Blogs

A new photography exhibit in Rangoon is offering a glimpse of what Burma was like in the 19th century.

Hosted by the Italian Embassy and the Yangon Heritage Trust, a local NGO dedicated to preserving Rangoon’s heritage, the exhibit is showcasing nearly 50 photographs that shed light on architectural styles from over a century ago, as well local fashions, the daily life of various ethnic groups, and the people who lived and worked at royal palaces around the country.

The images were taken by three foreigners who owned photography studios in Burma in the mid- to late 19th century. Most were taken by Italian-British photographer Felice Beato, who owned a studio in Mandalay in 1887 and took a wide array of portraits of people from that era.

The photographs will be displayed until Feb. 28 in the lobby of the Yangon Heritage Trust on Pansodan Street in Rangoon. Details can be found here.

As part of Birmingham Heritage Week there will be a display Taking and displaying the photograph which will show one  hundred years of cameras made in Birmingham, and how the city manufactured ways to show and display the resulting images.  It will be an opportunity to see mahogany wood and brass plate cameras through to cheap plastic snapshot cameras as well as the magic lanterns, projectors, photograph albums, frames and the images themselves that the cameras would have taken.

Library of Birmingham, Level 4, Heritage Learning Space Centenary Square, B1 2ND
16-18 September, from 1100-1700 daily
Free
https://birminghamheritageweek.co.uk/

Boots Archive are delighted to announce the second phase release of the online catalogue of the Walgreens Boots Alliance archive collections. This digital resource, which launched in 2017 has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, through their Research Resources programme. The archive includes phootgraphy and material relating to Boots' involvement with amateur photography.

The catalogue currently comprises around two fifths of the total archive holdings (c5,000 boxes) with over 27,000 entries and 4,500 digitised images.  Subsequent additions to the catalogue will be made on an annual basis over the next three years until the entire collection is incorporated.  The majority of the entries on the site relate to the Boots UK collection, and the material charts the development of the business into large scale manufacturing, product development, research and healthcare and beauty retailing. Information relating to product development, which includes employee training, formulations, packaging and merchandising records, is a particularly strong element within the collection. The holdings also include a large number of store and factory photographs and building plans.

In addition to the material relating to the history of Boots UK, other significant holdings also include the business records of Walgreens; Dollond and Aitchison; Optrex Ltd; Timothy Whites and Taylors Ltd; Unichem and E Moss Ltd.

The archive catalogue can be accessed here: http://archives.walgreensbootsalliance.com/ 

This well loved Camera Collectors' and Users'  Fair will soon be taking place and this year we are in a new Central London venue The Royal National Hotel near Russell Square on the 19th May 2024. Organised by The Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain there will be up to 100 sales tables selling user and collectable cameras, consumables, lenses, literature and images. It is not a trade show for new equipment.  If you fancy a table to clear that build up of photographic equipment phone 01920 821 831. Early buyers tickets can be obtained from the same phone number.

The Royal National Hotel, 38-51 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0DG

Public entry is from 10am-4.00pm and admission is £8 on the door from 10am to 12 noon and £5 noon to the close, for PCCGB members the entry is free.

Any late updates, the flyer and booking form can be found at https://www.facebook.com/photographicafair

Thanks

Nigel 

Tate has announced its 2026 exhibition highlights. Of particular notes is Light and Magic which explores how pictorialism, the first international art photography movement, developed across the world from the 1880s to the 1960s. The exhibition was previously scheduled to open in December 2025.  Bringing together over 50 artists from Seoul to Sydney, New York to Cape Town and Brazil to Singapore, this truly international exhibition takes a fresh and inclusive look at the history of art photography.

Featuring never-before seen works from around the world alongside pieces from Tate’s Collection, Light and Magic highlights the vast and varied artistic possibilities of photography as a medium.

Light and MagicThe Birth of Art Photography
8 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
London, Tate Modern, Bankside
Ticket price to be confirmed
See: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/light-and-magic

Apparently, in the 1920's his descendants gave the Daguerreotypes to the University of Newcastle, where Pattinson was from. The University library kept them on a shelf in Special Collections but sometime after that, for whatever reason, they were thought to have been lost or destroyed. However in 1997 while looking through some store rooms in the library, the University came across an old dust covered carton marked “Daguerrotypes”, which lo and behold, contained the lost images!

