686
As far as the general public was concerned, their only
contact with these photographs was via wood block il-
lustrations drawn from photographs in journals such as
the Illustrated London News. However important the
coverage of the war was in the history of photography,
it was not a commercially viable proposition. The length
of time taken to make the thousands of prints from
Fenton’s negatives delayed publication of the portfolios,
and the publishers Agnew, Colnaghi and others were
left with hundreds of unsold prints when interest in the
war fi nally faded.
Other major publishing projects achieved much
greater success. Francis Frith’s series of photographs
of Egypt, Nubia and the Holy Land taken in 1856–59,
published by James Virtue, sold in large numbers. Indeed
the photographic exploration of the Nile valley, inspired
by the work of the late 18th century French scholars who
fi rst explored the region, and later by eminent painter
David Roberts RA, did much to demonstrate the value
of photography as an aid to scholars. Frith may have
taken his camera further up the Nile than anyone before
him, but the majority of his travels were in the footsteps
of, amongst others, Frenchmen Maxime du Camp
(1850–52) and Félix Teynard (1851–52) the American
John Beesley Greene (1854).
The 1850s was the decade which saw the foundation
of the photographic press. As much of the development
of the medium was driven by debate, discussion and
the sharing of information—carried in general interest
magazines through the 1840s—the emergence of jour-
nals specifi cally devoted to photography was an obvious
progression. In Britain, journals like Notes & Queries
had established themselves as conduits for the exchange
of information on photography, but the fi rst dedicated
photographic periodical emerged not in Britain but in
the United States.
The Daguerreian Journal fi rst appeared in January
1850, but within little more than two years had changed
its name to Humphrey’s Journal, becoming one of the
most infl uential photographic publications over a period
of two decades, before folding in 1870.
The Photographic Art Journal fi rst appeared a year
after The Daguerrian Journal, also later changing its
name—to The Photographic and Fine Art Journal.
An early issue in 1851 carried an article on Matthew
Brady, noting that, due to failing eyesight, Brady was
not himself taking pictures, but concentrating on run-
ning his business.
In France, the proceedings of the Société hélio-
graphique, formed in 1851, were published in La lu-
mière, and once Ernest Lacan had taken over as editor in
late 1851, the journal became, for a time, the authorita-
tive voice of organised French photography.
The fi rst British periodical devoted specifi cally to
photography was the Journal of the Photographic Soci-
ety of London, which was published for the fi rst time on
March 3 1853. In his opening remarks on the purpose of
the journal, carried in its fi rst issue, Roger Fenton made
an oblique reference to La Lumiére and the London so-
ciety’s journal was clearly modelled on what he knew of
its French counterpart. For several years, translations of
key articles published in Paris were carried in the pages
of the Journal of the Photographic Society, widening yet
further the interchange of ideas. Through a number of
slight name changes, it has endured for over 150 years
and is still published today as the RPS Journal.
It was followed in 1854 by the fi rst issue of the
Liverpool Photographic Journal, which became the
Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal and
briefl y The Photographic Journal before eventually
becoming the British Journal of Photography by the end
of the decade. Under that name it still thrives today and
it too has a record of more than a century and a half of
continuous publication.
Thomas Sutton’s Photographic Notes published its
fi rst issue in 1856. The American Journal of Photogra-
phy and the Allied Arts and Sciences was fi rst published
on June 1 1858, and across the Atlantic in Britain, Photo-
graphic News fi rst appeared in September of that year.
If, as was generally the case, the emerging photo-
graphic press largely confi ned itself to dealing with the
technical and scientifi c manipulation of the medium,
and the myriad variations on every available process,
other writers did introduce critical discussion of pho-
tography’s ability to capture a realistic, pleasing and
satisfying chiaroscuro, and its claims to be accepted as
an art form. Attempts to reconcile science, technique
and aesthetics when discussing photography were only
sometimes successful.
Writing in the Journal of the Photographic Society
as early as 1853, John Lieghton attempted to identify
the challenge facing photography’s attempts to be ac-
cepted as ‘art.’
Fine art seeks to elevate the imagination by lofty images
derived from nature in its most agreeable forms. Nature
may be and is conventionalized in the noblest and highest
and highest art; the abstract is given without the minutiae.
In photography this is reversed; breadth being sacrifi ced to
detail. For purposes of science, however, for example, for
natural history, for the architect also, or the engineer, the
utmost detail obtainable in a photograph is advantageous;
but the artist will not descend to minutiae; he desires
breadth of effect; “his most perfect pictures may be out
of focus, his distances may fade away, his foregrounds
look indistinct, his trees may appear in masses, and his
fi gures may be obscured by positive shades.”Photographic
pictures are at present too literal to compete with works
of art.Eugéne Durieu, writing in 1855 summed up photog-
raphy’s dilemma:HISTORY: 4. 1850s