Blogs

A story that has been live for a while is the proposed sell off of the archive of the now-closed Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Glasgow. The story of the CCA and its closure, and relationship with Creative Scotland, the Scottish government and Glasgow City Council, is outside the scope of BPH. Check out the museum press and The Herald websites for more on this.The recent threat to 103 Trongate, Glasgow, which houses Street Level Photoworks and other arts organisations is a further sign of the pressure arts organisations are under in Scotland. 

The sale of the CCA archive which includes photography is of interest, both from the photography perspective and the wider issues it raises around the value and sale of archives especially where they have been formed by bodies in receipt of public funds.  

Steven Wright, a business recovery partner at the accountancy firm Dains, was appointed as the provisional liquidator and as such has a duty to recover as much of the value of CCA's assets to pay creditors and staff who having outstanding pay and redundancy payments. Part of the assets of the CCA is the archive which consists of the CCA's predecessor body, the The Third Eye Centre (1973-1991) and the CCA itself (1992-present). Dains instructed Middleton Barton Valuation (MB Valuations) to assess the value of the archive and offer it for sale by private treaty. MB's summary of the archive is reproduced below for the record. No value has been given for the archive which in commercial terms is likely to be negligable - much of the material could not be exploited as copyright will subsist with the artists represented or their estates - but its cultural and historical value to Glasgow and beyond is significant.

With the deadline for expressions of interests or offers this week there is an urgency to resolving the archive's status and where it might go. Ideally, it will be passed, not sold, to a public body in Scotland. 

See:

Dains - https://www.dains.com/insights/steven-wright-appointed-as-provisional-liquidator-of-the-centre-for-contemporary-arts-2026-02-10

CCA - https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2026/07/outcry-over-plan-to-sell-building-that-housed-glasgows-centre-for-contemporary-arts/

CCA archive - https://mbvaluation.com/asset_for_sale/sale-by-private-treaty-the-third-eye-centre-centre-for-contemporary-art-archive/

Image: Public domain

Trongate 103 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78l2ljw6d8o

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The Third Eye Centre & Centre For Contemporary Art – Archive

Third Eye Centre

The archive covers the period from January 1973 to December 1991

Scope and Content:

The archives contains administrative paperwork, committee papers and legal documents, publicity materials such as exhibition posters and flyers, publications such as exhibition catalogues, documentation such as VHS, audio recordings and images in multiple formats.

The contents include:

• Paper records
• Film records
• Photograph records
• Publications
• Brochures, Flyers and Posters

Administrative / Biographical History:

In 1974 the Scottish writer and playwright, Tom McGrath, founded The Third Eye Centre in Glasgow. Described by the Guardian as ‘a shrine to the avant garde’, the centre hosted visiting artists and performers such as Allen Ginsberg, Whoopi Goldberg, John Byrne, Edwin Morgan and Kathy Acker, as well as quickly becoming the focus for Glasgow’s counter culture. When it consolidated its activities in the 1980s it presented some of the key exhibitions by the new Glasgow painters such as Steven Campbell, Ken Currie and Peter Howson and was the home of the National Review of Live Art.

With the demise of The Third Eye Centre at the turn of the 1990s, the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) established in its place, opening in 1992. In 1996, the organisation was awarded a lottery grant to redevelop and expand the building complex and in 2001 the newly refurbished CCA opened to the public. Now housing a spectrum of cultural tenants as well as a café/restaurant, bar and cinema. In 2006, the organisation itself underwent a profound cultural shift, deciding to pursue a more open curatorial policy – an ‘open source’ approach – which encouraged artists and organisations to propose their own programs to sit alongside those curated by CCA. Today, that policy has produced a livelier and more varied program that offers a new kind of accessibility to audiences, drawing on the spirit of The Third Eye Centre and the early history of the CCA.*

Centre for Contemporary Arts

The archive covers the period from January 1992 to Current.

Scope and Content:

The archive comprises of fourteen collections arranged into format; slides, VHS, photographs, publications, ephemera, audio, posters, film, VHS, news cuttings and paper records which are subdivided into CCA (1992-present) and Third Eye Centre(1973-1991).

