Pictorial Photography in America 1920

Some of the advantages which photography offers are worth restating. It helps to draw one closer to nature and to seek fresh air. Through the exercise and cultivation of choice, it teaches how to decorate the home, to dress with taste, and to keep an alert eye and mind on the passing events of the world. The black and white photo of the past required a higher degree of artistic ability with blurs, hues, shadows, to capture the beauty of the scene.

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Excerpt:

The progress of pictorial photography in the Far West can be aptly compared with the settlement and growth of this big new country itself. We have had our pictorial pioneers, as it were-our hard-working, enthusiastic, rather crude first settlers in the art; now we have come to the stage of permanent abode, with traditions, albeit young, great enthusiasm, definite ideals, and ambitious hopes for the future.

The one great asset in the upbuilding of the West has been boundless enthusiasm. This characteristic trait dominates the very soul of the Western pictorialist. In it lies his greatest hope for the future progress in his chosen field of art.

It is this live energy and enthusiasm which brings him out afield even before break of day, which leads him over hill and dale, mountain and valley, in his insatiable quest for the pictorial. Miles are as nothing; hunger stays him not; nor rests he at night until his potential treasures are developed and their beauties appraised.