The Eye of Photography carries a report from François Kirkland noting the passing of Michael Rand who has just died aged 96 years.  Rand was the Art Director and Managing Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine 30 years from 1962. 

See more here

The death has been reported of Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani, aged 48, in London. Although not a name that will now be familiar to many photography collectors, for a period in the late 1990s/2000s Sheikh Saud was the largest buyer of photography - photographs and cameras - in the world, securing a number of important photography collections for himself and for the state of Qatar at auction and from dealers across the UK, Europe and North America.

The blurring of lines between the two and allegations of false accounting ultimately brought and end to his spending and formal role but he later resumed his position as a personal buyer. He had a connoisseur’s eye across wide range of art forms, of which photography was just a part and other interests that included wildlife conservation.  

See: http://news.artnet.com/in-brief/worlds-biggest-art-collector-sheikh-saud-bin-mohammed-al-thani-dies-at-age-48-161867

Much of Sheikh Saud's photography collection eventually became part of the the Qatar Museum Authority's proposed photography museum, later renamed International Media Museum, plans for which were scrapped earlier this year - see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/qatar-s-international-media-museum-plans-scrapped

UPDATE: Personal note: I was a Christie's photography specialist when Sheikh Saud emerged on to the scene as a collector of photography.On one memorable occasion he purchased an entire camera sale, bar one lot, much to the chagrin of those present in the auction room who delighted in bidding against him, knowing that he would not stop until he had secured the lot. On another occasion he invited me to a meeting at his Portman Square apartment ostensibly to offer me job in Qatar as a curator of his collection. The whole experience was surreal. Dealers were lining up to offer him all sorts of works of art which he would look at, and then dismiss or indicate an interest with a wave of a hand. We shared a short conversation before I was passed to an aide. The promised job failed to materialise.   

In retrospect, Sheikh Saud could have used some experienced advice on the auction process and how to manage dealers, but I sense, that as money was essentially no object, he knew what was happening and that was part of the game for him. And there was no question that he had a very good eye for traditional works of art, for high-end photography, and to recognise when a photography collection was of sufficient importance to be added to his portfolio.

The Qatar Museums Authority collections are testament to his abilities and it is disappointing that the photography collection that he largely built up is, for now, consigned to a secure, climate controlled warehouse in the desert, with plans for a photography museum now scrapped (see link above) as other priorities for the QMA have arisen. MP

Read more about Sheikh Saud here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saud_bin_Muhammed_Al_Thani

Sean Sexton is the subject of an interview by Orla Fitzpatrick on RTE's website and a television documentary. The interview focuses on Sean's collection of photographs of Ireland, arguably the most important of such material anywhere in the world. The collection of over 20,000 images spans the history of photography covering post-famine Ireland right through to the turbulent revolutionary years. The collection will be the subject of a forthcoming RTE documentary.

As Orla notes: 'Sexton's collection includes all formats, genres and processes, from early salt-paper negatives and once-off daguerreotypes through to snapshots and spy cameras. Portraits, landscapes and even nudes are in the collection.'  He began forming the collection from 1973, later funded, in part, by his purchase in Bermondsey market of a trove of photographs by Charles Jones. 

The collection has been featured in two books and is still awaiting a permanent home in Ireland where it rightly belongs.  

Framing Irish History - The Sean Sexton Collection will be screened on RTÉ 1 on December 28th at 6.30pm and on RTÉ Player

Read the article here: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2023/1217/1422502-sean-sexton-photos-collection-ireland-history/ 

The British Library has secured the Dillwyn Llewelyn/Story-Maskelyne photographic archive which was offered to any United Kingdom institution under the government’s acceptance in lieu scheme.

The Dillwyn Llewelyn/Story-Maskelyne photographic archive is a significant addition to the Library’s collection and enhances and supports the 2006 donation of Talbot material by Petronella and Janet Burnett-Brown and other members of the Talbot Family Trust. The British Library has further enhanced its position as the leading centre for material relating to Talbot and his circle of early photographers.

