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

particular aspect, some particular isolated grouping has conveyed to one, then
it is not by such a mere " statement,, of a building as the composite study,
but by the faithful translation of the isolated grouping, the rare effect of
lighting, the subtle depth of shadow. If more than this is given to the eye
and mind, simplicity and concreteness of effect and impression vanish and
the theatrical statement takes its place. " It may be magnificent, but it is
not”—picture-making in its highest and truest sense.
No, I think the critics who so cheerfully rule Photography out of court in
architectural picture-making are all in the wrong. With modern tools—lenses
perfect in equality of illumination, films perfect (in the double form I have
before advocated) in recording power (and that in an easily printable fashion)
—whatever be the complexity of cross-lightings, etc.—we can nowadays hope
and expect to record the subtle beauties, the ennobling grandeurs of our great
cathedral interiors in a way not to be despised nor even perhaps excelled by
any other monochrome method of art-expression.
For, added to the beauty of rendering and the successful conveying of
atmosphere, there is always the subtle sense of inevitable truth to subject,
intimacy of knowledge of it. It is the place, a truthful vision of it, and not
merely one to be taken on trust, depending whether the name of the artist
be more or less celebrated and acceptable. Frederick H Evans.

OUR ARTISTIC OPPORTUNITY.
THERE ARE two prime requisites necessary for the great
artist and seer—whether he be a maker of poetry, music,
pictures, sculptures, or buildings. First, he must have some-
thing to express; and second, he must know how to present it
to the best advantage — to embody his idea in as perfect form
as possible. We might also sub-divide the content of the artist’smessage
into two great divisions of the intellectual and the emotional. But this it
were not wise to try, for the intellectual and the emotional are twin require-
ments, complimentary parts, as it were; and though one of them may
preponderate noticeably in some instances, the two have to be subtly com-
bined in art-expression in a union almost as unanalyzable as that of the
spark of life in animate matter. But as to the requirements of the matter
and the manner — the something worth expressing and the power to put it
well—there is ever the ideal union to be sought, though in various forms of
art there are differences in the proportions of the two elements desired.
And artists by nature also vary in their ability to approach, and their
conception of, the ideal union of a perfect idea perfectly expressed.
Few have combined the highest thought and most intense emotion with
powerful expression in absolutely exquisite style, which forms the highest
achievement of great genius. Most artists fail in one or the other of the
great requirements. Some have much of worth to say, a pregnant mind or
a deeply emotional nature, or both ; yet do not seem able to acquire a good