Notes & Comments

NOTES & COMMENTS

/ The San Francisco Museum of Art has just been able to purchase (by the efforts of a hard-working committee to raise funds) fifty-eight prints by Alfred Stieglitz. The addition will give importance to a collection which already has a strong nucleus of photographs by west coast creative photographers. If fifty-eight seems an insufficient number of photographs it can be remembered that quantity is of no importance in the work of Stieglitz. One photograph sums up a wide and deep experience; a half dozen encompass a period in the life of a city; consequently the collection is representative and enough to state Stieglitz. There are a few of the famous documents, some of the portraits, enough of one person to show his exploration of a single individual, the Populars at Lake George and several of the significant and probably spiritual Equivalents.

The work of Stieglitz is of far more than local interest. If many love his work, too few have seen it. These collections that are gradually finding public viewing places throughout the land will do much to communicate to people at large the tradition that is now Stieglitz. A tradition that is one of essence; and a tradition that is one of place. When he was alive he communicated these ideas and ideals to people directly by talking to them. Now that he has gone there are the photographs to take his place. It is a little more difficult to understand a photograph than a conversation, especially if the man efficiently made himself understood with words. But to the potential creative photographer here are the photographs to give body and proof of a tradition of essence and of place.

/ This summer Ansel Adams will conduct two sessions of a new Photo Workshop in San Francisco: July 7th through July 19th and July 21st through August 2nd. Each session will be two weeks of personal instruction and exploration by means of special projects in the techniques and esthetics of Landscape, Reportage, Portraiture, Industrial and other applications of photography. Mr. Adams will be aided by Nancy Newhall, Fredric Quandt and Pirkle Jones. Special consultants for the courses are Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Minor White. For particulars write the Registrar, Dody Warren, 5 Associates, 131 - 24th Ave., San Francisco 21, California. Eastern representative is Magnum Photos, Inc., 67 West 44th St., New York City 18.

/ Under the auspices of George Eastman House IMAGE has been appearing w'ith amazing frequency. This is a new journal with articles that uncover the pertinent, important and curious facts buried in the history of photography. The articles all have a mark of scholarly thinking which gives them a precision and an authenticity that is refreshing in photographic literature.

IMAGE is beginning to fill a large gap in our knowledge. It can relate the short items that rarely get into the more general history books—unless as footnotes; and which rarely get into the current magazines because the material is unrelated. Here the emphasis and content of the journal is just this historical importance. Its value to the contemporary photographer is something else. We tend to practice photography as if it existed in a vacuum, neither knowing nor caring what has gone into photography to make it what it is. There has been an enormous amount of research, both in the optical and chemical areas and in the esthetic employment of the tool which, if a contemporary had some idea of, would save him considerable time for pursuit of the expressive aspects of the medium.