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

THE PARIS SALON AND “L’EFFORT,” OF BRUSSELS.
In the criticisms of these exhibitions, the Photo-Secession Loan Collection
there hung received an unusual amount of attention, and while all the
Secession work did not appeal to all the critics, yet, taken as a whole, it was
the feature of these exhibitions. In the official organ of the Photo-Club de
Paris, “La Revue de Photographie," there appeared a conscientious review
of the Salon by the pen of Robert Demachy, whose verdict must always
receive most respectful attention as that of a sincere worker.
THE “ROYAL” JUBILEE EXHIBITION.
In celebration of its Fiftieth Jubilee, the Royal Photographic Society of
Great Britain has sufficiently departed from its conservatism to devote a
section of its annual exhibition to invitation exhibits intended to show the
history and progress of pictorial photography. The Photo-Secession was
invited to exhibit as a body, besides which its more prominent members were
individually invited each to exhibit two pictures in this special section. For
a number of years past the attitude of the Royal has been such as to convince
most of the more prominent pictorialists that the organization, instead of
advancing the cause, has acted rather as a drag upon its progress. Notwith-
standing this feeling, pictorial photographers would undoubtedly have
supported the Royal were it not that it has chosen a time of year for its
Jubilee Exhibition coincident with the London Salon, with whose exhibition
it is thus directly thrown into competition. Under such circumstances the
Linked Ring must be first considered, simply because it has done and is
doing more for the interests of pictorial photography than the venerable
and conservative Royal. For these reasons the Photo-Secession and its
members individually deem it inexpedient to accept the invitation.
THE ST. LOUIS WORLD’S FAIR AND THE PHOTO-SECESSION.
The Photo-Secession received from J. A. Ockerson, Chief of the Liberal
Arts, St. Louis World’s Fair, an invitation to aid in securing an exhibit
of pictorial photographs to be hung at the exhibition. The conditions of the
invitation are, from the standpoint of the Photo-Secession, of such a nature
that to accept would mean to cast aside all the principles for which we have
struggled so long. The question of expense alone would be sufficient to
deter from participating, as, under the conditions named, everything but the
wall-space would have to be paid for, including the expenses of a trip to St.
Louis by the delegate to the “Committee of Review and Selection,, whom
we might send. In fact, the whole theory of selection and management
meets with disapproval and we can not see our way clear in making sacrifice
of principles without any prospect of accomplishing any advance for
photography.
We would, indeed, be surprised if the other organizations which have been
similarly invited were to accept the terms offered.

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