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

In introducing the work of Messrs. Paul B. Haviland, and Marshall R.
Kernochan, of New York to our readers, two new names of promise are added
to the list of interesting workers. Neither are beginners as far as photography
is concerned. As in much of the American work, it is exceedingly difficult to
hold the original print quality in the reproduction, yet the Manhattan Photo-
gravure Company has done all that possibly could be done in that respect.
The tenth and last plate is a photogravure by Coburn of one of his own sub-
jects. It is more fully referred to elsewhere in this number of CameraWork.

LONDON—TWENTY GRAVURES BY COBURN
HILAIRE BELLOC, M. P., who wrote the introduction to
“London”, by Coburn, which has just been published, says :
“ This collection of photographs of London has been in
preparation by Mr. Coburn for the past five years; but techni-
cally they represent the latest development of his art. His repu-
tation as a master of photographic printing has been gained
by single prints in gum and platinotype, each of which cost considerably
more to produce than all the prints in this volume. He found it impossible
to hand over his negatives for reproduction by commercial processes without
losing the personal qualities on which the artistic value of his work depends.
Recognizing, nevertheless that in photogravure Commerce has produced a
method capable of rivalling mezzotint in the hands of an artist, he set him-
self to master this process also; and he has now, as the impressions in this
volume show, won the same command of it as of his earlier methods, and
can not only produce prints comparable to his finest achievements in gum-
platinotype, but reproduce them with certainty at a cost which makes such
a publication as the present possible.
The photogravure plates from which the pictures have been printed
have not been made in a factory from Mr. Coburn’s negatives, but by his own
hands. Every step of the process has been carried out by himself in his
studio with the artistic result aimed at constantly in view, thus placing the
process on the artistic footing of etching, lithography and mezzotint.
Like Whistler, Mr. Coburn has the advantage of looking at London much
more imaginatively than any born Londoner could. What he shows us is
there, as the camera testifies; but few of us had seen it until Mr. Coburn
showed it to us.”
We can add only that the book shows Coburn at his best. His gravure
“On the Embankment” which appears as Plate X in this number of
Camera Work is one of twenty in the book. Two others, “Waterloo Bridge”
and “London Bridge”, have already appeared in Camera Work, Number XV.
The other seventeen are fully equal to these in interest. The performance is
worthy of his reputation; and all those interested either in London, Coburn,

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