Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/photographyasfinOOcaff «Ur ^e-^-fuQT^ .' ^ <^4oR' % "K ' i ■ % m PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART 1 \ I A I'ORTKAIT, liV J. CRAIG ANNAN ■■ »» By J. A unan CAMrO SAN MARGIIERITA List of Illustrations — Continued Portrait of Mrs. D. Self-oblivious The Puritan What Shall I Say? Morning . . . . The Readers At the Window Portrait of Mrs. D. Study of a Head Before Agincourt Portrait of Alphonse Mucha The Rose The Pool — Evening The Brook in Winter \\'ild Crocus The Rivulet The Judgment of Paris — Landsca|)e d'he Marshes — Florida Scurrying Home The Urn Girl and Guitar The May-Pole Shylock — A Study I'he Bath Mother and Ghild The Letter Box 'resting Fruit A Roycrofter 119 12 2 123 . 125 . . . . 1 28 . 131 132 • 133 135 • 137 1 43 • 145 148 . ist 154 ■ '57 Arrangement . . 159 • if>3 169 . 171 173 . 174 177 . 179 . . . . 1 8 1 182 185 • 187 XV / PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART The Achievements and Possibilities of Photographic Art in America By CHARLES H. CAFFIN Itlu^trated NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1901 COPYKIGHT, IQOI, BY JOHN WaNAMAKER Copyright, iqoi, by D(;ubleday, Page & Company November, 1901 3 fit. bL , , V CENTER LIERA.RY Introduction Everyone recognizes the modern improvements in photography, hut very few are aware of the direction and scope of its best developments. They know what respect- able results can he obtained by the amateur and how superior the print exhibited on Fifth Avenue is to that displayed in the Bowery ; but do not realize that anything more artistic is being attempted and achieved by men and women who are seeking to lift photography to the level of one of the Fine Arts. This group of “ advanced photographers ” is striving to secure in their prints the same qualities that contribute to the beauty of a picture in any other medium, and ask that their work may he judged by the same standard. This claim involves two necessities : first, that the photog- rapher must have as sound a knowledge of the principles of picture-making as the painters have; and, secondly, that it is within his power, as well as theirs, to put personal expression into the picture. It is not enough that he shall be an artist in feeling and knowledge, hut that he shall be able so to control the stages of the pho- tographic process that the print at last shall embody the evidence of his own character and purpose, as an oil- painting may do in the case of the painter. That this is possible has been either ignored or denied. The original intention of the following chapters was to estab- lish this possibility and thus substantiate the claim of the vii INTRODUCTION advanced photographers that their art could be practised with such purposes and results as to place it among the other Fine Arts. Beginning with a consideration of persons, the book has grown more and more towards a consideration of principles. It evolved itself that way and, perhaps, not unfitly ; for an understanding of the principles is necessary to an appreciation both of what these photographers are aiming at and of what they have achieved, as well as of the further possibilities within reach of the art. Neces- sarily, it was only a summary of the principles that could he attempted and the utmost that the book can lay claim to is a possible suggestiveness. It may, perhaps, lead the general reader to look for something more in a photograph than a good likeness or accurate record of a landscape ; may stimulate some photographers to a higher appreciation of the possibilities of their art and may even incline the painters to include a few photographers within the pale of the artistic brotherhood. The first six chapters have been republished by permis- sion of Everybody s Magazine and the seventh by the courtesy of Camera Notes. C. H. C. Mamaroneck, N. Y. CONTENTS Chapter Introduction ...... I. The Development and Present Status of the Photograph II. Alfred Stieglitz and Mis Work III. Gertrude Kasebier and the Artistic-Commercial Portrait IV. Methods of Individual Expression V. Other Methods of Individual Expression VI. The Landscape Subject .... VII. The Figure Subject in Pictorial Photography Page vii I 19 51 83 1 1 1 141 167 XI ! % \ C(JPY OF THE EARLIEST SUNLIGHT PICTURE OF A HUMAN FACE, TAKEN IN 1840. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINK ART CHAPTER I The Development and Present Photograph Status of the With Photographic Examples erom the Pearliest Portrait T(.) the Works of J. Craig Annan* AN photography he reckoned among the tine arts ? The great French painter, Paul Dela- roche, seeing an example ot Daguerre’s new light-pictures, is said to have exclaimed, “ Painting is dead.” So far the prophecy has not been fultilled ; and it is safe to say that painting has less to tear from the competition ot photography than trom its * Mr. Annan, a Scotchman, is one of the most versatile and artistic of European photographers, a man of forceful personality, who has had a powerful influence in the development of pictorial photography. I PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART own over-productive- ness. The interest of the remark, therefore, consists in this — that Delaroche instinctively recognized in the new invention qualities and possibilities which would ultimately bring it within the pale ol the other fine arts. It is a belief that has been cherished by pho- tographers from the start, and it is the object of the present article to trace, first, the development of this belief into prac- tice, and then to con- sider the possibilities and limitations of pho- tography for picture- making and the salient characteristics of pic- ture-photography a,'- aimed at or reached by the advanced photog- raphers. It is not always good to he heralded into the world with a EXAMPEES OF 'IMI': PllO'H )GRAP1 1 10 ART OF ■nil'. FIFTllOS I )agucncotv])cs stiff in ch.ir.u ter and awkward in arrangement. 'They were mounted in gilt frames and generally encloseil in plush or leather cases. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART flourish of trumpets, and the exaggerated expectations which the public formed regarding Daguerre’s invention aroused the suspicion and aninn^sity ol the painters. This changed to contemptuous indifl'erence as it began to be understood that photography had its limitations. The pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme, the art side was ignored and the process dismissed into the limbo ot chemistry and mechanics. The one attitude was as unreasonable as the other. Moreover, photography as an art fell upon evil times ; it was seized and ex- ploited for moneyed ends, and its artistic possibilities became obscured by commercialism. With the usual interacting of cause and effect, the photographers aimed to please the public, and the latter accepted their work as representative of the art at its best. Dip into the family album of twenty-flve years ago ; you will see the mediocritv that prevailed under these conditions. Here and there a print will record a good likeness; but, for the most part, appear examples of persons, posed in painful attitudes, amid surroundings execrable in their ugliness ; the faces purged of every blemish and presenting surfaces as smooth and unlifelike as a fresh cake of soap. Or one’s researches may be carried further into that realm of bathos, peopled with the make-believes of the pictorial photographer ; models, clad in cheese-cloth, masquerading as angels, madonnas, fairies or classic heroines, or the thousand and one “creations” of the uncultivated photog- rapher, who either had no sense of humor or carried his tongue in his cheek at the credulity of the public. Yet it would be unjust to dwell too insistentlv on these points, still more so to saddle photography with the entire responsibility for its own shortcomings. Tbe PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART period under notice was one of banality in all the arts. A few names of painters and sculptors stand out as eminences, but for the most part the two arts showed a dead-level of mediocrity. This is as true of Europe, with its uninterrupted traditions, as of America, which was just commencing its art-conscious- ness. And it is equally true to say that, although higher standards are now understood and recognized, a vast mass of pictures and sculpture is still annually produced which has no reason for existence ex- cept that it is made to sell. Its motive is commercial, and commercialism its only justih- cation. But both these arts have a noble past and dignified traditions, which a faithful few are resolute to maintain, while photography is even now en- gaged in establishing its dignity and in storing for itself traditions. All the while a few enthusiasts, disregarding the allurements of popularity and full of belief in the possibilities of their craft, have steadily worked to produce photographs which shall appeal to the cultivated judgment as truly pictures. f'or a time the Photographic Society of Cireat Britain, now known as “'Hie Roval,” afforded at its annual exhibi- tions opportunity for the display of artistic work by pho- tographers in all parts of the world. It conferred awards. A 'rVPlCAL PORTRAIT OF THE SIXTIES At this period photographs were usually made about the same si/.e as these reproductions, and were mounted on small cards. 1 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART and the highest was regarded as the Blue Rihhon of the art. Gradually, however, the Society “grew lax in its methods and did not insist on the highest standard.” The earliest protest arose in Vienna, when certain photogra- phers, braving the sneers of the conservatives, organized, in 1899, the Viennese Photo- graphic Salon. Its success was so pronounced that it brought to a head the discon- tent felt in England with the unprogressiveness of “ The Royal ; ” the result being a secession of some of the mem- bers and the formation of the now famous “ Linked Rin«;.” Th is differed from the Vien- nese Salon in two important respects. While the Salon had adopted a system of awards, the “ Ring ” dropped them altogether, determining to maintain a standard so high that the mere admission of a picture to the exhibitions should be in itself an award of honor. Again, the Salon had entrusted the selection of pictures to a jury of painters; the “Ring” reverted to a jurv of photographers ; for it argued, quite reasonably, that the latter were, or ought to he, as capable of judging the pictorial qualities of a picture as the painters are; that they, moreover, understood the technical possibilities aiid limitations, while the painters did not, and, still further, that they regarded photography in all seriousness, which, A COMPANION PORTRAIT OF THE SAME PERIOD 5 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART as yet, it was not at all certain that painters, as a class, did. The “ Ring,” then, was formed to uphold the highest possible standards in picture-photography, and, being anxious to avoid the least chance of itself falling by degrees into set grooves, it refused to shackle itself with a constitution or even to have officers. Originally composed ot some thirty members ol various national- ities, it has grown, through the election ol those who have made distinguished showing at its exhibitions, to rather more than double that number ; including in its membership the following Americans : Alfred Stieglitz, R. Eickemeyer, Jr., F. Holland Day, Joseph T. Keiley, Clarence H. White, and Mrs. Gertrude Kasehier, who is the first ladv to have been enrolled. Idle example of this annual Photographic Salon was followed shortly in Vienna, Paris, Hamburg, Alunich and other liuropean cities; “till, hnally, pictorial photography came to he taken seriouslv by the continental Art Societies and Academies, and today the principal photographic exhibitions are held under their auspices, and in several art centres the leading art museums have established per- manent exhibitions of original photographs of real artistic merit ami value, and have set aside a fund for the pur- chase of the same.” 'The latest salon, the Philadelphia A STIFF MODERN PHOTO The style of print which has passed for fine work in the best galleries PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART Photographic Salon, was organized under the joint direction of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Photographic Society of Philadelphia in 1898. Up to this time there had been no dearth of photo- graphic societies in the United States, or of exhibitions ; but their artistic standards were poor, for the facilities of the cheap camera had been and still are prolihc of medi- ocrity. Even the joint annual exhibitions, held in turn at New York, Philadelphia and Boston, from 1884 to 1894, which were modelled to some extent on the Photographic Society of Great Britain, gave no encouragement to the principles and efforts of the advanced photographers. The latter have been represented in this country by a small and steadily increasing group of earnest workers, whose work will form the subject of sub- sequent articles in this series. For the present, it is enough to say that their leader has been Alfred Stieglitz, well known throughout the pho- tographic world, who has been closely identified with each stage in the develop- ment of the art during the past fifteen years. Both in his pictures and in his writ- ings, as well as hy his personal influence, he has, little by little, in face cd a dead inertia of indifference and of the more active opposition of misconception and ridicule, upheld the hands of the artistic photographers AN “ARTISTIC” PORTRAIT “ A favorite pose ” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART and won recognition for the art. The result of his efforts in this country has been the establishment of the Philadelphia Photographic Salon, at which no awards are made, admission to the exhibition being held sufficient honor ; \\diile the test of selection is that the work, to be accepted, must show “ distinct evidence of individual artistic feeling and execution.” It remains to be seen whether the Alanagement of these exhibitions will have enough courage of its convictions to maintain this prin- ciple. If there is any wobbling of purpose, and the high standard now professed is for any reason relaxed, the exhibitions will immediately lose all claim upon serious consideration.'^ On the other hand, the character of the best work in this country is so good that, with staunchness to principles and patience under opposition, the Philadelphia Salon may soon become the most distinguished in the world. Such is a brief account of the move- ment that has been started and maintained by the vanguard of photographers to make the picture-photograph pictorial in the highest sense. It remains now to describe the characteristics of the best ^ Already, since the above was written, an attempt has been made to “ pop«'anze tile Salon ! F.UCOMt' IMIoroCKAl'IlV An excellent representation nf tlie photo,e;raphic art as practised in tlie smaller towns s LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pa(.e A Portrait, by J. Craig Annan ..... iv Cainpo San Marglierita . . . . . . x Copy of the Earliest Sunliglit Picture of a 1 fuinan Face, taken in 1840 i Examples of the Photographic Ai't of the Fifties ... 2 A Typical Portrait of the Sixties . . . . .4 A Companion Portrait of the Same Period ... 5 A Stiff Modern Photo. ...... 6 An “ Artistic ” Portrait ...... 7 Bucolic Photography ....... 8 Professional “Higli Art” ...... 9 The Black Canal . . . . . . .11 The Sand Dunes . . . . . . . 13 Portrait of Mr. R. . . . . . . .21 At Anchor ........ 23 Going to the Beach . . . . . . .24 Gossip-Katwyk . . . . . . . 25 Morning . . . . . . . .26 Noon ........ 26 Good Night . . . . . . . • -7 Mother and Child ...... 29 An Icy Night, New York . . . . . -31 The Afternoon Visit . . . . . . 32 A Study in Two Colors . . . . . -35 Reflections — Night, New York ..... 37 Portrait of a Dutch Woman . . . . . -41 'Fhe Net Mender ....... 43 September . ...... 47 xiii List of Illustrations — ^Continued Decorative Panel ....... 53 Going to Boston . . . . . . -55 Portrait of a Boy ....... 56 Portrait of Mr. B. . . . . . . -57 Mr. A. M. ....... 59 Study of a Boy . . . . . . .61 Fairy Tales ....... 63 Dickey . . . . . . . .65 A Group . . . . . . . . 67 Miss Sears . . . . . . . .68 Portrait ........ 69 Mother and Child . . . . . . .70 Portrait . . . . . . . . 71 Miss D. ........ 72 Cornelia ........ 73 I^ady -with Newspaper . . . . . -73 La Grand-Mere . . . . . . . 74 Adele . . . . . . . -77 Sisters . . - . . . . . 79 Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz . . . . . .85 The Horse . . . . . . . . 87 I’ortrait of Zolnay, the Sculptor . . . . .89 Confined Vista in the Afterglow of an Autumnal Sunset . 92 Autumn Twilight . . . . . . -93 Nirvana ........ 94 Song of the Lily . . . . . . -97 An Indian Madonna ...... 98 Young Man with 'Cello . . . . . .99 Garden of Dreams ....... loi y\ Sioux Chief . . . . . . -103 Portrait of a Child . . . . . . .104 Vine-crowned. A Summer Idyl ..... 106 Man in y\rmor . . . . . . .107 Citizen Louche . . . . . . .109 Kvening Interior . . . . . . . 113 Landscape with Sheep . . . . . ■ 'J'elegraph Poles . . . . . . .117 XIV PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART picture-photographs, and, incidentally, to touch upon the possibilities and limitations of photography in this direction. There are two distinct roads in photography — the utilitarian and the u\sthetic : the goal of the one being a record of facts, and of the other an expression of beauty. They run parallel to each other, and many cross-paths connect them. Examples of utilitarian photographs are those of machinery, of build- ings and engineering works, of war-scenes and daily in- cidents used in illustrated papers, of a large majority of the views taken by tourists, and of the greater number of portraits. In all these the operator relies upon the excellence of his camera, and in developing and printing aims primarily at exact definition. Examples of the intermediate class are photographs of paintings, sculpture and architecture, which, while first of all useful as records of works of art, are treated with so much skili and feeling for the beauty of the originals that they have an independant value as being themselves things of beauty. Preeminent in this class is the portrait, which gives a truthful record of the individual’s characteristics, at the same time being so handsome as a picture that we enjoy it apart from any consideration of its being a good likeness. Lastly, there is the photograph whose motive PROFESSIONAL HIGH ART’’ This photograph was awarded the prize in a beauty contest in Paris 9 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART is purely aesthetic : to be beautiful. It will record facts, but not as facts ; it will even ignore facts if they interfere with the conception that is kept in view; just as Corot in his paintings certainly recorded the phenomena of morn- ing and twilight skies and just as certainly left out a num- ber of facts which must have confronted him as he sat before the scene, his object being not to get at facts, but to express the emotions with which the facts affected him. The point to be noted is that, while in the hrst class the photographer succeeds hy mechanical and scientihc means, in the two latter he must also have sympathy, imagination, and a knowledge of the principles upon which painters and photographers alike rely to make their pictures. He must understand the laws of composition, th ose also which affect the distribution of light and shade; his eye must be trained to distinguish “ values,” that is to say, the varying effect of light upon objects of different material and the gradual changes in the color of an object according as it is nearer to or farther from the eye. ddiese involve technical knowledge which may he acquired ; in addition there must be the instinctive sense of what is beautiful in line and form and color, which may be developed by study, and, lastly, the natural gift of imagination which conceives a beautiful subject and uses technique and instinct to express it. The contention of what we have called the “advanced” photographers is that these qualities of temperament and training must be brought to the making of a picture-photograph. They are identical with the equipment of a painter, except that he learns to use color and, if he is a true cx)lorist, thinks in color. But no stress need be laid on this exception; for, in its present inability to reproduce color, photog- THE BLACK CANAL, BY J. CRAIG ANNAN An excellent example of the possibility of obtaining unusual effects in photography. The treatment of the water has the value of a fine etching PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART raphy stands along side of etching ; nor must we forget that a good “black-and-white,” though it does not state the colors of a scene, has a power of suggesting them, which also reminds me that sculptors speak of a statue as being good in “color” when they wish to commend its distribution of light and shade. So we reach the point that the most important difference between the painter and the photographer is in their respective tools. While the former uses a brush or knife or his own thumb to cover his canvas, a needle to scratch his etching, or a burin to engrave his plate, the latter uses a dark-box with a lens in the front of it. The painter who affects to despise photography — except, by the way, as a short cut for obtaining studies of his models — might condone the dark-box, just as he has been accustomed to paint nature’s sunlight while sitting within the four walls of his studio, lighted from the sunless north ; but he calls a halt on the lens. That is mechanical, substituting a soulless eye for the artist’s individual vision. The reader will notice that this objection involves two propositions : first, that the camera is mechanical ; secondly, that the use of it prevents the artist’s individual vision. We may admit the one without subscribing to the other. Undoubtedly the camera is mechanical, and that is the limitation under which the photographer labors. But every art has its limitations. The architect is confronted with problems of construction, with local conditions and the need of satisfying required utilities — all of which hamper the freedom of his artistic invention. Idle conscientious painter laments the inadequacy of pig- ments to express what he sees and feels, and, except in rare instances, finds the handling of his brush an obstacle I 2 THE SAND DUNES, BY J. CRAIG ANNAN A particularly successful and sincere specimen of modem pictorial photographic art PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART to freedom of expression ; while the sculptor knows better than anyone the difficulty of manifesting life and move- ment in inert marble or bronze. Each art is shackled with material fetters, and the pride of the artist is in rising despite them. With brush and pigments the painter-artist can accomplish something infinitely superior to the work of the house-decorator. Is he blind to the immeasurably superior results reached by the artist-photog- rapher over him who merely relies upon the mechanical facilities of the camera ? We shall better appreciate these results by thoroughly realizing the limitations which the camera imposes. They make themselves felt particularly in hgure-work. Consider the simplest case, where the picture is to consist of a single hgure. Both painter and photographer work from a model ; hut the former can correct, modify, and above all put into the face such expression as the subject demands. The photographer on the contrary, though he may talk the subject into his model’s brain, may hnd him- self disappointed of success by the impossibility to make the model express it. Particidarly is this true of the regular professional model, who, ordinarily, is not expected to do any thinking, and who is also apt to he too sophis- ticated to assume even a natural expression. It is in this respect that children afford the happiest results, especially if thev can he caught, as it were, in their free wildness. The difficidties hinted at in the single hgure composition are increased in the case of groups. Rarely does one see a photograph, containing many hgures, in which the lines retain their suppleness throughout the composition or in which there is a complete uniformity of feeling pervading the whole picture, unless the group is treated in the 14 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART middle-distance rather than the foreground. It is in this way that the prudent photographer often prefers to use hgures, or he will rely upon the movement rather than the expression. Especially, he is inclined to make the motive of his composition decorative, using the human ligure as part of an ornamental arrangement of lines and masses of light and shade. What we have said of the hgure-picture is prac- tically true of the portrait. The painter enjoys the opportunity of studying his subject’s character and charac- teristic pose and expression in majiy sittiiigs, and can gradually elaborate the record of what he sees, striving