Robinson's Pictorial Effect

 

It is tempting to associate "effect" with the type of unwarranted interference that Emerson had Robinson performing on nature, or with the emerging art-for-art's sake credo and its apparent jettisoning of nature as the source of representation. From these perspectives, effect (an effect with no apparent natural cause) begs alignment with the artistic component of photography's doublet. Effect certainly involves the modification of nature, it imports artistic aesthetics and it might iterate the content of painted art. But while Robinson's background as a painter is relevant to his photography, he didn't try to imitate the canvasses of painting. In Robinson, artistic licence is always held in check by effect's obligation to "truth."

Robinson dismissed a photography based on the type of positivist truth advocated by the purists - "the matter-of-fact truth-at-any-price school", but a form of truth was nevertheless a constituent of his pictorial effect, which was "strictly from nature and true". In Picture-making by Photography, Robinson explains the relationship between truth and effect partly by way of the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Robinson finds that the relations of light and shade in many of Reynolds' pictures can't be attributed to the source of natural light in which their subjects pretend to be set: "This is false to nature, but we cannot help admiring the effect". (27) Admire it though he might, such falsifications of the truth could not hold in photography: "In photography we must not indulge in such licence. It would be very unwise to use any effect which could not be shown to arise from a natural cause". (28) Robinson had already posted a similar qualification in Pictorial Effect, again with reference to Reynolds: "His landscape backgrounds are always singularly appropriate and natural, although the horizon in many instances is lower than we should feel justified in representing it in such a truthful art as photography". (103)

Truth, or adherence to the real, acted upon the artist's ideal no less than the ideal modified the real. Photography's obligation to truth distinguished it from painting but, then again, truth should not over-determine photography. Truth was a constituent of photography, but was so at the level of a "material". And, like other photographic materials, it was endowed with the degree plasticity necessary for the production of effect:

The aim and end of the artist is not truth exactly, much less fact; it is effect ... . There is no doubt he [the photographer] best gets his effect by way of truth, but he uses it as he would a servant, not a master. The newest critics go so far as to say that effect is not only the aim but the end of art, and will not admit that it need say anything more. It is not good to set up a fetish, even a respectable one. Truth should be classed with the other materials, whether paint, brushes, canvas, cameras, or prepared plates. All must, of course, be properly used or success will be missed ... .

Effect is not on the side of "fact", or "prosaic actuality", it is not to be found in the reproduction of what happens to be in front of the camera's lens; but neither does it belong to the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary. Truth, albeit a plastic truth, ensures that effect is in some measure referential. Effect can't be a self-sufficient figure like Whistler's "art for art's sake" which Emerson had such difficulties in reconciling with his own photography. Robinson is just one short step away from aligning himself with Whistler, or with a surface like that of Reynolds which falsifies according to the regulations of painted art. But it is an important step, and it is the closest Robinson can approach, because the desire for reference intrudes in this space to assert a kind of determination in the last instance.

The possibility of an art resting upon a type of imagination was known to Robinson, he placed it within the institution of painted art and thus excused photography from it. Artistic photography was not yet allowed the same liberties as painted art: "What is our art that it should be more strictly guarded than any other?" (82) asked Robinson, but his understanding of the medium depended precisely upon it not having the same licence as other arts. In photography, a desire for reference set the limits of artistic production. This type of interaction between determining subject and the subject of determinations flickers throughout Robinson's praxis. In The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph he succinctly describes the nature of photography's double: "It is possible to get into two minds over the limitations of our art. On the one side I want all possible liberty; on the other, I have a feeling that no artist, in whatever material, should transcend the bounds of the process which he has adopted" (75). The "bounds of the process" are not technological. The technology can be modified to suit discursive requirements. Both Emerson and Robinson advised Dallmeyer on the design of photographic lenses so as to make them appropriate to their respective photographies, and Dallmeyer delivered the goods. The technology might eddy along a line of increasing sophistication, but that drive for sophistication is motivated by discursive imperatives. Robinson set about searching for a technology that would satisfy the needs for both the "limitation" and the "liberty" side of the photographic doublet.

