DOI article:
R. [Robert] Demachy, Pictorial Photography [reprint from The Complete Photographer, incl. letter from Alfred Stieglitz]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30586#0045
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modest man, and it does, generally; it will also make him more careful in
his productions and more severe for his faults, but it will not make him work
furiously with the idea of glory ahead. Now, I really believe, if the active
body of the Secessionists was brought forcibly to Paris and left there for a
year, that after six months they wouldn't ' do a thing.' And it would be a
pity, for I admire their work immensely, and I was the first one over here to
fight for their cause.
" Yet pictorial photography is not at its last gasp. It is quite alive, and
we are trying to keep it so. MM. de Pulligny and Puyo are working at
pictorial lenses, Puyo and I at a book on pictorial processes, Fresson has
been perfecting a pictorial printing-paper, and a number of men are working
over photographs in the hope that they will turn out pictorial too. In
truth, we have been getting some very promising work from the provinces
lately, from Brittany especially, and the prospect is not of an alarming
character.
" But there is no getting out of it, pictorial photographers are, and
always will be, called photographers, and the name covers such an amount
of anti-artistic iniquity that it will be hard, in France, at least, to get rid of
the associations that cling to that name, and suggest eternally young ladies
with beautiful smooth faces and clean-cut eyes, smiling at you from the
polished surface of a beveled-edged portrait carte.
" You will probably find a certain lack of optimism in my private views
on pictorial photography in France. Well, it would have been easy enough
to stir up a frothy mixture of jingoism and gum, and serve it hot; but you
know that we Frenchmen have a knack of painting ourselves blacker than
we are, for fear of subsequent detection, perhaps, or with the hope that we
will be judged more leniently when the time comes. R. Demachy. ”
29
his productions and more severe for his faults, but it will not make him work
furiously with the idea of glory ahead. Now, I really believe, if the active
body of the Secessionists was brought forcibly to Paris and left there for a
year, that after six months they wouldn't ' do a thing.' And it would be a
pity, for I admire their work immensely, and I was the first one over here to
fight for their cause.
" Yet pictorial photography is not at its last gasp. It is quite alive, and
we are trying to keep it so. MM. de Pulligny and Puyo are working at
pictorial lenses, Puyo and I at a book on pictorial processes, Fresson has
been perfecting a pictorial printing-paper, and a number of men are working
over photographs in the hope that they will turn out pictorial too. In
truth, we have been getting some very promising work from the provinces
lately, from Brittany especially, and the prospect is not of an alarming
character.
" But there is no getting out of it, pictorial photographers are, and
always will be, called photographers, and the name covers such an amount
of anti-artistic iniquity that it will be hard, in France, at least, to get rid of
the associations that cling to that name, and suggest eternally young ladies
with beautiful smooth faces and clean-cut eyes, smiling at you from the
polished surface of a beveled-edged portrait carte.
" You will probably find a certain lack of optimism in my private views
on pictorial photography in France. Well, it would have been easy enough
to stir up a frothy mixture of jingoism and gum, and serve it hot; but you
know that we Frenchmen have a knack of painting ourselves blacker than
we are, for fear of subsequent detection, perhaps, or with the hope that we
will be judged more leniently when the time comes. R. Demachy. ”
29
