In the fall of 1944, some two dozen New York photographers formed the Society of Magazine Photographers or SMP. Within a few months, though, they had to change the name to American Society of Magazine Photographers because the acronym SMP was already being used by another organization. (In 1992, recognizing that it had grown far beyond the borders of the magazine industry, the Society adopted its current name.) Their goal was to address their common problems: lack of credit lines, unauthorized reproduction of images, and uncredited copying of photographs by illustrators and artists. They also hoped to raise their rates of pay.