Ida Tarbell
McClure’s/May, 1897
Photography is treated so generally as an art in which a machine does all the work, that it is difficult to believe that some of the greatest portraits of our time have been produced by this medium. It is true, however, that the ideal requirement of a portrait—to give a glimpse of a man’s soul—has never been more nearly satisfied than by a few photographs made several years ago in England by Mrs. Julia Cameron, and by a large number made in the last few years in New York by Mr. G.C. Cox. Of Mrs. Cameron’s work this magazine has already given its readers some specimens. The present article is devoted to that of Mr. Cox.
So quietly has Mr. Cox’s work been done that, except to a limited public particularly interested in purely artistic results, it is unfamiliar. He has never sought general recognition. Conscious that what he was striving to attain would be understood by only a few men, he has worked for them alone, seeking their criticisms and suggestions and observing closely the effect on them of what he had done.
To appreciate his method of work, one should have a sitting in his studio. The experience is altogether unusual. One does nothing as in the conventional studio. He is not posed. He is not bidden to look at the “upper right-hand corner” of anything. He is not asked to smile. He is not made to keep quiet while a watch ticks out an interminable minute. As for the camera, it seems hardly to come into the operation. Probably many persons have had a series of portraits taken by Mr. Cox who afterwards were unable to tell without an effort where the camera stood and how it was operated. All this is natural enough if one understands what the artist is trying to do. His treatment of a sitter is founded on his theory that all men purposely or unwittingly wear a mask, and that unless this mask can be torn away and the emotions allowed to chase freely across the face, no characteristic picture is possible. His first effort then is to get rid of the non-committal mask; to make the subject forget himself, the camera, his mission at the studio.
An ordinary man could not do this, but Mr. Cox is no ordinary man. He is original, sincere, witty, and in profound earnest over his work. The subject who comes to him prepared to pose is surprised to be greeted with what seems to be quite irrelevant, though decidedly brilliant, talk. Mr. Cox has known many of the most interesting people of the last twenty years, and has a great fund of unusual anecdotes about them. When he begins to tell stories of Whitman and Beecher, of William Hunt and Richardson, of Amelia Rives and Duse, it is only an unusually dull and preoccupied mood which will prevent one from becoming interested. The quaint and original expressions; the unconventional opinions; the odd personal observations; the contempt for shams, surprise and arouse the subject. Before he is aware he, too, is talking animatedly. Mr. Cox tells with appreciation how Bishop Taylor, the great African missionary, came to him once to be photographed. He was for some time indifferent and dull, not understanding at all what the artist was after, but finally thawed out, and Mr. Cox caught one of his best portraits just as the aged Bishop finished telling with great gusto the story of a young man coming to the ship to see him off on a recent voyage.
“Good-by, dear Bishop,” he blubbered; “I shall probably never see you again.”
“No,” said the Bishop, “you may be dead when I get back.”
It is not only the habitual mask of a face which must be conquered. Many people suffer from what is called “camera fear.” In front of the machine they become, in spite of themselves, rigid and lifeless. Cox believes that this peculiar feeling is best conquered by taking the subject in his own home or place of work. There he naturally wears a lighter mask and falls more readily into characteristic attitudes. Many of Mr. Cox’s happiest results have been obtained by studying his subjects in their own homes. Thus the fine portrait of Richardson was taken in the architect’s house. His recent experiences in photographing Mr. Cleveland at the White House and Major McKinley at Canton, have been equally convincing that if one wishes to make a real portrait it is wiser to study the subject where he is most at home.
In taking photographs Mr. Cox aims to make as many as six negatives. A complete series of his pictures runs the gamut of a man’s soul from the moment of smiling ease to the one of anguish. Not that he always succeeds in completing the series; he rarely fails, however, to get several characteristic pictures. What could be more characteristic, fuller of sweetness and truth than his portrait of Whitman? He has given us in it what must remain the typical portrait of Whitman—a portrait which is the foundation of Johnson’s great etching, which George Barnard, the sculptor, declares has been his inspiration, and at the sight of which Duse cried out, when it was shown to her, “But it is his soul! How can one photograph a soul?”
It is not to be supposed that all of Cox’s sitters yield themselves unresistingly to his unusual procedure. Trained to pose to a camera, many are inclined to resent the artist’s effort to interest them and make them forget the object of their visit. There are others who insist that, unless a face is lighted in a certain way, the result cannot be satisfactory—slaves of a theory, they fail to see that this is a revolutionist regardless of conventions, whose only aim is to get the fine thing he sees.
Another difficulty with which Mr. Cox struggles is the almost universal notion that a portrait should be something decorative. Many a woman who goes to him makes a really characteristic picture impossible by her elaborate preparations. Nothing could be more fatal to the Cox idea. Chiffons are as inappropriate in one of his portraits as trefoils on a Grecian facade. Where a woman dresses especially for her picture, all that Cox can get is, as he says, “a picture of her consciousness of her clothes.”
Where the decorative is entirely eschewed, it follows that the subject must have individuality for the picture to be of value. Cox rejoices in the decided character, and shrinks with dismay from a neutral one; there is nothing for him to get hold of. The people who have sat to him have been a rare lot; in the past twenty years he has photographed Walt Whitman, Richardson, General Sherman, C. A. Dana, Melchers, Howells, Hunt, Beecher, E. E. Hale, Duse, and hosts of others. In most of the cases the portraits he has made will remain the standard ones of their several subjects.
The Cox portrait, however, appeals primarily to the discerning mind and the artist’s eye. Ordinarily it clashes too hard with the conventional idea of a photograph. The unusual is to many the unmeaning. It is this fact that comes in frequently to depress and discourage the artist. Often he hesitates to seize with his camera what he sees in a face, because conscious that it will not be understood. He shrinks from putting before subjects something which means a great deal to him but will mean nothing to them. The real reward in his work lies in his ability to produce that which is an inspiration to those who, like himself, are seeking independently to do sincere, truthful work, rich in a value of its own.
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