Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/736

716 number. Let any one examine the majority of the photographs of the white Royal Monument in the Thiergarten at Berlin. The monument is excellently given, but the background of trees is a confused black mass, without details, without shades of tone; the architecture and other features are there, all except the splendid foliage that delights the eye at that spot. Still more numerous are the photographs of rooms, in which the dark corners, quite discernible to the eye, present nothing but pitchy-black night. There are other cases, besides these, of photographic incorrectness.

Suppose we are looking at a mountain landscape. A small village, inclosed on both sides by woody hills, occupies the centre, its houses extending along the declivities and scattered picturesquely among the trees. A ridge of finely-broken mountains in the background, their summits shining in the setting sun, frames in the wonderful picture, whose effect is only injured by one object—a ruinous pig-sty close to the spectator, with a dung-heap beside it. A painter, wishing to paint this scene, would certainly have no scruple about altogether leaving out the pig-sty, or leaving it so indistinct and dark that it would not injure the landscape. But what is the photographer to do? He cannot pull down the offending object. He seeks another position; but there the greater part of the landscape is concealed by trees. He ends by admitting the pig-sty, and what kind of picture is the result? On account of its vicinity, the pig-sty appears of colossal size in the picture. On the other hand, the landscape, which is the principal thing, appears small and inconsiderable. A still more fatal adjunct is found in the dung-heap occupying almost one-fourth of the picture. As the most brightly-lighted part of the photograph, it immediately attracts the eye of the beholder; it diverts his glance from other important points; it acts as a disturbing influence. The photograph obtained does not appear as a picture of the landscape, as it ought to be, but as a view of the pig-sty! The accessory has become the principal point. The picture is untrue. It is untrue, not because the objects it represents were not present in Nature, but because the accessories are presented too glaringly and too large, while the principal parts appear too small, indistinct, and inconsiderable.

This brings us to a weak point in photography, which represents accessories and principal features as equally defined. The plate is indifferent to every thing, while the genuine artist, in reproducing a view of Nature, gives prominence to what is characteristic, and entirely keeps under or softens off accessories. He can dispose and manage it with artistic freedom, and he has a perfect right to do so, because, by his giving prominence to what is characteristic, and dropping what is accessory, he is truer than photography, which gives equal prominence to both, and often more to what is accessory. Reynolds says of the portrait of a lady in which an apple-tree was most carefully painted on the background, “That is the picture of an