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Essay on Art and Photography

9781465681768
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
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Overview
When Photography was first introduced, it met with a severe struggle ere gaining the esteem it now happily enjoys. Artists of all grades unanimously condemned it, looking upon it only in the light of a vehicle that would carry destruction to their own especial pursuits, while on those who attempted to practice and advance it fell anathemas and ridicule. So great was professional prejudice, and so blind in its apprehension, that it dexterously and successfully biased and enlisted the opinion of the Press in its favour, which echoed the assertions that, under the most favourable circumstances, “Photography could only be a caricature of the subject it portrayed.” Thus was the combination of Art and Science for a time checked in its progress, and the artists, now exulting in having temporarily attained their purpose, watched jealously the science of chemistry, and depreciated as useless any further inquiry that seemed to encourage or aid Photography. The great body of the public, as usual in all such cases, remained neutral, but fortunately, for the advancement of the new art, there remained a few who were more sanguine than their cotemporaries, and generously bestowed their sympathy on the “oppressed.” They saw in Photography, a great science, then but in its infancy, but which must ultimately compete with the finer arts; its peculiar adaptation in copying rendering it still more valuable, not only to artists, in furthering their own success, by securing truthfulness and accuracy, but likewise in all the various usages to which it has since been so successfully applied. Too numerous to attempt to specify here.

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