1084
articles, “Photographic Galleries of America,” which
profi led commercial studios in Philadelphia, Washing-
ton, New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Richmond
in the mid and late 1850s is particularly useful for the
photographic historian. Writers for the journal included
Marcus Aurelius Root, the Philadelphia daguerreotypist,
who published early excerpts of The Camera and the
Pencil in its pages, and New York daguerreotypist and
photographer Nathan G. Burgess.
While publishing the journal, Snelling met Edward
and Henry Anthony and later became the general
manager for their photographic supply business, E.
and H. T. Anthony and Company. Snelling was also a
photographic publisher, reprinting Delamotte’s manual
and T.F. Hardwich’s Manual of Photographic Chemis-
try, originally published in London. Snelling himself
authored The History and Practice of the Art of Pho-
tography (1849), A Dictionary of the Photographic Art
(1854) and A Guide to the Whole Art of Photography, a
gallery start-up manual (1858). Snelling sold the journal
to Charles A. Seely, editor of the American Journal
of Photography in 1860, and was subsequently less
of a presence in the photographic press, although he
continued to write for The Philadelphia Photographer
and Anthony’s Photographic Bulletin in the 1870s and
the 1880s.
The journal is a frequent source of information for
Robert Taft’s Photography and the American Scene
(1938, reprint 1964). Alan Trachtenberg cites the journal
in his cultural history of the daguerrean era in Reading
American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew
Brady to Walker Evans (1989) and Mary Panzer, in
Mathew Brady and the Image of History (1997), draws
on Snelling’s view of daguerreotypes in her cultural and
photographic history of Brady’s New York.
Andrea L. Volpe
See also: Snelling, Henry Hunt; and Brady,
Mathew B.
Further Reading
Johnson, William S., Nineteenth-century Photography: an An-
notated Bibliography, 1839–1879, Boston: G.K. Hall and
Co., 1990.
Panzer Mary, Mathew Brady and the Image of History. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
Snelling, Henry Hunt, A Dictionary of the Photographic Arts.
1854, reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1979.
——, The History and Practice of the Art of Photography. 1849.
Reprint, with an introduction by Beaumont Newhall, Hastings-
on-Hudson, New York: Morgan and Morgan, 1970.
Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene. 1938, reprint,
New York: Dover, 1964.
Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American Photographs: Images as
History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, New York: Noonday
Press, 1989.
Welling, William, Photography in America: the Formative Years
1839–1900, New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1978.PHOTOGRAPHIC EXCHANGE CLUB
AND PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY CLUB,
LONDON
During the 1850s, the exchange of photographs between
some early practitioners became formalised. Two clubs
are referred to as the Photographic Exchange Club
and both were instigated in 1853: the Photographic
Exchange Club (1853) and the Photographic Society
Club (1853). Among other organisations, which ad-
vertised photographic exchanges, were the Liverpool
and National Photographic Exchange Club (1856), the
Architectural Photographic Association (1857) and the
Amateur Photographic Association (1859).
The aim of the earliest clubs was to enlarge the port-
folios of amateurs throughout Great Britain who had
limited leisure to devote to photography. Clubs for the
exchange of prints, such as etchings, already existed and
distribution was made possible by the postal service.
Photographic exchanges achieved rapid popularity
because of the large number of positives that could
readily be obtained from a negative.
The Photographic Exchange Club was advertised fi rst
through the pages of Notes and Queries, a fortnightly,
antiquarian periodical edited by one of the club mem-
bers, William John Thoms. The Photographic Society
Club was established from within the newly formed
Photographic Society of London (later RPS) and pub-
licised in the Journal of the Photographic Society. In
both clubs, the fi rst issues of photographs did not take
place until 1855. Some photographers participated in
both exchanges.
The Photographic Exchange Club appears to have
begun as an antiquarian exchange. A printed leafl et (RPS
Collection, NmeN) contains a list of members and the
rules of the exchange. Initially, there were twenty-one
members, but ultimately twenty eight members took
part in one or more exchanges. The members were
Francis Bedford, W. G. Cambell, A. B. Cotton, Francis
Edmond Currey, Philip Henry Delamotte, Hugh Welch
Diamond, Thomas Damant Eaton, Joseph James For-
rester, George Glossop, Robert Howlett, Edward Kater,
John Dilwyn Llewelyn, Robert Wilfred Skeffi ngton
Lutwidge, Thomas George Mackinlay, John Richardson
Major, Thomas Lukis Mansell, Sir William Newton,
Lady Caroline Nevill, Lady Augusta Mostyn (nee Nev-
ill), John Percy, Henry Pollock, Arthur Julius Pollock,
William Lake Price, Henry Peach Robinson, Alfred
Rosling, George Shadbolt, William John Thoms, Peter
Wickens Fry was listed as a member but did not take
part in the exchange.