(A Photograph from life, by Messrs. Cameron & Smith. Reproduced by half-tone process.)
The time is coming fast when cheap editions of popular novels will be illustrated—and many in the following way. The artist, instead of being called upon to draw, will occupy himself in setting and composing pictures through the aid of models trained for the purpose, and the ever-ready photographer. The “process man” and the clever manipulator on the plates, will do the rest, producing pictures vignetted, if desired, as overleaf. Much more the makers of blocks can do—and will do—with the photographs now produced, for they are earnest, untiring, ready to make sacrifices of time and money.
The cheap dramatic illustrations, just referred to, which artists’ models in America know so well how to pose for, may be found suitable from the commercial point of view for novels of the butterfly kind; but they will seldom be of real artistic interest. And here, for the present, we may draw the line between the illustrator and the photographer. But the “black and white man” will obviously have to do his best in every branch of illustration to hold his own in the future. It may be thought by some artists that these things are hardly worth consideration; but we have only to watch the illustrations appearing week by week to see whither we are tending.[19]
The last example of the photographer as illustrator, which can be given here, is where a photograph from life engraved on wood is published as a vignette illustration.[20] It is worth observing, because it has been turned into line by the wood engraver, and serves for printing purposes as a popular illustration. The original might have been more artistically posed, but it is pretty as a vignette, and pleases the public. (See opposite page.)
There are hundreds of such subjects now produced by the joint aid of the photographer and the process engraver. It is not the artist and the wood engraver who are really “working hand-in-hand” in these days in the production of illustrations, but the photographer and the maker of process blocks. This is significant. Happily for us there is much that the photographer cannot do pictorially. But the photographer is, as I said, marching on and on, and the line of demarcation between handwork and photographic illustrations becomes less marked every day.
The photographer’s daughter goes to an art school, and her influence is shown annually in the exhibitions of the photographic societies.