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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
The American Journal of Photography began publica-
tion in New York City as the American Journal of Pho-
tography and the Allied Arts and Sciences in 1855. The
journal was founded by Charles A. Seely, professor of
analytical chemistry at the New York Medical School,
who had also worked at Scientifi c American before start-
ing the journal. Henry Garbanati, Seely’s partner in the
photographic chemical business, and a fellow member
of the American Photographical Society, joined him as
publisher in 1859. Seely edited the journal until 1867.
The bi-weekly journal had a wide subscribership
beyond New York City and drew correspondence from
a readership of amateurs and commercial photographers
across the United States. In 1859 the journal began
publishing the minutes of the American Photographical
Society; it shared the concerns of the society’s founders,
among them chemist and physician John W. Draper, his
son, astronomer and photographer Henry C. Draper,
Henry Hunt Snelling (publisher of The Photographic
and Fine Arts Journal), commercial portrait photogra-
pher Abraham Bogardus, astrophysicist and astronomer
Lewis M. Rutherford (who fi rst photographed the moon
in 1858), Peter Cooper, founder of Cooper Institute,
and Robert MacFArlane, editor of Scientifi c American,
primarily with science and photographic chemistry.
Scientists such as John W. Draper had been working
on the chemistry of photography even before the advent
of the daguerreotype, and in subsequent decades contin-
ued to experiment and advance photographic science.
Articles explaining and evaluating photographic chem-
istry, with titles such as “On Washing Gun-Cotton” and
“How to Use the Nitrate Bath,” complete with chemical
formulae fi ll the journal. The leadership of the society
were the most active writers for the journal. Largely
chemists drawn from scientifi c elite of New York City,
correspondence in the journal suggests that, in contrast,
its readership was either commercial or “practical”
photographers or amateurs whose had less interest in
the science of photography for its own sake. One such
subscriber wrote to the journal that its penchant for de-
bating and publishing multiple chemical formulas and
printing instructions were “bewildering” to the point of
being “useless.”
The journal regularly reported on and evaluated
photographic trade manuals published in the U.S. and
abroad. Several manuals, including Lake Price’s A
Manual of Photographic Manipulation (London, 1858)
and C. Jabez Hughes’ The Principles and Practices of
Photography (London, fi rst edition 1858?) were ex-
cerpted or serialized in the journal.
Seely used his “Editorial Miscellany” column as a
compendium of observations on the medium in and
around New York. Exemplary comments extended from
the social uses of the medium, such as his visit to see
the city’s “Rogue’s Gallery” ambrotype portraits of
criminals, to gauging public response to new processes
such as cartes de visite. Seely frequently noted the
relationship between economy and the photographic
profession. Seely’s commentaries on the state of pho-
tography reinforce the scientifi c point of view expressed
by the journal’s articles on chemistry. In his view,
science, not art, would be the discipline that furthered
photography.
In keeping with printing practices of the time, the
journal relied heavily on reprints and excerpts from
other publications. Notably all the cultural commentary
on photography is reprinted from other sources. For
example, originally printed in the Atlantic Monthly,
Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Stereoscope and the
Stereograph,” and “Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture”
were excerpted in the journal. An appraisal of Brady’s
photographs of the House of Representatives was drawn
from the New York Daily Times, and Scientifi c American
was also a source for reprints. The journal also reprinted