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

SUPPLEMENT TO “CAMERA WORK”-
NOTES AND COMMENTS
“A chiel amangye takin9 notes.”—Burns.
IN the issue of “American Photography ” for December, 1910, Mr. F. Austin Lidbury has
an excellently written article in praise of the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography
which was shown in the Albright Gallery, Buffalo. He deals, with discrimination with the
work of the chief exhibitors and passes sentence with judgment. “The last noteworthy impres-
sion you get from the show,” he says, “ is that of finality.” That is the conclusion after five and
a half pages of summing up. There the matter might have ended. But Mr. Lidbury had
something more to say, and the more he had to say was not by way of capping his climax, but a
question by way of anti-climax, as if he were afraid he had said more than he ought to have
said, or had said something that might displease a possible patron. He had given credit to the
full to the Photo-Secession for making the exhibition the success it was, he must now temper his
praise ; so he concludes his article by throwing a wet blanket over all the enthusiasm he had felt
and aroused.
“ Is the Photo-Secession,” he says, “ having at last stormed the citadel which it has been
assaulting so long, having won that Recognition which has been the watchword of its fight, now
singing, in this exhibition, its Nunc Dimittis ?”
After the enthusiasm aroused in me by Mr. Lidbury’s previous pages I confess this came as
a shock to me. I do hope his question is not well founded. I do hope that, a body of workers
that can give us what Mr. Lidbury here says it has given us will continue in their labors. Is it
possible that photographers like Steichen, Coburn, Seeley, Stieglitz, Eugene, Brigman, Kaesebier,
Boughton, Keiley, Clarence White, nd the rest are to break their lenses and drown their came-
ras ? Surely that is a consummation devoutly not to be wished for! The men and women of
the Photo-Secession have, as Mr. Lidbury clearly shows, done so much for their art that they
should be petitioned to continue in their well-doing. Mr. Lidbury’s question implies that these
workers had possibly met and decided together to give up working in photography. I ask them,
in the name of all that is best in art, not to disband. I ask you to continue your Laus Deo.
You have gained the citadel of ignorance which you have been assaulting so long; you have won
that Recognition which has been the watchword of your fight. Why give up now ? Rebuild
the citadel you have battered and convert it into a school in which to teach the ignorant. Use
the Recognition you have won to aid you in bearing the light of truth into all the dark places
where no light penetrates and where there is no joy, but only malice and rancour and jealousy.
If Mr. Lidbury is right, and I feel convinced he is, your work is really only begun.
*****
I am puzzled. Here comes the January issue of “American Photography” with an edito-
rial comment on this Exhibition at the Albright Gallery, which runs counter to what Mr. Lidbury
wrote the month before. The editor says the Albright Exhibition was not the equal of the In-
ternational Section at Dresden in 1909. He says that the exhibition of secessionist work, with
the exception of D. O. Hill’s portraits, “shows a distinct retrogression from past exhibitions of the
same character.” I am wondering why. I am wondering why the editor disagrees with Mr.
Lidbury. Mr. Lidbury said the “exhibition contained the very finest work that has ever been
produced in photography.” Did the Dresden exhibition contain finer than the finest or more of
the finest ? But wasn’t the big bulk of the Dresden pictures shown at Buffalo ? I am, myself, always
very thankful for the privilege of looking at fine things; and feeling as I do I get^ a deep pleasure
from them. If I worried because I didn’t get enough of fine things, I wouldn t deserve what I
got, and if I abused the man who gave me only a few of the finest things for not giving me more
I ought to be treated as a sensible father would treat a greedy and selfish child. If the editor of
“American Photography” talks on other matters in the way he talks of this exhibition I shall lose
what little confidence in him there is left in me after reading his latest editorial comment. One
month he prints one statement and the next month he makes a contrary statement. All I can say
is that I’m puzzled.
*****