The Future of Photography, Seen from 1850

In January of 1850 or 1851 (by a printer’s error, both dates appear), a maga­zine with the ambitious title The Photo­graphic Art-Journal was launched, featuring a frontis­piece engraving (there was no good way to repro­duce a photo­graph directly) of the already-famous Mathew Brady. In the intro­ductory essay, the editor, H. H. Snelling, laments that pho­tography has been purely mechanical for most prac­titioners, but he pre­dicts that the future will bring a mature under­standing of pho­tography as art.

Even as the art of engraving and sculp­ture has improved under the criti­cisms of the press, so must that of Pho­tography.—At the present day it is viewed, too much, in the light of a mere mechan­ical occupa­tion to arrive at any high degree of excel­lence. In too many instances men enter into it because they can get nothing else to do; without the least appre­cia­tion of its merits as an art of exquisite refinement, without the taste to guide them, and without the love and ambition to study more than its practical application, neglecting the sciences intimately con­nected with it, and leaving entirely out of the question those of drawing, painting, and sculpture, sister arts, a knowledge of which must tend to elevate the taste and direct the operator into the more classical and elegant walks of his profession.

Daguerre­otyping is compara­tively rude to what it will be a few years hence. The pictures now produced stand in relation to those that will be executed within a quarter of a century, very little better than the ancient Egyptian paintings compared with the beautiful works of the present day, or the early copper engravings of Germany with the exquisite steel produc­tions of our own times. We look forward to a period not far distant, when our best Daguerre­otypists will wonder how they could, for so long a time, be content with the specimens of their art they now put forth, as much as they do at this day at the shadows of six and eight years ago.

But a far different feeling must exist among them than that entertained to be produc­tive of the result we predict. In all our intercourse with Daguerre­otypists we have found but two who are enthusi­astic lovers of the art; and the greatest ambition we detect is a desire to produce a good picture so far as the present process will permit—very few, if any, experi­ments are made to improve the whole system. We have never yet seen a perfect picture, and the fault lies with all the various manipu­la­tions in a more or less degree. These are to be corrected only by the most careful and intense study, more than the art has ever yet received from an Ameri­can operator. We think one fact will illustrate the cor­rect­ness of our asser­tion. We know of one of our best artists who fre­quently gets into diffi­culty from the imper­fect working of his material and is quite incapable of discov­ering the cause, and yet he pro­fesses to despise what he calls—and what is par­tially—the theory of the art; quite ignorant, probably, of the fact that it is to theo­ret­ical analysis and deduction he is indebted for his art. Had Daguerre and Niepce been ignorant of the sciences of Chemistry and Philos­ophy, they never would have discov­ered pho­tography; and as yet none can assert that the latter is per­fect, it must be conceded that a more intimate inves­tiga­tion of chemistry and philosophy in connec­tion with pho­tography will lead to new dis­coveries of the most surprising results.

The philos­ophers of Europe are daily toiling in search of the still hidden principles of the art, and every year brings forth from their labora­tories some new appli­ca­tion. But why should we wait for new develop­ments to be wafted to us across the Atlantic, when we have from our exten­sive practical knowl­edge of the business so many advan­tages for noticing its various phases, developing and applying them, and success­fully experimenting.

Since the time of Professors Morse and Diaper’s experi­ments, what new discoveries—apart from various “Quick stuffs”— have been made by our ten thousand Daguerre­otypists? None; at least none have come to light. If any have been made, we must depre­cate the selfish­ness which induces the miserly hoarding of such discov­eries. It is a great mistake to suppose that individual benefit can result from such a course; it is only by free communi­cation and inter­change that permanent advantage can be derived from them. Many may be drawn to an operator’s room by the announce­ment of a new discovery, but many more will think and judge for them­selves, and consider it a mere catch-penny affair, unless they are assured of its adoption by others. Thus we have heard numbers reason, and in this age of so much decep­tion it is quite plausible.

Photography must assume a higher sphere and main­tain it. It is a noble science, and as such it must be regarded and preserved. If personal con­sidera­tions do not now make men sensible of this, they soon will exist, for we feel assured, from the eager­ness with which our “History and practice of the art of Pho­tography” has been sought after within the last few months, that the minds of Daguerre­otypists are awakening to the importance of knowing something more than the mere mechanical portion of their art.

——From The Photographic Art-Journal, January, 1850 or 1851.

