Author Carolin Görgen will discuss her new book about the California Camera Club, a San Francisco–based photographic association that emerged as the largest organization of its kind in the United States at the turn of the 20th century.  Although the club played a decisive role in advancing the careers of Ansel Adams and other famous American photographers, its most significant legacy lies in how it fostered collaborative outdoor practices.  In telling the story of these largely unknown photographers, Carolin Görgen offers a new perspective on American photography.

 

Author bio: Carolin Görgen is Associate Professor of American Studies at Sorbonne Université.  A historian of photography and the American West, she researches the histories of photo networks in the western United States and their environmental afterlives.  Görgen’s research has been supported among others by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Huntington Library, and the Thomas Mann House.  She was a 2025 Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.