Newly revealed: Photographic Society of Philadelphia Records (1862-1965) and Inventory of the Philadelphia Photographic Salon Albums (1898-1901) in the Louis Walton Sipley / American Museum of Photography Collection at George Eastman House

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Rochester and George Eastman House, Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, 2015.This applied thesis provides the historical context of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia (founded 1862) together with an overview of the four annual Philadelphia Photographic Salons hosted by the Society and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1898-1901), Philadelphia. Manuscript records of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia (1862-1944 bulk dates) held in the Library of the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY) are newly arranged, described, and presented in a new finding aid. Details of provenance, administrative and custodial history are also provided, along with other elements required of a finding aid as stipulated by the Society of American Archivists. Contents of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia’s four albums chronicling the annual Philadelphia Photographic Salons (1898-1901) are described to item level in the new finding aid. Data concerning each Salon, including lists of every artist (296 exhibitors) who exhibited in a given year and the titles of every work shown (1,094), are compiled in order to facilitate analyses or serve as ready reference. Each Salon installation was photographed contemporaneously and printed as platinumprint photographs, 55 of which are pasted into the Philadelphia Photographic Salon albums. These have been newly photographed digitally and are presented here in the hope that they will enable future users to study the placement and arrangement of photographs among and between all four Salon installations. The new photographs also provide important clues regarding the practices of matting, framing, arranging, and hanging Pictorial photographs in the United States at the turn of the last century. Finally, all of the works exhibited in the Salons have been cross-referenced by title, artist, and provenance with those in the collections database of the Department of Photography, GEH, in order to determine if a given work owned by GEH is likely to be the same object that was exhibited in a given Philadelphia Salon. By cross-referencing the Society, the Salons, and the holdings of the Department of Photographs, this work links the authenticity of each