Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 4))

attained a perfect result. Only the color would be lacking. That is the
only drawback. And should color-photography ever be rendered successful
only dream-pictures and color-orgies will hold their place in painting.
Ryders can not be photographed, but Dewings and Tryons might possibly.
And therefore I would advise artists to become photographers — they are
able to select the most pictorial bits of nature, and by becoming technical
experts in the manifold processes of photography, they could give to the
work something like individuality of brushwork — then to limit each
successful picture to one print and sell it at democratic prices. They would
be more popular and do just as much for art. At least that is my opinion.,,
At that time I knew very little about artistic photography, I had merely
noted down my first impression, but even to-day, after six years of constant
study — for writing about a subject is, after all, nothing but self-education-
I find nothing of importance to add. I would word it, perhaps, a little bit
differently, that is all.
Maeterlinck has really said nothing new — already Delacroix made a similar
statement when he saw the first Daguerreotypes — only the way in which
he says it is novel and fascinating.
The artists were not slow in recognizing what valuable assistance they could
derive from the "indifferent and impersonal" work of the sun. It has
revolutionized our entire pictorial art. Photography was as important a
factor in the evolution of the modern artist as the influence of Japanese
art. The photographs of galloping horses by Anschütz and Muybridge
revealed to us a wealth of movements that hitherto had entirely escaped the
eye, and I wonder if Raffaelli and other street-painters would have ever
succeeded in “fixing” the furtive movements of pedestrians and city
crowds without the help of the camera. Raffaelli relies entirely upon
snap-shots for the pictorial facts of his pictures. Shinn is in this respect a
phenomenon, as he depends solely upon his memory. His eyes are like a
photographic apparatus, to which his mind furnishes a sensitive non-
halation plate. The peculiar attitudes of Degas’sballet-girls are also of
photographic origin. The illustrators nearly all work from photographs. If
they had to study every subject they treat in the old-fashioned manner of
making sketches they would suddenly see their income curtailed by more
than half. Also the poster-painters, trying to see things flat, have profited
by the monotonous tones of the photographic print. One can notice it in
Steichen's paintings. They are really nothing—if such a paradoxical term
is permissible—but faintly tinted monochromes. Even the portrait-painters,
from Lenbach to Encke, who has painted the most satisfactory portrait of
our President (i.e., the most satisfactory one to Mr. Roosevelt himself) find
photography indispensable. The public has obtained through photography
a better idea of likeness than it had ever before, and the portrait-painter
finds it impossible to compete with this almost intuitive knowledge.
This will suffice to show that the artist does not exactly regard the camera
and the sun as belonging to his innumerable enemies. As long as they
facilitate his work, he is very prone to regard photography as a valuable