Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 5))

can not get to Windsor to rejoice in the originals; and certainly we must
have nothing to do with Bartolozzi’swatering down of them into the pretty-
pretty.
¶This enterprise of Mr. Strang's, in which I venture to wish him the
completest artistic success he can desire, suggests how fine a thing it would
be if we photographers could be making a serious effort toward the
founding of a collection of really great portraits of our great contemporaries.
The artists are with us who could begin this important work, though
doubtless few in number; but the means are unfortunately lacking, as well
as the belief on the part of the sitters that this is their best chance of being
sent effectively down to posterity “ in their habit as they lived.” Present
fees will not do it, as no one will pay enough just yet to properly
reimburse an artist of the requisite capability to give up sufficient time to
its accomplishment. We have not at present a multi-millionaire, with a
craze for photographic art, sufficiently mad to be tempted to endow a studio
for this noble purpose! Yet how good it would be; it might even be made
a National work, did we but see its importance.
¶ What more interesting collection have we in London, for instance, than
our National Portrait Gallery? Yet who does not go through it but with
fear and doubt as to the reality of the likenesses? Even our greatest
contemporarv in this work, G. F. Watts, does not achieve always, indeed
very seldom, that instant sense of physical as well as spiritual likeness that
appeals as necessarily true. And that is why I air my anxiety to see the
good work begun of a collection of great photographic portraits, to have
equal honor in a National collection with the painted portraits; not
necessarily side by side — that might be invidious — but to have equal value
as records.
A DREAM.
¶ I lately dreamt that I had the overseeing of a huge National Photographic
Record of current life, buildings, people, types, etc., as a Department of
History-making for Posterity. I had such autocratic authority that I was
able to deal at will with persons, or buildings, or even with street life, by
having the police to stop all traffic at the point and at the moment of my
required picture. In buildings, even in our conservative cathedrals, I had
the Governmental right to remove benches, pews, chairs, wherever I listed;
to erect a scaffold where I chose, for the record of a bit of precious detail
otherwise invisible. I had also the right to call on any person, public or
private, to sit for his portrait, either as a celebrity or as a type of the
current life. My small army of workers were as enthusiastic as myself, and
adequately trained; and my only sorrow was that I could not live to witness
the satisfaction of posterity over this veritable history-making. Imagine
such a series of Elizabethan or Tudor times, to go no further back.
¶ It is not the current but the past that delights and charms us most; we
have the present, like the poor, always and too much with us; it is only
the exceptionally enthusiastic student who sees in it what will have the like
interest and value for posterity that the past has now for us.