that Mr. Stieglitz has as keen an eye for a perfectly “straight” rendering of the various phases of New York City as he had when he made his historic print of “Winter in Fifth Avenue”; but I think you are likely to linger most over Craig Annan’s photogravures and to take careful note of the wonderful craftsmanship of the man the still more astonishing fact that his early work looks just as good to-day as when executed. Here is certainly an example of the undying beauty of sincere work. Fashions have come and fashions have gone, making reputations and killing them; the history of all of which is clearly written in the present exhibition. Untouched by fashion, seeing with an artist’s eye, executing with unrivaled skill, Annan has steadily worked along and has to-day the satisfaction, rare in so young an art, of being able to look back at his early work and call it good, to-day and for all time. Much the same can be said of Eugene; though one’s satisfaction in his work is somewhat qualified by the attempt to insist on the value of some of his prints as being unique examples, rather than by letting their pictorial qualities speak for themselves. Eugene’s numerous contributions, which include some of those recently issued in Camera Work, are grouped with collections by Mrs. Brigman, Mrs. Kasebier, J. G. Bullock, Alice Boughton, Rose Clark, J. T. Keiley, and Holland Day, whose prints are among his earliest work. Of these collections, those of Mrs. Brigman and Mrs. Kasebier are the most extensive and important, containing much of their best and best-known work. The yellow daubs with which Mrs. Kasebier has surrounded more than one-half of her prints have a distracting effect and are unfortunate in interfering with the enjoyment of some of her best work. In the French room attention will be chiefly centered on Demachy’s twenty prints, two thirds of which represent his latest work in oil and show well his extraordinary mastery of that process. The Puyo oils serve little purpose, except to show how smoothly the medium can be handled, but there is also one print in his best style, “The Straw Hat,”—a gum. This room also contains six nude studies by Le Begue, in gums of violent color; three prints by Dyer, a curious colored manipulation in platinum by Miss Stanbury, and three of the extraordinary series of Stieglitz-White collaborations in the meaningless depiction of the naked. The Austrian room is very interesting. The enormous Hofmeister gum, “The Solitary Horseman,” and the large, but not so enormous, gum landscapes of Kuhn and Henneberg have a striking effect; and if on closer acquaintance they grow to appear somewhat crude in color and conception, and rather old-fashioned, you can always turn to some of Kuhn’s quieter, smaller, and later work, the
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[pgbrk] recollection of two of the portraits among which will stay with one for some time. The last room is devoted to Clarence White, whose prints are grouped and hung with more than usual loving care. Take off your shoes, walk softly with bowed head, cultivate with reverence an appreciation of the beauty of anaemia. You will have need of it. The collection contains a few of the prints which brought him reputation, and one or two later gems. It also unfortunately contains not a little entirely unworthy of the artist, or, indeed, of being hung at all. The White room is the disappointment of the show.
The Sculpture Court affords a wide separation between the Sheep and the—Open Section. In the latter about a hundred prints are drawn from some thirty workers, those represented most liberally being Paul Anderson, Jeanne Bennett, Pierre Dubreuil, Arnold Genthe, Paul B. Haviland, W. J. Mullins, Karl F. Struss, and Augustus Thibaudeau, each of whom show six prints or more, many of these prints being already familiar ones. The only unknown of consequence is Karl F. Struss of New York, who is represented by twelve prints, showing considerable technical attainments and ability to reproduce “effects,” but varying very considerably as regards pictorial merit. On the whole, I think the Open Section was somewhat of a mistake. It contains not a little very competent work, and even a few real “joy spots,” such as the portrait in oil by Mme. Laguarde and the six extraordinarily interesting examples of Dubreuil’s original, if distorted, way of looking at things. But it also contains not a little which goes to show that the now famous Principles of Independent Vision and of Quality of Rendering do not imply any higher standard than that of the ordinary camera club.
