Four Editions of the Aide-Mémoire de Photographie (1888–1909)

This object con­sists of four edi­tions of the Aide-Mémoire de Pho­togra­phie, an annu­al pock­et hand­book pub­lished between 1876 and 1910 under the aus­pices of the Société Pho­tographique de Toulouse and edit­ed by Charles Fab­re. Intend­ed as a prac­ti­cal com­pan­ion for pho­tog­ra­phers, each vol­ume com­bined a diary with tech­ni­cal ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al, includ­ing expo­sure tables, pho­to­graph­ic for­mu­las, direc­to­ries of pho­to­graph­ic soci­eties, bib­li­ogra­phies, and reviews of new equip­ment and process­es. Reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed, the series reflects the rapid devel­op­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy dur­ing the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies. The four sur­viv­ing edi­tions in this col­lec­tion, dat­ing from 1888, 1891, 1893, and 1909, illus­trate both the long pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry of the hand­book and the evo­lu­tion of its design, from dec­o­ra­tive cloth bind­ings to the sim­pler paper-cov­ered for­mat of the final years. Today, the Aide-Mémoire de Pho­togra­phie is an impor­tant pri­ma­ry source for study­ing the every­day prac­tice of pho­tog­ra­phy and the pro­fes­sion­al net­work of pho­tog­ra­phers dur­ing this for­ma­tive period.