DOI article:
Joseph T. [Turner] Keiley, The Photo-Secession Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—Its Place and Significance in the Progress of Pictorial Photography
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30584#0060
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In reviewing the Third Philadelphia Salon, Camera Notes had warned
the Philadelphia Photographic Society and the Academy of Fine Arts
what would be the result did they violate their pledges to the photo-
pictorialists, and abandon established standards. Commenting on the
Exhibition of 1901, Camera Notes had closed its review of the situation with
these words:
The pictorial photographers of the country will now form their own organization, and hold
their own exhibitions where the best interests of pictorial photography will be more faithfully
guarded and consistently served.
Following the decline and fall of the Philadelphia Salon, came increased
bitter dissension throughout the American photographic world. The Phila-
delphia Photographic Society was torn by conflict, and lost some of its oldest
and most valued members. The New York organization also felt the force
of the storm. An adverse administration having been elected, the founder
and editors of Camera Notes, from sense of justice to that administration
and sense of self-respect, refused longer to edit and publish a magazine
whose policy was distinctly at variance with the organization of which it was
nominally the official organ. They retired with the issuance of Vol. VI,
No. 1, of that publication. With No. 4 of the same volume that maga-
zine died. The opposition, ever ready with objection, seemed unwilling
or unable to take up the work from which it endeavored to drive others.
Out of all this chaos grew the Secession, a body composed of those
who believed in, and had been connected with, the photographic pictorial
movement, who had well-defined ideas on the subject. Banded together to
carry out those ideas as one man, they were pledged to loyalty to the move-
ment and to each other, and to participate in no quarrel. Petty quarrels had
been the bane of photographic progress—had time and again turned victory
to defeat, brought earnest labor to sterile results, and engendered harmful
ill-feeling and retrogressive discouraging chaos. Only by making such differ-
ences and conditions impossible could final attainment of success be hoped.
Every person who came into the Secession did so with full understanding
of its purpose and tenets, and was pledged to live up to both. Those who did
not feel free to do this were not wanted in the organization, where unity
of purpose and harmony of action were the governing laws. This
did not mean that the work of outsiders, where up to standard, was
not wanted. The contrary was the case. One of the Secession’s objects
was to exploit all representative work, whether by friend or foe, and the
catalogues of all its leading exhibitions show names not enrolled with the
Secession. It was its policy to put before the picture-loving public
compact shows of the very best examples to be had of photography as a
picture-making medium, and in such shape and manner as to excite attention
and respect.
It was founded February 17, 1902. Its first exhibition was at the
National Arts Club, on the invitation of that organization, in March of the
same year. In that exhibition were thirty-two exhibitors, at least half of
whom were not members of the Secession.
48
the Philadelphia Photographic Society and the Academy of Fine Arts
what would be the result did they violate their pledges to the photo-
pictorialists, and abandon established standards. Commenting on the
Exhibition of 1901, Camera Notes had closed its review of the situation with
these words:
The pictorial photographers of the country will now form their own organization, and hold
their own exhibitions where the best interests of pictorial photography will be more faithfully
guarded and consistently served.
Following the decline and fall of the Philadelphia Salon, came increased
bitter dissension throughout the American photographic world. The Phila-
delphia Photographic Society was torn by conflict, and lost some of its oldest
and most valued members. The New York organization also felt the force
of the storm. An adverse administration having been elected, the founder
and editors of Camera Notes, from sense of justice to that administration
and sense of self-respect, refused longer to edit and publish a magazine
whose policy was distinctly at variance with the organization of which it was
nominally the official organ. They retired with the issuance of Vol. VI,
No. 1, of that publication. With No. 4 of the same volume that maga-
zine died. The opposition, ever ready with objection, seemed unwilling
or unable to take up the work from which it endeavored to drive others.
Out of all this chaos grew the Secession, a body composed of those
who believed in, and had been connected with, the photographic pictorial
movement, who had well-defined ideas on the subject. Banded together to
carry out those ideas as one man, they were pledged to loyalty to the move-
ment and to each other, and to participate in no quarrel. Petty quarrels had
been the bane of photographic progress—had time and again turned victory
to defeat, brought earnest labor to sterile results, and engendered harmful
ill-feeling and retrogressive discouraging chaos. Only by making such differ-
ences and conditions impossible could final attainment of success be hoped.
Every person who came into the Secession did so with full understanding
of its purpose and tenets, and was pledged to live up to both. Those who did
not feel free to do this were not wanted in the organization, where unity
of purpose and harmony of action were the governing laws. This
did not mean that the work of outsiders, where up to standard, was
not wanted. The contrary was the case. One of the Secession’s objects
was to exploit all representative work, whether by friend or foe, and the
catalogues of all its leading exhibitions show names not enrolled with the
Secession. It was its policy to put before the picture-loving public
compact shows of the very best examples to be had of photography as a
picture-making medium, and in such shape and manner as to excite attention
and respect.
It was founded February 17, 1902. Its first exhibition was at the
National Arts Club, on the invitation of that organization, in March of the
same year. In that exhibition were thirty-two exhibitors, at least half of
whom were not members of the Secession.
48
