Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1912 (Heft 37))

dramatic, story-telling painters—Carpaccio, and Mantegna, and the mirac-
ulous Hogarth, for example—it is clear that photography can do their work
only through a co-operation of sitter and camerist which assimilates the
relations of artist and model to those at present existing between playwright
and actor. Indeed, just as the playwright is sometimes only a very humble
employee of the actor or actress manager, it is conceivable that in dramatic
and didactic photography the predominant partner will not be necessarily
either the photographer or the model, but simply whichever of the twain
contributes the rarest art to the co-operation. Already that instinctive
animal, the public, goes into a shop and says: ‘Have you any photographs
of Mrs. Patrick Campbell?’ and not ‘Have you any photographs by Elliott
and Fry, Downey, etc., etc.?’ The Salon is altering this, and photographs
are becoming known as Demachys, Holland Days, Horsley Hintons, and so
forth, as who should say Greuzes, Hoppners and Linnells. But, then, the
Salon has not yet touched the art of Hogarth. When it does, ‘The Rake’s
Progress’ will evidently depend as much on the genius of the rake as of the
moralist who squeezes the bulb, and then we shall see what we shall see.”

MAETERLINCK ON PHOTOGRAPHY*
I BELIEVE that here are observable the first steps, still somewhat hesitat-
ing but already significant, toward an important evolution. Art has held
itself aloof from the great movement, which for half a century has en-
grossed all forms of human activity in profitably exploiting the natural forces
that fill heaven and earth. Instead of calling to his aid the enormous forces
ever ready to serve the wants of the world, as an assistance in those mechan-
ical and unnecessarily fatiguing portions of his labor, the artist has remained
true to processes which are primitive, traditional, narrow, small, egotistical
and over-scrupulous, and thus has lost the better part of his time and energy.
These processes date from the days when man believed himself alone in the
universe, confronted by innumerable enemies. Little by little he discovers
that these innumerable enemies were but allies and mysterious slaves of man
which had not been taught to serve him. Man, to-day, is on the point of
realizing that everything around him begs to be allowed to come to his assist-
ance and is ever ready to work with him and for him, if he will but make his
wishes understood. This glad message is daily spreading more widely
through all the domains of human intelligence. The artist alone, moved by
a sort of superannuated pride, has refused to listen to the modern voice. He
reminds one of one of those unhappy solitary weavers, still to be found in
remote parts of the country, who, though weighed down by the misery of
poverty and useless fatigue, yet absolutely continues to weave coarse fabric
by an antiquated and obsolete method, and this although but a few steps
* Written by Maeterlinck for the first Steichen Number, Camera Work, Number II
(April, 1903), but the MS. arriving too late, published in Number III as a loose insert so as
to permit its being inserted in Number II.

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