This group set includes all 12 hand-pulled photogravure plates (heliogravures) issued with the 1908 annual volume.

The masthead for the first issue of 1908 includes the following, with a customary editors note “to the Readers” that follows:

15th Year     January  4  1908   No. 1 

Geïllustreerd Weekblad voor Fotografie

International Survey of Photography and related subjects of Art and Science.

Chief Editor J. J. M. M. VAN DEN BERGH,

Valeriusstraat 58, Amsterdam.

To the Readers. (translated)

This first issue of the fifteenth year of the Illustrated Weekblad voor Fotografie brings you in the very first place the congratulations of the Editors and Publishers, on the new year that has begun. They hope that the changes that the appearance of their magazine has undergone will meet with general approval and it was a great satisfaction to them during the previous year that irrefutable proof was received from several sides that, as far as the interior is concerned, no significant changes were necessary or desired.

Knowing that a part of our readers feels more for photographic technique than for photographic art; that another part cherishes exactly opposite sympathies and that finally a third category is interested in both and would not like to see either of them neglected in our magazine. It is our firm conviction that the latter will find the most satisfaction in the beautiful profession that they practice.

We do not wish to discuss here the worn-out question of whether photography is art. One might as well ask whether painting is art. A farmer who paints his chicken coop, and Israëls paint both! It is only a question of how one paints and how one photographs.

That question, about which volumes full of meaning have been written, leaves us completely cold, and most of us with us. For undeniably the new way of developing the profession has already shown us so much beautiful, artistic work that it can only be a question of time, of reading, of study and of seeing, for the serious worker to no longer find satisfaction in his impeccable technical work; to begin to yearn for higher and better.

No technically developed professional photographer, who makes good work, in his own genre, has the right to meet with a mocking shrug of the shoulders those whose main goal is to deliver works of art; for there is work of art delivered, and in ample measure. Moreover, one step, still, and he himself passes the boundary that still separates him from the other, for in someone who seriously applies himself to photography, as a visual art, must, even unconsciously, already have some artistic con-are present, which usually only needs development. Nor does the art photographer have the right to look down with disdain on the skilled technician who is unmoved by the new direction, because without a perfect technique, even the most artistically inclined is not capable of giving his impressions a form that is understandable to others. Therefore we will continue to refrain as much as possible from one-sidedness and try to move in every area.

Will we again have to mention photographic giant leaps this year, as in the previous one? Color photography, the practical execution of direct enlargements in carbon printing, the glue pressure (lijmdruk), and what not? One can deny that; but we do not deny it or we will only have the material for our content for the grasp, where, as in the previous year, we hope to be the first to inform and keep the readers informed of everything important that happens or is written in the old and the new world. Whoever reads the Weekblad will not have to sift the wheat from the chaff of a series of foreign magazines; the editors of this magazine will do that for them.

We once again call upon the cooperation of readers and non-readers, of professional and amateur photographers, by sending us beautiful photos, in order to be able to provide a dozen heliogravures that are to their taste. We also ask for their cooperation in the content of our magazine, when they have some important announcement to make, or can send in a decent piece.

And finally we repeat our request to all subscribers: Provide us, without exception, with a new subscriber this year, that will double the number, enable us to continue to beautify, improve and expand our magazine and therefore benefit our subscribers themselves.

History: Geïllustreerd Weekblad voor Fotografie  1894-1910

The Dutch photographic journal Geïllustreerd Weekblad voor Fotografie (Illustrated Weekly Magazine for Photography) was published for 17 years, from 1894-1910. The masthead on the title page for yearly volumes owned by this archive indicate the “Weekblad” was the “Official Organ of the Amateur Photographers Association “Rotterdam” from at least 1903-1905, and most likely associated with the group much earlier. From 1893-1900, (1898 missing) the weekly was promoted as the Official Organ of the Nijmegen Amateur Photographers’ Association M.L. (1.)

The journal was initially published in Apeldoorn, a city in the province of Gelderland in the center of the Netherlands by Laurens Hansma from 1894-1906. Hansma, (1860-1920) according to a short biography by the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam was “an enthusiastic amateur photographer….the publisher of more than fifteen books on photography, including Kleurenfotografie, Fotografie voor den natuurliefhebber, Gomdruk and Het fotografeeren in de tropicen. Laurens Hansma is seen as an important figure in the spread of photography in the Netherlands.”

From 1907-10, the “Weekblad” was then published in Zutphen, located approximately 30 minutes southeast of Apeldoorn- also in the province of Gelderland, by W.J. Thieme & Co.

At the end of its 17th year of publication in late 1910, the journal was purchased and incorporated into the pages of the Dutch photographic journal “Lux” (geillustreerd tijdschrift voor fotografie-illustrated magazine for photography). Now published by J.R.A. Schouten, Lux (1889-1927) took on the former weekblad’s top editor, J. J. M. M. Van Den Bergh, with him joining the growing publications editorial staff.

1. List of Dutch amateur photographers and their circle before 1900: Dissertation: Mattie Boom: Doctoral degree: Erasmus University Rotterdam: “Kodak in Amsterdam The Rise of Amateur Photography in the Netherlands 1880-1910” (p. 142)