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

ON SILHOUETTES.

The possibilities of photography in absolute black and white are, I
believe, very great. Little that is really striking has been done so far,
however. The prints which were sent in recently for a "silhouette,, compe-
tition in a contemporary were mostly very disappointing from an artistic
point of view, though excellent technically. Few of the competitors rose
above portrait-studies of heads, or pretty little girls sitting on stools eating
porridge. This sort of thing is not all that can be produced in silhouettes.
The idea need not be confined to portraits and figures. In my opinion,
there is much to be done in the way of impressionistic, rather poster-like,
silhouette landscapes.
The truth-to-nature people will be up in arms against this, no doubt.
But their prejudices are too inconsistent to concern us here. I know several
keen truth-to-nature faddists, for instance, who are quite capable of admiring
the weirdest of poster designs, book-covers, initial-letter designs, and so on,
yet come down like a ton of bricks on a photograph if it shows any sign of
leaving the beaten track of f/64 , so-called accuracy. Such folk are incorri-
gible. One of them, to whom I showed a rather sketchy gum-print,
objected to it because there was so much white paper about it, and said
(good old theory!) that no absolute blanks existed in nature. Then I gave
him a Phil May drawing whose background consisted of a tiny patch of
cross-hatching—and very little, even, of that. He didn't mind the Phil
May drawing—oh, no! It was a drawing, and my poor thing was a
photograph. The pen-and-ink man might omit as much as he liked, but
the unhappy photographer must let every atom of detail stay in on pain of
earning his acquaintances' eternal scorn.
Well, this truth-to-nature bugbear, though very much alive in the Man
in the Street's world, is quite dead, thank goodness, as far as that of art is
concerned. Even the Man in the Street would probably give up the creed
if he only took the trouble to think about it. With the picture-galleries
of our modern hoardings before his eyes, I can'tsee how he could help
himself doing so.
However, even the truth-to-nature maniacs do not, as I have hinted,
apply their foot-rules to designy work. And why they should forbid
camera-workers — merely because they are camera-workers and not pen-men
or brush-men, or repoussé copper-men, or gesso-men, or clay-men — to go
in for designy efforts, I do not know. Anyway, we're going to do it,
whether they give us their kind permission or not.
All this (I really ought to explain) is à propos of silhouette landscape
photography. I believe there is a comparatively new field here for the
experimenter with ideas, plus a sound knowledge of composition. My own
attempts, I feel, are so far disappointing. But at any rate they may serve to
give a hint of the lines along which I am working. Doubtless many readers
will think out far better notions for themselves. If the editor can find space
to reproduce one or two prints, then all the better; no harm will be done.

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