703
Welling, William, Photography in America. The Formative
Years 1839–1900, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press,1978
Witkin, Lee D. (ed.), The photograph collector’s guide, London:
Secker & Warburg, 1979
HISTORY: 8. 1890s
Nineteenth-century international photography is a rich
and above all surprising fi eld. To those accustomed at
looking at drawings or prints, the photographic medium
was characterized by extreme directness and clarity. The
photograph, or ‘light drawing,’ had a strong attraction.
Its qualities were considered to be the realm of depic-
tion, the composition of light and shade and the render-
ing of space. Art critics summed up the strength of the
new medium’s ‘secrets of light and brown.’ Right from
the start, photography was used for various scientifi c
and documentary purposes. It was also the object of
artistic interest. Even by the pioneers: William Henry
Fox Talbot practiced photography as a kind of alchemy,
seeking tangible depictions. David Octavius Hill and
Robert Adamson used the medium as an exercise in
portraiture. Samuel Bourne, accompanied by a large ret-
ine of sherpas, toured the Himalayas in order to register
photographic impressions of great heights.
The fi rst photographs were exhibited to the public
as early as the fi rst decade after its invention. At fi rst
the results of photography were displayed alongside
other exhibits at world fairs. Very quickly special –of-
ten-international—photographic fairs were held, where
photographers showed their prints. Clarity, defi nition,
color and the choice of photographic procedure were
the criteria applied in judging the exhibits.
The appearance and treatment of this new art form
constitute an interesting facet of 19th-centrury-art
history. Photographers adopted the genres and picto-
rial traditions of paintings and printmaking. Portraits,
landscapes, architectural views and genre scenes were
popular photographic themes. Photography was viewed
and assessed in the context of historical and contem-
porary artistic movements. The photographers of the
late 19th-century took their subjects and genres from
17th-century Dutch painting or the literary themes of
their artist-contemporaries. Raphaelesque compositions
and Rembrandesque chiaroscuro were stylistic devices,
which were imitated in photography. Numerous links
and correspondences can also be observed in the train-
ing, background and studio practice of painters and
photographers.
The explosion during the 1890s in amateur pho-
tography came at a propitious moment in the cultural
history of America. Despite the boom in the camera
market, the term detective continued to be applied to
a variety of the hand cameras introduced to be applied
to a variety of the hand cameras introduced before the
turn of the century. Among the professional photog-
raphers, considerable discussion began to take place
among those who advocated the use of small versus
large cameras. Cameras able to accept large plates
had traditionally been used to make many of the fi nest
photographs of exhibition caliber, but enlargement had
become a simpler matter from negatives made with the
new hand cameras.
There was plenty to discuss in the professional trade,
as well as among the amateurs, and from these discus-
sions and debates appeared a new group of periodicals,
particularly aimed for a permanent market of amateur
readers. The three prime new publications, all of which
fi rst appeared in 1889, were the American Amateur Pho-
tographer, the Photo-American and the Photo-Beacon.
All were discontinued in 1907, perhaps a telling indica-
tion of just how long their subscribers were interested in
reading up on photography before accepting the camera
as just another adjunct of everyday living.
In many aspects this was photography’s most eclec-
tic moment. Not only was there much that was new to
choose from in equipment and apparatus but there were
many choices to be made, as well, in processes. Still to
come were entirely new dimensions, both in portraiture
and in the means of printing artistic photographs for
public exhibition and sale. Perhaps because of all thee
innovations there something of a lull in commercial
business in 1892. It was a rush to cheapness and quantity
which blamed for the fact that among people an the class
who in former years were liberal patrons and are able to
pay good prices, it is no longer fashionable to display
photographs, except as mere cheap souvenirs, and as a
possible basis for future use in copying.
When Alfred Stieglitz returned to the United States
in 1890, he soon realized, he said ‘that photography as
I understood the concept, hardly existed in America.’
Because of his fi rst-prize award at an 1887 London
amateur photography competion, and the favorable
recognition accorded him by European artists as well
as photographers, Stieglitz became the sole American
to actually participate in the movements begun at that
time in England, France, Germany and Austria to elevate
photography to its rightful position as a fi ne art. Stieglitz
was generally correct in his 1890 appraisal of the death
of fi ne-art photography in America, but there was an
encouraging note, which had occurred prior to this at
the 1887 joint exhibition of photographs in NY by the
amateur societies of NY, Boston and Philadelphia. In
the period 1890-94, there other isolated events which
indicated that the movements across the Atlantic were
having an effect on American photographers. In 1890
for example ‘impressionism’ in photography was chosen
as a topic of discussion at the Pacifi c Coast Amateur
Photographer’s Association and in 1891 forty AmericanHISTORY: 8. 1890s