Adjoining the Open Section is a group of British prints in which some of Davison’s historic successes, a group of well-known Cochranes, interesting selections of the most recent work of that active triad, Dudley Johnstone, Arbuthnot, and Frank H. Read, a rather poor assortment of Benningtons, and some of F. H. Evan’s architectural studies, exemplify (in a very limited degree of course) British activities in pictorial photography.
So much for the scope of the show. One or two other general impressions are worth noting. The first is the danger that attaches to the use of Japan tissue in print making. There are numerous prints in the exhibition which show only too clearly that in some hands the peculiar qualities of Japan tissue prints have been paid for by a shriveling up of the surface which has resulted in an almost complete obliteration of the effective image. When it gets to the point where previous acquaintance with the picture through the medium of reproduction is necessary before one can make out the picture itself, it is time to call a halt. The next point is that not the least of the debts that the Photo-Secession owes to Mr. Stieglitz is in connection with Camera Work. In this wonderful periodical, through which the Photo-Secession workers are known more widely than through the actual exhibition of their prints, he has maintained a standard of selection very considerably beyond that of the present show. One who has known the work of the Secessionists only through Camera Work will find little cause in the present exhibition for surprise or astonishment except possibly in room 17; on the other hand, in the case of at least one well-known worker, the original prints now on view are so far inferior to the photogravures from the same negatives in Camera Work as to cause a distinct feeling of disappointment. Nor is the show without its lessons as to the kind of work that lives and the kind of work that, after flashing up brilliantly, dies; it may be doubted whether there ever was or ever will be a show so organized as to point this lesson with half such completeness; for if this exhibition contains a great deal of the very finest work that has ever been produced in photography, it also contains a great amount of the veriest rot. Do not pass the latter by with a scoff; it was once hailed as good; it merits your careful attention while it explains to you why it is now despised and rejected, and puts a few ideas into your head which will be useful to you in looking over your own prints and asking yourself what will be the verdict on them in ten years’ time. The last noteworthy impression you get from the show is that of finality. You meet it in the foreword of the catalogue; there is a certain sense of finality in the very phrase “summing up.” Even the makeup of the exhibition itself, with its parading of old and forgotten protagonists, sounds like the word finis. And, indeed, the show is final in several respects. It is the final appearance of the large-scale photographic exhibition. The feast is too gargantuan. At a time when even painters are clearly seeing that small and homogeneous collections are more enjoyable and better appreciated than large mixed shows, however well hung, photographers cannot afford to adopt retrograde tendencies. Nor will the present show encourage them to do
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[pgbrk] so. Extraordinary and interesting as it is viewed as a historical summing up, there is no question in my mind but that, as a show pure and simple, one hundred or even fifty prints selected from it would have made a far more enjoyable and impressive collection. Paradoxical as it may seem, the very completeness of this show proves that the day of the large show is drawing to a close.
It is final in another sense. It is the final and conclusive refutation of the claim that the Photo-Secession is divinely commissioned to uphold a standard of unusual excellence. The Open Section proves that.
Is it, one wonders, final in yet a third sense ? Is the Photo-Secession, having at last stormed the citadel which it has been assaulting so long, having won that Recognition which has been the watchword of its fight, now singing, in this exhibition, its Nunc dimittis ?
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
THE plates in this number of Camera Work are all devoted to the work of Herr Heinrich Kuehn, of Innsbruck, Austria. Kuehn, Hugo Henne-berg, of Vienna, and Hans Watzek, also of Vienna (deceased 1902), were known as the “Trifolium” and evolved the multiple-gum printing method, as now used so extensively by the Austrian and German pictorial photographers. They are the founders of the so-called “German-Austrian” school in photography. Kuehn, like the other two, began his career in the eighties. He has been a vital force in the evolution of pictorial photography, not only as an artist but as an indefatigable experimenter in virtually all the photographic processes. Most recently he has turned his attention to the possibilities of photogravure.
