Camera Craft ~ September 1934 ~ Notes On The Miniature Camera ~ About the Paper Negative by William Mortensen

Continuing work with a 35mm Leica camera, William Mortensen further described how to use techniques developed for large format images could be applied to the "miniature camera."

The use of paper negatives was talked about when I lived and worked as a B&W print technician in Hollywood, California.  We never used the process in the lab since we were devoted to cranking out museum quality prints at a rather hellatious rate and paper negatives would've slow down our entire process.  We would've needed to work much more closely with photographers and would've needed hours of work on one image.  There simply was zero time for such things.

After reading the following article, I wish I'd taken the time to explore this technique.  In fact, I wish I still had access to a darkroom to work this out in.  Alas, I and my colleagues were held under the St. Ansel, Group F 64 spell of "purist", "realistic" photography back in the day and digital photography arrived before I realized making paper negatives could add to the art and craft of photography.

What caught my attention is William Mortensen's stress on techniques used to avoid what he called the "Fuzzy Wuzzys."  St. Ansel used the same term and derisively applied it to Mortensen's work.  Alas, Mortensen himself preferred to avoid softness in his images.  Which underscores an obvious point that he who "wins" gets to write history.

This will be the last William Mortensen article that I re-post for now from the original 1934 Camera Craft publication.  In a month or two I'll try to remember to post a translation of an article from the Camera Club of Paris 1902 that talks about single element lenses, where to buy them (back in the day), and how to adjust the focus point to correct for chromatic aberration.

Until then, the following William Mortensen article is a real "banger" of a thing to read. 

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Notes On The Miniature Camera
William Mortensen
About the Paper Negative

There are probably two hundred thousand miniature cameras at present in use.  These represent the ultimate refinement of the experience and labours of the most skillful makers of optical apparatus in the world. Hundreds of miles of film pass through these cameras annually, and millions of exposures are made. But despite this tremendous expenditure of materials and energy, the pictorial output is amazingly small.  The mountain has indeed laboured, but to date nothing so lively and prolific as the proverbial mouse has made its appearance.  There are occasional creditable pictures made from miniature negatives, to be sure; but when compared with the colossal effort, the showing is not impressive.

As a tour de force of camera engineering the miniature instrument seems to exert a strange compulsion with many of its users to linger unduly over the technical aspects of their craft, with a proportionate disregard of the fact that the true end and aim of photography is the making of pictures. Light meters, thermometers, chronometers, logarithms, graphs and higher mathematics have converted minicam photography into a sort of scientific black magic. Amateur photographers assume the manner of initiates performing mysterious rites at the dark of the moon, mumbling gamma factors as they compound their developers. Snapping the shutter becomes a ceremony, and developing the negative, a sacrament. But at this point, apparently, the fine ecstacy exhausts itself; for nine out of ten minicam owners seem to be content for their final result with a perfunctory bromide enlargement of the most bromidic character. 

Even the best workers are inclined to distrust all types of "processing."  No doubt they fear the loss, through processing, of definition and gradation, virtues which they rightly treasure very highly.. As a matter of fact, miniature negatives may be processed, as I have discovered through my own experience, without serious loss of gradation, and with an apparent gain in definition. The paper negative and bromoil transfer are processes that the miniature camera worker would do well to employ.

For a process of such great potentialities there has been surprisingly little literature on the subject of the paper negative. This paucity of material is no doubt partially due to the simple and obvious nature of the fundamental principle of the process: "paper negative"
the term is practically self-explanatory.  But most amateur experiments with the procedure terminate very unsatisfactorily; for there is a great deal more to the process than the fact that it utilizes a negative made of paper. Correctly understood and handled, the paper negative is one of the noblest processes available to the pictorialist. It is employed by Echague, who is probably the outstanding pictorialist of these times. The scope it provides for selectivity and control is only slightly less than that afforded by the bromoil transfer.  Indeed, I have found in working with pupils that it affords the best possible preliminary training for the latter process.  Not only are the facilities for local alteration similar, but a similar type of original print is required.  A print that is correct in quality for a paper negative is also suitable to being converted into a bromoil matrix.

In broad outline the paper negative procedure as I practice it is as follows: A bromide enlargement is made from the original negative. After the desired alterations are made on the enlargement, it is placed with it's emulsion side in contact with emulsion of another sheet of bromide paper and, by printing through, converted into a negative. Further alterations may be made on this negative, after which it is again placed in contact, emulsion to emulsion, with a third sheet of bromide paper on which the final positive print is made.

 

The procedure given above differs in various respects from that advocated by other workers. For example, instead of starting with a simple bromide enlargement, some advocate making a film positive. I prefer the paper positive on account of its simplicity and much greater ease of alteration. Extensive alteration of a miniature film positive is a
practical impossibility, whereas the enlarged print allows for changes in the same terms in which they will appear on the final print. Another point of difference involves the making of the final print from the paper negative. At this juncture, instead of placing the emulsions in contact, one authority advises putting the emulsion side of the negative against the plain side of the priniting paper, so that the light passes through the thickness of both papers. This procedure, he suggests, minimizes grain, because the texture of one paper tends to neutralize that of the other. My experience, however, indicates that this method introduces undesirable diffusion and fuzziness: keeping the emulsions always in contact, on the other hand, permits of no loss of definition. As far as grain is concerned, I am unable to discern any difference between the results of the two methods.

Much more important than the mechanical details of the process ( variants of which each practitioner may work out for himself ) are certain requisites of print and negative quality.  It is failure to understand these that is chiefly responsible for the unsatisfactory outcome of most experiments with paper negatives. Not every print by any means, not
even every good print, is adaptable to the process. There are three of these requisites, and they must all be observed if good results are to be obtained.

CONTRAST MUST BE AVOIDED. The tendency of the paper negative, as of most other processes, is to exaggerate contrast. What seems an effectively contrasty print is often converted into sheer black and white. Hence great care must be taken to secure and preserve all the middle half-tones. There are three sources of contrast, all of which  must be avoided, (a) It may be the result of one-sided, unbalanced lighting.  A fairly flat lighting is much better for processing, (b) The contrast may be inherent in the local colour of the subject, with large areas of light and dark placed in juxtaposition, (c) Contrast may be of chemical origin. For this reason, in working with paper negatives, it is necessary to avoid contrasty emulsion on the original negative, as well as on the bromide paper, and to avoid likewise contrasty developers for paper negative and final print.

THE SOFTNESS OF THE ORIGINAL PRINT AND OF THE PAPER NEGATIVE MUST BE INTRINSIC AND GENUINE. A sort of spurious softness is to be obtained by under-development.  But a print thus secured will not produce a good paper negative.  A print of
the right type shows a scanty use of pure black and white, but a full and complete range of half-tones lying between. Such a print is to be gotten only by full development and correct quality of the original negative.

THE ORIGINAL NEGATIVE MUST BE OF CORRECT QUALITY.  In larger negatives slight deviations from the standard may be permitted; but in miniature negatives each deviation is magnified to a disaster when it is enlarged.  A negative of correct quality utilizes the full range of half-tones that its emulsion affords.  It therefore exhibits a very sparing use of either full black or complete transparency, reserving the former for nothing but the intensest high-lights, and the latter for nothing but the deepest accents of the shadows. Between these two extremes there must be shown a complete range of translucent half-tones, providing modelling by delicate gradation in the light area, and giving a suggestion of drawing in the darker area. This type of negative is very difficult to obtain unless one understands the precise factors of exposure and development that enter into it. Broadly speaking, these factors may be summed up in two rules. ( 1 ) The minimum of exposure. ( 2 ) The maximum of development. By "minimum of exposure" is meant an exposure based on the light area (rather than on the shadows, as the older rule has it). Such a procedure preserves all the half-tones of the light area, instead of lumping them together with the high-lights as the conventionally over-exposed negative does. But to secure all these half-tones it is essential that the second rule be equally observed. By "maximum of development" is meant full development. Any negative that has to be "jerked" from the developer in order to prevent the light area from blocking up is ipso facto an over-exposed negative. With a developer of reduced alkalinity there is no such thing as over-development if the original exposure has been correct.

 

The same two rules must be observed in making prints and paper negatives in order to save at every point the all-important middle tones.  For this reason I not only employ the briefest possible exposure compatible with the above theory of density, but employ the A solution of D64 at one quarter strength (i.e., one part of D64-A plus three parts of water).

In addition to a negative of correct quality, the following equipment and materials are required for the paper negative procedure as hereafter outlined.
Projection printer.
11x14 printing frame.
Retouching desk, sub-illuminated.  ( Failing this, a contact printer will serve. )
Carbon pencil, Wolfe BB.
Felt stump.
Venus pencil, medium.
An ample supply of XF bromide paper. (Defender velour black F)

For clearness of demonstration I have chosen an example showing a rather extreme amount of control. Not only has a background been added, but there are numerous local alterations. The model was originally photographed in front of an illuminated white screen under a flat front light. A tall gray box served for the vertical form in the background. 

