Whenever I have spoken of the possibilities of photography becoming so independent and artistic that it can claim to be ranked as one of the expressions of pictorial art, the work of men like Robert Demachy and Alfred Stieglitz has formed the basis and starting point for my speculations.
Alfred Stieglitz is to me indisputably the foremost artistic photographer of America -- and I say this with due consideration of Eickemeyer's scientific realism and F. H. Day's decorative portraiture -- a man whose personality and accomplishments are worthy of being treated by the critic with the same consideration as the life and work of a master artist. What differentiates the genius from the ordinary being and lifts him above the multitude? To me it is the mastery of three gifts, which also others possess, only not to the same degree and not united, namely, first, the power of selection in which technical accomplishments find their expression; second, the depth of emotion, which formulates the conception of the idea to be portrayed; and thirdly, perseverance largely dependent on temperament and constitution.
In his selection of his subject, the photographer is as much an artist as a painter, only forced to limit himself, like the plein air painter, voluntarily to the reproduction of realities. He must have mastered the science of composition, the laws of perspective, the effects of empty space and linear beauty, the massing of light and shade, and the art of values (rendered particularly difficult by the unreliability of photographing color values); in short be a connoisseur to such an extent that he knows at what moment to realize a certain sentiment and express it on the plate. The ability to select, after the setting of the picture has been satisfactorily chosen and composed, the moment when atmospheres and figures passing by make a perfect harmony with the premeditated conception, surpasses all other ways of expressing an artistic idea. In this moment, the photographer can show genius. To wait for days at the same hour for a certain effect, to wait for years for a certain atmospheric expression, and, later on, the developing of the plate, the process of printing, and not quite legitimate procedure of retouching, demand principally the practice of perseverance, with knowledge, judgment, and chance as guidance.
This is merely to prove that genius is possible in photography.
How far Alfred Stieglitz realizes these conditions I will leave to the judgment of the readers. The domain of criticism is to analyze the actual results of an artist's work.
Although the recipient of scores of medals at international exhibitions, in correspondence with the leading artistic photographers of Europe and recognized by them as their equal, continually sought by the American profession for advice and criticism, his position is a solitary one, as it necessarily must be, of a man who is a pathfinder and pioneer in a new direction of art.
His work, fairly well known to the profession of amateur photographers, has remained comparatively unknown, not only to the larger public -- easily enough explained by the general indifference in art matters -- but also to the artists, who on the average do not disdain photography as a mechanical helpmate for a sort of plagiarism from nature, yet do not condescend to recognize it as a possible rival to their productions. It would be in their own interest to surmount this prejudice, as an artist should not be only conscious of the scope but also the limitations of his art, both of which are dependent on the intellectual drift of the time.
Alfred Stieglitz has recently for the first time given the general public an opportunity to estimate his work by letting the publishing firm of R. H. Russell reproduce twelve of his original photographs in photogravure (Picturesque Bits of New York, and Other Studies).
We have seen so many paintings and illustrations that look like photographs that it is refreshing to see once photographs that look somewhat like paintings.
Although I am aware that I cannot do perfect justice to Mr. Stieglitz by criticizing the contents of this map -- realizing fully how much is lost by the process of reproduction -- it will after all be more advisable than to criticize the originals themselves, of which only two or three perfect copies are in existence and which but few will have an opportunity to study.
The map contains two complete failures: "The Incoming Boat," which is in every respect commonplace; and "The Glow of Night," Fifth Avenue with a full view of the Savoy with its long rows of lighted candelabra reflected on the wet pavement, which is utterly spoiled by the attempt of lending it a color effect, a cheap yellow monotony which has robbed the otherwise excellent picture of all its delicacy and vibratory force. Reproductions of works of art are almost most dignified in black, or at least one dark tonal color.
"The Old Mill," a picturesque nook somewhere in the Black Forest, is one of those bits of realism that become romantic not so much by the handling of the artist, but by the reminiscences that such old landmarks awaken in us. It shows competent composition and exquisite gradation f light and shade -- strong and powerful in the foreground and fragile in the remoter parts.
