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

HANS WATZEK.
“Those to whom art is only a trade have never known the great thoughts
of the real artist face to face with nature.”—Alex. Tavernier.
KÜHN, HENNEBERG, and Watzek, the Viennese “Kleeblatt,” are
names comparatively unknown to American photographers, and their
work is known only through the oft-times unsatisfactory medium of magazine
reproductions. They have formed part of one of the most thoroughly
individual and intellectually artistic movements of modern times. An art
atmosphere, social, musical, literary, and artistic, which gives us men like
Klinger, Hoffman, Strauss, Klimt, and others, has given us likewise Kühn,
Henneberg, and Watzek. And it is not remarkable that a movement so
intense and enthusiastic, so profoundly serious, so essentially modern,
should have produced among its artists some that became photographers.
Nor is it more or less remarkable that this group of sculptors, painters, and
architects were sufficiently great in their artistic interest to recognize and
receive these photographers and their craft.
Although Watzek’s prints lack something of the noblesse of conception and
eloquence that we find in Kühn, and more especially in Henneberg, they
have other sterling qualities to compensate. There is a crisp freshness and
vigor in everything Watzek has done, a spontaneity and whole-heartedness
we admire, and certainly a virtuosity, the brilliance of which compels us to
stand by and applaud. There is no one to my knowledge working with the
camera who is so thoroughly an impressionist, using the term in its true
sense, as Watzek. He concerned himself with great and difficult problems,
both technical and artistic, and went at the solving of them with a remarkable
confidence. He thoroughly analyzed his medium, accepted no prescribed
limitations, and, what is more, prescribed none himself.
There is reason in everything he did, a scientific basis and analysis such as in
painting we credit to Monet.
He discovered an individual technique and expressed therewith his thorough
artistry. His manner of breaking up large surfaces gave vitality to his
values and great luminosity and atmosphere to the ensemble. He was a
pioneer in photography, but above all, an artist.
At a time when photography is but commencing to develop seriously, his
death becomes keenly felt. He was one of the few that exalted
photography’s ideals by the dignity of his labors. Eduard J. Steichen.

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