Professional Photographers of America

Photographic organization

Professional Photographers of America (PPA) is a nonprofit trade association of professional photographers. As of August 2022, PPA has 35,000 members.

The association began in December 1868 as the National Photographic Association of the United States (NPA). The group was against the Ambrotype patent restrictions. Although it succeeded in preventing the reissue of the patent, the executive committee of the NPA became discouraged, and the group disbanded in 1876 because of a lack of interest. The Professional Photographers of America, as it is known today, was officially founded in April 1880 as the Photographers Association of America, Inc., by members of the Chicago Photographic Association and the former National Photographic Association. In their first meeting in April, PAA elected John Ryder from Cleveland, Ohio, as its first president. From August 23–26, 1880, 237 photographers attended PAA's first convention in Chicago. At the 1880 convention, a committee demonstrated the new gelatin dry plate imaging process. American daguerreotype pioneers also attended the early PAA conventions, including John H. Fitzgibbon. The daguerreotype, introduced in 1839–1840, was the first profitable photographic process.

PPA has published Professional Photographer magazine since 1907.

In August 2019, the National Press Photographers Association and the American Society of Media Photographers filed an amicus brief in support of Jim Olive in University of Houston System vs. Jim Olive Photography, D/B/A Photolive, Inc. The brief was attended by the North American Nature Photography Association, the Graphic Artists Guild, American Photographic Artists, and Professional Photographers of America. "The case began when Texas photographer Jim Olive discovered that the University of Houston was using one of his aerial photographs for marketing purposes without permission. When Olive asked the University to pay for the use, they refused and told him they were shielded from suit because of sovereign immunity, which protects state government entities from many lawsuits." After a negative ruling from a Texas appellate court, Olive hopes to continue his fight. In 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in Allen v. Cooper, raising the question of whether Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity via the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in providing remedies for authors of original expression whose federal copyrights are infringed by states. Thirteen amici, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Copyright Alliance, the Software and Information Industry Association, Professional Photographers of America, and the National Press Photographers Association, filed briefs in support of Allen. Those briefs proposed various doctrines under which the CRCA could validly abrogate sovereign immunity and variously re asserted and supported the reasons why Congress examined and enacted CRCA, claiming that Congress was fair in finding that states had abused immunity and that an alternative remedy was needed. On November 5, 2019, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Allen v. Cooper. A decision in the case is expected in the late spring of 2020.