In 1896 the Camera Club of the Capital Bicycle Club sponsored the 1896 Washington Salon and Art Photographic Exhibition and it was a tremendous impetus in gaining acceptance for art photography within the USA with fifty of the photographs being purchased by the Smithsonian Institution. Alfred Stieglitz was editing Camera Notes (1897-1903) for the Camera Club of New York and Fred Holland Day was preparing for the The New School of American Photography exhibition he was organizing for the London Royal Photographic Society in 1900 that included works by:

Alvin Langdon Coburn Fred Holland Day Frank Eugene

Gertrude Käsebier Edward Steichen Clarence H. White

The London exhibition was followed the following year (1901) with the Paris, Photo-Club of Paris also showing The New School of American Photography. It was the photographs shown at these shows and their acclaim that encouraged Alfred Stieglitz to push forward with his own plans in the USA. In the United States Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a talented photographer and he seemingly had endless enthusiasm for promoting photography through exhibitions, writing and social networking. Following his resignation as editor for Camera Notes in 1903 he promoted his personal vision at the little gallery of the Photo-Secession that he ran somewhat autocratically at 291 on New York's Fifth Avenue. The founding members of the Photo-Secession (which took its name from a modern art movement in Munich) included most of those who had contributed to the 1900 London RPS show organized by Fred Holland Day.

Alvin Langdon Coburn Frank Eugene Gertrude Käsebier Joseph T. Keiley William B. Post

Edward Steichen Edmund Sterling Alfred Stieglitz Eva Watson-Schutze Clarence H. White

At it's inception it seems that even the members weren't entirely sure if they were included in the group - but acceptance by Alfred Stieglitz was not to be taken lightly and people could fall out of favor and patronage just as easily as they were accepted. Almost every photographer of any consequence at the beginning of the twentieth century in the USA and most of Europe was influenced by Alfred Stieglitz. From 1903 to 1917 he was responsible for the production of the quarterly publication Camera Work and it included high quality photogravures stuck onto Japanese tissue by hand. The accompanying articles constantly promoted the view that photography was an art - it should be remembered that this was before museums or private individuals, with very few exceptions, were developing photographic collections. The link between painting, sculpture and photography was explicitly made because Camera Work promoted artists such as Rodin, Matisse and Picasso who were developing their reputations at this time. Major photographic exhibitions such as the 1910 show at the Albright Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY, USA) promoted the hanging of photographs in art galleries which was a break through. At this show over 600 photographs hung and 15 photographs purchased for the permanent collection by the museum.
 
Camera Work was expensive to produce and declining sales through the First World War brought about it's cessation of publication in 1917 - but not before it had started to feature the works of Paul Strand who saw pictorialist photography as a dead end and was developing a modernist style.