Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 15))

BERNARD SHAW’S APPRECIATION OF COBURN.

During the months of February and March of the present year, an exhibition of Mr. Alvin
Langdon CobunFs photographs took place in the rooms of the Royal Photographic Society
of Great Britain, London. The exhibition aroused unusual interest, not only through the
actual merit of the work shown by this Photo-Secessionist, but through the exceptionally
enthusiastic Appreciation from the pen of Bernard Shaw prefacing the catalogue. The
Appreciation has made copy for virtually every photographic magazine in the English language,
and has also appeared as an original contribution in one of our prominent New York popular
monthlies. We nevertheless feel impelled to reprint it, not only as a matter of record —
Coburn being one of the leading spirits in the class of photography we are so deeply
interested in — but because it is especially opportune in this number.—Editor.

MR. ALVIN LANGDON COBURN is one of the most
accomplished and sensitive artist-photographers now living.
This seems impossible at his age — twenty-three; but as he
began at eight, he has fifteen years’ technical experience be-
hind him. Hence, no doubt, his remarkable command of
the one really difficult technical process in photography — printing. Tech-
nically, good negatives are more often the result of the survival of the fittest
than of special creation : the photographer is like the cod which produces
a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. The ingenuities of
development which are so firmly believed in by old hands who still use slow
“ordinary” plates and develop them in light enough to fog a modern fast
color-sensitive plate in half a second, do not seem to produce any better
results than the newer timing system which is becoming compulsory now
that plates are panchromatic and dark-rooms must be really dark. The lati-
tude of modern plates and films, especially those with fast emulsions super-
imposed on slow ones, may account partly for the way in which workers like
Mr. Evans get bright windows and dark corners on the same plate without
overexposure in the one or underexposure in the other. And as to choosing
the picture, that is not a manipulative accomplishment at all. It can be
done by a person with the right gift at the first snapshot as well as at the
last contribution to The Salon by a veteran. But printing remains the test of
the genuine expert. Very few photographers excel in more than one proc-
ess. Among our best men the elder use platinotype almost exclusively for
exhibition work. People who can not see the artistic qualities of Mr. Evans’
work say that he is “ simply ” an extraordinarily skilful platinotype printer,
and that anybody's negatives would make artistic pictures if he printed them.
The people who say this have never tried (I have); but there is no doubt
about the excellence of the printing. Mr. Horsley Hinton not only excels
in straightforward platinotype printing, but practices dark dexterities of com-
bination printing, putting the Jungfrau into your back garden without effort,
and being able, in fact, to do anything with his methods except explain them
intelligibly to his envious disciples. The younger men are gummists, and
are reviled as “ splodgers ” by the generation which can not work the gum
process.

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