Science Division.
In this division the aim of the work is to investigate the phenomena of nature, and by experiment to make new discoveries, and corroborate or falsify old experiments. The workers in this great and valuable department of photography may be divided into—
- a. Scientific experimentalists in all branches of science.
- b. Chemists and spectrum-analysts.
- c. Astronomers.
- d. Microscopists.
- e. Engineers.
- f. Military and naval photographers.
- g. Meteorologists.
- h. Biologists.
- i. Geographers.
- j. Geologists.
- k. Medical men.
- l. Physicists.
- m. Anthropologists.
These sub-divisions include all that vast host of trained scientific men who are photographers in connection with their work. Their aim is the advancement of science.
C.—Industrial Division.
Industrial Division.
This class includes that great majority of the photographic world—the craftsmen. These men have learned the methods of their craft, and go on from day to day meeting the industrial requirements of the age, producing good useful work, and often filling their pockets at the same time. Their aim is utilitarian, but in some branches they may at the same time aim to give an æsthetic pleasure by their productions, but this is always subordinated to the utility of the work. When they aim at giving this æsthetic pleasure as well, they become art-craftsmen.
Amongst these craftsmen are included photographers who will take any one or anything if paid to do so, such forming what is known as “professional photographers.”
All reproducers of pictures, patterns, &c., by photo-mechanical processes, in which the aim is not solely æsthetic pleasure, as in reproducing topographic views. All plate makers. Transparency, opal, lantern-slide, and stereoscopic slide makers. All facsimile photographers; photographers of pictures, statuary, &c. All makers of invisible photographs, magic cigar photographs. All operators who work under the guidance of artists or scientists for pay, they not having artistic and scientific training themselves, as in the preparation of lantern slides for a biologist. All enlargers, operators, spotters, printers, retouchers, mounters, &c. Producers of porcelain pictures. Producers of facsimile type blocks and copper plates, with no artistic aim, et id genus omne. All photographs produced for amusement by the untrained in art or science. All photographers who produce pattern photographs, “bits” of scenery, and animals for draughtsmen to work from.
It will thus be clear to the student that all these photographers serve useful purposes and each is invaluable in his way, but we repeat the aim of the three groups of photographers is very different and quite distinct, as distinct as in draughtmanship are the etchings of Rembrandt, the scientific drawings of Huxley, and the pattern plates of a store catalogue. All are useful in their place, and who shall dare to say which is more useful than the other; but all are distinct, and can in no way be compared with one another or classed together any more than can the poems of Mr. Swinburne, the text of Professor Tyndall’s “Light,” and the Blue-books. All can be good in their way, but the aims and methods of the one must not be confounded with the aims and methods of the other, and we fear that such is the case in the photographic world at present.