ABSTRACT
Photography is a widely and diversely practiced medium of communication, which makes it a useful focus of study for scholars who seek to understand the social foundations and implications of human expression. Until the late 1850s, amateur photographers were a small, homogeneous group of scientifically oriented and trained men, primarily interested in making technical improvements in the medium. As amateur photography became more widespread, amateur photographers became an increasingly diverse group. The technical innovation that provided impetus for dramatic change in the amateur world was the introduction in the late 1870s of dry-plate photography. Many photography historians have chronicled the great changes that occurred within the world of amateur photography in the late nineteenth century. When hand cameras first came on the market in the 1880s, they were enthusiastically embraced by societies of amateur photographers for their compactness and technical capabilities.
