“San Francisco on a thousand plates”: New perspectives on photo-historical research around 1900 through the lens of the California Camera Club
With a focus on the dispersed corpus of an American photographic society – the California Camera Club – this article proposes new methods to examine photographic objects produced around 1900. In a period commonly defined by Pictorialism and the New York Photo-Secession, the works of San Franciscan p...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Université de Bourgogne
2019-06-01
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| Series: | Interfaces |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/644 |
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| Summary: | With a focus on the dispersed corpus of an American photographic society – the California Camera Club – this article proposes new methods to examine photographic objects produced around 1900. In a period commonly defined by Pictorialism and the New York Photo-Secession, the works of San Franciscan photographers stand out as extremely versatile. The Club corpus, which has withstood the earthquake and fire of 1906, and decade-long oblivion on the part of scholars and curators, is dispersed over numerous Californian institutions. As such, it represents an important contribution to American photographic history that demands us to rethink the categories generally ascribed to camera clubs. To grasp how the works of the more than 400-member-strong organization can be partly reassembled, this article proposes a survey of the Club's primary sources with a special focus on their material supports and their storage locations, accompanied by a historiographical discussion. By looking first at the productions of the members in their most active period, and, as a second step, examining the processes of canonization which led to their oblivion, this article provides new tools for photo-historical research around 1900. |
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| ISSN: | 2647-6754 |