The club attracted professionals who recognised its mission; photographers, curators, gallery owners, laboratory technicians, including
Jean-Claude Lemagny, curator at the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Michel Quétin, curator at the National Archives, gallery owner Agathe Gaillard, and Claude Mollard, senior civil servant and future president of the National Centre for Photography, as well as amateurs who came to rub shoulders with the five
Niépce Award-winners who frequented the meetings. Registered at 52 rue Custine, a few streets north of Sacre Coeur, the organisation met every Thursday in the salons of the Club Alpine, 10
rue La Boétie, 75008 Paris, then at the Maison pour Tous (
rue Mouffetard) and at the Centre International de Séjour in Paris. After a discussion of current exhibitions of photography (and other media), the members of the club, followed by their guests, presented their work and received a critique, in particular from Daniel Masclet, a seasoned photographer, who was present at all the sessions and seated in "His" armchair, in the first row. Professionals and amateurs confronted each other in critiques and debates in which
Jean-Philippe Charbonnier was prominent, while the young guard, represented by Jean-Pierre Ducatez,
Léon Herschtritt, Michel Kempf and
Yvette Troispoux, rebelled against conformism and amateurism, and challenged their elders whose ambition had flagged, and asserted their point of view to defend an uncompromising conception of photography. At a time when books on the history of photography were rare, or inaccessible, or centred on technique, the group provided a source of information; Jean-Louis Swiners, a
Life magazine subscriber, shared the photographic essays of
W. Eugene Smith, and
Man Ray and
Brassaï themselves presented on occasion, though even they were not immune to criticism from more militant members. Dealer André Jammes, collector of 19th century prints, showed his collection from the
Missions Héliographiques, of
Atget, or of neglected photographers from the School of Paris. Few were the weeks when a foreign international photographer was not present on Thursday. The club regularly organised exhibitions at Studio 28, rue Tholozé in the
18th arrondissement of Paris, and in
Leningrad and
London.
Jeune Photographie Aside from occasional catalogues of their exhibitions, from 1952 the club issued
Jeune Photographie, an internal bimonthly of twenty mimeographed and stapled pages which compensated for its lack of pictures with the quality of its writing. Initially an information bulletin, it came to host strenuous debates between Swiners and photography historian Michel Francois Braive and the pronouncements of Gautrand or Lemagny. A keen subscriber was
Ansel Adams, who submitted an article. However, lacking subsidies or sponsors, patrons or advertisements, from 1968 to 1974 the newsletter appeared only intermittently, and ceased publication in 1976. A new and short-lived publication,
Les Cahiers des 30 × 40, replaced
Jeune Photographie for 8 issues, until 1980.
May 1968 Members, with
Henri Cartier-Bresson,
William Klein and even
Marc Riboud, covered the events of
May 68 on a daily basis, which they documented in hundreds of pictures, many not published at the time, that were exhibited in a permanent and daily exhibition in their premises, at the Maison des jeunes, rue Mouffetard in the 5th arrondissement. == Influence ==