Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1905 (Heft 9))

attitude of the Buckeye school and their photographs are taken in the
attitude of the impressionist.
An interesting idiosyncrasy of judgment of values has given rise to
opposed schools of keys. The term key is used by painters to express the
scale of values a picture is painted in. The impressionistic painters of sunlit
landscape are said to paint in a high key because their range of colors runs
from white down the value scale to something far lighter than black. The
Whistlerian school of figure-painters are said to paint in a low key because
their range of colors runs from black up to something quite a distance below
white. When a painter paints normally — namely, uses the full gamut of his
palette—the key usually attracts no attention and is not spoken of. The high-
key and the low-key impressionist is perfectly logical. When we look from
a slightly dark room out of the window, over the sunlit meadows and hills,
the whole scene, by contrast with the surrounding darkness of the room, will
appear very light, particularly if we compare the landscape frequently enough
with the interior. This effect is due to contrast; the enormous contrast
between the dark walls and the sunlight making the comparatively light
shadows outside appear still lighter than they are. The instant we step out-
of-doors the great lightness, particularly that of the shadows, disappears.
The impressionist assumes that he is indoors, looking out of a window, and
if the beholder has properly attuned his imagination, and can place himself
where the artist imagined himself to be, the picture may have a rare charm;
but if the beholder lacks this imagination he will see merely chalk. The
Whistlerian impressionist either places his sitter or imagines him in a dark
part of the room, while he himself is in a light part. Again, the same effort
of imagination on the part of the beholder is required to turn those leathery
flesh-tones into health and life, and sometimes he is fortunate enough to be
able to do so. When the painter assumes himself to be in the same light
that he is portraying, and uses the full, or nearly full, range of his palette, the
difficulty of understanding what he means to express is much lessened, as
little translation is required. The photographer has the same possibilities of
controlling his keys as his values, and may achieve either the same successes
or sad failures that the painters have done. Stieglitz's photographs are
masterly examples of what may be accomplished with a properly poised key.
There are many other systems of values that have been employed by
artists, but these are enough, and I hope that I have to a slight extent com-
bated the prevalent idea that there is but one truth of values. The only
requirement to make values truthful is that they shall be consistent and
expressive of something interesting and artistic in nature. The lack of
ability of the camera to render values of local color is not untruthful; it is
merely one of its personalities, just as it was the personality of Giorgione to
leave too few values for his blacks and deep shadows. The artistic photog-
rapher has it to-day in his power to evolve an entirely new philosophy of
values, to do something that has never been done before, and to be just as
truthful as his contemporaries and predecessors with the brush.
Roland Rood.

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