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

imitations of fragments of nature. In other words, photography is the art
that expresses itself through symbols, which, in their imitativeness of nature,
are like those used in painting, but which, in their being scientifically made,
and not hand-marked, are also like those used in architecture. That art may
express itself through mathematically exact forms, I think I have sufficiently
demonstrated; but if there remains any doubt in the mind of the reader, I
will remind him that poets have on occasions used scientific symbols.
Edgar Allen Poe, in his “ Eureka,” which he calls a prose-poem, and which
it certainly is, speaks solely in scientific terms. It is true that the poem
recounts his conception of the creation of the Universe; but he employs
logical and material terms and scientific conceptions to produce his effect.
It is through the proper ordering of these impersonal concepts, through ex-
actly the right juxtaposition of mathematical facts, and even figures, that he
makes a song as beautiful as could be sung in terms of love.
The conclusion, then, that we have come to is, that photography is one
of the fine arts, but no more allied to painting than to architecture, and quite
as independent in the series as any of the other arts. As a necessary
corollary, photography can not be pictorial, any more than can music or
oratory. Photography is photography, neither more nor less.

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