to make it comprehend or suggest the many-sidedness of his subject. This, however, is a great gift, and few there he that find it; but it constitutes the «:randeur of the 2;reat portraits of the world. I have heard of a photographer inviting to his studio some one whose portrait he wished to take, and on many occasions in the unrestraint of con- versation studying his characteristics, and then one day, by a little ruse, securing a negative-plate when the subject thought it was something at his side that was being pho- tographed. But this is obviously impracticable as a rule, and the photographer must ordinarily rely upon quickness of sympathy and comprehension, upon his ability to culti- vate conhdenee at short notice, and the power of rapid decision as to pose and lighting, so that he saves the sitter the oppressive feeling of being operated upon. One can imagine the difficulty of this, and it is surprising how the best photographers surmount it. There is another side to the portrait, which is that, besides being a goc)d likeness, it may he a beautiful picture, and one is inclined to believe that in this respect the phott)graphers succeed 15 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART more often than the painters. Indeed, one may go even further and assert that, in this country today, the portraits hy the best photographers attain a higher average of all- round excellence than those by the best painters. From what has been said it may he gathered that in photography the hardest of all hgure-subjects is the study from the nude. Except in the case of children, the modern form is seldom sufficiently free from defects or able to pose and move naturally without the accustomed restraint of clothing. Still less is the nude model tolerable for any subject that involves expression of sentiment. Yet many photographers use it to good effect in subjects dis- tinctly decorative ; particularly in statuesque poses and with the emphasis on light and shade. Another limitation encountered hy the photographer arises from the impartiality with which the camera records anything near to it and the misinterpretation it gives to distances ; whereas, when, we look, for example, at a landscape, our eye, on the one hand, is conscious of successive planes of distance, and, on the other, is unable to grasp more than the salient features. So the landscape taken hy an untrained photographer may he a very pleasant reminder of a beautiful spot, hut it will not be true to nature, and it will he so crowded with facts as to lack the simplicity and synthesis of pictorial composition; a charge, hy the way, which may he brought against many painted landscapes. Before considering how pho- tography surmounts this limitation, let us note that in certain branches of photographic work it is a quality of value. One has seen, for example, some studies of birds and dowers in which the fulness of detail and suggestion of the actual texture were beautiful in thenit-elves as t6 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART well as valuable for truth. The painter obtains his synthesis by elimination til the unessential and massing of the important features. The photographic artist does practically the same. He studies the landscape until he has found the point of view from which it most im- presses him ; then he discovers the time of day and the atmospheric conditions most conducive to the impression he wishes to record. Perhaps he selects the moment when a broad shadow or a Hood of light stretches across the foreground, with the effect of unifying it. Having made his negative, he is able in the processes of deveh^p- ing and printing to control the result — strengthening this part or reducing that until he gets the planes of his picture truthful, and reaches synthesis. In a wtird, thcxse who have studied the work of the advanced photog- raphers realize their ability to make a picture that is large in conception and heautifid in feeling, notwith- standing the limitations of the camera. It will he recognized at once that such work as this, in landscape or in figure, demands artistic temperament and training, and involves a large expenditure of time and labor. And now we arrive at a definition of what we have been calling the “advanced” photographer; he has the temperament and training and is so devoted to his work as to expend on it patient study, time and lalun*. Lastly, can he infuse an individuality into his pictures, as the painter can, making them express his own personal conceptions of beauty? For answer we need only refer you to the work of the best photographers. You will find a kinship of feeling throughout all the examples of anv one, so that you would know an isolated example t(') he by So-and-so ; and, on the other hand, that his work 17 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART differs from that of the others as theirs from one another’s. In short, if he has the equipment of an artist and an artistic individuality, the photographer can surmount or evade the limitations of his mechanical tool, the camera, and produce work which, barring colors, may have the characteristics of a beautiful picture. In a word, Saul also is to be reckoned among the prophets. i8 CHAPTER II. l ORTRAIT OF MR. R„ 15 Y ALFRED STIEGUTZ (1895) (From a ]»latinotype) i AT ANCHOR By Alfred Sticglitz, i8q4 (From a gum-print in India ink on rough drawing paper) CHAPTER II Alfred Stieglitz and His Work With a Reference tu the “Straight” and “Manipulated” 1 ’rint ERE are few, if any, who will not concede to Alfred Stieglitz the first place among American exponeirts of pictorial photogra- phy. It is his own, hoth tor what he himself has done, and also for what he has encour- aged and enabled others to accomplish. H is influence upon the progress of the art has heen so widely diffused that it is difficult to estimate it accurately. \VT have to consider him as an artist, following his own ideal, and reaching certain definite results of personal expression — hut as much more than an individual factor; hy his training and affiliations a connecting link between the photographers of Europe and of the United States — as a man “J PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART of international inliuences; then, again, as a vitalizing force in the betterment of the art in this country, one whose wide knowledge and large sympathies have been ever at the call of those who are earnest workers, and always with an ardor entirely unsellish. In fact, he has been the incarna- tion of the movement — artist, prophet, pathhnder. He is an American by birth; born in 1864. In 1881 he went to Germany to study mechanical engineering in the Polytechnic Schools at Berlin. His object up to this time was purely scientihc. However, the famous scientist. Professor Vogel, Chief of the Photo-Me- chanical Laboratory, suggested a course of theoretical photogra- phy as of practical value in engineering. Mr. Stieglitz was one of those who fell in with the idea and had the heneht of work- ing under the professor while he was developing his invention of ortho-chromatic plates and reducing his results to a commercial possibility. The object of these “cor- rected color” plates was to counteract the tendency of certain ca)lors in iiature to assert themselves at the expense of others; to tliscover, in fact, a scdution which should render the plates sensitive t(.i all the colors in their balanced relations, translating them into a truthful equivalent of black and ^^dlite. 'Phus fc)r two vears Mr. Stieglitz assisted in the experiments, photographing all kinds of subjects — landscapes, flowers, portrait paintings, and so forth, and he 24 GOSSIP— KATWYK By A//rcdStie^c,t~^ ijo* PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART was probably the lirst amateur to use these “ color sensitive ” plates in his own work. During this period the passion for photogra- phy asserted itself over his original intention of being an engineer. It satisfied alike his love of science and a natural instinct he found he possessed for art. After two years of close scientihc study he started, camera in hand and his wallet filled with these ortho-chromatic plates, for a By Alfred StieglitZy 1899 MORNING tour through 0 Italy in search of the pictur- esq Lie. He seems to have 1 ooked for it and found it, particularly in its relation to the outdoor life of the people One of the lirst of these Italian studies was A Good >Ar, which he sent to a “ hoi id ay work competition,” organ- ized 1 >V 'The yhniitair Photogriipher of Lon- don. 1 1 was awarded By Aljted BticglitZy 1899 fAll llircefron. the “ Photograpliic Journal of a llaby ”) NOON 26 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART first prize, the judge being Dr. P. H. Emer- son, subsequently well known as the author of Naturalistic Pho- tography, who said of the print that it was the only spontaneous work in the whole collection. I shall re- turn to this picture presently. Apparently its recognition con- firmed Mr. Stieglitz in his devotion to photography, and, very characteristically, he returned to Germany and entered upon the study of chemistry, mean- while keeping up a correspondence with the leading pho- tographers of Europe, writing on the science for (ferman periodicals, and winning prizes at many exhibitions. In 1890 he returned to the United States, continuing his scientific investigations; sending pictures to exhibitions all over the world; heiim elected a member of the famous “Linked Ring” in England, and winning nearly a hun- dred honors of various kinds ; acting for a time, without remuneration, as editor of The American Amateur Pho- tographer, and stimulating through the countrv a higher standard of aim and accomplishment; for some time filling the position of manager for a photo-engraving company; helpi ng to organize the Camera Club, and assuming the responsibility for and editorship c')f Camera N otes, the most dignified, and probably most intiuential, of all photo- By A Stieglitz, iSqy GOOD-NIGHT -1 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART graphic journals; hnally taking a leading part in the establishment of the Philadelphia Photographic Salon, and Holding today a unique position of leader, counsellor and encoLirager, to whom the only introduction needed by other amateurs is that they also have the interests of pic- torial photography at heart. In this elaborate web of energy two qualities are clearly perceptible — the scientihc and the artistic temperament. They represent the warp and woof; and, if one is to assign their relative positioiis, I am inclined to believe that the foundation threads of his purposes are scientihc, and that into these he has woven the artistic woof. But the two are so closely matted that their discrimination is of little practical value; the main thing being that they are adjusted to a most admirable balance, and that the entluis- iasm which is characteristic both of the scientihc aiid of the artistic temperament is in him united. In this dual interest we discover the secret of his own personality as an artist, and of his inhuences upon the purposes of photo- graphic art. 'fhere is no inlierent antagonism between science and art, as some people rashly imagine; regarding the former as fastened down to measured footsteps of accuracy and logic, while art proceeds by leaps and hounds. Our great artist, fohn La Large, for example, has reached his splen- did results of color, both in painting and stained glass, by making science his handmaid; Pissarro, Alonet and Sisley, the most famous of the “ I mpressitmists,” have done the same, the tirst nametl attrilniting his earliest inspiration to the scientific (.liscox'eries of Professor Rood of C'olumhia Tni\’ersitv; while architecture is largelv an adjustment of artistic motive to scientific possibilities. But the alliance MOTHER AND CHILD (From the “ Photograpliic Journal of a I’nby”; PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART seems even closer in the case of photography ; for it has its base in chemistry and physics, and only upon these can one rear an artistic superstructure, independent of the other arts. It is impossible, therefore, to overestimate the valu^ to this new art ot having had a champion fully equipped in both directions ; one who could comprehend the artistic possibilities, and reach them through scientific investiga- tions, making himself not merely a prophet of ideas, hut a pathhnder toward their realization. Moreover, Mr. Stieg- litz has been perpetually a counterpoise of sanity, resisting the tendency to run after strange gods, to indulge in “faked” effects, and to consider that the end always justi- fies the means. “Faked effects” may sound a strong term, but with what other can one describe the old so-called “moonlight” scenes which were taken in full daylight with the camera pointed at the sun, occasion being chosen when a passing cloud veiled the intensity of its glare.? An effect was obtained which unquestionably suggested moonlight; but failed entirely to render the mvstery of night, the subtle pranks which the lights and shadows play. In fact, it was not a picture of moonlight, hut of something that to the thoughtless and easily satisfied might seem to he “just as good” — not a record of nature, hut a fake. VTry often it w'as an extremely pretty one, and to a great many people prettiness represents the limit of their comprehension in art. vSo these “moonlights” pleased, and the discovery that thev were faked lent a further zest. The “Who’d have thought it?” followed on the “Oh! my, how pretty!” and that curious trait of human nature, recognized by Ifarnum, was satisfied. Hut an artist is not satisfied with prettiness; he searches fi)r beauty, and, in his study of 30 By A If red Stieglitz^ 1807 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART nature, linds it through truth to nature. The only moon- light picture that could begin to satisfy him was a picture ot moonlight. Experimenting in this direction, another artist, Mr. Wm. A. Frazer, succeeded in obtaining moon- light landscapes at night with an exposure of some ten By Alfred Stieg’liiZf iQOO THE AFTERNOON VISIT ( IVom the “ Photographic Journal of a Baby ”) minutes. This, of ccnirse, precluded the introduction of moving objects, and Mr. Stieglitz pushed his investigations still further until he was able to take a rapid picture of a street at night, animated by vehicles and pedestrians. He has made a present of this discovery, as of his other ones, to the photographic world; for he is an amateur in the strictest sense of the word, impelled only by a love of his art and a desire for its advancement; devoting any money that remains from the sale of prints to further research, the results of which in time become public property. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART In this connection allusion may be made to the propa- ganda he has maintained by voice and pen. His corre- spondence with photographers throughout the world and contributions to periodicals, apart from his editorial work, have been continuous and influential. His writings are terse and to the point ; hacked with so much knowledge and so disinterested that they command respect even from those who are disinclined to accept his views. There are heartburnings among photographers as among co-workers in other lines, and Mr. Stieglitz has received a lull share ol knocks from opponents, hut I dcnibt if there is a single one of the latter who does not heartilv respect him even while he thumps him. He alse^ is an accomplished thumper ; delivering his blows with telling directness, the effect of which it is difficult to explain away. For it cannot he said that he has any private ends to serve, or that he is merely an artistic visionarv, or, on the other hand, that he is only a scientist with no feeling for art. So he is a troublesome antagonist, and even those who resent his dc facto leadership among American photog- raphers are hound to admit that he has not sought the honor, hut that it has gro^^'n around his personalitv through his qualificatioiis fitting so admirably the circum- stances and needs of the time. Moreover, it is not only by direct exertion of his talents that he has reached his position. People approach him in various wavs; to secure his pictures at exhibitions and himself as a juror; to have him lecture; and to seek his advice in problems with which they are wrestling. 'I'hus, he has had forced upon him the role of spokesman and counsellor, and in both capacities is actuated simplv hv what he conceives to he the best interests of the art to which he has devoted his life. 33 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART It was mentioned above that he has always combated the doctrine that the end justihes the means. His atti- tude upon this subject is that the photographer should rely upon means really photographic ; that is to say, upon those which grow out of and belong to the technical process. For example, he objects to the “touching up” ot a negative by taking out the high lights or by deepen- ing shadows, because this imparts a foreign element. The operator ceases to rely upon the actual scientific process and is “ getting around ” the deficiencies of his plate or of his own skill by what is, after all, a subter- fuge. He does not deny that in certain cases a beautiful effect has been obtained, but, detecting the trick, feels a jar. The picture is not exclusively a photograph. On the other hand, he advocates and practises the fullest control of the result, both in the way of emphasizing certain parts, and of reducing or eliminating others. The gist of his argument consists in the fact that through the modern improvements in developing and printing, the operator not onlv has almost unlimited control over the result, but even can metamorphose the original. One sees photographs, for example, which look as if they were charcoal drawings, etchings, or wash-drawings; the pho- tographer with brush or needle having simulated these effects. Of these i\Ir. Stieglitz would be disposed to say: “ '^Ts, they are beautiful as pictures, but do not ask me to regard them seriously as photographs. If a man wishes to get a charcoal effect, let him use charcoal ; why burden bimself with the restrictions and difficulties of the camera, when he can accomplish his purpose so much more readilv and eff'ectivelv \\ith a bit of burnt wood?” His friend might reply : “ I am seeking certain results ; the 34 A STUDY IN TWO COLORS By A If red Sticglitz^ iJigS (Reproduction from a glycerine print in two colors — the process improved by Messrs. Stieglit^ and Jos. T. Keiley.) PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART means are immaterial ; I use photography as the readiest to my hand, but do not regard her as a mistress with divine rights, but as a servant to do my bidding.” “ But there are servants and servants,” Mr. Stieglitz would rejoin, “ Some learned in horses, some in the mysteries ot the toilet, others in the cooking of cutlets — and reason would suggest relying upon their individual capacities. The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities ot expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art ; but granted that it is an art, reliance should he placed unreservedly upon those possibilities, that they mav he made to yield the fullest results.” As chronicler in these pages ot our leading photog- raphers, I do not take sides in the controversy ; preterring to adopt the non-committal attitude of the theological student who, when he was asked to distinguish between the “ major and min(,)r prophets,” humbly replied ; “ Far he it trom me to draw distinctions between such holy men.” But, whatever may be the merits ot the case, it must he admitted that this doctrine ot photography tor photographers, so ahlv and staunchly maintained, has been most opp(.)rtune and usetul. 'The art is new ; its road is being gradually laid, “ slowlv broadening down trom precedent to prece- dent,” and the tendency cd men, seeking tor individual manner ot expressicm, is to wander oft the track. The influence ot Mr. Stieylitz has been the conservative one ot insisting upon the value ot the main road, while his scientific knowledge and his own artistic producticuis have kept him in the van ot those \\ho are continually pushing it torward. REFJ.ECTIONS— XIGIIT, NEW YORK (First night photograph made with the introduction of life) PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART In common with all the best photographers, he lays great stress upon the mounting and framing of the prints. Size, shape, color, and texture of the mount and the color and character ot the frame are all considered with a special regard for the color and character of the print, so that a complete harmoniousness may be obtained. In this respect the photographers as a body have shown themselves more artistic than the painters, who are gradu- ally realizing the inappropriateness of most of the gilded abominations in which they frame their pictures. These are generally made in factories by artisans, skilful enough, hut having no artistic sensibility, or, for that matter, any chance of displaying it if they possess it, since the frames are not designed for the pictures, but turned out in pat- terns which aim mainly at elaborateness of commonplace ornament and excessive glare of gilt. How often does one see such incongruity as the face of a maiden with sweet, wistful eyes peering out of a frame bedizened with the vulgar trimmings invented in the ostentatious court of the Graiid Ylonarch ; or a tender landscape, whose deli- cate atmosphere is sucked up by the hot glare of gilt around it. Such inartistic anomalies are common enough in every gallerv of paintings, but rarely seen in a photo- graphic exhihititm. I'he reason is that the photographers have more completely realized the beauty ot tofic ; and this from the nature of their craft. For, whether they print their pictures in gray, black, brown, or some other tint, they are practically limited to one color and must obtain \’ariety and harmony by playing upon subtle gradations from tbe darkest to the lightest parts. One may compare the virtuosity of the violinist who, in the sweep of his bow over a single note, can produce robust- PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART ness of sound and a variety oi differently modulated expressions, dying away into tremulous vibrations. We say he is extracting tone from his instrument, and hy analogy apply the same word, tone, to the artist’s manage- ment of his single color. Tone is equally applied to similar management of many combined colors. The photographer’s feeling for tone does not stop short at the edges of the print ; he tries to make the frame con- tribute to the effect hy a harmony either of similaritv or contrast ; hy making the frame form one of the grada- tions of tint, or by introducing into it another color that will hy contrast enforce the picture within. It is no uncommon thing for a photographer to experiment ftir several months with the framing and mounting of a print; hanging it where he can see it frequently and study it with a fresh eye, gradually amending his original conception of the setting until it satisfies him. As a key to the consideration of Ylr. Stieglitz’s own work as an artist, it may he repeated that his prominent characteristic is the balanced interest which he feels in science as well as art. Interwoyen with the artist’s enjoy- ment of beauty and the man’s interest in human nature is the expert’s delight in seeing in his work the evidence of scientific problems solved. He is hy conviction and instinct an exponent of the “straight photograph;” working chiefly in the open air, with rapid exposure; leaving his models to pose themselves, and reiving for results upon means strictly photographic, ffe is tc^ he counted among the Impressionists ; fully ca>nceiving his picture before he attempts to take it, seeking for effects of vivid actuality, and reducing the final record to its simplest terms of expression. It will be remembered 39 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART that Dr. Emerson said of the print v/ith which he won his hrst distinction that it was the only one in the collec- tion which had spontaneousness. The subject of N Good "Jokt’ is a group of thirteen women and children standing near a water-trough in an Italian street. They are engrossed in doing nothing in a manner charmingly Italian, and a laugh is rippling from face to face, started, one may suspect, by the artist. It represents a vivid moment of actual life. So far it is impressionistic. But in this early picture there seem to be evidences that the hgures were posed by the artist. If that be so, he has long abandoned the practice. He takes snap-shots, but does not touch the button until he has completely thought out the pictures, studied exactly the scene, con- ditions of light and position of the hgures, and then bides his time until the conditions are possible, and then again waits for the hgures, unconsciously, to pose themselves. The only chance upon which he depends is the one of eventually getting his hgures in the place and pose that he desires. If that does not happen neither does the picture. Another fault of that early picture is its lack of condensation. It brims over with interest, hut the inter- est is too scattered. Each face is a capital study, and the eve w'anders from one to the other; this very dihusion of interest interfering wdth a simple, unihed expression of the whole group. In a word the scene is a literal tran- script from nature, rather than an artist’s pictorial impres- sion of it. 