International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1931)

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— 631 — this kind, the scenery, houses, human figures, a room, a passage or an archway gradually acquire a physical solidity in our eyes. This has to be learnt, but it soon comes and, when it does, it is a source of peculiar enjoyment. Gradually we lose the taste for bad colouring and the spoiling of good photographs by bad colour processes. We have no need of a fashion for the coloured picture. We are not, of course, criticising the work of amateurs in connection with colour photography. The field is a new one and the work to be done has a serious purpose and a definite value. It is, however, the work of a few specialists and does not touch our own limited needs. Quite recently a new fashion mania has appeared in our midst — the " Kleinbild ", and once again, I repeat, we shall all be delighted if it at last becomes possible for those with slender purses to take photographs for the home circle of the daily life at school and in the home, to take photographic " minutes " as it were, recording earlier lessons for the use of future classwork. Such a possibility is fraught with great scientific value to not only psychology but to pedagogics, the teaching of individual subjects, local geography and the history of teaching and of the school itself. I remember alas! how, when I was a young teacher, I endeavoured to record as much as possible of the work of my pupils, their environment, their achievements of every kind, and so on. I had no public funds to draw upon and no means of my own. And who at that time felt that such work was indispensable? In those days public money for the photography of our fellow-creatures was available, if at all, only for the obtaining of matter for criminal records. If in pre-war days there had been miniature cameras of all kinds at a possible price, what would they have been used for? Even to-day their function is not determined. In consequence we are entitled to view the whole question of this branch of photography with a friendly and hopeful eye without fear of being accused of prejudice. And yet we are afraid! Technical objections, certainly, may be dismissed. Such is our faith in modern science that we reckon with the removal of all technical difficulties within a measurable time. What we are afraid of is the unstemmed flood of photographs that will stream forth from this type of camera in response to dealers' exhortations, such as " You take the snap and we do the rest ". There is here a real danger to culture. It is suggested that as many photographs could be taken as possible and the best be chosen. This is rather the point of view of tropical nature, which sows seed with a lavish hand, reckons with enormous loss and yet reaps the harvest, but it is not a principle that I could recommend in our own case. Where is there the possibility of choice, of inculcating conscientious forethought and a wise calculation of cost? Is that not necessary? A word now about the episcope, another fashionable phenomenon, especially in the form of the epidiascope. Again, I am fully in agreement with the principle. There is perhaps no aid to teaching so effective and so