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

recollection of two of the portraits among which will stay with one for some time. The last room
is devoted to Clarence White, whose prints are grouped and hung with more than usual loving care.
Take off your shoes, walk softly with bowed head, cultivate with reverence an appreciation of the
beauty of anaemia. You will have need of it. The collection contains a few of the prints which
brought him reputation, and one or two later gems. It also unfortunately contains not a little
entirely unworthy of the artist, or, indeed, of being hung at all. The White room is the disappoint-
ment of the show.
The Sculpture Court affords a wide separation between the Sheep and the—Open Section.
In the latter about a hundred prints are drawn from some thirty workers, those represented most
liberally being Paul Anderson, Jeanne Bennett, Pierre Dubreuil, Arnold Genthe, Paul B. Havi-
land, W. J. Mullins, Karl F. Struss, and Augustus Thibaudeau, each of whom show six prints or
more, many of these prints being already familiar ones. The only unknown of consequence is
Karl F. Struss of New York, who is represented by twelve prints, showing considerable technical
attainments and ability to reproduce “ effects/” but varying very considerably as regards pictorial
merit. On the whole, I think the Open Section was somewhat of a mistake. It contains not a
little very competent work, and even a few real “joy spots/’ such as the portrait in oil by Mme.
Laguarde and the six extraordinarily interesting examples of Dubreuil’s original, if distorted, way
of looking at things. But it also contains not a little which goes to show that the now famous Prin-
ciples of Independent Vision and of Quality of Rendering do not imply any higher standard than
that of the ordinary camera club.
Adjoining the Open Section is a group of British prints in which some of Davison’s historic
successes, a group of well-known Cochranes, interesting selections of the most recent work of that
active triad, Dudley Johnstone, Arbuthnot, and Frank H. Read, a rather poor assortment of
Benningtons, and some of F. H. Evan’s architectural studies, exemplify (in a very limited degree
of course) British activities in pictorial photography.
So much for the scope of the show. One or two other general impressions are worth noting.
The first is the danger that attaches to the use of Japan tissue in print making. There are
numerous prints in the exhibition which show only too clearly that in some hands the peculiar
qualities of Japan tissue prints have been paid for by a shriveling up of the surface which has
resulted in an almost complete obliteration of the effective image. When it gets to the point where
previous acquaintance with the picture through the medium of reproduction is necessary before
one can make out the picture itself, it is time to call a halt. The next point is that not the least of
the debts that the Photo-Secession owes to Mr. Stieglitz is in connection with Camera Work. In
this wonderful periodical, through which the Photo-Secession workers are known more widely than
through the actual exhibition of their prints, he has maintained a standard of selection very con-
siderably beyond that of the present show. One who has known the work of the Secessionists only
through Camera Work will find little cause in the present exhibition for surprise or astonishment
except possibly in room 17; on the other hand, in the case of at least one well-known worker, the
original prints now on view are so far inferior to the photogravures from the same negatives in
Camera Work as to cause a distinct feeling of disappointment. Nor is the show without its lessons
as to the kind of work that lives and the kind of work that, after flashing up brilliantly, dies; it may
be doubted whether there ever was or ever will be a show so organized as to point this lesson with
half such completeness; for if this exhibition contains a great deal of the very finest work that has
ever been produced in photography, it also contains a great amount of the veriest rot. Do not pass
the latter by with a scoff; it was once hailed as good; it merits your careful attention while it
explains to you why it is now despised and rejected, and puts a few ideas into your head which will
be useful to you in looking over your own prints and asking yourself what will be the verdict on
them in ten years’ time. The last noteworthy impression you get from the show is that of finality.
You meet it in the foreword of the catalogue; there is a certain sense of finality in the very phrase
“summing up.” Even the makeup of the exhibition itself, with its parading of old and forgotten
protagonists, sounds like the word finis. And, indeed, the show is final in several respects. It is
the final appearance of the large-scale photographic exhibition. The feast is too gargantuan. At
a time when even painters are clearly seeing that small and homogeneous collections are more
enjoyable and better appreciated than large mixed shows, however well hung, photographers
cannot afford to adopt retrograde tendencies. Nor will the present show encourage them to do

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