Art for Art’s Sake Kills Civilization

Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts was one of the most influential men in the history of American culture. His New York Times obituary remembered that “Dr. Crafts, charged by opponents of legislation he sponsored with being a ‘reform fanatic,’ was for years a picturesque figure in congressional lobbies and committee rooms. By those in sympathy with his policies he was credited with having an influential part in enactment of prohibition, of laws to restrict the use of narcotics and of legislation of similar nature.… To the general public Dr. Crafts was of course, best known for his attacks on popular amusements. Screen vampires, close dancing, ‘joy rides,’ which he said ‘often proved a ride of lifelong shame and woe’; Sunday baseball, cigarettes were a few of the objects of his tireless reforming zeal.” His Reform Bureau also succeeded in encouraging Hollywood to censor its own movies in order to prevent the government from doing it, and there can be little doubt that it had the same effect on American books and magazines. Shadowland was a trendy magazine with pretensions to up-to-date taste, as expressed in reviews of modernist literature and semi-nude portraits of movie stars. It was a everything Dr. Crafts deplored and a frequent target of his ire, so the editor invited him to write his opinions as an article. Clearly Dr. Crafts was very familiar with the sorts of entertainment he deplored; he had made an exhaustive study of them, in order to deplore them with proper vigor.

Morals and America

By Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph.D.

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL REFORM BUREAU

Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts is the recognised head of the reform movement in this country. He has expressed himself as at variance with Shadowland’s reproductions of pictures and, consequently, the Editor called upon him for a clean-cut expression of his views upon morality. It is interesting to note his opinion which is herewith reproduced in its entirety—exactly as it came to the editorial offices.

With your three artistic magazines before me I am glad to respond to your request to write on moral standards in magazine art. I write not alone or chiefly as a reformer, for I have visited great temples of art at home and abroad.

The fundamental fact I keep in mind is, that there were no nude female figures in the Periclean age, the supreme period of sculpture, the greatest works of which are found in the Vatican Gallery, regarded as the world’s chief treasure house of art. Every female figure in that gallery is draped and carving drapery is the masterpiece of sculpture—far more difficult than the exact reproduction of a naked body. A stone cutter could do that.

One who cannot see Periclean sculpture in Greece or Rome can see it, chronologically arranged, in bound volumes of large pictures in the Philadelphia Public Library, and, doubtless, in other American libraries.

That illustrated history of all great sculpture, shows that Greece produced no naked Venus till the nation had begun to decline in mental, as well as physical virility, and had been conquered by Philip of Macedon. Art declined with patriotism and prowess, and inferior artists found it necessary to make their art appeal not alone to the eye and mind, but to the passions in order to get attention and purchasers.

Many who put on airs as masters of art, bulldoze those who shrink at lasciviousness and sheer nakedness in art by charging they lack artistic sense, but I gravel such with the historic fact that the most artistic statues of womanhood, those of Diana and Minerva and others in the Vatican Gallery, are representations of superbly draped womanhood—not lascivious, nude portraits of giddy artist’s models.

The only Venus that comes to us from the Periclean Age, the Venus de Milo, is but a draped representation of dignified womanhood, with no lascivious suggestion about it.

That is a good study for a moral standard in artistic treatment of the female form. It is a standing figure, not reclining; a dignified figure with no suggestiveness in face or pose or place; and it is draped, not stark and bare.

From my first tour of European art galleries I brought home a large portfolio of photographs of the finest nude female statues, which tho nude were not passion-stirring to me nor to my educated friends, either men or women. Some of these photographs I framed for walls and mantels of my home, and others I laid in portfolios on my parlor table. But I soon discovered that such pictures were not mere art to the average young people, even those of a religious congregation, and I laid them away to be shown only to the few friends sufficiently educated to get only cultured enjoyment from their beauty. That is my mature conviction as to even the most chaste of nude art, and copies of it—that it should not be spread before those unprepared to receive its artistic message.

Tho an artist is supposed to paint for the love of it, with no lowering of his standards, to get either attention or pay for his picture, artists are quite human, not always indifferent to their nude living models, and not always oblivious of the fact that a picture that in some way appeals to passion is more likely to be both noticed and purchased.

Both the history of the past and the courts of the present afford very practical tests of what art is harmful to individuals and nations.

Babylon and Athens both fell when they were centers of art and culture, partly because they put beauty above duty, the beauty of the nude, regardless of moral effects—“art for art’s sake.” The world is strewn with the graves of buried nations, which died not of “free trade” or “free silver,” but of free love; not of currency, but of moral cancer. And these dead nations were lands of art, which, instead of saving them, accelerated their fall by making a beautiful Lucifer of the devil of lust.

France, tho she made a great fight for life in the world war, has long been a subject of anxiety to her own loyal statesmen because the birth rate has tended to fall below the death rate. If anything artistic is in actual effect demoralizing and destructive it must give way to public welfare.

