Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 34-35))

power of the money is another important basis of calculation. It would be
unfair, however, to base monetary valuations on this element alone, as the most
appreciative people would have to pay the penalty of their appreciation by
paying a higher price than less courageous or less enthusiastic friends. It is the
duty of the artist not to reduce the level of his prices once established, nor on
the other hand to charge some people more than he would others.
Last but not least comes the question of permanency, a question to which
artists have often given but too little thought. What fair-minded man will
claim that the purchaser who acquires a work of art on the assumption that he
becomes the possessor of a ‘'thing of beauty” which will be “a joy forever,”
is treated honorably when in exchange for a tender of fixed and undisputed
value he receives an article which in a short period of time will have lost,
through deterioration, much of its exchange value, as well as its power to give
esthetic pleasure ?
In short, the artist should not take the cash valuation of his work as the
measure of its artistic appreciation. He should accept, sadly perhaps, but
courageously, the interference of unavoidable economic laws, and remember
that while he is entitled on the part of the people he deals with to a fair remun-
eration for his efforts, he owes it to them to tender them a fair equivalent
for their money.
Paul B. Haviland.

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
The first four plates of this number of Camera Work, devoted to Rodin,
are reproductions from the original negatives of Eduard J. Steichen’s later
portrait of Rodin and of three of the eight “Balzac-Moonlight” series. Good
as the gravures are, they unavoidably lack some of the power and naturally
also fail to give the print quality of the large original gum prints, which were
first publicly exhibited at the Photo-Secession Gallery, in April, 1909.
The nine other plates in the number are reproductions of Rodin drawings,
the originals of which were exhibited in the two Rodin exhibitions held at the
Photo-Secession Galleries. They include two gravure reproductions; a
process which does not lend itself particularly well to this kind of work. But
we have used it in the case of two drawings for the purpose of comparison
with the process employed in reproducing the seven others. The latter were
reproduced, reduced to two-thirds the original size, by a combination method
in which collotype plays an important role. The spirit and character of the
originals have been preserved with extraordinary fidelity. They were made
by the firm of F. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich, under the direction of
Mr. Goetz, whom it is pleasant to remember as an American, one compelled,
in pursuit of his artistic ideals, to expatriate himself.
Incidentally, we might add that none of these plates has heretofore been
published, except No. I, Steichen’s Rodin, and No. I of Rodin’s drawings;
the other eleven are now first issued.

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