Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 1))

MRS. KÄSEBIER’S WORK — AN APPRECIATION.

NEW MAGAZINE, devoted to the higher interests
of photography — for which, by the way, I earnestly
wish all the success that I am confident it will merit
—not inaptly opens with a survey of the work of
Mrs. Gertrude Käsebier. For this lady has won a
most enviable reputation both for the quality of the
work and for the tact with which she has united
artistic endeavor to business considerations.
THE latter is no slight achievement, since Mrs.
Käsebier is doing what the majority of professional
photographers are only pretending to do. Every practitioner with the
camera nowadays dubs himself an artist, just as we have tonsorial and
sartorial artists, until the designation has become a by-word and a joke.
The dear public also are practically unanimous in desiring artistic
photographs and almost equally ignorant of what really makes a photograph
artistic. So, to have emerged clear of the ordinary clap-trap of the
profession and at the same time to have impressed upon clients her own
estimate of artistic qualities in a photographic portrait, represent a very
remarkable triumph. It has not been without some compromises, of which
no one, I dare say, is more conscious than the artist herself; but the same
only redound to her credit. They have been sacrifices which she was
wise enough and big enough to make for the ultimate end of her endeavors,
which is to establish photography, where many of us believe it belongs,
as a distinct and valuable medium of artistic expression.
I HAVE spoken above of “photographic portraits”; not because Mrs.
Käsebier has confined herself to these, for she has produced many pictures
in photography, but because it is in the former métier that she has gained
the special distinction that I have been discussing. And what a rare
combination of qualities is necessary to have so distinguished her!
Consider only that one quality of sympathy which must intervene if the
character of the sitter is to be rendered in the picture. A painter enjoys
the advantage of many sittings, during which he may gradually establish an
agreeable intimacy with his subject and study the latter’s characteristics.
One visit, however, is generally all that the photographer can count upon,
during which the matters of pose and lighting have to be seized and
satisfied, at the same time that some estimate of character and characteristics
is being formed. Moreover, the photographer, notwithstanding his acumen
and well-laid plans, is at the mercy of the sitter’s nervousness or excess of
sang-froid', so that he must have the magnetic influence which wins the
sitter'sconfidence and puts him or her in an easy and natural state of mind.
This is less difficult to accomplish in the case of children, whose unconscious
artlessness is more readily awakened, so it is not surprising that her portraits
of little folk represent some of Mrs. Käsebier’s most charming work. But
still one will often be surprised at the extreme freshness of fancy on the


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