The chief difficulty of the editor who is trying to picture not imaginary women but the living actresses of today, without this forbidden obscenity, is that a reckless un-American mood has come on our American girls since the World War.

Commentators say Mary Magdalen was not a Magdalen, but she must have needed careful chaperoning when she was “possessed by seven devils.” Our American girls today, many of them, are surely possessed by seven devils: the devil of immodest dress; the devil of the suggestive song; the devil of the yellow magazine; the devil of the lewd drama; the devil of the vampire film; the devil of the barnyard dance; and the devil of the cabaret, where drink intensifies the indecencies of the dances borrowed from savages and demi-monde.

The painted, powdered and puffed doll of a girl is making a “sex appeal” that is far more likely to end in seduction than matrimony. I do not wonder seventeen millions of our people between twenty-two and forty years of age are unmarried. A real man may play with a silly female fool for an evening, but he is not enough of a fool to tie such a doll to himself for life. Girls, give more attention to athletics and education, and you will have a better chance to win the supreme prize of a good home.

All over the country Americanism is spontaneously rising in revolt against the “Frenchy” dressing and dancing, and the “Frenchy” shows and pictures. And all along the line, among the movie folks, there is talk of a more reticent treatment of sex—the golden mean between the old “conspiracy of silence” and the recent garrulity that leaves no beautiful secrets to young lives, whose faces are many of them old with “vamping” before they are grown. Art should not assume that sex is the only thought in the lives of men or women. “Think of us not always as women but sometimes as humans,” said Dr. Frances E. Willard.

Let us hope the call back to moral normalcy, sounded by President Harding in his advance veto of the Inauguration “show,” is going to be felt all along the line. Let us banish from stage and dance hall and screen and billboard, nude dances in harems; the bare-limbed bathers parading among ogling men; the desecrating glimpses of childbirth; the disrobing scenes in bedrooms and bathrooms; the peeping into brothels, and apartments of kept mistresses, and bacchanalian feasts in bachelors’ apartments; the high kicks of ballet girls; the lascivious kiss and embrace in which body and soul are surrendered to lust.

This is not the American way to treat womanhood. Let us have pictures of happy girlhood; of maiden queens devoted to patriotic service; of clean and loving courtship; of homes musical with the laughter of children, and no lover prying in between wife and husband, for which one of them rather than the meddling lover is blamed.

Instead of always wading the sewer of beastly passion, let us walk with true womanhood on the radiant heights of true love. That is a worthy goal for your high grade magazines, and for the wonderful art of motion pictures, whose future will be powerfully influenced by you as an editor-teacher.

——Shadowland, May 1921.

Kinds of Photoplays to Avoid

In 1915, a book of instructions for the novice writer of mov­ing-picture plays included this helpful advice on catering to the taste of the moviegoing public.

Avoid any scenes or suggestive compli­cations that may offend good taste or morals. Avoid scenes of murder, suicide, robbery, kidnap­ping, harrowing death­beds, horrible accidents, persons being tortured, scenes attending an electro­cution or hanging, violent fights showing strangling, shooting, or stabbing, stag­gering drunkards, depraved or wayward women, rioting strikers, funerals, and all such scenes of a depres­sing or unpleasant nature. Do not make a hero of a high­wayman or escaped convict. Do not reflect upon any religious belief, national­ity, or physical deformity. Thou­sands of men, women, and CHILDREN of all classes, national­ities, and creeds witness these pictures daily. We may occa­sionally see some play depicted which is contrary to the above advice, but they are the excep­tions, and are to be avoided. Give your story a clean, whole­some, pleasant tone, leaving the few morbid tales for others to write. These tales of crime are growing less every day, and conse­quently the photo­play is growing better.

——How to Write Moving Picture Plays by William Lewis Gordon.

Big Interests Plan Television Theatres

With the exception of the flying machine, no inven­tion was ever so breathlessly antici­pated as tele­vision. Every­one knew it was coming, and every­one knew it would change the world. But how? This article, pub­lished in 1930, suggests that tele­vision will be made to pay its way by becoming another attrac­tion in theaters. Clearly the author is simply making it up as he goes along; he has no inside informa­tion (as an exer­cise, count how many uses of the passive voice you can find, as in “it is predicted,” “it was asserted,” “it is recog­nized,” and so on). As a history of the behind-the-scenes prepara­tions that led to the television industry, this article is worth­less. But it is fas­cinating as an example of the hyster­ical antici­pation that built up around the idea of tele­vision in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

BIG INTERESTS PLAN TELEVISION THEATRES

Public Must Pay for New Air Features

Big Business, watching its scientists in the research labora­tories, fore­sees an early solution of puzzling tele­vision problems. With the solution, it is predicted, will come the tele­vision theatre.

