European Society for the History of Photography

The European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh), founded in 1978, is a society concerned with the historical events within photography from a European perspective.

The ESHPh publicly hosts symposia, publishes journals, and distributes the "International Letter" to its members. The ESHPh is actively chronicling the historiography of the history of photography in Europe.

The founding of the Europäischen Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Photographie (ESHPh) [European Society for the History of Photography] took place at the first general meeting on 19 November 1978 in Leverkusen, Germany. The decision to form a society of this nature had been taken one year earlier in Antwerp, Belgium. A group of museum curators and photographic historians from six European countries - notably Laurent Roosens (of the Sterckshof Museum, Antwerp), Margaret Harker (the UK's Royal Photographic Society) and Rolf Krauss (Deutsche Gesellschafte für Photographie) - came together to establish a new society dealing with the history of photography in a European context.

Since 2001, the presidential headquarters are to be found in Vienna. From 1978 until 1989, those headquarters were in Antwerp; thereafter, until 2001, in Croydon, UK. It is currently based in Vienna, although the website is hosted by the Donau University Krems, Austria.

The ESHPh was founded with the primary aim of researching the historical development of photography from its origins up to the present and integrating it within a European context within the social political matrix of photography's inherent interdisciplinary nature. Photographers, general historians and historians of photography, philosophers, sociologists, ethnologists, academics, curators and private collectors as well as many important European institutions and some from further afield all belong to the ESHPh. Alongside its research activities, the ESHPh takes part in a worldwide exchange of information. It supports both the recognition of the history of photography as an academic discipline and the establishment of chairs in the discipline at European universities.

From 1981 until 2004, the society has held symposia in various locations in Europe, as evidenced by diverse publications. For its 30th anniversary in 2008, the ESHPh celebrated an internationally attended photography congress at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in Vienna, from 6–8 November 2008. This anniversary event was accompanied by an English language commemorative publication and took place as the theoretical focus of the European Month of Photography 2008 in Vienna.

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