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

Storm,” “Poplars at the Brook,” “Summer,” “Southern Landscape,”
“Sirocco,” and “Roman Villa.” Kühn was the first to exhibit gum-prints at
German exhibitions, thereby furnishing food for more than derogatory criti-
cism of the new movement.
His artistic and technical development was very similar to that of his
two friends, he appearing to be by natural endowment the most mobile and
many-sided. He writes: “I had just about overcome the stage of doing
the usual thing when I became acquainted with Watzek and Henneberg at
the Vienna Camera Club. They exercised a great influence. I drew my
inspiration chiefly from frequent visits to art-galleries and specially to the
exhibitions of the Munich Secession. The landscapes of Petersen, Dill,
and others opened my eyes. I began to understand what they were striving
for. This realization I then endeavored to utilize in my own work. I
sought to give correct values, to arrive at a more interesting grouping of
masses, and to study nature more closely.” Kühn is still striving for subtle
tone-values. In closing his “Study of Values,” which we heartily recom-
mend to pictorial photographers, he says: “Orthochromatic photography is
a medium which makes it very nearly possible for us to reproduce the colors
according to their light-intensity. I must not, however, be understood to
say that the photographer must invariably resort to this medium. He must
control nature. For it is now entirely within his power to translate colors
into their monochromatic values; and if the negative should show any
discord, the gum process enables him at will to attune the discordant elements
in the print. Thus, on the one hand, he can subdue or entirely suppress
anything too prominent in the less important parts of the picture, while, on
the other, he can emphasize all the subtleties where they are interesting and
of importance for a pictorial effect. This naturally requires mastery of the
technique. The apparatus, the soulless machine, must be subservient, the
personality and its demands must dominate. The craftsman becomes an
artist.”
His pictures clearly show the result of his special methods. The pro-
portion of the light and color-values is frequently so truly reproduced that
we feel the sensation of color. It is not, however, solely the correct
instinct for tonal values which gives such importance to his work. It is
distinguished, besides, by his gift of seeing the essential and giving expres-
sion to it. There is a bigness in his conception, a quality which must not be
underestimated, as a comparison with other even good photographic land-
scapes will readily show. The reproductions in this number give but a faint
idea of his powers. His work includes genre pictures, street-scenes, still-
life, portraits, color-experiments, etc. etc. Taken all in all, Kühn is the
most diligent and competent of the German-Austrian pictorialists; and the
success of an exhibition has frequently been decided by his participation or
non-participation.
These three men deserve the entire credit for the development in
Germany of pictorial photography as that term is understood to-day.
Their artistic landscapes, refined “still-life” pictures, and their characteristic

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