 Note that the original print (fig. 1) is amply supplied with half-tones, and that there is nowhere in it an extreme contrast of black and white. As a first step in planning the picture, make a small enlargement (about 4x6), determine the most effective framing, and with pencil and eraser make a rough preliminary lay-out of the intended structural alterations.

 Using this as a guide, proceed with making an 11x14 enlargement on F paper, framing it in accordance with the plan. Be careful not to over-expose the print, and develop it for four minutes in the A solution of D64, one quarter strength.

[My comment: Developer Formula D-64 is then described... but is not provided here...]

After the print is dried and pressed proceed to make the desired alterations. Work with pencil on the face of the print, and with transmitted light. Use the Venus pencil for detail and the carbon pencil for broad passages when intense black is required. The stump is used to accomplish gradations of tone. Begin working with the head. Do not make the error of starting with the background, lest you lay in the tone too dark. The head and figure, as the dominating element of the picture, must determine the key of the other planes of the picture. Emphasize the shadows, rounding the contour of the head and the orbits of the eyes, and filling in between strands of hair and badly placed light passages.
If it is necessary to get extremely dense blacks, turn the print over and work on the back also. Remember always that it is the transparency value of this print that is of  importance, not the surface appearance.

Proceed down the figure, adjusting the drapery and shadowing the  breasts slightly to emphasize the modeling of the body.  Notice (by comparison with the final print) that the vegetables in the lower corners are considerably lowered in tone to lead the eye to the center of the picture.

When the key tone of the dominating plane of the picture is established,  begin work on the next plane, which in this case is the timber and stone wall. Be careful to avoid mechanical monotony in the stones, and note that they are suggested with light and shade and not literally drawn in. Keep this plane in a lighter tone than that of the figure. The other planes are built up in order, with progressive lightening of tone.  Note that the distant spires echo, in form and number, the motive of the hanging moss, and that the mountains carry out, but not too obviously, the rhythm of the neck-line. The sky is darkened inward from the edges to bring the strongest contrast opposite the head.

To make the paper negative, lay this altered print in the printing frame, emulsion upward, press it into close contact with the glass and lay a piece of F paper over it, emulsion down. Before locking up the frame be sure that the two papers are in absolute contact, for any bubbles or bulges are disastrous. Give it an exposure commensurate with four minute development, with the lens of the projection printer wide open.

The paper negative thus obtained ( Fig. 2 ) shows some increase in contrast, but, thanks to the softness and gradation of the original print, this increase is not serious.  At this stage, incorporation of light passages is accomplished. As with the initial print, the work is started on the principal plane of the picture. The detail of the hair is renewed, and the high-lights on the face are intensified. The modeling of the body beneath the dress is suggested by a few high-lights. The neck-line of the dress is lightened and almost eliminated in order to pull the light passages of the picture together. For the same reason the embroidery pattern on the right shoulder is much subdued and considerably lightened in tone. High-lights are intensified on the sash, on the fingers and on the vegetables in the foreground. Notice also that the bad fold breaking the line of the right sleeve is eliminated, and a slight correction made of the disagreeable foreshortening of the fingers of the left hand. Detail and character is given to the confused mass of foliage at the left. Passing then to the other planes of the picture, the high-lights are intensified on the stones in the wall and the sky slightly brightened near the head.

The procedure for making the final print is the same as that described for the paper negative.   The exposure and development times are the same. In printing, the principal figure may be given increased dominance, if desired, by "dodging" with the negative removed.

 

 The picture "The Sophisticate" was made by a pupil of mine. I have included it because it is an excellent "piece of work and because it shows the extremely personal type of expression possible with the paper negative process. In this case the formal aspect of the figure has been emphasized by bringing out the wiry outline and making it tight and rigid.

Like Projection Control or any other control process, the paper negative is liable to unskilful and ignorant abuses that make the judicious grieve.   Paper negative prints are frequently to be seen in salons and photographic annuals that betray complete lack of knowledge of human anatomy by placing the high-lights in utterly impossible locations. Others, by harsh and obviously drawn outlines, completely violate the integrity of the photographic original. The process must not be regarded as a means of "doping up" an indifferent picture to conceal earlier technical blunders: technically, the original print should be able to stand on its own merits. A control process lays a heavy burden on its user because it cuts him off from the precise mechanical guidance of the camera. Unless
he knows what he wants to do and how to do it, he is very certain to find that what he has made is a mistake, and not a picture.

Camera Craft ~ August 1934 ~ Notes On The Miniature Camera by William Mortensen

In discovering William Mortensen's book series on photography I came to appreciate his clarity of thought expressed in his writings.

Reading further in the 1934 Camera Craft publication I stumbled upon the following article.  It's written about using a Leica 35mm camera.  Up until now I've only seen photos of him using 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 cameras, so his use of 35mm came as something of a surprise to me.

1934 was rather early in the adoption of what they used to call the "miniature camera", so these insights and demonstrations of practical use are quite interesting. 

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Most of us will recollect, among the more terrifying experiences of our childhood, the day that we were carefully scrubbed and led to have our pictures taken. Two details usually dominate such remembrances.  First, a man who bounded about, dishevelled and distracted, doing strange things and making strange noises. This odd creature we subsequently identified as the photographer. Second, an apparatus slightly smaller than a freight car but much more alarming in appearance, apparently designed by a Spanish Inquisitor out of spare parts of a draw-bridge, which glowered horrifically under a black hood at the far end of the room.

When the owner of a modern miniature instrument compares his compact handful of camera with this medieval monster and realizes that it can do everything that the monster did except frighten children into convulsions, it is obvious to him that, in the material sense, photography is at present making huge advances. Unfortunately many a Leica or Contax owner is failing to take full advantage of the peculiar abilities of his
camera. He seems content to treat it as a sort of super-Kodak for securing super-snap-shots which he steps up into unimaginative enlargements of the drug store type. The miniature camera, of course, admirably fulfills such pedestrian purposes as keeping records of travel and sporting events and Junior with his new bicycle and similar domestic history; but it is not so generally realized that it excells all other types of equipment for photography of the creative, pictorial type.

 

Some of the advantages of the miniature camera as applied to pictorial work are so
obvious that they need only to be mentioned. Such for example are its cheapness of operation facilitating free experimentation, and its small size which makes it very apt in securing angle shots and in taking prompt advantage of accidentally provided opportunities. 

The lens of short focal length (50 mm) that is regularly supplied as stock equipment with both kinds of miniature cameras, is, if properly understood, the type best suited to pictorial purposes.  Such a lens has, of course, much greater depth of field than one of the longer focal lengths which are the standard choice of most of the old-line photographers. This increased depth of field has the effect of rendering the subject in terms of flat patterns of light and dark areas instead of in terms of greater and lesser definition.
To be sure, the short focal length produces in certain instances considerable abberation and distortion of drawing. This point have all of us is a favorite with the proponents of long focal lengths.  We seen pictures in which feet, protruded toward the camera, take on freakish dimensions, or in which a horse, photographed head-on, dwindles to dwarfish hind-quarters. Such pictures used to be exhibited as demonstrating the faults of a short focal length; rather, they demonstrate faulty arrangement of subject-matter. Slight resourcefulness on the part of the photographer of such awful examples would have enabled him to compose his material into a two-dimensional plane and simultaneously eliminate the abberation and produce a more pleasing pictorial result. The short focal length lens, by forcing its user thus to arrange his material, forces him also to give thought to such primary pictorial considerations as linear patterns and notan values.

I have come to much prefer, for pictorial use, the view finder of the miniature camera to the ground-glass of cameras of the reflex type. The very smallness of the image in the view finder causes one to judge its pictorial values in terms of large planes and broad patterns of light and dark.  Indeed it is impossible under normal conditions, to see things in the ground-glass in the two-dimensional aspect they will assume when photographed. For when one closes down the diaphragm to bring the back-ground into focus, the image on the glass becomes too dim and dark to be of any use.

The quality of selectivity, which distinguishes pictorial photography from photography that is merely realistic and fact-recording, is readily achieved with the miniature camera. Of course the very flexibility and portability of the little instrument gives it extreme freedom in the selection of subject-matter and effective angles; but a more significant selection is achieved in the mere process of enlarging the 35 millimeter negative to an 11x14 print. This tremendous amplification emphasises planes and patterns and subordinates details, keeping perfect gradation with no apparent loss in definition. A landscape is seen by the miniature camera, not as a group of contradictorily clamouring details, but as large masses and simple planes as the artist sees it. Similarly a portrait with a miniature camera reveals the structure and dominating characteristics of a face, rather than its lesser details, its textures and its blemishes.

The various procedures of Projection Control— framing, local printing, dodging, distortion, and montage which I have discussed in previous articles, are all applicable to miniature negatives and greatly increase the small camera's scope for selectivity.

Such special processes as the little-understood bromoil transfer and the neglected paper negative are particularly happy mediums for working up the products of the miniature camera. Both are susceptible to a high degree of control and provide a great stimulus to a worker with imagination. In an article to follow, I will consider the advantages of the paper negative to miniature pictorialists.

