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that the one is a representation of the sentiment of a scene, while 

 the other merely illustrates the shapes of the separate objects that 

 it embodies." This applies not only to photography but to all other 

 branches of pictorial art. In referring to photography which 

 expresses no artistic sentiment as inartistic it must be plainly 

 understood that no slur is cast upon the other great branch, viz., 

 record work. For all artistic work could be described as bad from 

 the point of view of the scientific record. No two things which 

 have distinct aims can be strictly compared in relative value and the 

 point of view of him who can only realise the value of one of them 

 is necessarily one-sided and incomplete. To realise the artistic aim 

 there must be the effect in the result of the intervention of a human 

 temperament, of a human soul. Art is the manifestation of an 

 emotion. " The beginning of real art is reached when one begins to 

 see and to record so that others can see, something beyond the mere 

 physical facts, some hints of the inner, mental or spiritual quality. 

 At this stage we realise that the subject is merely a means to an 

 end." In record or scientific work, the subject is the end itself. 

 Therein lies the distinction. " Art is the creating by artificial means 

 of a something which shall give rise to pleasurable thoughts, a 

 something which is not Nature yet is drawn directly from Nature, a 

 something which while not the material thing, is greater than the 

 reality, for it is the essence, with all dregs eliminated." " Pictorial 

 ability," in short, " depends upon the power to see beyond the 

 obvious." 



The artist sees the spirit of a scene, it may be some beautiful 

 play of light, a human emotion, or the glamour of its former 

 grandeur which hovers round some ancient building, and he 

 endeavours to use the powers of his medium to represent the scene, 

 not as it would have appeared to the purely scientific observer in all 

 its detail, but in such a manner that a receptive or sympathetic 

 beholder shall have emotions stirred within him similar to those 

 which attracted the picture-maker. The greater this appeal to the 

 beholder the higher is the artistic merit of the picture. This state- 

 ment is general and is the criterion by which all pictorial art must 

 be finally judged. Of course since art depends on the emotions, it 

 is a matter, to some extent, of individual taste, feeling and 

 perception ; some subjects will appeal more to certain people than 

 others. I have said " receptive beholder." It is characteristic of a 

 work of art (as opposed to a scientific or record photograph) that the 

 beholder must bring something to it as well as the producer. Some- 

 thing must be left to the imagination of the former. If he be 

 insensitive to some or all forms of artistic appeal, pictures, or a large 

 proportion of them, will have no meaning for him. 



What, then, is the position of our Photographic Section with 

 regard to these two photographic aims ? Since we exist as a portion 

 of a science society it is but natural that we should have scientific 

 and record photography as an aim. I do not say, as an only aim or 

 even a chief one, for the following reason. Although pictorial and 

 record results, when good of their kind, are widely different in 

 character, yet they meet upon the vast common ground of photo- 



