THE YEAR'S PROGRESS

We cannot claim for our art any outstanding phenomenon like the interest in the radio that has swept the country this year, or any remarkable development in the science of photography like the invention a few years ago of the LumiÈre plate. The day may come when our exhibitions will show masses of color on their walls which will make the water-colorists and the miniaturists green with envy, but that day is not yet. And I for one would be sorry to see it come. There is to me a charm about good monotone photography that is all its own and that puts it on a plane with etching, engraving, lithography, and other monotone processes. Of course some artists, strictly so called, object to regarding photography as anything but a mechanical process, but the number of those who would make art a close corporation is happily diminishing.

In fact, the recognition that photography is receiving from accredited representatives of the fine arts makes its position no longer a doubtful one. Any of the arts may be used for commercial purposes, but that fact does not take away from them their rightful place when they are used by competent hands for aesthetic purposes. The increasing number of museums that are opening their exhibition halls to good photography is an evidence that is obvious to all observers. Caustic critics like Joseph Pennell may decry photography, but many able artists and critics, attending exhibitions of photography that are being held in many of our centers of art, are having their eyes opened to the beauty of lens work in the hands of men and women who use the camera with feeling and insight. Then, too, we must not forget the fact that some well-known artists, beginning with D. O. Hill and continuing with Mrs. Kasebier, Frank Eugene, Steichen, and others, have found in the practice of photography a more lasting fame than in any other line of their effort.

Among notable exhibitions of the past year several should be mentioned. Of course there are what might be called the historic exhibitions that have won an established place, like the London Salon, the Royal Photographic Exhibition, the Pittsburgh Salon, the Los Angeles Salon, the Portland Exhibition, and others. [pg 10] More recently established exhibitions that are to be noted are those of the San Francisco Pictorialists, the Oakland Salon, the Canadian National at Toronto, the Buffalo Salon, and that of the Pictorial Photographers of America at the opening of the Art Center in New York City. At many of these exhibitions pictures from the same exhibitors were hung, and as the judges at practically all of them were different men (and women), including professional artists, it is evident that there was a consensus among the competent critics that these exhibitors at least are doing worthy work. But in that fact there is no cause for discouragement to the novice, for new names are to be found in the catalogues of all the exhibitions, and there is no league to keep out any individual's pictures anywhere. That is one of the triumphs of our art—that, while judges may sometimes err and exclude a good picture or select a poor one, there is a general open-mindedness in recognizing merit wherever it exists. A well-known worker is pretty sure to have his photographs declined by the judges in most of the photographic exhibitions if he falls below his standard, and, on the other hand, a gifted beginner will quickly get a place in the seats of the mighty if he can produce the photographs that entitle him to distinction.

Some notable one-man exhibitions have been held since our last Annual was published. Among them should be mentioned those of the veterans Alfred Stieglitz and Rudolph Eickemeyer in the Anderson Galleries in New York—and it is a significant testimony to the lure of our art that these masters of it have “come back”; those of Dr. H. B. Goodwin, of Stockholm, at the Brown-Robertson Gallery, and E. O. Hoppe, of England, at Wanamaker's, in New York; that of Clarence H. White, of New York, at the Art Center; the joint exhibition of prints of W. E. Macnaughtan and William A. Alcock, of Brooklyn, at the New York Camera Club, and of F. J. Mortimer and Alexander Keighley of England at the same place; and by Mrs. Antoinette B. Hervey, Miss Sophie Lauffer, Nicholas Muray, and F. O. Libby, with numerous others, that show the popularity of this method of placing good work before the public. Such exhibitions should be encouraged, for not only do they stimulate the exhibitor to show worthy work, but they are in the nature of spurs to the activity of every serious worker who has the privilege of seeing them.

As to processes that are in favor, the bromoil and the bromoil transfer still continue to attract a host of workers. European workers seem still to have access to better and cheaper materials for this work than we in America, as is evidenced by the number and quality of the prints that are produced in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany, where bromoil work has even acquired a commercial status among professional photographers.

The question is sometimes raised whether the general public who attend photographic exhibitions are interested in processes as such. I think the question must be answered in the negative. It is the general effect that interests the outsider, and he cares not whether the print is a gum, a bromoil, a bromide, a platinum, or a palladiotype. We must beware lest we get enamored of a process rather than the result. I say this with no disrespect to the bromoilists, many of whom are gifted workers and endowed with art feeling. But we must remember that we are working to popularize photography as an art as well as to demonstrate our own artistic feeling and technical skill, and we ought not to lay too great stress on a difficult branch of our work, to the discouragement of those who would seek to share the delights of a beautiful recreation. The problem must be left to each individual. The beauty of a bromoil print, for instance, is supreme to its devotee: is its superiority to other processes worth the time and the toil necessary to make it, which might be devoted to the study of composition, of a wider range of subject, or to the mastery of simpler processes? Picture construction and print quality are after all the main things in photography, not the medium we use.