Most minicam owners nowadays are greatly hampered in getting the best out of their cameras by several technical obsessions that are earnestly fostered by dealers and manufacturers. These obsessions are four in number and are concerned, respectively, with (1) grainlessness, (2) speed, (3) colour correction, and (4) gadgets.

Under the vogue for grainlessness there have been marketed thousands of gallons of developer - some good, some useless, some consisting of old stand-byes in fancy bottles with new labels, and some definitely poisonous, to susceptible individuals. As a matter of fact, grainlessness is not particularly related to extremely modern methods and formulas.
I have, in my files, many ten-year-old negatives that were developed in the tabloid Rytol solution and are nearly devoid of grain. For pictorial use a certain amount of grain is rather an advantage than otherwise, as it produces a vibration that is more effective than a (technically) more perfect print. In making bromoil transfers considerable grain in the matrix is permissible as the graininess of the processes tends to counteract the grain of the original print.

The speed obsession takes on two manifestations: speed and lenses.  Instead of working out the possibilities of a lens of moderate aperture, the bedeviled minicam owner sets his ideal at something that looks like a locomotive headlight, and hastily acquires F 2 and F 1.5 and dreamily contemplates the day when he will be able to own F 0.9. Save for very special problems, such stupendous apertures are not of the slightest use to the average worker. Speed is a quality that can be gained only by the loss of other qualities much more important. A lens of F 2 aperture is quite incapable of obtaining the depth of field necessary for pictorial work. Of course such a lens may be closed down till the desired definition is obtained, but the lens in such a case might as well have been F 3.5 in the
first place, thus saving one the embarrassment of a large amount of excess baggage of expensive and un-needed glass. The weight of such lenses out of proportion to the camera, and is apt in my experience, to cause vibration of the tripod. Films have similarly become afflicted by the speed mania. Speed emulsions and super-speed emulsions have made their appearance, and without doubt extra-hyper-ultra-super-speed emulsions are
just around the corner. One five-hundredth of a second on par-speed is film is amply rapid to care for all normal events of man and beast. As in the case of lenses, film emulsions are speeded up only by the sacrifice of desirable qualities. It has been my experience that the super sensitive emulsions invariably produce degraded half-tones with greatly increased grain. 

The obsession for colour correction has led some owners of miniature cameras a merry dance of desperate experimentation with strange types of films and with filters of all colours of the rainbow and some new ones.  The result of this experimentation has for most workers been very meager, and many of the so-called "successful" prints would have been much better if they had been done on ortho film without filters. Frequently indeed, the distortion of colour values is a pictorial advantage. If one accepts the premise of the creative pictorial worker that the end of photographic art is not fact but the interpretation of fact in terms of the medium, the zeal for colour correction is seen to be of little account.  The conversion of colour into a scale of grays is a matter of accepted
convention, and the change of the relative position of some colours on this scale does not alter the convention.

The obsession for gadgets is perhaps the most prevalent of all the minicam owner. There are adjuncts, false ideals that afflict the average appurtenances and attachments without number that monthly sing their siren songs from the adverising pages of photographic journals. Some of it is special equipment designed for specialists, but a great deal of it
is gadgets, dingueses, thingumies and doodads of a fantastic degree of uselessness that seems to have been conceived in the fertile brain of Rube Goldberg. The special equipment is undoubtedly well adapted to its purpose, but for the average amateur to stock up on boxes of lenses and racks of filters is not only unnecessary but a distinct hinderance to his advancement in his craft. Many a miniature camera is now lying discarded on the shelf because its disgusted owner was not able to make his ponderous and overwhelming equipment do what it was supposed to do. To try to improve one's pictures by buying complicated equipment is like studying differential calculus in order to learn to add two plus two. Many an enthusiast has sunk a thousand dollars in equipment without bothering to learn how to make a correct exposure or how to correctly develop it.

In speaking of the vanity of gadgets pioneer struggler with miniature cameras I do not speak lightly.  As a pioneer struggler with his miniature camera who has sowed his wild para-phenylenediamine and wasted his substance in riotous experimentation, I speak from the heart when I say that gadgets are the prime time-wasters and energy-disperser. There was a time when I too lent an ear to their seductions and tried them all. Every dingus that could be hung onto a camera, every foul brew that could be used for developing, every paper, every film that the market offered— with these I wasted my youth. My once great beauty, alas, has faded, my back is bowed and my feet are flat; but I have learned to abjure gadgets and haphazard experimentation.

This attitude does not imply any blindness to genuine advances in methods or equipment. But such significant advances always so obviously and unmistakably fill a definite need that there is no possibility of confusing them with the common run of ingeniously useless inventions. Such an advance was made recently, for example, in developing the automatic focusing device for the projection enlarger.  In general the use of new things is prone to run ahead of the proper understanding of them. Many a minicam owner would do well to leave technique to the technicians and put his camera to the almost forgotten task of taking pictures.

In equipment of the extremest simplicity lies the best hope for success in pictorial work with the miniature camera. Such a list of essentials as the one that I shall presently suggest will, I fear, seem insultingly meager to the minicamist who is prone to console himself for lack of results by treating himself to fresh equipment, after the manner of the well-known feminine habit of buying a new hat to rouse the drooping spirit. The list,
small as it is, is adequate for all purposes, saving only the most specialized, and one could easily spend several life-times in learning to use it properly.

Here then is the list:
Miniature camera with 50 mm lens.
Cable release. 
K2. filter.
A hood.
6 magazines.
Green viewing glass.
Vertical enlarger with good lens and condensers.

This equipment is used in connection with the following materials and formulas.
Eastman Panatomic film.
Defender Medium weight white rough matt paper.
For developing, D76 (Eastman) or a similar boric acid-borax formula.

Equipment of value only as it is used, and nothing is included above that is not immediately useful in the making of pictures.  Abjured along with hampering excess of equipment are all faddish procedures relating to temperature, rinsing, washing, drying, etc., over which minicam owners have spent tormented days and sleepless nights. Much more important are skilful handling, clean apparatus, fresh chemicals, and good sense.

As I have claimed such pictorial advantages for the miniature camera, I have chosen for demonstration a pictorial subject involving an extreme degree of romanticism and illusionary quality. "Indian Serenade" despite its delicately lyric vein and exotic atmosphere, is assembled from quite common and ordinary materials. The picture was taken indoors, and the lengthy perspective was not greater than twenty feet.

The material components of the picture were the following:
A white wall.
A dish pan of water.
A cement floor.
Two people.
A baby spot.
Some artificial flowers.
Gleanings from rag bags.
Eight yards of pink gauze of two shades.
Two grass mats.
Prunings of a rose bush.
A musical instrument.

The picture is arranged in a series of parallel planes. The first and most distant plane is comprised of the sky and mountains, the second, of the tree and figures, the third, of the foreground. Thus a clear sense of recession and space is given, without loss of two dimensional quality. 

 

A rough pencil sketch served to establish the main planes of the picture, to give an approximate idea of the linear and notan pattern, and to indicate framing and relating of the figures to the picture-space. I find that use of such a preliminary sketch is indispensible, as it compells one to visualize in advance and obviates aimless experimentation at the time of shooting.

The set was carefully arranged before hand. Directly in front of the white background was laid the pink gauze, bunched up to represent the mountains, the paler colour serving for the distant ranges and the darker for the nearer ones.  Five feet from the background the grass mats were put down, the flowers sprinkled about, and the tree suspended from the ceiling Then for about fifteen feet in front of the grass mats, the cement floor was well wet down, laying in the water in streaks parallel to the background. The costumes consist simply of a few bits of cloth pinned about and draped. The materials were selected for their photographic and notan qualities rather than their intrinsic beauty, taking due care, of course, to avoid extreme contrasts of black and white. Authenticity was not aimed at; rather the endeavor was to suggest the spirit of the oriental garb with as few elements as possible.

 

In arranging the models it was found necessary to seat the man on a small stool in order to create the desired pyramidal composition. The tree was shifted somewhat and a few twigs lopped in order to bring it into more harmonious conformation with the figures. The flowers were adjusted until they furnished effectively placed accents.

The white background was well illuminated, and from another source characters were given a flat front light.  For the moon a "baby Klieg" was used, which with the aid of a cardboard mask was made to cast a spot of intense illumination on the background. To avoid hitting the characters with the shaft of light it was necessary to place the Klieg to
one side. This of course produced an oval moon until the hole in the cardboard was altered to correct this distortion.

Finally, the whole set-up was studied through a blue glass, observing the notan pattern, noting and correcting a few bad contrasts. The moon was moved to its most effective placement relative to the heads, and a last slight rearrangement was made of the foliage.

The camera was placed on a low tripod, about five inches from the floor and twenty feet from the back wall. This low position of the camera was chosen to get a low horizon line, giving dominance to the figures and making it easier to build a pyramidal composition. It also secures the best reflections from the wet floor. A large number of exposures were taken, about three rolls in all, with slight variations in exposure, and gradual and slight changes in the inter-relationship of the smaller elements of the picture. 

