Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 2))

blues, and reds. The Bartholomé is deficient in composition, the Greek
column against which the sculptor is leaning and the huge caryatid, which
he is contemplating and which fills the rest of the picture, are too
obstrusive, and yet they intimate the dreams of this poet of form, with
their mixed savor of the modern and archaic.
BUT the masterpiece of this collection is the Rodin. It can not be
improved upon. It is a portrait of Rodin, of the man as well as his art,
and to me by far more satisfactory than Alexander’s portrait of the French
sculptor, excellent as it is. It is a whole man’s life condensed into a simple
silhouette, but a silhouette of somber splendor, powerful and personal,
against a vast background, where black and white seem to struggle for
supremacy. This print should, once for all, end all dispute whether artistic
photography is a process indicative of decadence, an impression under which
so many people and most artists still seem to labor. A medium, so rich
and so complete, one in which such a masterpiece can be achieved, the
world can no longer ignore. The battle is won!
BUT it is getting late. Only a few more words, about Mr. Steichen's
nudes.
" THESE nudes nobody seems to understand,” Mr. Steichen remarks.
" Do they mean anything to you?” It has grown dark and the rain is still
tapping, curiously and faintly, at the window-panes.
MY answer is a smile. He does not know that my whole life has been a
fight for the nude, for liberty of thought in literature and art, and how I
silently rejoice when I meet a man with convictions similar to mine.
STEICHEN'S photographic nudes are not as perfect as the majority
of his portraits, but they contain perhaps the best and noblest aspira-
tions of his artistic nature. They are absolutely incomprehensible to
the crowd.
TO him the naked body, as to any true lover of the nude, contains the
ideals, both of mysticism and beauty. Their bodies are no pæans of the
flesh nor do they proclaim absolutely the purity of nudity. Steichen’s
nudes are a strange procession of female forms, naïve, non-moral, almost
sexless, with shy, furtive movements, groping with their arms myste-
riously into the air or assuming attitudes commonplace enough, but
imbued with some mystic meaning, with the light concentrated upon their
thighs, their arms, or the back, while the rest of the body is drowned in
darkness.
WHAT does all this mean? Futile question. Can you explain the
melancholy beauty of the falling rain, or tell why the slushy pavements,
reflecting the glaring lights of Fifth Avenue stores, remind us of the golden
dreams the poets dream?
I SEIZE my umbrella and say "Good night” indifferently, as I might say
it to any stranger, and he answers absent-mindedly " Come again!” He is
thinking of his soul, and I am thinking of mine. What a foolish
occupation is this busy, practical world of ours!
SlDNEY ALLAN.

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