Thus it will be seen that in the “text” part of this newspaper two-thirds of the illustrations are produced without the aid of artist or wood engraver!
To turn to one of the latest instances where the photographer is the illustrator. A photographer, Mr. Burrows, of Camborne, goes down a lead mine in Cornwall with his apparatus, and takes a series of views of the workings, which could probably have been done by no other means. Under most difficult conditions he sets his camera, and by the aid of the magnesium “flash-light,” gives us groups of figures at work amidst gloomy and weird surroundings. The results are exceptionally valuable as “illustrations” in the true meaning of the word, on account of the clear and accurate definition of details. The remarkable part, artistically, is the good colour and grouping of the figures.[18]
Another instance of the use of photography in illustration. Mr. Villiers, the special artist of Black and White, made a startling statement lately. He said that out of some 150 subjects which he took at the Chicago Exhibition, not more than half-a-dozen were drawn by him; all the rest being “snap-shot” photographs. Some were very good, could hardly be better, the result of many hours’ waiting for the favourable grouping of figures. That he would re-draw some of them with his clever pencil for a newspaper is possible, but observe the part photography plays in the matter.
In America novels have been thus illustrated both in figure and landscape; the weak point being the backgrounds to the figure subjects. I draw attention to this movement because the neglect of composition, of appropriate backgrounds, and of the true lighting of the figures by so many young artists, is throwing illustrations more and more into the hands of the photographer. Thus the rapid “pen-and-ink artist,” and the sketcher in wash from an artificially lighted model in a crowded art school, is hastening to his end.
No. XXXI.