Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 21))

IS PHOTOGRAPHY A NEW ART?

HEN photography was first discovered, and it was realized that
machinery and chemicals could make what had hitherto been held
to be exclusively the product of man’s most superior faculties,
many asked the question, “What will the artists do when this
process becomes more nearly perfected?” The amazement at the almost
magical result that had been achieved was so great that enthusiasm, and
expectation of further and equally startling revelations, knew no bounds.
Perfect results in color were confidently expected to follow shortly—then
the artists were to go into bankruptcy. The painters for their part denied
the possibility of machinery ever producing art; they engaged in controversy
with the photo-enthusiasts, and argued the case endlessly.
This was in the first part of the last century. What is said of photog-
raphy now? Are the portrait- and landscape-painters told that their doom
is sealed, and that when color photography shall be discovered, their stufF
will no longer be a desideratum ? To the contrary, the word photographic,
in the minds of the general public, is synonymous with pedantic exactitude,
illogical selection, absence of imagination, and feeling in general; in fact,
anti-art. Of course, as every one interested in pictorial photography knows,
there are little oases like the Secession, and corresponding European
organizations, in which the tradition that photography is an art is still kept
up; but, as a widespread rule, the discussion is looked upon as closed—the
public has made up its mind, and so far to the other extreme has its feeling
swung, that even painters dare not say that they sometimes use the camera
as an aid to their work for fear of being thought inartistic.
Now, it appears to me that the whole discussion as to whether photog-
raphy is or is not an art has always been, and is still being, conducted on an
illogical basis. The question rightly put is, “ Is photography one of the
fine arts?” To either prove or disprove this question, the disputants have
always entered upon long definitions of painting, etching, charcoal, water-
color, and what not, in order to find what resemblances or dissemblances
there were between these arts and photography. But on the face of it, this
method of reasoning is fallacious, for the question asked is not, “ Is photog-
raphy one of the graphic arts ? ” but is, “Is photography one of the fine arts?”
— and even if it can be proven beyond doubt that photography is not one
of the graphic arts, it does not at all follow that it is not one of the fine arts.
The conclusion I have come to after much investigation is that photography
is not one of the graphic arts, but that it is one of the fine arts, and more
closely allied to architecture than to painting. To prove my point, I will
ask the reader to follow me through a short analysis of the different fine arts,
and a little deductive reasoning.
Music makes its appeal to the sensibilities through the sense of hearing.
The symbols it uses are sounds, pure sounds, without any intelligible mean-
ing attached. The element of time enters as an all-important factor, much
of the effect produced depending upon the relative duration of the different
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