PHOTOGRAPHIC PRIVILEGES IN THE NEW YORK 
ZOOLOGICAL PARK 
By The Director 
T HE experiments of the Zoological Society 
in the management of the photographic 
privilege in the Zoological Park have con¬ 
tinued throughout the first twenty-three years 
of the Park’s existence without any elucidation 
or discussion in the Society’s publications. From 
the beginnings the members of the Society have 
been familiar with the Executive Committee’s 
reasons for strictly regulating the privilege of 
photographing our animalSs and this statement 
will add little to their information. In view, 
however, of the creation of new zoological parks 
and gardens throughout the world, and for the 
information of the public outside the member¬ 
ship of the Society, a brief historical record of 
the Society’s policy and success now seems 
worth while. 
In 1899, when the Zoological Park was about 
to be opened to the public, and rules for its man¬ 
agement were being drafted, the value of fine 
pictures of living wild animals, either in captiv¬ 
ity or out of captivity, was fully recognized. 
The very great usefulness of pictures of all 
kinds in what soon became known as “visual 
instruction,”' is now abundantly recognized by 
all educators. Great industries have been built 
up, and incidentally vast fortunes have been 
made, by the exploitation of the picture idea as 
a means of education. 
When the Zoological Park opened to the pub¬ 
lic in November, 1899, there was not then in 
existence in any zoological garden or park, or 
in the offices of any zoological society, a fine and 
noteworthy collection of wild animal photo¬ 
graphs. We know whereof we speak, because 
of the great efforts and expenditures that were 
necessary in those early days to obtain even a 
few good photographs of the most noteworthy 
and most common wild animals of zoological 
gardens. The Director of the Zoological Park 
had in .previous years come in painful contact 
with the need for good photographs of wild ani¬ 
mals with which to illustrate the living verte¬ 
brates in educational publications. 
The efforts of artists, taxidermists, animal 
painters and sculptors, and also writers of books 
on natural history to obtain good animal photo¬ 
graphs were at times positively pathetic. It was 
the knowledge of this very unsatisfactory situ¬ 
ation that impelled the Director of the Park to 
urge upon the Executive Committee of the Zoo¬ 
logical Society the desirability of taking steps to 
form a really great and zoologically important 
collection of photographs to embrace all of the 
important species of mammals, birds and rep¬ 
tiles that might come into the new institution 
that was to be called the New York Zoological 
Park. It was pointed out that the haphazard 
efforts of outside photographers, either amateur 
or professional, never could be relied upon to 
produce, a collection of photographs that would 
amount to anything of value. 
The Executive Committee decided that as a 
duty to science and the public, and to the gen¬ 
eral cause of education, it was imperatively 
necessary to establish and maintain at the Park 
an official photographer, and to make whatever 
expenditures and efforts were necessary to accu¬ 
mulate an unprecedented store of pictorial rec¬ 
ords of living wild animals. At the same time it 
was decided that it was highly undesirable, from 
the standpoint of the practical interests of the 
Zoological Society and the Park, to permit free 
access to its collections by the millions of per¬ 
sons owning cameras and desirous of taking 
millions of snapshots without limit or control. 
It seemed inadvisable that the country should 
be flooded with poor pictures of the Zoological 
Park and its animals; and it also seemed in¬ 
advisable that animals shedding their winter 
coats of hair, that men in their working clothes, 
and above all, that accidents and untoward hap¬ 
penings should be photographed by anyone, and 
broadcasted. 
Finally, it was quite clear that the annual 
use of thousands of cameras in front of the ani¬ 
mal cages would interfere with the use of the 
collections by visitors, and would not be for the 
greatest good of the greatest number. 
It was without dissenting opinion that the 
Executive Committee of the Society reached the 
conclusion that a strict regulation of the photo- 
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