The 1896 international photographic art exposition hosted by the Photo-Club de Paris, its third, was held at the Galerie Des Champs Elysées in Paris from May 12-31, 1896. Like the first two years, an elegant photogravure portfolio was published in conjunction with the show. This portfolio contains 42 photogravures and one lithographic plate-depicting an Art-Nouveau style drawing by the French artist Edme Couty. All the plates were printed by the French Atelier Charles Wittmann. Copper plates for the plate impressions were prepared by Fillon et Heuse, two by Blechinger and one each by James Craig Annan and Walter Colls.

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 the revolutionary new photographic organization: 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. 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.