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

The prints from a photographic negative vary in quality to a much greater degree than the
impressions of an etching, for there are so many more factors to be taken into consideration. It
requires a very fine connoisseur to appreciate the subtle beauties of a fine platinum print, but the
time will come when a selected example of the work of, say, Clarence White will be as eagerly
sought after and as difficult to obtain as the work of certain old masters is to-day. When people
begin to realize more fully that nearly every print in this Buffalo exhibition is unique (and it is
this quality of uniqueness that is so important), that the show includes carefully selected examples
of practically every photographer of international reputation, and extends back in time to the
days of Hill, the scope of this show will be easily seen. If anyone is considering the advisability
of starting a collection of photographic prints (and even from a commercial point of view it is an
excellent investment), this exhibition offers the finest opportunities, for in the days to come the
fact that a print was shown in the Buffalo Exhibition of 1910 will give it a place in the history of
photography.
Two outstanding facts, quite apart from the pictures themselves, give this exhibition
especial distinction. The first is the splendid setting of the Albright Gallery, and the second is the
method adopted in hanging the collection. Hanging an exhibition is really a fine art in itself, an
art more akin to architecture than to any other, and it is difficult to imagine a more perfect expres-
sion of this art than that which has been given us in this instance by Mr. Max Weber, the painter
secessionist. The work of each exhibitor has been hung in a panel which has taken into con-
sideration the character of the prints, the size of the panel, and the general harmony of the room.
If you simply regard the pictures as the spots of a pattern against the background the effect is so
pleasing that it seems a tragedy that in a short few weeks this collection will be dispersed to the
four corners of the earth, and that nothing will be left of this wonderful frame pattern but the
memory of it in the minds of such of us as have seen it. That it should not be entirely lost, I have
made a number of photographs of the chief groupings, and in them I have tried not so much to
indicate each individual print as to give some idea of Mr. Weber’s beautiful pattern.
The catalogue is in thorough keeping with the spirit of the exhibition, from the picture of the
gallery in essence on the cover, to the historical descriptions of the prominent workers, which are
of the same direct character, and it will be a most valuable document as time goes on and the
importance of this exhibition in the history of photography is realized. Those interested will do
well to secure a copy, as it contains much information of an interesting and reliable character.
In Hill’s time there was not the multiplicity of printing methods that are now at the command
of the workers in photography. The catalogue mentions thirteen methods employed in prints shown
and each year adds to the number; yet, strangely enough, in spite of the greater number of com-
plicated processes that are invented, the prints of the best workers seem to be growing simpler,
more direct, and more free from what is vulgarly termed “faking” as time goes on. If one wants
to produce the effect of a wash drawing or a mezzotint, it is better to work in these mediums and
very much easier. Photography has not obtained its recognition by any such cheap method as
masquerading as some other art. It is in giving us the liquid quality of water, the delicate beauty
of clouds, and the subtly seen and rendered expression in portraiture that photography has its
greatest field of activity and where its finest qualities are to be found.
Great Britain is represented by nine men: Hill, to whom I have already referred; Craig
Annan, who has been connected with photography since the early nineties and has been one of the
chief factors in its development; George Davison, who was a worker at an even earlier date and
one of the founders of the “Linked Ring”; Frederick Evans, of architectural fame; and five of
the younger workers: Malcolm Arbuthnot, Walter Bennington, Archibald Cochrane, Dudley
Johnston, and Frank Read.
France is represented by Robert Demachy, the champion and defender of “manipulation”
in photography, and three of his confreres. Austria-Germany is a most interesting section, as it
contains the large gum-bichromate prints of the “Viennese Trifolium,” which, more than any
other exhibits, compete directly with painting, as is their evident intention. It is very curious to
see these prints at this stage of the development of photography; and to think that of the three
workers that produced them Watzek is dead, Henneberg has become a painter because he con-
sidered photography too difficult, and Kuhn, perhaps the strongest of the three, has come under
the influence of the American school and practically abandoned his earlier methods. Baron de
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