The Dillwyn Llewelyn/Story-Maskelyne photographic archive, approx 164 early photographic prints in 5 photograph albums (including W.H. Fox Talbot, High Street Oxford), 50 glass negatives, the memoirs and journals of Thereza Story-Maskelyne in 10 volumes (the memoirs including a further 52 early photographs), photographic research papers of Nevil Story-Maskelyne in 2 portfolios, and related albums and papers.

John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810-1882) initiated his first photographic experiments -- prompted by news of the activities of William Henry Fox Talbot (a cousin by marriage) -- at his house at Penlle’r-gaer (usually spelled Penllergare by the family), near Swansea, in February 1839, and daguerreotypes of his family and house survive from as early as the following year. He claimed (in a letter to Fox Talbot) to have been familiar with all the known photographic processes, and in 1856 announced his own innovation, the oxymel process, ‘a mixture of honey and vinegar, whereby the collodion plates of the period could be prepared some time before use and developed when the photographer returned home’ (ODNB). He was on the first council of the London Photographic Society, and was awarded a silver medal of honour at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855 for his instantaneous photographs.

The photograph albums in the archive not only provide an important, family collection of some of Dillwyn Llewelyn’s best-known images, but also demonstrate the extent to which the whole Dillwyn Llewelyn family and its wider offshoots participated in the experiments, either as subjects or as photographers: amongst the identified images are photographs by his sister, Mary Dillwyn, his son-in-law, the mineralogist Nevil Story-Maskelyne (grandson of the astronomer royal, whose photographs often depict the family house at Basset Down, Wiltshire), and at least three of his children.

Dillwyn Llewelyn’s daughter, Thereza Story-Maskelyne, was closely involved with his photographic activities, and was also an active amateur astronomer – both activities highly unusual for a woman of the period; she combined both fields in the pioneering telescopic photographs of the moon which she took with her father in the mid-1850s. Thereza’s memoirs and journals in the present archive are a rich source of information on her scientific career, and include not only an important series of photographic prints, but also her own watercolours of comets and other phenomena from the 1850s onwards.

The acquisition builds on an important earlier gift to the British Library of the work of Nevil Story-Maskelyne (1823-1911), which included paper negatives, salted paper and albumen prints, collodion on mica negatives and research papers on early photography. The additional material now acquired – which includes a series of Story-Maskelyne’s wet collodion negatives, as well as prints and other papers – brings together the largest surviving archive of the work of an important- if undeservedly little-known - photographer. The journals of his wife Thereza contain many references to the photographic practises of the Llewelyn and Story-Maskelyne families and will form a rich primary resource for the study of this formative period of British photography.

Images: from top:

1. Portrait (self-portrait?) of Nevil Story-Maskelyne, late 1840s (reproduction from the original calotype negative.
   
   
2. John Dillwyn Llewelyn, Thereza Llewelyn and dickies, mid-1850s (salted paper print).
   
   
3. John Dillwyn Llewelyn, Gipsies – Palmistry, mid-1850s (albumenised salted paper print
   
   
4. John Dullwyn Llewelyn, Costume of Glamorganshire, mid-1850s (albumenised salted paper print).
   
   

Courtesy: John Falconer / British Library

Doha News reports that plans for the proposed Qatar-based International Media Museum in Doha have been scrapped amidst staff and budget reductions. Several senior staff working on the Media collections have recently left. The newspaper reports that: 'QMA employees have also alleged that teams working on plans for three proposed museums – the Pearl, Media and Children’s museums – have been significantly reduced, and plans for individual museums scrapped.

'However, a QMA spokesperson told Doha News today that while the organization had considered establishing permanent homes for the Pearl and Media collections, these plans were never formalized. The collections remain, however, and their respective teams are still working on them, she said, adding that there had been “no change” to plans for the Children’s Museum.' Reference to the photography and related collections have been removed from the QMA, now Qatar Museums, website which has recently been updated.

