The story of photography in the 19th century is organized by technical hurdles individual practitioners contributed to the advancement of the medium. Until 1888, a photographer had to mix the chemistry for the negative plate right before taking the photograph, then immediately chemically develop it. It required knowledge of chemistry and math; and funding for the expensive lenses, cameras, and chemicals. It was difficult to learn, and difficult to create a sharp, clear image, as the materials were not as sensitive to light as what we are familiar with now. Because of this, early photographs were multiple second exposures, even minutes for an indoor portrait. Photographers used head-clamps on stands to hold a subject still long enough. Many early portraits look stiff and somber, as a result.
As the medium matured, enthusiasts formed Camera Clubs, to keep in contact with each other, share techniques, and rally around the cause of the photograph as a creative medium. From the beginning, there were questions about whether photographs were ‘art’ like paintings, or whether they were merely the renderings of machines. Painters competed not only for clients, but in organized Societies that juried membership and exhibitions (called Salons). Members were ranked by their subject matter specialties: genre (scenes from history or mythology) being most important, followed by portraits, landscapes, then still life. The camera clubs adopted these subject areas too, and many of the strongest photographic works of the time were being created in direct response to the categories of painting.
The first clubs were open to anyone with an interest in the new medium, where an amateur could learn the techniques (No photo schools yet, and books at this time were very technical). Professional photographers were defined as making their living from photography, usually from portraiture. By the 1870s, a trend towards embracing the medium’s limitations was becoming apparent: if a photographer scratches the delicate negative or print before it dries, it creates a line more similar to drawing techniques; could a lot of scratches successfully blend the medium into art? If the subject moved, creating a blur, why not also move the camera? The camera easily created soft images in and out of focus; painters shifted to imitate it (the Impressionists). The microscopically sharp tintypes of the previous decades were being replaced by methods that were easier to use, and created larger, reproducible images, that were not quite as sharp. So they embraced blurry as a creative effect, in the late 19th-century movement later known as Pictorialism.
With the invention of roll film in 1884, followed quickly by the Kodak camera, everything changed. Suddenly anyone could be a photographer! The boom in photo clubs, photo exhibitions, photo magazines and advertising between the 1880s and 1920s reflect how much changed. Professional photographers (who may not have been very good) lost work to the burgeoning masses.
Articles began appearing, criticizing the mixing of professional and amateur work in exhibitions, and complaining about lost customers. One of the loudest American complainers is remembered as the most famous, Alfred Steiglitz, who thought clubs should be more discerning. After failing to get these changes, he decided to secede from the photographic community, and started his own club in 1902, the invitation-only Photo-Secession. Stieglitz used his club, his New York Gallery, his magazine Camera Work, and his influence to discredit open-membership clubs and anyone who would show their Club's works.* He wrote open letters to the photography magazines, singling out photographers and clubs he disagreed with. The following issue would print the subject’s response; each with their tongue-in-check insults and insinuations. The conversations took months, but are delightfully easy to follow now.
The national exhibitions tried to calm the masses by segregating prizes into Professional, or Amateur categories. Photographic equipment companies hosted international competitions, with huge prizes to entice the elites to compete with the amateurs. One such contest, the 1903 Bausch and Lomb Quarter Century $3000 prize, was actually positively reviewed in Camera Work as fairly judged! Stieglitz had won the grand prize.
Camera Clubs had popped up all over the United States but were not well organized nationally. In December 1903, a group of midwest photographers formed the Salon Club of America, a highly organized, open membership group that exchanged portfolios of prints through the mail for critiques. Within a year, the Salon had organized with other clubs to form the American Federation of Photographic Societies, which hosted its first salon in New York, December 1904. (Nellie isn’t included in the limited edition catalog, but is in mass produced one.)
The values of the American Federation of Photographic Societies are cheekily illustrated on the cover of the Catalogue of the First American Photographic Salon, 1904. “Many schools in art and all good.”
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* See “Photographic Politics, The First American Photographic Salon and the Stieglitz Response.” by Gillian Greenhill Hannum, in History of Photography, Vol 14, No. 3, Jul 1990, pp 285-295
As the medium matured, enthusiasts formed Camera Clubs, to keep in contact with each other, share techniques, and rally around the cause of the photograph as a creative medium. From the beginning, there were questions about whether photographs were ‘art’ like paintings, or whether they were merely the renderings of machines. Painters competed not only for clients, but in organized Societies that juried membership and exhibitions (called Salons). Members were ranked by their subject matter specialties: genre (scenes from history or mythology) being most important, followed by portraits, landscapes, then still life. The camera clubs adopted these subject areas too, and many of the strongest photographic works of the time were being created in direct response to the categories of painting.
The first clubs were open to anyone with an interest in the new medium, where an amateur could learn the techniques (No photo schools yet, and books at this time were very technical). Professional photographers were defined as making their living from photography, usually from portraiture. By the 1870s, a trend towards embracing the medium’s limitations was becoming apparent: if a photographer scratches the delicate negative or print before it dries, it creates a line more similar to drawing techniques; could a lot of scratches successfully blend the medium into art? If the subject moved, creating a blur, why not also move the camera? The camera easily created soft images in and out of focus; painters shifted to imitate it (the Impressionists). The microscopically sharp tintypes of the previous decades were being replaced by methods that were easier to use, and created larger, reproducible images, that were not quite as sharp. So they embraced blurry as a creative effect, in the late 19th-century movement later known as Pictorialism.
With the invention of roll film in 1884, followed quickly by the Kodak camera, everything changed. Suddenly anyone could be a photographer! The boom in photo clubs, photo exhibitions, photo magazines and advertising between the 1880s and 1920s reflect how much changed. Professional photographers (who may not have been very good) lost work to the burgeoning masses.
Articles began appearing, criticizing the mixing of professional and amateur work in exhibitions, and complaining about lost customers. One of the loudest American complainers is remembered as the most famous, Alfred Steiglitz, who thought clubs should be more discerning. After failing to get these changes, he decided to secede from the photographic community, and started his own club in 1902, the invitation-only Photo-Secession. Stieglitz used his club, his New York Gallery, his magazine Camera Work, and his influence to discredit open-membership clubs and anyone who would show their Club's works.* He wrote open letters to the photography magazines, singling out photographers and clubs he disagreed with. The following issue would print the subject’s response; each with their tongue-in-check insults and insinuations. The conversations took months, but are delightfully easy to follow now.
The national exhibitions tried to calm the masses by segregating prizes into Professional, or Amateur categories. Photographic equipment companies hosted international competitions, with huge prizes to entice the elites to compete with the amateurs. One such contest, the 1903 Bausch and Lomb Quarter Century $3000 prize, was actually positively reviewed in Camera Work as fairly judged! Stieglitz had won the grand prize.
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| From Camera Work, January 1904, pg. 53, Heidelberg University Library Digital Collections |
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| Metropolitan Camera Club of New York and Salon Club of America. Catalogue of the American Photographic Salon. N.p., 1904. Nineteenth Century Collections Online. Accessed 27 Mar. 2020. |
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* See “Photographic Politics, The First American Photographic Salon and the Stieglitz Response.” by Gillian Greenhill Hannum, in History of Photography, Vol 14, No. 3, Jul 1990, pp 285-295