The contents include:

• Paper records
• Film records
• Photograph records
• Publications
• Brochures, Flyers, Posters, and Ephemera
• Administrative / Biographical History

The venue has had four directors in its history: Jo Beddoe, Penny Rae, Graham MacKenzie and Francis McKee. The 1990s saw a programme bristling with energy and excitement. A challenging live art programme welcomed Ron Athey and Goat Island, as well as a series of adventurous and often provocative exhibitions such as Bad Girls and Slip of the Tongue, Janine Antoni’s first solo show. In 1994, CCA presented New Art in Scotland, by Douglas Gordon, Jane Lee and Nicola White. Key emerging artists presented in this show included Nathan Coley, Jacqueline Donachie, Louise Hopkins, Carol Rhodes, Richard Wright and David Shrigley. Ross Sinclair’s Real Life Rocky Mountain and The Persistence of Painting – helped to confirm the breadth of the nineties art scene in Glasgow.

In 2006, CCA underwent a profound cultural shift, deciding to pursue a more open curatorial policy. This open source approach encourages artists and organisations to present their own programmes in CCA. Today, that policy produces a livelier and more varied programme that offers a new kind of accessibility to audiences, drawing on the spirit of The Third Eye Centre and the early history of CCA.

General

Since news of the CCA’s liquidation, there has been clear interest from researchers, academics, and the Scottish archive sector in ensuring the archive is safeguarded and preserved for the long-term. It is identified as a culturally and historically valuable archive to Scotland’s art scene, and documents a significant chapter in contemporary art and culture through the records which relate to past exhibitions, events, workshops, festivals and performances.

In summary, this is a nationally important collection detailing a unique chapter in Glasgow’s contemporary art scene over the last fifty years. It is visually rich, and comprises a variety of both physical and digital records.

Further Information & Viewing:

Please contact Tom McWillliam by email thomas@middletonbarton.com, or contact the Glasgow office on +44 (0)141 478 0732.

Offers:

Expressions of interest and/or offers invited by 14 August 2026.

https://mbvaluation.com/asset_for_sale/sale-by-private-treaty-the-third-eye-centre-centre-for-contemporary-art-archive/

Since photography's invention in 1839, people have tried to photograph what cannot be seen: ghosts, dreams, prayers, sickness, sin, psychic forces—even the human soul. The images they produced are beautiful, unsettling, and often absurd. The experiments behind them are stranger still. Leading scientists, artists, physicians, and thinkers took these investigations seriously. Yet today this remarkable visual record has been dismissed as a curiosity and largely written out of photography's official history.

What if the strangest photographs ever made are also among the most important?

Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History argues that attempts to photograph the invisible reveal something fundamental about photography itself. Photography has never simply recorded reality. It has also functioned as a ritual technology for giving visible form to invisible realities. In this day-long symposium, Emily Hauver, Mark Pilkington, Annebella Pollen, Beth Saunders, and Shannon Taggart return to photography's neglected archive. Through surprising case studies spanning art, science, religion, and the paranormal, they reveal how photography has long imagined, negotiated, and transformed what people and cultures understand to be real. At a moment when AI is reshaping our understanding of photographic truth, the medium's forgotten past may offer insight into its future.

Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History.
University of Brighton
Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton, BN2 0JY
Free to register
Thursday, 3 September 2026, 10:30AM - 6:00PM
Programme and booking https://www.ticketsource.com/centre-for-design-history-university-of-brighton/camera-miracula-an-uncomfortable-history/e-ljdmxz

Traditionally stories of culture and society have been held and told by institutional collections. But what about the everyday material which is hidden, forgotten or displaced outside of these traditional records? Who tells these stories and decides who they belong to, how they are looked after and what their value is? Who are they for? Whose Archive is it Anyway? is the first in a three-part series of events exploring the future of archives and archiving. This one-day event on Friday 16 April 2027 will kickstart the conversation with talks addressing:

• what it means to make an archive today 
• who decides what an archive consists of 
• who creates an archive 
• who an archive is for
• who has access 

This event is for anyone interested in or already involved in creating, holding, exploring, and taking care of archives, especially those not working in more traditional institutions or archives.

