The Photographic Journal, May 15 1861

Abstract

In our last Number we took occasion, in a hurried manner, to call the attention of our readers to the extraordinary classification decided upon by Her Majesty’s Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1862. Since, then, an official communication from Mr. F. R. Sandford, the Secretary to the Commissioners, has been addressed to our President, requesting the Council of the Photographic Society to appoint a Committee to organize Class 14, “Photographic Apparatus and Photography.” Under these circumstances the Lord Chief Baron assembled the Council to consider the proposition. The Council express themselves unanimously as feeling aggrieved at the manner in which the Art of Photography is classed. In a reply, which will be found below, the Lord Chief Baron puts the grievance in a manful and logical manner. It is needless to recapitulate the various points in this powerful and effective reply. From the manner in which the case is put, we cannot anticipate anything other than an immediate alteration of the obnoxious classification. Last month we quoted instances which we think sufficiently prove that Photography by common consent is acknowledged to be a branch of the Fine Arts. Since then, in the discussion of the new Copyright Bill, the Attorney-General, and the various Members of the House of Commons who spoke on the subject, placed Photography on the same footing as Engraving; that being the case, the Lord Chief Baron is undoubtedly right when he says “that the Council of the Photographic Society claim for it a position (however humble) among the Fine Arts (if etching and engraving may be so placed, as no doubt they may).” He then goes on to say that “Photography, quite as much as engraving, gives room for the exercise of individual genius, so as to stamp a special character on the works of photographers, and give to the result of their labours the impress of the mind of each artist.” The truth of this succinct statement is annually to be found on the walls of our Exhibitions, where any one who has the least knowledge of the productions of our leading photographers can instantly, without the assistance of a catalogue, single out the productions of Messrs. Fenton, Bedford, Llewellyn, Lake Price, Robinson, Vernon Heath, G. Washington Wilson, Maxwell Lyte, and others too numerous 502to mention. It is this “impress of the mind of each artist” that enables us to do so without any trouble.