Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1916 (Heft 48))

Here, for example, is a Winter view of City Hall Park; a vista of winding paved walk,
spotted with figures and threaded with shadows of the bare limbs of trees, flanked in front by
bits of iron fencing and turf, bounded at the back by a diversity of buildings. You may be
disposed to size up the impression generally by the phrase: “It is so wonderfully alive.” That’s
just it; it is a fragment of the kaleidoscopic variety of appearances and movements that make
up our city life and are so familiar that we are apt to overlook their wonderfulness. And the
fragment has been caught in the directness of actual movement. It is wonderfully alive.
For this result the photographer can lay claim to two achievements. He first exercised
artistic knowledge and taste in selecting his subject and determining the exact position that his
view should occupy on the negative. Then followed integrity of craftsmanship, leading up to
the beautiful possibilities of tone inherent in platinum printing. Thus, while the contents of
the picture are absolutely objective, outside himself, their vitality and expression have been
enhanced by his personal taste, skill and honesty.
Now such complete objectivity of purpose and achievement is impossible to the draughts-
man or painter. However much he may try to depend on eyesight, something of his personal
feeling must affect everything that he depicts. But today, with our increased scientific knowl-
edge and our cultivated taste for accuracy, we demand an absolute objectivity. We are not
satisfied to have the facts filtered through the subjectivity of the artist. We want our facts
straight, and we can only get them so through the straight use of the mechanism of photography.
The limitations of photography have long been dwelled upon; but its distinct, unrivalled and
unassailable possibilities of picture-making are only now being incontestably proved, by such
examples as these of straight photography.
Royal Cortissoz in the “N. Y. Tribune”:
At the Photo-Secession Gallery, usually devoted to the vagaries of artists of the various
modern “isms,” are some noteworthy photographs of New York and other places by Paul
Strand. This photographer has a good sense of composition and some of the pictures have a
remarkably fine color suggestiveness in their tones. He has, too, the faculty for seeing possi-
bilities of beauty in the most commonplace objects and places. In the snowy street corner the
figures are well placed, and the top of a lamp-post at the bottom of the picture is a telling note.
He has made splendid use of the line of foam against the rocks in the photograph of Niagara
River below the falls. The base of the falls is veiled in the cloud of spray, which forms the
background, and the spots of dark are supplied by the pile of rocks on the left and the “Maid of
the Mist” pursuing her valiant way on the right. It is a lovely photograph. The winding
stream with a leafless willow in the foreground is exquisite in tone and texture. The artist has
made a thing of great beauty out of a railroad yard. The snow-covered hillock, with its in-
definite bushes, is a silvery picture of surpassing loveliness.

Henry J. McBride in the “N. Y. Sun”:
The Marsden Hartley pictures fill the small galleries of the Photo-Secession with glowing
color. Any one who takes delight in color should get the same pleasure from these canvases
that one obtains from fine stained glass. They are rather large for the small galleries and there
is no chance for the architecture to provide settings for them. Still that is not a serious draw-
back for the lover of color. There never can be too much good stained glass, some people
think. Witness the admired Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which appears at first glance to be all
glass!
These works are all terrifically modern, of course, else they would not be shown at the
Photo-Secession. There are triangles which can be readily accepted as soldiers’ tents, and there
are rhythmic repetitions of horses and constant suggestions of uniforms of dragoons, banners,
swords and all the pomp and circumstance of war. So much even a Philadelphian could make
out. But as to the exact episode or emotion that the artist portrays there will be less certainty,
although Mr. Hartley says he has expressed only what he saw during his travels in Germany.
This Mr. Hartley, the artist, is a lean, intellectual, disillusioned type, “very American,”
as the Berlin newspapers said; so American that it is a fair guess that he is a Yankee. He
has the appearance of a man who does not fool himself or deal in foolery. He would be taken
by most people for a surgeon, a chemist or an inventor. Yet this is what he says himself of his
strange pictures:

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