Introduction to the History of Photography

The advent of the portable camera allowed for changes in the practice of photography, in the methods and goals of photographers.  Photography leaves the comforts of the studio, its tempo or rhythms, its formal ideas and established procedures and searches for novelty in the cadences, the pulses and figures of everyday life. Photographers such as Giuseppe Primoli and Paul Martin stand in between the amateur art of their predecessors and the developing discipline of photojournalism, as observed by I. Jeffrey (1).    Roma - Via Ostiense 1890 self-portrait of Giuseppe Primoli photographing the flooded street The informal, the improvised, the ephemeral are made into new plastic values translating the energies of urban life, the heterogeneous world of modern civilization unified in the commodity form of its material products and social exchanges, and similarly equalized in the “democratic” vision of the camera, a vision more and more unconcerned with ...

 The Photographic Salon exhibition of 1902 (source: Leggat pdf) The Salon was created in 1893 by members of the Linked Ring. "Many artists regard the hanging of their work at the Royal Academy almost as an accolade. So too with photographers. In the 1880s, the exhibitions mounted by the Photographic Society were regarded as the premier event. However, several of its members were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the Society's emphasis on scientific as opposed to aesthetic matters. As time went on differences between the photographic scientists and photographic artists became greater and more acrimonious, and Henry Peach Robinson was becoming increasingly frustrated by the failure of the Photographic Society to recognize that there was an artistic dimension as well as a scientific one to photography. The Photographic News for 19 August 1892 pinpointed the problem: "If photography is ever to take up its proper position as an art it must detach itself from s...

Blind beggar at the cattle market, c.1890 Paul Martin British, 1864 - 1942 Platinum print 18 x 22.8cm Dancing to the organ, Lambeth, 1893 Platinum print 10 x 7.5cm The Old Empire Platinum print 17.5 x 23.5cm Southend Beach, 1905 Yarmouth sands, 1892 Link: Victoria and Albert Museum: Exploring Photography