1303
Leijerzapf , Ingeborg Th. (ed.), In Geschiedenis van de Neder-
landse Fotografi e in monografi eën en thema-artikelen, Alphen
aan den Rijn, Amsterdam: Samson/Voetnoot, 1984 [a series
still being published].
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tie van Nederlandse beroepsfotografen, 1839–1889, Leiden:
Primavera 2006/2007.
SOCIETIES, GROUPS, INSTITUTIONS,
AND EXHIBITIONS IN THE UNITED
KINGDOM
The material infrastructure of nineteenth-century British
photography has received remarkably little attention,
yet exhibitions, societies and journals provided the
framework for practice and theory. For a period, the
social organisation of photography in Britain revolved
around gentlemen amateurs. However, the category of
the amateur requires scrutiny. Historians of photography
have seen amateurs as synonymous with landed aristo-
crats, engaged in the disinterested pursuit of knowledge:
Talbot is the paradigmatic example. An oversimplifi ed
distinction is often made between landed gents and
middle-class industrialists: in reality, no strong barrier
separated these class fractions. However, a drift towards
the professionalisation of photography is discernable
during the period.
At the outset, photography was organised through
bodies associated with the ‘men of science’: William
Henry Fox Talbot exhibited his photogenic drawings
at the Royal Society and at a meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. These
organisations provided ‘men of science’ with social
networks and models of authority. Typically, early papers
appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society or in
the journals of the bourgeois public sphere: Edinburgh
Review, North British Review, Athenaeum, Art Journal,
Notes & Queries—even Household Words was a general-
ist magazine. By the 1860s, the Athenaeum showed little
interest in photography and Notes & Queries had been
supplanted by the ‘Notes and Queries’ section of the
Photographic News. As in everything else, the capitalist
division of labour produced increased specialisation in
photography.
The earliest recorded organisation dedicated to pho-
tography was the Edinburgh Calotype Club, possibly in
operation as early as 1841. This amateur organisation
had a small membership (mainly legal men) who met
over dinner to look at calotypes and socialise. Similar
organisations soon sprouted in England: the Photo-
graphic Club (sometimes called the Calotype Society),
existed by 1847. As a contributor to the Athenaeum
noted, the Photographic Club consisted of ‘a dozen
gentlemen amateurs associated together for the purpose
of pursuing their experiments in this art-science.’ The
model for these groupings was based on networks of
print connoisseurs. Members were to play a prominent
role in British photography; among them were artists
such as Sir William Newton, and ‘men of science’ like
Robert Hunt. (P. Roberts, 212).
The Great Exhibition of 1851 initiated a transforma-
tion in the structure of British photography. An extensive
collection of British photographs, and related equip-
ment, were shown; reviews appeared and medals were
awarded. However, it was the foreign photographic
displays (particularly the French) that drew praise.
Many commentators claimed that French photographers
outstripped their British counterparts. This argument
needs to be treated with caution, because an established
discourse suggested that British manufacturers—par-
ticularly in the luxury trades—had slipped behind
their French competitors. The account of photography
circulating around the exhibition meshed with this argu-
ment and was, in part, the product of self-serving taste-
mongers. Nevertheless, combined with the simultaneous
foundation of the French Société héliographique in 1851
the exhibition provided an impetus to the formation of
British photographic societies.
The earliest British photographic society was estab-
lished in Leeds in 1852. Crucially, in 1853 the London
based Photographic Society came into being. The mem-
bers of the Photographic Club played a signifi cant role in
creating this body, with Roger Fenton playing a leading
role. The inaugural meeting took place, in 1853, at the
Society of Arts—a venue that suggests the Society was
modelled on the learned societies. The fi rst Council was
made up of twenty-four prominent gentlemen. By June
of 1853 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had agreed
to act as patrons (though, it was not until 1894 that it
assumed the title of Royal Photographic Society).
During the preparations for the Society, Joseph
Cundall proposed an exhibition. Described by Pam
Roberts as the fi rst purely photographic exhibition,
it opened at the Society of Arts on December 22nd
1852 and ran until January 29th 1853 (Roberts, 215).
The fi rst offi cial exhibition of the Society took place
in 1854. Thereafter, the Society’s exhibition was an
important annual event (with the exception of 1862,
when it was suspended in favour of participation in the
International Exhibition, and 1866). Held at a number
of venues over the years, the entrance fee was set at
one shilling, though on certain evenings—designated
for the ‘working classes’—it was reduced to 3d. The
pictures were selected by jury and the display mimicked
exhibitions of watercolours or prints—photographs in
elaborate frames were stacked on the wall; a catalogue
was published and extensive reviews appeared in both
the national and the photographic press. These reviews
provide important sources for judgements on particular
images and assumptions about photography.
At least three amateur organisations existed during the