'This is not a characteristic of Mr. Stieglitz’s mature work, in wdiich he invariahlv emphasizes the important facts of the scene, eliminating or moderating the less important, and bringing every detail into due sulH)rdination to a single effect of telling simplicity. A 40 PORTRAIT OF A DUTCH WOMAN' By Alfred Sieigliiz, iSij4 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART very fine example ol this is shown in the reproduction ot Gossip — Katwyk. Before discussing it, however, we should rememher that a “ half-tone reproduction,” no matter with what skill and care it he made, cannot render faithfully the delicate modulations of tone in the original print. The minute mesh of cross lines reduces the brilliance both of the whitest and blackest parts ; tending to a general shrinkage in the range of tints or “values” and battening the picture, with a resultant loss of distance and atmosphere. In Gossip, for example, the sky has been deadened, the vibration of light is scarcely repre- sented, and its suggestion of atmosphere and hreeziness much diminished. Moreover, the crests of the waves, and particularly the caps of the women, do not present the vivacity of contrast which is noticeable in the original. Hut to return to the Gossip — how simple it is and what impressive realism in the simplicity ! The broad sweep of open skv, the strip of waves following one upon another, and the stretch of sand, over part of which the water slides, are racy of free, fresh vastness. You may feel the scene to be a little drear, yet what invigoration there is, echoed in the sturdy forms and energetic action of the two women and the blunt strength ch the boat. Boat, ocean, and wives, and a sense of isolation — the life and romance of a little fishing village admirably epitom- ized. The highest praise one can give the picture is to sav that it reaches the heart of the matter with the same directness and svmpathy that characterize the works of the Dutch artists Israels and Bloomers. One distinguishes these qualities again in I'hc Net Motder and the Portrait of a Datr/i IPoauui. Thev have the intimate feeling that usuallv Dutch artists alone can impart to Dutch subjects. (2 THE NET MENDER PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART In the case of the portrait most strangers would have unduly emphasized the ruggedness of the face or the delicate linen cap, and insisted probably on the woman donning her gala attire, and have elaborated what they are pleased to call her “picturesqueness.” But in his desire to reach the humanity of his subject Mr. Stieglitz has controlled his record masterfully. The breadth of the ligure is felt rather than seen ; our notice being drawn to the long, powerful arm ; just enough definition is given to the cap to suggest its freshness and homely elegance ; nothing is permitted to interfere with the strong, sweet earnestness of the face. This, too, is kept in control ; the weatherbeaten fiesh and massive skull being softened to a mystery of tenderness by the shadows, so that looking forth from her eyes is the soul of a woman, wholesome, strong and lovable. Nor let us omit the ample distribution of dark passages in the pic- ture, knowingly diversified and spotted with the head and hands, the very pattern of black and white contributing to the expression of the woman’s character. The Net Mender is a study of a type rather than of an individual, a familiar feature of the shore at Katwvk, seeming to belong to it as naturally as the tufts of grass, embodying even the spirit of the scene. The figure, notwithstanding its firmness, is supple and admirably adjusted to the spaces around it, and from edge to edge of the frame there is not an atom of jar upon the pensive tranquility of feeling that breathes through the picture. It is one that Alillet might have conceived. 1 ndsh that others (,)f these Dutch pictures could have been reproduced, such as Teurrxifig Home and IVniting for the Touts, also (Uher examples of the Italian and Swiss 14 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART series. It is in his treatment of the human siihject in relation to outdoor scenes that Air. Stieglitz has exhibited the most distinguished skill. Nor is he one ol those who despair of discovering pictorial motive at home. The human nature which attracts him he hnds most free from artihciality in the streets of cities. New ^ ork in its scenic and human aspects he has studied exhaustivelv, ami one hopes that the results will some day he published, for they would give a record of city life witlnnit a parallel. Reproduced here are two of his famous series of night views of New York, one of them memorable as being the first night photograph made in which life is intrcxluced. In both, the combined effects of brilliant and of diffused light are remarkable, and An Ley Night amply justifies his contention that a certain airunint of “halation” (the muzzy halo surrounding some of the lights) is true to facts and pictorially pleasant. In this picture, also, one notes with what fine precision the reaching distances of the scenes are rendered. Considering the absence of light, the depth of the picture and the suhtletv of its “ values ” are surprising. Another famous New ’Wirk series is the one of snow scenes, of which a well-kno\^ul example showed a Fifth Avenue stage ploughing through the newdy-fallen snow; a picture fine in composition and in its suggestion of solemn desolation, full of atmos- phere and wn')nderfullv true in the receding distances of the waste of snow. Like all his wmrk, it represents a conception thought out and vividly realized before the camera w'as set in place. In connection with these snow pictures there is an amusing storv. One night he \\as awakened by a blizzard, and getting up and putting on many layers of clothing, crept from the Innise. He set 45 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART his shoulders to the storm and worked his way backward up the street ; at one moment having his camera swept from his hands and carried far by the wind, but eventually obtaining a picture. Soon after daybreak, when the storm had cleared, other photographers began to arrive, to whom the policeman, emerging from his shelter, remarked: “Ah! you tellers ain’t the first; there was a d d tool here in the middle ot the night.” With one accord they exclaimed, “ Stieglitz ! ” No picture has secured its author more deserved repu- tation than the Portrait of Mr. R. One need not have known the subject to teel sure that it is a characteristic likeness ot a most interesting personality; a man of mental power and tender qualities and, above all, of beau- tiful poise of character. One can read the last in the lean of the head and the carriage of the two hands, a pose at once spcnitaneous and reposetul ; evidently habitual. Moreover, it is a handsome picture, rich in color-tone, with a noble simplicitv in the distribution of light and dark and a gradation from the blackest to whitest that moves in a slow, impressive crescendo; the extremes of each meeting beneath the face and giving it additional distinction. The mingled firmness and mohilitv of the features and the soft luxuriance of the hair are exquisitely rendered. In fact, the more one studies the picture, the grander and sweeter it appears. It was achieved by the squeezing of a rubber hulh held perdu in the artist’s pocket, for the subject did not know that he was being photographed. Hut it represents preliminary study extend- ing over more than two years, d'he gentleman was habitually composed, hut stiffened at once into unnatural self-consciousness at anv suggestion of a sitting. Mr. 46 By A //red Si/e^/i/a, iSq8. “ SEI'TEMBER” (Reproduced from a p;um-bic1iroiuate print in India ink on tinted paper) PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART Stieglitz cultivated his friendship and studied his charac- teristics, until one day, during a summer visit to Lake George, he laid his plans for securing a picture. The camera was in readiness, facing a background of trees ; for, little as one would suspect it, the picture was taken in the open air. The artist invited his friend for a stroll, chatting meanwhile of a picture he proposed to take. On reaching the camera, he expressed a doubt as to how much of a scene he should include, and begged Mr. R. to stand for a moment that he might compare the scale of the hgure with that of the landscape. Without a sus- picion the gentleman placed himself, assuming his accus- tomed attitude; and the next moment his portrait had been secured. Devotion to art is most charmingly mingled with the personal element in a long series of pictures, still growing, entitled, 'Hie Photographic yoarnal of a Baby. Both the originality of the idea and the methodic completeness of its realization are eminently characteristic. The exam- ples illustrated are not to he regarded as pictures ; they are simplv studies of hahv life ; artless, lovable incidents that had been watched and noted many a time before they were permanentlv recorded. A word must he said of St/uiv in 'Two Colors. In the original the face is a pale nut-hrowu, a savor of the same being appreciable in the lace. It is an example of the improved glvcerine prcK'ess perfected by Messrs. Stieglitz and foseph B'. Keilev, which enables the artist to increase or retard the development of the print and to introtluce a coloring pigment. 'I’he intention here is not to present the color of the desh, hut to infuse an accidental note into the harmony of hlack and white. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART In final summary of this appreciation of Mr. Stieglitz and his work, I would reiterate that the personal qualifica- tion, which has made his influence upon pictorial photog- raphy so widely felt and valuable, is the rare balance in him of scientific knowledge and artistic feeling, joined to a character enthusiastic, powerful and sympathetic. Re- garding his pictures, one may end as one began with Dr. Emerson’s word, “ Spontaneousness.” He excels in studies of human subjects, and in his best examples attains a realism that is no bare record of facts but the realization of a vivid mental conception. When he sets his figures in a scene they become part of it and one with it in spirit. He puts them there because he has seen that they belong to it. His sentiment, never degenerating into senti- mentality, is always wholesome and sincere, and his pictures have the added charm of handsome arrangement and of simple and controlled impressiveness. In his hands the “ straight photograph,” in the broadest sense of the term, is triumphantly vindicated. 49 Tf : , CHAPTER III. By Gertrude Kasebier, i8yy •• DECORATIVE PANEL HI By Gertrude Kascbier^ igoi “GOING TO BOSTON” CHAPTER III Mrs. Gertrude Kasebier and ehe Artistic- CoMMERCMAL PORTRAIT R8. KASEBIER will tell you that she is a commercial photographer ; unqiiestiouahlv she is an artist. The union in her work ot these two motives forms a study ot more than usual interest. There are several kinds ot commercial photographer, all united in the purpose ot making a livelihood out ot their work, hut varying in the ideals which they set themselves. One will give his clients the least for their money, cheapening on material and process, so that the photograph will haye not eyen permanency. Others, ss PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART either from honesty of purpose or because they are in a position to demand better prices, will use only the best instruments and materials and the most thorough process, so that their prints will stand the wear of time. Among the latter group are many who try in various ways to make their photographs pictures. Lastly, there are a few who succeed in this respect and produce truly artistic work. Preeminent among them is Mrs. Kasebier. The portrait forms so large a part of her work that we will study her art particularly in this direction ; and it is worth while just to try and reach a mutual understanding of what \/e mean by an artistic portrait, lor really the sitter has a large share in determining the result. I’he pho- tographer has to give his client what the latter desires or go out oi business ; so public taste may he a stimulus to him, while the lack of it acts as a constant drag upon the free play of his imagination and skill. If one asks what is understood hv a portait, the answer in nine cases out of ten will he “a good likeness.” And this represents a very important quality; one that is sometimes overlooked hv advanced artistic photographers. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART who in their zeal to make an attractive picture will pay scant courtesy to the features. Yet, after all, to the friends of the person photographed it is, not unjustly, a first desideratum that the portrait shall be a good likeness. But of what ? A faith- ful representation of the features is not enough. Occasionally, it is true, one sees a face so faultlessly and regularly modeled that it has the beauty of a statue ; almost always “ it is icily regular, splendidly null,” and the mere touching of the button may record everything which it has to give us. But generally features are less regular; a faultless detail may be balanced by one less perfect, or the features may all be open to criticism, and yet the whole face charming by reason of its expression. Indeed, we shall admit that play of expression and mobility of features are in most cases the chief charm, while the rendering of these qualities is the most difficult thing in photography. For the source of the charm is its spontaneousness, which in presence of the camera is apt to disappear, the features stiffening. You wish to look vour best and succeed in lookinv vour worst, or even like nothing that your friends will recognize. But this expres- By Gertrude Keisebier, iSg7 “PORTRAIT OF MR. B.” 57 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART sion is itself a radiation from the mind and character within. In the case of a little child, for example, over whose face there is a continual ripple of animation, it is the result of a nimhle and sunny temperament. If the photographer can catch the child unconscious, he will probably catch the sunshine. But as the character develops in youth, doubt and hope and wonder and a hundred dim surmises ruffle the surface ; the face laughs this moment, is pensive the next ; neither is the whole character, only a suggestion of both will suffice. In later life character becomes more fixed, but often no less com- plicated. Shall we be satisfied with a rendering of features that does not mirror something of this inner personality .? You may think the question involves its own answer; hut unfortunately it does not do so in the case of every- body. I could name a portrait painter, a fashionable one, which means he has an extensive clientage, of whom it is said that he always secures a good likeness. It may he so as far as the features are concerned, hut if you do not know the ladies or gentlemen depicted the portraits will mean nothing to you. You are quite prepared to find eves, nose and mouth represented, but in their arrange- ment you look in vain for individuality of expression, something that will identify itself in your imagination with a separate character, that, as vou studv the picture, will cause you to feel you are making the acquaintance of an actual personal! tv. On the other hand, the great por- traits of the world, which have survived the judgment of time, ami are agreed to he great by succeeding generations of cultivated persons, owe their eminence partly, it is true, to their technical excellence, hut a great deal more to the undehatahle, perennially certain fact that they represent By Gertrude Kasebier, iqoo MR. A. M. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART human beings with such insight into character and fulness of expression that, although centuries may have elapsed, and our modern ideas ot life be entirely different on the surface, those portraits have a fundamental relation to a common humanity. Their painters secured a vivid realiza- tion of character, the vital facts which constitute a separate human identity, and we look into their faces as into those of our acquaintances and friends. Unlike the photographer in active work, the painter can reach his results gradually, having the advantage of many sittings, during which he is learning more and more of the sitter’s characteristics. He can scrape his canvas clean and begin again, gradually through mistakes reach- ing the residt which seems to justify him in laying down the brush and saying the portrait is finished. In fact, he is not dependent upon the sitter’s appearance or condition of mind at any one moment, or upon his own momentary ability to compass the problem. The photographer is dependent upon both. Such limitations call for very exceptional powers, and explain why so few photographs are really good portraits. The photographer must have not onlv insight into character, but its keenness perpetually sharpened to a point ; he must have the sympathetic faculty to gain the confidence of his subject, and the same coiitinually, as it were, on tap. But people whose analytical and sympathetic faculties are most alert are just the ones whose temperaments are most susceptible. The least little thing may disturb their ecjuilibrium ; the chance remark of a sitter as she enters the studio, some detail of her dress or manner may stir an involuntary antagonism, which has to be gulped down and forcibly put out of memory before the w'ork can pnK'eed. 6o PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART Again, even among people who realize what a portrait should he, there is much misconception as to what consti- tutes a good photograph portrait. The most common is that it should be clear and distinct, full of dehnition, the features clearly rendered, the dress — ah, how important a consideration ! — distinctly recorded. Yet if people would study each other across the space of an ordinary sitting- room, they would discover how little dehnition they, respectively, present. They become patches of color against the colors of the walls and furniture ; thev are animated, individual personalities, and yet the outlines of their hgures are not rigidly carved, hut merge with the surroundings, and are softened by atmosphere. Still, how charming they all look, so spontaneously alive and inter- esting, and how their gowns become them ! If they would pursue the study further they would hnd how large a part the distribution of light and shade plays in the at- tractiven^s of the scene. The figures are not lighted from all the points of the compass in a stark glare, like the people on the stage. The real scene is a maze of shadows as well as light, moving with the movements of the figures, giving a hun- dred different sugges- 6i PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART tions of piquancy, dignity, subtlety, and so on. Perhaps no one will deny this, and yet he or she will ignore the logical conclusion, and visit the average photographer, who turns on the full light, producing a bald, hard, uniformly-lighted picture, unsuggestive, merely obvious, and too often commonplace. Whereas the photographic artist, by skilful adjustment of light and shade, will reproduce the accidental effects that, I hope, we are willing by this time to concede form so much of the charm in real life. He will go further and make them contribute to the expres- sion of the most refined and persuasive qualities of the sitter’s character. Again, we may have noticed how the charm of a lady’s presence is enhanced bv her costume happening to harmonize with the colorings of the room. This is, again, an accidental effect, which the artist uses with intention ; placing the figure in surroundings which will add to its dignity, individuality or graciousness, choosing colors which will merge into a prevailing tone ; or, if he is a photographer, so arranging his darks and lights and varying their intensity as equally to produce a fine grada- tion of tone from the deepest dark to the brightest light. And, again, in the texture of the material of a costume there is charm. W’e need scarcely to be reminded how different is the sheen of satin from the soft, moss-like sur- face of velvet ; how extjuisite often is the union of white lace with the white hair of an old lady, what a different charm if the lace is black, and so on through all the tex- tures, whether hard or soft, brilliant or dull. Each has its peculiar attractiveness, and a clever woman knows exactly by which her special characteristics are most helped. But ha\e you considered how the beauty of the 62 FAIRY TALES By Gertrude Kasebicr, igoi PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART texture depends upon the amount of light upon it and the way in which it reflects it? How hard and relentless, for example, a satin dress is apt to look in full daylight, while it has a subtle charm by artiflcial light, because the latter is distributed piecemeal with attendant shadow, instead of being all-pervasive. Yet the average photographer, or his client, ignores this fact, and the lady’s form, set in full light, seems sheathed in metal. In the same way the lace flchu is made to look like perforated cardboard, the velvet like solid wood. But whv dwell so fully on these points ? Simply because each and every one of them has its share in con- trihutiiig to the beauty of the portrait, and they are pre- ciselv the points which are ignored, alike by the public and the average photographer, hut are duly considered by Mrs. Kiisehier. So, at the risk of giving much of the play without the appearance of Hamlet, I have dwelt upon these points, because they are essential to a compre- heiisioii and appreciation of this lady’s work. Her por- traits have character and individuality ; for uniformity of deflnition and lighting she substitutes the suggestiveness of light and shade ; not merely posing her flgures, she composes them with the surroundings, and makes the whole composition a beautiful pattern of line and form and color, ccnitriving at the same time that this pattern shall help to elucidate the character. Perhaps by this time we may detect a gentle cynicism in her avowal that she is a commercial photographer. It implies that, while she is making portraits for a livelihood as well as practising an art she loves, the exigencies of the profession some- times interfere with the realization of her ideals; not always because time and opportunity are lacking for 64 DICKEY Gertrude KaseOier, igoo PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART mature study, but because, occasionally, the sitter is not of one mind with herself as to the ends in view, urging, or at least desiring, some compromise with the common- place. And you cannot conform to the average and be above the average at the same time, so the unreasonable insistence must involve certain tuggings at the artist’s heartstrings, justifying a little cynicism. Whether by chance or design, the majority of illus- trations to this article are studies of children. Nearly all of us love a child, but not all in the same way. Some are so enamored of the child being the promise of the man, that they would have him a manikin in petticoats or short pants ; finding amusement even in that odious form of cuteness known as “ smart.” Others will load with hnery the little limbs that Nature has meant for free action and due acquaintance with healthy dirt. These are not the sort of children in whom Mrs. Kasebier takes much interest. Her children are essentially childlike, fresh little buds of vitality with the fragrance of uncon- sciousness. She WOOS them into her confidence, sets them to amusing themselves, or holds their interest, and catches them in their unsophisticated naturalness. I turn to her Portrait of a Boy, and find myself laughing. At him ? Bv no means ; he has too much skull beneath that soft thatch of hair, too much possibility of character in th ose chid-)hily decisive features and wide-apart, honest eyes to give any cause for ridicide. But the sturdy little face is so deliciously childlike, so unconscious of anything hut the something w'hich is making his brain ponder, while he sucks in his under lip in a sort of a poise of judgment, as to what the strange lady is trying to do to him, that I laugh, as I have laughed on the top of a 66 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART mountain, in sheer ex- uberance of spirit, rilled with the sense ot abounding whole- someness. Do you mark the extraordin- ary realism of the soft, smooth hair and the podgy inequalities of the features Let us imagine, for a moment, the face, as it would ordinarily be photo- graphed, white and smooth, with only enough shade to indi- cate the modeling of the features, the background whitish, and the costume derined as if to advertise a tailor’s stock. \\ ould the picture have had the distinction of this one, \'iewed only as an effect of color, of tonal arrangement ? Would the head have had the naturalness and character of this one ? Far more, would there have been the mystery and the poetry of this child-face peering out of the depth of shadow, as it were, into the obscurity of his own future ? Perhaps we reccdlect how the old Saxon likened the life of a man to the fight of a bird through the dimlv-lighted hall — out of the darkness into the dark- ness.” Some such depth and poetry of feeling is in this little portrait. Now turn to her Goi)ig to Bosto?i, on page Surely, I mav enjov my healthv laugh again, if only at the plaintive insipidity of the stuffed lamb and the lovely 6S By Gertr^ide Kasebier^ igoo “MISS SEARS” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART inventiveness the artist, who dares to be playlul "‘ind at the same time can produce a picture so truly heautitul as this. I turn it upside down and this way or tliat, and every way it is heautilul. Its adjustment of the forms to the space, the subtlety of mass and line and balance of the dark and light seem equally admirable. How ^^a)n- derful that quivering thrill of light which appears and vanishes in the line of the string ! The picture has the decorative simplicity and exquisite precision of a hue Japanese print, and the feeling expressed by purely aesthetic qualities is echoed in the characterization. This youngster was evidently a person of action with a pre- dilection for the strenuous life. He would be in his element climbing trees, but for the moment must be held in repose without loss of active suggestion. His father has lately taken a journey, the son shall do the same. A valise big enough to hold himself is ready to his left hand, his right one holds his overcoat. He is prepared for a start, and meanwhile the lamb stands there in evidence that he is only playing, after all ; and in order that the fun may ]iot be at the child’s expense, the lamb is prominently in the light, and the bov’s Gertrude KasMc,-. o’ J "PORTRAIT” 69 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART own dear little face in serious shadow. Comparing this picture with the previous one, can we refuse to admit that in an artist’s hand shadow as well as light will bring out character in the lace Can anything be more childlike and unconscious than the expression in the face of Dickey, and the gesture of the hands ? Yet with all this artless- ness, how artful is the introduction ot the dowers, the soft, silk dchu crossed low over the neck, and the stiff little bow, which last adds a quaint spot of emphasis, thus drawing the eye and insuring that the head shall he the drst and last part on which the attention rests. The picture rep- resents a charming little conceit of fancy, which detracts nothing from its serious sweetness. By Gcririuie Kascbicr, iJig? 