This open call for speakers is now live. We welcome submissions of real-life experiences, rather than academic papers, which challenge or answer these or other points related to the future of archives. 

The deadline for submission is 1 November 2026 and selected speakers will be notified by 18 January 2027

Speakers could cover a range of ideas related to archives, including: 

• Artist/ photographers’ legacies 
• Institutional archives
• Memory  – forgotten or lost histories being made visible again 
• ‘Truth’ within archives – who's telling the stories and how?
• Ownership - who has the authority to tell stories? Who owns the images and their stories?
• Relationships – from those who create archives to those who use them 
• Radical, non-traditional archives that look to redesign how stories are gathered and held to safeguard living memories
• Family archives 
• Reclaimed photographic archives
• Counter archives – those that question dominant historical narratives
• Grass Roots archives
• Technologies to reduce barriers to archives while safeguarding material
• Digital preservation/ digitisation 
• Dialogic archives

This call for contributors is open to all especially those with experience of working with archives and the stories within them. 

Selected speakers will receive a fee of £200.

Any questions please email archive@tpg.org.uk

Open Call - Future of Archives: Whose Archive is it Anyway?
1 November - cfp deadline, event on 16 April 2027
The Photographers' Gallery, London
See: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/open-call-future-archives-whose-archive-it-anyway

From the moment they were introduced, photographs were seen as fragile objects and their instability soon attracted the attention of scientists and photographers. During the industrial revolution, manufacturers took up the challenge of developing sensitive surfaces; and by the end of the 20th century, conservation institutes were conducting their own research into the conservation of this new heritage object. The use of photography in a wide variety of processes, and its materialization on different media, raises many questions about the characteristics of objects and their preservation, at a time when the need for green transition is forcing us to open up new research paths into the conservation of cultural heritage artefacts. Therefore, photography is now facing technical, scientific, ecological, and societal challenges. This symposium intends to build a narrative of 50 years of research into the preservation of photographic heritage, while taking part in the development of a forward-looking approach to these new conservation challenges.

It is aimed at conservation scientists, curators, collection managers, conservators of photographs and photography historians. It is part of the French Ministry of Culture's bicentennial celebration of photography, which is taking place in 2026-2027. The conference languages are French and English, and simultaneous interpretation will be provided.

The program is structured into three sessions. The first one seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution of concerns regarding the materiality of photographs. The goal is at the same time to enhance our knowledge of the collections and to understand the objects themselves, with the aim to improve their conservation. The second session will explore the evolution of conservation practices with a focus on the consideration of the objects’ degradation as a component of their historical significance. Preventive and remedial conservation as well as restoration will be studied in terms of methodological differences, particularly at international level. The third prospective session will examine considerations relating to the ways in which photographs are acquired and exhibited. The conservation and exhibition conditions will be discussed from the first official recommendation of the 1980s, till the recent reassessment in the context of ecological transition.

The conference takes place at the beginning of the week that sees Paris Photo. 

This placement will contribute to the cataloguing and research of the V&A’s recently acquired Yu-Chee Chong Collection of Southeast Asian Photography (1860–1920), an outstanding collection of early photography unrivalled in its scope and significance. Spanning Southeast Asia and beyond, the collection documents a wide range of architectural, topographical, portrait and ethnographic subjects, including many rare photographs and some of the earliest known images of the region.

Working with colleagues in the Photography Section, the placement researcher will help catalogue the collection by assimilating existing research into the V&A’s record-keeping systems and undertaking further research into individual photographs and photographic studios active across the region. The placement offers a unique opportunity to work closely with a major collection of early Southeast Asian photography and to help situate it alongside the V&A’s world-class photography holdings.

PhD Placement - Cataloguing the Yu-Chee Chong Collection of Southeast Asian Photography, 1860-1920
Unpaid
Closes 15 AUgust 2026
See: PhD Placement - Cataloguing the Yu-Chee Chong Collection of Southeast Asian Photography, 1860-1920

We invite you to submit papers to our session, Intersections: Hong Kong and Photography from the 1840s to the Present at the College Art Association Annual Conference/CAA115 in New York City (Feb 3-6, 2027). 

