Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 47))

291
The sun-disc-emblem which “291” has maintained, these ten years, in
its entrance-hall, between Mary-Elizabeth’s carnal, and Long Sang Ti’s
spiritual allurements, has assumed with time a steely countenance, with
features vacuous and waiting; a fitting symbol for a mirror-like place.
A cosmos-reflecting dew-drop, returning to each one of us his illumined
spectre—is “291” to me. Diverse images of life are here focused side by
side. In it, ideal finds the blue flower, and vanity—its tinsel. In it, truth
sees its innocence, and falsehood—its aesthetic fig-leaf. Here didacity shouts
sapience into wisdom’s patient ear. A cheap maecenas here beholds an ample
needle’s eye for the camel. Nearby a man stops one of destiny’s leaks with
his own heart. In this charmed lens a cat sees herself a social lioness, and
sharpens her obtuse claws with harmless radicalism, and thanks God for
one more excuse for snobbery. A soaring eagle finds comet-wings here,
where moles deftly administer an eternal twilight-sleep to a New Era in
travail. Here art is dying at the breasts of New-art academicians, and is
reborn to greater glory in creators’ free souls. Here fate disports and scatters
its staples with a lavish hand. . . . Holding a mirror up to life—that is
Stieglitz’s art.
John Weichsel

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