The tremendous strug­gle for the Fox film and theatre interests, it was asserted, was moti­vated by the impending sensa­tional upheaval predicted for the intro­duction of tele­vision, and not by any desire of Wall Street to enter the motion picture produc­tion business.

CONTROL PLANNED

Television, according to definite and extensive informa­tion, is not to be permit­ted to leap out of hand by the big interests as did radio.

Television will be made to pay its way, competing when perfected with the present legiti­mate stage and the talking pictures as leading enter­tainment purveyor to the masses.

This is no guessing contest solution but the definite scheme of big business groups, repre­senting great elec­trical concerns, financial institu­tions and powerful theatre chain operators.

UPHEAVAL DUE

From the production studios of Hollywood and New York to the tremendous theatre chain facili­ties operating under the trade-marks of Fox, Paramount-Publix, Warner Bros. and R-K-O, must be broad­cast the enter­tainment of the future, for unless the solution of handling and control­ling tele­vision is put into operation, Big Business faces a deprecia­tion in its great land, building and equip­ment holdings far greater than the financial burdens imposed by the transfer from silent to talkie methods and more sudden than the decline of the speaking stage, and almost incon­ceivable in its economic effects.

It is recognized that television cannot be withheld for long, and if tel­vision were to be unleashed as was radio, thrown on the air for he who possesses a rented, borrowed or owned radio set to receive, the theatre industry must inevitably suffer.

If it were made available to all broad­casters, hundreds of theatres would be forced into darkness, trans­forming to worthless paper the securi­ties of the the­atrical industry and making radio-television the undisputed, preeminent enter­tainment medium.

METHODS PERFECTED

An English method of broad­casting tele­vision has been a prac­tical fact for some time. American methods, designed in the research labora­tories of the big interests, have been developed along different prin­ciples to avoid the necessity of paying royalties to foreign inventors, and also, it is claimed, made as complicated as possible in order to keep its operation under the control of the major leaguers.

The A. T. & T. method is now completed to the point of practical demon­stra­tion, and the General Electric is said to be perfected to the point of getting it into the tube of the receiving equipment. But matters have been com­plicated by a German inventor who, it is revealed, has reduced the American methods to the point of such utter simplicity that construc­tion of tele­vision reception equipment is as easy as the making of the old crystal sets used to be.

GREAT CHANGES

The keenest minds of the country are now concen­trated on this television problem. The magnitude of the changes to be wrought by it are almost beyond the power of present human conception.

What it will mean to the profes­sional performer is something that can only be conjec­tured. It may mean the centralizing of enter­tainment production to such a point that unemploy­ment will be even greater than it is now. On the other hand it may mean such an impetus to produc­tion and such a widening of demand that it will be necessary to keep a continuous flow of new enter­tain­ment on tap day and night, providing increased employment and wider opportunities.

Whatever the exact nature of the develop­ment, however, it is true beyond all argument that the changes brought about on the enter­tainment map during the past fifteen years will be made to appear insig­nifi­cant in the face of the sweeping changes now on the threshold of the industry.

——Inside Facts of Stage and Screen, Saturday, April 19, 1930.

The Coming Scarcity of Draft Horses

We’ll always need good draft horses, says a Canadian agricultural expert writing in 1921. Motorized farm equipment will never be of more than limited utility, and the horse will always have the economic advantage. It therefore behooves breeders to invest in the future by keeping up a good stock in the expectation of rising prices.

The Coming Scarcity of Draft Horses

By ALEX. GALBRAITH,

Superintendent of Fairs and Institutes, Dept of Agriculture, Edmonton, Alta.

There is one material difference between the breeding of horses and that of any other kind of domestic animals that is frequently lost sight of, and that is the much longer period required to produce the mature animal. Let the shortage in the hog market for instance manifest itself by an increasing demand, and productive conditions be at all favorable, farmers can catch up with the demand inside a year or so. If the demand for dairy cattle increases materially the breeder can overtake this demand in thirty to thirty-six months, but when the shortage in the horse supply becomes evident, five or six years at the very least must necessarily elapse before any change in the existing conditions can take place or the increasing demand in any way be satisfied.