Enlarged proofs about 3 by 4 inches were made of all the perfect negatives in the three rolls. Then followed a long process of elimination and selection on the basis of two standards subject interest and notan pattern. When the group was reduced to two or three the final choice was on a basis of subject interest. Thus three standards of choice entered into this stage of the picture. 

1. Negative quality.
2. Notan pattern.
3. Subject interest.

A considerable amount of Projection Control was employed in making the final print. Much care was used in framing so as to secure the proper relationship of the figures to the picture space. Dodging with the finger tip was resorted to in order to liqhten the moon and darken the tone of the rest of the picture. Through dodging also were secured the deep tones in the upper corners of the picture.

 

( To be continued )

Camera Craft ~ 1934 ~ Responses to Venus And Vulcan and William Mortensen

Following the "Venus and Vulcan" articles published in Camera Craft written by William Mortensen that examined various approaches to photography, Group F 64 appears to have taken great offense.  Two letters were published that same year, 1934.

My experience of the history of photography in California is that Group F 64 "won" the war of "purism" and "realism" over "pictorialism".  Ed Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham went on to lead successful careers. William Mortensen was resigned to be backwaters of photography history.

Yet, in so many ways, it was William Mortensen who helped democratize photography and made it accessible to Americans.  He taught and wrote about skills and techniques used in photography years before St. Ansel published his now famous series (including The Negative, The Print, etc).  Specifically, William Mortensen described a system of exposure and film development that led directly to the Zone System.  This was much to the horror of St. Ansel, who felt he'd made something entirely new, had written books on the subject, only to learn later though a professor he'd taught with about who had actually given rise to the concept.

Before St. Ansel was crowned King of West Coast Photography my family belonged to a little camera club in San Juan Capistrano.  It was run by a photographer who'd been injured by an Indy car that'd lanced into the track-side photographers area where he was photographing an Indy 500.  We learned about Weston, Adams, and other members of the original Group F 64.  A few of the photographers in the club would go north to Yosemite Valley during the summer to take classes from Adams and his assistants.  They'd come back and tell stories about how much fun they'd had, how their photography was vastly improved, and such and that.  Those of us who couldn't afford to take classes were impressed.

Much closer to home, I grew up not far from Laguna Beach.  This is where the Last Great Pictorialist, William Mortensen, lived and worked.  The appellation I just give Mortensen is, of course, not strictly true.  There are, even today, perfectly capable Pictorialist practioners.  But I put things this way because of my own history of the place and time.  I knew nothing of man even though he was situated very close to were I, too, lived.  It feels all to much like a "missed opportunity."

It's interesting to me to read these raw first person histories.  They're not always kind, these materials.  What is striking is there's so much passion for the subject, even as I've just recently learned through a friend this passion was deliberately fueled as to stoke the fires of commercialism.  Create controversy.  Sell more books.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  

I don't mean this to minimize William Mortensen's words.  Instead, I feel what he wrote nearly 100 years ago stands true and clear in spite of any underlying commercial motivation.  He roundly angered Group F 64 in the process, that's for certain.  How did members of Group F 64 respond to the following?

"...  The whole program of the purists inclines to overlook the basic truth that the final concern of art is not with facts, but with ideas and emotions..." ~ William Mortensen, Camera Craft, 1934

Let's have a look, shall we? 

 

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Correspondence April 1934 ~

Dear Sir:

The article by William Mortensen in the February issue of Camera Craft interests me very much indeed.  In a very engaging manner he has presented a point of view which paves an excellent path for discussion.  As a member of GroupF64 I feel obliged to answer certain points of opinion which M. Morensen holds about us.  I say "about us" - I really mean about the contemporary tendency which I feel we reflect rather than motivate.  It is true that Group F64 has strenuously held to its program and ideals and has, in its short existence, produced a good deal of work.  But the work of the Group is no self-assertive of Perfetion and the Ultimate.  We are experimenters who are investigation, as it were, the possibilities of the pure photographic medium.  We have no base our work on the photographic precedents alone; we are attempting to define photography as a fine art, and we embrace the motives and accomplishments of all contemporary art in relation to the thought (and thought-processes) of the times.  We are not imitating the superficial aspects of the other art-forms; we are concerned with the essential logic of art.  All art is really the expression of the same thing, and we are attempting to define the particular manner and mode of the pure photographic expression.  The "Pictorialist" has acknowledged the other arts only in the imitative sense (superficially) and has neglected to remember photography in his production.

All the members of the Group F.64 are independent - and all are quite different in their essential work.  The Group membership is open to anyone who comes forward with original work well done and true to the medium in the opinion of all the the Group.  Regarding the name of the Group - F.64: let me offer a short history of it.  For several years I had entertained the idea of forming a small group of workers in the modern idiom; finally, with the enthusiastic aid of Willard Van Dyke, the Group was organized.  It was very difficult to find a suitable name - many suggestions were made but rejected on account of inadequacy, duplication, etc.  They Willard Van Dyke suffered a stroke of genius and thought of "F 64."  The Group immediately accepted the name.  Not only have we not disowned it - we chose it enthusiastically.  The name suggests precision and accuracy, and it does not men that we use only F64!

Mr. Mortensen's term "Meta-realism" is a very good term, but I do not think he has clearly defined what he means. I think that the work of the Germans of which he speaks is developed along the same general direction of the work of Paul Strand, Group F 64, etc., except that it is very unimpressive in technic and is often shallow throughout.

Also, I would like a precise definition of Mr. Mortensen's conception of Taste.

Ansel Adams

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A Purist's Reply to Mr. Mortensen ~ June 8, 1934

Dear Mr. Young:

It is impossible for me to take issue with Mr. Mortensen on the subject of photography, for our definitions of the medium are woo widely divergent to permit a common ground of discussion.  I believe that an artist must express his time and place withing the limitations of his medium; that every medium has its limitations; and that both in his work and in his writing, Mr. Mortensen has disregarded the exigencies of photography.  However his article in your last issue is convincingly written, too convincingly, to let pass certain misconceptions Mr. Mortensen seems to have in regard to the purist, which might be misleading to someone who reads one side of the story only.

Mr. Mortensen says that the work of the purist lacks subjective interest.  Either  he must be unobservant, or he is unfamiliar with the work. Photography is an
objective medium, true enough, but the most objective photograph is capable of
profound subjective reaction arousing a in the mind of the In the in-
spectator.  In the infancy of any medium, there are produced examples which may be considered experimental, and important only as indications of a maturity of expression to come.  Doubtless many of us are guilty of presenting photographs of this type.  However, certain recent tendencies are away from mere pattern making toward photographs rendered in a straight manner, the interpretation of which may be considered definitely subjective.  Furthermore this interpretation would be in the light of our time and our conditions, not in an escape from them into a nebulous past.  Mr. Mortensen has photographed a contemporary American disguised as Cesare Borgia (who after all lived in Renaissance Italy).  Does this have any meaning for a twentieth-century American, or is it merely Mr. Mortensen's attempt to escape the problems with surround him?

Unfortunately, when the question of "staticism" in portraiture is consider, Mr. Mortensen takes Ansel Adams' remarks to represent the attitude of all the workers in the pure manner.  Weston definitely disagrees with this point of view, and I am sure that John Paul Edwards and Imogen Cunningham also do not agree.

As to the subject of equipment: Ansel Adams is engaged in a variety of commercial jobs with necessitate the use of several cameras and lenses.   The fact that he has mastered them is to his credit.  Weston, on the other hand, uses one camera for portraiture and a view camera for all other work.  Most of the men I know who work in pure photography use but one camera.  It is far more usual to find "gadget hounds" among the users of miniature cameras.  So much for the statement that we pay "lip-homage" only, to the doctrine of simplicity.

Mr. Mortensen objects to our complete rendering of detail, and says that our records of actuality are not artistic truth, because art "is things as they are experienced, not things as they are."  The art of the purist is experienced.  The experiencing of an emotional reaction to the subject is the impetus which causes him to make his photograph.  The subject is "seen" however, within the confines of his objective medium, and he proceeds therefore, to make a photograph in a manner which best will convey to the spectator, th truth of the subject which has caused his emotional reaction.  For after all the spectator has nothing from which to react but the photographic print.

The purist is selective, although Mr. Mortensen says that this is not true.  He may select subject material, point of view, film, filter, lens, and printing paper.  Selectivity differentiates the photograph of artistic intent from that of mere fact transcription.  I don not mean to disregard the importance of subject material, for there is no doubt in my mind that the period of technical tours de force is over, and that now, by associative connotations in the mind of the person who sees the print, subject matter must also play its part in the composition.

Yours truly, Willard Van Dyke 

Camera Craft ~ June 1934 ~ Venus And Vulcan William Mortensen An Essay On Creative Pictorialism Fallacies of "Pure Photography"

Image-making today is generally and for the most part rather banal.  Viewers and practitioners alike for whatever reasons are satisfied with this state of affairs.  Images are created and consumed at a hellatious rate.  Billions of little banalities are posted every day across the 'net.  To what end?  For what purpose?