He proceeded from the assumption that nature as it stood was not true nature: "It is fashion to yearn for Nature, and to select her as bare, bald and ugly as she is made, the particular kind being that which is the outcome not of nature, but of the errors of civilisation" (65). His examples of the errors of civilisation include, "the most fatal gash on the beauty of the country ... one which is ruining the appearance of the whole earth - I mean telephone and telegraph wires" (100). Others are attributed to industrialisation and changes in the education system, the results of which were:

The lusty mower or reaper is no longer to be found... . The gleaner, chief feature in past rural scenes ... is no more; the smock-frock and sun bonnet are seldom seen near towns; children have been converted by compulsory education into primly dressed little prigs; the lovely bespangled hedgerows have been trimmed; the `nasty violet' ... scarcely exists now as a wild flower, and the primrose is following. (100)

Like many of his contemporaries, Robinson yearned for the expression of a type of ideal nature, but this "true" nature was no longer accessible simply by looking. Nature as it stood was "marred by discords" (100). It was the photographer's task to impose order:

As I think I have said before, a work of art is a work of order, and if the artist is to put the stamp of his own mind on his work, he must arrange, modify, and dispose of his materials so that they may appear in a more agreeable and beautiful manner than they would have assumed without his interference. (Picture-making, 44)

The unruly raw material of nature was ordered through the grid of artistic composition. In Robinson's theory there was, initially, a collapse of the determined side of photography and the regulations of painting. These were founded on what he called "immutable laws ... of balance, unity, repetition, repose and harmony ... based on the diagonal line and the pyramid". (Pictorial Effect, 191) The immutable laws of composition didn't eliminate the need for judgement - the judgement of the photographer who "thinks for himself" was always necessary - but they standardised nature and ensured a type of repeatability. They provided a standard environment which helped to ensure legibility within a community of readers: "Very little true artistic work can be done without some knowledge of the laws of composition. A picture by one ignorant of these rules may occasionally come right and be effective, but he [the photographer] must not expect a series of these accidents to occur". (Picture-making, 17)

The laws of composition controlled the variable individual perspectives on nature. They performed the same standardising function that Emerson had for nature itself in his differentiation between naturalism and impressionism. The laws of composition allowed representations of nature to be communicated between those who understood the standard language. This is why Robinson imported John Burnet's rules of artistic composition into Pictorial Effect; they supplied a quasi-grammar, "the grammar of art", through which nature could be read and understood. But legibility has its price. The obligation to communicate through a shared language immediately confronts its users with a density beyond their control - the laws of composition are "immutable". The liberty granted to the subject to interfere with raw nature is regulated by the grammatical constraints required to communicate through a language of truth.

Once in place, the "immutable laws" were immediately introduced to the "comparatively scant plasticity of the photographer's tools". (11) This posed the problem of how to make nature fit the contours of the composition through a medium which was lacking in plasticity because of its obligation to replicate shards of nature. Robinson had to have an equipment which would encourage nature to flow into the composition without relinquishing the commitment to a form of positive truth. He arrived at the medium of combination printing. Combination, composite or double printing allows a single photograph to be printed from an assemblage of several negatives. Robinson did not invent the technique; Oscar Gustav Rejlander first exhibited a combination print in 1855 under the title Groupe Printed from Three Negatives, but the real launch came with his spectacular Two Ways of Life, entered in the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857. Two Ways of Life had its supporters, but it was widely criticised both for its allegedly realist representation of nudes and for its attempt to elevate photography to the realms of painted art. Just as pertinently, the single print was assembled from thirty negatives, a practice roundly condemned by the photographic purists.

Robinson's similar photography was by no means impervious to this type of criticism. All of his writing is punctuated by ironic darts aimed at the purist critics. In Letters on Landscape Photography he advises his readers that he has no ethical objection to improving a lake-side composition by the placement of a stuffed heron, one which "could not have been distinguished in the print from the live, feathered, fish-eating biped", (67) but the picture would be spoilt "because we were afraid of the critics". He found it similarly necessary to fend off criticism from those who saw the effects of "several curvetting suns" in photographs which they assumed to be combination prints. It is difficult to reduce the relations of light and shade to a single source in a photograph taken at several different locations and several different times of day, thus leaving him prone to the same accusation of effect over truth that he had levelled at Reynolds. What Robinson relentlessly stressed in all his major works, and at the core of his theory and practice, was the dictum "let the art conceal the art". Robinson aimed for a type of action which was expended both in the force of picture-making and the elision of its own traces. The plasticity projected on to the medium and the referent allowed for both picture-making and its concealment as action. But there is always a sense in which Robinson's art gives itself away.

