Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1909 (Heft 25))

THE HOME OF THE GOLDEN DISK

^^HEN, on April 30th, 1908, “The Little Galleries’* turned over

their original rooms, at 291 Fifth Avenue, to a tailoring estab-
*/Wk lishment, a chapter was closed in the history of the Photo-Secession.
For three years, under the directorship of one man, who

gave his entire time to this educational work, exhibitions have been held in
these rooms, which have attracted the New York public, compelled the at-
tention of dealers, critics and art institutions, and obtained that recognition
for photography as an art, for which the champions of the new movement
have been striving.
Perhaps, the first time you went up the narrow elevator which took in-
quirers to the top floor and entered the room to your right, the director, the
leading spirit, would be found in conversation with some friends or visitors.
The minute you gazed into the rooms so fittingly designed, you seemed
to breathe a different atmosphere. The quiet, neutral tone of the walls and
of the woodwork; the softly diffused light; the happy spacing and proportions
of the rooms and their furnishings; the color note of autumn foliage in the
big brass bowl in the centre of the farther room; all combined to give you
from the outset a feeling of harmony, balance and repose. You insensibly
relaxed. You fell into a receptive mood.
Before you could phrase your inquiry as to whether you were in the
right place or were addressing the proper person, you would be greeted by a
slight nod of the head, and a, “You want to see the photographs? They are
inside. Walk right in.” Entering the rooms to your left, you found yourself
confronting a set of pictures which immediately arrested your attention. You
looked to the catalogue for the name of the artist; the name was unknown
to you; the titles did not help you. Giving up the catalogue, you returned
to some one picture which had attracted your attention more particularly;
then to a second, then to a third,—and you wondered at it all. Surely these
were only photographs, obtained by a mechanical process incapable of
recording anything but facts, and yet they appealed to your emotions. There
was atmosphere, there was feeling in them, an unexplainable something re-
cognizable in every one,—the stamp of individuality.
Startled out of your reverie by a, “ Well, what do you think of them?”
you turned around and met a pair of dark eyes behind glasses, looking at you
from under a mass of bushy black hair. If your answer showed any response
whatever to the artist’s appeal, then you had a treat before you. Conversa-
tion warmed up ; you branched out into other fields, painting, etching, sculp-
ture, music; you heard of personal experiences with casual visitors, and
with friends, some encouraging, some discouraging. For half an hour, or an
hour, or two hours you forgot all about New York, the rush of the subway
and the struggle after the almighty dollar; and when you got back into the
street, into the turmoil of everyday life, you felt that you had discovered an
oasis, seemingly thousands of miles from the scorching struggle for life,
where at your pleasure you could stop and refresh yourself in the peaceful

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