Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 8))

public says the photographer is wrong. Interesting as this subject is, it is
altogether too long and too technical to discuss here. The physicists, how-
ever, have demonstrated that there is no true system of values, that truth of
values in art is a mathematical impossibility, and that all systems of values
resolve themselves into the personality and idiosyncrasies of the artist. So,
after all, the photographer is merely practicing one of numerous untruthful
systems. Therefore the question is not, “Is the photograph true?” but
“Does it charm?” You can answer that question for yourself.
Roland Rood.

PROS AND CONS.
II. CRITIC VERSUS CRITIC.
FROM THIS same seven-year-old Contemporary Review I get
another text for a short discussion, and this I can supplement by a
text or two from the very recent pronouncements of Professor
Herkomer on the same subject in The Magazine of Art.
Mr. Pennell, in his article, says that he can not agree with
another art-critic (whose initials as given, D. S. M., cover the name
of D. S. MacColl, the very eminent art-critic of The Saturday Review), when
he says that “a photograph will give a better idea of an ancient building than
a drawing by an architectural draughtsman.” A very acceptable verdict, es-
pecially from so penetrating a critic.
Our adverse critic goes on to say: “The senseless lens of the camera
will never record the vital characteristic qualities of great architecture. For
two reasons: First, because it is mechanically impossible in the majority of
cases for the lens to take in the subject that is wanted; and, secondly, even
if it does, there is always in the best of photographs a hopeless confusion of
detail and light and shade.”
The reader will surmise how this interests me and how gleefully I try
to disprove it. As my own chief love and belief in photography is known
to be architectural picture-making, and as the critic himself is almost wholly
an architectural draughtsman, he is an opponent one is glad to encounter,
as his opinion would be taken by most to be an instructed one and therefore
authoritative.
We may dismiss “the senseless lens” as merely another loose expression,
with the reminder to our critic that we have yet to learn that even his tools,
his pencils and brushes are other than “senseless.” Tools are but tools in
any art, and it would be a sad day for one’s individuality were we to find
that any of our tools were other than the dead, inanimate, “senseless” things
they now are and ought to be, waiting on us, their masters, to breathe
through them the breath of life into our creations.
For a moment we will leave the “mechanically impossible” case to go
on to the “hopeless confusion of light and shade.” Just here we may most
helpfully make our quotations from Prof. Herkomer: “In photography,
light is the great mischief-maker.” This is just about as luminous as saying.

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