There is no royal road to distinction in photography, but each year sees some helps devised for the earnest worker, whether amateur or professional. For the amateur there is now an increasing variety of cameras and photographic material. New cameras are coming from abroad, among them a small French moving-picture machine, the “Sept,” which can be carried in the hand and with which, it is claimed, good “stills” may be taken as well as good regulation movie pictures. An auto-focus enlarger, at a comparatively small price, has also been put on the market for amateur use; and with the increasing use of small cameras and the adoption of simpler methods this may prove a boon to those who wish to make bromide enlargements more easily than they could by the older methods. It is to be regretted that platinum paper is not being manufactured in America for photographic purposes, for the quality of a choice platinum print is still regarded by many as unsurpassed, and many workers wish to see platinum resume its old place among the photographer's resources. Many “spotlight” machines and artificial illuminating devices have been put on the market, and with these the photographer will be equipped to play on his sitters the “light that never was on sea or land,” if he so desires. But the ingenious photographer who is quick to seize good lighting effects will not need the aid of artificial lighting, anymore than did the early master of photography, D. O. Hill, whose simple effects reached almost the finality of lens art.

Just here I might add a word as to the increasing coalescence of the amateur and the professional photographer in America. Strictly speaking, an amateur may [pg 12] be said to be one who gets no return in money for his work, while the professional's work is mainly financial in its object. The amateur photographer, however, finds his expenses heavy and the temptation strong to sell his pictures; while in America the professional photographer is frequently so much in love with the pictorial possibilities of his work that he loses sight of the financial end of it.

For the worker to get the real enthusiasm and benefit from photography, the thing now necessary to mark a distinct note of progress, or to make an outstanding year, is to have a great international exhibition, similar to the one held in Buffalo in 1910. This, I am glad to say, is already planned for next year, to be held in New York City, which, although the great center of activity, has never had an exhibition of this kind.

ON IDEAS

Thackeray resigned the editorship of a British periodical only because he could not endure the ordeal of rejecting the thousands of submitted manuscripts. This is a distressing phase of an Art Director's duties and to my mind his most sacred obligation. No matter how hardened by experience, a conscientious editor cannot fail to suffer for and with the unhappy authors and artists whose work goes back with the proverbial pink rejection slip. Why are drawings and photographs rejected? What is wrong with the great mass of rejected material? My observation is that they suffer more from a lack of clear thinking and careful execution than from a paucity of ideas.

The weird conceptions and grotesque ideas in back of most of the unsolicited material submitted would make one easily believe that the artists are inmates, or perfectly qualified to be inmates of asylums. I am seldom inclined or required to urge an artist to seek originality of idea. My constant plea, and what to my mind is a prerequisite, is an optimistic point of view, a sound, intelligent thought rendered with, may I say, reverence.

Struggling young artists are constantly advised to cultivate their imagination. What is imagination? Arthur Brisbane defined this in the most compact, tangible statement: “Imagination is nothing more than the power to see and realize what others fail to see and realize.” The illusive idea that we are searching for is nothing hidden or mystic but right before our very eyes. We have only to “see and realize.”

It is conceded, I am sure, that the idea is the prime requisite of a political cartoon. A prominent cartoonist was once asked where he got his ideas. In reply he asked “what ideas?” Men of ideas have brains that function exactly as those of other normal well-ordered citizens. They are not gifted by strange kinks in their brain cells. When the prominent cartoonist is contemplating the banal act of shaving or putting in a new furnace, his thoughts are no more or less exalted or lofty than when creating a cartoon idea intended to sway public opinion. Strange, isn't it, that considering the thousands of earnest thinking [pg 14] diligent-working young students, that there are so few artists whose work reflects real genius? Strange that the standard of the Graphic Arts is as discouragingly low as it is considering this army of talent. But even more strange that this contradiction to the law of averages is also applicable to the field of sports—to a field so practical, tangible and therefore measurable. Every healthy-minded youngster born, has two early ambitions: one to be a great baseball player, another to become President. And yet the scouts and managers for the Big Leagues have difficulty in discovering talent above the average.

In the field of Pictorial Photography, the average is exceedingly high. This volume is a demonstration. To be sure, if one seeks, one can quickly discover atrocities in the galleries and on the printed page; but my conviction is that the progress from the purely aesthetic standpoint has kept pace with the mechanical and scientific strides made in Photography.

Quotations are generally sneered at, but they make excellent conclusions. Some one once said: “All one's life is music if one touched the notes rightly and in tune.” A very happy thought and true. But finding the right note is infinitely more difficult than the striking in tune. Ideas, to be sure, you must seek. But orderly thought, patience and fine craftsmanship in carrying out your idea frequently count for more than the originality or brilliance of the idea itself. Owing to the restlessness of the world situation—wars and rumors of wars, strikes and overtendency towards jazz and slang—there is already, especially in the work of youngsters, too evident an urge to be different; different merely for the sake of being different.

A thought possibly worthy of the deliberation of every artist is that Distinction is a result, never the object, of a great mind.