_By_ DWIGHT A. DAVIS
In Massachusetts, as in other parts of the country, war-time activities
interfered to a noticeable extent with the cause of pictorial photography.
The interference was perhaps less marked than in some other sections,
where more of the prominent workers were actively engaged at the front.
The difficulty in securing materials, amounting now and then to utter
impossibility, was, however, the same, and there was the same falling off
in enthusiasm, due to the demands on one’s heart and pocketbook from
across the sea. In this crisis organized effort might have been
especially helpful, but it is just in this respect that Massachusetts has
always been weak. Her workers have been widely scattered from the
Berkshires to the shore, and such local clubs as have here and there
existed have not been deeply or permanently influential. In Boston there
was the once famous Photo Clan, with Garo, Eicheim, and Schuman as its
leading spirits, but that has long since ceased to be an active force. On
the other hand, the Boston Young Men’s Christian Union Camera Club and the
Boston Society of Arts and Crafts have lately come into new prominence
through their efforts to stimulate interest and afford frequent
opportunities to view exhibitions of the best in photographic art. The
former held, during the past winter, excellent one-man exhibits, in which
work of such prominent pictorialists as John Paul Edwards, Dr. Rupert
Lovejoy, Dwight A. Davis, Francis O. Libby, John H. Garo, Edward H.
Weston, and Arthur Hammond was shown.
But, in spite of these various influences, the workers of Massachusetts
for the most part pursue solitary ways, with little enough—all too little,
some would say—of the advantages that come from intimate association.
There is, however, another side of the shield. It is at least
questionable whether such strongly marked personality as appears in the
work of Seeley, Garo, Davis, Hammond, Eicheim, Buttler, the Allen sisters,
and a dozen others who might be mentioned, would be possible if the
workers of this section were under the closely dominating influence of a
centralized group, itself dominated by a single individual of exceptional
powers. Such a state of affairs has sometimes been observed in other
parts of the country, and the results have not always been advantageous to
the interests of the individual workers. Under such conditions as exist
in Massachusetts, the Pictorial Photographers of America has come as a
boon, since it affords just the kind of stimulus most needed.
Massachusetts has been swift to avail herself of the advantages thus
offered. At the recent exhibition of the work of New England and New
Jersey pictorialists, held in New York, Massachusetts was represented by
16 out of a total of 27 exhibitors, with 64 out of a total of 107 prints—a
showing decidedly creditable to the old Bay State.
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