Photo grapliy as a Fine Art. 21 



The natural scale of brightness as connected with colour is 

 constantly at war with the photographic scale ; and the results 

 of this conflict are seen in all photographic works which 

 attempt to give a black and white version of a polychromatic 

 object or scene. 



The rise amongst us of the pre-Raphaelite school, and the 

 modifications which that school, as represented by its leading 

 artists, has undergone, has familiarized most minds with ques- 

 tions pertaining to detail or generalization. To paint a number 

 of leaves and branches correctly, according to imitative notions, 

 is not to paint a tree as any mortal ever saw it or could see it, when 

 he looked at it as a whole. Too much detail for the conditions 

 of a picture damage its verisimilitude as well as its art. Too 

 vague a generalization is still more fatal, because it is want- 

 ing in particular truth. A drawing of a particular man so 

 generalized as to be as much like any other man of the same 

 race and clothing, would be an absurdity if it could be pro- 

 duced, and the true artist has to consider how far he is to 

 generalize, and how far he must particularize in order to pro- 

 duce the best result— one of truth combined with beauty and 

 with suggestive power. 



If a number of good and bad photographs are examined, 

 it will soon be found that, in addition to their merits or 

 demerits, as attempts at imitation, they will vary in approach- 

 ing to or receding from the kind of delineation which great 

 artists delight to give. The artist imitates the appearance of 

 nature in which delicately graduated lights and shades indicate 

 the forms of objects seen in and surrounded by an atmosphere. 

 Photography has a constant tendency to the child's blunder of 

 making hard firm outlines where nature avoids them. The 

 best of the orthodox school of photographers mitigate this 

 mischief, but we are not aware that an} r one besides Mrs. 

 Cameron has fairly attacked and vanquished it, and thus 

 established a connecting link far stronger than any which 

 previously existed between photography and fine arts. Mrs. 

 Cameron has been engaged for several years in this labour, 

 and her productions have been for some time before the public ; 

 but some of her most recent works have been the most remark- 

 able, and have called forth from artists of the highest eminence 

 a very enthusiastic, and, as we think, richly deserved praise. 

 Mrs. Cameron has especially devoted her talents to two objects, 

 both usually neglected in photography. The first is the 

 realization of a method of focussing by which the delineations 

 of the camera are made to correspond with the method of 

 drawing employed by the great Italian artists. The second 

 has been the introduction of an ideal pictorial element, by 

 selecting good models and calling forth the kind of expression 



