Sharpness need not be hardness; on the contrary, sharpness and softness can be harmoniously combined in the representation of any object desired. On the other hand, a subject may possess abundance of detail, and yet convey to the mind an idea of hardness which the artist did not intend. This kind of hardness I should attribute to a miscarriage of thought, or a failure, from want of manipulative skill, to produce the desired effect. For example: one artist will paint a head, model it carefully, and carry out all the gradations of light and shade, and for all that it will be hard—hard as stone, resembling the transcript of a painted statue more than flesh. With the same brushes and colours another artist will paint a head that may be no better in its drawing, nor any more correct in its light and shade, but it will resemble flesh, and convey to the mind of the observer a correct impression of the substance represented—its flexibility and elasticity—that it is something that would be warm and pleasant to the touch, and not make you recoil from it as if it were something cold, hard, and repulsive, as in the former case. Again, two artists will paint a fabric or an article of furniture (say a table) with the same brushes, pigments, and mediums: the one artist will render it so faithfully in every respect that it would suggest to the mind the dull sound peculiar to wood when struck, and not the sharp, clear ring of metal which the work of the other artist would suggest.
Another example: one artist paints a feather, and it appears to have all the feathery lightness and characteristics of the natural object; the other will paint it the same size, form, and colour, and yet it will be more like a painted chip, wanting the downy texture and float-in-the-air suggestiveness of the other. Thus it will be seen that both artists had similar ideas, had similar materials and means at their disposal to render on canvas the same or similar effects. The one succeeded, and the other failed, in giving a faithful rendering of the same subjects; but it was no fault in the materials with which they worked. The works of one artist will convey to the mind an idea of the thing itself; with its texture, properties, weight, and proportions; nothing undervalued; nothing overrated, nothing softer, nothing harder, than the thing in nature intended to be portrayed. The other gives the same idea of form and size, light and shade, and colour, but not the texture; it is something harder, as iron instead of wood, or hard wood instead of soft wood, or stone instead of flesh. This, then, is the artistic meaning of hardness (or concentration, as Mr. Wall said), and that is an apparent packing together, a compression or petrifaction of the atoms or fibre of which the natural materials are composed. This difference in the works of artists is simply the effects of feeling, of power over the materials employed, and ability to transfer to canvas effects that are almost illusions. And so it is with photographers in the production of the photographic image. There is the same difference in feeling and manipulative skill, the same difference of power over the materials employed, that enables one photographer to surpass another in rendering more truthfully the difference of texture. Photographers may and do use the same lenses and chemicals, and yet produce widely different results. One, by judgment in lighting and superior manipulation, will transfer to his plates more texture and suggestiveness of the different substances represented than the other. It is a fact well-known to old photographers that in the best days of the Daguerreotype practice two widely different classes of pictures were produced by the most skilful Daguerreotypists, both sharp and full of exquisite detail; yet the one was hard, in an artistic sense, not that it wanted half-tone to link the lights and shades together, but because it was of a bronzy hardness, unlike flesh from which it was taken, and suggested to the mind a picture taken from a bronze or iron statue of the individual, rather than a picture taken from the warm, soft flesh of the original. The other would be equally sharp as far as focussing and sharp lenses could make it, and possess as much detail, but it would be different in colour and texture; the detail would be soft, downy, and fleshy, not irony, if I may use that word in such a sense; and this difference of effect arose entirely from a difference of feeling, lighting, preparation of the plate, and development of the pictures. They might all use the best of Voightlander’s or C. C. Harrison’s lenses, the favourite lenses of that day. They might all use the same make of plates, the same iodine, bromine, and mercury, yet there would be this difference in the character of the two classes of pictures. Both would be sharp and possess abundance of detail, still one would be soft and the other hard in an artistic acceptation of the word hardness.
Collodion positives exhibited a similar difference of character. The works of one photographer would be cold and metallic looking, while the works of another would be softer and less metallic, giving a better idea of the texture of flesh and the difference of fabrics, which many attributed to the superiority of the lens; but the difference was really due to manipulation, treatment, and intelligence. And so it is with the collodion negative. A tree, for instance, may be photographed, and its whole character changed by selecting a bad and unsuitable light, or by bad manipulation. The least over-development or “piling up” of a high light may give it a sparkling effect that would change it into the representation of a tree of cast iron, rather than a growing tree, covered with damp, soft, and moss-stained bark. Every object and every fabric, natural or manufactured, has its own peculiar form of “high light” or mode of reflecting light, and care must be taken by both artist and photographer not to exceed the amount of light reflected by each particular object, else a hardness, foreign to the natural object, will be represented. But not only should the artist and photographer possess this feeling for nature in all her subtle beauties and modes of expressing herself, to prevent a miscarriage in the true rendering of any object, the photographic printer should also have a sympathy for the work in hand, or he will, by over-fixing, or in various other ways, mar the successful labours of the photographer, and make a negative that is full of softness, and tenderly expresses the truth of nature, yield prints that are crude, and convey to the mind a sense of hardness which neither the natural objects nor the negative really possess.
Now, I think it will be seen that hardness in a painting or a photograph does not mean sharpness; nor is the artistic meaning of the word hardness confined to “rigid or severe drawing,” but that it has a broader and more practical definition than concentration; and that the converse to the art meaning of hardness is softness, tenderness, truthfulness in expressing the varied aspects of nature in all her forms, all of which are coincident with sharpness.— J. Werge (Photographic News).
UNION OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH LONDON PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETIES.
To the Editors, British Journal.
Gentlemen,—Allow me to express my opinion on the suggestion to unite the North and South London Societies, and to point out a few of the advantages which, I think, would accrue from a more extensive amalgamation.
Though I am a member of all the three London photographic societies, I have long been of opinion that there are too many, and that the objects of all are considerably weakened by such a diffusion of interests. If the furtherance of the art and the free and mutual interchange of thought and experience among the members were the only things considered, there would be but one society in London; and with one society embodying all the members that now make the three, how much more good might be done!
In the first place, the amounts now paid for rent by the three would, if united, secure an excellent meeting room or chambers, in a central position, for the exclusive use of the society, where the ordinary and special meetings, annual exhibitions, and soirées could be held much more independently than now, and at a cost little or no more than what is now paid for the privilege of holding the ordinary meetings alone.