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

ST. PETERSBURG.
¶The Secretary of the St. Petersburg International Photographic Exhibition
has sent word that the Photo-Secession Loan Collection, in its entirety,
has been awarded the highest honors — the gold medal — in the Pictorial
Section of the exhibition. It thus seems that American photography, as
represented by Secession ideas, is appreciated quite as highly in Russia as
in Italy. The list of individual awards has not, as yet, been announced.
THE CHICAGO PHOTOGRAPHIC SALON.
¶ After having made preparations to send at least one hundred and fifty
frames to Chicago comes the word that the authorities of the Chicago Society
of Amateur Photographers are unable to live up to their agreement to give
the Photo-Secession the requisite amount of space. This is unfortunate, as
it is impossible to compress the collection without destroying its scope and
importance. We are sorry to be compelled to disappoint the Chicago Society
and feel much disappointed ourselves.

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
¶ IN DEVOTING the major part of the illustrations in this issue of Camera
Work to Mr. Robert Demachy, of Paris, we are but following the plan of
presenting to our readers in each number the work of some world-figure in
pictorial photography. Mr. Demachy devotes himself solely to the gum
process, and is recognized not only as the father of gum, but also as a past-
master in the technique of this most elastic of photographic printing
mediums. The examples of his work herein reproduced are but a few of
the hundreds of pictures produced by this most fertile of photographers,
and are mainly of recent origin. In past years Demachy was fond of using
reds and browns as his pigments, but his more recent work is all done in
black. His later products show a decidedly greater breadth of handling
and a development of his undoubted artistic temperament. He was one of
the first to understand and appreciate the modern American work, and out
of it drew some inspiration, as he himself admits. Excellent as our repro-
ductions are, they can not adequately convey the subtlety or the texture to
be found in the originals; the quality of Demachy gum prints being inherent
in the medium and incapable of reproduction by any other process.
¶ It is surprising to us that the growing use and abuse of gum by the mem-
bers of various photographic organizations have not led these societies to
purchase a few of his originals to serve as exemplars to the struggling
gummist, for Demachy’s gum prints, more than any others, will lead the
beginner along the proper path.
¶ ’Midst Steam and Smoke by Prescott Adamson, of Philadelphia, and La
Cigale by Frank Eugene, of New York, are two well-known American
pictorial photographs which, unlike the Demachys which were reproduced
from the original gum prints, were made in photogravure directly from the
negatives. Editors.