In the photographic realm of the nude, this quality is compulsory. We don’t want to have offered us so intimate a likeness of a nude figure that we ask, “Who is she, or he?” The general and not the particular suffices; the type not the person. The painter’s art contains few stronger touches through this means than the incident of the sleeping senator in Gérôme’s _“__Death of Cæsar__”_.
In the suggestion of an idea, graphic and plastic art rise to the highest levels of poetry. The picture or the poem then becomes the surface, refracting the idea which stretches on into infinity.
The dying lion of Lucerne, mortally pierced by the shaft, the wounded lion of Paris, striking under his forepaw the arrow meant for his destruction are symbols memorializing the Swiss guard of Louis XVI, and the unequal struggle of France against Germany in ’72.
At the death of Lorenzo the arts languished and Michel Angelo’s supine and hanging figures in his tomb are there to indicate it.
Suggestion with its phantom guide-posts leads us through its varied mazes to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry and learn all the oracle may teach him.
The positive light of day passes to the twilight of the moon and stars.
What things may be seen and forms created out of the simple mystery of twilight!
Its value by suggestion may be known technically to the artist, for through the elimination of detail, the work is sifted to its essence and we then see it in its bigness, if it has any, and if not we discover this lack. When the studio light fails our best critic enters and discloses in a few moments what we have been looking for all day long.
There should be in most pictures an opportunity of saying that which shall be interpreted by each one according to his temperament, a little place where each may delight in setting free his own imagination.
To account for the popularity of many pictures in both color and black and white on any other ground than that of mystery seems ofttimes impossible. The strong appeal made to all classes by subjects containing mysterious suggestion is evidenced by the frequency of awards to such in photographic and other competitions.
The student of photography asks if blurred edges, empty shadows and vaporous detail mean quality. They certainly mean mystery, which when applied to an appropriate subject signifies that the artist has joined his art with the imagination of the beholder. He has therefore let it out at large usury.