During the First Opium War (1839-1842), the coastal fishing village of Hong Kong was ceded to the British Empire. From that moment, it occupied a singular place in the global circulation of goods, people, and ideas, emerging as an entrepôt of exchange, mobility, and encounter, as well as a stage for geopolitical and ideological rivalry.

Photography developed contemporaneously with Hong Kong's rise as a global metropolis. By 1845, photographic studios were operating in the city. Since then, photography in and about Hong Kong has served diverse functions and constituencies: as archival evidence recording conditions and infrastructure; as a vehicle for news reporting and political expression; as a medium for artistic experimentation; and as a record of personal and cultural memory. Communities such as the Photographic Society of Hong Kong organized practices of collecting, viewing, and making.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the 1997 handover, this panel explores intersections between Hong Kong and photography, examining Hong Kong both as a subject and as a site where photography's artistic, social, and political meanings have been produced, circulated, and contested. We invite proposals on any aspect of photography and Hong Kong. Possible questions include:

• What impact has Hong Kong photography had during and after British rule, including within diasporic communities?
• Has photography in Hong Kong developed a distinct visual identity, whether in dialogue with, or in resistance to, British, Chinese, or other influences?
• What can Hong Kong photography reveal about the transnational circulation of photographic practices, styles, or political uses of imagery?

Intersections: Hong Kong and Photography from the 1840s to the Present 
at the College Art Association Annual Conference/CAA115
Conference: New York City, 3-6 February 2027
cfp - closes 31 August 2026

To submit your abstract, create an account on CAA (https://caa.confex.com/caa/2027/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html) and submit via our session page (https://caa.confex.com/caa/2027/webprogrampreliminary/Session18196.html) by AUGUST 31, 2026.

Email us with any questions: bingw@illinois.edu and zulaychang@nypl.org.

Co-chairs: Bing Wang, PhD, Chinese Studies Librarian, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Zulay Chang, MA/MLIS, Specialist, Photography Collection, New York Public Library.

Image: Queen's Road, Hong Kong, 1950s.

Inconjunction with an exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, London, is this associated publication. Whippersnappers is the first book to tell the history of children as photographers, from school societies in the 1880s, via post-war camera clubs and radical 1970s workshops, to the coming of digital cameras.

Annebella Pollen shows how photography was presented and promoted to children — by camera companies, comics, and teachers — and how the children themselves chose to use it. They include the girls whose trick photographs of the Cottingley Fairies first fooled, then angered, the nation; and the family given cameras and limitless film for a year by a national newspaper.

Tracing photography’s movement from elite pastime to accessible hobby, including a wealth of photos taken by children — of pets and friends, teachers and toys, fairies and ghosts — it presents a unique child’s-eye view of the world, seen through the camera.

Whippersnappers: How Children Became Photographers
Annebella Pollen
Four Corners Books, 2026
Hardback with cut-flush cover
24 x 19 cm, 330 pages
£25
978-1-909829-26-8
To be published: 25 September 2026
Preorder here: https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/whippersnappers/

Golden Age topographical postcards offer valuable insights into local history, but few identify the photographer, which consigns most pictures to the difficult area of orphaned works. Recent developments in 'risk aware' publication have freed some images from a further forty to sixty years of legal limbo, but not everyone has resources robust enough to pursue that path. One small community organisation is exploring a relatively risk averse way of enlisting public help in identifying photographers of the 500+ postcards that show its local scenes from the 1900s to 1920s.

Brislington Community Museum (Bristol, UK), has launched an exhibition of hundreds of such problematical postcards in the hope their photographers may be identified. A range of measures have been taken to keep the images legal (including putting a time limit on the exhibition). A dozen photographers are known already - from all over the British Isles - and those whose works are out of copyright have been published freely online (and archived at the British Library). Help is needed to find the other photographers whose works form the remaining 85% of this local resource.