It wasn't always this way.  In fact, "things" used to matter a bit differently back in the day and these things could be sometimes hashed out in public.  Peoples egos were inflated or bruised, depending on the individual sure enough.  "Stuff" happened.  Lives were lived.  Histories recorded.  A few of the participants got famous (and rich).  Others languished into the back of the deepest caves of photographic history. 

The following William Mortensen Camera Craft article from 1934 is particularly interesting in this regard.  It's interesting to me he was so often denigrated and not celebrated.  Ansel Adams later wrote he wished Mortensen dead.  Could this specific article be related to that desire?

 

 

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Venus and Vulcan ~ William Mortensen
An Essay on Creative Pictorialism 
4. Fallacies of "Pure Photography"

There have always been purists in art just as there have been puritans in morals. Purists and puritans alike have been marked by a crusading devotion to self-defined fundamentals, by a tendency to sweeping condemnation of all who over-step the boundaries they have set up, and by grim disapproval of the more pleasing and graceful
things in life. Both of them, in their enthusiastic zeal for putting down gross abuses, are prone, in Savonarola fashion, to throw everything onto the fire. So, instead of merely fulfilling their salutary function of clearing out rubbish and getting down to basic principles, they have set themselves perversely in the way of further progress.

 In the field of photography there had long been many sins committed with the aid of a camera that cried out for correction. The snap-shooter was busy giving perpetuity to banalities. The photo-artist of the Fuzzy-Wuzzy school was, with the aid of diffusion lenses, expressing himself in terms of cotton wool. An aimless dilettantism marked the efforts of the average amateur, and a bare-faced ignorance of technical fundamentals marked the efforts of many a one who called himself a professional. And finally there was an emphasis on the quick and easy, cheap and nasty commercial aspects of photography.

Here, surely, was opportunity for the reformer and his torch and a rousing 'bonfire of vanities". Such a reformation movement was forth-coming in the work of the so-called purists. Rationalizing their prejudicesinto a definition of the aim of photography, they found it to consist in an objective rendering of fact free from any "conceptions reminiscent of other mediums". Manipulation or retouching of negatives or prints they
shunned as the plague. They stressed the need of simplicity and sincerity, and the vital importance of solid technical knowledge.  Their work is uniformly hard and brittle, shows technical competence, and consistently avoids any subjective interest. And after the perennial fashion of reformers, they have duly erected their reforms into a code, and have chosen to regard a good clean contact print as the end of photography rather than as its indispensible beginning.

In earlier articles of this series I have endeavored to outline somewhat the positions of the Realistic (or purist) and the Non-realist (or Creative) groups in photography. In the present article I intend to examine critically the major tenets of the Realists, with the view of pointing out some of the fallacies that, it seems to me, infect their thinking.
In so doing, I, for the most part, omit from consideration the crowning fallacy of all
a would-be art that is unselective; for this aspect of the — matter was largely covered in the last chapter.

The Realists have laid great emphasis on the purity- of "pure photography", unpolluted by any of the methods, mannerisms, or qualities of the graphic arts of painting, drawing, etching, etc. "Purity" is conceived to consist in limiting photographic expression to the mechanically objective representation that is inherent in the uncontrolled camera, and in limiting processes to the simplest and most primitive type. Thus the photo-chemical process, seizing its tail in its mouth, finds its realization in itself. Purity in art is an ancient topic for argument. In the fifth century before Christ, Euripides was sharply taken to task for bringing human problems into his plays and thus debasing the severe purity of the dramatic form. Shakespeare, in Voltaire's opinion, was a talented barbarian who understood nothing of the niceties of play-writing. Beethoven and Wagner were both charged with violating the purity of their medium Beethoven by bringing a philosophic element into his music, Wagner by developing his music on dramatic lines. However, it seems exceedingly doubtful that purity in art is either possible or desirable. Imagination is a wayward and wilful wench, and when she is on the loose she is not to be held in check by any arbitrary boundaries that divide one medium from another. The best work in any medium often contains "conceptions reminiscent of other mediums". Michael Angelo, the sculptor, brought sculptural qualities to his painting. Rembrandt was a master of both painting and etching, and used the two mediums to obtain similar effects. The quality of Beethoven was unchanged, whether he wrote for piano or symphony orchestra.

Photography as a technique and an art is very young, much too young for any one to say just what is "photographic". So, even if it were desirable, it would be an exceedingly presumptious act to fence in a narrow tract and label it "pure photography". Regarded merely as a means of objective representation, photography is a shallow medium
possessing neither breadth nor emphasis. To confine oneself to this aspect of  photography is to be guided by the weakness rather than the strength of the medium.

In many cases the finely enunciated precepts of the Realists are contradicted
by their own practice, oftentimes because these precepts are impossible of realization under the limitations which they have laid upon themselves. "Honesty and sincerity", for example, which the Realists mention as being among their aims, are certainly worthy objectives, and are certainly essential qualities of great art; but honesty and sincerity
are not to be achieved by mere repetition of superficial facts. It may be a fact (let us say) that Mary Jones has a pimple on her nose; but to portray the pimple in all its effulgence would be neither honest nor sincere, for to do so would imply that the pimple was as important as Mary, and even might be regarded as suggesting that Mary partook of the annoying nature of her blemish. For reasons that I will discuss when I come to the matter of texture, faithful representation of surfaces often vitiates or even contradicts the essential character of the subject.

 "Staticism" 'in portraiture is another quality sought by the Realists.  By this expression they mean photographing a head or figure in objective terms as if it were a piece of sculpture. Given appropriate subject matter, such impersonal handling may be very impressive; but here again the Realists are betrayed by their unselective and literal rendering of details. Accidental, temporary things thrust themselves into the attention. A wisp of hair out of place, a skin imperfection, an assertive pattern in the dress and the desired static, sculptured quality breaks down into a mere conglomerate of detail.

"Simplicity" is another excellent standard which the Realists have set themselves - simplicity in equipment and rendering.  Unquestionably such simplicity characteristizes the best in art. But, with the Realists, simplicity in rendering is often lost through their passion for irrelevant detail. As to simplicity in equipment this seems to be an ideal to which they pay lip-homage only. In a recently published exposition of purist technique and methods, the author lists in his simplified equipment three cameras and six lenses. Three very similar portraits are shown as the product of two cameras and three lenses. Simplicity of equipment is of value only because it enables one to be master of his tools and concentrated on the sole end of photography the making of pictures. To thoroughly master three cameras and six lenses in all their permutations would require a considerably longer life-span than Providence has allotted to photographers. An imperfectly mastered tool is largely master of its user.  So great is the technical obsession revealed by some of the purists home that it seems not illogical to suggest that they keep their prints at and send their cameras to the salons.

A further curious conflict of principle and practice appears in the Realist's identification of tone with emotional characteristics.  That tone has such emotional qualities I do not deny: but how came such an untamed maverick as emotion to stray into the chaste pastures of the purists? Emotion is a subjective quality, and is strange, not to say danger-
ous, company for "pure objectivity". Emotion is a very unruly critter, and is likely to play hell with the purist china-shop. Indeed, there is evidence that the destructive work has already begun; for the exposition of Realist technique to which I have already alluded refers to tone as something admitting of control. This is, of course, a fatal concession, and
gives the whole show away. For if an objective "record of reality" is the aim, then a "photometrically accurate presentation" is the only possible presentation, no matter how aesthetically distressing it might be. If tone is granted to be subject to control, why not line also, which has equal emotional significance? And if line, why not shapes and forms?
And if shapes and forms, why not allow elision or emphasis of detail?  And if all these things are allowed, what becomes of the "record of actuality"? ...  Sunk without a trace!

 So much for the inherent contradictions of the purist position. More serious are the deviations of the purist tenets from basic art principles.  Especially fallacious is their assumption that artistic truth lies in a complete rendering of literal detail, in a "record of actuality". Truth in art — lies in the rendering of experience or rather in the rendering of things-as-they-are-experienced, not of things-as-they-are. Psychological truth, not scientific accuracy, is the species of veracity with which art is concerned — conformity not to fact, but to the mind's way of apprehending fact.

The mind in apprehending a thing does not grasp it as a collection of details simultaneously and equally important. Rather, the mind moves. by the momentum imparted to it by the initial impression, to an apprehension of the thing as a whole, not only as it is, but as it has been previously experienced, and even as it has been coloured by emotion.  This sort of mental movement (which is what the psychologists call "per-
ception") may follow either of two different patterns. (1 ) A few details or attributes may be developed to a completely filled outline.  (2) A suggestive or familiar shape or configuration may be supplied with necessary detail. As an example of the first sort of pattern: I see a girl crossing the street a block away, and I recognize her as my old friend,
Mary Jones.  As a matter of fact, her dress is the only thing that I recognize; but from the momentum given by this suggestion my mind moves to a convincing presentation of Miss Jones the colour of her eyes, the way she does her hair, the kind of scent she uses, and what she said to me a week ago Tuesday.  As an example of the second sort of pattern: I
recognize Mary Jones, not from a significant detail, but from a familiar quality of figure or posture.  From this I fill in the essential detail.  As an equally familiar and more striking instance of the second type I may cite the common human propensity for seeing "pictures in the fire", and finding faces, beasts, and monsters in accidental configurations of clouds or stains on the wall.  Though the resemblance may be of the vaguest, so eagerly creative is the unencumbered mind that it moves instantly to supply detail...

