Photography

“ Photography is shown to be the one radical advance in depiction since art began. In days of old an object had to be seen before it could be pictured; to-day new heavens and a new earth impress their images first in the camera, to declare themselves only afterward to the eye. ”

“ Photography is a reproduction; it becomes a betrayal. What is the copy interpreted by this betrayal? How can one extract the character of anything if the true model is not there?
“Here, then, is our engraver obliged to copy with his precise art from something quite vague. Photography sees the globs of color, the accidents of a picture, with as much interest as the most beautiful design. ”

“ The sun and the camera between them certainly do your picture for you, and as you urge, there is more of artifice in the merest Sunday-school tale than in the best of photographs. Still, you must remember that photography too has its artifice, its choice of the right and the wrong way, and its exercise of judgment; there is a great deal in it that is not mechanical; and in its essence it is of the same class as the books I have been alluding to. ”

“ 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 photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until he has made a net work all over his plate and led us to look at this instead of his picture, which, if good, would have been let alone—a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. ”

“ Through photography the whole world may become acquainted with the great statues, the great paintings, the victories of art. In this way the mind is enlarged, the sympathies quickened, the appreciation of the beautiful intensified, the taste refined and the character ennobled. ”

“ It would be utterly impossible to estimate the advantages Photography has conferred upon all mankind, or to anticipate the still greater wonders it is yet destined to achieve.
Having sketched the early struggles which Photography had to surmount to claim a high place for its followers, we now proceed to examine its distinguishing features. In scrutinizing the works of even the greatest artists of our day, we are sure to find some fault—some error. ”

“ For many years photography was largely confined to portraiture and the faithful reproduction of objects and scenes. All that was expected of a camera was to “make a picture” of a thing. Within the last forty years, however, as reproductive processes have been invented, photography has come to be one of the most useful of arts. ”

“ One of the most recent and beautiful is the art of photography, where, by means of applied chemistry, aided by the rays of the sun, there can be produced the most pleasing and lifelike representations. ”

“ As the problems to the maker of pictures by photography are the same as those of the painter and the especial ambition of the former's art is to be painter-like, separations have been thought unnecessary in the address of the text. It is the best wish of the author that photography, following painting in her essential principles as she does, may prove herself a well met companion along art's highway,—seekers together, at arm's length, and in defined limits, of the same goal. ”

“ The literalness of photography, which prevents its ever competing with etching or painting in imaginative art, makes it of inestimable value in certain realms, and scientists of all sorts, astronomers, physicists, physicians, pathologists, as well as architects, building contractors, business men, who wish a precise and accurate record of any object, recognize the value of the camera. ”

“ We know from the camera how a lightning-flash really looks, what a horse is like when at full speed, the different actions of a bird’s wing when flying, the true shape of each wave in a storm, also the swing of drapery in a high wind, and how men and women really appear when excited; for before the days of instantaneous photography the painter was apt to be deceived, and take as one several motions and effects. ”

“ The daily use made of photography by artists is another proof of the good opinion in which it is held by them. You could not get these men to say a word in favour of chromo-lithography, because that is a hybrid craft with few possibilities. These questions being disposed of, we will proceed to discuss an assertion of Mr. Hamerton’s, that photography is like a reflection in a mirror. Now from what we have shown in this book, means are at the artist’s command to influence the final picture in every stage of its development. ”

“ The aim. We wish from the first to make it clearly understood as to what is our object in comparing photography with the other pictorial arts. It is not to condemn any of the other arts as inadequate for artistic expression, for we hold that good art, as expressed even by a lead pencil, is better than bad art expressed on the largest of canvases, but our object is to inquire what position the technique of photography takes when regarded side by side with the methods and limits of each of the pictorial arts. ”

“ But how much more popular and useful does photography become, when it can be used as a means of securing plates from which to print photographs in a regular printing press, and, what is more astonishing and delightful, to produce the real colors of nature as shown in the subject, no matter how brilliant or varied. ”

“ CHAPTER XI - THE PLACE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN FINE ART Since the time that photography laid its claim to be reckoned among the fine arts the attention of artists has been attracted first by the claim and thereafter, with acknowledgments, to the performance. ”

“ Invention and design, feeling and imagination, are all a part of the photographer's suite. He employs them all. And these too are qualities the most artistic. Technique, which is manual and not spiritual, is the one point at which art and photography cannot coalesce. ”

“ President of the Pictorial Photographers of America To many people photography is merely a mechanical process. To an increasing number, however, photography is being seen as an art, by which personal impressions of nature or human life may be expressed as truly as by the brush. These workers in photography see in it a medium by which the action of light upon sensitive surfaces may be so controlled as really to interpret scenes and persons in the individualistic spirit of a true art. From every part of our country come evidences of the growing appreciation of photography as a pictorial medium. ”

“ For one reason or another the men whose names were known ten or fifteen years ago seem to have dropped out and their places are being filled by new blood, men with high ideals and aspirations, who are not content merely with reproducing, by means of their cameras, pretty scenes and places, but who believe that photography is capable of much more—of showing not only the physical facts, but the very spirit of nature herself—a true impressionism ”

