The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring

The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring

You know those arguments about whether photography is an art or a science? They aren’t something that broke out when digital cameras started to take over, but had been going on for more than a hundred years before that: the battle lines were first drawn up in a formal way in 1892, when Henry Peach Robinson and some friends formed the Brotherhood. It has nothing to do with Saruman or Frodo, by the way.
Membership of the Brotherhood was by invitation only: and it was eight years before they invited the first sister to join: her name was Gertrude Käsebier. Ten years after the Linked Ring was founded, an American equivalent, the Photo-Secession was kicked off by Alfred Steiglitz – which prompts the question as to what it was a secession FROM. On the whole, it appears to be from stale artwork aping Victorian styles, and also from the dictatorship of entrenched institutions. Just another revolution, then.

The Photo-Secession dissolved again in short order because of Steiglitz’s autocratic tendencies: the Linked ring led to the Salon Exhibition to ‘exhibit [images] that are description of pictorial photography in which there is distinct evidence of personal feeling and execution.’

The weakness of Wikiresearch is that you can’t always dot the Ts and cross the Is: so I haven’t been able to establish for certain that the London Salon that continues (with a Covid break at present) is the direct descendant – but it’s interesting that the website states that ‘The aim of the London Salon is to exhibit only that class of photographic work in which there is distinct evidence of artistic feeling and execution.’

Now, this is where it gets confusing: in 1932, Ansel Adams helped found Group f/64 – with an anti-pictorialist aim to promote ‘pure’ photography – sharply-focussed and carefully framed images. At this stage, I’m inclined to throw my hands in the air and curse the idea that we must have names for everything – it’s like deciding that if we can name an illness, we’ve solved the problem. Until you have worked out what treatment will cure a disease, the name doesn’t matter. Similarly, being part of a photographic movement isn’t a lot of use unless it inspires you to take good pictures…