The Art of Photography

The machine has begun to rival the brush. For a time, art rose against the machine in a sweeping revolt, because the machine, as art says, cannot achieve beautiful, lofty expression; it is but a deaf machine, capturing things as they are — and things as they are, without imagination and without beautiful expression, remain inert and dry to the soul and to the eye...

But photography has for some time now begun to occupy its distinguished place in art; and the deaf machine has set about rivaling, to a certain degree, the artist's creative brush and his soaring imagination.

Photography is composed of two essential elements: the element of the machine, and then expression and invention. Expression and invention are the artist's style and his personal stamp, and they are the two elements with which the machine would rival the brush... In these specimens we have seen by the photographer Farid Kahhaleh there is a most successful attempt to bring out those immortal artistic horizons which the machine was formerly powerless to express.

There is in them much life and much freedom of movement, and this artist has succeeded in capturing them and making of them living pieces lacking nothing of faithful expression, or of distinguished imagination...

In Mr. Kahhaleh's pictures you see the mark of the gifted artist who knows how to refine his pictures, and how to create the beautiful atmosphere within them, so that as you look at them you forget that they are the work of a machine — a machine with an eye that sees, but no imagination that creates.

The artist Kahhaleh was an engineer before he took up photography as a profession; but the artist in him overcame the engineer. This came about through his reading of the works of William Mortensen, the famous American photographer; he threw himself into the study of this artist, and then circumstances allowed him to study under him...

Last year the artist Kahhaleh returned to his homeland in the company of the Arab Emir Saud, and he exhibited some of his specimens in the great West Hall of the American University of Beirut, where they met with great appreciation.

"The Woman's Voice" will present magnificent specimens by this artist in its coming issues.