Today the novice amateur photographer can seek guidance from innumerable manuals and magazines, and move forward by easy stages. But in the early decades of photography beginners had a much harder time. The best way to avoid initial difficulties (the excessive choice of processes, and the problems of making them work) was to get advice from seasoned practitioners. The phrase vae solis—woe to the solitary—seems custom made for the early amateur. So the first clubs appeared quite soon after photography itself.
The first societies
The world's first photographic society was probably the Edinburgh Calotype Club, founded in 1843. Four years later in London, a number of amateurs formed the Calotype Society. In France, too, amateurs first banded together around photography on paper. In 1851 the Société Héliographique was founded. Probably because they were too informal, however, these association soon disappeared. The Calotype Society was replaced in 1850 by the Photographic Exchange Club, then in 1853 by the London Photographic Society, which eventually (1894) became the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). In 1854 some members of the short-lived Société Héliographique formed the Société Française de Photographie (SFP). (The first American amateur group, the American Photographic Society, appeared in 1858.) Both it and its London counterpart were solidly structured on the lines of scientific academies and learned societies, with regular formal meetings at an established venue, a bulletin, and an archive. In principle, these bodies advanced the progress of photography via that of their members. The latter often belonged to other learned societies as well, were in many cases artists and scientists, and generally came from the affluent elite. The clubs provided sociability and the chance to exchange news, technical information, and pictures, often in opulent surroundings: thus the Club der Amateur-Photographen in Vienna (f. 1887) occupied premises furnished by Nathaniel von Rothschild, with a games room, billiard room, and all the amenities of a top-rank English club.
Modern clubs
At the end of the 19th century, with the spread of the dry-plate process and the simplification of photographic techniques and equipment, the number of amateurs grew considerably. But instead of boosting the membership of existing societies, this produced a proliferation of new ones. In France, the years 1850-70 were characterized by the hegemony of the SFP. From the 1880s on, the number of groups grew continually. The year 1887 saw the creation of the Société d'Excursions des Amateurs de Photographies, and 1888 that of the Photo-Club de Paris. In 1892 there were 38 photographic societies in France, a figure rising to 50 in 1900 and c.100 by 1906. In England, the number rose even more steeply, from 40 in 1885 to 131 in 1890 and over 250 by 1895. (In the German Empire in 1899, 120 groups were listed, although c.25 of these were organizations for professionals and their employees.) This expansion can be explained partly by a general craze for clubs at the end of the 19th century. But it also reflects a desire on the part of a new generation of amateur photographers for a different setting for photography-related sociability: not so much a learned society as a convivial meeting place, with a clubbier atmosphere. Amateurs also wanted to distance themselves from the professional organizations of an increasingly commercialized medium. The Society of Amateur Photographers of New York, for example, founded in 1884, emphasized its exclusive dedication to amateurs, ‘unhampered by trade interests, …governed by men who did not sell goods or practice photographs as a trade’. Diversification, too, was the order of the day, with each new group representing a different variant of photographic activity: for example, the Photo-Vélo-Club de Paris organized photographic cycling trips, the Photo-Postal-Club Français ran exchanges of prints by mail, the Stéréo-Club Français was dedicated to three-dimensional photography, and so on. (In 1890s London, a Society of Night Photographers appeared, with an annual Night-Hawks' dinner.) Photography also played a significant part in many societies whose nominal purpose was non-photographic: for example, the Société des Excursionnistes Marseillais—‘les buveurs d'air’—founded in 1897, whose members saw the camera as a serious adjunct to hiking, matchmaking, and leisurely meals; 17, 000 of their images survive in the Marseille archives.
Whatever their individual peculiarities, the activities of modern clubs were generally much the same, including the organization of competitions, outings, and projection sessions, the demonstration of new techniques, the mounting of exhibitions, and the publication of newsletters. Though the atmosphere might be less academic, there was no fundamental departure from past practices. Still central was the promotion of exchange and interaction between amateurs and the idea of pooling knowledge and talent. This golden age of photographic societies lasted for a good part of the 20th century, both in the West and elsewhere: in Japan, for example, clubs multiplied from the 1900s. It was only in the 1970s and, especially, 1980s, with the growth of individualism both in photography and more generally, that amateurs began to desert the photo clubs, whose numbers, at least in the West, went into steady decline.
The role of associations
At its creation in 1851, the Société Héliographique defined itself as ‘purely artistic and scientific’. It was mainly in these two areas that associations made their most effective contribution to photography's expansion and progress. As far as science in general was concerned, societies pressed for the application of photography to medicine, astronomy, cartography, etc. In the narrower field of photographic science (optics, chemistry), they encouraged the development of new processes, partly by organizing regular technical competitions. At the end of the 19th century it was societies—increasingly coordinated in leagues and networks—that campaigned for the codification of practices and the standardization of materials (for example, the format and sensitivity of plates). And, in defending the interests of their members, most of whom were amateurs, they also helped to defend photographic quality, which was often threatened by commercial logic. In the 1980s, for example, it was photographic societies that, by lobbying the industry, prevented baryta-coated papers being wholly replaced by resin-coated (RC) types.
The associations' non- or anti-commercial stance also favoured the emergence of art photography, and they bred the first artistic movement in the medium's history: pictorialism. Although, previously, certain photographers had been regarded as artists, and many photographs had had undeniable aesthetic qualities, there had been no fully coherent movement, with its own artists, theorists, critics, journals, debates, and public. It was the society network—from the Linked Ring and the Photo-Secession to the Daguerre Society in Kiev—that created the preconditions and institutional structure for this kind of collective dynamic.
Finally, the societies' achievement was not only scientific and artistic, but historical. For, by first forming collections and archives, then helping to rediscover early images, and finally promoting the study of the medium's practices and discourses, they contributed crucially to the formation of a discipline: the history of photography.
— Clément Chéroux
See also amateur photography, history.Bibliography
- Taft, R., Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889 (1938).
- Seiberling, G., Amateurs, Photography and the Mid-Victorian Imagination (1986).
- Greenough, S., “‘ “Of Charming Glens, Graceful Glades, and Frowning Cliffs”: The Economic Incentives, Social Inducements, and Aesthetic Issues of American Pictorial Photography, 1880-1902’”, in M. Sandweiss (ed.), Photography in 19th-Century America (1991).
- Sternberger, P. S., Between Amateur & Aesthete: The Legitimization of Photography as Art in America, 1880-1900 (2001)
