I had almost included Eduard Steichen among the French exhibitors, and am only saved by a personal acquaintance and a strong and happy recollection of the man himself. Steichen's photographic career is both interesting and recent. Coming to Europe on the crest of the wave of modern American photography he has, during his long stay in Paris, blended much gained from the art centre of the world with his own original ideas and treatment, and the highest result at the present moment—for he is still traveling fast— seems to me to be his portrait, Dr. Franz Ritter von Lenbach. It would be easy to write pages of praise on this one photograph, and it would be difficult to avoid quite extreme language in describing it, so I will be restrained and simply record the opinion that it touches the high-water mark of pictorial photography in 1902. A description of the picture here would be useless and out of place, for all readers of "Camera Work" are sure to see it either at the Salon or in America. Steichen has a good number of other works hung, and his five nudes are idealistic studies, going a long way to refute the objection to the photography of the nude, which was formerly so fruitful of controversy.
And so, with the connecting-link—Steichen—I find myself in the midst of the American exhibits. A close observer of the prominent workers across the Atlantic has a feeling of at-homeness amongst them, recognizing the various well-known and well-liked hands and heads at work in the differing results.
Mrs. Käsebier seems to have started a fresh furrow in most of the work she has sent; or is the difference due to the different printing-medium in which she has expressed herself? Be this as it may, a trail of chairs marked my inspection of her pictures, so much is there in each for thought and reflection; and wicked covetousness overtook me in front of (No. 187) Portrait— Miss N.—so decorative is it and of such sweet color. In The Hand of Man and in On the Ferry-boat, Alfred Stieglitz treats pictorially, and altogether successfully, subjects that the button-pressers have perpetrated with very different aims and results. The picturesque which is often strong in locomotive subjects is, as a rule, ignored or, worse still, not seen by the ordinary photographer, consequently Mr. Stieglitz's clever rendering of a train with its beauties of steam and smoke is all the more welcome. His Spring has always been a favorite of mine, and the daily sight of a framed copy at home has not in the least impaired its charm. His Gossip—Venice—too, is an old friend, thanks to Camera Notes, but in treatment so different to his other exhibits that one would not recognize the same hand. Of Clarence White's nine photographs, The Spider-web attracts, perhaps, the most attention, but personally I found some of his portraits more satisfying, notably the ivory-like little picture, Lady with the Statuette, and Portrait—Miss Dille. A fresh field is opened to the photographer and a new delight vouchsafed to the reading public, if future books are to be brightened by such photographic work as the two pictures Mr. White sends as illustrations for Irving Bacheller's "Eben Holden." Both the interior and the meeting of the two women at the door are consummate pieces of work. The writer of