Full details of this project can be found online (https://www.brislington.org/gallery/postcards/publishers2.html) until the end of August.

This August, Photofusion, in partnership with The Centre for British Photography and The Hyman Collection, presents Nice Day for It! The British Summer in Technicolour. This vibrant group exhibition brings together definitive imagery from British documentary history, celebrating the humour, spectacle and eccentricity of the classic seaside holiday. Spanning six decades of social history from the 1960s to the 2010s, the exhibition features work by Anna Fox, John Hinde Studio, The Caravan Gallery, Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr; photographers who shaped the way the nation views itself.

Filled with saturated colour, kitsch aesthetics and affectionate social observation, the exhibition explores traditional holiday resorts as theatrical spaces where leisure, identity and nostalgia meet. From Hinde’s pioneering 1960s postcard imagery to Fox’s sharply observed contemporary portraits, Nice Day for It! offers a playful look at the British summer as an enduring part of national identity and a backdrop for everyday absurdity.

A programme of events associated with the exhibition will be announced shortly. 

Nice Day for It! The British Summer in Technicolour
12 August – 5 September 2026
Photofusion, Unit 2, 2 Beehive Place, London. SW9 7QR
Free admission, 1000-1800
See: https://www.photofusion.org/gallery/nice-day-for-it

Image: Ocean Hotel, from the series Resort 1, 2011 © Anna Fox

The Herschel Society has organised a one day conference devoted to Sir John Herschel, William Henry Fox Talbot and their achievements and contemporary legacy. Three panels will look at Herschel,Talbot and their circle; photography origins and acceptance 1834-1851, and historic photographic processes and contemporary practice, each with respected speakers. The event will be held at Bath's Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. Speakers include: Andy Cochrane, Kelley Wilder, Sara Stevenson, Anne-Lou Buzot; Rose Teanby, Anthony Hamber, Sian Prosser; Jo Gane, Kristina Chan and Caroline Douglas.

Full titles, synopsis and speaker biographies will be available to registrants.  

The conference coincides with an exhibition on Herschel and Talbot at the Herschel Museum of Astronomy and No 1 Royal Crescent opening in September. Details to follow.

Early British Photography and its Contemporary Legacy
12 September 2026, 0945-1730
Bath: BRLSI, 16 Queen Square, and online
See the fuull programme and book here

Image: Nevil Story-Maskelyne, Lansdowne Crescent, Bath, 1847; The British Library, gift of Janet and Petronella Burnett-Brown, 1 March 2006. 

Through photographs and archives, Snap Happy! celebrates the creativity, curiosity and distinctive perspectives of generations of young photographers. Do you remember your first camera? Or the first photograph you took? Snap Happy! explores the history of children as photographers. From post-war camera clubs to magazines and photobooks designed for young people, this exhibition traces photography’s movement from elite pastime to accessible and popular hobby.

Featuring archives of advertising, manuals, comics and toys, Snap Happy! shows how photography became more mainstream and much loved by younger generations. From snapshots of family, friends and pets to school projects and photographic experimentation, Snap Happy! celebrates a child's eye view of the world through the camera.   

Snap Happy! is curated by Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture at University of Brighton, UK, where she researches undervalued archives and untold stories in art and design history. 

Supported by the Leverhulme Trust. The exhibition and book are part of the outcomes from Pollen's £100,000 Leverhulme grant award made in 2021. 

Whippersnappers: How Children Became Photographers by Annebella Pollen will be published on 25 September by Four Corners Books at £25. See details here and pre-order.

Snap Happy! How Children Became Photographers
14 October 2026 - 21 February 2027
London, The Photographers' Gallery
See: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/snap-happy-how-children-became-photographers

Images: (top): Robert Cooper ‘Self-portrait with Agifold’, c.1964-67 © Robert Cooper; (left) Mae and Ira Freeman, ed. by Gordon Catling, Fun with Photography (Edmund Ward, 1962), cover.

