608
the idea of the photographic record or document. Hunt
made “nature prints” at this time, as did the amateur
botanist Anna Atkins.
Thirdly, there were wealthy amateurs engaged in
photography for their own amusement, though some
also attempted to market pictures. Talbot’s own circle
was prominent in the early exploration of photogra-
phy: Christopher Rice Mansell Talbot (a cousin), John
Dillwyn Llewelyn (who married another cousin), Nevil
Story-Maskelyne (Llewelyn’s son-in-law), and their
friend Reverend Calvert Richard Jones, all made pictur-
esque calotypes. Particularly interested in the maritime
scenes provided by the Welsh ports, Jones and Llwelyn
intended to contribute ‘Marine Talbotypes’ to The Pencil
of Nature. Jones sympathised with Talbot’s attempts to
exploit his invention commercially, and between 1845
and 1846 made calotype’s in Italy and Malta marketed
through the Sun Rooms. Work for Talbot’s venture
subsequently passed to the Reverend George Bridges
who produced about 1,700 negatives in seven years,
working in Italy, Greece, Egypt and the ‘Holy Land.’
Talbot lost interest and Bridges produced a prototype
album: Illustrations of the Acropolis of Athens; and
in 1858 published Palestine as It Is. In 1845, Talbot
issued Sun Pictures of Scotland, comprising of twenty-
three calotypes from subjects drawn from the life and
writings of Scott. Photography in the 1840s was by no
means restricted to this circle. Horation Ross, one time
MP for Aberdeen, worked with both the daguerreotype
and calotype, producing family portraits and sporting
pictures. In 1847 a small group of interested photogra-
phers (including, Hunt, Frederick Scott Archer and Dr
Diamond) established the Calotype Club; renamed the
Photographic Club in 1848. This group provided the
nucleus for the next phase of photography in Britain.
Photography received a significant boost from
Archer’s wet-collodion process, introduced in 1851.
Glass-plate negatives where already in use, but collodion
plates, exposed and processed while wet, were faster
and gave quite fi ne detail. This process effectively killed
the daguerreotype. Archer’s process was represented by
only one picture at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Ten
years on, at the International Exhibition of 1862, photo-
graphs not made with collodion were singled out.
In the early 1850s Talbot engaged in a series of legal
defences of his patent. In 1852 he obtained an injunc-
tion to restrain Richard Colls from trading without a
licence and in 1854 the court upheld Talbot’s claim
against John Henderson who was “restrained under
penalty of fi ve thousand pounds” from selling calotype
portraits. The same year he was also involved in the
celebrated lawsuit of Talbot v. Laroche. This case was so
signifi cant because it tested Talbot’s claim that Archer’s
process was covered by his patents. The court reasserted
Talbot’s calotype patent, but rejected any claim over
Archer’s process. Effectively, this ended Talbot’s legal
restriction and he subsequently allowed his patents to
lapse. It has been estimated that Talbot recovered less
than half of the £5,000 he spent on photography, but at
a time when opposition to patents was central to liberal
political economy, his reputation suffered considerably.
In contrast, Archer did not patent his process and was
acclaimed for his decision.
In response to photographic display at the Great
Exhibition some suggested that English photographers
had slipped behind the French. This argument gave im-
petus to the development of photographic societies and
specialist journals. The fi rst society appeared in Leeds in
1852, whereas the Photographic Society came into being
in London in 1853. Initiated by Fenton and Claudet, it
held regular meetings, discussed papers; from 1854 an
annual exhibition was mounted. The society’s periodi-
cal—Journal of the Photographic Society of London
(subsequently the Photographic Journal)—appeared in- Also in 1853 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
became the patrons (the title of Royal Photographic
Society being adopted in 1894).
Societies spread rapidly throughout mainland cities
and further a fi eld. The Liverpool Photographic Society
was established in 1853; Dublin in 1854, Manchester in
1855 and the Photographic Society of Scotland founded
in Edinburgh in 1856. In the mid-1850s there were three
societies in India. Many of these societies published
proceedings and occasional papers in the Journal of
the Photographic Society; some of them also organ-
ised exhibitions. In 1874 the Photographic Society was
renamed the Photographic Society of Great Britain in
recognition of its umbrella role. Two other journals of
note emerged during this period: The British Journal
of Photography was launched in 1860, but had existed
under various names since 1854; and The Photographic
News was founded in 1858, running until 1908. From the
1860s these groupings and their publications provided
the armature for professional photography, however,
they initially represented mixed interests. The early
years of the Society saw tensions between amateurs,
who favoured a gentlemanly organisation unsullied by
trade, and those engaged in commercial photography.
Fenton was in the later camp. Grace Seiberling argues
that this wrangle dragged on until 1858 (Sieberling,
73).
The exchange clubs in the Society—the “Photograph-
ic Society Club” (established 1856), and the “Exchange
Club of the Photographic Society” (sometimes called
the “Photographic Club”)—were probably vehicles for
amateur hegemony. According to Seiberling, no more
than forty people were involved in these clubs and the
related the Photographic Exchange Club (9–10). The
work produced was shaped by antiquarian-amateur
interests with picturesque landscapes featuring dilapi-