The Qatar state has acquired significant holdings of photography, originally through the collecting of Sheikh Saud Al-Thani, and subsequently taken over by the state.  Al Thani collected photography, cameras and printed materials - from the late 1990s. The QMA collections include significant holdings of daguerreotypes and the S F Spira Collection amongst many others. According to the QMA: 'The IMM possesses one of the most outstanding and valuable photographic collections in the region and one that ranks with major collections through the world. The photographs are of exceptional quality and span from the 19th century to present. The collection includes photographs from early daguerreotypes through albums and photography - illustrated books to contemporary colour photographs and photographic advertising poster. Also IMM possesses a collection of films and photographic and film technology as well as a significant rare book collection.' Recently buying of photography by the QMA had largely stopped. 

Details of the QMA Photography collections can be found here: http://www.qma.org.qa/online/index.php/en/collections/photography

Plans for a photography museum, later re-named International Media Museum, were first drawn up by 2002 and were well advanced with designs (shown above, left) prepared by the renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. Construction never started.

In February 2013 World Architecture News revealed plans (image below, right) from Fernando Romero Enterprise’s (FR-EE) latest building concept: PH Museum in the Middle East. The location of the building was widely believed to be Doha. WAN noted: 'The main bulk of the 3,800sq m museum takes the form of a large canopy, shading visitors from harsh sunlight beneath a circular overhang. Romero has taken his cue from ‘the mechanics of a camera’, falling in line with the functionality of the space as a museum of photography and photographic equipment.

FR-EE explains: “Inspired by the mechanics of a camera, the organization of the museum reflects the complexity of a camera lens. The interior is organized radially from the center of the building and a spiraling ramp connects these spaces to emphasize spatial continuity.'

The proposed opening had been postponed several times since, most recently with a date of 2017 being suggested. This now appears to be unlikely as QM reviews its cultural strategy, assesses its budgets, appoints a new CEO after the departure of Edward Dolman, and adopts a policy of Qatarisation for employees. Sadly, the photography museum appears to have become a casualty of those changes. 

See: http://dohanews.co/qatar-museums-authority-announces-re-branding-amid-job-loss-uncertainty/ and 

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/main/search/search?q=Qatar

Frankfurt's Städel Museum is claiming to be the first art museum in the world to have exhibited photographic works. The first mention of a photo exhibition at the Städel Museum dates from 1845, when the Frankfurt Intelligenz Blatt – the official city bulletin – ran an advertisement. The museum is claiming this is the earliest known announcement of a photography show in an art museum worldwide.

The 1845 exhibition featured portraits by the photographer Sigismund Gerothwohl of Frankfurt, the proprietor of one of the city’s first photo studios who has meanwhile all but fallen into oblivion. Like many other institutions at the time, the Städel Museum had a study collection which also included photographs: then Städel director Johann David Passavant began collecting photos for the museum in the 1850s. In addition to reproductions of artworks, the photographic holdings comprised genre scenes, landscapes and cityscapes by such well-known pioneers in the medium as Maxime Du Camp, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, Carl Friedrich Mylius or Giorgio Sommer. An 1852 exhibition showcasing views of Venice launched a tradition of presentations of photographic works from the Städel’s own collection.

The museum is now marking the 175th anniversary of the announcement of the invention of photography with a new photography exhibition. The special exhibition dealing with European photo art – Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 – presents the photographic holdings of the museum’s Modern Art Department, which have recently undergone significant expansion.

From 9 July to 5 October 2014, in addition to such pioneers as Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton and Julia Margaret Cameron, the show will feature photography heroes of the twentieth century such as August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Man Ray, Dora Maar or Otto Steinert, while highlighting virtually forgotten members of the profession. While giving an overview of the Städel’s early photographic holdings and the acquisitions of the past years, the exhibition will also shed light on the history of the medium from its beginnings to 1960.

See more at: http://www.staedelmuseum.de/sm/index.php?StoryID=1924&websiteLang=en#sthash.xaUUWzZM.dpuf

Image: Giorgio Sommer (1834–1914), Naples: Delousing, ca. 1870.

The Photographers' Gallery, London, has announced that its new digital archive is live. The digital archive is a free online resource to dig into the rich and varied past of The Photographers’ Gallery and to support future learning about photography, and includes exhibiton poster, documents and photographs. 

See: https://archive.thephotographersgallery.org.uk/ or email: tpg.archive@tpg.org.uk

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members.