DCMS has published the V&A Museum's annual report and accounts for 2025-26. Of particular interest are that the Julia Margaret Cameron touring exhibition Arresting Beauty which featured 98 objects from the RPS Collection and V&A's collection was seen by 106,000 people when it was shown at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

The RPS digitisation project The rerport also acknowledges the support for the RPS digitisation project from TheBern Schwartz Family Foundation, The William Brake Foundation and The Ampersand Foundation, among others.

In terms of the museum's collection it records it holds approximately 250,000 objects from the Royal Photographic Society Collection, although the reports notes that the Collection is yet to be fully catalogued.

Read the full rpeort here

Professor Geoff Batchen has retired from his post as Head of Department and Professor of Art History at Trinity College, Oxford, having reached the university's contractual retirement age. Batchen presented a farewell lecture: Going Postal. Photography and Exchange on 17 July.

Geoffrey Batchen was appointed to the Professorship of the History of Art at the University of Oxford on 19 May 2019 and he officially took up the post on 1 January 2020, at which time he also became a fellow of Trinity College. During his tenure he has supervised a new generation of PhD students bring new approaches and insights in photographic history, He curated the Bodleian exhibition A New Power. Photography in Britain 1800-1850 in 2023. He was actively involved in the appointment of the library's new post of Curator of Photography.

Going Postal investigated the history of 'mail art', focusing on the intersection of photographic images, hand-written correspondence, and the global postal system. It explored how photographs circulated through the mail—such as vintage postcards and private letters and transformed personal correspondence into a distinct medium of visual, artistic, and social exchange.

Batchen's biography from the History of Art department is below: 

GEOFFREY BATCHEN (BA PhD Sydney) holds the Professorship of the History of Art in the Department of the History of Art and the Faculty of History. Professor Batchen is a Fellow of Trinity College.

Professor Batchen's work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography.  His publications include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997); Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001); Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004); William Henry Fox Talbot (2008); What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (2009); Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010); Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (2016); Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (2018); and Negative/Positive: A History of Photography (2020).  He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012). His curated exhibitions have been shown at, among other places, the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro; the New England Regional Art Museum in Amridale, Australia; the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK; the International Center of Photography in New York; the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne; the Izu Photo Museum in Shizuoka, Japan; the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik; the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand; the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, NZ; and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Australia.

Professor Batchen is the Head of Department for 2025-2026.

Born and raised in a liberal Jewish family in Vienna, Edith Tudor-Hart’s legacy is defined by her pioneering social photography and her pivotal role in the recruitment of Kim Philby as a Soviet agent. Arrested for her involvement with socialist groups, Edith emigrated to England in 1933 to escape political and religious persecution. There, her photography came to reflect her socialist ideals, and her clandestine work for the Soviet Union meant she would spend the rest of her life under the suspicion and close surveillance of MI5.

The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart is the culmination of Peter Stephan Jungk’s enduring fascination with his cousin’s life. His vivid portrait reveals a woman whose life was shrouded in secrecy and whom – in his confession to MI5 a decade before Edith’s death – the Soviet spy Anthony Blunt called ‘the grandmother of us all.’

Peter Stephan Jungk is an Austrian-American novelist, non-fiction author, and documentary filmmaker. His notable works include Crossing the Hudson, The Perfect American and The Snowflake Constant. 

The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor Hart
Peter Stephan Jungk, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
Haus Publishing, May 2026
£20, 280 pages, hardback
See: https://www.hauspublishing.com/product/the-darkrooms-of-edith-tudor-hart/

The AmberSide Trust, one of the UK’s most significant documentary and film collections has received £242,508 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for Relocating Amber, a major new project that will protect the world-renowned AmberSide Collection while expanding public access to it across the North East.  The project will bring one of the UK’s most significant documentary photography and film collections on loan to Newcastle University’s Special Collections, enabling people to encounter the Collection through exhibitions, screenings, education and community programmes across the region. 

Built over more than five decades, the AmberSide Collection contains more than 20,000 photographs, around 100 films and extensive paper and digital archives documenting working class communities, mining, shipyards, housing, protest, youth culture, family, migration and everyday life across the North East and beyond. Key elements of the Collection were inscribed onto UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register in 2011. 