"Methinks it is like a weasel.
"It is backed like a weasel.
"Or like a whale?
"Very like a whale."

Graphic art endeavors always to expedite and facilitate the mental movement of the perceptive process. This is the advantage of breadth of handling large simple forms and open planes wherein the mind can move freely through the picture. But if the forms are broken up and the planes cluttered with minute inconsequentials, the mind stops, baffled and resentful. For the mind in a mood of aesthetic contemplation is the mind on a holiday, and simply will not be bothered with the nagging logic of things-as-they-are.

 Herein lies the particular fallacy of the Realist's preoccupation with the literal rendering of minutiae as textures.  For in textures it is peculiarly evident that too much concern with things-as-they-are may prevent one from attaining the perceptive truth of things-as-they-are-experienced.  To render flesh, for example, in terms of pores, hairs, and wrinkles, no matter how accurately it is done, fails utterly to give an experience of
flesh.  Our perception of flesh is to only a limited extent made up of visual facts: impressions gained from other senses, such as warmth, smoothness and firmness, are just as important as surface topoqraphy.  These qualities must be suggested to give the true experience of flesh texture. Such an experience cannot be given by a technique that invites you to trace the wrinkles and count the hairs.

 With numerous references to the "logic of art", the purists have drawn attention to the fact that the camera is essentially a recording instrument, insisting that this fact should condition and limit the product.  To my mind, the logic of art would indicate, rather, that this fact is an irrelevant one, just as irrelevant to the photographer as the fact that paint
smells of turpentine is to the painter. As well, by strict logic, define the etchers needle as "an instrument for scratching" and then limit his activities to nothing but scratching.

 Although they allow themselves the unphotographic luxury of "spotting" their prints, the Realists protest bitterly against retouching of prints or negatives.  Why this intense prejudice against retouching? It belongs to the selective method of all arts. Painters retouch. Etchers retouch.  Writers retouch.  The notebooks of Beethoven reveal the enormous amount of retouching that went into his work. For a photographer to foreswear retouching seems mere affectation.

The whole program of the purists inclines to overlook the basic truth that the final concern of art is not with facts, but with ideas and emotions. ll who talk glibly of new art forms and new techniques must be prepared to cope with that most laconically cruel of all questions: "And so what?" Or to put it less tersely: "What are you trying to tell with your
forms and your techniques?"  Technically speaking, photography is a matter of facts. The image produced by the lens is an optical fact; fixed on paper, it becomes a chemical fact.  A chemical fact can never become a picture unless an idea and an emotion are also present; and these are qualities that cannot be added to the developer.

Many a lowly news photographer in his illustrative embellishments of such themes as Love Nests, and Heiress Elopes with Chauffeur, and Scion of Wealthy Family Leaps to Death, has for years been producing technically perfect "records of actuality" because his job required it of him. It has never occurred to him to make artistic claims for his pictures.  Yet now, like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain, who was so amazed to discover that he had been talking prose all his life, the press photographer may learn, to his consternation, that he is a purist.

The principal fruit of the purist movement so far has been a series of excellent finger exercises in technique.  This is well and good.  Most aspiring pictorialists don't give themselves half enough hard, grinding work of this sort. But the purists (and here is my ultimate quarrel with) insist emphatically that their finger exercises merit artistic consideration.  Such consideration, I feel, cannot be given them until they are through with ostentatiously playing scales in the key of C.

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It is a matter of common knowledge that Vulcan, the spouse of Venus, was lame in one leg. So far as I am aware, no one has ever told how he met with this misfortune. Thanks to my researches into Pompilius the Younger's monumental and little-known work on The Domestic Life of the Gods, I am for the first time able to offer an adequate explanation for Vulcan's deformity.

 It all goes back to one quiet evening at home on Olympus. Venus and Vulcan were sitting in front of the fire, he twiddling his toes before the blaze, and she stringing beads of lapis-lazuli into some lovely thing.

 After a long silence, Vulcan spoke. "Do you know, dovey," he said, "I have just heard of a new way of making pictures."

 "Indeed?" said Venus absently, slightly wrinkling her lovely brow over her bead work.

 "Yes," said Vulcan. "It seems one draws the picture with light instead of with a stylus."

"But are not all pictures painted so?" remarked Venus sentimentally.  "... By the light that never was on land or sea?"

 "Eh?" said Vulcan.

"Nothing. Just a thought. Pray proceed."

 "I wish you wouldn't interrupt me, darling," said Vulcan irritably.  "Where was I? ... Yes. One makes pictures with a black box and a burning glass and a few odds and ends of chemicals."

 "Pictures?" said Venus skeptically. "What sort of pictures?"

 "Damn good pictures," said Vulcan. "Pictures that look like what they are supposed to be. Not the sort of pictures that this Apelles paints, leaving out a lot of things that any fool would know were there. Now, I could make a picture " He broke off.  "Just why are you smiling in that nasty way?"

 "Oh, Vulcan." she said in slightly smothered tones, "you make a picture?"

 "Why not?" said Vulcan defensively.  "I understand chemistry and physics and optics. Furthermore, I am a good blacksmith.'' He paused.  "For one as lovely as yourself, sweetheart,'' he said, with ominously careful self-control, "you have a most annoying laugh."

 Venus, past reply, waved her hands helplessly.

 "You don't think I could?" he stormed. "Why, I could take a picture of our back fence that would look almost as much like a back fence as our back fence does?"

 A strangled shriek was Venus' only comment.

Vulcan lunged to his feet, his black beard bristling. "Very well," he shouted. "I'll show you. I'll show you, by Jove. I'll take a picture. I will take a picture, if I break a leg doing it." So saying, he stamped out of the room. Venus sighed, wiped her streaming eyes, and returned to her beadwork.

Two days later Vulcan clumped into her presence on crutches. "Precious lamb." said Venus, springing up, "what have you done to your leg?"

 "Oh. damn my leg." said Vulcan, loftily. "Look at this?" And proudly he thrust into her hands a picture.

 "Why. to be sure." said Venus after a moment, "this is your dear old demi-john isn't it? And surely this is a cabbage. And here is an egg."  She smiled at him.  "How terribly clever you are. darling."

... And that, my friends, is how Vulcan broke his leg.

Camera Craft ~ May 1934 ~ Venus And Vulcan William Mortensen An Essay On Creative Pictorialism 3. Selection, and the Function of Control

This is a particularly interesting look at how William Mortensen made a photograph, realized it wasn't to his liking, and then re-worked it three (!!!) more times until he got it "right."  From the point of view of creating images with intention, I find this admirable and very much "of his time."

Looking at the state of photography at the time William Mortensen wrote the following piece I see what was considered "serious" photography was very much intentional.  "Pictorialism" nothing if not intentional.  Consider the works of Clarence White (that great American photographer who taught and influenced so many people), Karl Struss (and his fabulous quartz lenses), Heinrich Kühn (whom I feel was something of a complex person to try and understand), Constant Puyo, Celine Leguard (whom I feel was an absolutely wonderful but largely unknown photographer), Robert Demachy (President of the Camera Club of Paris), and Leonard Missone  (whom I feel was a wonderful "romantic" photographer), as well as many others.  All produced "intentional" works.

I begin to understand how the photographic "purists" of Group F64 came to oppose those who had by now become the "old guard" of Pictorialism.  Growing up in southern California I took up photography at a time when the war had been settled and the "purists" had won.  At least on the west coast of the USA, that is.  I knew nothing of the outside world, such was the narrowness of my view of things.

Going back and reading the actual events that led to the war of west coast photographic ideals is rather instructional for me.  Getting to the source of the matter is enlightening.  In a broader context this war was actually relatively minor.  St. Ansel is not necessarily revered outside the USA any more than, say, Robert Doisneau or Henri Cartier-Bresson are elsewhere.  In fact, this last little war might have been a minor incident that put a period on the end of the photographic pictorialist sentence.

However, there is something enduring from this dust-up for me that echos into the present.  That is William Mortensen's references to craft, art, art school educations, and how this can help inform out "intention" in photography.  Most of us don't go to art school to learn the details Mr. Mortensen describes.  So what exactly did he propose?  Simply to be aware of what one is doing?  To learn more about ones chosen craft?  To lead a deeper, more informed life through art?  To understand not only what a person is doing, but why?  These things and more?  There's more than a bit to "chew on" here.

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The fact that they deal selectively with their picture material is the thing that most definitely and immediately distinguishes the Creative from the Realistic group in present day photography. It is not merely a convenient mark of difference, but a sign of diametric opposition of ideals.  Since the principle of selection is so fundamental a part of the non-realistic creed, it has seemed good to devote a complete article to the exposition and demonstration of this principle.  I realize that, to those who are already in accord with the Creative group, much that I shall have to say will seem a needless labouring of the obvious; but too many people are still supinely accepting the early judgment on the camera, that it is not an art medium, but simply an instrument of record and documentation.

