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

developments, or fogyish and behind the times? Do the authorities base
their exclusion of pictorial photography from the sacred enclosure of the
Fine Arts Building on a comprehensive knowledge of the best results so far
obtained by photographic artists? Is their exclusion grounded on the patent
facts, or upon the hide-bound reasoning of the theorist, which already comes
near to being as inadequate to explain the facts of photography as the Adamite
theory is of those connected with the origin of man.
AT any rate, even granted that their reasons for exclusion are absolutely
sound and irrefutable, can they not see why their conclusions are as absolutely
unacceptable to the enthusiasts—fanatics, if you will—who persist in the
opposite delusion ? These latter are trying to produce artistic work, and it
is just as repugnant to them to have their prints coördinated with the dis-
plays of photographic material as it would be to the painters to have their
pictures shown in connection with commercial exhibits of brushes, canvas,
and pigments, of easels, lay-figures, and the camera, which they use so fre-
quently as an adjunct to portraiture and other pictures. The Colonel's
suggestion that the photographers should pocket their pride and should
submit to what they feel an injustice for the sake of compelling the public to
recognize their merits, must seem to them very " child-like and bland.” It
savors too much of an attempt to get the photographers to sacrifice their
convictions so as to cover up the blunders of the Executive Committee. For
it is not pride that makes them hold out, but principle. " If we yield up the
latter,” they very reasonably say, " we postpone indefinitely the time when
people will regard pictorial photography seriously. Indeed, Colonel, what
you so courteously offer us is an opportunity of hara-kiri; you would have
us cut our throats to prove the reasonableness of our logic.”
IF the authorities persist in their determination, we do not see how the
pictorial photographers can consistently do anything else but refrain from
exhibiting. To do otherwise would be to abandon all for which they have
been contending, and with no compensating benefit to their art. It does not
need the help of any exposition; still less of one that would obscure the
issue. It has got along very well so far in the face of ignorance and
prejudice, and is steadily winning advocates and admirers by the quiet force
of its intrinsic merit. In an age like this, where self-advertising is the very
breath of the average life, we can quite believe that the St. Louis authorities
find it incomprehensible that any men and women should be so blind to their
own interests as to refuse an opportunity of making a display, no matter how
equivocal, in their great show. But they should remember that the vastness
of such a show itself interferes with deliberate and penetrating study. Visitors
take their impressions at a jump. If they find pictorial photography in the
Fine Arts Building, they may see that it has some pictorial merit; but if
they came upon it in the mélange of exhibits in the Liberal Arts Building,
mixed up with all kinds of varieties of photographic prints, they would not
have time or perhaps ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. The public
needs directing.
IT is a pity if the St. Louis authorities should show themselves in this

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