TRANSPARENCIES, LANTERN AND STEREOSCOPIC SLIDES.
[Sidenote: Transparencies.]
For industrial and educational purposes transparencies of all kinds are
valuable, and we shall touch upon them elsewhere. [Sidenote: Lantern
slides.] With lantern slides our art-student has nothing to do. A lantern
picture is an optical illusion, and lantern slides are toys when they do
not serve lecture purposes. For lecture purposes they are of course
invaluable, but they have no place in art, neither have stereoscopic
slides. They all rank with the camera obscura, the diorama, and the
panorama.
We say all this because a beginner must be cautioned against paying any
serious attention to these subjects if his aim be to become an artist. Art
is much too serious for her devotees to trifle with any other subject, and
besides the making of lantern and stereoscopic slides is apt to have a bad
effect on the beginner. His attention becomes centered on the production
of pretty things—a neat, small, superficial prettiness pervading most of
the work of good lantern-slide workers. Conventional compositions and
Birket-Foster prettiness are the lantern-slide maker’s beau-ideals. Of
course these qualities are very admirable for lantern slides, for without
them they would have but little attraction; but they are quite distinct
from, and very, very far removed from, having any connection with fine
art.
[Sidenote: Stereoscopic slides.]
We know many artists who photograph and value photography _per se_, but we
have yet to meet that one who deigns to make lantern slides except for the
purpose of making enlargements from which to draw. It has been said that
the appearance of stereoscopic pictures is wonderfully true; this is not
the case. There is a lustre, false tonality, and apparent illusion, which
to an artist makes them anything but true. In short, until photographers
do away with much of the “play” of their art, and look at it seriously,
they cannot hope that highly-trained artists will join in with them.
[Sidenote: Lecture purposes.]
For scientific lectures of course lantern slides are invaluable, as we
have already said, and for this purpose they should be untouched; but we
cannot help smiling when we hear of producers of slides claiming for their
work the title of “artistic,” _because_ they are untouched and true.
Absolute truth is not necessarily art, as we have often pointed out, and
as Muybridge’s photographs prove.
Let our student, then, avoid these snares, unless he wishes to cultivate
what Professor Herkomer has aptly called “Handkerchief-box art.”