Under the custodianship of Newcastle University Special Collections, the preservation of the Collection will be supported within specialist archival facilities, whilst opening the works up to new opportunities for public access, research, teaching and engagement through Newcastle University Library.

At the same time, Side, the delivery team for the AmberSide Trust’s exhibitions, will expand the screening and public programmes through collaborations throughout the North East.  Rather than being centred in a single venue, Side and its partners will bring photographs, films and local histories directly into the communities they were made with and about, through exhibitions, screenings, talks and events across the region.

The project will also create new pathways for photographers, artists, filmmakers and heritage practitioners. From Side’s new curatorial office at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, practitioners will be able to access the Trust’s reference library, and receive portfolio reviews and project advice, supporting the development of new documentary work rooted in place, research and social engagement. 

Amber Education will continue to use the Collection in classrooms, connecting children and young people with local history, place and lived experience through inter-generational community projects centred around photography and film. 

Laura Laffler, Managing Director of the AmberSide Trust said:“The AmberSide Collection was built through long-term relationships with communities across the North East. This project protects that work for the future while opening up new ways for people to encounter and use the stories it contains. Through collaboration with Newcastle University, Side’s regional programme, Amber Education and our new curatorial office, we can care for the Collection properly while sharing it more widely and supporting the next generation of documentary practitioners.”

Jill Taylor-Roe, Director of Academic Services and the Newcastle University Library said:  “Newcastle University is proud to partner with Amber to safeguard their incredible archive, which has documented and celebrated working-class culture for more than fifty years. Our nationally accredited archive service will curate the collection to ensure that future generations may benefit from access to these resources. We look forward to enabling wider community engagement with the archive and are excited by the opportunities that will be afforded to students and researchers through having enhanced access to this  iconic collection.”

Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:  “Preserving heritage is very important to us at The National Lottery Heritage Fund and we’re proud to be able to support the safeguarding of this incredibly significant collection thanks to National Lottery players. Working with Newcastle University, it is fantastic news that AmberSide Trust will unlock many new opportunities for the public to engage with this important archive that showcases and celebrates the wonderful heritage of the North East.”

Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Relocating Amber is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, Relocating Amber will support collections care, conservation rehousing, archive integration, digital access, education activity, practitioner development and a new programme of exhibitions, screenings and public events across the North East. 

This project marks a major new public chapter for the AmberSide Collection, protecting a nationally significant archive while ensuring stories of working-class life, community memory and social change remain public, local and active.  

See: https://sidegallery.co.uk/blog/relocating-amber?mc_cid=ebcb71304e&mc_eid=b48467438a

Newcastle University
Special Collections & Archives
email: libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk
t: +44 (0) 191 208 7712
Special Collections & Archives, Philip Robinson Library, Jesmond Road West, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4HQ

It is an absolute pleasure to share the news that my article ✨‘The Garret Photographic Studio’ How the Home Darkroom Facilitated Everyday Queer Image Making ✨is now live on the Eidolon Journal website!

This essay is published in conjunction with Eidolon Club Vol. 12: The People's Pictures which was an afternoon of talks on vernacular photography held on 27 March 2026 at Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, organised by Eidolon Centre and Photoworks_UK in collaboration with the University of Westminster. Alongside the event, a call for papers was extended to university students, with selected work to be considered for publication in Eidolon Journal. My essay on the Reg and George Collection held at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, was the selected contribution! ❤️

In the article, I discuss one of the case studies I have been focusing on as part of my PhD research. The Reg and George Collection is so rich with photographic material of which I have barely scratched the surface! Reg and George were a gay couple who ran B&B buisnesses in Wales from the early 1970s but prior to this they lived in Bournemouth where George worked as a professional photographer. His first itteration of the business - the Garret Photographic Studio - was a domestic/studio/darkroom space. In the article I discuss how the queered photographic domestic space facilitated image making during the criminalisation of homosexuality and the obscene publications act.

