Photographs Exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915

Photographic history has only recently developed as a formal academic discipline in the UK, its progress restrained by lack of major reference works and standard texts of the type that underpin art history and other scholarly subjects. The most comprehensive records of photographic exhibitions for the latter part of the 19th century are those of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, London, which, after 1870, are published in full in The Photographic Journal. Although other photographic societies elsewhere in Britain flourished and held their own annual exhibitions, sadly, exhibition catalogues from these societies seem not to have survived. In contrast, the 44 extant catalogues of the Photographic Society of Great Britain contain around 30,000 individual records, including, for the first time, accompanying line or half tone illustrations of some of the photographs exhibited. They offer a unique insight into the personalities, products, techniques, tastes and artistic and commercial trends of this period, as well as the fortunes of the Royal Photographic Society itself. After 1870 the Photographic Society of Great Britain was recognised as the leading photographic society, attracting a wide constituency of photographers, from Britain, Europe and America. Many individuals launched their photographic career by exhibiting at the Royal Photographic Society and a significant number went on to become leading practitioners of their day.
Drawing on the resources of Birmingham City Library, De Montfort University will make these records available online in a browsable and searchable database, supplementing them with additional images and commentaries from the contemporary Journal Photograms of the Year to further aid identification and understanding of the items exhibited.
When viewed together with the previously AHRC funded Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865 (www.peib.org.uk), Photographs Exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915 will create a unique online resource spanning the entire 19th century history of photography. It will allow scholars for the first time to conduct searches across a broad sweep of historical data, to reveal hitherto hidden practices, groupings, developments in techniques, changes in fashion and the dissemination of ideas. It will also aid the identification and attribution of photographs from this period. The synergistic potential of this combined resource will be further enhanced by the development of a search facility that will allow combined search of these two databases and others, despite their differences, and return integrated sets of research results that can be collectively filtered and organised.