PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART series. It is in his treatment of the human subject in relation to outdoor scenes that Mr. Stieglitz has exhibited the most distinguished skill. Nor is he one of those who despair of discovering pictorial motive at home. The human nature which attracts him he finds most free from artificiality in the streets of cities. New York in its scenic and human aspects he has studied exhaustively, and one hopes that the results will some day be published, for they would give a record of city life without a parallel. Reproduced here are two of his famous series of night views of New York, one of them memorable as being the first night photograph made in which life is introduced. In both, the combined effects of brilliant and of diffused light are remarkable, and An Iry Night amply justifies his contention that a certain amount of "halation" (the muzzy halo surrounding some of the lights) is true to facts and pictorially pleasant. In this picture, also, one notes with what fine precision the reaching distances of the scenes are rendered. Considering the absence of light, the depth of the picture and the subtlety of its " values " are surprising. Another famous New York series is the one of snow scenes, of which a well-known example showed a Fifth Avenue stage ploughing through the newly-fallen snow; a picture fine in composition and in its suggestion of solemn desolation, full of atmosphere and wonderfully true in the receding distances of the waste of snow. Like all his work, it represents a conception thought out and vividly realized before the camera was set in place. In connection with these snow pictures there is an amusing story. One night he was ::~.wakened by a blizzard, and getting up and putting on many layers of clothing, crept from the house. He set 45
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