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

we fear that in consequence we may seem somewhat biased, we reprint a few
extracts from the criticisms published by three prominent American art-critics
—in no way identified with photographic politics—in the daily press upon the
exhibition in question.
Mr. Fitzgerald, one of the keenest and most modern of the New
York critics, said in the Evening Sun, December 10, 1904:
An ever-present difficulty for the chronicler of art is to decide the nice point of how to treat
the several exhibitions that come under his notice in such a way as to protect his own opinions
without needlessly offending the susceptibilities of the exhibitors or wantonly outraging their sense
of fitness. Once or twice we have had the misfortune to differ radically from an artist’spersonal
opinion of his genius, but this is an accident one is compelled to accept as an inevitable consequence
of the fallibility of human judgment. The difficulty we speak of arises from the various nature of
the exhibitions and the possible estimates of various types.
Thus the photographers this year, having raised their exhibition a step higher in the scale of
Art by the appointment of a jury of painters, bestow upon it the title of “Salon” and betray so
many other terrifying symptoms of estheticism that we are afraid to comment upon the "pictures"
shown at Mr. Clausen’s.
After considering the work of Mr. F. Holland Day, and finding him spoken of with awe
in the catalogue as “the Master," we fear that as yet we have not succeeded in acquiring that
spirit of reverence with which it is necessary to approach Modern Photography. For the present,
therefore, we must postpone all comment on the Salon.
Charles De Kay, the well-known American art-critic and art-editor
of the New York Times, wrote as follows in that paper on December
14, 1904:
There is the Camera Club of New York, and there is the organization of the Photo-
Secession, but amateur photographers exist in such abundance that a third society has been formed
to appease photographers of the upper part of Manhattan. It bears the formidable title of Metro-
politan Camera Club, and boasts that it “occupies 6,000 square feet of space in a modern office-
building in the center of the residence district of the city." It is this society under whose auspices
the First American Photographic Salon makes its bow with an exhibit of somewhat less than 400.
Noble four hundred ! An idea of the popularity of kodaks, and the general thirst for the privilege
of exhibiting works of art wrought by the patient camera, may be obtained from the statement in
the “Greeting ! ” that nearly 10,000 frames were entered !
To sift this mighty mass twenty-one painters, led by Mr. La Farge, devoted hours which
might have been spent in sweet excursions on canvas with the brush ; but, like the soldiers at
Thermopylas, there was the country to be saved, and to a man they stood their ground, undismayed
by the barbarians. When at last they fell, only a few hundred, or to be exact, 369, of the enemy
pressed forward over their corpses, and seized the heights of Clausen’sGalleries, 381 Fifth Avenue.
The Photographic Salon is a federation of societies in Portland, Me., and Portland, Ore., in
Toronto, Canada, and Washington, D. C.; in New York, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, and
Brooklyn; in Columbia (State not given), and one other at large—for the “Salon Club of
America" has no definite local habitation, though it is organized to “encourage photographic salons
and other exhibitions of an artistic character at home and abroad—upon request." Furthermore,
the Salon Club of America promises to “encourage pictorial photography " — as if that were
needed—“ promote good-fellowship among those devoted thereto, coöperate with new and rising
talent, and provide a new field without prejudice to photographic pictorialists."
For a new field new terms are required, and “ photographic pictorialist "exactly fills the
void. Anybody can be a photographer who possesses a kodak, but must it not require a long
training and a large consumption of patience and gray matter to become a photographic pictorialist ?
The Chairman of the Salon Club is Mr. Curtis Bell of New York, and he is also President
of the Metropolitan Camera Club, and Chairman of the Hanging Committee of the First American
P.S. After a prolonged study of the catalogue one feels a certain satisfaction in at last touching

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