Pictorial Photography in America 1920-1921 (Complete)

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. Because the Association knows that photography is able to teach these things, it sought the aid of art museums and public libraries to conduct photographic exhibitions so that children and adults may not only see fine examples of the work of the camera in the hands of artists, but be led thereby to appreciate more fully the value of photography as an aid to interesting composition and a quickening of the eye in realizing the beauty of sunlight and shadows which flit around us much unrecognized at times. Succeeding in gaining the sympathetic co-operation of seventeen museums, in the winter of 1917-18 the Association collected, from many of the most important workers in this country, more than two hundred prints, which were divided into two groups and exhibited as follows: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Milwaukee Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, City Art Museum (St. Louis), Toledo Museum of Art, Detroit Museum of Art, Cleveland Art Museum, Cincinnati Museum of Art, Morristown Library, Newark Museum Association, New Britain (Conn.) Institute, Worcester Art Museum, Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Guild of Allied Arts (Buffalo), Grand Rapids Art Association, University of Oklahoma, New Orleans Art Association. There was also held in New York City an exhibition of the work of the New England, New Jersey and Connecticut photographers, and among the immediate activities of the Association will be the holding in New York of exhibitions of the work of members of the Pacific Coast and Other places, so that there may be established a fuller understanding of the points of view among the various pictorialists throughout the country. Among Other of its plans are: honoring those who have given valued service to photography; the formation of a library; the establishment of a home headquarters; the distribution of knowledge tending toward the making of better catalogues; the art of hanging pictures so that their individual beauty may be enhanced; the application of the motion picture to pictorial expression; the recommendation of books on the development of the individual, as well as Others relating to the study of contemporary arts, so that, through an acquaintance with all these, there may be brought to the student a new and an individual approach in his photographic work. The Association holds monthly meetings at the National Arts Club, 119 East 19th Street, New York, where exhibitions and lectures are given. Admission is free. The Association now publishes its first annual “Pictorial Photography in America,” which comprises the work of important pictorialists in this country, whether or not members of the Association. And in following out so broad a plan the Association has demonstrated to its friends that its main interests lie in the presentation of fine work, little caring who the individual may be. As soon as the world has resumed its normal stride, the Association will extend invitations for an exhibition of foreign work to be shown in America. In turn, the Association will be glad to send an exhibition of American work abroad to those who desire to see, more intimately than we are able to do by the process of reproduction, what American pictorialists are doing. In another volume we hope to present the work of foreign pictorialists. Plans are now being made whereby the original prints selected for this Annual will be exhibited, under the direction of the American Federation of Arts, in the galleries of many art museums throughout the country