Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 17))

(England) “Pines” is a good workmanlike exercise; the trees are
excellently placed and in good lighting, but the whole effect is not specially
inspired or inspiring; one accepts it, but does not linger over it. His
“ Evening Mists” is a tender piece of work in a difficult sort, but it errs on
the side of indistinctness and irresoluteness; the detail, the “stuff” through
the mist, should be a good deal more understandable, apparent, and real;
the whole is too tenuous to have a sufficiently abiding charm.
Horsley Hinton's (England) “On the Moors,” was a daring and a
difficult thing to try for, but it “ comes off” excellently. The sudden and
fleeting mist that comes sweeping across a moorland stretch, filmy and trans-
parent, yet of sufficient body to all but hide the rocks and ground it races
over—all this I have reveled in many and many a time, and Mr. Hinton’s
fine work brings back my enjoyment with a keen edge to it. His com-
position is happier than usual, and the textures and focusing are free from
those eccentric and inartistic — because unpainterlike—effects that too often,
for me, mar his work. Mr. Craigie’s (England) portrait of Coburn is quite
successful as a character-study, very well lit and modeled; a virile and well-
balanced piece of work. Arthur Marshall's “Appian Way” suffers from
an absurdly undue mass of foreground, reducing the “Way ” itself to a mere
inconsiderable rise or slope in the distance; trim away a full half from the
bottom and it becomes a good enough exercise, though not specially remark-
able. These exaggerated foregrounds, which the eye never sees or feels,
come from the full enlarging of whatever the snap-shot camera, with its
insufficient rising front, has given. I feel sure that if this “ Appian Way”
had been taken direct in this size on a large plate this effect of grossly
exaggerated foreground would not have been worked for; why then keep it,
when it is but due to a defective use of a small hand-camera? “A Venetian
Pearl,” by the same hand, is nearly a really fine thing; but the sky is poor
in gradation and sense of space; the whole is too good not to be discarded
in its present state, and tried for again when the conditions should prove
happier. Walter Clutterbuck’s (England) “ In the Trades” is finely full of
go and motion, while at a respectful distance the undue granularity of surface
does not worry overmuch. Here again this unpleasant peculiarity of inferior
gum-work, the granular surface-appearance which obtrudes itself, and will
not be lost sight of, goes through all planes alike, and insists on being felt.
Kühn (Austria) has a good collection, which, though of course full of
excellent work, does not move me as did last year's; but his “ Schoolboy ”
is an unconventional child-study full of character.
Mrs. Käsebier (America) sends a gum version of her very exquisite
girl-study, “Josephine.” I rejoice in the possession of a perfect platinotype-
print of this, and for truth, and charm, and value, in every way I rank it as
infinitely superior to this “gum” version. The platinotype is arresting and
enjoyable at first sight, and grows on one as a quite perfect and happy piece
of true portrait-photography; but the gum version is hardly more than
interesting. I should like to see a good platinum-print of Mrs. Käsebier’s
“From the Crinoline Ball,” a colored photograph of much charm, though not

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