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

handmaiden. It becomes an enemy only as soon as it asserts itself indepen-
dently. This is a rather ungrateful attitude, but a quite natural one. The
artist can not comprehend that a "mysterious slave,, can suddenly become a
master. He only sees the “anonymous force."
I have heard painters say over and over again, while looking at some photo-
graphic journals, " if I took up photography, I would do just as good
work as these men.” How foolish to talk in that fashion! They can be
assured that unless a man really likes the process he uses and heartily enjoys
the work while he is performing it, there is not the faintest chance, whatever
his knowledge and ability as an artist may be, that he will produce a good
print, or anything resembling a good print. Photography does not seem to
agree with the taste and temper of the average artist. They consider it too
mechanical — and, true enough, the process is a very mechanical one and
the type of men represented by the artistic photographers quite different to
that of our painters. This is easy enough to explain as men with an artistic
temperament are still very scarce in photography, and that men artistically
endowed hesitate to explore this field is largely due to their complete
ignorance of photographic processes. Prejudices are always caused by
ignorance. They do not object to etching. And yet etching is as elaborate
a process as photography, as the conscientious etcher is also obliged to
prepare his own plate and baths and supervise the printing. But the etcher,
they argue, draws with his own hand; he does not let the sun and chemicals
draw for him.
Well argued; but as the sun and chemicals do their work tolerably well and
in some particulars even very well, why should the artist not take advan-
tage of them? If photography can help a Lenbach to produce a masterpiece,
why should not the medium itself, if the artist would condescend to endow
it with his personality as he does his painting, become a work of art? Here
Maeterlinck's argument comes in. Why be narrow-minded and disregard
the natural forces which all other professions utilize to their utmost
capacity ? Everybody knows how difficult it is to draw a nude. The
camera does it in a few moments. And to render it artistic, as for instance
Steichen does, only the same faculties which the painter employs in painting
his painting have to be put into action. The conception, the pose, the
study of light and shade, the arrangement of the accessories are, after all, the
essentials, in comparison to which the actual drawing is also only a
mechanical process.
That a photographic print can be a work of art has been proven in rare
instances, at least to my satisfaction. If a picture affects me with a
special and unique impression of pleasure, I care little whether it is a
chromo-lithograph or a painting, a photographic print or an etching. What
is this Craig Annan or Demachy print to me? What effect does it really
produce on me? Does it give me an esthetic pleasure? And if so, what
sort or degree of pleasure? Does it satisfy me as much as a Meryon
etching or a Shannon lithograph? The answers to these questions are the
aim of all true criticism; to know one's own impression as it really is, to

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