All of Robinson's photographs are heavily stylised or, from some perspectives, contrived. What cautions spectators from regarding them as such is that they are, after all, photographs. Something approximating the scene must have been in front of the lens when the shutter was opened. There are no visible signs on the photograph - no misalignment of register marks to indicate where the negatives were joined, no sign of assistants to reveal the act of shepherding sheep or people - no technological spectres to whisper that this scene is other than it appeared in nature. And yet we know, just as the historical spectator knew, that it cannot be so. We know because, to adopt an Emersonian point of view, we have the referent in front of us against which to measure the representation and we see that the representation, in a manner of speaking, exceeds the referent: nature never appears as perfect, as ideal as this. Idealism gives itself away precisely because it is ideal. If we are able to adopt the positivist perspective, it is not a matter of, "does this photograph depart from nature?" We immediately see that it does, and in the manner of enjoying a good conjuring trick, the question becomes, "how is it done?" There is always something of this in Robinson's photographs and it was this sleight of hand that attracted most of the attention of Robinson's contemporary critics. There is no doubt that Robinson was under the same critical pressure as that which caused Rejlander to publicly purge himself of his desire to have photography as art, but Robinson, from within the artistic wing of a fractured Photographic Society, and later ensconced behind the artistic ramparts of The Linked Ring, was better placed than Rejlander to withstand criticism.

Henry Peach Robinson, Autumn (1863)

All of Robinson's photographs were heavily composed and many of them combination printed. In Pictorial Effect he gives a detailed account of the way in which his combination picture Autumn was assembled:

A small rough sketch was first made of the idea, irrespective of any considerations of the possibility of its being carried out. Other small sketches were then made, modifying the subject to suit the figures available as models, and the scenery accessible without very much going out of the way to find them. From these rough sketches a more elaborate sketch of the composition, pretty much as it stands ... was made, the arrangement being divided so that the different positions may come on 15 by 12 plates, and that the junctions may come in unimportant plates, easy to join, but not easy to be detected afterwards. The separate negatives were then taken. (196)

Robinson roved the countryside with a train of models, props and pruning equipment, trying to shoe-horn the elements of a recalcitrant nature into the spaces designated for them in the compositional sketch, but this type of ideal could never be fully realised.

He describes a practical application of his theory in Picture-making by Photography. The end result of this particular scenario was his photograph A Merry Tale. This photograph was not a combination print, it was produced from a single negative, but the principles were the same as those at play in combination printing. A Merry Tale was a composition worked up from a drawing which was finally subjected to the modifications of nature.

Robinson prefaces his story of the photograph's construction by telling his readers: "To analyse a picture in a cold blooded way, as I am going to do now, is to rob that picture of any poetry it may contain, and leave nothing but a mechanical interest; but I know no better means of conveying the information". The mechanics of representation could indeed be exposed for the purpose of instruction, but they could not be left in this state. At the point of viewing the picture its "poetry" must fold back and conceal the mechanics. After making this stipulation Robinson began his expose.

He and his entourage were settled in the drawing room of a country house in North Wales, prior to a photographic shoot. He found one of his models "relating some funny circumstance to the others, who arrange themselves in a picturesque group round the story-teller". Robinson saw in this "the germ of a picture" and quickly sketched the scene. From here he worked up a more detailed sketch which attended to props, costume, arrangement of models, details of light and shade and the relations of these to an imaginary landscape: "By an easy transition the mind easily changed the young ladies into peasant girls, and suggested suitable surroundings". Robinson had plenty of time to reflect on the availability of these surroundings. He knew the country well, and for the next few days rain interfered with his plans. When the storm lifted the troupe made its way to the "selected spot". Once arrived, Robinson arranged his models and reworked nature so as to fit his plan - "interfering branches were cut away ... every leaf or twig that came behind [the model's outstretched hand] was hurriedly removed". The scene was almost prepared:

But a last glance from the camera showed the photographer that the tree was exactly over the head of the standing figure, and cut the composition in two parts. This would never do. But instead of moving the model the camera was moved. This corrected the error to some extent. (62)

The reader is left with the sense that the outcome is less than perfect, that nature has somehow compromised the ideal picture. Yet this intrusion of nature was a vital component of pictorial effect.

The problem was a consequence of photography in particular, it did not apply to the other, more plastic arts. Whether combination printed or not, Robinson allowed that the subject - the idea - may have to be modified according to the scenery available (nature). The modification occurred at the second phase of the procedure. Having completed a sketch of an idea "irrespective of any considerations of the possibility of its being carried out", the artist made other sketches, modifying the idea to suit accessible nature. There was no point in going very much out of the way to find the ideal accessories, because they could not exist in the material world. Robinson's photography was always an interaction between the actual and the ideal, or as he put it, "the doings of nature and the doings of man".

Many photographers, including Emerson, frequently used combination printing to introduce clouds into an otherwise "flat" landscape. When used for this purpose, the procedure overcame technological difficulties which worked against the tonal gradation of sky and land on the same plate. According to Emerson: "Printing in clouds is admissible because, if well done, a truer impression of the scene is rendered"; but this simplest form of combination printing was the only one that Emerson would admit for artistic work. He was violently opposed to the type of pastiche advocated by Robinson, likening such compositions to the pasting of pictures into the spaces left for them in a nursery picture-book.

