THE ALBUMS OF THE FUTURE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue II, 11 July 1896, Page 46

THE ALBUMS OF THE FUTURE.

The family album is the foe (or, shall we say, ally ?) of the mauvais quart d'heure. With ears cocked for the announcement of dinner, one turns its leaves. What a procession of uncles and aunts ! One’s host as a boy, is here as a youth, a young man, a bridegroom ; one’s hostess as a girl, a young woman (several examples), as a bride. Now and again since has she been taken ; but his day as a sitter is over. Perhaps on the celebration of their silver wedding he will submit to face the camera again, but not before. Many reflections arise as one glances at the book, not the least consolatory being this —that everyone has queer relations. To blush for one’s kin is the common lot. They dwell on the drawingroom table, these albums, between ‘ Picturesque Europe ’ and Farrar’s ‘Life of Christ.’ Very often a stereoscope stands close by, containing views of Lucerne, and as likely as not, the album is bounded on the north by a weddingpresent inkstand ; known to be a wedding - present inkstand because it is unlike any other kind, and only 'n a diffident, aristocratic way invites one to use it. The guests lay the great books on their knees, and the host and hostess lean over their shoulders and put names to the portraits. Now and then, among the press of uncles and aunts and cousins, of school chums and college friends, all faded, comes a portrait of the actress, who twenty, thirty years ago was the personification of womanly charm and loveliness. * Yes,’ says our host, ‘ that was Rose Twinkletoe. I saw her in “ Warm Water,” in, let me see, sixty-one. Ah ! she was an actress if you like !’ The albums of the future are likely to be more interesting since the rise of the amateur has wrought flexibility into the art of photography. The Sunday afternoon family group ‘ snapped in the garden ’ is a distinct improvement on the old tableaux vivants procured in a studio ; and Jack, with a pipe over a novel, or Lucy playing with the dog, are more life-like than Jack in new clothes, and Lucy in an expression of seriousness pumped up for the occasion. But it is appalling to think of the multiplication of photographs now going forward. A studio is in every street, and every schoolboy has his camera. There is some balm in the reflection that not all the amateur photographers ever get so far as developing, and that some who can develop are unable to print; but the fact remains that whereas a score of years ago one man one photograph was a liberal annual allowance, to-day, every man and woman are liable to be taken, wittingly or unwittingly, a dozen times a week. As for the new photography—the X rays, the cinematograph, and all the other inventions that tread upon each others’ heels—it adds terror to life. Professor Riintgen (whose motto might be ‘ Praise God, Barebones ’) has made it feasible for the family album of the future to supersede the cupboard as the home of the family skeletons, and it is not impossible that with the assistance of the cinematograph the mauvais quart d’ heure may, a year or so hence, be enlivened with pictorial representations of minutes in our host’s daily life. We shall see him eating an egg, or catching his train.