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Pictorial Photography in the Far West
By John Paul Edwards
The progress of pictorial photography in the Far West can be aptly compared with the settlement and growth of this big new country itself. We have had our pictorial pioneers, as it were—our hard-working, enthusiastic, rather crude first settlers in the art; now we have come to the stage of permanent abode, with traditions, albeit young, great enthusiasm, definite ideals, and ambitious hopes for the future.
The one great asset in the upbuilding of the West has been boundless enthusiasm. This characteristic trait dominates the very soul of the Western pictorialist. In it lies his greatest hope for the future progress in his chosen field of art.
It is this live energy and enthusiasm which brings him out afield even before break of day, which leads him over hill and dale, mountain and valley, in his insatiable quest for the pictorial. Miles are as nothing; hunger stays him not; nor rests he at night until his potential treasures are developed and their beauties appraised.
The purpose of this preliminary psychologic analysis is to explain the militant attitude of the Western pictorialist in his pursuit of the art of the camera. His extremely prolific production, manifesting itself in liberal contributions to the salons and exhibitions of the world photographic, rises not from vanity but from super-enthusiasm—from the great joy he derives in making his picture, from the creation of the beautiful, and from the playing of the game as it is best played.
Without losing a whit of the steady enthusiasm which has brought it to its present encouraging stage, Western pictorial photography is, nevertheless, settling down to a more staid and intellectual plane of progress.
The broad average of quality of work is steadily improving. Better standards have been established. The workers are “finding” themselves. Enthusiasm is being beneficently tempered by increased technical skill, and more particularly by the intellectual development of the art side of the work.