Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1909 (Heft 28))

a matter of fact, it is not with intrinsic qualities he is occupied, but with those
that are specious and meretricious. It is on the sentimental prettiness of
superficial accidents that he relies: the oval print, the artifice of pose, the coy
introduction of flowers and ribbons, the general sweetness of the tout en ensemble.
These delighted the fine ladies of the Eighteenth Century; why should they
be less potent in satisfying the vanity of the Nineteenth ? So he adopts these
devices, and apparently they please. His method is tricky and cheap but pre-
sumably “there is money in it,” which according to the editorial utterance of
our new periodical, “Photographic Progress” (vide the September issue),
“is the best of all possible reasons for adopting it.”
Again, from his studio in Boylston Street, Boston, another “professional”
imitates the arrangement of an old-English painted portrait. The latter is
more worthy than the mezzotint of the same period, and to this extent the
device has more to recommend it than the one just mentioned. But it is
essentially a trick, whether the effect is obtained by a painted backcloth hung
behind the figure or by painting a landscape on to the negative; for in neither
case is the illumination of the landscape the same as that of the figure. Neither
is it, you may reply, in the case of portraits by Reynolds or Gainsborough.
But in these we may accept the convention as a reasonable one, since the chia-
roscuro throughout is a studio convention based on no truth of actual light
values. A photograph, on the other hand, is a composition the very fabric of
which can be constructed of values of light in natural relation. Not to rely
on these, or to interfere with them by the introduction of arbitrary artificial
chiaroscuro is to cheat the medium of its essential possibilities. And this is the fault
of all these extraneous trickeries of which I have noted only a few examples, as
being more or less characteristic of the contrivances for tickling the popular taste.
The best that can be said of them is that they offer a momentarily wel-
come contrast to the barren monotony of the average commercial output. But
I am disposed to believe that they are even more prejudicial than the latter in
their influence upon the technical and artistic development of the craft. For
in both respects they are false; and falsehood, particularly if speciously attrac-
tive, is more injurious than the merely commonplace. One of its results is
apparent in the kind of photograph that is selected for use by the magazines,
and not alone by the cheaper ones. Very few editors have taken the trouble
to acquaint themselves with those qualities in a print which are peculiarly and
most worthily photographic. What they seek is something that will make an
emphatic spot of illustration on a page, and they find it in these bastard prints.
Hence the fact that, though they have all the resources of photography within
their reach, they are content to pass them over for some meretriciously attrac-
tive print. The use of the latter continually tends to lower the dignity of the
craft and to maintain the ignorance of the public as to its real value, while
putting an argument into the mouths of those who choose to belittle it.
And apropos of this I note that the new periodical, “Photographic Pro-
gress, ” seems for the present to have assumed an attitude of sitting on the fence.
Naturally its editors are desirous of a big circulation but they appear to hesitate
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