'MOTHER AND CHILD d he group called Fdiry Idles, of a lady and two little hoys bending over an album, involves a more complicated problem of composition, lighting and characterization. I wish that mv readers could see the original of this, printed in brown, with such a rich range of tone and varying cpiality of color : opaque in the background on 70 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART the right and having a wooly, cloth-like texture ; soft, transparent on the children’s hair, smooth and lambent on the flesh, and smooth, but crisper on the cloth suits. What complete unanimity of interest in the attitude of the three heads, and yet difference of feeling ! One boy, for example, attracted lightly by the picture, the other giv- ing his mind to it, with hand lifted unconsciously to the chin in concentrated atten- tion. I can understand some one objecting that the hoy’s face is so much in shadow that the features are almost indistinguishable. One may share the regret and yet feel that this loss is compensated bv a greater gain in the shrewd revelation of the hoy’s character. This indication of quiet, penetrating earnest- ^ ness should be a more precious document for a mother to cherish than one merely of the features, both because it is a much more diflicult thing to have attained, and because it dips into the unpl limbed mystery of the child’s mind. The qual- ities of his brother’s mind, on the other hand, one may judge to he of a more obvious kind, so there is a spiritual suggestion in the contrast of light and dark in the two faces. By Gcj'trndc Kascbur, igoo ‘ PORTRAIT” 71 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART A similar quality of spirituality reappears in the Portrait, on page 69. What beauty of character and temperament is suggested in the older girl ! the effect being assisted not only by the suave dignity of the pattern of light and dark, hut by the exquisite pose of the figure, the lean of the head, lift of shoulder, and the expression of the hand which rests upon the younger child. The latter nestles very naturallv, hut the deep shadow on one side of her face is unfortunate, detracting from the roundness and softness. But even so, the picture is most beautiful, having the rich quality, both in tone and spacing, of an old \^enetian master. K quality shared by all the prints we have been discussing is sin- cerity. I do not mean of purpose and \vork- manship, which go without saying in this lady’s work, hut of method. To express the character and make a beautiful picture the means employed have been those of sound and serious art, \vithout any trace of afiectation or trick to secure distinction. Of the former, scnne might see a suspicion in the ptirtrait of Pfirkcy, on page 6cj, hut I refuse to perceive it, for the face, quaint JSy Gertrude Kuiebier ^ iqoo “MISS U. ” 72 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART and dreamy, justihes the treatment. The slight bizarrerie of Miss Scurs may also be justifiable. The child would seem to he a demure, prim little miss, rather man- nered for her age ; her hair is dressed in a very formal way, the hand- some coat is in style much as her mother might wear, and as she sits with the stufi'ed dog on her lap and the queer By Gertrude Kasebier. i8q6 "CORNELIA ’’ bow on her head, she has the complete self- possession and some of the complacency of an adult. She is not play- ing a little game like the small hoy with the lamb ; she seems con- scious of posing for a cunning effect. Hence the feeling of the pic- ture does not ring true ; it is forced, unspon- taneous, and the promi- By Gertrude Kasebier., iqoo "LADY WITH NFAVSPAPKK" 73 “ I, A (;kanu-m'ekk” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART nence given to the dog seems freakish, the bow tiresome. Still I should judge it a very telling piece of character rendering. It needs boldness to suggest that there is affectation in the beautiful Group on page 67, for nothing could he more simple and heartfelt than the management of the mother’s and baby’s heads and the expression in each. But why the Japanese costume ? Why not ? may he the retort. Because this lady is not Japanese, or she would not be sitting on a chair, but kneeling on the door with her body on her heels in a cosy mass of drapery ; and this device of dressing up a subject to make a pretty pic- ture is one of the ordinary resources of the photographer who has not the knowledge of art possessed by Mrs. Kasebier, and is accordingly driven to such shifts in trying to make his picture distinguished. It is my respect and admiration for this lady’s art that make me judge it onlv by the highest standard. For this reason I cannot cordially accept the Dfcorutivc PiDiel. The child is so obviously put on view. 'Phe old-fashioned photographer would have put a piece of figured drapery over an arm- chair, and hidden the mother behind it to hold the baby in position. I’his is not so bald a device, but here \\c have instead of a draped chair a draped mother with her head bowed in shadow. Of course we know why; hut if the attitude and treatment of shadow have any a'sthetic meaning, they indicate profound grief, which is not justi- fied by the possession of so healthy and well-formed a child. Ao-ain, one of the main beauties of a child’s limbs is their satin texture. So we miss in this picture the full quality of loveliness in the child’s figure, and the artistic charm of spontaneousness and unity of feeling in 75 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART the whole conception. It is a set-piece rattier than a glimpse of nature. So most explicitly is La Gra?id-)uere, which, however, it should he noted, was executed some years ago. The scene is a rude one with mixture of sun and shadow, suggestive of the life of the poor ; the old woman is a sturdy, wholesome type, who has done her simple duty, upheld and cheered hy religious faith. Surely an artist could have led our imagination to this point without the crude device of making her hold a crucihx to her breast. No ; she has been posed, and one resents the artihciality as an imposition. There is more than a little affectation also in the profile Portrait on page 71, for the self-consciousness of the face interferes with the spontaneity which such a treatment demanded. Yet the artistry of this print, apart from its sentiment, is exquisite. I have the original before me, and the beautiful quality of color in the head, the contrast between the soft confusion of the hair and comparative flatness of the face, the dainty touches of definition in certain of the features, and the suggestive line that passes down the figure, appearing, reappearing, delicately em- phasized in parts and fading away into the paper imper- ceptibly, so that one cannot tell where it ceases — all these exhibit a sensitiveness of artistic feeling and handling beyond praise. If I may try to paraphrase the impression w ith wdiich it affects me, I ww)uld say it is like a deep, full breath, passing awniy in a sigh ; a suggestion so exquisitely subtle that I wdsh the breath had been the expression of a more sincere, less self-conscious feeling. Quite possibly this fancied detection of insinceritv may he due to some prejudice of mv own. One can only state one’s opinion honestiv, ttivin^ at the same time one’s reasons, so that 76 ADELK ” By Gertrude Kascbier ^ 189S PHOTOCJRAPHY AS A FINE ART the reader may judge whether the conclusion be good or bad. What shall we say of Mother and Child Beautiful it certainly is, it only tor the delicacy of light and shade in the tolds ot the lady’s white gown. It seems to have been the result ot a sudden impulse of enthusiasm. One may imagine the general conception of the picture settled and the artist waiting for her opportunity. The baby suddenly glides into a pose with head thrown back and eyes raised. It is like an infant Christ or wingless cherub. Exquisite ! Even the mother shares the excitement of the moment, as one may see from the tense action of the head and fixity ot the gaze. The picture is taken and is very spiritual and beautiful, yet the pose and expression of the child have not the unaffectedness of a baby. The result is, haby plus tbe enthusiasm of the artist tor some- thing she did not expect to get, and could only have got by accident ; certainly not normal, simple, character- istically childlike. A mastery ot subtle effects ot light and shade is seen in the picture of a Lady u'ith Newspaper, in which the open sheets are made to vield a most interesting pattern ot form and color, while the mingling ot light and dark in the folds of the dress is full ot poetic suggestion. In the Stiuly of a Bov the difhculty ot setting the camera at the window has been triumphantly overcome. The massing ot shade upon the left is full and deep in tone, in the original especiallv a jov to studv, and the pensive expression ot the young man’s face, so admirably un- affectetl, has a delightful reference to the misty distance ot view outside the window. It is a surprising and most impressive picture ; strong, deep and siditle. Ot the print, 7 « “SISTERS” By Gertrude Ka^cbicry 1901 PHOTOCJRAPHY AS A FINE ART Mr. A. M., on page 59, I have only the proof before me, so that I cannot speak with such extended admiration as I am sure the picture warrants ; for even in this rough state the treatment of the head, and the two hands so strangely echoing its expression, and the placing of these three spots against the plunge of dark, are managed with a comprehension and lulness of artistic feeling most delightful. The beauty of the picture Miss D. needs no commending. Its appeal is instantaneous and endur- ing. Only I would dwell upon the consummate feeling and skill with which the character as well as the features are made to emerge from the soft shadow. It is as line a refutation as could be of the ordinary fallacy that the face should he brightly lighted and dehned. To sum up one’s impressions of Airs. KAsebier’s work, as illustrated in these portraits, it is, in the first place, sympathetic, influenced by love and enthusiasm as well as knowledge. She has a keen intuition of character, and a wonderfully swift inventiveness of means to express it, for we may conclude that certainly the majority of these pictures have been done under the ordinary conditions of fulfilling appointments. Each has an unexpectedness of treatment, presupposing a mind stored with artistic resources and an imagination alert and fertile. Equally spontaneous is her sympathy. She has a remarkable power of focussing her interest upon her sid^ject and of eliscovering the best qualities. I'he means hv which she gives expression to her conceptions are those of a thorough artist, and in almost every case (d a “straight” photographer. Indeed, the Portrait, page 71, is, perhaps, the only example t)f a picture conspicuously altered in the process, and here it is mainly in the way of elimination. 80 PHOTCKJRAPPiY AS A FINE ART H er resources are the management ot line and form, and of light. These she handles, not merely with knowledge, hut with a vivid imagination and poetic instinct ; securing, as she needs it, dignity or delicacy of line and mass and fulness or evanescent charm of color. The quality ot the latter can only he guessed from the illustrations, hut many of the originals urge one to use that much-abused term “ orchestration of color.” No other seems so litting ; tor example, her dark passages have a resonant, sonorous quality ; elsewhere the eftects ot light are Hute-like in their tremulous purity, or the impression upon one mav he of the vibration of stringed instruments, and all are tused into a harmony ot tone and teeling. Si \ 1 CHAPTER IV. '1 I POK'IRAi r OF ALFRKD STIEGLITZ By Frank Eu^oie^ lyoo \ ■i By Friifik Euge7ic “THE HORSE.” SHOWING A HOED USE OF ETCHING IN THE BACKGROUND CHAPTER IV Methods of Individual Expression Illustratkii kv the Work oe Frank Eu<;ene ani> Josei’h T. Keiley T is not because the work of these (yentlemen offers any special point of resemblance that their names are coupled; nor do I propose to institute any comparison. But they have in common an identity of motive, which, however, is shared by innumerable others, so that it is as the type of a class, and as illustrating an important phase of photography, that they are to he considered here. They represent, at anv rate, in a great deal ol their WTU'k, the opposite to the “ straight photograph.” Thev largely “manipulate” their negatives or prints to secure the desired result. 87 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART The goal of the best photographers, as of all true artists, is not merely to make a picture, but to record in their print and transmit to others the impression which they experience in the presence of the subject. This sounds like “ Impressionism,” and indeed it is, in the broadest meaning of that term, which, however, in common usage has been whittled down to a narrow sig- nihcance, to particularize that group of artists whose fondness for painting light would better justify the dis- tinguishing name of “ luminarists.” In a broad sense all artists are impressionists. They do not picture the object itself, but what they are conscious ol seeing. One man may be satisfied to represent merely the external facts of the object ; but if nine other men, facing the same object, set about doing the same thing, the ten would not produce identical results. In each case it would he tinged by the individual’s particular way of seeing. The thing pictured would not he the object, hut a record of the impression made by it on each of the separate pairs of eyes ; every one of the ten would he involuntarily an impressionist. Another man, however, will he conscious of the impression made upon liis mind ; and it will seize upon his imagination, and tluis become itself colored by his personality. If, then, he tries to picture this impression, using the object, not as an end in itself hut as contributory to his impression, omitting some details and emphasizing those most important to his purpose, he is an impressionist in the sense in which we are usintj the term here. I cannot better signify the difference between the painter or photographer who is satisfied to he a recorder only of the external facts of the object, and him who forms a vivid mental conception of it and tries to make us realize his 88 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART impression, than by comparing the street arahs of J. G. Brown with Murillo’s. The former are, as it were, word for word translations into paint of the shoeblack or news- paper-boy— snatched, too, from their context of busy city life and rendered in isolated fragments ; nor, it may he added, with much characterization of the dirt and super- sharpened wit of the originals. Alurillo, on the other hand, saw his hoys as part of the lazy, sunny, shiftless life of the Spanish street — attracted, no doubt, as a painter by the art- less freedom of their gestures ; and he painted them with the dusty sunshine on their healthy burn- ished limbs, and with the dirt encrusted on the soles of their feet, which, you remember, so troubled Ruskin. But Alurillo in his sympathy with hoy-life had no horror of dirt, no doubt seeing in it the reason why those limbs were so lithe and sinewy ; the hoys running wild like young creatures of the forest and basking in the sunshine, as near to nature as the denizen of a city can get. Or, again, to emphasize this point, let me compare Abbey’s illustrations of Cjoldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer 89 By Joseph T. Kcilcy PORTRAIT OF ZOLNAY, THE SCULPTOR PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART with those he made for Shakespeare’s comedies. In the former a trivial interest in what the characters are repre- sented as doing is swallowed up in the larger enjoyment of the wonderfid way in which the artist has recreated the atmosphere and sentiment of the old times. He made them in the little village of Broadway, in England, where the mind, as those who have lived there know, can readily detach itself from what is modern and drift natur- ally and easily into the old feeling. Enough of it still survives to whet the imagination and help it to conjure up vivid impressions of the past. But when he came to illustrate the comedies of Shakespeare, he found no such spontaneous inspiration, and had recourse to arch;eological research ; the illustrations are satisfactorily correct, but impressionless. On the other hand, when Elihu Vedder undertook the illustrating of Omar Khayyam, he did not picture literally the phraseology of the text, hut absorbed its spirit, and, having taken the beauty and meaning into his own send, gave out of himself a painter’s equivalent for the thought and imagery of the poet. So his work stands as an interpretation or, better still, a reincarnation. The old Persian’s thought has transmigrated into a new state. Even to any one who has not thought of these things before, one may hope that there is a dawning conscious- ness that the conceiying and imparting an impression is more to he desired than a bald statement of fact, such as wendd he edndous to any one ; just as we hang upon the speech of an orator, less for the facts he formulates than for the ue\y significance they acquire after being fused in the crucible of his own vigorous personality. If, there- fore, I have been so fortunate as to carry my reader with me, we have reached the conclusion that the chief beauty go PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART in a work of art, he it painting, photograph, or silver salt-cellar, is the evidence ot the artist’s expression of himself. It is manifested diversely. In a portrait, as we said in the last chapter, it shows itself in ability to sym- pathize with the subject, to penetrate behind the mask of the features, and to present an epitome of character as well as of appearance. Again, in ever so simple a picture of domestic life, a gcfire subject, there will he given not only the facts of the episode and its local surroundings, hut also the essence of the matter, the sentiment ; not expressly stated, hut to he felt. I rememher a very happy example in the Danish Section at the recent Paris Ex- position in a picture hy Irminger, called Past Mid)iight. A young husband is studying or writing, and the wife has slipped down in her night-robe and stands behind his chair. The story is trivial enough, hut I would draw attention to the artist’s way of telling it. In the choice of details, simple and rehned : the soft, diffused light from the shaded lamp, glinting tenderly on the dowers, leather hacks of hooks, and the young man’s earnest face mostly in shadow, and shed so reticently over the white-clad dgure of the girl-wife ; the lovahleness of a happy home, the beauty of absolute accord, are suggested with an amount of imagination that lifts a triding circumstance into a poem. Or, again, the photographer or painter may render a landscape that we recognize as true to nature, hut which adects us as little as the glimpses that dash before the eye as we speed along the railroad. The fault may he in ourselves or in the painter’s inability to conceive and transmit a vivid impression. A love of nature is one of the things that you cannot buy at a department store, nor mav it he acquired from 9 ' Reproduction from n glyceri)ie Priiit by Joseph T. Ketley CORNFIELD VISTA” IN AFTERGLOW OF AN AUTUMNAL SUNSET Rcf'roduction front a g^lyccrtne print hy Joseph T. Keiley “AUTUMN TWILIGHT” ITiis scene is identical with “ Cornfield Vista,” reproduced on page 91. but the character lias been altered througli local development of the print Reprod^lciion from a g^lycerine print by Frank Eugene PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART text-hooks. It must have origin and growtli in ourselves. But if I am speaking to a lover ol nature, he knows better than I can say that his joy in it is the result ol communing, companionship, and intimacy with nature. That clump of trees upon the rising ground has a yigor of outline that loiw ay-o arrested his attention, hut he has become so used to its features that he takes them for granted, as we do the face of a friend. Aleanwhile, \\diat interests him is their eyer-changing play of expression. At dawn, noonday, or twilight, under gray light or burn- ing sunshine, when storm is gathering or everything is at peace, in countless other vicissitudes of local conditicms, those trees, lifted up against the sky, take on moods and changes of expression, making constant yariety of appeal to his imagination, and always someho\y litti ng in w ith his own mood of feeling. In our ability to put ourselyes thus at one ^yith nature we ourselves are artists — unable, however, to o-ive utterance to the thoiwht. The creative power is lacking, and this is the distinguishing character- istic of the artist. He is the creator ; and, the more ^vc realize this, the greater our delight in art which involves a personal expression, and the less interest ^\'e feel in the process which merely records facts. In the early stages of photography man’s interest was captured by the camera’s ability to record facts ; today, the artist’s aim is to make it record his impressions of the fact, and to express in the print his pers(.)nal feeling. ’Phe camera’s ability \yas oyerrated. Because it can take in so much more detail than the human eye, its accuracy of yision was regarded as infallible ; \yhereas, in effect, it is less accurate than the trained eye, falsifying t’ne record by undue enlargement of the objects near, and diminution of 95 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART those more remote. So the artist in his search after truth has set himself, first of all, to correct the camera’s fail- ings ; not, however, in the generally accepted way, as, for example, by eliminating every inequality in the features of a portrait and reducing them to the simpering smooth- ness of a milliner’s wax model. This is the commonplace method, aided and abetted by the vanity of the sitter. I have heard it stated, in connection with a portrait, that the artist would have done well to soften down the prominence of the bones in the lady’s neck. For my own part, I think the lady would have done better to cover up her bony neck. The prominence of these bones has a physiological relation to her character, and for