Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 30))

But while some of the elements which make the print a success or a failure
escape human control, the majority of the conditions which shape the final
results are sufficiently within the photographer’s grasp to enable him to attain
under favorable circumstances whatever he wishes to express, or at least to
approach it without feeling handicapped by his medium any more than a
worker in oil or water-color. For every worker must figure with the possi-
bilities of his tools, and it is necessary for him to study the points of superiority
and the limitations of his medium.
So much of the result depends on the photographer’s control that if he goes
back to one of his old negatives after his freshness of vision is gone, or his
natural evolution has modified his point of view, he will not be able to duplicate
his former work. Choice photographic prints follow the universal law that
things of beauty are scarce, for they are rarer in fact than fine etchings or even
paintings. Painters have often painted several replicas of their successful can-
vases. Bocklin has painted seven of “The Isle of Death.” Chardin has
frequently painted six or seven replicas of the same subject, and there are
others amongst the famous painters who did likewise. In etchings the usual
“edition” comprises twenty-five to fifty pulls from the same plate. Many
photographs, such as Steichen’s gum prints of “Lenbach,” “Le Penseur,”
“The Little Round Mirror,” “In Memoriam,” are unique prints, and this
worker has decided not to print more than six prints from any of his negatives.
The instances are few where this number has been exceeded by any worker,
and they are numerous where no more than two or three prints from a negative
are, or ever shall be, in existence. In Eugene’s case most of his beautiful
Japan paper proofs exist but in one example.
On the day when art lovers and collectors understand that fine photographic
prints are as scarce as pulls from Whistler’s rarest plates and a source of as
keen an artistic enjoyment, a few more collectors will be added to the ranks of
those who guard these rare examples jealously. Competition will become
keener for the possession of unusual prints as they appear in the market, and
the auction rooms shall witness royal battles where the best prints of some of
the foremost pictorialists shall be disputed with as much fire as the choicest
Meryons, Whistlers or Seymour Hadens.
Paul B. Haviland.

$6