But it is, of course, too soon to evaluate the photographs of the last war, and the historian must reserve judgment. Thousands upon thousands of prints and negatives are buried in archives. Among them will be discovered photographs that have meaning beyond records, made by cameramen whose names will remain as anonymous as those of their brothers-in-arms who landed by their side on the beachheads, or who flew with them deep into enemy territory.
The fashion magazines were among the earliest to make regular editorial use of photographs. Vogue in 1913 began to publish photographs taken for them by Baron Gayne De Meyer: he founded a style in which the elegance of fashions are displayed with photographic feeling for textures. In 1923 Edward Steichen — who had taken fashion photographs both in black and white and color for Arts et decoration as early as 1911 — joined the staff of Conde Nast. In addition to photographing fashions he produced a great quantity of portraits of celebrities, which appeared regularly in Vogue and in Vanity Fair. These photographs are brilliant and forceful; they form a pictorial biography of the men of letters, actors, artists, statesmen of the 1920’s and 1930’s, doing for that generation what Nadar did for the mid-nineteenth-century in-
de meyer: Fashion photograph of a wedding dress, modeled by Helen Lee Worthing, 1920. Courtesy Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
 |
| beaton: Pavel Tchelitchew, 1936 |
tellectual world of Paris. Steichen’s work is straightforward photography which relies for its effectiveness on the ability to grasp at once the moment when a face is lighted up with character, on the dramatic use of artificial lighting, and on a solid sense of design. He succeeds best with people of the theatre. In U.S. Camera Magazine he shows how he photographed Paul Robeson as "Emperor Jones” by reproducing twenty-eight of the exposures made during one sitting. His account of his approach is revealing:
I have almost invariably found that the sitter acted as a mirror to my own point of view, so that the first step was to get up full steam on my own interest and working energy . . . If everything moves swiftly and with enthusiasm, the model gains courage in the belief that he or she is doing well, and things begin to happen. The model
 |
| lynes: Jean Cocteau, 1936 |
 |
| NEWMAN: Max Ernst, 1942. The Museum of Modern Art |
and the photographer click together ... In photographing an artist, such as Paul Robeson, the photographer is given exceptional material to work with. In other words, he can count on getting a great deal for nothing, but that does not go very far unless the photographer is alert, ready and able to take full advantage of such an opportunity.
Another approach has been taken by Cecil Beaton, in which there is an emphasis upon the setting, often of an elaborate nature. Beaton, who is a painter as well as a photographer, has produced stage sets for theatrical productions, and this interest is reflected in his camera work. George Platt Lynes and Arnold Newman show striking ingenuity in working out poses and new uses of materials to express the character of the sitter.
Recently the fashion magazines, perhaps under the influence of the picture weeklies, have turned to a more informal type of fashion picture and portrait: both Cartier-Bresson and Lisette Model have worked for Harper’s Bazaar, photographing, not in the studio, but in natural surroundings.
Magazines have pioneered in the use of color photography. New techniques have brought color within the reach of all, and it is in this field that we may look for important esthetic developments in the future.
14 IN COLOR
When Niepce described his early photographic researches to his brother Claude, he said, “But I must succeed in fixing the colors,” and when he visited Daguerre in 1827 he was especially interested in the latter's researches into this problem. He wrote enthusiastically to his son:
M. Daguerre has arrived at the point of registering on his chemical substance some of the colored rays of the prism; he has already reunited four and he is working on combining the other three in order to have the seven primary colors. But the difficulties which he encounters grow in proportion to the modification which this same substance must undergo in order to retain several colors at the same time . . . After what he told me, he has little hope of succeeding and his researches can hardly have any other object than that of pure curiosity. My process seemed to him much preferable and more satisfactory, because of the results which I have obtained. He felt that it would be very interesting to him to procure views with the aid of a similar simple process which would also be easy and expeditious. He desired me to make some experiments with colored glasses in order to ascertain whether the impression produced on my substance would be the same as on his.
Apparently Niepce had no better results than Daguerre, but the immediate possibilities of daguerreotypes in monochrome outweighed the fact that the colors were not recorded. It was not long, however, before the lack was sensed, and daguerreotypists began to color their plates by hand. In the meantime experimenters sought for some substance which, chameleon-like, would assume whatever color was shining upon it. Although claims of success were made, no permanent results have come down to us.
The loudest voice was that of Levi L. Hill, a Baptist minister of Westkill,
N. Y., who announced in the public press in 1850 that he had succeeded in fixing the colors of nature. He showed examples of his work to leading American daguerreotypists. The editor of the Daguerreian Journal was so impressed that he said “Could Raphael have looked upon a Hillotype just before completing his Transfiguration, the palette and brush would have fallen from his hand, and this picture would have remained unfinished.”
The profession demanded to know the technique. They were prepared to pay roundly for the secret, but Hill fended them off by saying that “$100,000 would not purchase my discovery,” and declaring that he would publish his results “When I think proper.” Months went by, and not a word from Hill. In a pamphlet dated 1852 and addressed “To the Daguerreotypists of the United States and the Public at Large,” Hill stated that the invention was all that he had claimed for it, but that he was faced with difficulties beyond his control in perfecting it, by “the invisible goblins of a new photogenic process.” The profession became impatient, for their business had been ruined by Hill’s premature announcement. They denounced him in the press as a humbug, and as an impostor. He finally published in 1856 his Treatise on Heliochromy, a confused and complicated piece of writing, which contained, in place of specific workable directions, an autobiography and an account of endless experiments.
That Hill achieved some kind of result cannot be doubted; the evidence of daguerreotypists and particularly of so notable an artist and scientist as Samuel F. B. Morse, is too convincing to be dismissed. More than once daguerreotypists had, by accident, found colors upon their plates: Niepce de Saint-Victor in 1851 secured colored daguerreotypes by sensitizing silvered plates with chlorides which received acclaim in their day, but, alas, could not be made permanent. Hill had perhaps stumbled upon the same path which these other experimenters had struck out upon, but we can form no more definite conclusion about his work than what was written about him after his death in 1865: “He always affirmed that he did take pictures in their natural colors, but it was done by an accidental combination of chemicals which he could not, for the life of him, again produce!”