Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 3))

CLARENCE H. WHITE.

Living in Ohio, and separated from the larger experiences and inspira-
tion of the big centers of civilization; moreover, tied to a business which
perforce occupies the lion’s share of his attention, Clarence H. White has
yet accomplished work which proves him to be foremost among the
producers of artistic pictures in photography.
Perhaps the readiest way to gage the excellence of his work is to begin
by recognizing its limitations. It is in a way provincial; although, I
confess, it is more easy to feel conscious of this than to describe exactly in
what it consists. Remember, you may smack your lips with gusto over a
certain dish and yet find it impossible to translate its flavor into words.
And it is just something akin to flavor that betrays the provincialism in
Mr. White’spictures. To my own mind I can explain my meaning
through the analogy of Miss Wilkins’s New England tales; such a one, for
example, as the story of a quilting-party. It is so very local as to be a
little tiresome, and yet there is no mistaking the artistry of the story-teller.
I know that some of our mentors in literary matters insist that truth to facts
and an artistic clothing of the same constitute the art of the novelist. A
great deal of vexatious argument may be saved by agreeing with them.
We may admit that of such is art, and yet weigh the quality of the art thus
presented, and find it some degrees removed from high proof. For, as Mr.
John La Farge says in one of his writings, the local quality in art is always
its weakest element; whereas, that which attaches to more universal expe-
riences is per contra the quality in art which conduces to its larger significance.
After all, this is only another way of saying that as it is the personal
equation of the artist which most affects us in a picture, so we are bound to
be the more affected according as the mind of the artist reaches beyond the
local accidents to matters of wider and more abstract significance.
As I write this I am not forgetful of the place in art which is occupied
by the little masters of Holland. Unquestionably local was their choice of
subject—for example, the clumsy gamboling of peasants at the inn as in
many of Jan Steen’s pictures or the routine of simple family life as in those
of Pieter de Hooghe. But they selected those subjects, not for their
intrinsic value as such, but because they were ready to hand and offered
opportunity for the display of the painter’s craft; for producing an effective
ensemble of color and movement or for working out some abstract scheme
of light and shade and of delicate tonality; qualities of universal appeal
quite irrespective of the special subject which served merely as a peg on
which to hang them. This makes all the difference; and in the admirable-
ness with which the painter-problem is attacked and solved, the subject as
such takes less than secondary place.
It is in this way that one should regard Mr. White’s pictures. He sets
himself certain artistic problems and uses for the purpose the local material
at hand. But it is not through the latter that the result should be judged,
but through the degree in which the larger purpose has been achieved.

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