Some of Kuehn’s work was published in Camera Work Number XIII. The plates in this present issue have been in the course of preparation for over two years; the selection was by Kuehn himself. Owing to the large sizes and the colors used by Kuehn, the Bruckmann firm had great difficulty in retaining the character and spirit of the originals in the reproductions. The reproductions have a two-fold interest. They not only show Kuehn’s pictorial scope, but show the possibilities of the various photo-mechanical processes used today in reproducing photographs. Plates I-VII are photogravures, intaglio plates printed by hand; numbers VIII-XI are mezzotint photogravures, printed by steam; and numbers XII-XV are duplex-halftones (two printings), printed in the usual way. As examples of reproductions by the three different methods they are quite remarkable.
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[pgbrk] OUR SECOND PILGRIMAGE
(A sequel to the First Pilgrimage to the Secession Shrine.*
Written in Buffalo on the Day of the Opening.)
ONCE more the shrine has been opened to give its loyal adherents an opportunity to gaze at it with renewed wonder and surprise. Six years have passed in continuous discussions of its merits, but no eye was allowed to look at it. The scene has shifted. With great difficulty and expense the shrine has been brought this time not over the Alleghany Mountains but through the Mohawk Valley to show forth in full splendor at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo. (Only three Indians were sighted!) It was a weary task, as many of the panels had to be regilded and brought up to date; besides, several panels important to the history of pictorial-ism were added, and surely one cannot forget the decorations of the various side chapels which were erected by foreign knights in honor of Daguerre.
Six years have past, and we do not feel quite as enthusiastic as in those days of dawn when a golden sun climbed over the bars of tradition into a white limpid sky. We all have grown a little bit older. Many things have happened ; the sun has risen and a temple has been built. In consequence we have grown more serious. The festivities of old no longer fascinate us. It is the shrine itself which now holds our full attention. Besides, many shield-bearers are absent. Titurel-Steichen, and Magister Eugene-Smith have wandered to foreign countries. Parsifal-Cobum did his best to devour distance but arrived too late for the opening. Even the faithful Gurnemanz stayed in Gotham. King Amfortas himself does not suffer quite as much as formerly. His wound is still open, he is still indisposed, but there is a braver and more defiant smile on his lips. He knows that there are now knights all over the world, in quest of the ideal, fighting for his final deliverance. One of them will perform the miracle, and at times he feels that if none come to his rescue he might lift the Grail himself.
Thanks to a curious little paint-sprite by the name of P. P. (i. e. pictorial projection) unusual care has been bestowed this year upon the decoration and polishing of the shrine. Its lustre and rare material have never been shown to better advantage. In consequence knight Seeley of Stockbridge, Mass., overcome by emotion at seeing his own panels, shed copious tears at the entrance gate. The stains are still visible.
Some of the panels, despite of being regilded, do not make the same impression as before, while others shine forth in fuller splendor. Beauty must not only be discovered; Kundry-like, it has to grow into our souls and find a permanent resting place, lest it be fleeting like the glow of light on a flower maiden’s lip. Six years of fasting and penance have done much to counterbalance our youthful estimates. We concede now more than ever that King Amfortas rules his kingdom with an iron, but at the same time gentle hand, and that the art of knight White of Ohio has an intimate charm and sweet persuasion which we did not quite realize in the days when dawnflowers could be picked even in Pullman Sleepers. But the panels all show excellent workmanship. Even the latest additions show that sincerity which we admired so much in the original decorations of the shrine.
Amfortas’ cries have been heard, and saved he will be if saved he can be. His following has steadily increased, even seventeen dames have found permanent employment at the court. Pictorialitis, not unlike appendicitis, has become a fashionable ailment of all young camera devotees. True, some of them need an operation very badly, but when have great achievements been brought about without suffering and self sacrifice.
