1430
that a professional might have made before, although not
necessarily with strong artistic consciousness. Finally,
this process of popularization also coincided with, and
in several ways underlay, the much more self-conscious
efforts at distinguishing art photography from run-of-
the-mill professional photography—as well as from
“button-pressing”—by some advanced individuals,
who since about 1885 had been advocating and prac-
ticing “pictorial photography,” under the infl uence of
P.H. Emerson, and British and other European artists
and critics. The most notable example of the partition
between “high-brow” amateur photography and popu-
lar photography was, of course, Alfred Stieglitz and
his New York circle, which between 1892 and 1900
progressively broke away from the New York amateur
clubs to create the Photo-Secession and the prestigious
magazine Camera Notes. Stieglitz went on to found a
distinctively American branch of photography—as well
as modern art—on the premise that neither the limited,
recipe-style, technical expertise of the professionals nor
the haphazard and vulgar opportunism of the “button-
pressers” constituted true photography. But at the same
time, Stieglitz himself practiced the hand-held camera
and other contrivances associated with popular pho-
tography, while also showing great meticulousness in
his picture-taking choices, as well as in developing and
printing procedures, and he thus served as the synthesis
of the new diverging trends, and as an endpoint to several
of the main traditions of 19th-century American photog-
raphy. Ultimately, it may be argued that the American
19th century climaxed in the contradictory but comple-
mentary fi gures of Eastman and Stieglitz, who not only
jointly revolutionized photography for the U.S. and for
much of the world, but who paradoxically upheld some
of the basic trends of the 19th century, most notably the
profoundly political dimension that in the U.S. had at-
tached itself to photography, making it the democratic
art par excellence. This political dimension, indeed, was
lost neither on Eastman nor on Stieglitz, both of whom
viewed photography as the double expression of hard
work and individual freedom.
François Brunet
See also: Daguerreotype; Southworth, Albert Sands,
and Josiah Johnson Hawes; Draper, John William;
Goddard, John Frederick; Brady, Mathew B.; Great
Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,
Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851); Wet Collodion
Negative; Cutting, James Ambrose; Cartes-de-Visite;
Stereoscopy; Watkins, Carleton Eugene; Weed,
Charles Leander; and Fardon, George Robinson.
Further Reading
Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, The History of Photography from
the Camera Obscura to Tthe Beginning of the Modern Era,
New York: Mcgraw-Hill, 1969.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Jenkins Reese V., Images and Enterprise, Technology and the
American Photographic Industry 1839 To 1925, Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Newhall, Beaumont, The Daguerreotype in America, New York:
Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1961.
Newhall, Beaumont, ed., Photography: Essays and Images, New
York: The Museum Of Modern Art, 1980.
Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography, 5th ed., New
York: The Museum Of Modern Art, 1982.
Rinhart, Floyd And Marion, The American Daguerreotype, Ath-
ens, Ga.: University Of Georgia Press, 1981.
Rosenblum Naomi, A World History of Photography, 3rd ed.,
London: Abbeville Press, 1997.
Sandweiss, Martha A., ed., Photography in Nineteenth-Century
America, Fort Worth And New York: Amon Carter Museum,
Harry N. Abrams, 1991.
Scharf Aaron, Art and Photography, New York: Penguin Books,
1986.
Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene: A Social
History 1839-1889 (1938), Repr. New York: Dover, 1964.
Trachtenberg, Alan, ed., Classic Essays on Photography, New
Haven, Conn.: Leete’s Island Books, 1980.
Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American Photographs: Images
as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, New York: Hill
and Wang, 1989.
Welling, William, Photography in America, the Formative Years
1839–1900, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1987.
Wood, John, ed., America and the Daguerreotype, Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1991.URIE, JOHN (1820–1920)
John Urie was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1820, the son
of a weaver, and was apprenticed in the printing trade.
In the 1840s he operated his own business hand-carving
wooden type for use in the printing industry, and later
working as a wood engraver making printing blocks.
Urie’s engagement with photography was reput-
edly initiated by a visit to the Great Exhibition, and by
1852 he had established himself as a photographer in
Glasgow.
In December 1852 he was mentioned in The Practical
Mechanics Journal in connection with the application
of photography to wood engraving.
By 1854 he occupied premises in Glasgow’s Bucha-
nan Street, at Nos. 33 and 35, producing portraiture. The
Mechanics Journal, May 1854, published an account of
Urie’s Relievotype variation on the collodion positive, or
ambrotype, in which the image was presented emulsion
side up, with only the background of the actual portrait
backed with black shellac. The image was then placed
on a light paper or card background. This had the effect
of creating a three-dimensional effect.
He later advertised studios in Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Leeds, Perth, Dundee and Belfast and that he had ‘agen-
cies’ in all important cities.
In 1885 he invented a photographic printing machine
which could produce two hundred prints an hour by
gaslight (Photographic Times, Nov 27 1885).
John Hannavy