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HOTOGRAPHY has generally been regarded as a mechanical art, if indeed the term art in any sense has not been begrudged it. The average man thinks of photography as a matter of plates and lenses, of brilliant-surfaced papers and of burnishers to make the print still more brilliant. The sun and the lens are supposed to do the work, with the incidental help of the man who presses the button and the other man who develops the plate. The popular comment on this class of work, "Isn't that a splendid photograph! You could count every hair on that dog's back!" is a fair example of the way in which excellence in photography is often judged. For a certain class of work this mechanical excellence is indeed a proper standard. Where a clear and accurate record is needed for scientific or legal purposes, fineness of definition and the absolute reproduction of every detail is desirable and to be commended. But the artists in photography who have of late years risen to prominence among us have abandoned all this. They contend that photography may be used as an art; that it is not necessarily mechanical; that where the traditional artist uses a brush and paint to reproduce his impression of a scene, the photographic artist may, if he will, use rays of light and solutions of chemicals as the media with which to record his individual impression of a face or a landscape; and that it is the feeling and the skill which a man puts into his transcript of nature that should be the criteria of art, and not the material with which he works.

In developing this idea of putting individualism into photography various means have been employed. There has been a general recognition of the ideas which the impressionistic school in art has sought to realize. The new school of photography desires to get "atmosphere" into the photograph, and to avoid

the hard effects of blank skies and naked high lights. It seeks to eliminate the unimportant features of a subject and to emphasize the salient ones. It studies moods in the sitter for a portrait, and elusive effects of light and shade in its landscapes. It cares little about "records," but everything about the pictorial quality of a photograph. And in its endeavor to work out pictorial quality it is not satisfied with the ordinary result of the development of a photographic dry plate or the appearance of a "straight" print from a negative. The advanced worker in art photography may purposely underdevelop his plate, so that instead of strong high lights the resultant print will be in a low-toned key throughout. With acids and brushes he may reduce or intensify different portions of his plate. He masks his negative so that only certain portions will print, or he makes a photograph from two or three different negatives or printings. Some workers show marvelous dexterity in this manipulation, so that the average amateur feels that he is really in competition with painters and etchers when he comes to compare his efforts in straight photography with the productions of wizards such as Stieglitz, Steichen, Demachy, and some others.

Again, the clever manipulator of plates and paper may get a soft effect by printing the photograph through the glass side of the negative instead of the film side, or he may use old platinum paper which his inexperienced rival would throw away as useless, and get a prize-winner for an exhibition. He may use the glycerine method of development, which holds back anything that he does not wish to appear. He is ready to experiment, and has been known to soak his photograph in a tea or coffee solution in order to give it an antique flavor. He may throw his lens out of focus to avoid the unthinkable wiry sharpness which is the delight of the kodak user,

or he may discard his hundred-dollar lens and use a cheap one for this very purpose. The writer knows one maker of photographs that always suggest the Barbizon school in their soft diffusion as well as the admirable posing of their subjects, and on asking him once, "How do you get that beautifully soft definition in your pictures?" was told, “Why, I use an old three-dollar lens with brass stops. I picked it up a number of years ago, before these fine highpriced anastigmats were manufactured." So we see again that it is the man and not the camera that counts-unless it be a very old camera.

The medium in which the most characteristic work of the new photography is done is perhaps that of the "gum print." This is a very simple process, and by it can be produced results which are either among the worst or the best in photography. It is par excellence the easiest way of making a smudge," but in the hands of a skillful manipulator it may produce most beautiful results. The work of some of the best French and American users of this method, for instance, shows the delicacy of a fine platinum photograph with the freer effects that are so characteristically those of the gum process. A gum photograph is of all processes most peculiarly the individual work of its maker. The process has for its rationale the action of light upon the chemical known as bichromate of potash. When this is mixed with gum, it becomes sensitive to light. The parts acted upon by light become insoluble; the rest can be washed away. The worker mixes his bichromate with gum or mucilage, spreads the solution on paper, lets it dry in the dark, puts it under his negative, and exposes it to the sun. The light acts on the paper that is under the clear glass, but is stopped by the denser portions of the negative. When the paper is removed, all the soluble parts of the gum can be immediately washed away, to just the depth desired by the worker. He can thus have a sky with heavy storm-clouds,

or one flooded with sunlight. He can leave his trees masses of black, or he can wash them out till every leaf shows. He has complete command of his material, and in just so far as he is an artist can he produce a picture.

The new photography, however, is not specially wedded to any process. It has successful exponents who work in carbon, in platinum, in bromide, in kallitype, in the so-called sepia papers, and even in velox-in anything, in short, except the highly burnished glossy papers which are so popular. These are taboo in the exhibitions, however dear to the heart of the beginner. They lack the softness, the impressionism, the suggestiveness, which are the soul of the new photography.

For a while, after the discovery of "artistic" photography, the reaction from sharp lens work led to some aberrations in the direction of fuzziness. Photographs were put on exhibition that were painful to the eye in their lack of focus. Smudges of black were allowed to pass for moonlight scenes, and underexposures, overexposures, overprintings, underprintings, and all sorts of failures in the developing or printing room were seized upon as artistic, framed, and hung up in the galleries. The story is told of a visitor, seeing one of these creations, turning to the exhibitor, who happened to be present, and saying, My dear sir, don't you know that the sun never appears as large as that in a landscape," to be met with the explanation, “But, sir, that is a portrait of a lady." This sort of thing has largely ceased. In the best examples of the new photography there is a delicacy of handling that is altogether charming. The accuracy of the older school is combined with the softness of outline which is really more truthtelling than hard definition. Fuzziness and smudginess are done away with, but there remain the atmospheric quality, the subtle charm, and the appeal to the imagination which the imagination which were lacking in the hard and fast lines of the old photography which was once so admired.