_By_ H. R. NEESON
The progress of pictorial photography in Maryland is to be ascertained by
an examination of the progress of the amateur in Baltimore, for aside from
the local exhibitions we have no record of anything done in the State.
While this condition is regrettable and hard to comprehend in an
art-loving center of such population, there is none the less an
improvement over former times.
The shops and the “finishers” have prospered, while the club—the old
organization in which the reason of being has been lost in a maze of
constitutional amendments, by-laws, and such like red tape—has declined in
influence and popularity. In the world at large, pictorial photography
has grown amazingly. This has led to a more pronounced line of
demarkation between the dilettante and the intelligent worker of
appreciation, with the balance of influence inclining strongly to the
latter. In Maryland there has been an upheaval, a photographic
revolution, so to speak, and out of the wreckage has sprung the
Photographic Guild of Baltimore, which has done more to put Maryland
photographically to the fore in its five years of activity than had been
done in all the years previous. It was due almost entirely to Guilders
that Maryland stood fourth at the recent Pittsburgh Salon. Two
prerequisites to membership in the Guild are ability in keeping with the
highest standards and _productiveness_, as a consequence of which it has
only six members, who may be said to comprise the representative
pictorialists of the State.
For the past four years there has been an annual exhibition under the
auspices of the Guild at the Peabody Gallery, each well attended by the
art-loving public, with marked enthusiasm for what is being done with the
process. A feature of the Guild exhibitions, beginning with the 1919
portfolio recently hung, is the invited work of out-of-town amateurs,
which is giving Baltimoreans a wider and better knowledge. While this
exhibition has not assumed salon proportions, it will in a measure bring
the salons to Baltimore if help in the way of prints from outside is
forthcoming, as we hope and believe will be the case.
On the whole, it may be truly said that the flexibility and responsiveness
of the photographic process have been sufficiently demonstrated to fix it
firmly among the art mediums.
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