Barry Taylor, who was managing director of Olympus Optical Co (UK) from 1977 until 1999, has died aged 87 years. During his career at Olympus Barry was behind a series of memorable advertising campaigns, the establishment of Olympus’s London photography galleries, and through Olympus supported photography more widely across Britain.  

In 1975 Japan’s Olympus Optical Company took…

The landmark British photo-magazine, Picture Post (1938-57), was launched in the era of the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front. Conceived for Hulton Press by Stefan Lorant (a Hungarian editor exiled from Nazi Germany), Picture Post had a transnational staff and a global outlook. It was the leading British example of an international phenomenon – the birth of…

A paper just published in Studies in Conservation by Kim Bell and Robin Canham of Queen's University Library, Canada, has analysed the card mounts of stereocards, based on a limited sample of North American cards recently donated to the library. Their analysis by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy has indicated the significant presence of different heavy metals in the…

Photo Oxford has announced a series of alternative process workshops during March and April to explore the art of cyanotypes, anthotypes, phytograms, botanicograms, chemigrams, caffenol film development, pinhole cameras, photography as performance, and psychogeography. They include: 

• Caffenol film processing with Melanie King…

A series of monthly blogs posts highlighting the rare photography material held in Leicester's De Montfort University's Special Collection has just started. DMU's Special Collections houses rare photography periodicals from Kodak Ltd's research library, the Robert F White collection of printed materials mainly relating to cameras and photographci technology, the Photographers' Gallery library, publications, books and auction catalogues from the Wilson Collection, and periodicals from Thomas…

Just received the sad news that my old friend and teaching colleague, the legendary John Blakemore died last night after a…

A behind the scenes look at the creation of the Lee Miller Archives which today houses more than 60,000 negatives of Lee Miller’s work, 20,000 vintage prints, many manuscripts and ephemera.

Ami Bouhassane (Co-Director of the Lee Miller Archives and grand-daughter of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose) presents the story of how Lee Miller’s family came to conserve and disseminate her…