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

no matter how skilfully, how well it may be manipulated; and the maximum
of art reveals itself only where the communion between art and nature has
been most direct.”
POINTELIN
A painter—a specialist in landscapes, sometimes in monotone, but with
much charm of their own. He prefers, above all, twilight effects and the
somewhat savage melancholy of the hills of the Jura.
“ There is in some of these prints a beautiful envelope, a laudable syn-
thesis that makes them akin to works of art and makes one appreciate their
authors. I prefer those that have preserved the modulations, the qualities
of the half-tone of photography. In some prints simplified with the brush,
I find certain parts of the picture which offend the eye of the painter, by
defects in modelling, breaks in continuity, lack of precision and weakness.
Others, on the contrary, are very happily synthesized, and I approve of the in-
tervention every time that it permits the getting rid of the essential dryness
of photography, in order to make a synthetic work. But it must be done
by a perfect artist, for instead of a good photograph one takes the chance of
merely producing something which looks a reproduction of a bad painting.
Photography can give remarkable results, but it lacks artists, just as painting
does, for that matter. While on this subject, I believe that color photography,
having finally become practical, will rid painting of all the detestable and
finickey daubers who know nothing of nor understand nature. The exact-
ness, the dryness of the work of the lens, the exact reproduction of color,
the deception of the eye, that will settle them.”
GABRIEL MOUREY
Novelist, critic, poet, playwright, translator into French of the poems
of Swinburne and of Poe. Gabriel Mourey was the founder of an interest-
ing review, “ Les Arts de la Vie,” militant and independent, whose principal
object was the acquisition of Rodin’s “ Penseur ” for the people of Paris. His
volumes of criticism, his monograph on Besnard, his articles of all kinds, are
those of a fine artist; his last volume of verses “ Le Miroir ” and the libretto
of the coming opera of Claude Debussy “La Mort de Tristan,” prove
Mourey one of the best of modern poets.
“Photography produces works of art only when it remains photography.
It is better for it to remain true to itself than to risk attempting the imitation
of drawing. I am only moved before such results as—keeping the char-
acteristics proper of the process employed—contain also the qualities com-
mon to everything which is a work of art. The photographer, following his
conceptions, must prepare the composition of his subject, arrange everything
to his taste, and then interpret his negative; and if he wishes, intervene on
the print in any way which may prove useful. All this is indifferent to me
provided that these operations are sufficiently unobtrusive and well-judged,

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