THE VERY LATEST SECRET OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XII, 20 March 1897, Page 360

THE VERY LATEST SECRET OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

The woman with Janoeeqae bands and feet can now have them appear in a picture as if they had been fashioned for Titania herself. If her nose be too prominent, and if her mouth be altogether too rich and ripe, she can have the defect remedied —in the picture—and look exceedingly presentable. It is all due to a secret. Some persons might call it one of the tricks of the photographer's trade. The process is a simple one. and the principal factor therein is that remarkable little revealer of wonders, the lens of a microscope. Everyone knows that if you turn a microscope lens wrong side up and look through it, the result will be that the object gazed upon will seem smaller rather than greater, just as a glance throngb a spy-glass from the great end makes an object seem far distant, even though it be near at band. This is the secret of the photographer. The person who is to have his or her picture taken is posed before the camera in the usual fashion. Over the part which it is desired to have appear as if submitted to a process of reduction is placed a micro scopic lens in inverse ratio. The lens used in the camera is of peculiar make and has been subjected to many strange and powerful teste. The subject is posed and the camera is ready. Possibly the subject may have had a nose that seemed to him or her of Brobdignagian proportions. So the subsidiary lens is adjusted, the camera properly focused, the button touched, and the rest forced into history. Now then for the developing process. What is it makes the demon of the dark room smile when, after the usual acid bath, the outlines of the sunlight's art are apparent ? There is the subject, and there is the nose. The latter has been greatly reduced. Unfortunately, it might seem, the contrivance by which the lens was held in place is in evidence. ‘ Very good,’ says the artist to himself -. ‘ I’ll make this party look as if that was the nose of a real Venus.' And that is exactly what happens. Presently, in a day or two, the subject returns to the studio for the proof, and smiles with keen delight at what is presented for inspection. The face has not been changed, but the nose—well, that is different. It is as nice-looking a nose as ever was seen beneath the shadow of the Acropolis. This is one of the instances where comparisons are odious, so far as the original nose is concerned, and the photographer wisely refrains from making any. The person who has been photographed is delighted. The photographer receives liberal remuneration for the exercise of his art. Everyone is satisfied. The same principle applies to the photograph of the hands and feet or the mouth.

Not that it ia one of fashion's recent dictates that a persons feet of necessity appear in a picture, but it is gradually becoming more and more the case that the swell young woman loves to be photo graphed in a costume so charming that she wants it in evidence from the top of the very charming tortoise-shell pin that graces the apex of the golden hair that does not hang down her back to the very tip of the —in the picture—tiny shoe that peeps from beneath the skirt which is nothing if not a la modi. Now to have the tip of that shoe which projects from beneath the skirt of disproportionate size would be shocking indeed. So the photographer carefully adjusts his microscopic lens and the picture is taken. The projecting foot is tiny, or at least it appears so. Then there are the hands. It unfortunately happens that the young woman who looks at life from the window of an £BO.OOO residence, often has much larger bands than the girl who sells her what she chooses at the great store. Nature is very queer that way, and the respect that she ought to feel for the persons of the 400 is not always in evidence. But the photographer is more diplomatic than Nature. Unlike that good dame, if he be a fashionable be must of necessity please his fashionable patrons. The shopkeeper or professional man who makes his customer look her prettiest, or rather prettier than she is, is the one who best pleases, and so, when the photographer with his microscopic lens makes the abnormal hand of his customer look as charming as Cinderella’s foot in the famous slipper, he has achieved a financial and artistic success. No one, as stated, knows just who learned of this clever plan to make what seems to be a real photograph a gross flattery of nature. It cannot be called a Yankee trick. English dames and damosels were, so far as known, the initial beneficiaries of the new art, as it is now called, and there are unkind people who say that it is one of those inventions that is conceived by an English brain because of the dire necessity therefor. However, this is unkind and cannot be proved, at least not offhand in a newspaper article. However that may be, it is exceedingly fashionable in England at the present moment, and people who know say that more than half the swell femininity which daily disports itself on Rotten Row patronizes photographers who keep microscope lenses in stock. Over in Paris, where no woman who thinks anything of herself admits that either her hands or her feet are other than exactly of the right proportion, the photographer's microscopic lens has met with distinct failure. In the United States, and particularly in New York, where the fad has taken a very firm hold, society has endorsed the microscopic lens. Dame Fashion, according to our own interpretation of her ideas, says there is no reason on earth why we should not make ourselves appear as beautiful as possible. Art and nature are always supposed to go band in hand, and in the case of the photographer’s pictures they are certainly doing just that thing. It is claimed that every photographer has to slightly alter the photographs of his patrons, provided these patrons are wealthy and the photographer is fashionable. It does not do to let ns see ourselves always as others see us. Never a portrait maker is there who does not appreciate this fact. The most popular fashionable photographer is he who, like the late Sarony, always shows of us the very best that nature put forward, and then helps us out with a little art. The photographer calls the aid he gives to nature retouching. In our hearts we know better. We all know that not one of ns who has his photograph taken would accept it from the photographer if every blemish that the truthful plate shows were allowed to remain. Not a bit of it. We may say that we are not vain, and that we must have our photograph * natural.' Just the same, we are vain, and we wish to look unnatural. It is these truths that have made the

secret of the photographer revealed in this article so popular It is the catering to human vanity that makes the picturemaker a leader among his fellows. He must be an artist and one of the most notable of the notables of Vanity Fair.