But if the camera's innate honesty works any hardship on the photographer by limiting his subject matter in one direction, the loss is slight when weighed against the advantages it provides.
For it is that very quality that makes the camera expressly fitted for examining deeply into the meaning of things. The discriminat ing photographer can direct its penetrating vision so as to present his subject—whatever it may be—in terms of its basic reality. He can reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder will find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object.
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time : an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and mean ingless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process. The lens does not reveal a subject significantly of its own accord. On the contrary, its vision is completely impartial and undiscriminating. It makes no distinction between important detail and meaningless detail. Selection, emphasis, and meaning, must be provided by the photographer in his composition.
Nowhere has the painter's influence had a more lasting hold on photography than in the field of composition. Photographers who have put to use every other resource of their medium still try to emulate the work of painters in this respect. They consider com position as a thing apart, having no relation to a specific medium, but consisting of a set of tested rules and conventions that must not be contravened. To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible. The painter and the photographer will have two different ways of doing this because of the basic differences between their mediums. Its capacity for rendering fine detail and tone makes photography excel in recording form and texture. Its subtlety of gradation makes it admirably suited to recording qualities of light or shadow, and its ability to record sharply everything within the angle of lens-vision from the immediate foreground to the distant horizon carries it far beyond the painter's province. The photographer cannot depend on rules deduced from finished work in another medium. He must learn to see things through his own eyes and his own camera ; only then can he present his subject in a way that will transmit his feeling for it to others.
An intuitive knowledge of composition in terms of the capaci ties of his process, enables the photographer to record his subject at the moment of deepest perception; to capture the fleeting in stant when the light on a landscape, the form of a cloud, the gesture of a hand or the expression of a face, momentarily pre sents a profound revelation of life.
The appeal to our emotions manifest in such a record is largely due to the quality of authenticity in the photograph. The spec tator accepts its authority, and in viewing it perforce believes that he would have seen that scene or object exactly so if he had been there. We know that the human eye is capable of no such feat, and furthermore that the photographer has not reproduced the scene exactly ; quite possibly we would not even be able to identify the original scene from having seen the photograph. Yet it is this belief in the reality of the photograph that calls up a strong response in the spectator and enables him to participate directly in the artist's experience.
There can be no doubt that photography is potentially a power ful and vital medium of expression. But even today many photographers who attempt to use it as such still cling to the weak effects of photo-painting, while others imitate the work of abstract painters with "shadowgraphs" (recording shapes, shadows, and sometimes a degree of texture by laying various objects on sensitized paper and then exposing it to light).
However, there has been in the past decade a perceptible growth of interest in and understanding of photography as an art medium. Museums are holding more photographic exhibitions every year and private collections of fine photographs are more numerous. The unique advantages that photography offers are being recognized by an increasing number of artists. The camera has extended their visual horizons by opening their eyes to new perspectives and new subject matter.
Conception and execution so nearly coincide in this direct medium that an artist with unlimited vision can produce a tre mendous volume of work without sacrifice of quality. But the camera demands for its successful use a trained eye, a sure, disciplined technique, keen perception, and swift creative judge ment. The artist who would use his photographic powers to the full must have all these, plus the first requisite for the artist in any medium—something to say.