DH Lawrence, who complained that his beard looked black in photos, 1920s
In 1843, Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes to Mary Russell Mitford:
“Do you know anything about that wonderful invention of the day, called the daguerreotype? Have you seen any portraits produced by means of it? Think of a man sitting down in the sun and leaving his facsimile in all its full completion of outline and shadow, steadfast on a plate, at the end of a minute and a half! The Mesmeric disembodiment of spirits strikes one as a degree less marvellous. And several of these wonderful portraits, like engravings (only exquisite and delicate beyond the work of the engraver) have I seen lately, longing to have such a memorial of every being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness which is precious in such cases—but the association, and the sense of nearness involved in the thing… the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say what my brothers cry out against so vehemently— that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.”
A clergyman at the Old Vicarage in Shinfield complains to a newspaper in 1851:
“Sir,—I beg to bring to your notice the serious harm likely to come from the increasing popularity of photography... There has been an alarming increase in the popularity of this unnatural pastime. The stage has now been reached when permanent damage is likely to be inflicted not only on painting, engraving, and the arts in general, but upon industry, manners, and the home itself.
“Already, I am informed, the fascinations of the photograph album have had their effect on the thousands of children who would be better employed in pit or mill; already the reputations of Landseer, Turner, and even Martin and Westall are believed to be suffering; and I can myself vouch unhappily from my own family circle that idleness and vanity are encouraged by the constant posing for portraits, and the subsequent poring over them... This day, alas, I have been obliged to call five of my daughters before me for reproof.”
Charles Baudelaire writes in his essay, “The Salon of 1859”:
“As far as painting and sculpture are concerned, the current credo of the sophisticated public, above all in France... is this: ‘I believe in Nature, and I believe that Art is, and cannot be other than, the exact reproduction of Nature... Thus an industry that could give us a result identical to Nature would be the absolute of Art.’ A vengeful God has granted the wishes of this multitude. Daguerre was his Messiah. And now the public says to itself: ‘Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the idiots!), then photography and Art are the same thing.’ From that moment our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze at its trivial image on a scrap of metal.” (But six years later, Baudelaire writes to his mother to ask that she have her photograph taken: “The face must be at least one or two inches large. Paris is almost the only place where one knows how to do what I would like, that is, an exact portrait but one that has the softness of a drawing.”)
Vincent Van Gogh writes to his sister in 1889:
“I always think photographs abominable, and I don’t like to have them around, particularly not those of persons I know and love. Those photographic portraits wither much sooner than we ourselves do, whereas the painted portrait is a thing which is felt, done with love or respect for the human being that is portrayed. What is left of the old Dutchmen except their portraits?”
Bernard Berenson writes in an essay in 1893:
“Printing itself scarcely could have had a greater effect on the study of the classics than photography is beginning to have on the study of Old Masters... Until very recently any accurate comparison of pictures was out of the question... Few people are aware how completely [connoisseurship] has changed since the days before railways and photographs, when it was more or less of a quack science, in which every practitioner, often in spite of himself, was more or less of a quack... [Today] it is not at all difficult to see at any rate nine-tenths of a great master’s works (Titian’s or Tintoretto’s, for instance) in such rapid succession that the memory of them will be fresh enough to enable the critic to determine the place and the value of any picture. And when this continuous study of originals is supplemented by isochromatic photographs, such comparison attains almost the accuracy of the physical science.”
In February 1929, DH Lawrence observes in a letter to Bernard Falk:
“I hate photographs and things of myself, which are never me, and I wonder all the time who it can be. Look at this passport photograph I had taken two days ago. Some sweet fellow with a black beard I haven’t got.” (His beard was red.)
In 1969, Walker Evans writes:
“Colour tends to corrupt photography and absolute colour corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way colour film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies’ playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar.”
