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

they had never looked for it. It is worthy of record that Childe Hassam began painting views of
New York after Alfred Stieglitz’s “Fifth Avenue” had shown the possibilities of street work. The
German pictures of railroad yards followed closely the dissemination through magazines of Stieg-
litz’s “Hand of Man.” For photography has been the one original contribution of America to
art, the one field of art where this country has been a leader, not a follower of Europe. And it may
be said of American work that it has developed along absolutely independent lines and owes nothing
to the influence of painters, while most of the prominent European workers have studied too closely
perhaps the works of painters, etchers, mezzotinters, lithographers, and have thereby lost some
originality, and hampered themselves in the search for the best results to be obtained from straight
photography. They have tried to make photography a follower of the other arts instead of opening
a new field through the development of qualities which are peculiarly photographic.
To the general accomplishments of photography as they stand today each worker represented
in the historical or Invitation section has contributed his share through originality of point of view
or through technical improvements of the medium.
Beginning with the father of pictorial photography, the work of D. O. Hill, who worked
between 1840-1845, stands in a class by itself, and in the qualities which attract us has not been
surpassed by any of the later workers. Despite the fact that the possibilities of the medium were
little known and that he had at his disposal tools far more rudimentary than those at the disposal
of the modern pictorialist, he shows beyond question that the true artist can express his individu-
ality through this medium. As Mr. Craig Annan rightly says in a recent paper read before the
Edinburgh Photographic Society: “Only a big mind could conceive these pictures.”
In the same room with the D. O. Hill’s hangs the work of Alfred Stieglitz. An advocate and
practitioner of straight photography, he has from the start established a standard in hand camera
and snapshot work which it is doubtful will ever be surpassed or even attained. Depending more
than in any other field of photographic endeavor on fortuitous circumstances to obtain composition
and light effects, he has shown what can be done by indomitable perseverence, patience, artistic
ability and a thorough knowledge of the mechanics and chemistry of the medium. Quoting the
catalogue, “He popularized platinum printing in America, as well as photogravure, in which
medium only many of his prints exist. He was the first to choose his subjects in city streets under
various aspects, such as those of rain and snows—considered at the time, impossible to render
successfully with photography. Simultaneously with Paul Martin, in London, he was the first to
successfully experiment with night scenes.” Each print is a masterpiece of composition and tech-
nical achievement.
In the work of Eduard J. Steichen we have an example of the result of mixing brains with
one’s chemicals. Whether in his masterful and characteristic portraits, in his landscapes or in his
compositions and studies, one feels a forceful personality at work. No photographer probably
has a more thorough knowledge of his medium or has done more experimenting along so many
lines. The faults in his pictures, of which he is probably as fully aware as his critics, are due not
to ignorance or inability, but to a deliberate sacrifice of certain qualities made necessary by the
limitations of the medium in order to obtain a certain result which under the present knowledge
of photographic possibilities has never been rendered better by anyone than by this great artist.
A master of composition, a master in the handling of lines and masses, Clarence H. White
charms us with his “studies in light” indoors and out of doors. His sympathetic rendering of
figures in the diffused and reflected lights of the home have led many critics to connect him with
the little Dutch masters, while his outdoor studies connect him with the best masters of the open-air
school of painters. His work is delightful and refreshing, the kind of work by which one would
like to live surrounded.
A. L. Coburn’s work reflects the enthusiasm of youth, a quick and clear vision for the pic-
torial, a preference for strong contrasts, and much of his work, of which boldness is the chief
characteristic, gives an effective poster-like effect. By his use of double printing in the medium
known as gum-platinum he has been able to secure a richness in his blacks which is not obtainable
by any single printing process. This process has since been used by a number of his followers in
England and America. He has also shown that it was possible to obtain good modeling and soft
lighting effects by flash light, and many of his successful portraits of theatrical people have been
made in that way.
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