“ I thought when I began to write that I had little to say on photography, but now that I have got into the spirit of the subject, the possibilities, utilities, and various uses of photography start out before me from the chaos of unthought creation, all importuning me to take them up, one after the other, like a legion of undressed skeletons: photography as connected with etching, wood-engraving, lithography, zincography, typography, and a dozen other uses where photography is not only united in marriage to art, but must be regarded as the husband—i.e. ”

“ Most persons have a fancy that the application of photography is always uniform, whatever may be the object to be taken, and, therefore, that a photographer who can take a portrait must be able to take equally well a machine, a landscape, or an oil-painting. ”

“ No one will deny the interest there is in a sensitive, flexible line and in the rendition of [pg 200] mass by line. But photography is an art dealing with finished surfaces of perfect modelling, and workers in this art should preserve the “nature” of their subject. The man who feels line had better etch or use a pencil. ”

“ The operations of photography serve to make us understand how it is that the sun presides over chemical action in the vegetable world. What is photography? What does that curious phenomenon which fixes a drawing formed by light upon a sheet of paper, consist of? A paper steeped in chloride or iodide of silver is placed in the focus of the lens of a dark camera, and the image formed by the lens is made to fall upon paper sprinkled with water. ”

“ The wider the framework of practical experiences involving the camera, the more interesting the testimony of photography proved. This applies to photography in journalism and science, as well as in personal and family life. With photography, images started to substitute for words, and literacy progressively gave way to imagery in a variety of new human experiences related to space, movement, and aspects of life otherwise not visible. ”

“ Art, in the present age, stands conspicuous for its great achievements in Truthfulness, which has been guided and assisted by the aid of the Camera. Perspective, the great key to Art, was fabulous before Photography was introduced; and by its aid what perfection has it not obtained, not only is distance42 mathematically exact, but the round, soft, accuracy of light and shade in nature, is most beautifully defined! ”

“ In spite of all these advances, photography was almost exclusively a studio proposition, when, in 1880, experiments were begun which were to result in photography that could be universally enjoyed—photography as we know it today. ”

“ Forty years ago no expedition of importance set out without some member who possessed artistic ability, that pictorial records of the life and character of the new country might be brought back to civilisation. As photography developed, the artist of palette and brush was superseded by a man armed with a camera. ”

“ The beauty of the images which are formed in the camera obscura long ago gave rise to the desire of fixing them permanently. We know how perfectly photography has already satisfied that desire, so far as the forms are concerned. ”

“ While all these wonders have come to pass in practical service, photography has likewise grown and expanded in the field of fine art. There are photographic art schools, and clubs and exhibitions—all for the purpose of cultivating and developing the camera to the finest forms of expression. We have highly cultivated and skilled photographers who are true artists, and who are engaged in employing photography as a means to fine art achievement. ”

“ Photography not only aids and assists the Fine Arts, but gives invaluable aid to Architecture, Astronomy, Geology, Mineralogy, Science of Chemistry, Physiology, Literature, and numberless sciences, and likewise what the human eye is incapable of discerning, the microscope reveals and Photography delineates. ”

“ Picture-making by photography would perhaps be a simpler phrase, but that to my mind the word "picture-making" is too similar in idea to boot-making, lace-making, etc., all of which imply a mechanical manufacturing, whereas a picture—a real picture—like a musical composition, a poem or a beautiful thought, grows or is evolved rather than made to order. ”

“ Though the ordinary knowledge of photography must be taken for granted here, there are many details and preferences which are special to this kind of work. The bane of practical photography is the rich amateur, who insists on useless luxury of apparatus, and has set a fashion in fittings which is absurdly complex. ”

“ Popular Pastimes are numerous, but to many there is nothing more fascinating than photography. The magic of sunshine, the wonders of nature, and the beauties of art are tools in the hands of the amateur photographer. If you want to get a start in this up-to-date hobby, this outfit will help you. You will enjoy the work and be delighted with the beautiful pictures you can make. ”

“ When objects and situations in life that do not exist are wanted, the camera can, by some trick or device, create them for us. There seems to be no limit to the possibilities. Each wonder displayed in photographic reproduction gives way to some new effect more wonderful still.
Consider briefly a few of the wonders of modern photography. First and foremost, and most spectacular of all, is the moving-picture film. Then, in the world of practical things, we have the telephoto-lens—a combination of the telescope and camera—that takes pictures of objects far beyond the reach of the naked eye. ”

“ I have some little skill in photography, and I had brought with me a camera and some dry plates, intending to photograph any striking scenes that I might come across during my journey. By the aid of dry plates, photography, and especially travelling photography, is much simplified. ”

“ Photography has undoubtedly played an important part in the development of modern art, both in figure and landscape. In landscapes we are inclined to think that the influence of photography was for a time hurtful, for this reason, painters were apt to emulate the detail of the photograph, and lose the breadth of man’s view of Nature in consequence. ”

“ This pleasing development may primarily be ascribed to the fact that the practice of photography, which was originally confined almost exclusively to professional workers, has gradually spread and has become a means of recreation to the multitude in their leisure hours. ”