1429
the spectacular landscape forms of the West, and be-
cause their authors in general tended to underplay or
perhaps to hide their stylistic input in them, they were
generally regarded as anonymous “views of the West,”
notwithstanding the specialized interest of a small
“photographically literate” community in their makers’
idiosyncrasies. For that reason especially, as well as
because of increasing acts of piracy and underselling,
the more culturally conscious segment of American
photography fought after 1865 for a legal recognition of
their authorship, which resulted in 1868 in a modifi ca-
tion of the copyright laws that provided some protection
for authors. Thus, the same moment that witnessed the
true popularization of photographic images in American
society was also the time when the idea of photographic
authorship gained a measure of recognition. This dual
pattern was to maintain itself for several decades, as the
social distribution of views expanded into the business
of chromolithographs and then (after 1890) postcards on
the one hand, and as more demanding artist photogra-
phers on the other hand devised stylistic and publishing
means of distancing themselves from the mainstream.
William H. Jackson, who after his survey years went
into partnership with the railroads and then with the
Detroit Publishing Company, was an example of the
“commercial” model, as were also, in the last years of
the century, Frank Jay Haynes and Adam Clark Vroman
(although all three of these photographers at the same
time practiced more advanced or formally innovative
photography). Conversely, more sophisticated or more
artistically ambitious individuals, such as Peter Henry
Emerson, the founder of “naturalistic photography” in
the 1880s, and his followers illustrated a more formally
and intellectually demanding perspective, although they
learned immensely, if not always admittedly, from the
“view” or “business” photographers.
This latter trend, which led to the differentiation
of “professionals” and “artists,” was also a refl ection
of broader patterns after 1880, among which the most
signifi cant was the emergence of amateur photography
and the ensuing transformation of the older forms of
practice. Until 1880 or so, there were few amateurs
in the U.S., and those who existed were for the most
part the learned, high-profi le type, engaging primarily
in documentary endeavours. While the French law of
1839 on the daguerreotype had implausibly announced
that with the daguerreotype, every one could make a
picture, the democratic promise of universal access to
picture-making had remained until around 1880 a fairly
abstract notion, even though the possession of pictures
had already been democratized. In fact, in the U.S. even
more markedly than in Europe, the business of picture-
making had been, almost immediately and durably, the
exclusive privilege of a professional class, which prided
itself on its technical achievement, and which because of
its lack of reputation was especially prone to bar outsid-
ers from entering the fi eld. Photography until 1880 or
1885 remained, in Daniel J. Boorstin’s phrase, “esoteri-
cal.” But then after that things changed rather quickly,
as dry plates, smaller formats, and the fi rst attempts
at providing photographic customers with technical
services started to catch the fancy of the urban upper-
middle class. By 1885 there were amateur photographic
clubs in most leading American cities, and photography
was becoming a fad along the same lines as bicycling
or going to the beach. Then a new and decisive thresh-
old was crossed with the introduction, by the Eastman
Company of Rochester, of the fi rst Kodak (1888–89),
an easy-to-handle hand camera loaded with fi lm (fi rst
mounted on paper, then on celluloid) for a hundred
views, which after exposure the fi rm would take in and
process for a relatively low cost : “you press the button,
we do the rest,” the slogan went, as if to materialize the
promise of 1839. This slogan was successful enough
to become a catchphrase of the 1890s, as thousands of
Americans discovered the pleasures of snapshot-tak-
ing and thus constructing their own private memories,
and as the Eastman Kodak Company kept introducing
newer, simpler and cheaper models (such as the famous
Brownie in 1900). The Kodak organization refl ected
the new potential of American industry for technologi-
cal innovation, which around the same time was also
embodied in the development of moving pictures. But
the Kodak was primarily a concept, and although it
had been preceded, and was largely imitated, by many
competitors (such as Ansco, Carbutt, Cramer, etc.), it
was a revolutionary one, just like its author George
Eastman had intended it to be: for George Eastman had
been perfectly explicit about his ambition to make “a
Kodaker” of every American man, woman, and child, be
it at the cost of displacing the former corporative privi-
leges and organization of the professionals. Professional
photography did not simply disappear around 1900, but
it was progressively stripped of its basic functions and
relegated to more specialized ones, such as ceremonial
portraits on family occasions and the like. Meanwhile,
much of the former public and commercial character of
photographic practice was replaced by a new interrela-
tion of industrial and domestic concerns, out of which,
in addition, the amateur photographer now also started to
evolve, at least in some cases, as a new type of artist. To
be sure, serious amateurs and artist amateurs had been
around, and had even formed clubs, for several decades
before 1900, an early and important example being the
Philadelphia Society, which starting in 1860 gathered
around Edward L. Wilson and published a high-class
periodical, The Philadelphia Photographer. But the
boom of popular photography in the 1890s transformed
the very concept of amateur, in the sense that being a
popular photographer meant taking the kind of pictures