Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 6))

surely in the end, than to meddle in problems whose ultimate outcome we
can not grasp; in seeking to root out the bad, we stunt and destroy what
might, if left alone, be the beginning of a useful and valuable departure.
J. C. Warburg.

A MONOLOGUE.
Scene : Fifth Avenue, between Thirtieth and Thirty-first Streets.
Enter Hamlet-Steichen, wearing a Japanese obi as a necktie.
TO PAINT or photograph—that is the question:
Whether ’tis more to my advantage to color
Photographic accidents and call them paintings,
Or squeeze the bulb against a sea of critics
And by exposure kill them? To paint—to “snap”: —
No more; and, by a snap , to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That art is heir to— 'tisa consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To paint—to snap;
Perchance to tell the truth:—aye! there's the rub.
How may a fact be lost in fuzziness
When we have cast aside the painter'sbrush
Must give us pause: There’s the respect
That makes picture-painting of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The dealer's wrong, the patron's proud contumely,
The pangs of despised art, the cash’s delay,
The “nerve” of the profession, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might triumph over all
With a base camera? Who would brushes clean?
To grunt and sweat in schools or studios,
But that photograms were not dependent
On some manual fake: Photography turned painting;
Paintographs or photopaints; a sad plight,
Which makes me rather bear (at times) the painter’s ills
Than turn entirely secessionist.
Thus prudence makes chameleons of us all;
And thus my native store of “faky” talents
Is sicklied o’er with scarcity of tricks;
And enterprises of great moment to A. S.,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name: artistic. Soft you now!
The Käsebier, austere, comes down the street. Nymph of Newport,
In thy brownish tints be all my sins remembered!
Sadakichi Hartmann.

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