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The photographic news
- Bandzählung
- 35.1891
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- 1891
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- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
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- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
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- Bandzählung
- No. 1715, July 17, 1891
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The photographic news
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Band 35.1891
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518 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [July 17, 1891. poetry, of music, and at least twice in that of pictorial art, without leaving much permanent effect on the general appreciation of what are to be considered as the highest and most valuable qualities in the respective fields of labour involved. It could scarcely be expected that photography should be exempt from disturbances of a character similar to those referred to as affecting other arts, and, in fact, there has recently been a revival in a very aggressive manner of a claim for superiority in results, differing mainly from those which have been accepted as representing the best work in photography in the indistinctness characterising them in whole or in part. The renewal in question is, doubtless, very largely due to the energetic advocacy of Dr. Emerson, and, although he has renounced what he bad written in that connection, some of those who adopted his suggestions and supported his arguments still maintain the superiority of that photographic work in which indistinctness is the most promising characteristic, and do so with an aggressiveness and an assumption of artistic excellence that seems likely to induce a good deal of acquiescence, especially amongst the newer and less experienced amateurs, who are only too likely to be persuaded that the dimness and indistinctness which are so easy for them to produce, are something more artistic than the class of work with which they would find it harder to compete. These loudly asserted claims of artistic superiority seem, too, to have induced a certain amount of acquiescence among a larger class, photographers often submitting too readily to what claims to be artistic ally authoritative. It is not easy otherwise to account for medals being awarded to photographs which, independent of the question of indistinctness, one might have expected to be debarred by heavy artificial printing down of skies, a printing down which, in some cases, involves the con fusion of such objects as would in nature, in painting, and in simple true photographs, stand out in decided relief against the aerial background. The claim to artistic superiority for “soft” over “sharp” photographs depends, as has been previously pointed out, very much upon the different meaning attached to the word “sharp” by painters and by photographers, the latter understanding the word to mean minutely defined, and the former harsh in outline. Softness and thorough sharpness, in the photographic sense of fine definition, are quite compatible in a photograph in which, by extreme care in exposure and development, and, when necessary, by the use of orthochromatic methods, the gradations are properly rendered. It is, no doubt, easier to obtain a fictitious kind of softness by losing definition, but to claim a monopoly of artistic merit for this kind of softness seems to be about as reasonable as it would be to do so for those productions of the brush in which the badger softener had been freely employed by the painter. As an example of the assumption of the monopoly of artistic merit by the professors of the indistinct school, and of the unworthiness of those who do not share in their views, may be mentioned the remarks of Mr. Maskell at the Camera Club Conference on the paper by Mr. Pennell. The last-named writer had condemned photography as ' false in representation, and as a hindrance rather than as a help to art; and Mr. Maskell replied to the effect that he could assent to these charges if applied to photography ' as practised until quite recently, but that some of the pro- : ductions of the last two or three years—naming those : workers who belong to the same school of indistinctness . that he does—were of so different and superior a character 1 that Mr. Pennell’s criticisms were no longer justified. • This assumption was more irritating than Mr. Pennell’s easily refutable statements as to the inaccuracy of photo graphic perspective and other condemnations of our art. So, then, works such as those of England, Gale, Wilson, Robinson, Erith, Valentine, Bedford, Abney, Pringle, and hosts of others, English and foreign, are all to be rejected as fit for the denunciations heaped upon photography by Mr. Pennell, and only those of the circle to which Mr. Maskell belongs are useful to the draughtsman or worthy of anything but condemnation. Then, again, Mr. Davison, at his lecture on “ Impres sionism in Photography,” at the Society of Arts, spoke of those who had smirched photography by taking photo graphs sharp all over, and printing them on albumenised paper. That is to say, that those who have been recog nised as the ablest workers are set down as having “smirched” photography by producing works in which the details and gradation of tone visible in the natural scene are, as far as practicable, reproduced in the picture. With regard to the true rendering of gradation or tone, it may be remembered that Dr. Emerson particularly insisted upon preserving it as far as possible with the photographic means available. In this point he was at one with Abney and others, and I understand it to be the one point in his teaching which he did not renounce. By such devices as sunning the whole of the print—tending to in distinctness of another kind than that resulting from want of focus—and insisting upon matt surface, and even upon rough-surface paper for printing upon, the range of grada tion, already insufficient in photography, is weakened, and truthfulness of representation to some extent sacrificed. An out-of-focus photograph, printed on rough paper, may suggest an unfinished sketch by a painter, but is not on that account really entitled to be called artistic, however loudly such a quality may be claimed for it. Concerning such an essentially artificial (not the same thing as artistic) practice as sunning a photograph all over, Mr. Davison says (Phologra.pky, April 3,1891) : “ It struck us at the last Pall Mall Exhibition that nine-tenths of the photographs collected there would have been less objection able for a judicious sunning down, even if applied all over the prints.” To set down nine-tenths of the work of one’s co-exhibitors as “ objectionable,” from one cause alone, seems to me to be characteristic of that assumption of superiority by the professors of the cult of indistinctness, to protest against which is the object of the present paper. The remedy or palliative treatment prescribed will probably strike most people, besides the producers of this condemned nine-tenths of the work, as being itself objectionable. Pretensions to artistic superiority are not necessarily justified in proportion to the dogmatic way in which they may be put forward. Gloom, mist, and indistinctness do not exhaust the beauties of nature, and are not its only phases worthy of representation, although in photography they may be the easiest to suggest, whether existing in the original subject or not. Messrs. Percy Lund and Co., of Bradford, have been clever enough to find out a use for spoilt negative glasses. They are supplying, in boxes, at a cheap rate, “Vista” mounts for different sized plates. These consist of cut-out mounts in ornamental paper, which, by an ingenious device, form elegant frames for photographs when attached to, or merely placed behind, the cleaned negative glass. There are twelve mounts in the half-plate boxes, and twenty in the quarter-plate boxes, and amateur photographers were so quick to note their advan tages that upwards of one thousand were sold directly they were introduced.
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