The present partial depression in the horse business is only a repetition of what happened twenty-five years ago. At that period values of horses were much lower than they are to-day. For five successive winters, from 1893 to 1898, I took part in the Wisconsin Farmers’ Institutes advocating as strongly as I could the continuance of draft horse breeding, believing firmly as I did that it was absolutely necessary to anticipate the coming of better times, better prices and a greatly increased demand. When my subject was announced at those meetings the audience usually lessened materially. Their interest in horses was at zero because of existing low prices. I argued and insisted that the current prices had nothing to do with the question of whether or not they should continue to breed horses—that it was the prices ruling five years ahead that should alone govern their breeding operations. Perhaps ten or fifteen per cent. of those Wisconsin farmers took my advice and continued to breed their mares annually, and I had the satisfaction of knowing afterwards that those men who followed my advice made lots of money while their neighbors who had lost faith in horses had to go into the markets and pay two and even three prices for good work horses for many years afterwards. The faith and courage of those men who took my advice were duly rewarded. Now I have a great deal of faith myself in history repeating itself because I have seen so many instances of it during my own lifetime.

Long before my day, on the advent of the steam locomotive, the British farmers almost stampeded, as they concluded that if the iron horse was henceforth to haul their produce to market, the live horse would necessarily be relegated to the scrap pile. What happened instead was that business and industry generally received such a “fillip” and expanded to such a degree that instead of fewer horses being needed there were far more horses than ever required. They were needed in increased number to haul farm products to town, and factory products to the nearest railway station, and as the industries of the country increased and prospered a tremendous impetus was thereby given to the horse breeding interests of the whole world. From that date onward horses of all kinds, but especially draft horses, have been required in increasing numbers the world over. Occasionally a temporary set-back has taken place, but only to be followed by stronger demands and higher values than ever. The present depression is coincident with that of all other farm products and is aggravated to some extent by the bogus cry of the machine men in favor of gasoline trucks and tractors.

While these machines have already replaced a good many horses both in city and country, and will doubtless continue to do so, the draft horse remains to-day as essential a part of farm life as he ever was. Recent seasons in Western Canada have been extremely favorable to tractor work and yet only a very moderate amount of success can be claimed for even the best kind of tractors. I understand that some machines have proven so unsatisfactory that seventy-five per cent, of them have been returned to the makers, and the factories have since stopped making them altogether. In no case have even the best tractors proven so economical as horses and if this be the case when weather conditions have been almost ideal for their success, what would it be in a wet season? These tractors would be anchored everywhere in the fields and the farmers who have depended on them and parted with their horses would be at their wits’ end to know what to do. It is then that the never failing draft horse would be appreciated as he ought to be and the absolute necessity of his existence fully realized.

The present unsatisfactory condition of the horse market is largely due to careless, haphazard breeding in recent years and the narrow cheese-paring methods of raising the colts. The average farmer is not sufficiently impressed with the vast difference that there is and always must be between a real first-class draft horse possessing size, strength, soundness and quality, on the one hand, and the smaller boned, lighter muscled, light waisted, nervous animal, on the other hand. One type may have cost about as much to produce as the other, but the usefulness and market value of the first named is infinitely greater and always will be. Many farmers also cling to certain hobbies that are of little consequence. For instance, they must have a horse of a certain color with certain markings, or no markings at all. They attach undue importance to trifling matters and overlook the real essentials. The market for draft horses will accept any color, markings or no markings, but insist on a given weight, good conformation, reasonably good quality, and above all else absolute soundness. These are the important points which the breeder should always keep in mind. Early generous feeding combined with plenty of daily exercise is another matter that no progressive farmer overlooks. There are ten times as many colts spoilt annually from neglect and poor feeding as from over-feeding, in fact there are practically no cases of the latter unless the colt is shut up and prevented from taking daily exercise.

Farmers should have abundant faith in the future of horse breeding and raise all the good drafters they possibly can because prices will assuredly be high long before next season’s weanlings are ready for the market.

It is the opinion of horsemen everywhere that the future for drafters was never so bright. James Torrance, president of the Clydesdale Association of Canada, has the following to say: “In our own community it would be hard to pick up a carload of good sound draft horses, and from interviews with buyers I find the same conditions existing everywhere. During the days when grain and feed were high priced the farmer thought it to his advantage to winter his colts on as little as possible, or probably not breed his mares at all. As the result of the former practice we find scrubby and undersized horses all over the country. This condition is blamed by some on the quality of sires offered for service, but such blame is an injustice, for a visit to any of the larger fairs will show that there are plenty of good sires in the country. Unless the present rate of breeding is increased the numbers of good sound draft horses in the country will fall far short of the demand.”

R. R. Ness, of Howick, Que., says that he has as great faith in the future of the draft horse as in that of the dairy cow. He is backing up that belief by an investment of thousands of dollars in both stallions and mares. “But,” he says, “we must keep up the size. Quality is of equal importance, but it must be accompanied by substance.”

——Farmer’s Magazine, February 10th, 1921.