Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 19))

But apart from the absence of this mysterious something, this thumb-mark
of the living, thinking, and feeling artist, are there not other things wrong in
all straight photographs—faults due not only to the inevitable human errors
in exposure and development, but to photography itself, photographic faults
in the rendering of values (that no orthochromatic plates are capable of cor-
recting without creating other exaggerations just as bad), faults in the equal
translation of important and useless detail, in the monotonous registering of
different textures, in the exaggeration of brilliant spots, and in other things,
too ? What will the pure photographer do when he has detected these faults?
If he allows them to remain out of respect for the laws of the pure goddess
photography, he may prove himself a high priest photographic, but will he
still be a true artist, faithful to the gospel of art ? I believe that, unless he
has had his fingers amputated according to the dictates of Bernard Shaw, he
will feel them itching to tone down or to lighten this spot or that, and to do
other things also. But he may not do these things, the Law of the Straight
Print forbids it. The conclusion is simple enough, for there is no middle
course between the mechanical copy of nature and the personal transcription
of nature. The law is there; but there is no sanction to it, and the button-
pressers will continue to extol the purity of their intentions and to make a
virtue of their incapacity to correct and modify their mechanical copies. And
too many pictorialists will meddle with their prints in the fond belief that any
alteration, however bungling, is the touchstone of art. Later on perhaps a
sane, moderate school of pictorial photography will evolve. La vérite est en
marche, mais elle marche lentement.
Before ending I can not but confess my astonishment at the necessity of
such a profession of faith as the one I have been making. Pictorial photog-
raphy owes its birth to the universal dissatisfaction of artist photographers in
front of the photographic errors of the straight print. Its false values, its
lack of accents, its equal delineation of things important and useless, were
universally recognized and deplored by a host of malcontents. There was a
general cry toward liberty of treatment and liberty of correction. Glycerine-
developed platinotype and gum bichromate were soon after hailed with
enthusiasm as liberators; to-day the oil process opens outer and inner doors
to personal treatment. And yet, after all this outcry against old-fashioned
and narrow-minded methods, after this thankful acceptance of new ones, the
men who fought for new ideas are now fighting for old errors. That docu-
mentary photographers should hold up the straight print as a model is but
natural, they will continue doing so in æternum for various personal reasons;
but that men like A and B should extol the virtues of mechanical photography
as an art process, I can not understand.
I consider that, from an art point of view, the straight print of to-day is
not a whit better than the straight print of fifteen years ago. If it was faulty
then it is still faulty now. If it was all that can be desired, pictorial photog-
raphers, the Links and the various secessionists of the new and the old
world have been wasting their time, to say the least, during the last decade.
Robert Demachy.

24