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

Surely it is absurd to condemn Photography because it can not do every-
thing; it should be sufficient to condemn it when it does not do well what it
sets out to do. What folly, for instance, it would be for us to condemn an
otherwise delightful pencil-drawing of a cathedral interior by this artist-critic
because he does not give in it a knowledge of the color-effect of the glorious
stained-glass window he includes in his picture!
But this " mechanically impossible” leads our critic on to another con-
demnation: " An architectural draughtsman uses his brain and his hands to
give the best possible rendering of a building, and to do this he is frequently
compelled to compose his effects and to alter his point of view.” Now,
though I know that even great artists have done this thing also, I would
seek to condemn it, as not only an untruthful procedure but also an essen-
tially inartistic one.
It is untruthful because, whatever be the mental effect the picture is
meant to have on us as a picture merely (that is, when we are unacquainted
with the original subject and have to get our only impression of the building
from this picture of it), it fails of all genuine effect when we try to recognize
it in the building itself. Then we see that the composite structure we have
had imposed on us is far inferior to the effect the real building has; it seems
but a theatrical statement when compared with the simplicity and quiet
grandeur of the real thing.
Our progressive realization of it, as we pursue its aisles, enter its dim
chapels, look aloft into its dark roofs, dwell on the mystery of its lights and
linger in the deeps of its glorious shadows, gives us so much fuller an im-
pression of mediæval imagination and work than any “bovrilised” version,
secured by combining together a half-dozen points of view into one spectac-
ular effect. For an after-delight and memorizing of it pictorially, I would,
personally, far rather have a series of isolated instances of its grandeurs and
beauties than any " composed effect from altering the point of view”; a thing,
moreover, we are unable to realize, because we are unable from any single
point of view to get the draughtsman's effect.
A drawing, or painting, or photograph of a cathedral interior should be
at least true enough, in reproducing the building in any of its various effects,
to enable the beholder to recognize it and to have the joy, when next visit-
ing the building, of having its beauties heightened for him by this new
acquaintance with it through pictures. One should always find in the artist’s
picture a revelation of beauty and grandeur beyond what the untrained eye
would discover for itself; but this must never be in the way of inventing
effects which the layman will be unable to " place” when proving his en-
joyment of the pictures in the building itself.
There is no joy of recognition from these composite things, for there
is no seeing them; they have no real existence, because the single gaze, the
stable point of view, can not and does not embrace them.
And when I so condemn this type of work, it is mainly from the poet-
ical, the sympathetic, the impressionistic aspect. When one seeks in
one’spictures to embody a mood, a feeling, a joy, an experience that some

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