Where art begins by Hume Nisbet

• STANDING, as I do at present, in front of the partly opened gateway to that land of wonders-photographic discovery-I should like to begin my remarks, before looking through the narrow aperture, with a glance backwards, say twenty years, to what the science and art were then, and what they have since become, before we surmise what it-photography- may be twenty years hereafter.
  
• I mean to take up photography only where it joins hands with my own work-painting-in the broad sense of the word, which, I may safely assert, is taking it nearly all round. When I look back twenty years to the time at which I first began to mix with the professors of the sun-craft-"Brothers of the Light,‟ to use an occult term-
  
• and compare the work of those days with the results of this day, and think upon all it may yet be, it is with a feeling of profound astonishment, not unmixed with admiring envy, that I regard the young scientist beginning a career so filled with possibilities and future discoveries. It seems as if I, the painter, walked upon a highway tramped down by countless travellers, leading to an end definite and unavoidable, while he has before him only a little distance marked out, with a vast country to explore, as his mind and genius may best determine.
  
• Many years ago my father took it into his head to begin a photographic business. He did not know much about it himself, although he had a good knowledge of chemistry; but he was an enthusiast in experiments and a credulous believer in the honesty of mankind.
  
• Therefore, through the advice of a friend, he built a glass-house, bought some cameras and chemicals (it was in the wet-plate days), laid in a stock of handsomely-designed mounts, &c., and advertised for an operator. I dare say a great number of photographers have gone through a similar experience, thinking, as he did, that this was about the whole which was required to start a future flourishing business, and that the operator, like the cameras, would be equally easy to procure, provided the money was there to pay for them.
  
• He bought cameras and hired operators. I think he got through about a dozen of the one, and about half a hundred of the other, before he woke up to the knowledge that something else was required before the business could be built up on a firm basis or the public satisfied with the efforts made to please them.
• In those days backgrounds and accessories were not greatly considered as the means towards an artistic end. One plain background and one a little complicated were all that the operator considered needful, with a carved chair or fluted pilaster; and thus the multitude were turned out with a set, fixed stare, full front, bolt upright. If male, a lenient photographer might permit one leg to cross the other by way of ease. The female portion generally sat with hands meekly crossed over the lap and a curtain falling gracefully on one side, like the heroic portraits of the times of Sir Benjamin West.