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of photography in the United States. This was indeed
the period in which, thanks to collodion photography,
large organizations, especially federal departments and
services, but also railroad conglomerates, museums and
academic or scientifi c bodies, started to devise large-
scale undertakings of documentation, archiving, map-
making and illustration : hence the role of photography
in the Civil War, and especially the connection of the
Union’s Army of the Potomac with Mathew Brady’s
staff of war photographers, but also Joseph Henry’s
precocious organization of photo-ethnographic collec-
tions at the Smithsonian Institution, and the systematic
inclusion of photographers in federal surveys of the
West after 1867. Another trend was the emergence of
amateur photographers (or amateurs of photography)
and local photographic societies. The most important
of these was the Photographic Society of Philadelphia,
which was founded in 1862, and which drew amateurs
and professionals, including major fi gures such as Cole-
man Sellers and Edward L. Wilson, editor from 1864
on of the Philadelphia Photographer. This periodical
continued the goal of “elevating” photography by
promoting serious technical innovation and artistically
informed discourse and practices. The strength of the
Philadelphia connection was refl ected in the Centennial
Exhibition of 1876, whose large photographic section
displayed in Philadelphia what Robert Taft called “the
highwater achievement of the American wet plate pho-
tographer,” as well as the fi rst large-scale confrontation
of American and European photographs in the United
States before 1895.
Meanwhile, the protective spirit of the earlier daguer-
rian societies was far from extinct in the profession
itself. The ongoing battle against patents was topmost
on the agenda of the Photographers’ Protective Union,
which convened several times in the 1860. The matter
fi nally came to a head in 1868, when in an effort to fi ght
an application to renew the Cutting patent, a National
Photographic Convention was held at the Cooper Insti-
tute. At this important event virtually all the great names
of professional photography and the photographic in-
dustry were gathered (including Mathew Brady, John A.
Whipple, Henry T. Anthony, Alexander Hesler, James
F. Ryder, John Carbutt, etc.), united in a drive to obtain
the repeal of the patent renewal. The patent was indeed
revoked, and there ensued a new, “fraternal” organiza-
tion, the National Photographic Association (NPA),
which convened for the fi rst time in 1869 in Boston, in-
augurating a period of greater stability in the profession.
At this convention a large exhibition displayed the state
of the photographic art, including photographs made
from retouched negatives, and announcing a trend that
might be labeled “professional art photography,” and
which would characterize NPA exhibitions and Ameri-
can professional photography in general until 1900. In
1870, in the same protective spirit, the NPA defended
a copyright for photographers, obtaining a provision
in the 1870 law that granted copyright to photographs
on the condition that two copies be sent to the Library
of Congress (the single most important source of that
institution’s photographic collection). In the 1870s the
NPA became the principal photographic organization; its
membership exceeded 1,000 and included such presti-
gious fi gures as Samuel Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
and Hermann Vogel; it held large annual conventions and
exhibitions, and pursued a very eclectic agenda, from
patent discussions to artistic retouching to the esthetics
of landscape to the historiography of early American
photography. Although the NPA came to an early death
in 1876 as a result of internal dissent, it was more or less
revived in 1880 by the Photographers’ Association of
America (PAA), which essentially continued the former
society in its membership, its “fraternal” ambition to
elevate taste and quality and to combat price-cutting—a
goal that became vital in the face of growing dry-plate
companies and nascent popular photography—and in its
genteel commitment to art, which as Sarah Greenough
has noted, may have been innovative in theory, but was
rather conventional in practice. Thus, it could be argued
that from the fi rst daguerrian associations to the PAA’s
continuing fi ght for “art photography,” the mainstream
of American professional photography consistently
upheld the same agenda of resisting the more brutal
forces of business and industry and promoting photog-
raphy as art.
After 1880 and even more so after 1890 the structure
of American photography changed, in response to the
advent of popular photography and perhaps more di-
rectly to the growing ranks of self-conscious amateurs,
whose clubs and societies numbered over 50 in 1890 and
over 150 in 1895. This evolution was also refl ected in
the increasing number of photographic exhibitions and
galleries. A Society of Amateur Photographers of New
York held its fi rst annual exhibition in 1885, and in 1887,
along with its Boston and Philadelphia counterparts, it
started holding Annual Joint Exhibitions that gathered
vast amounts of photographs, still with a view to raise
standards of taste and quality. In 1896 a photographic
salon was held in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian
Institution, and the following year this was enlarged into
a “National Photographic Salon,” with the Smithsonian
Institution pledging to buy the best photographs. Also
in 1897 a large salon was held in Pittsburgh. The Na-
tional Academy of Design housed its fi rst exhibition of
photographs in 1898, and the same year a full-fl edged
European-style photographic salon was staged at the
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, which displayed
over 200 photographs by 100 photographers. The East-
man Kodak Company itself created clubs and exhibi-
tions for the promotion of artistic ambition within the