the artist to have clothed them with firm, soft flesh would have been to contradict the expression of the face. But this is dangerous ground ! Let us leave it for the safer one of landscape. Suppose the vista to he photographed is a mile in length, every yard of it gradually receding from the foreground. If the camera jumps the middle distance, and extends the horizon in appearance to two miles away, the whole character of the scene is falsified. The photographer in the printing seeks to correct this deviation from the truth. This is his first argument in favor of manipulating the print; and some photographers have another. “ 'Fhat scene,” says one, “ excites a certain impression in my imagination, the result partly of asso- ciation, partly of mv individual temperament. I want to express that phase of the scene and communicate it to you. The unresponsive eye t)f the camera will not see what I am striving for, hut I will try to extract from its record, or infuse into it, my motive.” So he manipulates his print. Another with the same end in view will manipu- 96 By Frujik Eugene ‘‘SONG OF THE LILY PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART late the negative. Mr. Eugene, for example, will draw or paint or etch upon the negative. There are many methods ot controlling the development of the print, but we will coniine our notice here to the glycerine process ot developing platinum prints, because it is the one which Mr. Keiley always uses, and which in conjunction with Air. Stieglitz he has brought into extended usefulness. Briedv, the process is as follows : a print is made from the negative upon platinum paper in the usual way ; unlike silver printing, in which the image prints out by the action of light, the image on the platinum paper is verv faint, needing a further process of developing, and it is at this point that the photographer controls his results bv means of glycerine. The print is coated with it, and the effect of this is to retard the action of the developing solu- tion which, either pure or mixed with glycerine, is then applied with a brush. The pure de- veloper brings out the platinum black, or, when diluted with glycerine, the lighter tones, while in the parts to which the pure glycerine is applied no development ensues. So the opera- tor, by merely spreading the glycerine, can elim- PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART inate what he pleases from the print, and convert light parts into dark, or ‘vice versa. The advantages of this process are summed up in a brochure, entitled “The ‘ Camera Notes ’ Improved Process for the Development of Platinum Prints, Including the Ex- periments ot Jo- seph 'P. Keiley and Alfred Stieglitz.” “ The great merit of this method of development” — the words are Mr. Keiley’s — “ lies (<^?) in its corrective possibilities, and that through it the manipulator is enabled to reclaim the print from the rigid bondage of tbe hitherto unalterable render- ings of values recorded therein during the process of printing, and (h) to introduce into it his own conception of the values, tonal qualities, feeling and artistic effect (,>f the theme under treatment.” I have taken the liberty of dividing the quotation into two statements, because they seem to contain the gist of the difference between its use bv tbe straight photog- By Frank Eit^cne “YOUNG MAN WITH CELLO •' 99 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART rapher and the other one — I cannot call him “ crooked ” — who claims unrestricted liberty of action. The former only modifies the result ; the latter reserves the right to alter it. The straight photographer may feel a shadow to be too dense, so he reduces it in the printing ; or the fore- ground too full of detail, and confuses it to bring it to a mass, or he will retard the printing of the stronger parts while he coaxes up the delicate tones in the sky, and so on. But the result is substantially nature’s image. On the other hand, a reference to the two parallel examples of a cornheld by Mr. Keiley, reproduced on pages 92 and 93, will show how completely in the second one the character of the scene has been altered in the printing. Or, again, as an instance of manipulating the negative, note the Nirvana by Mr. Eugene. The model was posed upon a sofa, but this has been obliterated and water sub- stituted by the use of the brush and needle. We could not have more suggestive examples of departure from nature than these ; the latter a subject built up to express an ideal conception, and the former a twisting of nature into the groove of the artist’s own impression. Immediately two retiections occur. Firstly, such alteration of the negative’s version demands the skill of the draughtsman or painter ; in the hands of any one without training in art it w'ill lead to deplorable results. But this need iiot he dwelt upon, since it invt)lves no fur- ther statement thaii the fact that a man should not try to drive an automobile on a crowded street until he has learnt how, and the best way of learning is to study the theory and then put it in practice. But the second reflec- tion does involve a serious consideration. If nature is the source of beauty (and few of us will question it, particu- roo PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART larly in the case of landscapes), can we derive as much pleasure from an interpretation of nature evolved out of a man’s brain, however poetical, as from one studied from nature direct ? Perhaps we may ; hut not, I think, if we Reproduction /roju a glyceriJic print by Joseph T. Kciley “GARDEN OF DREAMS” ourselves are nature-students. You may have observed in a collection of painted landscapes how some have the real open-air feeling, bringing to your imagination the fragrance and tonic of the breeze, the joyousness of sun- shine, or the mystery of twilight ; while others, beautiful lor PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART in their way, appear to be simply pictures. On the other hand, I do not forget that there is room for pictures of the imagination as for poems or music drawn from the artist’s inner consciousness ; and if the painter’s or pho- tographer’s imagination is full and powerful, he may give us pictures of great beauty. But such imaginations are few and far between, and for the majority it is safer to be students of nature than weavers of their own fancy. A fair conclusion seems to be that while these land- scapes of the imagination may be handsome pictures and emotional, thev will lack the subtlety and inhniteness of nature’s truth — representing the impression in a broad, discursive manner. The reproduction of Mr. Keiley’s Garden of Dreams illustrates this. It is wrapt in a solemn pensiveness, as if the tread of Time were hushed, and nature were wooing to gentle contemplation. But I hnd no mvstery in the scene or range for my imagination. The wall of trees is impenetrable, and does not lure the fanev on to lose itself in shadow ; the lily-pads, boating on the smooth water, are lighted almost uniformly, those beneath the shadow as well as those in light ; there are not the delicate differences of tone that would make the scene vibrate. The stillness, in fact, is rather of death than of sleep. Again, in the Antunni Twi/ig/it evolved from the Comfehl Vista, I find variety of tone in the light and dark upon the shocks, hut neither the impressive in- telligibility of massed lights and shadows nor the delicious surprises of effect that the waning light, lapping the shocks and stealing between the leaves, would give in nature. Nor is the black mass in the sky convincing. It is not the darkening of the upper sky or gathering cloud on the horizon, for it has no construction ; it seems rather *■ A SlorX (’HIKF’ By Joscf'h T. Keiley ■‘PORTRAIT OF A CHILD ’ PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART a shred of rainy mist carried by wind, which scarcely is in tune with the serenity of the scene. One hnds it, in fact, a beautiful arrangement of dark and light, but from its lack of truth to nature very limited in the range of its impressiveness. The reader, I hope, is not tired of this harping upon nature ; but, after all, we can be impressed only through our experience. A hundred thousand per- sons perishing from famine in India do not move me as deeply as the death of a friend’s little child. I love the child and the parents, and realize the awful gap now made in their home and hearts. And so the artist to arouse our imagination had better rely upon something we know and love in common. He finds it in nature, and his work, if true, becomes a part of her inexhaustihle- ness, setting no limits to his possibility of suggestion and to our receptivity of impression. If he lets go of nature, he accepts his limitations and imposes them upon us. Therefore out of these eight examples of Mr. Keiley’s work many of us will prefer the figure subjects, particu- larly those of Indians. They show such an intimacv of understanding and fulness of sympathy that we scarcely need to he told their author was an interested student of Indian life before he made these portraits. The head of a young girl, very sweetly called An Indian Madoiuia, is inexpressibly moving, admitting us at once into the temple of a human mind. The outer court is beautiful, and the veil of mystery which hangs before the shrine not so dense hut that we may peer through, guessing rather than seeing some vague hint of the mystery beyond. Who may penetrate the sacredness of a maiden’s mind r And this is of an alien race — one fading from the earth, with memories and associations outside our own ; she is of good PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART education, too, and a beautiful habit of mind — what a tanglement of mystery one meets in trying to fathom the depth of her thoughts. The artist here has set us on the threshold ot inlinitude ; there are no bounds to the sug- gestiveness ol his picture or to the workings of our own imagination. Mr. Eugene is unwarrantably regarded as the very antipodes of the straight photographer. As a matter of fact, he never manipulates his print, and hy no means alwavs touches the negative. We have noted, however, his daring experiment in the Ni?'V(wa ; and again in The Horse, reproduced at the head ot this chapter, the back- ground and straw have been fearlessly etched upon the negative, and brush and point as well would ap- pear to have been used on the horse. The print, in fact, has the quality of texture and spontaneousness ot a tine etching. On the other hand, the Man in Armor (a portrait ot himself) has received no manipulation at any stage, and the same is true of the other por- traits, with the excep- tion of that of a child, in which the dress has been etched over, ap- parently to give it io6 ph()T(k;raphv as a fine art transparency and to throw by contrast more substan- tialness into the face. The tact is, Mr. Eugene is not unreservedly addicted to any method. A painter By Frank Eugene “MAN IN ARMOR” This portrait of himself received no manipulation by Mr. luigene at any stage first of all, he gradually became interested in photog- raphy, and finally enthusiastic, discovering that it had possibilities for him unobtainable by any other process. He is a man of extraordinary vigor and versatility, keen after artistic problems ; and whether he uses the negative 07 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART straight or works it up or alters it entirely, is merely a question of expediency, the sole aim being to reach the result in view. In his portraits and subject pictures he often uses backgrounds of his own painting, combining with them real foliage. Such is the case in the Portrait of a Child, and, I suspect, in the Sojig of the Lily. And note the exuberance of his artistic invention, the robust wholesomeness of his work, his skill in large and hand- some compositions, and feeling for rich, impressional color. The examples shown here. Nirvana excepted, which is only an interesting experiment, illustrate these qualities, though they suggest but little of his versatility. He will be represented at the Glasgow International Ex- hibition by an Adam and Eve — one of the most beautiful studies of the nude I have seen in any medium. The forms are noble, the dappling of light and shade as they stand in the garden exquisitely subtle ; and while the beauty of Hesh texture has been rendered admirably, the figures are treated with such artistic reticence that there is not a hint of nakedness. I have spoken of the print of the cart-horse having the quality of an etching. This seems to have a bearing on the question sometimes asked of the photographer : If you desire the effect of an etching, of a chalk or wash- drawing, why not etch or draw with chalk or water-color; why use the camera and confuse the processes ? Well, to myself, that print, printed as it is on Japan paper, conveys every impression of an etching, having the beautiful char- acteristics that one looks for therein : spontaneousness of execution, vigorous and pregnant suggestiveness, velvety color, and delightful evidence of the personal touch, 'rhere is nothing sacred or even desirable in the mere o8 ‘crj'iZKN FoucnE" By Joi,tPh T. Kciley PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART process ot etching upon copper apart from its results. If similar results can be obtained some other way, and the artist chooses to adopt it because he buds it easier or more congenial, what concern is it of ours ? Surely none. I may have thought and written otherwise in the past. Let me admit conversion. The lact is, in this new art critics and photographers alike are feeling their way — they to expression, we to judgment. The art is still in the womb of time, its possibilities continually becoming wider and more appreciated ; being new, one learns that the old standards and points ot view do not necessarily apply to it, and more and more realize the need of an open mind. Meanwhile, as I have said, experience is the basis of our ahilitv to appreciate : one can hut speak as one knows, adding to that knowledge hv degrees. So, in trying to enter into the question of manipulating the result, I have clung intentionally to the ccmservative standpoint, because in the eagerness of a new movement it may easily he overlooked ; whereas, to alter slightly — or shall I say manipulate r — (jamaliel’s advice to the Jewish critics of the new (j(.)spel, “ It it he of art ye cannot overthrow it ; lest haply ve he found even to hght against art.” And if I have said cmnparatively little concerning the individual work of these two artists, it is because I took them as a tvpe, and believed that I could best arouse an interest in their work hv dwelling upon the principles which it involves. I [O CHAPTER V. 1 By Clarence //, White EVENING— INTERIOR r 1 .1 i By Clarence II. White “LANDSCAPE WITH SHEEP” CHAPTER V Other Methods of Individual Expression IU,LSTRATK,I> BY THE WoRK OF CLARENCE II. WHITE AND WlI,l,I.\M B. D’lER E are continuing in this chapter a study of tlie possibilities and means ot personal expres- sion in photography. Whether there are, indeed, possibilities represents the actual crux of the question : Is photography to he reckoned among the tine arts ? By those who have folknved the course ot this series, I venture to hope that the question has been answered in the athrmative. But ignorance or indifd'erence on the subject is very widely spread. I am reminded as I write that the authorities ot the Pan-American Exposition made no provision for photography in the art section ; on the other hand, that those of the International Exhibition PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART at Glasgow not only did so, but sent over to this country a special commissioner to secure a good representation ot American prints, and that these attracted much favorable comment in comparison with the British, French, German and Austrian work, simultaneously shown. Evi- dently the Scotchman has “ a bee in his bonnet,” or else on this particular point he is far ahead of the progressive American. Our authorities at Buffalo seem to have shared the common notion that photography is only a mechanical process ; that a piece of glass, coated with a him of bromide of silver, is put into a dark box, exposed to the light, and “ there you have it !” But what ? The negative ; and this is only the hrst step in the process ; one, indeed, that needs artistic feeling and knowledge, as we have tried to show in previous chapters, hut only a step towards the ultimate result. The photographer so far has reached a point corresponding to that arrived at by the student when he succeeds in gaining admission to a university. It is then that the actual development of his character and mental machinerv must begin : which c\)urse of study shall he select in order best to develop the inherent possibilities of his attainments and temperament ? fust so the photographer is confronted with the choice of many ways of producing a print from his negative. I’he latter has certain qualities which suggest the advisabilitv of using one out of these many processes, and the photog- rapher has certain motixes of his own which he thinks the negative can be made to yield. So by the choice of a method and by the skill and feeling with which he uses it will be determined whether the residtant print is an ordinary record ot certain facts or an expression of indi- vidual artistic purpose. 2''ro}}i a platniotyPc by Liarcncc //. // /uic lELKGKAPH POLKS" PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART It is here that the commercial photographer is apt to diher from those who can spare the time to treat the sub- ject artistically. His objective is a dehnite financial profit; he cannot afiord to experiment, and adopts a certain process which in the long run produces the best average of results and sticks to it. On the other hand, the pho- tographer who allows himself the luxury of study and reflection, either varies his process according to the qual- ities of each negative, or if he make a practice of one process, preserves a continual attitude of experimenting in the care and thought with which he applies it or reapplies It until the result he has in mind and heart be reached. It is this which determines the money value of a print. Some readers may be surprised to know that considerably over one hundred dollars has been paid for many. Such au amount, however, they will agree is a small one to pay for an oil painting, because it is engrained in their minds that an oil painting is necessarily expensive. But why ? Oil is cheap enough, paints not extravagantly dear, and neither canvas nor frames exorbitant in price. What we pay for is not these ingredients, hut an added value, the indehnahle something put into them by the personality of the artist. Equallv it is not the price of paper and chemicals or eveii of the photographer’s time at so much the hour that sums up the value of a photograph, but the skill and feeling of the operator which transmutes the result and makes it a work of art. And how sliall we know it for a work of art? you ask. Frankly, there is no comprehensive, infallible test, for feeling as well as fact is to he reckoned with ; the fact, being certain rules of composition, themselves various and contradictory, differing, for example, in a Japanese PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART print and in a picture recognized by the acad- emies of Europe ; the feeling, a matter for ourselves to decide. If the picture affects us pleasurably, it is, at least to ourselves, a work of art. The fellow who “ knows it all ” may tell us we are wrong. Let us listen to his ar- guments ; in time we may find he is right ; perhaps, however, he is not right, having only his own store of facts and feelings to work by ; meanwhile, we have got our enjoy- ment, and this way of thinkingly recognizing “what we like” brings with it a continuously developing appreciation and knowledge ; our old loves are replaced by others more congenial to our riper and wider judgment; we ourselves develop, and our taste correspondingly. But never he satisfied with the other fellow’s dictum ; let our judgments and fancies in the matter of art, whether right or wrong in others’ eyes, he matters of our own conviction. By Clarence H. IVhite PORTRAIT OF MRS. D.” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART In the previous chapter various methods of manipulat- ing the negative or print were considered. Here we will hrieliy touch on the platinotype and gum-hichromate methods ot development, using them as pegs on which to hang a discussion ot the work of Clarence H. White and ot William B. Over; not exhaustively from the point of view either ot the expert or the critic, but following our plan ot treating various phases of the art and of illustrat- ing them by reterence to some of their leading exponents. All the prints ot Mr. White, kindly submitted for this chapter, are platinotvpes, while the best of Mr. Dyer’s are gum-bichromates. Hence the adjustment of our thought. On the other hand, both these gentlemen trequently indulge in ligure subjects, as distinguished from portraits or landscape. On this point, however, I shall touch but liglitly, as it will he the topic specially considered in the next chapter. Air. White appears to lind in the platinotype process the best expression of his purpose. When platinum paper is exposed to light in the printing frame the dark parts cxnne out first in a teinporary image of iron or silver, which in the subsequent process of development is, in some cases, overlaid with, in others exchanged for, a permanent image in metallic platinum. ddiis is the scientihc statement which may mean much or nothing to the reader; hut the main thing is that the platinum, being distributed over the paper \\'ith exceeding fineness, yields exc]uisitely grailuated tones of black and gray. This black, blue-black or browii-black, but deep and full of color, and tbe delicate differences of gray are the distin- guishing characteristics of this process. It lends itself, therefore, ecpially to rich and dainty effects, and is in- 1 20 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART valuable when tender differences of tone are desired or sumptuous depth of color. For an example ol the former may he cited the Portrait of Mrs. D., in which the stiff- ness and glare of a white pique costume is reduced to a mingling of soft radiance and equally soft shadow, daintily differei^ltiated from the light wall behind the hgure. The picture recalls a somewhat similar subject by the painter, John S. Sargent, inspired by the same artistic motive of preserving the freshness of the fabric while controlling its angularity and sharp ohtrusiveness ; and, although the painting has more style, the print is equally artistic in a more gracious manner. It opens up a consideration of Air. White’s work from the artistic standpoint. After knowing his prints only in driblets at various exhibitions, I have had the pleasure on this occassion of examining over one hundred, and they offer quite a revelation. Probably there is not one in which genuine artistic feeling fails to appear. Aloreover, it has been cultivated. He has mastered the principles of composition and trained his sense of line; places the hgures excellejitly in their space, surrounds them with atmosphere, and distributes over and around them a fascinating web of light and shade, using also the simplest objects to complete the picture, but with a judgment that makes them contribute to the beauty of the design. In many prints, for example, recurs a little ice-chest, but its homeliness is forgotten in the suggestive way in which it has been used to secure a solid mass when such was needed. The most notable instance of Air. White’s ability to extract beauty from the homeliest material is the print entitled Telegraph Poles. The scene appears to be a canal, on the banks of which are poles and irregular I2I PHOTOCiRAPHY AS A FINE ART buildings, separated by vacant spaces, like teeth and stumps and gaps in an old crone’s jaw — an unsightly, even squalid, spot, at least to the stranger ; but to the man who has seen it under all sorts ot aspects of light and weather, moreover, with an artist’s eye, alive to the abstract fascination of mere lines and masses, of mingled variety of tone, this most Linsuggestive sub- ject has revealed pos- sibilities which have yielded an original and strikingly beautiful picture. If I am addressing any one who has hitherto regarded art as the mere imitating of objects, this picture shoidd open up a new idea. It would seem that it is not so much the objects as the use which the artist makes of them that consti- tutes art, the little something of himself mixed in with the ingredients, the personal alchemy that transmutes the commonplace into the beautiful. So, if you want your portrait taken, it may be less important what clothes vou wear than whom you select to photograph them. A print that gives increasing satisfaction is Self-ohlivtous . In view of the simple elegance of the apartment [simplex I 22 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART 7)iun(litiis, as Horace, writing in the days of Roman osten- tation, has it), and the dainty artihce ol the little hits of china and foliage-sprays, I dare to he honest and to express a wish that the impetuosity of the artist had allowed the lady time to finish the arrangement of her hair. Its disarray troubles the serenity of the composi- tion ; hut, accepting it as we hnd it, how dignified is the picture with its ample pas- sages of dark and volumin- ous mass of lighter drapery, the latter so simple and yet expressive in its well-chosen lines. One may hnd the lighter contour of the dress a little hard and insistent, lacking in atmosphere, and while on this subject may refer to the print entitled 'Tbe Piiritau, an upright panel with the standing hgure of a woman seen in prohle. In the soft rim of light down the front of the dress there is greater mystery, and more siditlety in the relation of the darker tones and in their differeiitiation from the backgrtnind ; and these qualities have a direct artistic reference to the feeling and senti- ment of the picture. What exceeding simplicitv there By Clarence H. White rilK PURITAN" IS in the composition, its frank contrast of Ion g up- PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART right lines with a horizontal mass (the ice-chest by the wav). It emphasizes most admirably a point that many a young photographer might well take to heart — that there is no necessary virture in elaboration, hut that the simplest principles, cunningly applied, will yield most satisfactory results. In both these last two prints the key-note is simplicity ; in the one case with a large suggestion, in the other with a o-entle reticence. O Let us compare with these the subject IJ'hat Shall I Say I a young lady seated before a writing bureau. This seems by comparison a manufactured article ; cleverly devised, no doubt, but lacking — what ? Apparently sim- plicity, which might have been secured by merging into masses some of the separate details. The lace curtain, patterned carpet and chair trouble us with distinct dehni- tion ; the paraphernalia of the bureau, on the other hand, is sketchily suggestive, giving an idea of papers and litter of stationery without the facts being forced upon our notice. I'his part of the picture is impressionistic, the before-mentioned details obvious and by contrast common- place. The ladv, iigidn, is charmingly presented, hut the pose lacks spontaneitv ; she did not assume it temporarily, one feels she was put there and w'ill stay. I dwell upon these points because this is just the sort of a picture that amuses the inexpert, like those pretty oil paintings of the Diisseldorf school and of some of our ovm painters with their “seeing’s believing” accuracy of dehnition and “ \\'hat-a-lot-for-vour-money ” profusion of detail. It lacks sim jd icitv, svnthesis, and spontaneousness, being too diffusi\e aiul insistent upon trifles. Compare with it the print called KvoSnig — Liter'ior ; light Hltering in through w'indowxs upon a seated wamian ; 124 ■WHAT SHALL I SAY?’ PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART everything told in a moment, nothing interfering with the suggesticm oi peace and resttulness — a true hit ot im- pressionism. The picture is saturated with tranquil light, even the shadowed parts of the wall and the woman’s figure being luminous there is no shock of light and dark, hut, as it were, a pervasiveness of musing quiet. Surely, if we prefer to have our imagination stimulated rather than to have a little statement of fact categorically related, we shall prefer this picture to the JVhat Shall I Say ? The management of the light in this Evoihig sug- gests a reference to the landscape with Sheep. The original is steeped in warm atmosphere. Looking at the picture one seems to feel the atmosphere, and the quality of fading light is equally well suggested. The tops of the trees are dark against the sky, but lower down their shadows are still loose and luminous ; light still lingers on the sloping hanks and glints on the fleece of the sheep. As you peer into the dark spots of the picture, hints of detail are faintly visible, and curious and unexpected pranks of light, which lend a mystery and suggestiveness, such as the scene would have in nature. These subtle effects, as was urged in the previous chapter, seem to he one great advantage of a “straight ” photograph, skillfully controlled, over the much manipulated print, which must depend chiefly on broad and general effects. 'Fhis subject of Sheep is printed in tones of warm brown ; hence, I fancy, the suggestion of evening, whereas, if delicate grays had been used, it wouhl prohahlv have been an equally true representation of very early morning. If this he so, it gives a clue to the range of possibilities in treating the negative, so as to make it yiehl what the operator desires. And let not any painter smile at this turning of morning PHOTCX^RAPHY AS A PANE ART into evening effect, or vice vc?\ut, at will, for it is often difficult in an oil painting to decide which of the two hours has been intended. The phenomena of both are often very similar, differing only in the degree of warmth or coolness in the atmosphere ; and as the morning may be warm and the evening cool, even this distinction is not always reliable ; and age, too, yellow pictures, so one mav not infrequently he in doubt. The earlv morniiig suggestion, by use of grav tones, is beautifully represented i]i the picture cd a ladv walking in a garden entitled Moniing. 'Phe cool light steals softlv th rough the early mistiness of atmosphere, sprinkling leaves and flowers, and creeping under the bushy masses of the apple tree. What a pure and fragrant scene, and how charmingly the figure is treated, detached so teiulerlv from its surroundings, aud yet in feeling and placing entirely a part of them ! The picture is as dainty as a fragment of rose-point lace, the darker mass of the lady’s head being the embossed centre of the design ; it might have been breathed upon the paper and yet the evanescent appearence will be permanent — one of the benefits of the platinotype process. And note, this tenderness is not obtained at the expense of reality and suhstaiice. The figure is very tangible, the path solid and sufficiently detailed, the nearby foliage detaches itself in parts, and the distance under the apple trees is suggested. Only these are blurred, as they might he in nature at this hour. I mention this because there is a prevalent notion that the necessary and infallible recipe for tenderness in a picture is hlurr and muzziness. One often sees such pictures, con- sisting merely of several masses of tone melting int('> one another; very prettv, hut inadequate as studies of nature 1-7 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART ‘ MORNING ’ By Claroice H. White because they generalize tot) mucli and obliterate the sense ot lacts. It is a virtue of this t)iie that, while the facts are subordinated tt) the general impression, they are suthciently indicated to ensure a ready acceptance of them as real and heautiful in themselves. On the other hand, the charm of .It the IVnuhnv — am)ther design of delicate grays — would have been much increased if some hint of PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART the scene outside the window had been given. As it is, the lady draws back the transparent curtain to reveal nothing hut formless and unlovely blurs. You will agree at once that the thffLised atmospheric effect has much to do with the beauty of this picture ; hut, lest it should seem essential, compare The Readers, in which everything is shown in clear light. The subject is full of pensive tranquillity, and yet there is no muzziness ; on the con- trary, a strong composition of well-defined darks and lights and intermediate tones, a pattern admirably bold and emphatic. Its harmonious quiet is the result of serene, unbroken lines, ample simplicjty of spacing, and the complete balance preserved in the masses and tones. In most of these prints the composition has been deliberately arranged with a decorative end in view. A fine example is seen in the Portrait of Mrs. D., which attracts for another reason ; that it is the only subject illustrated here in which Mr. White has shown an a^rtist’s joy in the beauty of rounded flesh ; the play of full light on the soft boss of the shoulder, and the showing of the firmly modelled arm through the delicate mesh of the sleeve. Moreover, there is a languorous ease about this picture, which is pleasant by way of occasional contrast to the strained earnestness in some of the others. We do not care a fig for a man who is not in earnest, yet the earnestness should not obtrude ; it should be felt rather than clearly stated. In some of these prints the model is keyed up to such a serious consciousness of the part she is playing that we ourselves experience a sense of strain and fatigue. With most photographers the difficulty is to find a model that can enter into their motives. Mr. White has been more fortunate. Two ladies appear and reappear 120 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART throughout his pictures, and to their intelligence and sympathy he owes, no doubt, a large measure of the beautitul results secured. I cannot hut feel, however, that they would often help the picture hy a little more light- someness of feeling. In the well-rounded artistic tem- perament there seems always to be a savor of this, even an occasional petulance of contempt for art, as being, after all, so inadequate to express everything the artist has to say. It acts as salt to the imaginatio]i, keeping it fresh and racy ; helps the artist to step outside himself and see what he is doing as a man ; prevents him from circling too persistently around the centre of himself, and widens the orbit until its direction appears to he spontaneous. In a spirit of sympathy with Mr. White’s motives, and out of admiration for his v/ork, I commend this thought to his redection. So far we have been discussing platinotypes, almost all of them “ straight ” prints, such manipulation as occurs being only to secure a loosening of the color in the shadowed parts. Mr. Dyer also works in this medium, hut the examples I have selected introduce us to the gum- bichromate process, for in this he seems to have accom- plished the most notable results. Color and tone would appear to he the qualities that he best understands, for in comptisition he shows weakness, the lines and masses being often angular, jerky, and harsh, and the patterns confused. But in the gum-hichromate process, wherein tone and color count so much, he has struck a vein which should vield rich results. d he process, briefly, is as follows ; The operator, having taken his negative, prepares the paper for printing hy spreading it with a mixture of gum, water color, and 130 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART potassium bichromate. When the coating is dry the paper is exposed to the light through a negative in a printing frame in the usual man- ner. The sunlight ren- ders the gum insoluble, in proportion to the amount of light which gets through the nega- tive. Thus under the clearest parts (which, it will he remembered, represent the shadows of the actual picture) the gum becomes in- soluble, while under the darkest parts (which will he the lightest) the gum remains sol- uble, and a gradation of insolubility is reached in the intermediate parts. The paper is then washed in water, which removes the gum according to the degree of its solubility, and with the gum the coloring matter in it. If the photographer leaves the paper in the printing frame until the light has accomplished its work thoroughly, the result will he a straight photograph. Put if he takes it out after an exposure merely sufficient to indicate the outlines of the image, he can, by simple application of water, remove much or little or all of the By Clarence H, IC/iile “THE READERS” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART gum in any part he wishes. In this way he is able to modify the tones, remove any details, and to entirely alter the character of the subject. Through this complete freedom of manipulation, joined to a wide range in the choice of color and quality of paper, this process offers the greatest possibilities of personal expression, and in the hands of any one of artistic knowledge, as well as artistic temperament, may be made to give surprisingly beautiful results in certain subjects. For it is not suitable in all “It is generally said to be specially indicated for cases. broad, sketchy effects,” writes Mr. F. A. Waugh, an expert of the process, in The Photo Mi?iiature “ and perhaps this phrase comes as near covering the case as can anything short of personal experience. I find it particu- larly useful for the fine texture it gives, espe- cially with lampblack. This texture gives the best rendering I have ever seen for old mossy stones, for di- lapidated architectural masses, light and shadow on old tree trunks, and the like. It is incomparably use- ful in showing trees, especially when leaf- less, and when only the outlines of the trunks and tops or the tracery of the branches By Clarence //. ly/iite ‘AT THE WINDOW” PORTRAIT OF MRS. J), By Claroice II. II /lite PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART is wanted. I dnd it difficult to interpret water surfaces in most composition (though not in all) by this process. It is difficult to print in clouds which may be in the nega- tive, hut supremely easy to ‘fake’ in clouds not in the negative. . . . It is not generally useful for por- traiture, though it gives the happiest results in certain cases.” It will he noticed that Mr. Waugh uses the term “fake,” placing it, however, in quotation, for elsewhere in his interesting brochure he alludes to it as a charge brought by others against the manipulation of prints, whereas he claims the right to do anything to secure the desired result. In the previous paper I tried to sum up a just conclusion of this matter, and what was said in relation to the glycerine process may fairly he urged in connection with the gum-bichromate. Successful manipu- lation demands artistic training, the ability to draw, as well as the trained eye for values and tones, and the results in this process will he of a “broad and sketchy” kind. This last statement seems to hear out what I said in speaking of the glycerine process, and that both these methods of printing are unsuited to subtle effects and delicate distinctions of tone, as, for example, appear in some landscapes. 'Phe point is worth insisting upon, for the fascinating liberty of action which both allow the operator may easily blind him to their dehciencies. On the other hand, there are possibilities in the gum-hichro- mate process of printing which fully justify the enthusiasm of those who use it and their belief that it offers the most fertile soil for further development of the art. A well- known “straight” photographer tells me (very signih- cantlv) that, if he had the requisite skill in drawing, he 134 STUDY OF A HEAD From a gum~bicromatc by IVilliam B. Dyer PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART would be devoted to the process ; though, he adds, not so much to change as to modify the straight record of the negative. I fancy, however, that when his enthusiasm became aroused over a certain point, he might easily hnd himself going heyond this self-appointed boundary. “ The wind bloweth where it listeth, and ye cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth ; ” the wind, in this case of personal expression, trying to free itself. Mr. Dyer, so far as I know, has limited the use of this process to idealized representations of the human hgure. The originals of the examples illustrated here are colored brownish-red in the darker parts and warm buff in the lights, and, except for the merging of the drapery into the background, are straight prints from negatives a little under-exposed. I find it difficult to take an interest in Before Agincourt ; it conveys little meaning, and its sentiment seems concocted ; nor are the lines agreeable, the arm and open sleeve being particularly devoid of feeling, while the lower part of the figure is not accounted for or its support sufficiently indicated. But the Stuffy of a Head has many beautiful qualities. The design is hold, while the sentiment is tender and dreamy ; there is impressive- ness of mass and mystery of parts ; beauty of firm, ripe flesh, and pleasant contrast of foamy drapery ; agreeable color and real suggestion of atmosphere. While the figure in the other picture seems fading into or out of the wall, you feel that there is space beyond this head, that itself is real and tangible, and the haze which envelops it is luminous and penetrable. One wonders if the negative ^^'ere taken in the open air. Certainly this method of using the process to secure flat tints, modelled but slightly, would suggest its suitability for out-of-door J' ron a gum-bichromatc by U ‘uliani B. Dyer “BEFORE AGINCOURT” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART studies of the human figure. For it may not have occurred to every reader that in a studio the light, being partial, is accompanied by shadows which throw the modelling up in strong relief, but that the greater diffusion of light in the open air reduces the appearance of bulk in objects ; fattens them, in fact, and for contrasts of light and shadow substitutes faintlv different planes of tone. If, therefore. Air. Dyer’s experiments have not already led him in this direction, one may hope he will essay it. We shall realize more fully the possibilities of the gum-bichromate process, if we think for a moment how the print might have been developed. The background, instead of being washed away, might have been left dark, the head merging into it ; or the head might have been made li«:ht as a contrast, or lights might have been introduced in parts of it ; the drapery might have been de- fined or indicated merely hv a few sketchy lines. Any one of these devices, and doubtless there are others, would have transformed the character of the pictures, giving it not only a different appearance, but another kind of senti- ment. No wonder the operator is fascinated ! He can improvise like a pianist upon the keys. In this and the previous chapter I have tried to ex- plain some cfi the wavs in which photographers can con- trol, modifv, and even alter the statement of the camera ; not, indeed, exhaustively ; touching, in fact, only “ the fringe upt)n the petticoat,” yet surelv ejiough to make clear that, if they are artists by temperament and training, they can make their print a medium of personal expression. Like the painters, thev may not always try to nor always succeetl when they try ; hut the possibilities are within their reach, and many photographers have grasped them. ■38 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART To admit this is to recognize photography as one of the hue arts. For do not let us he cheated hy a name. There is much in painting, in sculpture, and architecture which hears the same relation to Art (with a capital letter) as the husk hears to the grain ; necessary in the evolution of things, hut unsatisfactory as nutriment. If a picture speaks right home to me, or I know that it has to generations of men before me, I hail it as a work of art ; it it merely gives me a record ot tacts, more or less per- tectly represented, it leaves me cold, and I count it only journeyman’s work. So, while the photographs that figure in the shop windows very otten contradict all recognized canons of art, there are others, such as those we have been considering, and many more, which not only satisfy a cultivated taste, hut bring to one a personal message, a hint of human character, a whiff of fresh country air, or the poetic fancy of an artist’s mind. Such are acceptable as works of art. 139 ff ’.P ■Si' w . , . « ’.i I CMArTER VI. By hdxvard J . Bteichen ■‘PORTRAIT OF ALPHONSE MUCHA’ 1 3 ...1 CHAPTER VI Thp: Landscape Subject BY Reference to the Work of Edward J. Steichen a preliminary to the Landscape Subject in photography, let us briefly glance at the pedigree of landscape in painting, for the latter has developed along certain motives which are still in force, and belong as much to photography as to painting. The landscape in art was first studied and used as a background to hgures. Si') we find it in the works of the Italians, where the painter’s motive was to furnish a decorative pattern of form and color behind the tigure, to surround the figure with atmosphere, and to contrast its I LLHSTRATED '45 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A PANE ART closeness and predominance with the subsidiary charm of vaguer distance ; in tact, to set the hgure in a concave space of light and atmosphere, somewhat as the sculptor puts his statue in a niche ot architecture. It was not until the seventeenth century that landscape was studied really tor its own sake and assumed an independent importance. Then, immediately, trom this single source of the dignity ot landscape start two separate streams of motive : the naturalistic and the artihcial. The former, which aims to depict nature as it really is, was the motive of the Dutch painters, preeminently of Hobbema ; while the latter, which woidd represent nature as the painter conceived it was desirable it should he, was followed by the French painters, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Poussin spent most ot his life in Italy, and being saturated with classical lore and the induence of grand architecture and of tower-crowned hills, painted the so-called heroic land- scape, largelv as backgrounds for his figure compositions of heroes. The reputation accorded to his work in P'rance laid the foundation of the classic or academic school of P'rench landscape. Claude, his contemporary, while relying more upon the landscape than the figures, emidated this classic motive, building up imaginary scenes of great beauty, hut with only a partial reference to nature, hearing, indeed, about the same relation to it that f^irgiPs descriptions of scenerv hear to Tennyson’s. It is interest- ing to note, hy the way, that when the reaction began in Phigland against the old-fashioned gardens, which had gone to extravagance of artiticiality in such features as the cutting or “pleaching” of trees and shrubs to imitate the forms of birds and animals, the landscape gardeners who urged a return to nature actually set themselves to imitating j ,(6 PHOTOGRAPPiY AS A FINE ART the artificiality of Claude’s landscapes ! When landscape painting was begun in England, Constable followed Hob- bema ; while later on Turner, in the early part ot bis career, was influenced by Claude Eorrain. The French movemeiit of the Fontainehleau-Barbizon painters was a revolt from the artificial formality of the classic land- scape and a return to the nature-study of the Dutch ; a recognition also of the clrarm of the simple, familiar country-side — the paysc?ge 'wtiine — as compared with the heroic of man’s imagination or the stupendous phenomena of nature’s self. The latest movement — that of the plcw- ainsts, or open-air painters — is but a pushing of nature- study to closer intimacy, with a special desire to express the beauty of light and atmosphere. I’oday few painters indulge in the classic landscape unless as an accompaniment to mural decoration, yet the distinction in motive between nature as it is and what the painter imagines it might he still survives. Some draw upon their imagination for subjects and paint the land- scape frankly out of their heads ; others draw from nature, but with application of school and studio recipes for depicting the evanescent, elastic, and constantly varying aspects of nature ; and even amongst those who loyally take her for their guide, philosopher, and friend this distinction asserts itself as the result of their mental attitude towards nature. It has been the fashion, both in literature and pictures, to represent nature as corresponding very sympathetically with the vicissitudes and moods of humanity. Thus it is proper that the sun should smile upon the virtuous heroine while the welkin gapes with lightning and riunbles thunderously over the doomed head of the villain. This '47 rill'; TOOL— KVKiXING" Jiy Edward J . Steichcn PHOTCKJRAPHY AS A FINE ART affectation of the Romanticists, beginning with Byron among writers and with Gericault among painters, is dying a lingering death in the obscurity of the bucolic-domestic drama. Yet the fact remains that, though nature is abso- lutely insensate, just as likely to he gay over a child’s corpse as to drench a bridal party, we do hnd in her relent- less routine of changes both an inspiration to emotion and a correspondence to our moods. Looking out to sea when a fresh breeze is ruffling the water and the little waves dance to one another and play hall with the sunshine, we must be in poor case it we do ]iot teel an exhilaration, or when we stand in the rarelied air t)t the mountains, with spaciousness on all sides, above and beneath us ; scarcely, either, can we miss the sweet allurement of nature settling to repose at sunset ; and, it one’s mind is ragged with worry or the heart torn with griet, I know no better tonic and solace than to walk on and on with rain and wind