The RIBA's British Architectural Library is the leading library in the United Kingdom for the study of architecture and architectural history. It provides a service to practicing architects, students, architectural historians, and the general public, and has extensive collections of drawings, manuscripts and photographs, as well as books and periodicals. 

A digital image cataloguer is required to assist in extending the Library's online digital image database which currently encompasses 60,000 images. Duties will include researching background information on, and cataloguing, a wide range of visual material thereby increasing its educational and financial potential.

Candidates should be highly organised and have experience of research either within a work or educational environment together with good writing skills and a keen visual awareness. An ability to work quickly and accurately both as part of a team and on your own initiative is essential. A degree in architectural history or a demonstrable in-depth knowledge of the subject is essential. Familiarity with computer systems such as Excel and Access is desirable, as is a basic knowledge of recognised library standards.

If you would like to apply for this position, please complete and send a covering letter and CV, Applicants Statement and Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form to Human Resources Department RIBA 66, Portland Place London W1B 1AD or to recruitment@riba.org. 

Interviews will be held in late October 2011.

Location: Central London
Salary: £21,173 FTE - 
Hours: Part-time, 28 hours per week
Closing date: 14 October 2011

Details including full job description and application can be found here.

Good luck!

The body of photographic works created by Terry Hulf over the past 50 years tell epic stories of the area of Romney Marsh and its surroundings. He has had little need to travel further afield but rather the landscapes he records change over time. Indeed, he has made these views of the Marsh a focus of his life’s work, a project which he considers will never be finished.

It is important to consider that what continues to interest Hulf in the history of Romney Marsh are more often the effects and impact of human involvement has on the landscape, although people are rarely featured. Almost always what we see in his photographs is what humans have left behind, offering only a trace of presence. It is the same for the viewer looking harder at these images, like the man with the camera, we are just on the edge of being present ourselves.

Terry mainly uses the same standard lens with 35mm and larger format cameras pivotal length and film. In his practice he prefers early cold wintery mornings for his subject matter, there is hardly ever any cropping, so the composition is fixed, at the exact moment he chooses to release his shutter. The camera usually on a tripod remains at eye level, as a result the position of the horizon rarely changes.

The images captured reflect upon his own way of looking, a developed skill or maybe even a gift for avoiding the picturesque but recording instead extraordinary and beautiful ‘unblinkered’ landscapes as memory. Terry might not always remember the exact year the image was recorded but each image is in his memory, set in time and he clearly recalls every picture taken over the years. The hold your breath moment then the shutter is released, it’s like a negative has then been permanently scorched to his retina.

To say that Terry is particularly in touch with Marsh surroundings would be something of an understatement. As he moves quietly around the landscapes early in the morning, selecting his images in a relentless quest for creativity, a perfect picture carefully captured, then sometime later sharing this view, maybe as a beautiful silver gelatin print. Terry maintains, it is because he has so closely worked this land over the years that he feels so much a part of it. When he was younger, he was a Chestnut Paling maker, working beneath tarpaulin shelters, erected in the woods which covered the scratch where the chestnut was cleaved. During the months when the tree sap was rising, they would go fruit picking instead, all part of a natural symbiotic relationship with the land that they loved and worked.

Rye Art Gallery
This will be the first major photographic exhibition staged at the gallery, it also coincides with our first exhibition held sixty years ago, celebrating the opening of this historic building and museum of art in 1965. With fine art for sale, a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, and our own unique permanent collection, Rye Art Gallery continues to grow and develop.

Interestingly, the founder of the gallery the painter Mary Stormont (1871- 1962) who bequeathed her art collection and the buildings following her death in 1962, was also a keen photographer, documenting Sussex and Kent landscapes and recording local activities such as fishing, hop picking and harvest time particularly, from 1900 to the 1920’s. These photographs form part of our permanent collection archive in Rye along with personal photographs by the artist Edward Burra (1905 – 1976) and his close friend the society photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-1993).

Terry Hulf has over 70 framed works especially produced as monochrome prints for this show. They are available for sale and celebrate 50 years of photographing the Marsh landscapes, alongside this is a separate collection of 25 unique artists portraits also taken by Terry, the pictures tell an intriguing story of artists, a fantastic creative colony of people working here on the Sussex/Kent borders.

