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

A PAINTER’S IMPRESSION OF THE
WASHINGTON EXHIBITION.
UNTIL VERY recently the painter's attitude toward photography has
been that of good-natured tolerance. A few discerning and far-sighted
men, like the lamented Champney, saw the unbounded possibilities of
the camera in those early days when mechanical and chemical dexterity were
its accepted limitations. The full measure of honor due the up-to-date
pictorial photographer as an artist here in America has not yet been fully
accorded him, but that well-earned recognition is none the less certain and
near at hand.
The exhibition, recently held by the Photo-Secession in the Hemicycle
of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, seemed to me at first a
revelation; however, a more intimate acquaintance with that memorable
display convinced me that it was rather a confirmation of the deep-seated
conviction, secretly cherished since observing the photographs shown at
Chicago in ’93, that the line between painting and photography would soon
prove only a question of color, and remain such through unnumbered future
generations, if not always. Color is an element so subtle, and, in the higher
sense, only elusively present in nature. It is also well to bear in mind that,
delicate, pliable, and fairly exact as paint is, it is still but a clumsy means of
expressing one’s finer sensations in regard to color,
Thus it is that color suggested, as it often is in a truly successful print,
is more exact and satisfactory than a seemingly truthful and more complete
rendering of the same subject in paint.
The truth of this position was made very clear to me in the presence of
some of the prints exhibited at the Hemicycle. Furthermore, such prints
are to be preferred to imperfect color, for while hinting at color and tone in
an inexpressibly fascinating way, they do not have that actual polychromatic
character which too frequently diverts one’s attention from the fine rendering
of form, line, gradation, and quality. This singleness of impression possible
to the print is not sufficiently esteemed by the Camerist, as I have chosen to
designate the pictorial photographer, the man whose studies, aims, and hopes
be “art for its own sake ” in that limitless sense, where all mediums unite —
where laws about it cease, and the most perfect work yet produced in any
medium is only comparatively so. The unit which the print without color
makes is part of its strength. It is this quality often that is the chief charm
of a great etching, a charm which is denied all but very exceptional paintings.
My earlier visits to the exhibition were not critical. I simply reveled
in a delightful new development of a familiar medium, going from picture to
picture with much pleasure, for none were without some appealing qualities
of one kind or another. It is well to remember here that “not the
absence of faults but the presence of qualities ” marks the true work of art.
My later visits were more critical, and I found much in the display that
would not be acceptable to a jury of painters. The limitations of the
camera and thety ranny of the model were very apparent in some compositions

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