Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 20))

AD INFINITUM.

I WAS honestly in search of information and guidance. I had
turned from the reviews after having failed to find in them one
atom of real originality, one word that could be of real help or
inspiration. They conveyed chiefly the more or less valuable
indices of their authors’ likes and dislikes. He, the reviewer of the X
Journal, liked this, hence it was good. He disliked that, it logically followed
that it was bad: and—and—and—and—ad infinitum.
Here and there certain reviewers evidenced a semi-consciousness of the
moribund nature of the stuff by attempting to vivify it with a saline infusion
of smartness. Invariably there was an impudent assumption of authoritative
finality, whose sole support, after careful search through the string of
commonplace phrases composing the whole, was to be found in the
assumption itself. Mainly the reviews were made up of the conventional
verbiage of commercialized criticism. Even where, as it happened in rare
instances, the reviewer seemed to have had an original opinion or conviction,
it was too evident that he had put strong restraint on its expression, and
embodied it in such quilted language that the point of its originality was
cushioned beyond the possibility of imparting the slightest prick. Adverse
criticism when anything beyond bald disapproval, seemed to flow from the
well-spring of sheer malice, and to have been unsluiced by the consciousness
that even the most docile and word-drugged reader would not everlastingly
accept without protest— necklace-like-strings-of-words, without thought,
candied beyond all semblance of candidness. It is one of the most charac-
teristic traits of our humanity, that it experiences distinct pleasure in seeing
somebody “biffed.” This characteristic is looked upon by many as an
evidence of manliness. On it is based the highly immoral doctrine of the
right of might, immoral because right is a consequence of the contention of
conflicting facts not forces. This characteristic worship of the right of
might is, as a matter of fact, one of the lingering remnants of our primeval
and artless savagery, a modern evidence of ancient barbarism. It is a popular
vulgarity that evaporates under the illumination of refinement. It is to this
trait that the popular critic invariably makes his appeal when he wishes to
preserve his position as a purveyor of discriminating criticism. He knows
his readers. He must preserve himself.
Under the semblance of criticising a picture, its maker is held up to
ridicule through the medium of, sometimes clever, almost always vulgar,
personal attack. If, as sometimes happened, the critic had a personal score
to settle with the artist, the reviewer's words were inoculated with the virus
of venom. There are at times critics who have their own dusky reasons for
such course. Often they are sprung from resentment at the harsh repulsion
of some prior friendly advance, or some presumptuous criticism of one of
their own critiques. All this and more of like I found on studying the
majority of reviews, but that for which I searched, I found not. And I
wondered, and asked myself, “What seek these writers? who are tolerated
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