Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 29))

THE TERRIBLE TRUTHFULNESS OF MR. SHAW

“ Many people were under the impression (quite a mistaken one) that photog-
raphy could not improve on nature. A photographer could really do much
more in that way than an artist could hy the ordinary drawing process. There
were certain departments of art that remained outside the scope of the photographer
at present. For instance, if you wanted to make a moral picture, or a didactic
picture, it was necessary to invent the whole thing yourself, as Raphael did in
his cartoons. The process of photography is out of place there. Somehow or
other photography is very stern. There is a terrible truthfulness about photog-
raphy that sometimes makes a thing ridiculous. Take the case of the ordinary
Academician. He gets hold of a pretty model, he puts a dress on her, and he
paints her as well as he can, and calls her ‘Juliet,’ and puts a nice verse from
Shakespeare underneath, and puts the picture in the Gallery. It is admired
beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl; he dresses her
up and photographs her, and calls her ‘Juliet’ but somehow it is no good—it is
still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet. There is a whole
quantity of truth about it. The painter leaves out almost the whole of the essen-
tially truthful part of the thing. He looks at the girl, but does not see much of
her; he paints the Juhetty part of her. But the camera sees everything in the
most provoking way, and although the photographer may begin to blot out what-
ever is not Juliet, he may fake his plate, but when he has gone through all that it
is still not Juliet. It is one thing not to see the truth, and not to know that you
are leaving it out; it is another thing altogether to go and deliberately falsify
what you have.”
THIS interesting and remarkable analysis of the artist’s method and
of his relation to truth is taken from a report of a lecture delivered by
Mr. Bernard Shaw, on the sixteenth of October last, at the London
Photographic Salon. The passage is interesting because it quite adequately
expresses the attitude of the average man towards truth and art (with or with-
out their capital initials); it is remarkable and, in a sense, cheering, because
it amounts to a confession of Mr. Shaw’s faith, a confession by which he
bravely and debonairly writes himself down as of the commonalty.
Mr. Shaw has always struck a contemporary by his fine air of the
aristocrat. It is, therefore, more than cheering, it is even uplifting and
heartening, to find him marching in the procession with the rest bearing aloft
the old “Hocus-Pocus” Standard of Truth. In quoting the passage, how-
ever, I am not concerned about Mr. Shaw’s attitude; his assumptions have
changed so frequently with the changing years, that being still a young man,
there is hope for him. But I am concerned about what he says, because what
he says is eagerly accepted by many who have come to believe in Mr. Shaw’s
genius, but who have not either his supreme mental powers or his careless
and happy disposition. These take seriously even the privileged pleasantries
of the jesting critic—a hazardous thing to do at any time by anybody, for one
never knows when the jester may not turn round and deny the gentle impu-

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