Volltext Seite (XML)
258 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [April 3, 1891. paper-making to printing, or copper-plate planishing to engraving. If we look down the list of papers read before the Society during the past year, we shall find them all interesting to those who care for such subjects, all desperately clever, but not more than one, or perhaps two, of any use to the practical photographer. But there is a bright side to the shield. Our Society redeems itself in its exhibitions. Until lately—and it would do so now if it were not for Liverpool—it has held the principal exhibitions of photographs, not only in England, but the whole world. Even now it holds the best annual exhibitions, to which all the choice first- fruits of the year’s art are sent, and—it must unfortu nately be confessed—some of the worst. So that we who practise photography, and show our work in October, have not much to complain of except that the pictures shown at these exhibitions, as far as the chief feature, art, is concerned, are not the outcome of anything taught at the meetings of the Society, or by the Society in any other way, but of knowledge gained elsewhere. The curious issue is, that the Society teaches one thing, and shows another as the result. After all, everything is in order, for the first of the Society’s rules tells us that its object “shall be the advancement of photo graphy, and the branches of science and art connected therewith.” But this rule was made for an infant which wanted feeding and nursing; photography is now full grown, and wants increased education. The coming Institute should give us a chance of reformation. Before anything is done it should be thoroughly decided whether it is to be an Institute of Photography or an Institute of Photographic Chemistry, Optics, &c., which, as I have already pointed out, is quite another matter. I will go on the supposition that it is to be an Institute of Photography, although I don’t find much encouragement to suppose so in the first proposals issued, which ask only for “the en couragement of photographic research, and the perfect ing and practical teaching of photographic processes,” with a very faint-hearted reference to art in the shape of “probable ” exhibitions. The first consideration in a Photographic Institute should be to teach photography as an independent art; the next as a handmaid to other arts; afterwards, as applied to industry and science; and I would make a strict law that the students should be compelled to select their department, and not flutter through the whole of them. The departments should be kept strictly separate. Eor instance, if, in the art depart ment, a student was found wasting his time over a new developer, or a modification of an old one, he should be dismissed without benefit of clergy. The aspirants to the art department would have to pass a simple examination to discover what they know of the ordinary processes of photography, and a more severe one to disclose how much they would have to forget. The Royal Academy itself, in its early days, admitted coach-painters as members, and the works of artists in hair to its exhibitions; we have, therefore, no precedent in that august body for drawing the line too closely, and I have not made up my mind as to whether a student with some knowledge of science should be admitted. The principal visible use of photography is for portraiture; that I would have taught first, for com paratively few know how to take a portrait, and the crying want of the photographic world is the removal of the contents of the hideous show-cases that shock the eye of the artist, and degrade the taste of the mul titude. Then I would tackle the amateurs, and teach them how to place a figure in a landscape, instead of weakly giving it up as too difficult. I would have lectures, illustrated by aid of the lantern, on composi tion, light and shade, and the history of art, with (as we profit by our failures) an occasional extra on artistic misfits, fads, and fashions. And then—and then, that decimal percentage of students who become artists must be left to evolve themselves. The tributary arts, whether scientific or mechanical, I would encourage, on “ a more removed ground,” but not so that they should swamp art, as they try to do at some of our present societies. I would even, with the greatest generosity, endow research, but I would bar any more modifications of developers. Just as much profit can sometimes be got by the use of improved machinery from the waste of old mines; there should be a department for reviving old arts and investigating discarded inventions by the light of modern science. I am nothing if not practical, and will give a well-known instance of what I mean. Every reader of the works of a certain great traveller in the last century knows that at the famous Academy of Lagado there was a professor engaged upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the raw air in inclement summers at a reasonable rate. We have got used to inclement summers, and, personally, I enjoy the most artistic atmosphere on earth, and would not like to have it altered ; but if we could bottle the cucumber-given sunbeams, they may be a convenient substitute for our present clumsy, but most effective, flash-light derived from magnesium. Neither would I exclude the impossible. The sunbeam extractors may also undertake the discovery of photo graphy in colours, if it were only for the sake of supplying the much-believing outside press with exciting periodical paragraphs calculated to stimulate the interest of the public, and enable them to tell every photographer that it can be done, for they “ have seen it in the papers.” Disputation should not be allowed in the general body; but, if a member felt an inward compulsion to prove that two and two made four, or that A was as good as B, other things being equal, and another to deny the proposition, there should be a quiet and retiredroom provided for them—to “press the button” in; the “rest” should be done by pamphlet. For it has been wisely observed that every community is volcanic and requires a crater, just as every steam engine should be supplied with a safety-valve; there fore the Institute should be provided, as Cornelius