Commenting on the exhibition curator Dr Julian Day commented: "Terry is a dedicated and passionate artist which will be beautifully revealed in this his first major retrospective with a collection of so many of his photographic works on display for the first time. Like many other creative individuals, he is a person difficult to pin down, with so many talents he could be described as a true polymath, since he also paints in oils, is a musician and an accomplished fiddle player who has written many tunes connected to the landscapes that he photographs. For anyone who has seen his tango, you will know that Terry really means business!  Above all though, I believe it’s the photography in which he has found his true calling and purpose in life. We are delighted that Rye Art Gallery has been chosen to host this exceptional exhibition."

To accompany the show a book called Notes from a Landscape is available as well as a separate full catalogue of works exhibited. Rye Art Gallery is honoured to accept as a gift from Terry Hulf, his complete photographic archive, which will add significantly to our existing permanent collection held in Rye.

Terry Hulf at Rye Art Gallery: A Retrospective:
Notes from a Landscape with Terry Hulf
 Rye Art Gallery
Saturday 10 May - Sunday 29 June 2025.
Further details:           ryeartgallery@gmail.com

 Image: Grove Lane 2024

It is little wonder the life of Hemi Pomara has attracted the attention of writers and film makers. Kidnapped in the early 1840s, passed from person to person, displayed in London and ultimately abandoned, it is a story of indigenous survival and resilience for our times.

Hemi has already been the basis for the character James Pōneke in New Zealand author Tina Makereti’s 2018 novel The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke. And last week, celebrated New Zealand director Taika Waititi announced his production company Piki Films is adapting the book for the big screen – one of three forthcoming projects about colonisation with “indigenous voices at the centre”.

Until now, though, we have only been able to see Hemi’s young face in an embellished watercolour portrait made by the impresario artist George French Angas, or in a stiff woodcut reproduced in the Illustrated London News.

Drawing on the research for our forthcoming book, Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: the global career of showman daguerreotypist J.W. Newland (Routledge, November 2020), we can now add the discovery of a previously unknown photograph of Hemi Pomara posing in London in 1846.

This remarkable daguerreotype shows a wistful young man, far from home, wearing the traditional korowai (cloak) of his chiefly rank. It was almost certainly made by Antoine Claudet, one of the most important figures in the history of early photography.

All the evidence now suggests the image is not only the oldest surviving photograph of Hemi, but also most probably the oldest surviving photographic portrait of any Māori person. Until now, a portrait of Caroline and Sarah Barrett taken around 1853 was thought to be the oldest such image.

For decades this unique image has sat unattributed in the National Library of Australia. It is now time to connect it with the other portraits of Hemi, his biography and the wider conversation about indigenous lives during the imperial age.

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‘Hemi Pomare’, 1846, cased, colour applied, quarter-plate daguerreotype, likely the oldest surviving photographic image of a Māori. National Library of Australia

A boy abroad

Hemi Pomara led an extraordinary life. Born around 1830, he was the grandson of the chief Pomara from the remote Chatham Islands off the east coast of New Zealand. After his family was murdered during his childhood by an invading Māori group, Hemi was seized by a British trader who brought him to Sydney in the early 1840s and placed him in an English boarding school.

The British itinerant artist, George French Angas had travelled through New Zealand for three months in 1844, completing sketches and watercolours and plundering cultural artefacts. His next stop was Sydney where he encountered Hemi and took “guardianship” of him while giving illustrated lectures across New South Wales and South Australia.

Angas painted Hemi for the expanded version of this lecture series, Illustrations of the Natives and Scenery of Australia and New Zealand together with 300 portraits from life of the principal Chiefs, with their Families.

In this full-length depiction, the young man appears doe-eyed and cheerful. Hemi’s juvenile form is almost entirely shrouded in a white, elaborately trimmed korowai befitting his chiefly ancestry.

The collar of a white shirt, the cuffs of white pants and neat black shoes peak out from the otherwise enveloping garment. Hemi is portrayed as an idealised colonial subject, civilised yet innocent, regal yet complacent.