against one’s face. After all this inert thing, nature, is a perpetual source ot svmpathy and inspiration, having in it a latent poetry. It was this that the Fontainehleau- Barhizon painters sought lor, and accordiiiglv painted poetic landscapes, as innumerable painters are doing today. It would seem, however, that there are two wavs of essaying the poetic landscape — one, in which the artist lets nature tell her own storv ; the other in which he makes her the iiiterpreter of his. Of the latter method Corot was a preeminent example, alwavs true to the facts of nature, hut choosing to depict those which harmonized with his own sweet tenderness of disposition. Rousseau, on the other hand, like Moiiet todav, and like our own deceased painter (ieorge Inness, seems to have found a sufficiency in nature. Having no desire to express an photo(;raphy as a fine art antecedent emotion of his own, he paints nature objec- tively hut with such enthusiam and loyalty to truth that he succeeds in grasping her latent poetry. There need be no question of which is the better way. The motive, reaching in each case a corresponding result, is dictated by the artist’s individual temperament. But the point of im- portance to ourselves is that the picture, whether it reflects the feeling of the artist or embodies the impersonal poetry of nature, shall be able to affect us with some recognizable emotion ; that it shall not be a bare inventory of facts, but express something of the relation between those facts and our own lives. At first sight it might seem that the photographer has no option as to motive ; that he is obliged to record nature as it is, and that the camera, in its appetite for detail, will insist mainly upon the facts. This suspicion is certainly indorsed by the great majority of photographers, wherein excessive definition is the prevailing quality. On the other hand, in the two previous chapters we have seen how the photographer can control the result during the process of printing, by elimination, addition, or even by complete alteration. So in his case also the distinction of mcnive intervenes — shall he adhere to the mere facts of the camera, or modify them ; and, if the latter, shall it be in the direction of nature as it is or of nature as his fancy would imagine it ? I have continually used the expression “nature as it is” for convenience sake, with intentional, though, I hope, pardonable inaccuracv ; for we speak of nature as being so and so, when we really mean that it appears to he so and so to ourselves. But to each individual observer it mani- fests more or less variation of appearance, for each man 'V PHOTO(JRAPHY AS A FINE ART sees only what he has the capacity for seeing — that is to say, his vision is affected on the one hand hy the indi- vidual character ot his pair of eyes, on the other hy his power ot observation, hy the ex- perience of what he has seen before, and hy the likes and dislikes ot his temperament, which lead him to look for certain things in prefer- ence to others. His physical apparatus for seeing is not an insensate machine, hut an instrument delicately sensitive to conscious and unconscious modu- lations. Now the camera is not. It records what it sees mechanically and, more than that, with an eye whose way of seeing and recording differs from our own. When, for example, we look at a tree, we cannot distinguish separately all the leaves in sight or take in at a glance the lahvrinth of houghs and twigs ; the latter compose into a general character of structure and direction, the foliage into a mass or arrange- ment of masses. Further, as we gaze over a distance the landscape recedes hv easy stages, the eve readjusting its focus as the 2;aze travels forward. But the camera’s focus is fixed ; it is apt to give a surplus of definition in the foreground and to jump ahruptlv to vagueness in the back- PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART ground. The human way of seeing may he summed up as tollows : First — Our eyes have a tendency to generalize ; that is to say, to make selection and to arrange in masses. Secondly — Experience is constantly reinforcing our vision. We know that the meadow is covered with blades of grass and that the tree’s mass is really an aggregation of infinite detail, and this experience supplies the de- ficiencies of vision through the imagination. Relying on these principles or habits of seeing, the landscape painter or photographer, if he follow the best traditions of art (those, in fact, which are truest to nature), generalizes the scene, making an abstract of its larger aspects and most characteristic features, and giving just enough suggestion of detail to stir the imagination to realize their existence. On the other hand, the painter or photographer who niggles over details is losing the big in the little, interesting merely our eye and making no appeal to our imagination. Again, all of us, if we think about it, know that the landscape does not mass itself on one plane, hut on many, one behind the other, and that this is one of the sources of beauty in nature. For there is exhilaration in the sense of space, a certain mystery and enticement to the imagination in distance ; moreover, the beauty of nature’s coloring is largely influenced by the tender gradations of hue caused by the intervening screens of atmosphere. The painter renders these by infinitesimal differences of color, proceeding in orderly sequence from the front to the horizon. The photographer, limited to one color, attains the same result by varving its tones — in the platinotype print, for example, securing between the darkest black and the brightest light a modulated scale of '52 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART delicately different grays. Upon the leeling and skill with which these “values” are adjusted will depend much of the effect on our imagination ; we shall not he troubled hy the absence of colors — they have been transposed into an abstract key of black and white, with enough suggestion of relative truth to nature to arouse in our imagination the sense of color. And I wonder whether it is not true that our enjoyment of nature depends less on color than upon the action of light ? It may be otherwise with the glorious hues of autumn or of an Indian summer, but I am writing this in early spring, with a view from my window of a picture in tones of green framed in hy the casement. Yesterday the sky was lowering, and in the dull light the grass and foliage, for all its fresh vitality, seemed inert. Today the sunshine has awakened them to animation, hut with difference of expression. The leaves of the maple glance, open-faced, to the sun ; the elm’s are peeping shyly from their buds ; the chestnut’s, still frond- like, cling together for company in the cosiness of their woolly coverings, while the pine’s are strong in color and vigor, as hetits one who has weathered the winter and grown conhdent with experience. But on all these variations of green the light is playing differently — with broad welcome, coaxing tenderness, or the heartiness of old companionship — and there is a similar variety of ex- pression in the shadows. I am reminded, too, that color is refected light, that light is the source of life, and that the rendering of it in its endless manifestations is the absorbing motive of many great painters. So, perhaps, I am not far wrong in saying that light affects our imagina- tion even more than color, and therefore that a good photograph, which reaches its beauty through its inter- • 5 ^ PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART pretation of the manifold aspects of light, may yield us as much enjoyment as a painting — certainly far more than a poor painting, possibly as much as a good one. For we ought not to be like children, continually demanding literalness, forever asking Why ? and expecting their elders to make all the explanation and to do all the thinking tor them. We ought to have imagination enough to need only a hint and then be able to fill in for ourselves the fidl conception. Let us not forget, either, that a work of art, whether painting or photograph, is at best only an abstract interpretation of the actual thing — a legitimate make-believe which demands ot us the willingness and capacity to realize through the deception the thing repre- sented. You may have seen one of Whistler’s Venetian etchings— —the most abstract of records, merely a very few black lines and a great deal of white paper, which, how- ever, supplemented by our own knowledge and imagination (I keep talking of imagination — what is it but the faculty of adapting what we (k know to what we ))iight know r ) enables us to picture to our- selves the color and indwelling spirit of \Tnice. Equally we shall find that many photographs of land- scape have this emo- By Kdivard J, Stczchcn . - tional suggestion ; not 154 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART all, certainly, any more than all etchings or all paintings ; it is not a question of the medium em- ployed, but the amount of feeling which the artist puts into his picture. And if you ask me what I mean by this much-used and not seldom abused word, “feeling,” I w ill venture to define it (at any rate, for our present purpose) as that quality in a picture which starts some fibre in ourselves vibrating with memory, hope, or longing, with some emotion sad or pleasurable, as a piano string vibrates in sympathy with a note of the human voice. The accompanying reproductions of landscape hv Edward J. Steichen will show that he sees in it a subject either for the realizing of some artistic problem or for the expression of some emotional suggestion, or both. For he is to the marrow an artist ; one can detect it in all his prints. Some of them we may not care for as pictures — probably they were only experiments, verv likely inadequate in expressing what he strove to reach, but, even so, they are artistically interesting and bear in consequence an impress of distinctioii. This is a quality more easy to feel than to explain. Broadly speaking, it is the antithesis of the obvious ; getting closer home, it is seeing nature through a vision that transposes the facts into an abstract of form, color, light, and atmosphere, and th is with such vividness and power of expression that the result is in a greater or less degree a new thing — a creation. H is faculty of exprcvssion is not limited to photography, since he is an excellent draughtsman in a variety of mediums and has had an oil painting admitted to the recent Paris Salon. It is, therefore, interesting to know that he has recourse to photography, because he finds that in some cases he can reach by means of it better '55 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART results than in any other way. In his hands it is not a makeshift, but a separate source of power. One would like to question him as to what those cases are. A general pondering of the subject and particular study of his prints leads one to the conclusion that it is when delicacy of tone is desired as a prevailing quality. Per- haps also richness of tone (note his portrait of Mucha and The R osc, the latter reproduced on page 145), although that is readily within the scope of oil-paint and etching, whereas delicacy of tone is much more difficult to obtain — in painting, because the variety of hues tends to confuse the issue ; and in etching, because the process permits the introduction of only a few of the planes, so that tenderly proceeding gradation is well-nigh impossible, while in a platinotype print the range of greys between the darkest and the lightest parts is susceptible of almost unlimited subtlety. Perhaps also photography attracts him in another direction — in the readiness with which it can be made to express the flatness of objects. It was mentioned in a previous chapter that the greater diffusion of light out of doors tends to flatten objects — that is, to reduce the appearance of hulk wliicli they assume in the partial light of the studio, where the shadows, more insistent by reason of concentration, throw the forms up in strong relief. 'Fhrough all these landscapes of Air. Steichen’s there is appreciable the enjoyment which he feels in this flat pattern of form ; although, observe, it is not a flatten- ing of the objects against the front of the picture, but an extension of the principle that they count as masses, silhoueftetl against what is beyond. It you ask why an artist should find enjovment in this, I may conjecture that it is because it adds another feature of abstraction to the THE RIVULET />> Echvard J. Sfckhcn PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART already abstract conception of the landscape, and thereby increases his sense of mastery over his medium, in that by means so opposed to the lacts of nature he can suggest an impression of nature’s appearance. It is worth rememher- ing that the Japanese, whose art is the most abstract that we know of, founded upon generations of tradition and brought to the finest point of eloquent" suggestiveness, include among their resources this of flatness. Possibly a characteristic example, combining those two qualities of flatness and tonal delicacy, is The Pool, Even- l//g. One utters a prayer for the safe delivery of this delicately subtle print from the perils of the half-tone process ! The latter will at least reproduce the flat massing of dark and darkening light, just the features that would first arrest one’s attention if confronted with the actual scene ; hut will it render the ehhing pulsations of light upon the water or the mysterious penetrability of the shadowed wood heyond ? These, again, are the features which, if we lingered around the spot, we should gradually observe ; noticing later the charming disorder of leaves that float oii the placid surface, so unobtrusive although they are in the foreground, and hv degrees yielding to the spell of sweet solemnitv that pervades the scene. Do we retrret the absence of various hues of O color r d he picture is full of the se?/se of color, and the very reticence of the black and white permits a freer movement to our imagination. ’Phis is one of those prints which emphasizes the wide gap there is between the average pht^tograph and genuinely artistic work. Perhaps, if I were an expert operator, I might undertake to tell vou “how it was done”; that the negative was over-exposed or uiuler-exposed, or the camera PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART focused on the background, or that some other shrewd technical device had been adopted — pecking trivially around the big qualities of the picture and making believe that I or any other “expert operator,” using such By Edward J . Sicichcn “THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS— LANDSCAPE ARRANGEMENT” and such a camera and such and such a negative, lens, or stop, and printing according to such and such a process, could have produced a similar result. Fortunatelv lor my own enjoyment and, I hope, for yours, I am only a >59 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART sympathetic observer of other men’s work, and concerned a great deal more with the pictorial result than with the technicalities of process. As to the latter, however, I am inclined to smile incredulously and invite the “ expert operator” to repeat them; in which case I fancy there would still be some little discrepancy in the result, for he seems to have overlooked the personal ingredient, the thimhlefid of artistic yeast that raises the lumpish dough, I’he real difference between this print and the average photograph is the same as that between some paintings and the majority of them ; the difference, indeed, between mere technical accomplishment and the same quickened into vital expression by the spirit ol the artist — the difference, in a word, between craftsmanship and art. I set this print and some others of Mr. Steichen’s alongside as many landscape pictures by other photographers (the latter what you would call handsome but very literal interpretations of nature) and invited a child ol twelve, who is devoted to country life, to tell me which she liked the best. After some little while she selected this print of 7’/v Pool, and when I asked her why, replied : “ Because it is so real.” Apparently the literalness of some of the other prints had not conveyed an equal suggestion of reality. Of the other landscapes by Mr. Steichen, reproduced here, that which comes nearest in quality and interest to the one we have been considering is Pbc ""f luigmcnt of Pdr/s — fjcwdsccipe ^Irrcn/gcdient. 'Fhis Lcwdscdfe Arrange- mnit, as the name would implv, is rather a study of com- position, of forms and spaces, and of varieties of light and tone than a picture with emotional significance. A Decorative Landscape Study wdiich, how^ever, I have not PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART been able to reproduce in this article, is an essay ol a similar character, but carried to a farther point of generalization, until the whole has been reduced to a Hat pattern of forms and spaces in a very limited range ot tone. The motive is not a realization ot nature, but an abstract of its possibilities in the direction ot ornamental pattern. The expanse ot meadow in IVild Crocus, the level line near the top of the picture, the soft silhouette ot trees and hill against the quiet sky, and the smooth masses of slightly contrasted tone may be compared with the more stirring contrasts of line and color in The Brook in IViutcr — the one so reposeful, the other suggestive ot un- satished yearning. In all these prints, though they permit onlv a limited estimate of the range of Air. Steichen’s abilitv, there is visible the impress of a true artist. Whether thev have much or little or no emotional signihcance, they are alwavs distinguished bv individuality. It is not the obvious but what is concealed behind it that he tries to reach, and his search is not only stimulated by a virile personality but guided and controlled by artistic temperament and training. I have spoken ot the “obvious” and must trv to jiistitv the use ot the word. We admit the beauty of nature and that the artist renders this beautv through faithful studv ot what he sees; therefore, the “obvious,” that wbicb confronts his actual vision, mi;{ht seem to be tbe truth of iiature and accordingly desirable. Unquestionably it is tbe truth but a truth that is only the outworks, as it were, of a greater truth. In a bottle of perfume it is the essence which we cannot see and not the w ater ^vhich is plain to sight that constitutes its charm. So, latent wnthin the r6i PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART forms and colors of the landscape, is an essence or spirit. It was not, for instance, any particular evening that Corot painted but the spirit of eventide ; and when Rousseau painted a fragme2 THE MARSHES— FLORIDA PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART exultation, awe or sublimity that mountain scenes suggest, knows how comparatively petty is the impression of the pictorial record of them. You may recall a picture of an avalanche in the National Gallery, by Turner, which does convey some measure of this impressiveness, but it is because he did not make the rendering of the snow his chief motive but the force and fury of movement. He has tried to paint the abstract impression rather than the con- crete, obvious fact. Now, as very few of us in these days are Pantheists, I presume we use the expression “soul or spirit of nature” as a mere convenient metaphor. We conceive of it as existing not in nature herself but in the man who studies her with love. It is the artist’s subjective point of view. Opposed to this is the objective ; that of the photographer, for example, who exclaims “What a beautiful view!” and snaps it off. But we cannot reach the soul of a woman by a hurried recognition of her beauty ; and nature is at least as impenetrable to such casual admirers. Yet this is the way in which thousands of photographs are made and with which, unfortunately, both their authors and the public seem very well satisfied. Perhaps it is unkind to disturb their satisfaction, and equally futile to try and explain why they should not be satisfied. But pardon me for attempting it, as, at least, it will summarize the points we have been discussing in this chapter. Let us imagine a simple example. Here is a print, representing a field with standing shocks of corn ; con- taining a very intelligible record of the scene. But how far is it a picture? Our estimate will depend upon two considerations ; the mere pattern of black and white upon the paper and the amount of its suggestion. Is the pattern 164 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART in its abstract representation of forms and spaces well- balanced, intrinsically handsome? Has it admirable qualities of color ; richness in the blacks, clarity in the lightest parts, and line gradations of intermediate tones ; or, instead, has it a general delicacy of less contrasted tones ; or, again has it the vivacity of a few tones, strongly contrasted ? Moreover, is the lighter part really suggestive of light or merely a contrast to the darker parts, and are the receding planes of the picture, whether many or few, represented with the fluid continuity of the “values” in nature ? Then, secondly, what does the scene convey to us? Merely an accurate suggestion that the corn has been cut and stacked in sheaves? or, are we made to feel that nature for the time being has done her labor ; that the fulness of her strength has been expended, that she is resting like a strong man in the grand consciousness of work accomplished, her forces relaxed temporarily in the glow and luxury of well-earned ease? In this ramble over the broad field of landscape, a few points stand out with particular distinctness. To make a beautiful picture of landscape, or to appreciate it, some- thing more is needed than a taste for the picturesque : there must be a real love of nature, which leads to close study of it and a growing companionship with its moods and changes. Nature must mean something to our inner- most life. When the artist has entered into nature and allowed it to enter into him, his work, however simple, becomes impregnated with a sincerity that is unmistakable to any careful observer, just as the half-hearted motive of him who is merely trying to take pretty pictures can be at once detected. It is this sincerity that leads the artist to eschew the trivial and seek for the large qualities in a 165 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART landscape ; to feel so deeply the meaning of these that he can communicate the feeling to us and, so, recreate the emotion vve might have received if ourselves in the presence of the scene. For the lover of nature can never be satished with a mere record of the physical facts ; to him there is, as it were, a soul within them, and he looks in pictures for its interpretation. It would not be far wrong to say that landscape art is the real religious art of the present age. ClIAl’TKR VII. s a » “SCURRYING HOME By Alfred Sticglitz «> i ■j I “ THE URN By r. H. Day CHAPTER VII The Figure Subject in Pictorial Photography N an article on ^‘Figure Photography” in Camera Notes, occurs the following passage ; “Neither has there to be behind the kodak or camera any special kind of photographer; anyone who can work quickly and precisely and quietly can do good work ot this kind.” Surely this is a surprising statement in view of the difficulties of figure picture-making generally, and of some special ones which coniront the photographer particularly. Indeed, it can only be explained by assuming that the writer is not referring to picture-making at all, but only to the record of figures by means of photography, as a pleasant pastime for the peripatetic snap-shooter. This conclusion seems warranted by the sentence which follows : “ If any special qualification is required, it is the power of seeitig everything at once, not such a difficult thing for those of PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART average eyesight as it may appear ; though difficult, if not impossible, to those who are short-sighted or those who have to wear spectacles.’ The statement will give great encouragement and satisfaction to hundreds of photographers who are execut- ing just the kind of work that might be expected to result from such limited qualihcations, and who will have found conhrmation of what no doubt they already feel, that their work is all which can be desired. A similar narrowness of aim distinguishes a great many painters’ treatment of the hgure, and this blindness to the higher possibilities of the figure subject is verv generally shared by the public. It may not he amiss to try and enter into the purpose which actuates artists, whether painters or photographers, in approaching this most fascinating branch of art. And first let me attempt a general consideration of the matter ; yenturing afterwards to try and discover its special application to photography. It was a pretty saying of Pope’s that “the noblest study of mankind is man.” 