The progress of pictorial photography in Maryland is to be ascertained by an examination of the progress of the amateur in Baltimore, for aside from the local exhibitions we have no record of anything done in the State. While this condition is regrettable and hard to comprehend in an art-loving center of such population, there is none the less an improvement over former times. The shops and the “finishers” have prospered, while the club—the old organization in which the reason of being has been lost in a maze of constitutional amendments, by-laws, and such like red tape—has declined in influence and popularity. In the world at large, pictorial photography has grown amazingly. This has led to a more pronounced line of demarkation between the dilettante and the intelligent worker of appreciation, with the balance of influence inclining strongly to the latter. In Maryland there has been an upheaval, a photographic revolution, so to speak, and out of the wreckage has sprung the Photographic Guild of Baltimore, which has done more to put Maryland photographically to the fore in its five years of activity than had been done in all the years previous. It was due almost entirely to Guilders that Maryland stood fourth at the recent Pittsburgh Salon. Two prerequisites to membership in the Guild are ability in keeping with the highest standards and _productiveness_, as a consequence of which it has only six members, who may be said to comprise the representative pictorialists of the State. For the past four years there has been an annual exhibition under the auspices of the Guild at the Peabody Gallery, each well attended by the art-loving public, with marked enthusiasm for what is being done with the process. A feature of the Guild exhibitions, beginning with the 1919 portfolio recently hung, is the invited work of out-of-town amateurs, which is giving Baltimoreans a wider and better knowledge. While this exhibition has not assumed salon proportions, it will in a measure bring the salons to Baltimore if help in the way of prints from outside is forthcoming, as we hope and believe will be the case. On the whole, it may be truly said that the flexibility and responsiveness of the photographic process have been sufficiently demonstrated to fix it firmly among the art mediums. * MIDDLE WEST ACTIVITIES AND THE PITTSBURGH SALON _By_ W. H. PORTERFIELD Any article describing the activity in pictorial photography in the United States since 1914 must include a history of the work of the Pittsburgh Salon, and that has been very thoroughly covered in magazine articles immediately succeeding the close of each salon. At the outbreak of the war, the thoughts and energies of many of our foremost workers were directed toward other fields, and those who still practiced the work for the art side of it did so under difficulties.