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

Landon Rives; Harry C. Rubincam; H. T. Rowley ; Edmund Stirling ;
Myra Wiggins; S. S. Webber; and S. L. Willard.
The general average and standard of the exhibition were quite as high, if
not somewhat higher, than that of last year's members’show. Several new
notes have been struck, and all in all, American pictorial photography, as
represented by this Photo-Secession exhibition, shows itself thoroughly
alive. Up to the time of going to press, the attendance has been remark-
ably good, notwithstanding the fact that the novelty of the Secession Galleries
has worn off, and that this particular exhibition contains nothing of the
sensational order. This exhibition remains open until January first, when
a new collection will be on view. Admittance is free upon presentation of
visiting-card.

A VALUABLE BOOK — “THE
COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPHER”*
IT is with a sense of personal satisfaction—the personal
satisfaction that comes to us from finding that some one
has at last done what we have long wished that some
one would do—that we call attention to “The Complete
Photographer," by R. Child Bayley. The title is an
ambitious one, and to say that the book comes calculably
near to earning it, is to give it high praise; but
Mr. Bayley’s long personal familiarity with his subject,
his very actual and very catholic interest, and the
saving grace of his honest self-expression, give the book a character
and a value that are not to be gainsaid. To trace the pedigree of
photographic technics, to outline the successive dynasties of photographic
motifs, to review the present (that is to say, the pictorial) situation, and
discuss, informingly yet informally, the entire subject of photographic
means and photographic methods—this is what Mr. Bayley has undertaken
to do, and this is what, to a very satisfactory degree, he has accomplished.
Moreover, he has fulfilled another and perhaps a less obvious implication
of his title in that he has written a book which is neither deep enough to
submerge the beginner, nor too shallow for the expert to swim in. Here-
tofore there has frequently been something of analogy between the attitude
of the man who was writing about photography, and of the man who was
submitting to it. Each has been unduly conscious of his position. Each
has felt it incumbent upon him to sit up straight, and be preternaturally
unnatural. Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, has managed to be human even
while he is being technical, and the reader of his book has the double
pleasure of learning a great deal about photography, and of feeling that he
has met Mr. Bayley. J. B. Kerfoot.
* “The Complete Photographer,” by R. Child Bayley, with 100 illustrations, and photogravure frontispiece.
Demy 8vo, pp. 410 † xii. Methuen & Co., London. For the convenience of our readers, orders can be placed with
Camera Work, 1111 Madison Avenue, New York. Price, $3.50 net † postage, 50 cents.


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