These images are from the Royal Photographic Society Collection held at The National Media Museum, Bradford and can also be viewed at www.scienceandsociety.co.uk

It was Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, a staunch supporter of the Society, who suggested that the Society began to collect photographs to record the rapid technical process in photography, which was supplemented as time went on by collections of books and apparatus.

A major influence on the collection was exercised by John Dudley Johnston, who was President twice and a curator of the collection for 31 years. It was he who steered the collection in the direction of pictorialism and established it as one of the most important photographic collections in the world.

During its two decades in Bath a series of important exhibitions have used the collection as their basis and a permanent exhibition on the history of photography drawn from it was arranged in the gallery of the Octagon.

In June 2002 a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £3.75 million was announced, which, together with a grant of £342,000 from the National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund) and funding from Yorkshire Forward facilitated the transfer of The Society's collection to the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, now the National Media Museum, which is a part of the Science Museum.

Read more and see more about the Collection at the links below: 

The National Media Museum - The RPS Collection

Science & Society Picture Library