Pictorial Photography in America 1920

by Pictorial Photographers of America

This preliminary training and the art education of the beginner can best be obtained in clubs; and in Maine the two centers of photographic activity are Portland and Bangor, in both of which cities are active camera clubs, each affiliated with the local art society and each holding annual exhibitions in the spring of the year, at which workers from all parts of the country show their pictures. During the war these clubs have been doing little more than marking time, but now that at last days of peace have come again, we feel that the future holds prospects of great promise to us. For one reason or another the men whose names were known ten or fifteen years ago seem to have dropped out and their places are being filled by new blood, men with high ideals and aspirations, who are not content merely with reproducing, by means of their cameras, pretty scenes and places, but who believe that photography is capable of much more—of showing not only the physical facts, but the very spirit of nature herself—a true impressionism; and it is the task of these men to place Maine in the position she should hold in pictorial work.

During the past year much has been accomplished by a very few men, and through these men Maine has been represented at all the largest and best salons, not only in this country and Canada, but also in England at the London Salon. Prints by the multiple gum process are favored by some of the Portland workers, but the use of this process as a medium of expression is limited to a few men, [pg 10] and the most of the large prints produced are enlargements on bromide paper, as is probably the case generally throughout the country. This is perhaps somewhat to be regretted, for although bromide paper is capable of producing very fine prints when the subject is exactly adapted to it, still it does not permit of the personal control afforded by some of the other processes, and of course this is a handicap to the pictorial worker.

As before stated, the pictorial output of the State during the past year has been limited to the work of a few men, but this condition is not going to continue for long. The clubs and societies are bending every effort toward the encouragement of the new workers, and already some very creditable work has been produced, and the coming year should see a worthy showing from Maine at all the salons.

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Pictorial Photography in Massachusetts

By Dwight A. Davis

In Massachusetts, as in other parts of the country, war-time activities interfered to a noticeable extent with the cause of pictorial photography. The interference was perhaps less marked than in some other sections, where more of the prominent workers were actively engaged at the front. The difficulty in securing materials, amounting now and then to utter impossibility, was, however, the same, and there was the same falling off in enthusiasm, due to the demands on one's heart and pocketbook from across the sea. In this crisis organized effort might have been especially helpful, but it is just in this respect that Massachusetts has always been weak. Her workers have been widely scattered from the Berkshires to the shore, and such local clubs as have here and there existed have not been deeply or permanently influential. In Boston there was the once famous Photo Clan, with Garo, Eicheim, and Schuman as its leading spirits, but that has long since ceased to be an active force. On the other hand, the Boston Young Men's Christian Union Camera Club and the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts have lately come into new prominence through their efforts to stimulate interest and afford frequent opportunities to view exhibitions of the best in photographic art. The former held, during the past winter, excellent one-man exhibits, in which work of such prominent pictorialists as John Paul Edwards, Dr. Rupert Lovejoy, Dwight A. Davis, Francis O. Libby, John H. Garo, Edward H. Weston, and Arthur Hammond was shown.

But, in spite of these various influences, the workers of Massachusetts for the most part pursue solitary ways, with little enough—all too little, some would say—of the advantages that come from intimate association. There is, however, another side of the shield. It is at least questionable whether such strongly marked personality as appears in the work of Seeley, Garo, Davis, Hammond, Eicheim, [pg 11] Buttler, the Allen sisters, and a dozen others who might be mentioned, would be possible if the workers of this section were under the closely dominating influence of a centralized group, itself dominated by a single individual of exceptional powers. Such a state of affairs has sometimes been observed in other parts of the country, and the results have not always been advantageous to the interests of the individual workers. Under such conditions as exist in Massachusetts, the Pictorial Photographers of America has come as a boon, since it affords just the kind of stimulus most needed. Massachusetts has been swift to avail herself of the advantages thus offered. At the recent exhibition of the work of New England and New Jersey pictorialists, held in New York, Massachusetts was represented by 16 out of a total of 27 exhibitors, with 64 out of a total of 107 prints—a showing decidedly creditable to the old Bay State.

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