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

is seeking to render a vision of things not as they are palpable to the eye but
as they impress the imagination, Mr. Stieglitz proves, what he has known all
along, that photography is powerless to continue its rivalry with painting.
He has, in fact, called the bluff on the recent pretensions of painting by show-
ing that it is in its motive essentially photographic.
There was, therefore, a streak of malice aforethought in arranging this
exhibition of De Meyer’s prints. For the latter are far above the average;
represent an honest and exceedingly skilful use of the medium, and display
more pictorial imagination than is discernible in the majority of photographs
and paintings. They illustrate to an unusual degree the flexibility of the
camera’s resources; and thereby are all the stronger evidence of the latter’s
limitations, as compared with those of the draughtsman and painter.
For De Meyer unquestionably has vision. He sees beyond the mere
prose of his subject; his imagination realizes how the significance of the facts
may be enhanced by pictorial expression. Take, for example, his series of
still-life subjects, in which flowers and fruit are arranged in glass vessels, upon
a glass tray on the polished surface of a table. One of them, “Water-lilies,”
was exhibited on this occasion. In its lucid purity of color, the magic of its
shimmering light and evanescent half-tones, and the enveloppe of silky atmos-
phere which unites everything into an ensemble of impression, it is a veritable
dream of loveliness. The poetry, latent in the material, hovers like fragrant
breath over the whole conception.
Or, again, in the series in which the subjects are dainty porcelain figures,
what exquisiteness of fancy is revealed! Color, texture, tone and lighting are
at the service of an imagination which has felt beyond the daintiness and
miniature quality of the material and invested it with a certain intangible
piquancy of charm and enhanced it with a suggestion of the abstract dignity
of plastic immobility. Within their range of expression, the vision rendered
in these prints is delightful and complete.
In a less degree, there is a suggestion of individual vision in the portrait
and model studies. Perhaps the best of these are “The Cup” and “The
Silver Skirt,” since here the fancy of the artist seems to have played most
freely in the joy of what could be done with the treatment of lighted textures.
Meanwhile, portraits, such as those of “Mrs. Brown Potter” and “Percy
Grainger,” while far less individualized in treatment, have yet a distinction
of superior feeling, such as portraiture, whether in painting or photography,
none too often exhibits.
And throughout this scale of expression how is the result achieved ? The
very simplicity of the means involves its own high commendation. For it
is founded upon that none too common quality of honesty: the honest study
of the resources of the camera and the platinum method of printing; the
honest purpose to rely on these resources directly and exclusively, and the
honest purpose to shape the vision to what without trickery or evasion these
may be made to accomplish. Baron de Meyer is a man of the world, of wide
culture and sympathy with diverse forms of aesthetic expression. All this has
tended to broaden and refine his vision; but has never tempted him to distort
44