A CHAT ON THE LONDON
PHOTOGRAPHIC SALON.
FOREWORDS (From the Catalogue)
Facts are not necessarily the end with them—they are only the means. They (these photographers)
refrain from the vulgarity of full realization and essay no more than the pictorial expression of
certain balanced and choice suggestions. —Adapted from W. E. Henley (without permission).
THE ABOVE few words, with a short description of the
history and aims of the Linked Ring, confront the
reader on an early page of the catalogue of this tenth
annual exhibition of the Parent of Photographic Salons,
which was opened with the usual Private View on
September eighteenth. To say all London was there
would be inaccurate, but this function yearly becomes
more crowded, and one can not help noticing a more
intelligent interest on the part of the visitors. But
with this much acknowledged, the outsider still persists
in asking at times the funniest of questions and making the quaintest of
remarks with regard to the photographs, which, if collected and properly
served up , would form amusing reading. " But do they use cameras? ” was
the quite serious query of a lady who had no wish to be funny. Then one
often overhears the " Oh, I must take up photography myself,” in a patron-
izing tone, as a smart woman rustles by. " What does it mean! ” is another
very general question, and one which was constantly applied to Clarence
White’s The Spider-web.
THIS being the tenth year of the Salon’s existence, special efforts have
been expended to make the Dudley Gallery suit the pictures. The walls
are hung with a coarse brown holland, and the familiar ugly roof is hidden
with a canopy of fine lawn, which diffuses the light and gives a far more
complimentary effect than in other years. The walls are broken up into
panels by ivory-colored moldings, each panel comprising a small show in
itself, all of which harmonize well as a whole. The work of decorating and
hanging has been a one-man undertaking, Mr. Evans having, unaided and,
I might add, unhampered, carried it out alone. His energy and taste—two
qualities that are not always combined in the same individual — have united
in making his work a success. He grieved that the Jury of Selection had
accepted so many pictures, although the number totals only two hundred
and eighty-four. Indeed, there is no saying what Mr. Evans might have
done, simply with the view of bettering his scheme of wall-decoration, with
thirty or forty frames had he been entrusted with quite autocratic power.
THE internationality of the show is very apparent. The quickest glance
round the gallery reveals the brilliant, big, convincing Austrian work; the
dainty, sympathetic French pictures; the versatile, thoughtful and original
contingent from America; and the―English photographs, for which,
alas, good reader, I have no adjectives left! But to particularize. There
are fourteen pictures from Vienna, distributed amongst five men. Dr.