'Phe dictum is, perhaps, a little too pat to he precise, yet, on the whole has been justified by centuries of artistic tradition which puts the study of the human figure in the front rank of pictorial motive ; and there is little doubt that to the public at large the figure subject has more attractions than anv other. Let us note from what verv different points of view the public aiul the best artists have reached this agreement. 'To the former, the prime charm of a figure picture consists in its “human interest”; to the artist, in the possi- bilities of heautv inherent in the human figure. ’The two ideas may he summarized as, respectiveh’, the illustrative T72 ph()T(k;raphy as a fine art and the decorative; and both may he represented in the same picture, hut never, if it is the work of a great artist, will the latter he missing. Stated otherwise, the difference is that between the mere record of facts and the wav in which they are recorded. Tlie average public looks oidy for the portrayal of some incident or story ; eagerly inquires the title of the picture and “ what it is all about”; searches the picture in order to satisfy itself that the facts have been literally rendered; demands a pictorial in- ventory of the circum- stances and criticises them as to their accuracy and completeness. It looks for a detailed state- ment rendered after the manner of the literary By j a. oimcck. n^v York ^ ■■ GIRI. AND CUll'AR " man ; ignoring the sep- arate, individual qualities and possibilities td a picture and considering it merely as an appendage to the pen ; an illustration, in fact, in the boldest acceptation of the term. This view of the figure picture is no new one; being prevalent enough in the days cd the Italian Renaissance, during the earlier half of the fifteenth century, when the artist was engaged by priestly and lay patiams to paint religious subjects. H(,nv well Browning has summarized the motive and the effect when he makes h'ra I>ippo Lippi say : 173 •‘THE MAY-POLE ’’ By Llarcncc //. U kite PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART “ I painted a Saint Laurence six months since At Prato, splashed the fresco in line style : ‘ H ow looks my painting, now the scaffold’s down ? ’ I ask a brother: ‘Hugely,’ he returns — ‘ Already not one phiz ot your three slaves Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side, But’s scratched and prodded to our heart’s content. The pious people have so eased their own With coming to say prayers there in a rage: We get on fast to see the bricks beneath. Expect another job this time next year. For pity and religion grow i’ the crowd — Your painting serves its purpose!’ Hang the tools!” And “Hang the tools!” is still re-echoed by the exasperated artist ot today when he finds his point of view so entirely misunderstood or ignored by the public ; the latter confining their intention to what he says in neglect of his wav ot saying it. They miss the point that if picture-making is a method ot expression independent of the literary method, it should be judged by those qualities which are peculiar to itself. For, judged by the literarv standard, the painter or photographer is at a disadvantage with the writer, since he cannot include in his picture the sequence ot circumstances and of emotions leading up to the culminating point. But, on the other hand, in the terseness ot his presentment and the vividness with which he can flash his meaning instantaneously upon our con- sciousness, the advantage is all with him ; and the extent to which he relies upon these qualities, both in the choice ot subject and in manner of rendering it, will be his measure of success. ’75 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART For not every subject will serve his turn. There is a class ol subject readily adapted to the leisurely, methodic, analytical process of the writer ; and quite another kind appropriate to pictorial presentment which should be syn- thetic, no matter how analytical may have been the study which preceded it. And the subject as he presents it must be seli-sufficient, needing no other justification for existence than its own beauty, force or character ; and if it involves a story, self-explanatory, not dependent upon quotations of prose or verse to make the simple meaning of its title intelligible. xYs regards the conception of the subject, we may gather from a study of great works, that the main points are that the subject has been thoroughly comprehended, sincerely felt, and pictured fully in the brain before its representation is commenced. This antecedent realization may he the result, either of profound study and experiment or of a momentary suggestion, vividly seized. The model, for example, may be resting. The limbs, freed from restraint, loosen into lines of unconscious ahcuido}! ; at the same moment, perhaps, the sunlight falls upoji the polished bosses (,)f the shoulder and breast, while shadow wraps the remainder in a certain mysterv. 'Fhe artist sees at once the pictorial possibilities, he is tilled with enthusiasm, seizes the charcoal or adjusts the camera and records his impressions red-hot. Later he mav develop his study into a picture, trying to bring out those qualities which had impressed him so vividly, and last of all mav put a name to the picture. Hut the title was not the genesis of the picture, which had its inspiration in the chance presentment of a subject of beauty ; and we shall not reach an appreciatit)n of bis \\a)rk by pt)ring over the title and PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART endeavoring to square the representation with it. Least of all shall we ever put ourselves in sympathy with the artist if we suppose that great work necessarily involves a great and elevated subject. The artists of the Venetian School were great men, who lived in big and stirring By Joseph T. Keiley “ SI-IYLOCK— A STUFJY” times, intimate with women of noble build and with men distinguished by enterprise, ambition and intense pride of country, yet these artists often seem to have been striving most consciously to represent the gorgeous color and texture of rich fabrics and the fascination of light upon ripely 177 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART rounded limbs. That we hnd such pictures great is due to the large manner in which motives, comparatively trivial, have been expressed. And is not this a common experience of ourselves ? When we were young, we had such big thoughts, as i:ar beyond our capacity ot expression as of our comprehension ; as we mature, our horizon narrows, but the sense of vision grows; we reach out and grasp, alas! very much smaller things, but with a livelier comprehension and an increase of ownership, that compensate for their limitations. The conception of the subject, however, may be the product of long and careful study. Such is Millet’s Sower. His svmpathies were with the laborer; he knew him intimately in the going in and out of daily life ; the solitary figure passing rapidly down the furrow, scattering grain that in the fid ness of the season was to mean life to him- self and others, had been noted time and again with penetrating comprehensiveness, not only in its individual characteristics but in its relation to the big scheme of life. So that when at length the artist realized the fruits of study, he portrayed not d sower, but 'T/ee Sower; a typal embodiment which by force of the knowledge and sincer- itv involved must remain a classic. On the other hand there were recently exhibited some photographs of a Sicilian sower in various phases of his occupation. Why did they fail, as I think they did, (h satisfactorv rendering ? Because thev were simply illustra- tions of arrested movement, revealing no studv of the salient characteristics of the subject or anv attempt to unite them in one epitt)iue. In this way the motive had not been sincere. 'The photographer may have had jMillet’s picture in his mind and, certainly, had been attracted by 17S PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE AR'I the peasant’s costume and how it would lend itself to a picture out oi the ordinary. He came and saw and snapped his camera, but did not con- quer the intimate inner qualities ot the subject. His prints were merely snap-shots, and if he had taken a number of dif- ferent attitudes atid then combined them in one of those rotary contriv- ances that mingle the separate units into an organic movement, the latter might have come somewhere near to being an equivalent of Alillet’s picture. But, as it was, these prints were a fair example of what must have been in the mind of the writer in Cantcra Notes, quoted above: “Anyone who can work quickly and precisely and quietly, can do good w'ork of this kind”; merely interesting records of a tour in search of the picturesque. Oh! that same word “picturesque” — what a fogginess of misconception it involves ! Pictorial is intelligible ; it is the picture equivalent for actual facts, hut the sutfix “ esque ” puts the idea into the category of “ kind o’ not pictorial, but “kind o’ so.” It represents that quality of mind which cannot find pictorial motive in a building unless decay has settled down upon it, in a human being '79 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART unless clothed in some unfamiliar costume. There are painters, as well as photographers who compass lands and seas to find lawn caps, stiff bodices and cheap jewelry, because, as they say, such lend themselves to picturesque- ness, as if the country life at home were barren of pictorial suggestion. Surely, the barrenness is in their own imagina- tions. It is a notable fact that when Israels and Blommers or other Dutch painters portray a peasant of Holland you are hardly reminded of the costume, whereas when the American or Englishman essays the same theme, you are conscious of little else. The former are not attracted primarily by the little local accidents, but by the large universal truths of human nature, which are equally to be found at home by him who has sympathetic discernment and a true eye for seeing. Indeed, among painters and photographers alike, there seem to be two orders of mind or habits of seeing ; one continually searching for the picturesque, the other seeing everything pictorially. The former are by comparison journeymen hunting for soft jobs, the others artists, with the constructive, creative gift, who can take a fact, however old or hackneyed, and reshape it into something vitally fresh, because they infuse into it something of their own personality. While the picture-maker proves himself to he an artist by the selection of a subject particularly adapted to pictorial representation, by the thoroughness with which he grasps its salient characteristics, and by the vividness of his ante- cedent conception, he does so also by the reliance which he places on the methods of expression peculiar to his art. How few people realize that these are abstract and make their primary appeal to the eye! Eater, in the case of certain subjects, they may reach the intellect, hut even By Eva L. Watson “MOTHER AND CHILD” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART then through the passage-way of the senses. In literature, on the contrary, the words travel direct to the intellect and may later arouse a brain impression as of a picture seen. But in the actual picture of painting or photog- raphy, it is the things seen which affect us. and the ‘THE LETTER BOX’ By Alfred Stieslitz artist’s skill is shown in what he oders to our sight and ours in the receptivity of our vision. He offers us certainly a concrete fact — some figure or incident ; he cannot help himself, and this is his limitation, as compared with the musician who transports us at once into the abstract. His feet are necessarily of clay, and for the 182 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART most part the public never look above his knees, and so fail to discover that in the development of the concrete he has reached up into the abstract. The lines ot his picture, the shape ol the forms and their union into one composi- tion are designed to yield pleasure to our eves ; so also the colors, individually and in their harmonv of relation, wall play upon the eye, as music on the ear, arousing actual emotions of depth or delicacy, as the case may he, which the distribution of light and dark throughout the picture will increase, whde the representation of texture on the surlaces ol the different objects, tickling by suggestion the sense ot touch, will add a further source of pleasure. The picture that does Jiot represent the subject with some, at least, of these qualities is as barren of enjovment to a cul- tivated taste as the property pie which does service for real pie in a stage plav ; and the person whc^ cannot realize enjoyment from these qualities is like a man eating straw- berries after he has lost his senses of taste and smell. In confirmation ot this point, that the essential beauty of a picture consists in these abstract qualities, let us recall a few that are accepted masterpieces; for example, (I select at random) Idtian’s Assnmptiofi, Rubens’s Descefit from the Cross, Raphael’s Miidofifms, and, to come nearer home, John La Farge's Ascoisiou, in the C'hurch of the Ascension, New \’ork. Is it the subject in each case that is responsible for the impressiveness ? Scarcely, for we have seen representations of the same subject that have left us cold. Rather, it is an eloquence resulting from the pictorial qualities : in the Assiimptio)!, a superb massing of stately form and glorious color aird the suggestion of up- lifting movement ; in the Descent fro)n the C/vss, the impressive contrast of light and dark, the white, drooping PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART form of the Savior so pathetically relieved against the solemn gravity of the dark hgures massed around it. Raphael sheds over his Madonnas a golden haze of tender- ness, that translates a simple peasant girl into a typal expression of maternal and divine love ; and ]ohn La Large, partly by the noble adjustment of the hgures to the spaces and partlv by the ringing dignity of the color scheme draws our imagination upward with the ascending hgure. These are not exhaustive statements of the sources of gratihcation in these pictures or of the means employed to bring the story or meaning home to us, hut enough, perhaps, to suggest that the latter are purely abstract, and that through reliance upon these abstract qualities the sublimity, pathos or tenderness of the subject has been developed. In all these pictures the illustrative and the decorative motives, to which allusion was made above, are combined ; and, if the abstract qualities are so im- portant in their case, it will he admitted that they must he more so when the motive is singly decorative. In this case, indeed, a complete reliance upon them can be the only justihcation for adopting it. So far we have been discussing the general principles involved in the making of hgure-pictures, and may now apply them more particularly to photography. Surely they demand, except in the case of purely illustrative prints, such as are used in the daily and weekly papers, qualihcations which by no means eyery one possesses; calling, in fact, for qualities of a very high artistic order. It cannot be too often insisted that the mere snap-shooting of hgures or the mere pe>sing of them in some agreeable position is as far removed from the artistic possibilities of picture photography as night from day. The ultimate TKSTING FRUIT By H A . Latnncr, Boi,iou PHOrOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART possibilities of the art are only matter of conjecture, but already results are obtained which would have been deemed impossible a short time ago, and their beauty pro- ceeds from reliance upon the artistic qualities common to painting, with the sole exception of many colors. The photograph is still a monochrome ; yet in the opportunities it gives of rich and delicate tones, the limitation is less of a hindrance than some would suppose. The real limita- tion, the one most difficult to circumvent, comes from the physical and mental imperfections of the model. In studies from the nude this fact is often painfully apparent. Even when the form is comparatively free from faults, a consciousness or even an excess of unconsciousness, amount- ing to blank indifference, or some simpering expression of sentiment will mar the picture. And yet we have seen how successfully this difficulty has been surmounted by Frank Eugene and F. Flolland Day. The latter has done some very beautiful work from the nude model, partic- ularly with a Nubian, and again with children. His motive in these, I should imagine, has been purely decorative ; and it is the entire absence of any sentiment that is an element in his success, since it leaves one to un- interrupted enjoyment of the beauties of form, color and texture. Mr. Eugene, also, in his Adaui and Eve has obliterated the faces by scoring the surface of the plate wi th li nes. The reason is obvious, and again we find our- selves concentrated upon the abstract beauties of the picture. These and other examples, in fact, suggest a con- clusion that the best way of securing an acceptable picture in the nude is by adopting some expedient to cancel the personality of the model, either by hiding the face, or by keeping the figure far back in the picture whence the PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART features do not count, or else by so accentuating the other elements of the picture that the attention is diverted from the face. In the genre picture also this problem has to be met in a mitigated form, for the least self-consciousness stiffens, and under- or over-realization of the part that is being played may jar upon the tjeneral feeling; of the subject. But in genre the accessories may be made to play, and ought to play, so important a part that the hg;ure becomes merged in them, if properly treated. Indeed, one may almost divide the examples of this class of picture into two kinds : those in which there is a niise-en-scejie including; hg;ures and those in which there are hgures with some sort of setting added, and it is the former which, in photography at least, appear to be the more satisfactory ; and such complete identity of figure and environment demands the most syn- thetic arrangement. If a profusion of detail is allowed, the figure will necessarily obtrude itself, without, however, necessarily gaining separate importance, for the general confusion distracts. While, therefore, there slmuld be some central motive to which everything is subordinated, the same should not be the figures, but some abstract PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART quality, especially that of the lighting of the picture. Let this clearly express the sentiment of the picture, as it may very readily be made to do, and everything will fall into due relation to it, the accessories as well as the figure, and the latter, relieved from the chief burden of expressing the meaning of the picture, will contribute its share with all the greater spontaneity. On the other hand, the artist may wish to solve the problem by confronting it instead of getting around it, and -may determine to make the expression of the face the prime factor in the picture. Then he must either find a model that already corresponds to his conception, that may, indeed, have inspired it, or he will diligently coach his model, or, as a final resort, act as model himself. Here, again, I am reminded of Air. Day, who in several cases, notably in a series of heads, portraying the Sl’Vl’ji Last Jf ^ords of the Savior, posed for himself. Silly objections have been raised to this on the score of pro- priety, as if all the religious pictures had not been painted from models. A more tenable criticism would he that the theme is too tremendous to he treated with main reliance on the expression of the faces as in this case, and that the residt attained, though verv impressive, is rather histrionic than religious. This allusion tt) religious subjects reminds one of many points depicting some tragic emotion, none of which seemed satisfactorv. I recall, especially, some examples by Air. C’larence II. \\ bite, cleverly posed and yery beautiful in their rich quality of color. Their failure to convey the impression intended may possibly be due to the fact that Air. White’s temperament does not so strongly incline towards such subjects as to others of tenderer senti- iS.S PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART ment. At least such might he interred from a study ot a large number ot his prints. Mr. joseph A. Keiley has also essayed this kind of picture, as in the case ot a Shy- lock, using an actor tor a model and relying very much upon the latter’s contribution to the result. But an actor’s power to create an impression is in a general way a relative one ; dependent to a great extent upon the readi- ness of his audience to accept the illusion. Between the two there is a constant reciprocity ot feeling and the con- necting link is the sequence of the words. In a picture the artist has to establish the connection in order to help out the efforts of his model, and it is just because Ylr. Keiley has depended too exclusively on the cleverness of his model, that he seems to me to have failed. And this brings one hack to the point, which the more one thinks of it seems of greater importance, that to succeed in gi’/zre the artist must make some abstract quality the prime feature of his picture. So far I have been considering the deliberate posing of the model ; hut there is a class of pictures in which the figure is introduced without its knowledge or, at anv rate, without knowledge of the actual moment at which the exposure is made. Mr. Alfred Stieglitz has done some notable work in this direction, particularly in the series of pictures, made at Katwyk, and they hear out what I have said about the wisdom of suhordinatimj the fi«:ure to some abstract motive. In Tin’ Gossips, for example, and Going to Church, he has treated the figures as part of the scene, related to it and deriving from it their own significance. And the pictures were not made, I understand, until the essential features of the subject had been thoroughly digested and the relation of the figures to the scene and 1S9 PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART the exact part they should play in it, as to position and relative importance from a pictorial standpoint, had been well considered. This brings one back to the comparison of Millet’s Soever with the photographs of a Sicilian sower. Can the photographer emulate the methods of the painter, even if he fail to reach his results.? I am unable to see why not. Millet must have made an exhaustive analysis of the man at work until he had mastered the salient features of the operation; then, many studies were probably executed before he reached the final formula of expression. The analysis is certainly within the possibilities of the photographer; and repeated snap-shots might take the place of sketches, until, at last, the desired result has been attained. But this involves the sincerity, patience and self-criticism that mark the procedure of the artist, very far removed from the easy conscience and ready self-satisfaction of a mere toucher of the button. It distinguishes the artist of the camera from him who is only playing with it, and justihes the statement that really good figure-photography, so far from being a thing in which any one can succeed, is indeed the highest test of the photographer’s ability. This problem of expressing movement seems full of difficulty. Some years ago a number of photographs were piddicly exhibited, representing the position of horses at different instants of their gait, and it was clear, at once, that such positions were entirely different from those depicted by painters and accepted by the public as true to life. Immediately it was assumed that, as the painter was manifestly untrue to life, he must be wrong; the point being missed, that according to our sense of what we see, the photographs themselves were entirely false. The picture-maker does not attempt to depict the actual thing. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART but the impression which it makes upon him, and, in the matter of a horse’s gallop, sums up the diderent phases of the gait into one synthetic formula ; which may be arbi- trary, but justified, if it succeeds in conveying the im- pression to ourselves. Therefore, the snap-shot, while no doubt recording accurately some instant of the action, mav be very far from expressing the composite result, conveving instead a suggestion of suspended movemeiit. For one photograph of a man walking, a hundred can be seen in which he appears to be standing on one leg with the other held up in the air as if it had been hurt. But the difficulties which photography preseiits are the measure of its possibilities. If anyone could succeed there would be no chance for the artist. It is in a realization of the difinculties aiid in the persistent endeavor to sur- mount them that picture photography is being gradually brought to the level of an art, 19 r (f. 9 /■ i I I I. r I 1 k f GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 3 3125 00991 8307