Proceso de Planeamiento Estratégico Articulado.

The December 12tharticle was the final of the series but a year later what was

perhaps Davison’s most important paper was printed. In that year’s interval much had changed, including the widespread dissemination ofNaturalistic Photographyand the

formation of the Linked Ring by dissidents from The Photographic Society.

The tone was totally at variance from the previous set of articles; those had been aimed at amateur photographers who wished to attempt pinhole photography or had aspirations as “artist-photographers.” This article was a communication delivered to the prestigious Society of Arts, an honor that was never extended to Emerson, and another indication that his contemporaries valued Davison’s thoughts more highly than

Emerson’s. The fact that the address was to an influential arts group rather than

39

Davison 12 December 1889, p. 685.

photographers was beyond a doubt a major coup for photography as an art and Davison as its leading proponent.

Davison reveals his breadth of art history and theoretical understanding as he slowly unwinds his impeccable arguments. At its root, this is a call for revolution

patterned after the “revolt against conventionalism” led by “those painters who have been variously called impressionist, naturalistic, and the like.”41He walks a thin line

combining principles from ‘naturalism’ with ‘impressionism’ to synthesize a third school. In reviewing the painter’s art, ‘chained by dogma’ and beset with ‘unnatural conventions’, he may be making a reference to Emerson who spent a great number of words inNaturalistic Photographyreviewing the achievements of past art, and using

them to discover principles to support his views of ‘naturalism’ (more will be said on this in the next chapter).

Davison only once refers to Emerson in this paper; the reader/listener instead should refer to “Mr. Francis Bate's book,The Naturalistic School of Painting,a fresh,

direct, convincing little work which every photographer should read, and in parts re-read, and to which I wish to express my own indebtedness.”42This book is exceedingly rare

today and as far as can be researched by a reference librarian, no known copy of the first or second edition exists; no certain publication data can be found for the first edition but the second edition was printed in 1887, before Emerson’s book. H. Francis Bate (1853- 1950) was an English painter and educator. Nonetheless, this may explain why Davison’s thinking is at odds with Emerson’s even at the outset — his thinking followed Bate rather than Emerson. Emerson took great offence at Davison’s statement,

41

Davison 26 December 1890, p.821.

Suggestions have been made that I get some of my ideas from a book, called 'Naturalistic Painting.' I have a letter in my possession from an artist wherein is stated clearly and exactly that Mr. Bate has read a paper of mine onNaturalistic Photography beforehis first article appeared in the 'Artist.' At the Society of Arts, the other day, a paper was read by Mr. Davison - an amateur without training, and with superficial knowledge - in which myoldideas were freely and impudently handed about and no credit given me.43

Davison did no such thing or even infer that Emerson’s ideas came from Bate, only his own. Emerson is clearly hyper-sensitive about the issue; it would be revealing to know precisely why. The only time Davison mentions Emerson is in the concluding paragraph, quoting him in a positive manner.

Davison defines the naturalistic position as “a scene which appeals to our

experience of nature — harmonious and truthful” which will “affect most powerfully our aesthetic sensibility” and can only be “secured by a direct reference to nature.”44

The core of Davison’s thrust is “to put forward the claims of photography…to be admitted as a capable means of artistic expression.”45He delicately draws in the audience

of painters, giving the ideas “of some classes of painters who have despised and condemned photography” along with some similar photographers who viewed “any reform or movement which promised better artistic expression as ‘apeing the

conventionalities of painting.’” But most importantly, the argument of the mechanical nature of photography is defeated by the issue of style, that is, “two photographers separately treating the same subject will produce two impressions, almost, if not quite, as different in qualities as would two impressionist painters in monochrome.”46“The mere

43_{P. H. Emerson “Death of Naturalistic Photography” inNaturalistic Photography for Students of the Art}

3rded 1891 (reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1973) unpaginated addendum

44

Davison 26 December 1890, p.822.

45

Davison 26 December 1890, p.822.

fact of the means including more mechanism is not a disadvantage if the result be more truthful and life-like.”47

He is listing the various fallacies of arguments against photography, turning next to “the doctrine that minute definition is the distinctive quality of photography, and that, therefore, this should be made the most of in artistic work.” Of all the specious arguments about photography’s nature, this one is the most tenacious, resurrected dozens of times in the anti-soft focus debates in the 1900-1915 period and put forth vehemently forty years later by Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Beaumont Newhall, Helmut Gernsheim, and others. Davison states the rebuttal simply and directly: “it is no more the distinguishing feature of photography than is exaggerated perspective, or indeed, the want of definition that is diffusion or softness.” Even more importantly, “such definition is not the

distinctive characteristic ofseeing,”48harkening back to Emerson and Helmholz. Davison

even pokes fun at them: “it is certainly very refreshing in its audacity to be told that because photographers have consented to smirch the fair name of their art by the general use of albumenized paper and small stops therefore this is to be its character forever.”49

