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

artist’s own part, which characterizes these pictures, lifting them, as
conceptions, so far above the ordinary. Similarly in the case of old people
there is a simple acquiescence in themselves as they are, an unconsidered
mental and physical bearing, which renders them sympathetic subjects. It
is with the sitters of both sexes in between the extremes of age that the
difficulty is greater; and particularly in the case of those who feel bound to
live up to a reputation for being intellectual or artistic. I am not aware
what prints are to be used to illustrate this paper, so I can glide around
this delicate question without risking any personal reference. But, among
a considerable number of Mrs. Käsebier's prints which I have seen, I can
recall a few, which jar upon myself as being affected.
THIS is, perhaps, the weakest point in the efforts of some photographers
to be artistic. The large majority of photographic portraits are merely
commonplace. I do not allude to these, but to the ones in which there is a
definite aim to create a pictorial ensemble. And in how many of these can
one detect some trickiness of pose or arrangement, some artificiality of
sentiment, that is repugnant to good taste! Generally, no doubt, it results
from the photographer's own lack of taste, from a certain flashiness of mind
that regards the unusual as necessarily admirable, and mistakes sentimentality
for sentiment. It is for the most part accompanied with very meagre
knowledge of what really constitutes the artistic qualities of a picture. Now
this is so clearly not the case with Mrs. Käsebier's work, that it is reasonable
to charge any affectation that may appear to the sitter. But even so well-
trained an artist as this lady, with her instinct for what is sincere and fine,
labors under the disadvantage of being continually, as it were, before the
footlights. It is a disadvantage shared by all artistic photographers. It is
difficult for them to forget that they have a “mission”; they are particularly
open to the temptation of taking themselves too seriously—a complaint,
by the way, to which we, writers upon art, are conspicuously liable — and
it must be hard indeed for them to be free altogether of some occasional
pose of mind. It is, as I have said, a very detectable flaw in much artistic
photography, alluded to here because it is very rarely to be detected
in Mrs. Käsebier's work and its absence, therefore, is one of the most
commendable features of her work.
THAT it appears so seldom, or, as I am sure many of her admirers will
say, never — is due to the fact that she is an artist by training as well as by
temperament; that she has a sound basis of knowledge and an abundance of
imagination. For, in enumerating the artistic qualities of her work, let us
not overlook this one of imagination, which irrigates and fertilizes all the
others. I know of no photographer, at home or abroad, and not too many
portrait-painters, who display so much charm of invention. There is always
in her work the delight of surprise; no ordinariness, not even a tolerable
repetition of motive; but, throughout, a perpetual freshness of conception,
as extraordinary as it is fascinating, when one remembers the conditions
under which she works. And the creativeness is not limited to a happy
choice of pose and gesture; it circulates through all the elements of the