Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 16))

In 1894 Alfred Stieglitz, one of the chief prize-winners at these
exhibitions, and at the time editor of the American Amateur Photographer,
wrote:
We Americans can not afford to stand still; we have the best of material among us, hidden
in many cases; let us bring it out. Let us make up our minds that we are equal to the occasion,
and prove to the photographic world at large that we are awake, and interested in the progress of
picture photography. Abolish these Joint Exhibitions, which have done their work and served
their purpose, and let us start afresh with an Annual Photographic Salon, to be run on the strictest
lines. Abolish medals and prizes; the acceptance and hanging of a picture should be the honor.
There is no better instructor than public exhibitions.
In 1895 the Joint Exhibitions were discontinued, followed by wide-
spread dissension.
In 1896, the aspirations of those striving for the advancement of the
movement were voiced in the following language by the founder of Camera
Work:
Photographic exhibitions in other countries are gradually decreasing in number, and greatly
increasing in quality. Medals are being abolished in high-class exhibitions, and only the very best
work hung. Let us hope that the United States will soon show the world the finest collection of
pictorial photographic work ever seen, if only to make up for its former deficiencies and
backwardness.
And in 1897 he established Camera Notes in the interest of the pic-
torial photographic cause, and to forward the movement initiated abroad,
and attempted to be carried on here, through the instrumentality of these
Joint Exhibitions. Two years later were inaugurated the Philadelphia Salons,
national as to their submitted pictures, international by invitation, the warring
forces of the past binding themselves by spoken and written pledge to their
support. The great army of amateur and professional photographers who
had been reveling in, and winning medals and honors from, their various
local exhibitions, failing to understand the real purpose and standards of the
Philadelphia Salon, and vastly disappointed at having their elsewhere-success-
ful “masterpieces” turned down at Philadelphia, waxed bitter and abusive.
With the termination of the Third Salon, war again broke out with even
greater fury. The Philadelphia Society, the oldest and most conservative in
the country, was torn to its center by the conflict. The reactionaries, some
of them pledged to the policy of the Salons as held, threw over that policy
to which the Society was pledged. A fourth exhibition was inaugurated on
lines absolutely in conflict with those of the previous years’ " broad" lines,*
that disestablished all recognized standards, sacrificed all that had been
gained, deprived the Philadelphia Society of the confidence and trust of all
those who had held faith in its past pledges, and shut out photography from
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and threw the American photo-
graphic world once more into turmoil and confusion, with the result that
the fourth Philadelphia exhibition marked the decline and fall of the Phila-
delphia Salons.
* For history of the Salon movement see Camera Notes, Vol. II, No. 3 : The Philadelphia Salon—Its Origin and Influence;
Vol. III, No. 3 : The Salon—Its Purpose, Character, and Lesson ; Vol. IV, No. 3 : The Salon—Its Place, Pictures, Critics, and
Prospects; Vol. V, No. 4: The Decline and Fall of the Philadelphia Salon. See Photo-Times Almanac, 1901, Photography and
Progress; Photograms of Year, 1899 and 1900, The American School.

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