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

because man must live and with whom, our own struggles having taught us
how hard that is to manage sometimes, we are long-suffering, rather than take
away another's means of bread. “What seek these writers in their contem-
plation of what they undertake to review and criticise? What to them mean
these Life-flowers, these picture fancies and dreams? Is it possible that they
think they really seek the beauty and inspiration embodied therein and
would trace the source thereof, that they may point the way and give warn-
ing of sidetracks and by-ways?” But to my question came there no reply.
Silence, only silence. Then I heard the knell of a bell with a tongue of
gold, and I saw before me the things criticised and reviewed. And behold,
the critics had concerned themselves chiefly with the dead things amongst
them, the embalmed corpses and dried bones. The finer things they had
passed with a laugh, just as I had seen things of high value rejected for more
showy, tawdry objects because their worth was not understood; just as
precious stones of great worth have been passed by those who recognized
them only when cut, set and certified to by experts, because they were in the
rough or looked like the trick of an April Fool. And these painters and
artists, for what do they strive and expend their lives, all these, who covet
more than tinsel vain-glory or current coin—these who are neither counter-
feiters nor mummy-makers, but serious workers, laboring for a definite end?
Surely not for the mere praise of the critic or the admiration of the public?
Are they striving to express, as they see it, beauty? And Beauty, what is
Beauty but a dream that dies at mortal touch as morning mists vanish
before the sun? Joseph T. Keiley.

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE six plates representing the work of Mr. George H. Seeley, of
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, furnish the readers of Camera Work
an opportunity of judging for themselves what vast strides this
young photographer has recently made. Originally Seeley chose
a path peculiarly his own. He has followed it close. He is undoubtedly
one of the most original and earnest of the Photo-Secessionists. We
believe that, good as his present work is, it is but the forerunner of still
greater in the near future. The gravures were all made directly from the
original negatives.
The three snapshots by Mr. Alfred Stieglitz are snapshots, nothing
more, nothing less; but carefully studied ones. The gravures were made
from the original 4x5 inch negatives.
A Nude, by Mr. W. W. Renwick, of New York, is a gravure made
from the original negative.


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