e-book: Pittsburgh Amateur Photographers

In 2000, our historian, Valentino Buttignol, did a deep dive into the history of the Photo Section of the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburgh and its predecessors. The result was his book “Pittsburgh Amateur Photographers and the Photo Salons”. In 2015, Nancy Barnard revised, corrected and published the manuscript.

It’s too large for our website so we present it here chapter by chapter.


Note: this page doesn’t work on mobile devices but works fine on the desktop. We’re working on it but we ran out of coffee, so please be patient.

Table of Contents


Preface and Prologue

How Did It Get There?

The Amateur Photographer’s Society

Carnegie and the Academy

Pictorialists and the Photo Salon

The Photo-Secession

The American Photographic Salon

The Pittsburgh Salon

Profiles of Three Leaders

In To Modernism

The Photo Section After the Salons, To The Present

Addenda and Notes