In setting up selectivity as a basis of distinction, I am not ignoring the fact that the Realists do exert a certain degree of selection - as indeed all persons miust who use a camera at all.  Naturally they select subject matter, lenses, photographic materials, exposures; but all their selection is pointed toward securing a picture that shall be thoroughly non-selective - that shall be a complete objective replica, in photographic terms, of the subject. Quite different is the place and function assigned to selection by
the Creative school, for whom it dominates all phases, processes and stages in the making of the picture.

Selection, it is important to realize, is not a mere artistic abstraction but something that is almost a Vital Principle, not only in art but in all the processes of life and growth.  We live by means of the selective functioning of our bodies: each organ and part selects
from the breathed-in air, from the food we eat, from the blood stream those things needful for its sustenance and development.  Thought is a matter of selective dealing with the swift and disorderly stream of consciousness.  Darwin, seeking an explanation of the evolution of higher forms of life from lower, named as the key principle Natural Selection. Life is a selective process: when we stop selecting we stop living. Selection as it manifests itself in art is not a mere casual picking and choosing of the things that the artist likes,  rut an of ten-times laborious searching for the perfect expression of
an idea.  Every work of art is thus the fruit of an evolutionary process rather than a spontaneous creation. So selection in art bears a curiously Darwinian aspect. In its early stages, an art work presents a "struggle for existence" of conflicting ideas, forms and lines, wherein the artist most judge which is the fittest to survive. As the work develops, numerous variations and mutations insinuate themselves into the problem. With these again the artist must assert his god-like prerogative, relentlessly destroying the weak, the common-place, the superfluous, the irrelevant.  Often the original aspect of the conception is completely altered.

The selective process is inseparable from all artistic endeavor because art functions in terms of significant unity while reality manifests itself in terms of outwardly meaningless diversity. The artist senses, behind the shifting, confusing world of appearances, a fundamental unity, relation, meaning and purpose. To make these evident is his task.  His tools are few and inadequate; his -".aerials, the gaudy gim cracks of everyday sense experience. With these scant tools and these banal materials he must try an intimation of the entities he has glimpsed behind the curtain. So in dealing with his materials he works always from the accidental to the significant, from the complicated to the simple, from the many to the one, from the thing to the symbol.

The cameras manner of "seeing is vastly different from the eye's. While the visual angle of the eye is much wider than that of the camera, its range of attention is much narrower.
Thus the literal vision of the camera greatly exceeds that of the eye. which is inclined to see only that which it wishes to see. noting the essential points and ignoring or subordinating the minor ones.  The camera, however, diligently records trivialities along with important matters. But. in concentration and focusing of mental energy, the artist's manner of seeing surpasses the normal manner as far as the eye surpasses the camera.  Hence it is doubly imperative that photography learn to avail itself of selection to the same comprehensive degree that the older arts do: by this it must stand or fall as an art. 
Otherwise we must concede that the camera has no more artistic potentiality than a gas-meter, and that its finest flower is a photostat.

Leaving aside such obvious (and to this article scarcely relevant) fields for seleciton as the choice of subject matter, photographic materials and equipment, the principal stages in the creation of a picture that are amenable to selectivity are the following: (1) dealing with the subject, (2) lighting, (3) projection printing, (4) special processes, (5) final adjustments.  Selection at the arious stages is accomplished through the use of controls. Control in the past, and in the common mind, is largely associated with the removal of warts, wens, wrinkles and similar deformities which afflict unhappy mankind, and with the correction of over-exposure and under-development which afflict the careless photographer. The true function of control, however, is not this negative one, but a positive creative one of building a picture through selection.

 Let me touch briefly on the function of control as it is manifested in each of the five stages just enumerated.  The posing of a model involves delicate psychological problems.
The status of the photographer is somewhat that of a stage director: while he dominates the situation, he must manage to create and maintain an emotional rapport and sense of cooperation between himself and the model. A purely passive model, no matter how accurately he or she follows direction, is limited in usefulness, and a disinterested model is, of course, quite hopeless. But when this understanding does exist, there sometimes occurs that happy experience of an intuitive flash in which the model spontaneously creates the very thing that the artist has been groping for.

Lighting control, of course, goes far beyond the purely mechanical requisite of providing adequate illumination.  It governs the tone value of the subject relative to the background, and determines whether a picture is high or low in key. Emotional and dramatic qualities, as well as mood, are largely established by lighting. It also bears an important relation to composition: the changing of a light may completely alter the
balance and emphasis of a picture.

 Control during the process of projecting the negative is accomplished in several ways. Through local printing are achieved delicacy of drawing, the precise placing of accents, and the corresponding elision of non-essentials.  Through "dodging" the accurate distribution and balance of tone is secured.  Through distortion, general or localized, forms become more expressive and escape from purely literal connotations. Through montage fresh emotional values are created by the repercussion on each other of the emotional associations of two or more images.

Certain special processes recommend themselves because of their amenability to control. These are bromoil, the paper negative, and carbro.  Of the three, bromoil is the most subject to control and carbro the least.  Indeed the possibilities of control in the bromoil process are almost unlimited: local values may be freely altered, distracting detail deleted, significant lines emphasized, and backgrounds added.  In respect to control, the paper negative is but slightly more limited than bromoil. 

 The final operations of control embrace sundry mechanical and chemical adjustments made on the finished print or transfer.  Of these the simplest and most generally practiced is the operation of "spotting". Here likewise are included various toning processes: Russian crayon sauce, dry -pigment toning, and local chemical toning. Mechanical or chemical intensification of high-lights also may be employed at this stage. Analagous to the above methods of control, which are applied to prints, is the "pouncing" with soft ink on a freshly pulled bromoil transfer. Control at this stage should properly limit itself to adjustment and refinements of a structure already well established. Too drastic control at this point is apt to be disastrous.

 

In addition to these five stages of control, there is a sixth control -  a sort of super-control that dominates the selective process through all
the operations of making a picture. This is the picture idea. Toward the
concrete realization of the picture idea are directed all the operations, processes and manipulations through which selection is achieved. The photographer envisions his picture idea in photographic terms. So in his use of controls, though he may selectively modify, intensify and eliminate, he will be careful to retain the integrity of the original image. To allow ample scope for selection he will not limit himself unduly in the matter
of film, but take a generous number of variants of the basic idea. A picture idea of magnitude or subtlety will probably not attain its final form in a single "shooting". Rather, it will evolve through a number of intermediate stages, as the implications of the idea become clearer to the artist.

To illustrate the principle of selectivity in actual operation I have included a series of pictures done at various times, all of them dealing with the theme of Lazarus. The story of Lazarus, the man who was dead and four days in the tomb and then returned again to the world of living men, is one that makes great appeal to the imagination. What memories did Lazarus bring back from the grave? Was he happy or reluctant when
aroused irom his long sleep? Was he changed, and how did other men regard him that had been dead? It was a favorite theme of medieval painters, and such diverse authors as Robert Browning, Leonid Andreifi and Eugene O'Neil have been attracted to it. Pictorially. the idea suggests mystery, drama, and powerful characterization. Also, I discovered, it involves many problems.

The first picture will be recognized by some as a scene from Cecil B. de Mille's well-remembered production The King of Kings, on which I served as "still photographer".
In the preparation of this production no effort or expense was spared to make it completely authentic in costuming and background.  Hollywood's best talent was assembled to act the roles, and technical experts were constantly on the set to check all details.  Here it might seem, was an ideal opportunity to secure a magnificent pictorial result. That such a result was far from being secured is obvious from the picture (Lazarus I). Although it affords a fair record of the bare facts of this particular scene, it has little to recommend it pictorially.  Two things contribute to the failure: first, it is a picture of drama rather than a dramatic picture; second, various faults are introduced by in composition (which I shall presently point out) are introduced by my choice of a wrong camera angle.

The first point is an important one, for it concerns a problem which always must be dealt with in presenting a dramatic subject in pictorial terms.  A dramatic moment consists not only of action but of reaction. Reaction is the inevitable result of action and follows it in time.  To present action alone gives a sense of incompleteness, like a snapshot of a
person walking, with one foot eternally suspended in mid-air. To simultaneously present action and reaction in the same picture produces a feeling of incongruity and results often in the division of interest. Hence drama in pictures should have a passive quality, with emotion predominant and action quiescent or suggested as either on the point of beginning or just ending. In the picture under discussion, there is a subtle conflict between Lazarus' action and the reaction of the crowd in the background. As seen on the screen there would be no such conflict because the time element would there be made evident, with reaction following action.

