Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 24))

studies on the European museums; on Brittany; “ V Apprentie,” his masterpiece,
a novel of sweet pity and of paternal tenderness, all are from one of the most
admirable altruistic thinkers and poets of our epoch.
“ Most of these works undoubtedly contain an amount of art that no
photography had ever shown up to date. Before such portraits one can
dream of Whistler, of Carriere; and the works which I prefer are those that
remain photographs, but with that beautiful modelling, those great deep
shadows that give them an extreme power. Others resemble reproductions
of paintings, and while I appreciate their qualities of envelope and their tex-
ture, I am somewhat repelled by their exaggerated marks of intervention, as
if one had wished to make you believe that they had been done by a differ-
ent process. Many of these proofs show a fine sense of composition. They
are works finely thought out.”
FRANTZ JOURDAIN
The most combative of the art critics; president of the Syndicate of
the art press; the most independent and the leading French architect; presi-
dent of the Salon d’Automne. His career in his different functions has been
one constant, beautiful, armored and courageous battle against “ Acade-
mism,the Art of the School, the official teaching of the Fine Arts.
a Why should photography not produce works of art? Of course I do
not mean the intense and deep art of a Carriere, of a Monet, but of certain
personalities who by divers means have known how to represent their epoch.
Look at those landscapes, those very suggestive impressions, those
portraits, and tell me whether they do not contain more art than a painting
by Flameng.
Pure photography can produce, I believe, beautiful results ; but after all
it is interesting sometimes to see the signs of intervention. Is it not the
definition itself of art, this adjunction of man to nature with a view to a per-
sonal proof, no replica of which shall be exactly similar. Pure photography
may be compared to an ordinary newspaper report which when properly
interpreted may develop into a work of style. My most serious objections
are to those very simple tricks used to simulate certain processes of drawing,
“bavures,” <c reserves,” “silhouettages,” etc. Why simulate when one can
do so well with one's own resources? And I see another tendency, at trying
to be too distinguished, too pretty, too much on the professional model.
These are the breakers to avoid; one feels a conventional tendency to render
perfect the person who poses. It is no longer nature; the faults and per-
sonal traits are things that must be preserved.
On the other hand, many of the pictures are unreservedly admirable.
I knew a long time ago the capabilities of photography. I appreciated its
value when, as president of the Salon d’Automne, I insisted that it should
be admitted to the Grand Palais. The trial was incomplete; we were dis-
couraged too quickly, for we were swamped with productions of the profes-

15