Seulement pour elles, c’est bien pire

09:11 Sep 15, 2022 

I still don’t understand why Lartigue needs to care about changing fashions or his talent in photography at all, since he was aiming at becoming a painter when he wrote this. Taking photos for him at that time was a pure hobby.

@ph-b : Vous avez bien raison. Je vais essayer de poster ma prochaine question dans la paire français- français!

15:59 Sep 12, 2022 

Quelque chose m'échappe : vous traduisez du français vers le chinois, mais vous posez votre question de compréhension écrite dans la paire français-anglais ?

Au cas où vous souhaiteriez rectifier le tir, vous pouvez poser la question en français seul : il suffit de demander le français comme langue source et comme langue cible. Vous devriez recevoir un grand nombre d'avis autorisés.

Quoi qu'il en soit, le sens de « seulement » ici est celui-ci :
« B. [Le plus souvent dans des loc. ou dans des tours de la lang. fam. et pop. parlée*]
1. [Souvent placé en tête de phrase ou de prop., sert à marquer une restriction ou une oppos. à ce qui vient d'être dit ou écrit] »
(http://stella.atilf.fr/Dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/advanced.exe?8...
* Le style de votre texte, un journal, se rapproche de la langue parlée.

Et juste pour le challenge, si j'avais à traduire la phrase demandée en anglais, j'écrirais par exemple : Except (that) it's much/a lot worse for them. Mais je laisse ça aux anglophones de naissance.

06:33 Sep 12, 2022 

there is another tricky part:

Décidément, on ne peut pas faire de confitures ni de conserves de ses émerveillements.

There are definitely no literal jams nor cans of anything involved.

17:59 Sep 11, 2022 

I think you can make a reasonable suggestion TC - do go ahead!

17:07 Sep 11, 2022 

La mode (au sens large) évolue trop rapidement. Ses clichés ne reflètent pas cette réalité.
Pour elles ( les photos) la déception que Lartigue éprouve est encore plus forte ( c'est encore pire ) par rapport à celle qu'il éprouve eu égard à ses écrits ou à sa peinture.

13:02 Sep 11, 2022 

with Tony about how to construe the sentence, including of course the reference to "fashion/mode". I too think "seulement" is as he says an introduction to the following sentence and it means something like "The thing is..."

09:02 Sep 11, 2022 

In addition to what Tony says, you will have observed that in the previous paragraph he says that for an hour earlier in the afternoon his imagination had made him believe he had some talent, and that later he was "triste, furieux, malheureux". Consequently, it is possible that later in the evening he sees his photos as pathetic because of this perceived lack of talent. Worse, in addition to that inherent lack of quality, those photos have been overtaken by changes in fashion (photographic style, etc.). Or rather, what was once new and striking (as his photos might have been) and was initially criticized for its novelty, soon becomes mainstream as others copy the style.
However, it is not absolutely certain that he is referring to photographic talent since he mentions "elle, coquette et souriante" sitting beside him in his sports car at 7pm, possibly after spending the afternoon together ;-)

07:48 Sep 11, 2022 

A native French speaker will surely give you more valid insights, but here's the way I read this.
The photos don't "pass" — always tricky to translate, but perhaps here, something like "don't work" (we don't know if he means 'pass' in respect of some third party, like say a newspaper rejecting his pictures, but I don't see any clues to corroborate this) — or 'people (in general) don't accept / like them'.
Worse than that, not only do they not 'pass', but changing fashions mean that the qualities they do have today will not last long.
I think we need to understand the 'seulement' here as if written with a comma after it: "It's just that..." or "The only problem is..." We do use 'only' just like this in EN too, but it's perhaps too easy to read it in the other senses as "these specific photographs alone..."
I think 'mode' here means 'fashions' in the broader sense, rather than 'fashion' as in garments etc.
It seems to me the second paragraph is just bemoaning the fact that the photographs are by nature ephemeral, perceived and judged 'dans l'air du temps'.