Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1905 (Heft 10))

And your painter is no less imaginative. Like the poet he is an im-
pressionist — that is to say, he shows us the world not as it is but as he feels
that the good God might have made it had he been educated in Paris. And
to give him credit, he sometimes so persuades himself by his own preaching
that, going out absent-mindedly to paint Spring pictures in March, he dies of
a chill and thereby vastly enhances the value of his past output. And even
the photographer (who, as we have seen, may also have a temperament) is
sometimes known to print his bleak fall landscapes through the glass and to
dream dreams.
Since then it appears that either Art is a Spring madness or that Spring
is an Art madness, and since as wise men it behooves us to look facts in the
face while as artists we must preserve our ideals, let us agree to worship
Spring nine months in the year and the other three we can pass in what
forgetfulness we may, taking stock, practicing philosophy and, withal, keep-
ing our feet dry and our souls from mildew. J. B. Kerfoot

GLASS VERSUS PAPER.
This title has not been chosen with a view to suggesting that there is
necessarily any rivalry between these two methods of exhibiting the positive
photographic image, or that either is so much better than the other as to
take final precedence, but to show, if possible, that the one, glass, is really
more akin to the lens origin of our image, and to draw attention to the fact
that both methods are equally important and valuable, and that therefore
the all but entirely neglected glass transparency is worthy of the best atten-
tion our pictorialists can give it. My own feeling as to any supremacy is
shown in my giving glass the position of attack in my title, more especially
as I intend this article for a glorification of the lantern-slide.
Photography is essentially a means of the perfect rendering of half-
tones, of detail, of gradation. It is not, as in etching, a means of saying
things by line, or by suggesting things by spaces; it is not, as in engraving, a
means of showing things by a multiplicity of lines, or of fine hatching, or dots,
etc.; it is not, as in wash-drawing, a means of giving bold or tender masses,
nor is it akin to pencil-drawing, or pen-and-ink work, or to lithography.
All these have their own definite methods and messages in art, and
though photography can cleverly enough simulate many of their effects, her
legitimate path is the dealing with abundant detail plus a wealth of, indeed
an entire dependence on, gradation, on half-tone, as it is called, in which the
detail is more or less importantly given.
Now, given paper as the base of a picture, it is easy to see that in all
methods but photography, it is essentially the best one, as the image given
is to be chiefly a greater or lesser number of lines, in greater or lesser ap-
proximation. There is nothing between those lines, or behind those masses,
as it were; they are of surface effect only, and their whole value is in the
suggestion they afford, and not so much in the direct fact they convey.
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