As I have said, there exists documentary evidence which proves the deliberate unfairness of this article. It is therefore not necessary to accept my judgment on the importance of Stieglitz and the work done in America. A. Horsley Hinton, who is responsible for the prejudiced article in the Encyclopædia, was the editor of _The Amateur Photographer_, a London publication; and in that magazine, as long ago as 1904, we have, in Mr. Hinton’s own words, a refutation of what he wrote for the _Britannica_. In the May 19 (1904) issue he writes: “We believe every one who is interested in the advance of photography generally, will learn with pleasure that Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, whose life-long and wholly disinterested devotion to pictorial photography should secure him a unique position, will be present at the opening of the next Exhibition of the Photographic Salon in London. Mr. Stieglitz was zealous in all good photographic causes long before the Salon, and indeed long before pictorial photography was discussed—with Dr. Vogel in Germany, for instance, twenty-five years ago.”
Elsewhere in this same magazine we read: “American photography is going to be the ruling note throughout the world unless others bestir themselves; indeed, the Photo-Secession (American) pictures have already captured the highest places in the esteem of the civilized world. Hardly an exhibition of first importance is anywhere held without a striking collection of American work, brought together and sent by Mr. Alfred Stieglitz. For the last two or three years in the European exhibitions these collections have secured the premier awards, or distinctions.” And again we find high praise of Steichen, “than whom America possesses no more brilliant genius among her sons who have taken up photography.”
These quotations—and many similar ones appeared over a decade ago in Mr. Hinton’s magazine—give evidence that Mr. Hinton was not unaware of the extreme importance of American photographic work or of the eminent men who took part in it; and yet in writing his article for the _Britannica_ he has apparently carefully forgotten what he himself had previously written.
But this is not the only evidence we have of deliberate injustice in the Encyclopædia’s disgraceful neglect of our efforts in this line. In 1913, in the same English magazine, we find not only an indirect confession of the _Britannica’s_ bias, but also the personal reason for that bias. Speaking of Stieglitz’s connection with that phase of photographic history to which Mr. Hinton was most intimately connected, this publication says: “At that era, and for long afterwards, Stieglitz was, in fact, a thorn in our sides. ‘Who’s Boss of the Show?’ inquires a poster, now placarded in London. Had that question been asked of the (London) Salon, an irritated whisper of honesty would have replied ‘Stieglitz.’ And ... we didn’t like it. We couldn’t do without him; but these torrential doctrines of his were, to be candid, a nuisance.... He is an influence; an influence for which, even if photography were not concerned, we should be grateful, but which, as it is, we photographers can never perhaps justly estimate.” After this frank admission the magazine adds: “Stieglitz—too big a man to need any ‘defense’—has been considerably misunderstood and misrepresented, and, in so far as this is so, photographers and photography itself are the losers.”