Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 23))

the most progressive motives of modern painting; still less did he reason
out, that, as the photographic process is the product of light, it is through
light that its highest potentiality must be sought. He simply followed
an instinct.
He did the same in selecting subjects for his early experiments. He
was ignorant of the principles of composition, as expounded in the schools;
but he felt that such and such an arrangement was more pleasing than
another and accordingly adopted it. And this very ignorance of tradition
gave an elasticity and freedom to his habit of looking at his subject, that
encouraged inventiveness. How he should arrange his subject was suggested
to him by the subject itself; and it is so still. Thus, if you look over a
number of his prints, their compositions do not stale by repetition; each
has its own note of freshness, and all are distinguished by an exceeding tact-
fulness and reserve. They have the charm of novelty without bizarrerie:
and a most expressively close relation to the character of the subject.
A similarly keen and subtle instinct for the propriety of balance has
taught him the secrets of tonality. A false note hurt his instinctive sense of
fitness and must be avoided. Thus, without any knowledge of the jargon of
“values,” he found his own way to the principles involved in it. So too, he
discovered for himself the meaning and the need of “quality” in the various
values of color in the print. It probably grew out of his instinct for light,
since quality is merely a convenient term to express that the colors, whether
they contain more or less of light, suggest the vibration of light and thus
unite with one another in completing the rhythm of the whole picture.
But, informing all this growth in technique, was what one may call an
instinctive reverence. It colors the way in which he sets about a portrait.
There is never a suggestion of exploiting the sitter, to secure a technical
achievement or to pursue a personal notion of his own. It is to the person-
ality of the subject that he looks for suggestion, sets the key of his motive,
and attunes, for the time being, his technique. This fine reverence, how-
ever, becomes impregnated with personal feeling when his model is nature,
or when he combines a figure with surroundings to express some idea of his
own. Then he sheds around his subject an atmosphere of spiritual
significance that is poignantly alluring. Whether pitched to a lightsome
strain or to a minor key, it is arrestingly pure and plaintive; sometimes
suggestive of the youthful intensity of the Italian Primitives, at other times
burdened with a modern seriousness. Yet, even so, not encumbered with
age and worldliness. Always, as I said at first, it suggests the fragrance and
the freshness that one associates with the springtime of the spirit.
It is this rare combination of a natural instinct for beauty, refined and
trained by an impulse from within, and of an imagination, pure and serious,
that gives to all White’s work not only a pronounced individuality, but also
a peculiarly rarified charm. They are the emanations of a beautiful spirit.
Charles H. Caffin.