Alfred Maskell (born about 1857) was a founder member of the British Linked Ring.  Writing to Henry Peach Robinson on April 24, 1892, Maskell proposed a revolutionary new photographic organization that became known as the Linked Ring:  “Now it has struck me that it would be good…(to) form a small society, an inner circle, a kind of little Bohemian Club, and I am sending this idea to a small number of others in order that we might meet and make a beginning.” 1.

Maskell was both a  champion and pioneer for unconventional photographic processes  including pinhole photography and the gum bichromate process.  This photogravure of a young Dutch girl was taken using a pinhole camera by Maskell.  An article titled “Artistic Focus and the Suppression of the Lens” which deals with photography without the aid of a lens, (“pinhole photography”) was published in the Photographic Quarterly, Vol. II, No. 5. from October 1890. 2.

1. The Linked Ring. The Secession  in Photography, 1892-1910: p. 83
2.  website:  Nick Dvoracek Pinhole Photography