New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-06-10
TIE pUOTOGRhpHERS CONVENTION.

TIE PNOJOGRHPHERS' tONtLN iION'
If young mems fancies, as the poet tells us,
lightly turn with the warm Spring winds to
thoughts OF love, middle-aged mems apparently
run az fast to conventions They herd to-
gether during every May and June on the
slightest pretext of union. They meet and
koo-teo each other as Quakcrs, Presbyterlans,
prize fighters, or patriots; and now IA photo
graphers. Some spark of good we suppose, Is
struck out of all this friction; certain cor
dial emulation and guild-spirit, if nothing bet
ter. That Improvement and new ideas may
come from this great annual Association OF
Photographers now in session in Philadelphia
is "a matter in which we are all personally
concerned.
The Convention, we learn, is large and en-
thusiastc; delegates and specimens are present
from all parts of Europe; our own large
houses in every State contribute their best in
ventions. The staid Quaker City glimmers
with lenses and graphOscopes. The smell of
collodon and blue lights fills the air. There is
probably no mechanical art which has made
such rapid advance as this since the days of
Daguerre and Niepce, as is shown by the num-
berless inventions and the exquisite softness
and beauty of the specimens exhibited in
Philadelphia; but in an aesthetic point
of view the profession, we are forced
to hint has Jagged far behind. In the
cities where success would pay men with
real artistic talent to adopt the business, they
have frequently done so; but outside of these
large markets it is usually left to any young
fellow who can command money enough to buy
a camera and cXpertness enough to handle it.
Photography like wood engraving, while it offers
field for great artist, suffers from the fact that
the process is easily learned, the materials are
cheap, and the poorest workman will always find
work and wages. The average operator, as
we all know to our cost, has no knowledge of
the first rules concerning light or shade, nor
any glimmer of the idea that there might be
skill in placing and draping his victim
which would secure beautiful and
attractive picture out of the most
meager and inharmoniOus materials. He
pumps him into chair of torture in a room
heated to 92', screws his head into wise, and
then pacidly offers to wait until he has as
"sumed his best expression" HawthOrne's
morbid fancy that the secret devil in every
man peered out of his face somewhere in a
photograph may have had its foundation in
fact: the treatment human nature under
goes in that chamber of horrors brings what
ever is diabOlical in it to the light. There is
an old story of Greek artist to whom came
an unhOpeful subject in the shape of a man
blind, lame, and with a broken arm. He
painted him taking aim with bow-kneeling
on the lame leg closing the blind eye, draw
ing back the broken arm. Our modern photo
grapher would have scorned such art as sheer
compromising of felony.
Seriously this is no matter for testing. We
may leave what footsteps on the shores of
Time we please in the shape of character or
good deeds, but our real selves, our faces are
ineXOrably III the charge of these minons Of
the sun for posterity and whether we will or
no, they choose that every wrinkle and smirk
shall go down unhinchingly. For the great
majority OF us, twenty years after we are
dead, the only trace left of Us on earth will
most likely be a photograph in some dusty
album. Is it unnatural that we should wish
this to be at least the just shadow of what
we werei The most practical Gradgrind among
Us would fain look with cheerful face into
that golden age to come, unknown world of
strangers though it be, and not scOwl back to
it a grisly ghost. We beseech the Convention
to scatter some notions of true art among its
members. KIyolite and velvet cases and in
visible rests are no doubt excellent things,
but a subtle sense of grace, and fitness, and
beauty is not altogether to be despised. Have
mercy upon us, Messieurs Photographers; you
have the Immortality of this generation in
your keeping for the love of justice do not
any longer confirm the Darwinian theory by
sending us down to unborn ages in the pre-
sentiment of race of gorllas.