Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 33))

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This result is due to a comparatively small number of workers, most of
whom were represented in the recent exhibition. As a body they have recog-
nized that they were dealing with a new medium, the resources of which had to
be explored without the aid of traditions. Thus the most conspicuous of
these workers have been constant experimenters, from whose example the
rest have profited. The movement has had to contend with the ridicule not
only of painters, but also of other photographers who were satisfied to jog on
as mere caterers to trade conditions. The brunt of this has been borne by a
few workers of assertive personality, whose spirit has infused the remainder
of the group and made itself felt outside. To all this turmoil the late exhibi-
tion came as a fitting climax. It established the worth-whileness of the fight
by the best of evidence, namely, by the quality of the work which has resulted
from its inspiration. This is of a character to silence all defamers, whether
inside or outside the ranks of the photographers. Criticism is still in order,
but indifference to the artistic possibilities of photography is now only another
word for ignorance. Charles H. Caffin.

THE BUFFALO EXHIBITION
THE impression left by this exhibition was so subtly deep that after
the first complete view of it, one was not immediately conscious of
any impression other than a curious sense of intellectual quiet and
satisfaction. That one could come away from an exhibition of pictures with
such a feeling was in itself a unique experience. The mind at once began
to endeavor to analyze the effect, in its effort to arrive at the cause. What
was it that had produced this result? Through the entire exhibition every-
thing bespoke a quiet earnestness and sincerity of purpose. There had been
no clap-trap, no appeal to the hyperemotional, no melodramatic touches,
no effort at pictorial climaxes and crescendoes. The whole was pervaded
with a curiously rare sense of harmony; the individual parts were complete
and harmonious in themselves; harmonious in their relation to each other;
harmonious in their combined results as a whole. Everything was exquisitely
refined and well balanced down to the smallest setting of the exhibition. Then,
as one analyzed and gave thought to it, one began to understand that it was
the very bigness and perfection of the exhibition that seemed to fail to create
an impression by the very bigness of the impression that it did create through
so entirely lifting one out of the customary exhibition atmosphere as to take
away all standards of comparison.
II
The modern pictorial exhibition, with few exceptions, has, by those
familiar with the subject, come to be regarded as a possibly necessary evil,
and, in most cases, as the corruptor instead of the educator of public taste.
Admirable in their original purpose, academic and art-organization exhibi-
tions, with few exceptions, have degenerated into being conservators of
aesthetic snobbery or of the commercialization of art. The academy exhibi-

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