The Shrine teaches a great lesson. It is not necessary to improvise upon it in minnesongs. Those who look at it and appreciate it understand, and I only wish that all knights, squires and dames of photography who take their vocation seriously, will pilgrim to Buffalo and pay a silent tribute, drop a flower of thought or emotion at the shrine. No matter whether they consider one panel more beautiful than another. For the feeling of reverence must come from the heart spontaneously for the entity of a thing, for what has actually been accomplished and for which so many knights have fought valiantly for years.
The Shrine may never be reopened, for the work is actually done. A good thing must not be seen too often. Perhaps if our health permits we will see it revealed once more in our old age—but that is a secret and a hope, buried deep in the bosom of King Amfortas, who knows a blue bird when he sees one.
Klingsor, the Magician.
* For the “ First Pilgrimage” see Camera Work, Number VI., April, 1904.
[pgbrk] SUPPLEMENT TO “CAMERA WORK”---------- NOTES AND COMMENTS
“ A chiel amang ye talcin' notes.”—Burns.
IN the issue of “American Photography ” for December, 1910, Mr. F. Austin Lidbury has an excellently written article in praise of the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography which was shown in the Albright Gallery, Buffalo. He deals, with discrimination with the work of the chief exhibitors and passes sentence with judgment. “The last noteworthy impression you get from the show,” he says, “is that of finality.” That is the conclusion after five and a half pages of summing up. There the matter might have ended. But Mr. Lidbury had something more to say, and the more he had to say was not by way of capping his climax, but a question by way of anti-climax, as if he were afraid he had said more than he ought to have said, or had said something that might displease a possible patron. He had given credit to the full to the Photo-Secession for making the exhibition the success it was, he must now temper his praise ; so he concludes his article by throwing a wet blanket over all the enthusiasm he had felt and aroused.
“ Is the Photo-Secession,” he says, “ having at last stormed the citadel which it has been assaulting so long, having won that Recognition which has been the watchword of its fight, now singing, in this exhibition, its Nunc Dimittis?”
After the enthusiasm aroused in me by Mr. Lidbury’s previous pages I confess this came as a shock to me. I do hope his question is not well founded. I do hope that, a body of workers that can give us what Mr. Lidbury here says it has given us will continue in their labors. Is it possible that photographers like Steichen, Coburn, Seeley, Stieglitz, Eugene, Brigman, Kaesebier, Boughton, Keiley, Clarence White, nd the rest are to break their lenses and drown their cameras ? Surely that is a consummation devoutly not to be wished for! The men and women of the Photo-Secession have, as Mr. Lidbury clearly shows, done so much for their art that they should be petitioned to continue in their well-doing. Mr. Lidbury’s question implies that these workers had possibly met and decided together to give up working in photography. I ask them, in the name of all that is best in art, not to disband. I ask you to continue your Laus Deo. You have gained the citadel of ignorance which you have been assaulting so long; you have won that Recognition which has been the watchword of your fight. Why give up now ? Rebuild the citadel you have battered and convert it into a school in which to teach the ignorant. Use the Recognition you have won to aid you in bearing the light of truth into all the dark places where no light penetrates and where there is no joy, but only malice and rancour and jealousy. If Mr. Lidbury is right, and I feel convinced he is, your work is really only begun.
* * * * *
I am puzzled. Here comes the January issue of “American Photography” with an editorial comment on this Exhibition at the Albright Gallery, which runs counter to what Mr. Lidbury wrote the month before. The editor says the Albright Exhibition was not the equal of the International Section at Dresden in 1909. He says that the exhibition of secessionist work, with the exception of D. O. Hill’s portraits, “shows a distinct retrogression from past exhibitions of the same character.” I am wondering why. I am wondering why the editor disagrees with Mr. Lidbury. Mr. Lidbury said the “exhibition contained the very finest work that has ever been produced in photography.” Did the Dresden exhibition contain finer than the finest or more of the finest? But wasn’t the big bulk of the Dresden pictures shown at Buffalo? I am, myself, always very thankful for the privilege of looking at fine things; and feeling as I do I get a deep pleasure from them. If I worried because I didn’t get enough of fine things, I wouldn’t deserve what I got, and if I abused the man who gave me only a few of the finest things for not giving me more I ought to be treated as a sensible father would treat a greedy and selfish child. If the editor of “American Photography” talks on other matters in the way he talks of this exhibition I shall lose what little confidence in him there is left in me after reading his latest editorial comment. One month he prints one statement and the next month he makes a contrary statement. All I can say is that I’m puzzled.