Also, "The Letter Box," two little barefoot peasant girls in their neat Badenser costume, depositing a letter, with the diagonal wall of a house as background is merely a genre study, an attempt at story telling that arouses no special interest. Other men could do it, and I am only interested in that part of a man's work which the majority would find rather difficult to perform.
Of the two studies of Venice the reflections in the canal of the one termed "Reflections" are entirely too harsh in outline and values to allow a satisfactory enjoyment. The water is too opaque and has lost in parts all power to convey fluidity. It seems to me to be one of the most difficult tasks to photograph reflections in a sheet of water, as nearly all attempts at it seem exaggerated and untrue to me. That the difficulties can be overcome, Stieglitz shows in his "Bits of Venice." A stretch of water of a canal as a foreground, losing its perspective in its gondola-lined embankments of quaint weather-stained house walls with a bridge and the suggestion of another cross-thoroughfare as background. The texture of the reflection is superb, mellow, blurred, and of manifold variations; only when the sky is mirrored in the foreground a delicate tint is lost which lends a special charm to the original. The composition of the upper part is perfect. It gives a better idea of Venice than many a painting. It conveys the true spirit of Venice, that poetical city of "broken fragments and washed out colors" that reflects in its quaint melancholy the history of a sumptuous past.
In his "Wet Day on the Boulevard" the photographer has attempted figure composition on a large scale. Although not quite satisfactory from a painter's viewpoint, it has many excellent qualities. The empty foreground, the store in the left hand corner, and, in particular, the hazy vista of the boulevard with its cabs is worthy of a de Nittis. The only potent criticism I have to make is that the pedestrians coming toward us crossing the street lift their feet in a way that does not seem natural, although instantaneous photography has proven beyond dispute the correctness of such fugitive movements. The problem is whether we are not accustomed enough to the representation of such instantaneous reality to discover any beauty in it, or whether there is no beauty in the scientific analysis of movements, the details of which our eyes are not capable of reporting. More characteristic pedestrians, a grisette daintily lifting her skirts, or some other more typical type of the boulevards would have probably improved the picture.
The rotunda at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, with the Savoy and New Netherlands Hotels as backgrounds, is a bold attempt at night photography. The effect is very beautiful, but at closer scrutiny one finds the blacks rather monotonous, in particular the defoliated branches of the trees which form a confused network that disturbs.
A special compliment has to be paid, however, to the photographer for discovering for art one of the most picturesque spots of nocturnal New York. I do not know a single painting in recent exhibitions that attempts a similar subject with equal grasp of pictorial beauty. It is a lesson to our painters that cannot be undervalued.
A "Winter Sky," a solitary fir tree on a snow-covered hill with the sun struggling through a cloudy veil and glistening on the ice-crusted branches. Stieglitz has tried himself as a virtuoso. The effect is remarkable, but is too near the border line of sensationalism to be considered a work of art.
Now we come to the last three pictures -- "On the Seine," "Scurrying Home," and a "Winter Day." They are, with his "Net Mender," (not in this collection) a young girl sitting on the dunes mending her nets, a simple poem of nature like a canvas of Liebermann -- the masterpieces of his career. Before them criticism naturally grows silent or becomes largely descriptive, as it always does when art approaches perfection.
"On the Seine," a double road on the embankment of the river with a row of trees in the middle, loses itself in an obtuse angle in the distance. A flock of goats has grouped itself in the road nearest to the river. To the right a vista on the Seine, a tug boat with a line of barges, and a silhouette of the housetops of Paris in the distance. It is a decorative panel filled with the musical cadence of a waning day, and that peculiar atmosphere which roads where city and country blend together always have for me. What patience the artist must have exercised before the goats grouped themselves so adequately! In fact Mr. Stieglitz told me that for more than a week he stood every afternoon with his camera at the same spot, until at last he saw before him what he considered essential for a picture. The cluster of dark foliage, the border of grass along the edge of the water, and the distance have lost in values through the reproduction, but otherwise it is a picture which any modern master could be proud of. It is a well balanced artistic composition of rare decorative suggestiveness which shows that the artist understands the charm and power of linear and spacial beauty. "On the Seine" is a tribute to the undeniable truth that the future of art lies largely in decoration.
