William Mortensen: Venus and Vulcan1

Ideas, not sensations are its basic materials, and the art-form is strictly subordinated to them. Two things mark the propagandist -- the fact that he is obsessed by an opinion, and that he wishes to persuade you to a course of action. How shall he persuade you? Quiet speaking and subtle reasoning are of no avail. Paradoxically enough, propaganda, though dealing with ideas, must express itself in terms of action and emotion. Because of their direct sensory appeal, pictures are perhaps the most effective form that propaganda can take. Propaganda of this type impinges upon our minds at every waking hour ... But provinces less limited than [advertising and political cartoons] are open to the propagandist. The whole human comedy is his. Joining with the sardonic amusement of the ironist or the moral indignation of the satirist, he may castigate human absurdities, obscenities, and brutalities, and seek the reform of humanity by revealing to it its own depravities. Goya's Disasters of War and Caprichos belong to this high type of propaganda. So do Daumier's drawings of the law courts. Pictures such as these are not purely "pictorial" in their appeal, and frequently carry a literary appendage in the form of an ironic title. But considerations of pictorial purity did not deter Daumier and Goya, nor will it discourage any modern propagandist with an idea worth expressing.
1 William Mortensen, "Venus and Vulcan: An Essay on Creative Pictorialism, Part II: Sources and Uses of Material," Camera Craft 41, no. 4 (April 1932): 160-62

As quoted in A. D. Coleman, "Conspicuous by His Absence: Concerning the Mysterious Disappearance of William Mortensen," as published in A. D. Coleman Depth of Field: essays on photography, mass media, and lens culture, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998

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