67
Photographic Society, founded in 1853, and the Société
française de photographie, founded in the following
year, are two of the most prominent examples. The
collections of local, rather than national, 19th century
photographic clubs and societies, though signifi cant,
have largely been lost. However, the scale and scope of
the evaluation of such institutional collecting is in its
infancy and the history of the photographic collections
in countries formerly part of the Soviet Union awaits
fuller analysis.
The role of copyright law also played a crucial role
in the forming of collections of photographs. In Great
Britain the 1836 Copyright Act reduced the number of
libraries entitled to receive legal deposit copies of pub-
lished works from eleven to fi ve, The British Museum
Library (since 1972 the British Library), the Bodleian
Library of the University of Oxford, Cambridge Univer-
sity Library, the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh and
Trinity College Dublin. These institutions therefore be-
gan to acquire photographically illustrated publications
through deposit and purchase. In the case of the British
Library these holdings are international in scope.
State intervention to document national cultural
heritage began in the early 1850s. In 1851 the French
Government through the Commission des Monuments
historiques selects fi ve leading photographers, Édouard
Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard, Gustave Le Gray, Henri
Le Secq and O. Mestrel to document the medieval
architecture of France. Some 258 prints and their cor-
responding negatives were acquired from this Mission
héliographique though their contemporary impact was
very limited. In 1874 Séraphin Médéric Mieusement
(1840–1905) became the offi cial photographer of the
the Commission des Monuments historiques and took
more than 6,000 negatives. Mieusement’s work was
complimented by another Commission photographer,
Jean-Eugène Durand (active between 1876 and 1917)
In 1852 French copyright law was extended to
include photographs. This meant that copies of all
photographs on public sale be registered and deposited
with the Ministery of the Interior or a local prefectural
clerk. In Paris, over 9,000 photographs were registered
at the dépôt légal during 1864, a peak largely refl ecting
the craze for carte de visite celebrity portraits.
After much lobbying and great debate, the 1862
Fine Arts Copyright Act was passed in Great Britain.
For the fi st time copyright legislation in Great Britain
included the rights of photographers as ‘authors.’ Pho-
tographers could register their works at Stationers Hall
using standard template registration forms (the originals
now held in The National Archives, Kew) onto which
copies of the image could be attached. However, photo-
graphs were also used to illustrate other works ranging
from graphic designs, paintings and even designs for
the specifi c use of chicken wire enclosures on poultry
farms. The information on these forms, together with the
photographs pasted on them, give a broad view of the
state and application of photography during the second
half of the 19th century. Hitherto they have been largely
unresearched.
Artists, art schools and designers were early collec-
tors of photography and a number of photographers
created photographs specifi cally for this market. This
seems to been particularly active in France where from
1854 Adolphe Braun of Dornach produced a series
of fl ower studies (Fleurs photographiées) to enable
designers to work from natural models. In Paris from
the mid 1860s Charles Hippolyte Aubry (1811–1877)
created photographs of still lives of fl owers that were
sold to art schools. Similarly From the late 1860s the
Italian Gaudenzio Marconi (1841–1885) created a wide
variety of nude academic studies for artists.
The Royal Academy of Arts in London systematically
collected the large format photographic portfolios of
the collections of major European galleries issued by
the fi rm of Adolphe Braun & Cie from the late 1860s.
Other holdings include early portraits by William Lake
Price (1810–1895) dating from the 1850’s, portraits
by David Wilkie Wynfi eld (1837–1887) dating to the
1860s and Animal Locomotion by Eadweard Muybridge
(1830–1904).
Curiously, given the innovatory application of pho-
tography in France during the 1850s, the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris began collecting photographs in
1866, some 14 years after the South Kensington Mu-
seum, though it to was to form a substantial collection
by the end of the century.
The collecting of photographs by local history, anti-
quary, and archaeological societies forms another key
component. From around 1850 there was a very dramatic
increase in the number of these societies. This was on an
international scale. Evidence suggests that most adopted
photography to help fulfi ll their aims and objectives.
It was noted that in 1856 the Architectural Society of
the Archdeaconry of Northampton linked in ‘union’
with the local photographic society with the intention
of members of the photographic society promising to
enrich the architectural societies ‘sketch book’ with
photographs of ‘local architectural subjects.’
In 1858 Alexander James Beresford Hope (1820–
1887), who was instrumental in the founding of the
instrumental in the founding of the Architectural Mu-
seum in London implored those attending the inaugural
meeting of the Kent Archæological Society that ‘Pho-
tography is the honest friend who always comes out
with the whole truth’ and concluded that the Society
should adopt photography for ‘it would be a shame and
disgrace to it not to do.’
The local history and archaeological societies also
give insights into the collecting habits of their members.