Here he is clone stamping things out.
>By "a straightforward depiction of the pictorial beauties of life and nature," I mean work like Stieglitz's "Scurrying Homewards," "Winter on Fifth Avenue," "The Net Mender," etc., or his recent "The Hand of Man." "They also have been manipulated," the Photo-Secessionists will argue. Yes, I know he has eliminated several logs of wood that were lying near the sidewalk when he took the snapshot of his "Winter on Fifth Avenue," took out a rope that disturbed the foreground in his "Scurrying Homewards," lightened the sky in "The Net Mender," and darkened the rails in "The Hand of Man." Why not? Surely that is permissible, as it is really nothing but the old-fashioned retouching. If "dodging" is wrong, then also Eickemeyer, and nearly all pictorial photographers, have to be condemned. But if you allow elimination, why do you object to accentuation, do not all retouchers accentuate their highlights? Sure enough, but only where it is indicated on the negative and not willfully, wherever it happens to look well. The whole pictorial effect of a photographic print should be gained by photographic technique, pure and simple, and not merely a part of it. It is surely not legitimate to let the camera do the most difficult part, for instance the reproduction of a figure, and then after embellishing it with a few brush strokes or engraved lines (a comparatively easy task for a man used to painting) claim that it is all done by photography.