As to the faults in composition due to my ill-chosen camera angle, they are so numerous and so patent that I will point out only a few of the more glaring ones. In the first place, the figure of Christ is awkwardly placed in the mathematical center of the picture. Compositionally, Lazarus' extended hand occupies the most emphatic point in the picture, and takes on thereby a ludicrous over-significance. The line of the drape falling
from Lazarus' head is cut by the dark mass of the head in front of him. There is a bad division of the darks in the costume of the woman kneeling at Christ's feet si confusing.
The static mass of heads in the background is vaguely Finally, there is a very definite dilemma as to picture interest. Which is the principal figure? Christ commands interest by his position, stature and lighting: Lazarus commands its equally by his gesture.
(These reproaches, I wish to make very clear, are leveled only at my own attempt
to catch the pictorial quality of this scene in a still picture, and not against the interpretation given it in dramatic terms in this truly great production. 

Discovering this print some years later "among my souvenirs", and realizing that it was a good opportunity bungled, I determined to have another try at the subject. At this time, of course, none of the elaborate costumes or settings, and none of the high-priced actors were available. So I posed a number of my friends on a Southern California hillside under a late afternoon sun. For costumes, sundry ragbags were ravished of their contents, and various portieres disappeared from their accustomed places.

Even at first glance Lazarus II is seen to be vastly better pictorially than the earlier effort. There is much more sense of organic relationship ship between the various elements that comprise it, with a certain flow of line from one figure to another.  The placing of the heads forms an interesting pattern.  The question of dominance is more clearly answered than in the first effort.  The second picture is definitely about Lazarus: lighting, placing, and the attention of the other actors make this clear.

 

However, it still falls far short of the potentialities of the situation.  It is still conceived in a literal spirit, there is a certain smugness about it, and, all in all, it is inclined to resemble a Sunday School card. There are numerous flaws in composition. The drapery of the figure at the left is badly arranged and gives little intimation that there is a body beneath it. The placing of white drapery and arm produces a distracting V-shaped configuration over Lazarus' head. The right arm of Lazarus is so lost in shadow that it leaves him without visible means of support, and his legs are awkwardly cut at the ankles by the bushes in the foreground. The figure at the extreme right is so placed and lighted as to attract more attention than it merits.  Christ's face is darker in tone than the face of the woman at his right shoulder, producing a confusion of planes.

Some of these defects could have been remedied had I wished to make a bromoil of the subject.  But it so missed touching the central mystery of the situation that I determined to leave it as it was and make a fresh trial. On consideration it seemed best, since Lazarus was my theme, to omit the figure of Christ, as it was bound,  no matter how much subordinated pictorially to still preempt attention. For the third venture I came indoors
again, working with studio lights in front of a white background, under circumstances permitting the utmost in control. Lazarus III and Lazarus IV represent variant versions of this trial.

In Lazarus III is seen an attempt to compromise with the elimination of the Christ figure by simply showing his hand set in opposition to the darkness of the tomb in the lower left hand corner. This proves better as an idea than as a picture, for there is some difficulty in interpreting the unconnected hand, and the mind is apt to make an unsuccessful effort
to assign it to the woman at the right. Possibly, if Lazarus' right arm had been more extended toward the lower left corner, this opposition would have been better emphasized. At any rate there is far less of a literal quality about this interpretation than the preceding ones. Giving the figures in the background slight modifications of the same pose, and placing their heads high in the picture, creates a formalized, slightly Byzantine feeling. There is one objectionable feature, eliminated in other transfers made of this subject, which I have allowed to remain in this one, because it furnishes a very clear instance of the difference between the eye's way of seeing a thing and the camera's way of seeing it. I refer to the clasped hands beside Lazarus' right ear. To the eye, at the time of taking the picture, they looked simply like - clasped hands; but the camera saw and recorded them as a sort of disembodied artichoke. Elimination of this equivocal object greatly improves the composition, not only by relieving the mind of irrelevant speculation as to what the thing is, but by taking away from the confusion of too many hands in the upper part of the picture, and by giving greater isolation to Lazarus' face.

 Lazarus IV, though less formalized than the third version, is on the whole a simpler rendering. Concentration of interest is assured by removing the last vestige of the bodily presence of Christ, save as it is intimated by the upward glance of Lazarus' eyes. The tonal qualities are broad and simple. The lighting gives a faint hint of the mystery and wonder that belong to this moment. Despite the undetailed black of the figure at the
right of the picture, it is, I believe, the best interpretation so far.

But I was, and still remain, very dissatisfied with it the implications of the theme were so vast and my rendering of it so feeble. Thus far, I realized, I had been toying with the accidental edges of the theme and missing the center of it completely. Despite successive simplifications, my conception was still anecdotal rather than pictorial.  at it, I determined to represent nothing but Lazarus So, for my final try -  mortal man triumph-
ant over mortality, dragged down by the grave, but lifting his face to the light. To do this, it seemed, but four things were needed: a man, an emotion, a background, and an attribute or symbol. Lazarus V is far from satisfying me; but at last the theme begins to speak in direct pictorial terms, and to grope toward something universal and symbolic in-
stead of contenting itself with the mere telling of a story.

 

 The future potentialities of photography, when it shall have achieved a fluent use of the selective methods proper to it, are undeniably impressive.  Up to now, the principal obstacle that has stood in the way of an adequate understanding of selectivity and its application to photographic processes is the fact that too many photographers are lacking in appreciation of basic art traditions. Having arrived at their status as photographers by hard technical study, or having graduated into it from the amateur snapshooter class, they are apt, when dissatisfied with their own work, to dig deeper and deeper into technical subtleties and mechanical complications. Instead of blaming themselves, they blame their cameras, or their lenses, or their developers, and fly for help to manufacturers' catalogues and scan them feverishly like hypochondriacs on the trail of a
new patent medicine. Not corrected lenses, but a corrected viewpoint, is their need; not new developers, but new ideals.

I am not suggesting that every photographer should be a graduate Academy or of the Beaux Arts: specific art training is only to a limited extent useful in photography..  What am suggesting  I of the Pennsylvania. What I am suggesting Beethoven and Brahms is that a knowledge of Beethoven and Brahms is perhaps more important to the photographer than a knowledge of Hurter and Driffield, and that an appreciation of Goethe may take him further than an appreciation of Gamma-factors. Let him frequently desert his darkroom for the symphony hall, the art gallery, or the library. Here he may learn the essential unity of the artist's way of doing things, and come to realize that, as a potential creator, he is the inheritor of all the up-gathered beauty that all creators before him have given to the world.

 

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Of all the ladies on Olympus (as Pompilius the Younger tells us), none had such lovely jewels as Venus*. These she owed to the labours of her crochety but devoted mate, Vulcan. Far into the night he would toil in his grimy workshop, drawing out the recalcitrant gold, silver and bronze into forms of unbelievable intricacy and complexity, set with carnelian, chalcedony and chrysoprase cunningly fitted and curiously engraved. After weeks of such effort he would bring to her a basket brimming with chains, carcanets, tiaras and brooches.

"Here," he would say smugly, setting it before her, "are a few little gadgets that I knocked out in a leisure moment."

Promptly she tipped the basket over and fingered the contents critically.

 "Kind of nice, aren't they?" said Vulcan, expectantly.

 "Now what," said Venus, holding up something between thumb and forefinger, "is this obscene object?"

 "That," said Vulcan, keeping a firm grip on his dignity, "is a chain."

 "To hitch horses with?" said Venus.

 "That chain," Vulcan replied, in a tone of mortal hurt, "has a hundred links, and I spent an hour on each link, chasing and inlaying a tiny pattern."

 "Well, of course, your time's your own."

 "But look at the detail. No one ever got so much detail in so small
a space before."

 "Dear me," said Venus, laying it aside. She examined other articles with obvious distaste.

 "Really, Vulcan," she said at last, holding up an object that dangled, "for a married man you do have the strangest ideas."

 "My dear," said Vulcan patronizingly, "I do not think you appreciate the labour that goes into each of these things. That pendant, for instance, has ten thousand separate pieces of metal in the setting alone."

"But it looks exactly like a cabbage."

"It  is a cabbage," said Vulcan severely.

 "Dear me," said Venus.

She glanced rapidly through the pile, laying each piece aside with an elaborate disillusioned sigh or a sadly tolerent shake of the head.

 Finally Vulcan could stand it no longer. "Very well, madam," he said, "I shall not trouble you further. Never again will I try to make anything for you. Never."

With a magnificent gesture he started to sweep up the tangled pile.

"Wait," screamed Venus. "What is the little one on the bottom of the basket?" 

 "That?" Vulcan stared. "Just something that I hammered out of a bit of waste metal.  I forgot to throw it back into the melting pot."

"But it is beautiful!" She swooped upon the little ornament, put it on, and surveyed herself in the glass with great satisfaction. "Beautiful," she murmured. "Darling, you are so clever." She smiled at him. "And you have such a cute smudge on your nose." 

( Pompilius at this point inserts the Latin equivalent for a row of
asterisks.)

 "Darling," said Venus, "you have messed my hair terribly. Where are you going?"

 "Oh," said Vulcan. "I just have one or two little ideas in jewelry that I want to work out."

 

* I don't think it was intended the way I read it, but I couldn't help but think of Diderot's "Les Bijoux Indiscrets."