RETOUCHING NEGATIVES.
[Sidenote: Definition of retouching.]
Retouching is the process by which a good, bad, or indifferent photograph
is converted into a bad drawing or painting.
[Sidenote: Working up in monochrome, oils, &c.]
Theoretically, retouching may be considered admissible, that is if the
impression can be made more true by it. There are, perhaps, half a dozen
painters in the world who could do this, but no one else. Nature is far
too subtle to be meddled with in this manner. We have discussed the
question with many artists, and their verdict is the same as ours. It is
the common plea of photographers that photography exaggerates the shadows,
but we think it has been shown that if photography is properly practised,
no such exaggeration of shadows takes place, and if it did, retouching
would only add to the falsity in another way. This retouching and painting
over a photograph by incapable hands, by whom it is always done, is much
to be deprecated. The result is but a hybrid, and is intolerable to any
artist. One fatal fact in all painted photographs, and one which for ever
keeps them without the realm of art, is that the shadows, being
photographic, are black and not filled with reflected colour as in nature
and as in good oil painting. The same remark applies to
mechanically-coloured photographs. Such abominations, from an art point of
view may, however, be useful in the trades, for pattern plates and such
things. Consider for a moment the habit of working up in crayon,
monochrome, water-colour and oils. What does it mean? and how is it done?
In some establishments the practice is for a clerk to note down certain of
the sitter’s characteristics, such as “hair light, eyes blue, necktie
black;” these remarks are sent with a photograph, generally an
enlargement, to the _artist_! He, in a conventional and crude manner,
makes necessarily a travesty of the portrait, and for these abominations
the customer pays from 5_l._ to 20_l._ Consider the utter sham and
childishness of the whole proceeding, and remember that a portrait painter
of the greatest ability can only paint with the model _actually before
him_, yet these workers-up, who are not artists at all, can paint from
memoranda made by a clerk. It is astonishing to think there are people in
the world foolish enough to pay for such trash. Even the very best oil
painting done in such a way is but trash, and if the photographic base is
so destroyed or covered over that none of it shows, it must then be judged
on the grounds of monochrome drawing or painting as the case may be, and a
sad thing it is when judged on these grounds. [Sidenote: Posthumous
portraits and busts.] It may be said, “But painters paint posthumous
portraits.” Yes, they do, confiding public, but they paint them as
sculptors model posthumous busts, but they do not call them works of art.
We know several artists who are compelled by necessity and the vanity of
human nature to execute these posthumous portraits, and we know, too, how
they value such work. But it must not be forgotten what a gulf separates
able artists from the third-rate “workers-up” for photographers. Moreover,
true artists never attempt posthumous portraits on the top of a
photograph, but simply use the photograph as a guide for modelling, light
and shade, &c., a quite legitimate use, both for painter and sculptor.
[Sidenote: Phot. Soc. Great Britain.] The Photographic Society of Great
Britain is to be congratulated on the stand it has made in the matter by
not hanging any of these abominations on their walls, and it is to be
hoped they will stand firm and never admit coloured photographs of any
kind until the great problem of photography in natural colours be solved.
[Sidenote: “High Art” photographers.]
We have amongst photographers to-day persons who pride themselves on their
skill in taking out of a photograph double chins, wrinkles, freckles, and
all the character of a face, and who call themselves, we believe, “high
art photographers,” mere flatterers of mankind’s weaknesses are they, not
even honest craftsmen. And not only do they thus mutilate portraits, but
with their Chinese white and Indian ink will they, with all the confidence
of the uneducated, touch up a landscape or a face with no model before
them. Of tonality of course they never heard, and Nature they never knew.
It was once our lot to judge the pictures at a Cambridge photographic
exhibition, and we were not a little staggered by the audacity with which
one noted “London firm” had touched up and worked upon an opal enlargement
of Niagara Falls. The picture was very true and beautiful before those
vandals had got hold of it, but, great Cæsar! what a sight it was
afterwards, with its impasto of Chinese white, and its shiny gum polished,
India ink deepened shadows! In short, a more meretricious production it
has seldom been our lot to inspect, and this thing was exhibited by an
University undergraduate! If such is the taste of an educated man, what
can one expect from the rest of the world! Let, then, the student avoid
all these meretricious productions as he would all vulgarities, such as
eating his peas with his knife. No first-rate artist will allow his prints
to be retouched; he would never be able to bear the look of them
afterwards. That the idea of retouching springs from a wrong theory is
evident, the improper use of lenses gave false drawing, and people were in
artistically and sharply photographed, so that wrinkles, warts, freckles,
and even the pores of the skin showed, and then arose the demand for a
retoucher to correct all that, and one error led to another, although,
without doubt, the false work of a retoucher is much truer than the false
work of an uneducated operator. Certainly people do not see, at the
distance a photograph is taken from, the wrinkles, spots, and other small
blemishes, and they are too uneducated to see the falseness of tone which
retouching engenders. Of all the photographers who talk glibly of art, we
warrant scarcely one is able to distinguish between a bust carved by a
stone-mason, one carved by a mediocre sculptor, and one carved by a
master, in fact we have proved this, and yet they talk, talk, write, and
lecture on art; while to an artist the difference between each of those
three busts is as great as the difference between a mountain, a hillock,
and a marsh. The public see the warts and spots and call them false, the
greater falsity of tone and retouching they cannot distinguish. An etcher
once remarked to us, “How is it photographers seem to do everything to
make photographs anything but photographs?” And such is the case; the
matchless beauty of a pure and artistic photograph does not satisfy their
vulgar minds, and yet such is the only kind of photograph at which artists
will look.
