Clean Faces.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 976, 14 November 1890, Page 5

Clean Faces.

The following paragraph from the Daily News appears to be worthy of consideration:— Was there ever a photographer who could muster the moral courage to say to a customer, ‘Sir, or Madam,’ as the case may be, <1 regret to observe that your face is not scrupulously clean ?' If we can trust the complaint of one of their craft, the temptation to say something of this sort is often verj strong. If sitters, we are told, were to wash their countenances a little before a large photograph is taken, there would be less work for retouchers, and the result would be a better portrait. Unfortunately some people are touchy on the subject of clean faces. There was once a photographer who, being confronted with a decidedly dirty face, contrived, as if by accident, to drop a spot of lampblack upon the customer’s cheek. 'So sorry ; extremely careless on my part,’ said the diplomatie operator, ‘but yon will find soap, water, and towels, madame, in thiß little cabinet.* It is saggested that a photographer might hang up in the studio specimens of a portrait taken immediately before sponging the face side by side with one of the same face after an hour or two’s exposure to our smoky atmosphere. When it is seen how hard are the marks in the face in the latter case—for there is nothing like the lens in detecting foreign matter in crevices—it is thought that the customer might forgive the silent hint.