509
tions that aimed to educate working-class men and to
improve the quality of consumer goods. Mechanics’
institutes held annual fairs where commercial goods and
new technologies were exhibited together with the fi ne
and decorative arts. Photographs were often exhibited
alongside photographic equipment and new technology,
but they were ranked among the fi ne arts in the system
of awards. Portraits, an important source of income for
commercial studios, were the most common subject
matter of the photographs shown at these industrial
fairs. Prizes were awarded and photographers often used
awards to promote their businesses. Although smaller
in scale than the international variety, these exhibitions
were aimed at a similar, popular audience.
Photographs were also exhibited in the waiting rooms
of commercial studios. During the early decades of
photography, these displays were an essential part of
creating a theatrical atmosphere that drew clients in
to the illusion that photography was a mysterious and
magical process. These informal exhibits were used to
sell the work of the studio, but they also helped to estab-
lish an aesthetic environment by aligning photography
with art. For instance, from the 1860s, Montreal-based
photographer William Notman displayed photographs,
along with paintings, drawings, and sculpture by local
artists, in the reception area of his studio.
In the nineteenth century, photography was gener-
ally not shown in art galleries, but it was collected and
displayed by museums concerned with design and indus-
trial products. Henry Cole, the founder of the Museum of
Ornamental Art in London (1852), which later became
the South Kensington Museum (1856), and still later, the
Victoria and Albert Museum (1899), began collecting
and exhibiting art photographs in the late 1850s. Cole
collected work by photographers such as Roger Fenton
and Julia Margaret Cameron for its artistic merit, while
studies, such as Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of
animal locomotion, were valued as aids for artists. In the
1850s, proposals were put forth in Paris and Berlin for
museums of photography, where reproductions of works
of art from major collections, such as the Louvre, could
be shown. Although these plans did not come to fruition,
photography was used to reproduce works of art in mu-
seum collections. In the United States, the Smithsonian
Institution began collecting and exhibiting photography
in the 1870s as part of its Department of Graphic Arts.
Like the South Kensington Museum, the Smithsonian
attempted to educate visitors with its displays.
Exhibitions by photographic societies were impor-
tant in the struggle to have photography accepted as a
fi ne art. In the 1850s, photographic societies, such as
the Photographic Society of London and the Société
française de photographie, held small exhibitions of
their work. At fi rst, they followed the conventions ofacademic salons, with images hung from fl oor to ceil-
ing, but this method proved impractical for viewing
the fi ne detail and subtle tones that were valued by
the photographers. In the 1890s, when photographers
broke away from traditional photographic societies and
formed new art-focused groups like the Linked Ring,
the Photo-Club de Paris, and the Photo-Secession, new
spaces for the exhibition of photography and new modes
of display emerged. The Linked Ring salons in London
from 1893–1909 were extremely prestigious, and a jury
selected the best work from an international group of
photographers. Here, photographs were framed in an
increasingly uniform way with lighter frames, and there
was more focus on individual photographs. Collectors
could purchase the work, and reviews of the shows were
published in photographic journals. In 1893, the Japan
Photographic Society held its fi rst Foreign Photography
Exhibition in Tokyo, and the pictorialist work from
abroad delighted amateur and professional photogra-
phers. This show encouraged photographers in Japan
to experiment with new directions in art photography
and to develop a Japanese pictorial style. The Phila-
delphia Photographic Salons, held in 1898–1901 were
the fi rst American salons equivalent to their European
counterparts, as well as the fi rst American photography
exhibitions held in an art institution, the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts. Many of the original members
of the New York-based Photo-Secession exhibited and
met at these infl uential salons.
During the nineteenth century, the social and cul-
tural value of photography was negotiated through
exhibitions. While, in its early years, photography was
exhibited as a product of industry, towards the end of
the nineteenth century, it became increasingly common
to display photographs as works of art.
Sarah BassnettSee also: Expositions Universelle, Paris (1854, 1855,
1867 etc.); Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations, Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851); and
Société française de photographie.Further Reading
Brown, Julie K., Making Culture Visible: The Public Display
of Photography at Fairs, Expositions and Exhibitions in the
United States, 1847–1900, Amsteldijk, The Netherlands:
Harwood Academic Publishers, 2001.
Fox, Paul, “The Intercolonial Exhibition (1866): Representing
the Colony of Victoria” in History of Photography 23, no. 2
(summer 1999), 174–180.
Haworth-Booth, Mark and Anne McCauley, The Museum and
the Photograph: Collecting Photography at the Victoria and
Albert Museum 1853–1900, Williamstown, Massachusetts:
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1998.
Hoffenberg, Peter H., “Photography and Architecture at theEXHIBITIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
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