The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-10-03
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
1REDERIo J. HAsKIN. Director.
Waahington, d. q.
PHoroGRAPHING THE GREAT

Wa6htpg gin, D. u, saturday, sept.
3O.-when Justice John Hessfn
Clarke resigned from the supreme
court the other day. he did service
not only to the man appointed to
succeed him but also, tho quite in
cidentally. to one or more news pho
| tographerS in Washington. A new
/ justice on the supreme bench means
a new photograph of the supreme
| court, and a new photograph Of the
supreme court is worth many hum
dreds of dollars to the photographer
who secures it.
But photograp hing the supreme
/ court is all in the days business for
1.-THE news photographer in the ma
tional capital. a1tho not many photo
graphs are so valuable. A photograph
of the supreme court has a historic
value which causes it to be purchased
not only by newspapers and maya
J zines. but also by lawyers. law IL
, braries, "et AL" to use legal phrase
ology. Yet it frequently happens that
the news photographer by some
lucky shot secures a picture that out
distances the formal group photo
graph of the supreme Justices as
seller. This is usually view of some
great man in an imposed and human
attitude-the well-known picture of
Mrs. Harding fastening a rose in her
DISTINGUISHED husbands buttonhole
I
merely still picture of some scenic
| phase.
The man WHO first photographed
the reflection of the capitors dome
on the wet asphalt made himself
small fortune. How many copies of
the photograph of the poisoning
cherry trees along the tidal basin in
| Washington have been sold? Tens of
thousands of them. Some day, when
| the 1andscaping of the approach to
-, T t.
lucky button-p resser will get that
right: and there will be another for
| tune made.
No other city in the world is so
thoroly photographed, both as to its
distinguished inhabitants and visitors
and as to it's streets and buildings, as
Washington. The firm of Harris &
Ewing alone owns half a million
negatives of Washington pictures of
news value past and present. The firm
| of Underwood & Underwood, altho
established in Washington only for
few years, also possesses an enor-
nous file. Besides these there are
several other photographers whose
business is primarily a studio business
but who deal in news photographs to
greater or less extent. 1t is prob
ably safe to estimate that there now
| exist the negatives of a million news
photographers. And the oldest of
these negatives is not much more
| than Is years old.
Photographers Rank With Reporters
The business of photographing the
progress of Our government has grown
to be as highly specialized as that of
reporting it in print. The pho
tographer has taken his place along
with the Washington correspondent.
News photographers have their regu-
lar station at the White House, for
instance, just as do the representa-
tives of the press associations. This
is all an ultra modern development
Infants born before the modern action
news photograph was understood at
| all are still minors. Yet today there
| is scarcely any phase of historical
progress anywhere in the world that
is not being completely preserved in
photographs.
To appreciate the truth of this
statement, the reader has only to
| search his recollection for a mental
image of, say, President Benjamin
Harrison in scme active pose. He has
no such recollection. for he never
saw an action picture of Harrison.
Except for those who saw President
Harrison in kfe the public today has
no better means of knowing what he
really looked like than it has of
knowing what Julius Caesar looked
and that is all. The same is substan-
TALLY true of Presidents Cleveland and
Mckinley; altho motion pictures had
been invented by McKinley's time,
and the movie camera was turned
upon him.
But the photographing of news, as
we now know it, began during Roose-
velts administration, when Barney
Clinedinst, a Washington photogra-
pher, imported from Germany
camera with a shutter SO rapid that
it would stop upon the Photographic
,T-A, ~
man was more receptive to new ideas
than Roosevelt; and when Clinedinst
told Roosevelt about the new camera,
the president invited the photographer
| to test the new instrument by taking
some snapshots of T. r. on horseback.
The famous photograph of Roosevelt
vaulting a five-bar fence on a horse
was the result of that first appoint
ment-a photograph that is said to
have made CIinedinst over $4,000. 1t
was the forerunner of the modern
action picture of public men.
Roosevelt was the best of all presi-
DENTAL subjects for the camera. He
was a man of striking action, and he
was that most excellent of all posers,
the man who can be utterly himself
| In front of the cameras eye. But T. r.
had something more: he could sit in a
| studio and register a portrait that
fairly glowed with his own person
atty Other public men can get this
result occasionally. and then they Sc
cure what they cherish as their best
pictures: but Roosevelt had the
facility all the time.
1t was legendary the number of
times President Roosevelt was pho
Itographed, Lut the cameras have
clicked even more industriously in the,
vicinity of his successors. That is be-
cause of the increasing public de-
mand for pictures and the increasing
number of cameras to supply the de-
| mand. Mr.. Taft Gid not seem to lend
| himself well to Photography pic
| lures were all much alike-but Mr.
Wilson came in to be another good
subject and was often photographed
until his illness after his return from
the peace conference. Since then pic
lures of Mr.. Wilson have been ex-
| treme1y hard to get. Mrs Wilson was
photographed less than any modern
mistress of the White House.
Harding Much Photographed.