1295
pattern for the others. The photo-clubs were associations
where the members were strictly amateurs. Principally,
these associations requested the recognition of the pho-
tography as an art.
First, members of the Photo-Club de Paris and the
Société d’excursion des Amateurs photographes were
almost the same, including Maurice Bucquet, Albert
Londe and Jules-Etienne Marey. Quickly, theses so-
cieties’ respective positions became diametrically op-
posed. The Excursion society lauded photography as a
healthy entertainment—it was most of time combined
with sports like bicycle or walk—when the Photo-club
exalted photography as an aesthetic and conceptualized
art. In fact, the Photo-club recommended the pictorial
photography.
In 1892, they presented in the “fi rst international
photographic exhibition and the linked arts” (Première
exposition internationale de photographie et des arts qui
s’y rattachent) a new aesthetic. They showed staging
images, playing with lens aberrations to give an ethereal
and vaporous touch similar to drawings, mostly printed
with gum-bichromate. Pictorial photography was an
international movement fi rst represented by British
photographers like Peter Henry Emerson or Julia Mar-
garet Cameron. This photographic practice was known
in France thanks to universal exhibitions and books,
notably “Naturalistic photography for students of the
Arts” written by Emerson and published in 1889.
In France, the photo-club members had a particular
position because they struggled for the photographic
recognition as art, and also for the amateur status.
According to Paul Gers in 1889, the 12th December,
concluding on the Exposition universelle in Paris, “the
artistic value of their (the amateurs) works, (could)
compete with the specialist’s one, the professional’s one
(“la valeur artistique de leurs travaux, lutter avec succès
contre les spécialistes, les professionnels,” in Photo-
Club de Paris, Séance du 12 décembre 1889, Journal
des Sociétés photographiques 1890–1892, 31).
Then, the amateur could have been considered as a
better artist than the professional, whose sole purpose
was to make money with his practice. They refused little
camera boxes, choosing the camera obscura, refusing
the instant photography and choosing the staging pho-
tography, in fact refusing technical progress.
These pictorial photographers proposed to consider
a kind of hierarchy in photographs: their practice would
have been the most important, as the noble one, whereas
the excursionist’s practice would have been seen as an
entertainment able to give travel impressions and the
professional practice would have been despised because
of making money.
In France, particularly in Paris, photographers had
to choose their side: excursionist or pictorialist. How-
ever, the splitting was not that strong in the countryside
where some associations like the Photo-club rouennais,
located in Normandy, belonged to both sides. Created in
November 1891, its presidents were scientists like the
naturalist Henri Gadeau de Kerville (1891–1892) or the
physician Abel Buguet (1893–1900) but the association
was opened to “excursionists and pictorialists” (See
articles status of the Photo-Club rouennais, 1891).
However, these organizations had a common fi ght,
and to give them coherence, the Union Nationale des
Sociétés photographiques de France was created in- Every year, a congress was organized by the
Union in a different city, working on technical, artistic
or juridic subjects.
From the very beginning of the photography, the
pictures display, especially during the Expositions uni-
verselles, was considered as the best way to introduce
techniques’ newness. Actually, photography was held
as a scientifi c technique, so processes were the most
important distinctiveness.
To present their researches, the societies and the photo-
clubs used the same methods: the exhibition. The societies
proposed to the spectator a presentation copied on the
fi ne arts Salon. Another pattern was probably the exhibi-
tion of the Society of Arts in 1852 (or 1851) in London
composed by Joseph Cundall, member of the Calotype
Club with the help of Roger Fenton, active member of
the future Photographic Society of London.
The fi rst exhibition was organized by the Société
française de photographie in 1855, from the 1st August
to the 15th November. The photographs were divided in
sections: the different processes as salted paper print,
albumen paper print, daguerreotype, and then by sub-
jects like portrait, landscape and scientifi c photography.
The foreign photographers were accepted for the second
show, in 1857. Several countries were represented and
a jury awarded some of the photographers, like the
Universal exhibitions did.
For the fi rst edition, the amateurs were more im-
portant in numbers, but two years later, professionals
were represented almost as much as the amateurs. The
Société française de photographie made these shows
approximately every two years.
The Expositions universelles were the occasion to
show the new photographic techniques and processes.
There were also exhibited ancient techniques as a kind
of summary. One of the great wills of the societies and
the photo-clubs was to give credibility to the photog-
raphy as an art. They all tried to make the government
understand the importance to give them an exhibition
place in the fi ne arts section, not in the techniques’ one:
this request provoked a great scandal in 1900. Foreign
photographers—principally pictorialists—refused to
come and expose their production at the exhibition in
Paris because it was scheduled in the Education palace
and not in the art one.