*****
[pgbrk] Ah, I’m beginning to see the ugly face of “the nigger in the wood-pile.” I’ve just read another “editorial comment” on another laudatory article on the Albright Exhibition. The editor of “Photo-Era” seems to be suffering from the same kind of itch as is the editor of “American Photography.” He also doesn’t agree with the authority he commissioned to write on the International Exhibition. Mr. Walter Bertling places the whole credit of the remarkable exhibition at Buffalo to the Photo-Secessionists and to Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, who is the dominant factor of the Secession. “If,” he says, “Mr. Stieglitz can marshal forces to his aid who can produce the evidence that photography has come into its inheritance and is entitled to take its place among the fine arts, then, certainly, should Mr. Stieglitz be given credit for performing a great work, by all fair-minded persons. If he has labored for two-score years in the vineyard of photography and has, at last, brought luscious fruit to bear, it appears he is certainly entitled to approve the methods and assistances necessary to carry on this great work.”
Mr. Bertling here says no more than is just and proper. But the editor evidently feels that his contributor has said more than he wanted him to say. He, therefore, adds a note to Mr. Bertling’s article by way of a mild damper to the praise given, in which he points out that Mr. Stieglitz generously offered him the use of fifteen prints for illustrating Mr. Bertling’s article but that, “ unfortunately these prints were not duplicates of any from the Albright Gallery exhibition.” The offer was not accepted, because the editor could not see “what benefit could be derived from pictures which had no connection with the Buffalo display.” As a further damper to Mr. Bertling’s enthusiasm the editor notes with regret the absence of such names as Brookins, Chislett, Kunz, Porterfield and others, from the catalogue of the exhibition.
Here, certainly, is ground for complaint, though no ground for an editor’s interference with his contributor’s critical estimate. I asked Mr. Stieglitz if the editor had stated the facts, and Mr. Stieglitz showed me the correspondence between him and the editor of “Photo-Era.” I have now read this correspondence and, I confess, I am amazed at the editorial mind which could so misrepresent facts as this note to Mr. Bertling’s article misrepresents them. The prints offered the editor for reproduction were prints of pictures exhibited at the Albright Gallery, and a list was sent him. I would have acquitted the editor of any bad motive had I not also seen his last letter to Mr. Stieglitz. I learned from Mr. Stieglitz that he wrote a letter to the editor of “Photo-Era” pointing out the misrepresentations and requesting that the letter be printed in “Photo-Era” The editor replied saying that he would be glad to print Mr. Stieglitz’s letter in the advertising pages of “Photo-Era” at the usual rates. It was this last letter that opened my eyes to the editorial note. And of such is the Kingdom of Photographic Art! What, in the name of all that is decent in our human nature, does it matter who gives us beautiful things ? Should we not rather accept them with simple gratitude and delight ? Why sully the best that is in us by a mean jealousy of the artist who does the great work ? Before an exhibition, such as that shown in the Albright Gallery last year, all of us must stand in elated spirits, and in moving wonder that the human mind and hand can express itself in such finely-appealing and spirit-purifying ways. There is, surely, no room here for private rancour or petty spite. Shall we not rather take pride in each other that our Art is the one solvent which dissolves by its gracious power the sep rating obstacles that our selfishness, our vain gloriousness, our suspicion and our stupidity raise between us? Today it is this man, to-morrow it will be another who is chosen by the gods to do their work. And if we are not all gifted like in the power to reveal beauty, let us, at least, claim kinship with the best by our power to enjoy the revelation. THE CHIEL