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

all possible meanings and virtues into the worthy works of others. At any
rate, it is a fact that technical and semi-technical excellencies in the arts can
give great pleasure to cultured persons. Yet this need not in any way con-
flict with the more general belief that art not only should have an underlying
meaning in its excellence, but should have one of lovelier import than those
inherent in the ordinary productions of every-day life — of competition
and commercialism.
It is the more unfortunate that there should be such antagonism of
theories as to art, because it is not theory but accomplishment that counts
anyway. Any discussion pro and con that makes people think would seem
at first glance to be worth while; but this antagonism of ideas even more
effectually adds to the natural difficulties of an understanding between the
small camp of the artists and the large number of exceedingly well-meaning
persons in the world who do not know as much as they think they do, and
would like to know, about art. The public loses thereby, as also does art;
while her true meaning and mission lies unchampioned, miscomprehended
and ineffective between extremes of theory. The every-day mortal, repelled
by such extreme claims as those of the apostles of paint, falls back upon his
crude, inherited notions of natural-realism: that painting should be high-class
illustration, that poetry should echo his sentimental and moral heart-throbs,
and that music was developed to enable him to hear oratorios. By catering
to these elementary ideas small craftsmen get undue recognition, and the
sentimental flourishes widely in verse or paint, the “actually true” story or
naturalistic picture is lauded by the uncultured more than it might have been
had artists and critics—if not deigning to meet the public part way—at least
had tried to tempt the uncritical on, rather than to repel by a defiance that is
apt to react to the injury of the worker’sown best development. It is slow
progress even if the artist merely waits for the public to meet him half-way.
It is very difficult for the philistine to pull himself up at all unaided. He
would rather remain in the slough of process, where he is amused by the
anecdotal chromo or touched by the homely-pathetic. These are the things
he takes to his heart, unassisted; although he also goes to be puzzled now
and then by searching for a wrong “meaning” or intention in recondite works.
Is it not the privilege, and practically the duty, of pictorial photography
to step into the breach ? The camera is widely used and attracts even greater
popular attention; and in the hands of a few it has proved itself capable of
producing results of absolute artistic worth. Is it not, then, to be one of the
important means for bridging a heretofore difficult gulf, and for promoting a
much better popular understanding of art and its value in life? Is not pho-
tography to be one of the ways by which artists, from higher ground, shall
assist many up from lower levels of art-love and culture, and by which num-
berless amateurs shall find the means to educate their own taste for the beauti-
ful and the taste of their associates in a practical, objective manner and in
ever-widening circles of influence ? Probably in time the camera will be
reckoned as only less important than the printing-press as an influence in
modern civilization. Dallett Fuguet.

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