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

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

OUR illustrations include ten examples of prints by Frank Eugene, of
New York and Munich, which will be supplemented in the next issue
by about fourteen others. Taken together, they will present a very
fair resume of the photographic work of this artist whose career involves
some particulars of exceptional interest. For, while Eugene is one of the
pioneers of pictorial photography, having been working in the medium for
some twenty-five years, he has kept aloof from the personalities and politics
in which most other photographers have at one time or another found them-
selves entangled. Except for occasional visits to America, he has for
many years resided in Munich. In that chief center of German art he
studied and won recognition as a painter, meanwhile turning to photography
as a recreation. Although fascinated by its possibilities, he did not at first
practise it with a view to developing its technical resources, but rather in a
spirit of independent experiment. Thus, at first, he attained elimination of
detail by the arbitrary short-cut of etching the negative. Meanwhile, he was
the first to use platinumized Japanese tissue for printing, and some of his
prints in this genre are among the most beautiful that have been produced in
photography. Then came an occasion which changed the course of his artistic
career. He was invited by some of the artists of Munich to give an exhibition
of his photographs in the Kunstler-Verein. The impression which it created
was so favorable that the Bavarian State Institution of Photography and the
Reproductive Processes established a Chair of Pictorial Photography and
prevailed upon Eugene to occupy it. From that time onward painting has
become his secondary interest. Munich, while still regarding him as one of
her artists, now recognizes him as professionally a photographer. A few of his
prints have appeared from time to time in Camera Work; but an extended
survey has been impossible hitherto, through Eugene’s unwillingness to take
the risk of sending his negatives to America. Last summer, however, the
editor being in Munich, he was able to overcome the objection, through the co-
operation of his old friend, Mr. Goetz. This gentleman, an American, one of
the originators of the three-color process in this country, is now at the head of
the famous house of F. Bruckmann Verlag, of Munich, which, in addition to its
comprehensive half-tone and color works, has an extensive photogravure
plant. Mr. Goetz arranged to reproduce Eugene’s prints under the latter’s
own supervision. The results are forthcoming in the present number, to be
succeeded, as we have said, by fourteen more in the following issue. Thus, for
the first time, the photographic work of this American artist can be adequately
studied in reproduction. The Eugene pictures and the quality of the Bruck-
mann gravures speak for themselves.

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