"Scurrying Home" could teach many an artist what composition means. It is more simple and direct than the previous picture. Two Dutch women crossing an open waste of sand, with the Katwyk Church, made famous by modern painters, in the distance. How interesting the texture of the foreground! How well its oblique lines cut those of the middle distance! How well the distance is managed! And how marvelously the figures are placed, considering that if they had been photographed one second sooner or later the picture would have been spoiled. Their movement is as natural as it can be; it suggests the breeziness of the weather; only the feet of the larger one are somewhat indistinct, and the skirts of both are too opaque. It seems almost impossible in photography to attain Whistleresque subtleties of tone in a dark object.
"Scurrying Home" is a landmark in the domain of camera art and worth alone a trip to Europe. Many an artist after a three years' sojourn abroad returns without being able to show half as much. "Scurrying Home" shows better than any other American photograph I know the possibilities of artistic photography.
A "Winter Day," a Fifth Avenue stage coach ploughing through chaotic masses of snow, is perhaps less pictorial from a painter's point of view, but for that very reason more original and individual than the others because it reminds one of nothing else, while most of the others suggest in some way or another faint reminiscences of some school of art. It is a realistic expression of an everyday occurrence of metropolitan life under special atmospheric conditions, rendered faithfully and yet with consummate art. I, as a literary man, would feel proud if I could express a "Winter Day" in words with the same vigor, correctness, and individual note as Mr. Stieglitz in his photographic plate. His achievements in this picture are not merely finger posts for amateur photographers but for our American art world in general.
Let us scrutinize a little closer the personality of this man. Like so many other more or less prominent amateur photographers, he is so situated in life as to allow himself a constant devotion to his art, which is fortunate not so much because it lifts him beyond the dangers of mercenariness (since artistic photography is still in that idyllic stage where a market value of its productions is an unheard of thing),, but because it enables him to indulge freely in costly experiments that are quite beyond the purse of ordinary mortals.
Stieglitz is a university man; he has taken a three years' course of chemistry and photochemistry at the Berlin University under Vogel and Hoffman. He is a thorough master of his technique, although he has never tried to improve the technical mediums by inventions of his own; he has been satisfied with doing his utmost in artistic expression.
He has traveled much, has been in touch with all the various phases of modern art and artistic thought, and associated with quite a number of European painters. In my first conversation with him, he told me that his favorite painters were Thaulow and Besnard, and that he went to see Duse every night, and that he was also a great admirer of Yvette Guilbert. This I mention simply to show that the trend of his intellectual life is strictly modern.
Simplicity is the keynote of his artwork. He recognizes that "art is hidden in nature," as DŸrer so aptly said, "and that he who can tear her out of it, owns her." He does not try to idealize nature -- look at his vigorous Bonnat-like portraits, that are likenesses and no like so many other decorative whims or individual commentaries -- he merely represents picturesque ideas that suggest themselves in a simple natural manner. He endeavors to represent space and atmosphere, and groups his figures according to laws which nature offers itself. This seems simple enough and yet is rarely met with even in modern art. In Mr. Stieglitz was necessarily from the very beginning the material for an artist, but by taking up camera and chemicals instead of brush and paint, he has succeeded in finding a new expression of pictorial art and in lifting it by incessant experiments to such heights that it can no longer remain unrecognized by the artists. He has revealed principles that apply to all arts.
The principle merit of Mr. Stieglitz' works, however, lies in his bold independence which enabled him to resist all temptations to overstep the limits of photography. He never applied anything but photography "pure and simple" and disdained the assistance of retouching by which Demachy has attained some of his most marvelous results. He realizes that artistic photography, to become powerful and self-subsistent, must rely upon its own resources and not ornament itself with foreign plumes in order to resemble an etching, a charcoal or wash drawing, or the reproduction of an old master.
I am confident that Mr. Stieglitz works in the right direction, and if he will also free himself absolutely in regard to conception and composition from all existing schools of art, trust his judgment and experience alone, and discover for us in a score of pictures the picturesqueness of New York City, as he intends to do, he will gain himself a place in our art life which the future art historian cannot overlook. At any rate, the last word about Alfred Stieglitz has not yet been said.