It has been such a pleasure to work with the Eidolon team and getting to write about queer photographic history 🥰 

‘The Garret Photographic Studio’. How the Home Darkroom Facilitated Everyday Queer Image Making
Molly Caenwyn
See: https://everydayphotography.org/journal/the-garret-photographic-studio

The Birmingham-based documentary photographer, graphic designer and jazz researcher, Brian J Homer died on 10 July aged 79 years, after a short and sudden illness. Brian's work was always political (with a small p). With a large archive of work from the 1970s to the present he told Paul Hill for a piece in Amateur Photographer magazine "there was a social purpose to the documentation, but people are now fascinated by how places and people looked half a century ago". His work was prescient and remains relevant today.  

Brian co-founded and worked on Grapevine and Broadside Magazines in Birmingham between 1971 to 1979. Grapevine reached a peak of 3000 sales and ran from 1971 to 1975. In 1975 he edited Brum Book a guide book to Birmingham before co-founding another magazine similar to Grapevine -  Broadside - which ran from 1976 to 1979. Brian was part of the original Handsworth Self Portrait project with Derek Bishton and John Reardon in 1979, with whom he also co-founded Ten8 magazine which launched in 1978. Ten.8 provided a forum for West Midlands-based photographers to come together and share images and ideas. It was described by the Jamaican scholar Professor Stuart Hall as “the journal which has most systematically explored the relationship between how we represent the world photographically, the knowledge which these images produce and their implications for power and politics”. It was the subject of a special display at the Photographers' Gallery between 2024-2025.

Alongside his own documentary photography which documented Birmingham and elsewhere internationally from the 1970s these included the Grunwick dispute march in Birmingham in 1978 and Rock Against Racism march in London in 1978. He was commissioned by Peter James of the Library of Birmingham in 2013 to produce 1000 portraits which were shown on a large screen in the library. 

His archive is housed in the Art, Design and Media archive at Birmingham City University. It comprises of a full set of Grapevine and Broadside Magazines together with a copy of Brum Book. Brian co-founded, with Trevor Fisher, Grapevine a what's on and news magazine based in Birmingham. Run mainly by volunteers who did everything from writing, design and layout to distribution.  The archive for Handsworth Self Portrait was accepted in to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 2024. It includes notebooks, organisation and financial information, publicity posters, press cuttings, the original negatives and a very full set of more than 200 matched scans and prints.

From 1978 to 2015 Brain ran a design agency and was an active photographer documenting the jazz scene. He was a member of the Jazz Research Cluster at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and was collaborating with Dr Pedro Cravinho on Everyday Jazz Life a project exploring jazz musicians lives. His work featured in numerous publications including Café Royal's Saltley 1978-79 and Everyday Jazz Lives (with Pedro Cravinho) and his own photozine Birmingham 2025.

See: Brian's website: https://www.brianhomer.com/

Ten8 magazine history from Derek Bishton: https://derekbishton.com/other-stuff/legacy-ten8/

Handsworth Self Portrait: https://handsworthselfportrait.co.uk/

BCU Archive: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/arts/art-and-design-archive/collections/brian-homer-collection

Images: (top) Brian shown centre, bearded, at the Gruncwick dispute in 1978 taken by Derek Bishton with Brian's camera; (left, top), the first issue of Ten8 magazine created by Brian Homer and Derek Bishton; (right) portrait from Handsworth Self Portrait; (left, below) Everyday Jazz Lives. 

Made Together explores Amber Films’ place within the 1980s Workshop Movement, a short but important period in British film culture when collective, non-commercial and regionally rooted filmmaking was given national support.

Presented at Tyneside Cinema, the display looks at how Amber developed films through long-term relationships with communities, combining research, documentary observation, drama, local knowledge and trust. It focuses on four key works from the period: Keeping Time (1983), Seacoal (1985), Double Vision (1986) and In Fading Light (1989). Together, these films show Amber’s commitment to working with people and places over time, rather than arriving with a fixed story.

Through production stills, scripts, notes, flyers and archival material, the display traces a filmmaking practice shaped by class, labour, gender, regional identity and everyday life. It also reflects on the wider legacy of the Workshop Movement, which argued that film could be made differently: collaboratively, accountably, and from outside the usual centres of power.