Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 13))

to make an effort to familiarize itself with the history of artistic photography
and its exponents, and would acquire the necessary knowledge to enable it
to discuss intelligently the technical questions and the craftsman's side of
the work.
Recent criticism is chiefly directed against the tendency to attain purely
painter-like effects through photography, or, as has been said, "one pho-
tographer seeks to imitate the ' Warpsweder ’ painters, another to copy
Terborch, while the third tries to produce a sketchy background like
Koner.” Such a view is not without its justification, for we can not boast of
great progress if we find photographers, with a certain amount of talent for
drawing, imitating effects of pencil-drawings, etchings, or reproductions of
paintings. In its highest perfection photography remains a distinct branch
of art, whose means of expression are entirely different from those employed
by painters. Even if, instead of giving a mere literal transcript of reality,
the photographer would reproduce the effect of nature upon the spectator
by giving due consideration to line, tone, and distribution of light and dark
in space, he is by no means compelled to resort to the painter's medium of
expression. After all, such an attempt involves merely the solution of tech-
nical questions, even though it requires the guidance of an artistic concep-
tion. On the other hand, the critics unjustly object to a good many effects
—as, for instance, certain chiaroscuro ones — as being painter-like, which
they would find perfectly legitimate if they were to approach them from the
standpoint of the photographer. Like sculpture, poetry, and music, pho-
tography can be found only on its own peculiar paths, and it is only by
traveling those paths that criticism can be fair, or that it can aid the pho-
tographer and remove misunderstandings and abuses.
I have spoken of the mediocre photographers, who unconsciously copy
outward appearances and then pose as rivals of those they imitate. I do not
know the extent to which this phenomenon exists in other countries, since
my acquaintance with foreign photographers is confined to the capable ones
among them. In Germany and Austria, however, the trouble is very preva-
lent. Ten years ago they copied the silvery gray platinotypes of the
English photographers; now Kühn and Henneberg are the models; to-
morrow they will be imitating the Americans. All of which shows that
photography is in most cases not practiced by artists. For the work of the
artist is altogether original and independent. It shows that artistic pho-
tography, so-called, is chiefly the work of dilettanti; for the work of the
dilettante consists in finding out how a thing is to be done—in imitating.
The dilettante knows no limitations imposed by an artistic individuality.
He considers himself equal to all tasks, and is the slave of fashion.
At the end of the eighties there was great activity in the Vienna
Camera Club, well known even abroad. Those days abounded with ani-
mated debates for and against unsharpness, for and against the pinhole-
camera, the monocle, self-prepared papers, plein air effects, and the con-
ception of nature of the modern Munich and Paris painters. They were
the best days of the Club, the davs of rising talents and of the most brilliant