Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 16))

THE RECENT EXHIBITIONS—SOME IMPRESSIONS.
AT The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession the blinds have
been drawn down on its first season of exhibitions. One
has followed another during the past months with clock-
work precision, placing in review examples of French,
English, German, Austrian, and American prints. The enterprise has been
amply justified, both by the quality of the exhibitions, and by the interest
they have awakened in the public. As one of the latter, rather than in a
capacity of critic, I have been asked to summarize my impressions; general
ones, gathered more or less at random — an after-glance toward the display
as a whole, rather than a recollection of individual prints.
Well, first of all, a tribute to the manner of showing. I have never
seen an exhibition presented with so discreet a taste, even by the Viennese
and Germans, who are adepts at such ensembles. The management, in this
instance, reserving to itself the privilege of showing what, when, and how it
chose, was in the unusual position of having nothing to consult except its
own sense of fitness. It could avoid superfluity, and exclude discord. But
the secret of its discretion — and it is worth making a note of—consisted in
adopting the photographic print itself as the unit of the scheme of arrange-
ment. This sounds obvious enough, but observe the result of conforming
to it logically.
For the present I assume, what I will later discuss more fully, that a pho-
tographic print has certain characteristics in common with etchings and engrav-
ings. It is another version of black and white ; can not without loss of quality
be indefinitely enlarged; is, indeed, most effective when it does not exceed
some thirteen by seventeen inches; and, in its character of being small and
choice, is out of place in a crowd. Now, if this is so of the unit, clearly the
multiple of it — the ensemble — should be characterized also by choiceness,
reticence, and an absence of crush. It is so in the Little Galleries.
Each of the three rooms is small and low; the walls covered with some
material that leaves an impression of pearly gray, or grayish grass; a shelf
running round to mark the “ line,” and below it curtains of a slightly lower
tone than that of the walls; here and there the accent of a piece of Japanese
pottery, a flowering spray, a morsel of sculpture — objects that lend spots of
piquancy to an arrangement which eludes your observation, and keeps mod-
estly in the background. Against it, of course in a single row, the prints
were hung at wide intervals, so that, as you examined each, it was quietly
detached from all its neighbors; you saw it secluded in an amplitude of deli-
cately neutral margin. However, the value of such detachment was not
realized for the first time here; it is, in fact, what every intelligent hanging-
committee, if allowed a free hand, would attempt. Recently, however, I
have seen a massed exhibition of the same prints in three galleries of the
Pennsylvania Academy. Here again they were detached on walls hung with
quiet drapery. But the rooms were lofty and comparatively large, and one
felt that in the vacancy individual prints did not adequately find themselves,