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

untiring persistence and confidence all his own,—a confidence that could remove mountains, to
say nothing of the mere prejudiced conservatism of artistic persons. Recognition simply had
to come—and be mighty quick about it; twenty-seven years being a vanishing quantity in the
equation Ars longa, vita brevis. “This,” he tells you, “shows the whole history; it is a summing
up of the whole business—from the beginning.” Here, you see, is the key-note of the whole
exhibition; it appears, somewhat amplified by the concentrated mental efforts of eleven men, in
the short and carefully drawn foreword to the catalogue. The Occasion is the long fought-for
Attainment; let the Celebration, it seems to say, narrate the History of the Fight. To Alfred
Stieglitz the congratulations of all pictorial photographers; and in double measure from those
who have not been enrolled under his banner; for his present success, in the long run, means the
success of the whole pictorial movement.
As will have been gathered, this is no ordinary exhibition; not merely because of its size
(there are nearly five hundred prints in the Invitation Section and another hundred in the Open
Section), or on account of the extreme care and taste in its hanging (no show was ever better hung),
or even on account of the fact that it contains a great deal of the very best pictorial work that has
ever been done. It differentiates itself by being essentially a historical epitome. It is not and does
not claim to be the best collection of pictorial work that could be brought together. It purports
rather to show the history of a movement; not the history of pictorial photography in general,
but the history of that militant branch, the Photo-Secession. It is well to bear this in mind, so,
when you come across collections of prints that would to-day be rejected—and rightly so— at any
respectable exhibition, you will understand that their makers were once, say about ten or fifteen
years ago, at any rate on the outskirts of the battle. Or perhaps you may learn from your catalogue
that certain prints represent the first experiments in some then new and epoch-making, now
discarded, process (hear the parable, you oil-painters!). Some of these workers have fallen by
the wayside; some have found their powers waning and been discarded; but in the hour of triumph
there is properly a commemorative laurel for the helot as well as the hoplite. At any rate there
are the prints—dozens of them; and a receptive attitude, based on a knowledge of Secession
history, is at least desirable in surveying them; much in the same way as, before hearing “ Parsifal,”
the thing to do is to saturate yourself with the proper religious atmosphere; even then, of course,
you may be grievously disappointed, but it is your only chance. So, if one only gets a proper
attitude of mind, all these rather weak-looking performances fall properly into place as Milestones
in the Path of a Movement. One has, however, little need of these precautionary measures at
first; for the exhibition has been arranged with consummate skill and taste and a most unusual
eye to general effect. The uniform mounting of most of the sections, the appropriate grouping in
panels, the avoidance of glass-reflections by hanging at as low a level as possible, give a most
pleasing appearance to the exhibition as a whole, and the skill here shown is again exemplified
by the cunning device of hanging Steichen’s three striking moonlights of Rodin’s “Balzac” on a
screen visible from the sculpture court, so that curiosity draws the visitor at once into gallery 17,
the “big” room of the show; in which, among seventeen prints by de Meyer, and from twenty
to thirty each by Steichen, Coburn, and Seeley, there is scarcely one which is not of large dimen-
sions and corresponding size of conception and execution. A strong, bold, and effective group,
they hit the eye at once, and are altogether the most popular collection in the exhibition. Some
there will be who prefer to linger in the other galleries over, say, the photogravures of Annan or
Eugene; but this is the gallery designed to catch the eye and draw the admiration of crowds.
The Steichens are particularly striking; besides the Balzacs he shows portraits of Lenbach, R.
Strauss, Rodin, Maeterlinck, J. P. Morgan, Roosevelt,Taft, and Lady Hamilton; three nudes
(of which “In Memoriam” is not only the most effective but possibly the best print in the show,
with its wonderful modeling and color, and the strength and delicacy of both conception and
execution); as well as a few landscapes and miscellaneous prints. Wonderfully effective, striking,
and strong as his prints, almost without conception, are, owing to his incomparable technique
and the broad simplicity of his effects, it may be doubted whether the cumulative effect of the
group is a correspondingly strong one. Nearly all of his examples are based on one particular
mannerism-—the flinging of a mass of light against a background of luscious but impenetrable
depth; and the constant repetition of this unusual but limited scheme of tonality is a source of
weakness to the general effect of his collection. On the other hand, if the grouping together of the

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