[Sidenote: Artists on retouching.]
It is now fifty years since Daguerre publicly announced Niepce’s
discoveries, and on the scientific and industrial side, photography has
results to show nothing short of marvellous, but what has it to show on
the artistic side? Of the thousands who have practised photography since
1839, and who are now dead, how many names stand out as having done work
of any artistic value? Only three. One a master, who was at the same time
a sculptor, namely, Adam Salomon; one a trained painter, but without
first-rate artistic ability, Rejlander; and one, an amateur,—Mrs. Cameron.
Beside these three there is no name among the numerous dead photographers
worth a mention. And have matters improved? Well may it be asked by those
who have the good of photography at heart, whether it will always be thus.
We hope not; but if it is to be otherwise, some radical change must be
made, and the blind no longer lead the blind. We have said, then, that of
all the thousands of craftsmen who have practised photography and are
dead, three names only stand out as having produced works to which we can
apply the title artistic. Now let us see what those three have to say to
the matter of retouching.
[Sidenote: Adam Salomon.]
Mr. Adam Salomon, though he strengthened certain parts of his negatives by
artificial means, which in the hands of an accomplished artist like
himself, was admissible, condemned retouching altogether. He says,
“Eschewing retouching with brush or pencil on the film, risking the
further deterioration of the negative, I make light finish the task it
has, from want of time, or bad quality, insufficiently done, and in such a
manner that no hand can hope to rival its delicacy and precision, and this
is the only plan that a lover of his calling can justifiably pursue.” So
we see that a highly-trained sculptor, like Adam Salomon, _dared_ not
retouch, but only sunned down violent contrasts at first, and then printed
in all the picture, so that it could not be detected; yet Adam Salomon, in
our opinion, could have quite legitimately worked on his negatives, being
as he was a highly-trained artist.
[Sidenote: Rejlander.]
Rejlander, not being a painter of great ability, but having a painter’s
training, tried all methods until he arrived at the legitimate scope of
photography, then he came to the conclusion that retouching was
inadmissible, and it must be remembered that Rejlander was more capable of
retouching truthfully than any retoucher has been since, and yet he says,
“I think the practice of retouching the negative a sad thing for
photography. It is impossible, for even very capable artists, to rival or
improve the delicate, almost mysterious gradations of the photograph.
Magnify the photographic rendering of, say, the human eye, with a strong
lens, and it is found to be almost startling in its marvellous truth.
Magnify the retouched image, and it will look like coarse deformity. It
ceases to be true. I have sometimes seen a touched photograph which looked
very nice, but it possessed no interest for me; I knew it could not be
trusted. I have been charged with sophisticating photographs because I
combined and masked and sunned prints. But there is a great distinction
between suppressing and adding; I never added. I stopped-out portions of
the negatives which I did not require to form my picture; I sunned down
that which was obtrusive, and where one negative would not serve, I used
two or more, joining them with at much truth as I could. But I never
attempted to improve negatives. I never believed that I could draw better
or more truly than Nature. I consider a touched photograph spoiled for
every purpose.” This, then, was Rejlander’s verdict, and though from this
we gather he had not yet thrown off the fallacy of combination-printing,
yet he subsequently abjured that also. Even when he did use
combination-printing, he practised it in a manner never equalled by his
imitators, for like all imitators they have copied the bad qualities and
left all the genius behind.
[Sidenote: Mrs. J. Cameron.]
Mrs. Cameron, the last and least of the three, had knowledge and feeling
enough also to eschew retouching, none of her work is retouched, just as
she had knowledge enough to use a rapid rectilinear lens, although working
in the wet-collodion days, for she evidently saw what escaped so many
other workers, that the drawing was truer with that lens than with the
quicker portrait lenses.
When it comes, by the means of retouching, to straightening noses,
removing double chins, eliminating squints, fattening cheeks, and
smoothing skins, we descend to an abyss of charlatanism and jugglery,
which we will not stop to discuss. That such things pay and please vain
and stupid people, no one denies, but so do contortionists please a
certain public, so do jugglers and tight-rope dancers, and such like, but
all that is not art.
[Sidenote: Doctoring negatives.]
There are various practices of doctoring the negative by using paint and
other mediums on the backs, or by grinding the backs of the negatives.
These are, in our opinion, all unnecessary and harmful, the remarks on
retouching apply equally well here. Such artifices may easily deceive and
even please the uneducated, but the artist only sees them to despise and
condemn them. The technique of photography is perfect, no such botchy aids
are necessary, they take the place of the putty of the bad carpenter.
[Sidenote: Spotting.]
Of course, spotting does not come under the head of retouching. The
spotter does not attempt to modify structure or tone, but merely to render
an unavoidable and accidental “blemish” less patent. All spots should be
filled with red paint mixed with a little gum and water, but care must be
exercised in this operation, to put on only just enough paint to fill the
hole.
Our parting injunction, then, to the photographer who would be an artist,
is, avoid retouching in all its forms; it destroys texture and tone, and
therefore the truth of the picture.