Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 36))

of,
1 and
^an
"eto
's of
Sty
>rac-
fact,
lent
tof
us;
la
dry
>m-
* a
to
an
ch
he
t,
n
!>
}
e
it
d
i-
J*
:m,
na
>me
the
; for
)OUt
;mly
you
part
)um-
item-
wort

Think for a moment of the limitations of photography. You are confined
to what a friend of mine sums up in the high-sounding words, “contempo-
rary actuality,” and now I find that my vision of New York has gradually
taken upon itself a still narrower range, for it is only at twilight that the city
reveals itself to me in the fulness of its beauty, when the arc lights on the
Avenue click into being. Many an evening I have watched them and studied
carefully just which ones appeared first and why. They begin somewhere
about Twenty-sixth street, where it is darkest, and then gradually the great
white globes glow one by one, up past the Waldorf and the new Library, like
the stringing of pearls, until they burst out into a diamond pendant at the
group of hotels at Fifty-ninth street.
Probably there is a man at a switchboard somewhere, but the effect is
like destiny, and regularly each night, like the stars, we have this lighting
up of the Avenue.
Alvin Langdon Coburn.

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
The Plates in this number of Camera Work are, with one exception,
devoted to the work of Mr. Alfred Stieglitz. There are sixteen in all, and
they represent a series of “Snapshots” most of which were made in and about
New York. The number appearing after each title refers to the date when
the original negative was made. The photogravures were produced directly
from the original negatives. The Manhattan Photogravure Company who
are responsible for the editions deserve a word of special praise for the sym-
pathy with which they have done their work.
The other Plate in this issue of Camera Work is a reproduction of one
of Picasso’s drawings, the original of which was exhibited in the Picasso
exhibition held in the Photo-Secession Galleries during last April. At some
future time it is planned to devote at least part of a number of the magazine
to the work of this most interesting artist whose exhibition at the Secession
Galleries is referred to in “Photo-Secession Notes”. The excerpt from Plato
reprinted elsewhere in this number has seemed to us interesting in connection
with the latest phase of Picasso’s evolution.

73