Another persistent accusation against soft focus is that it is “imitating the natural characteristics of a certain school of painting. It might with equal force, or no force, be alleged that those in favour of minute definition are, in their sharpist tendencies, apeing the characteristics of the old miniature workers.”50

Davison addresses what he considers photography’s two great advantages: (1) “nothing gives so truthful a record in drawing” and (2) nothing “gives so delicately

47_{Davison 26 December 1890 p.823.} 48 Davison 26 December 1890 p.823. 49 Davison 26 December 1890 p.824. 50_{Davison 26 December 1890 p.823.}

correct a relation of tones.”51This latter subject becomes a major rallying point for those

advocating soft focus in the years to follow. Davison notes that “the subject of focus has altogether overshadowed the more important matter of tone…” a charge leveled at the f/64 school forty years later.

Davison concludes that if the two guidelines stated above, following the naturalistic theories of representation, then photography will be elevated “to its proper place amongst the foremost black and white processes.”52

In the discussion which followed the presentation, another leader of the photographic art movement and co-founder of The Linked Ring, Alfred Maskell, summarized the paper as “a plea for the application of impressionist feelings or naturalistic principles to artistic photography.”53Davison used the term ‘naturalistic’

quite a number of times and only occasionally ‘impressionistic’- without differentiating them. Given that he chose to title the paper “Impressionism in Photography” rather than ‘naturalism’ one would expect a emphasis on the former rather than the latter.

Another contributor to the discussion was W. E. Debenham, who had just recently published a paper, which although it gave a balanced review of the pros and cons of differential and soft focus, concluded that “that photographs should be sharp all over, and that a near object should be as sharp as a far-off one.”54His response to Davison’s paper

is exclusively concerned with “the arguments in favour of blurring a photograph” which were fallacious. Although he did not consider Davison “an extreme advocate of blurring” and “recognized the artistic character of Mr. Davison’s work, but thought it would be still

51_{Davison 26 December 1890 p.823.} 52_{Davison 26 December 1890 p.824.} 53

Alfred Maskell “Discussion”BJP26 December 1890 p. 825.

54

W. E. Debenham “Is Blurring Desirable in a Photograph?”The Photographic News14 November 1890 p. 883.

better if he would use smaller diaphragms and give better definition generally.”55For

Debenham, his entire retort (approximately 600 words) addresses one paragraph of Davison’s approximately 7,000 word presentation, and is a good example of the fixation by those opposed to diffusion of focus. This is the same Debenham whose actions led to Robinson’s censure and the rejection of Davison’s image in the 1891 RPS salon which precipitated the Linked Ring formation.56

Summary

If a single spokesman of the artistic-photography movement was in evidence at the outset, that person would surely be George Davison and not Dr. Emerson.

Furthermore, Davison’s stimulus was likely not from Emerson’s tomes, as Emerson claimed, but from Francis Bate. It is important to consider the subject matter of Davison; he was almost solely concerned with the landscape, to the exclusion of portraiture, the nude, still lifes and other topics which will become the focus of Pictorialist lenses in the future. Given the sensitivity of film and the apertures of pinholes, they were limited to objects in direct sun light at this time (1890).

In the years before the invention of new soft focus lenses, his advocacy of the pinhole for artistic photographs was complete. “I favour them as giving the most pleasing softened quality of definition of any means yet employed in photography, and because such diffusion seems to me fairly to give the impression as regards focus which the mind

55

Debenham 26 December 1890 p. 825.

selectively receives from many subjects.”57This also serves as the definition of

impressionist photography for Davison.

Davison did not make a great differentiation between ‘naturalism’ and

‘impressionism’ in the Society of Arts paper, although at many other times, he clearly criticized naturalism, at least as described by Emerson:

…it seems to me that the bearing of merely optical phenomena upon the question has been over-estimated and too exclusively considered. The

investigation of these phenomena is of great interest, but, after all, one is brought back to the conviction that the treatment in an artist's work is a matter of feeling, the results of complicated mental impressions, reactions and analysis. He can be bound by no one limiting rule as to what he must do in all cases.58

For Davison the test was “Is it art?” and for his critics, “Is it photographic?” This framed the debate between Pictorialism and ‘straight’ photography for the next hundred years. Despite the rapid ascension and adoption of digital photography in the first decade of the 21stcentury wherein veracity is a moot point, the same lines can largely be drawn

even now.

57

George Davison “The Focus Question”The Photographic News14 November 1890 p. 883.

Chapter 3: