EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY

Evening Star, Issue 19388, 23 October 1926, Page 2

EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY

METHODS USED YEARS AGO. A photograph gallery of tho seventies, •where heads ot young and old were securely braced with iron “rests” for the long time exposures then necessary, was reproduced m Chicago by the Chicago Historical Society for the fortyfourth annual convention of the Photographers’ Association of America. Mr Silas P. Mclander, a veteran photographer, who dates his experience back to the daguerreotype days, appeared in the' reproduced studio to toll the progress of the art as invention followed invention, daguerreotype yielding to amber-type, which tvas succeeded by tintype, wet plate, and then dry plate methods. Mr Moiauder recalled his discovery of tho art of retouching, previously unknown hero. Mr Loander J. M‘Cormick, a prominent Chicagoan of the early period", called to see proofs of hia photographs. “ They will be better when they are retouched,” said the enterprising young photographer, proud of the art ho had just acquired through his own experiments.

“ Don’t you put a lie on my face,” was the vigorous answer. Blurred effects of diffused light seen in many portrait photographs to-day is not a sound artistic method, Colonel Eduard J. Steichen, chief photographer for ‘Vogue’ and ‘Vanity Fair’ Magazines, told the convention. Ho once used this method himselfha said, but was now convinced that it was a mistake. The only blurring permissible, ho held, is the slight effect of the movement caused by the model s breathing. Colonel Steichen met enthusiastic response when he declared that it was the photographer’s duty not to try to express his own personality in his work, but to seek first to understand the person or thing he was photographing. Even a matchbox should he understood, he said. The photographer should study the geometric beauty of its lines, should think about vts characteristics. “ After I study it in this way I photograph, not my impression, but that box as I understand it,” he said.