Royal Photographic Society (RPS). In January 1852, on the initiative of Roger Fenton, a public meeting was held at the Society of Arts, London, in order to form a photographic society. Robert Hunt and Henry Talbot also supported the idea, based loosely on the already established Calotype Society (f. 1847) and the Société Héliographique (f. 1851), but it was not until 20 January 1853 that the Photographic Society of London was founded. Its declared aim was ‘the promotion of the Art and Science of Photography, by the interchange of thought and experience between Photographers’. Even in its embryonic form the group played a historic role, inducing Talbot, as he told William Parsons, Earl of Rosse, in a letter of 30 July 1852, to make his inventions freely available to the public. It also precipitated the demise of Talbot's calotype patent in 1854. No ill will existed, however, between the members of the new society and Talbot; in fact, he was offered the presidency. When he declined, Sir Charles Eastlake, president of the Royal Academy, was elected, with Fenton as secretary. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert became patrons. The prefix ‘Royal’ was granted in 1894.
Two records of photographic history, the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society and the RPS collection, continue to inform scholarship across a wide range of photographic subjects. Collecting began in 1892 at the suggestion of the photographer William Bedford, though the idea of a permanent collection had been previously mooted. But growth was slow, and when John Dudley Johnston (d. 1955) was appointed honorary curator in 1924, the collection comprised only c. 100 photographs. By 1930, he had secured works by Henry Peach Robinson, Frederick Evans, and Julia Margaret Cameron, as well as the private collections of Harold Holcroft and Alvin Langdon Coburn. The RPS collection currently incorporates over 270, 000 images: daguerreotypes, calotypes, salted-paper prints, albumen prints, ambrotypes, glass negatives, and examples of experimental colour processes. It includes over 6, 000 items of photographic equipment, 13, 000 books, 13, 000 bound periodicals, and 5, 000 other photography-related documents.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the RPS had over 10, 000 members worldwide, practising all types of creative and technical photography, a degree of diversity reflected in the wide range of awards distributed by the society every year. In 2004 the RPS was granted a royal charter.
— John Falconer/Kelley E. Wilder
Bibliography
- Roberts, P., Photogenic: From the Collection of the Royal Photographic Society (2000)
The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