Emerson's objections to combination printing are twofold. On the one hand, what Robinson proposed was the slicing up of standard nature and its rearrangement by the imperfect hand of the photographer; it was akin to the retouching of a negative. And on the other hand, it was an attack on the autonomy of the seer. "Selection", for Emerson, must be under the complete control of the artist: it was one of those instances where he veered away from standards and measures to stress subjective control. Combination printing replaced the autonomy of the seer with a form of photography-by-numbers which was potentially accessible to all but which made artists of none. The compositional spaces into which photographic images were implanted were delineated by the prescribed laws of composition. A more-or-less successful result could be achieved by all who were prepared to follow the instructions. The position of Emerson's highly individuated seer was immediately undermined. Emerson's objections to effect were based just as much on its restriction of artistic liberty as on its departure from a standard nature.

Emerson's fears were well founded. Although Robinson did envisage the possibility of a great artist who was exceptionally attuned to nature, unlike Emerson, he admitted that talent could be acquired.

Subjects, or the materials for subjects [in nature], abound everywhere; but the art of seeing them is a cultivated sense, and does not come by nature.

It is a great fallacy to suppose that all art, even very good art, is the work of what is vaguely called genius, except that genius which has been admirably defined as a capacity for taking infinite pains. I willingly admit that the greatest art is the product of inborn genius - added to labour - but there is very little work in any art that touches the highest point, and, therefore, little that is not the product of acquired talent. (Picture-making, 46-47)

Robinson closes The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph with the words: "if he [the photographer] takes the lesson rightly, he will first become humble, then hopeful, and afterwards confident, and if he is faithful and persistent he may `arrive'". (167) Once it was clear that artistry could be diligently worked towards and finally acquired, the ground was prepared for an institution which would teach people how to proceed. Robinson's photography was immediately institutional, as well as personal. The Linked Ring became an international society of artistic photographers - an institution of artistic photography.

 

Afterwards

Emerson and Robinson are not like oil and water but like fire and brimstone. Their photographies are complementary elements in a potentially combustible relationship. The source of that combustion is the same ground of Modernity on which the "other" correlative requirement is forged. Modernity tries to rupture science and art and drive them apart. This division was one of the many features of modernity explored by its photographers. In The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph, Robinson described the split like this:

Why should scientists take such pleasure, as they seem to do, in denying that they know anything about art?

There is a fashion in all things. Not only in our material wants but in our ways of expressing them. For many years everybody professed to know everything about art, and felt ashamed of the ignorance that they always tried to hide; others read up so as to enable them to assume a virtue and be dictatorial on the subject; but now it is quite the correct thing with many people, chiefly scientific, to boast that they "know nothing about art," and seem to be absurdly proud of their ignorance. (85)

In modernity, science and art are increasingly polarised at institutional levels and, in a Russian doll duplication, within both of the supposedly discrete institutional camps. These internal battles are fought in the angle between axes of determination. The lines of incidence might be called something like behaviourist and psychoanalytic psychology, or perhaps cultural policy and cultural theory. They are drawn in matching but opposed pairs. But these discursive extremities are prone to the same correlation of science and art as photography. When was there a positivism which could altogether eliminate the need for critical judgement? A science such as that would have to overcome the difficulty which confronted Emerson. It would have to decide the right time to "stop development so that the resulting print will be true to nature." It would have to eliminate the need for "the experienced eye" and specify, within the terms of its own functioning, "when a print is true to nature". The artistic equivalent labours under the same paradox. As in Robinson's case, the glide path of art eventually settles on a finite destination. The object is moulded by "the photographer who thinks for himself" and by the hand of a discourse translated through the manuals of an institution. There can be no such thing as a free subject who exercises "complete control, so that we can mould the picture according to our will". Emerson's will for the "complete control over both selection and execution" cannot be allowed into unqualified fruition in photography, but nor can its ambitions be erased.

It might be that the position of the photographer and the reader of photographs approximates that of the panoptic subject, endowed with the requirement of self discipline. It is in the nature of the construction that within the angle of determinations there must be some sort of latitude for the photographer to act. This latitude is the space left in Emerson's technological strictures, or that between Robinson's combination plates "easy to join but not easy to be detected afterwards." It was within those gaps that Emerson and Robinson assembled their photographs and theories of photography. It is the space in which the modern subject composes his or her self in relation to surrounding finitudes.