The Camera Club of New York
Encyclopedia
Since 1884, The Camera Club of New York has been a forum to explore photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
. Though the Club was created by well-to-do 'gentlemen' photography enthusiasts seeking a refuge from the mass popularization of the medium in the 1880s, it accepted its first woman as a member, Miss Elizabeth A. Slade, in 1887, only four years after its inception, and later came to accept new ideas and new approaches to the medium.
Over the years the Club helped launch revolutionary new approaches to photography and nurture many photographers who later became giants in the field. Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
used the Club as a forum and venue to convince a still skeptical public that photography was an art worthy of comparison to painting. Later, as the medium matured, the Club was again the place where the new "straight" approach to photography would emerge. Paul Strand
Paul Strand
Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century...
, who joined the Camera Club at 17, was introduced to a camera at the Club that had a right-angle viewfinder, allowing one to photograph people unawares. Strand used this camera to produced some of his most memorable images on the streets of New York, including Blind Woman and Wall Street.
Autochrome Lumière
The Autochrome Lumière is an early color photography process. Patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907, it was the principal color photography process in use before the advent of subtractive color film in the mid-1930s....
process, an early form of color photography, in 1909. In 1930 Willard Morgan first introduced the new Leica camera to Club members. Among the important lectures held at the Club were Aero Photography by Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen
Edward J. Steichen was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Steichen also contributed the logo design and a custom typeface...
in 1921 and The Life and Work of Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris....
by Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...
in 1931. Later, Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
lectured on fashion Photography in 1949.
Today, the Camera Club continues to function as an important resource for photography. The club offers classes in basic camera and darkroom skills, which help nurture and create new pioneers of photography and workspaces for established and emerging photographers. Lectures and exhibits are an important part of the club's program. Since 1999 such important photographers as Eugene Richards
Eugene Richards
Eugene Richards is a noted American documentary photographer.During the 1960s, Richards was a civil rights activist and VISTA volunteer...
, Nigel Parry
Nigel Parry
Nigel Parry is a New York-based photographer of celebrities, who started his career in London in 1987 and moved to New York in 1994. His work has been seen in magazine features, such as Elle, InStyle, Vanity Fair, Men's Health and Maxim...
, Duane Michals
Duane Michals
Duane Michals is an American photographer. Michals' work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.-Education and career:...
, Oliver Weber
Oliver Weber
Oliver Weber is a German photographer. Currently he lives and works on the Canary Island of La Gomera. His specialty areas are reportage, portrait and what has come to be recognized as street photography. He has become more widely known through numerous features with reputable magazines and...
, Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
, Eddie Adams
Eddie Adams (photographer)
Eddie Adams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and his coverage of 13 wars.-Combat photographer:...
, and Henry Horenstein
Henry Horenstein
Henry Horenstein is an American artist photographer. Henry Horenstein has worked as a photographer, teacher and author since the early 1970s. He is the author of over 30 books, including a series of photographic textbooks that have been used by hundreds of thousands of students over the past 30...
have exhibited and lectured at the club.
The Camera Club of New York is located at 336 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018.
External links
- Official website
- Wingfield, Valerie. Camera Club of New York records, 1889-1983. New York Public Library, July 1993.