DOI article:
Holland, Clive: Artistic photography in Great Britain
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27086#0016
GREAT BRITAIN
photographic, are from the artistic perception of their originators
and the methods of production chosen far removed from “ the old
style of thing,” and possess in a marked degree evidences of the
worker’s skill and artistic taste.
It is now, indeed, possible to tell a photograph by almost any
leading and well-known worker at a glance, to distinguish the style
as easily as to tell a Sargent, a Brangwyn, a Wilson Steer, an
Orchardson, a Le Sidaner or an Emile Claus. This fact not only
lends dignity to the works themselves, but also forms the strongest
possible argument that Photography, like all arts, is evolutionary,
and in a word—is an art.
The most recent developments of the pictorial school of photo-
graphy, whether it be those of Great Britain, France, or America,
will be seen to be an adaptation or modification of the methods
which created so much comment and gave rise to so much often
adverse and bitter criticism on their introduction some five or six
years back. Many of the most prominent and successful workers
in Great Britain have recognised that at the outset the extreme
pictorialists, who were many of them willing to sacrifice everything
to effect and for the attainment of a resemblance to painting, were,
in fact, checking the truest and sanest development of their art.
That, indeed, greater success and greater honour would be achieved
by a less close following of the art of painting as practised at the
present time. The limitations of photography as regards the
rendering of colour, and the fact that the elimination of the super-
fluous is not easy of accomplishment, prevent it, at all events at
present, being considered on the same plane as painting, or gaining
its chief successes in a similar way or by identical methods. In the
case of both landscape and portraiture it has been found over and
over again that to succumb to the ruse of excessive diffusion of focus
and flat low tones in the hope that the resultant photograph may be
considered to have been evolved by the same methods as a modern
painting by a member of the “ impressionist ” school, is but to
court ridicule by artists, and invite the stigma of failure at the hands
of the less educated. As in a monochrome drawing tone values
and a good range of them constitutes with symmetrical form the chief
charm and elements of success, so in a photograph for it to be well
and suitably printed and the original negative perfectly exposed
with a long range of tones will prove the best factors in obtaining a
success. Coupled, of course, with those of artistic perception, good
technique and individualism which cannot be spared either from
painting or from photography.
g b 4
photographic, are from the artistic perception of their originators
and the methods of production chosen far removed from “ the old
style of thing,” and possess in a marked degree evidences of the
worker’s skill and artistic taste.
It is now, indeed, possible to tell a photograph by almost any
leading and well-known worker at a glance, to distinguish the style
as easily as to tell a Sargent, a Brangwyn, a Wilson Steer, an
Orchardson, a Le Sidaner or an Emile Claus. This fact not only
lends dignity to the works themselves, but also forms the strongest
possible argument that Photography, like all arts, is evolutionary,
and in a word—is an art.
The most recent developments of the pictorial school of photo-
graphy, whether it be those of Great Britain, France, or America,
will be seen to be an adaptation or modification of the methods
which created so much comment and gave rise to so much often
adverse and bitter criticism on their introduction some five or six
years back. Many of the most prominent and successful workers
in Great Britain have recognised that at the outset the extreme
pictorialists, who were many of them willing to sacrifice everything
to effect and for the attainment of a resemblance to painting, were,
in fact, checking the truest and sanest development of their art.
That, indeed, greater success and greater honour would be achieved
by a less close following of the art of painting as practised at the
present time. The limitations of photography as regards the
rendering of colour, and the fact that the elimination of the super-
fluous is not easy of accomplishment, prevent it, at all events at
present, being considered on the same plane as painting, or gaining
its chief successes in a similar way or by identical methods. In the
case of both landscape and portraiture it has been found over and
over again that to succumb to the ruse of excessive diffusion of focus
and flat low tones in the hope that the resultant photograph may be
considered to have been evolved by the same methods as a modern
painting by a member of the “ impressionist ” school, is but to
court ridicule by artists, and invite the stigma of failure at the hands
of the less educated. As in a monochrome drawing tone values
and a good range of them constitutes with symmetrical form the chief
charm and elements of success, so in a photograph for it to be well
and suitably printed and the original negative perfectly exposed
with a long range of tones will prove the best factors in obtaining a
success. Coupled, of course, with those of artistic perception, good
technique and individualism which cannot be spared either from
painting or from photography.
g b 4