On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture

COLLECTORS
If twentieth-century collectors of photographs are just
recently becoming well known, then those of the previous
period were mostly unknown. A very few studies
have been conducted in the domain of 19th century collectors
and photographic market. This gap can also be
explained by the fact that the idea of a large disinterest
for old photography, which marked the fi rst half of the
20th century, and has been extended to the second part
of the 19th century. However, everything indicates that
many people during this period were able to distinguish
between photographic prints of a work of art, a document,
an industrial production or a scientifi c archive.