Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 18))

is tempted to answer in unparliamentary language, “Right you are!" Is our
critic, then, ignorant of the tendencies and efforts of poor "pictorial photog-
raphers” [sic] during more than eleven years? There is not one of them
but has sadly convinced himself of the insufficiency of his precious medium.
The gum-bichromate, the Rawlins process, and others owe their great success
precisely to the assistance which they allow us to give to this insufficiency.
Yet in this year of our Lord 1906 M. Puyo is blamed for discrediting the
photographic medium by allowing us to suspect that it might be — so far as
the mechanism of the art is concerned—below the ultima ratio of perfection.
Let us say a word or two, then, in our turn about these wonderful
qualities of the medium that are so much dinned into our ears. Whence
come they ? They are not in the negative, the qualities of which are unique
and easy to establish, but which neither the critics nor their public have
opportunities of examining. Are they to be found in the print? In that
case they must be manifold and indefinable except by means of a long and
learned classification, for they vary with every description of printing process.
The medium — if we must use the term—of the albumenist is miles away
from that of the gummist, for both their materials and their methods of
working are different. For all that, each of these mediums is a photographic
one. That of Mr. Cadby, who they tell us works in dry point by means of
a salt of platinum, has not and ought not to have similar qualities to the
medium of Mr. Hollyer, who does oil paintings with I know not what.
When, then, the critics—our neighbors—accuse M. Puyo of betraying
the qualities of his medium because he has left on his print traces of the
instrument necessary to develop it, they deceive themselves and lead their
readers astray. A print developed with a brush which resembles a print
developed with a brush betrays nothing at all; it is consistent with itself.
It would be another thing if one of M. Puyo's gums affected the distinctive
qualities of the bromide medium. But this is precisely what the English
critic of to-day would like, if I am to credit the numerous rumors which
have reached me.
Let us entertain no illusions with regard to the movement now being
organized in England. It is bringing us straight back to the mechanical
system against which we have so persistently fought. The photographic
character is, and has always been, an anti-artistic character, and the mechani-
cally-produced print from an untouched negative will always have in the
eyes of a true artist faults in values and absence of accents against which the
special qualities so loudly proclaimed will not count for much.
We must beware of the praises so suddenly lavished by these writers
on photography pure and simple. They have not been given without there
being something also in the background. For we find that they are angry
at the growing resemblances to methods of art which are still incontestably
superior to photography both in system and in the effects produced; they
forbid us to take them as models; they exhaust themselves, in fine, in
ingenious arguments tending to strengthen the barriers which we have been
engaged in shaking down. We know not whether our friends across the