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

¶ Yet a more enthralling piece of work can hardly be imagined, or a more
valuable record be made, if done from the point of view of art as well as
technical efficiency. The mere collection of mere photographs would be
too depressing a burden to inflict on poor posterity; we might in that case
alter Sir Boyle Roche's apostrophe, and say, " What has posterity done that
it should suffer this ? ”
¶ But it is all but an empty dream, and one that will end in this mere
adumbration of it.
Frederick H. Evans.

A QUESTION OF TECHNIQUE.
¶NO QUESTION has given rise to more discussion, none has been
more misunderstood than that which comes to the mind of the photographer
at the mere mention of Focus and Definition. All the disputations were
needless could each of those holding different opinions but realize that his
opponent is at least entitled to an independent opinion, and that it takes all
sorts to make a world, and, moreover, that such differences of opinion are
necessary to avoid a condition of intellectual monotony.
¶There are those who elect to use the camera as a means of recording facts;
there are those who use it as a medium of exploiting the chemical and other
scientific advancements that have been made in that complex organism we
call photography.
¶ Both these sections of the community are more than justified, and are
probably engaged in more useful work than he who elects to employ his
camera-craft for the production of that, which for want of a better term, we
may call a picture. But, like wholesome food and quiet living, the more
useful side is to most of us the least pleasing and attractive, and the pursuit
of pictorial photography because of its inherent difficulties has all the
fascination of hunting an ignis fatuus; moreover, the fact remains that with
more or less vagueness of purpose the majority of photographers at the
present time do aspire to produce something which, to say the least, bears a
resemblance or possibly a relationship to that which within the strictly
limited or artistic sense is called pictorial.
¶ Now, the means to be employed and the manner of its usage depend
directly upon the motive, and none can blame him who would produce an
exhaustive record if his delineation be replete to the utmost degree with facts
and details. Again, the scientific experimentalist may play all the tricks he
pleases; his motive, that of experiment and investigation, justifies his acts;
but, assuming that the pictorial worker understands what he is about, his
motive at once necessitates his utilizing his process in a very different
manner. To begin with, it should hardly be necessary to attempt to convince
the reader that a picture in the artistic sense is not a transcript of nature, nor
does it attempt to imitate or reproduce nature. I have said that it should
not be necessary to explain this, but my acquaintance with the rank and file

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