Read more: To build social cohesion, our screens need to show the same diversity of faces we see on the street

Angas travelled back to London in early 1846, taking with him his collection of artworks, plundered artefacts – and Hemi Pomara.

Hemi appeared at the British and Foreign Institution, followed by a private audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. From April 1846, he was put on display in his chiefly attire as a living tableau in front of Angas’s watercolours and alongside ethnographic material at the Egyptian Hall, London.

The Egyptian Hall “exhibition” was applauded by the London Spectator as the “most interesting” of the season, and Hemi’s portrait was engraved for the Illustrated London News. Here the slightly older-looking Hemi appears with darkly shaded skin and stands stiffly with a ceremonial staff, a large ornamental tiki around his neck and an upright, feathered headdress.

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An idealised colonial subject: George French Angas, ‘Hemi, grandson of Pomara, Chief of the Chatham Islands’, 1844-1846, watercolour. Alexander Turnbull Library

A photographic pioneer

Hemi was also presented at a Royal Society meeting which, as The Times recorded on April 6, was attended by scores of people including Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and the pioneering London-based French daguerreotypist Antoine Claudet.

It was around this time Claudet probably made the quarter-plate daguerreotype, expertly tinted with colour, of Hemi Pomara in costume.

The daguerreotype was purchased in the 1960s by the pioneering Australian photo historian and advocate for the National Library of Australia’s photography collections, Eric Keast Burke. Although digitised, it has only been partially catalogued and has evaded attribution until now.

Unusually for photographic portraits of this period, Hemi is shown standing full-length, allowing him to model all the features of his korowai. He poses amidst the accoutrements of a metropolitan portrait studio. However, the horizontal line running across the middle of the portrait suggests the daguerreotype was taken against a panelled wall rather than a studio backdrop, possibly at the Royal Society meeting.

Hemi has grown since Angas’s watercolour but the trim at the hem of the korowai is recognisable as the same garment worn in the earlier painting. Its speckled underside also reveals it as the one in the Illustrated London News engraving.

Hemi wears a kuru pounamu (greenstone ear pendant) of considerable value and again indicative of his chiefly status. He holds a patu onewa (short-handled weapon) close to his body and a feathered headdress fans out from underneath his hair.

We closely examined the delicate image, the polished silver plate on which it was photographically formed, and the leatherette case in which it was placed. The daguerreotype has been expertly colour-tinted to accentuate the embroidered edge of the korowai, in the same deep crimson shade it was coloured in Angas’s watercolour.

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The remainder of the korowai is subtly coloured with a tan tint. Hemi’s face and hands have a modest amount of skin tone colour applied. Very few practitioners outside Claudet’s studio would have tinted daguerreotypes to this level of realism during photography’s first decade.

Hallmarks stamped into the back of the plate show it was manufactured in England in the mid-1840s. The type of case and mat indicates it was unlikely to have been made by any other photographer in London at the time.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/344670/original/file-20200629-155322-my59r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344670/original/file-20200629-155322-my59r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344670/original/file-20200629-155322-my59r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344670/original/file-20200629-155322-my59r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344670/original/file-20200629-155322-my59r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" />
‘New Zealand Youth at Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly’, wood engraving, The Illustrated London News, 18 April 1846.

Survival and resilience

After his brief period as a London “celebrity” Hemi went to sea on the Caleb Angas. He was shipwrecked at Barbados, and on his return aboard the Eliza assaulted by the first mate, who was tried when the ship returned to London. Hemi was transferred into the “care” of Lieutenant Governor Edward John Eyre who chaperoned him back to New Zealand by early December 1846.

Hemi’s story is harder to trace through the historical record after his return to Auckland in early 1847. It’s possible he returned to London as an older married man with his wife and child, and sat for a later carte de visite portrait. But the fact remains, by the age of eighteen he had already been the subject of a suite of colonial portraits made across media and continents.

With the recent urgent debates about how we remember our colonial past, and moves to reclaim indigenous histories, stories such as Hemi Pomara’s are enormously important. They make it clear that even at the height of colonial fetishisation, survival and cultural expression were possible and are still powerfully decipherable today.

For biographers, lives such as Hemi’s can only be excavated by deep and wide-ranging archival research. But much of Hemi’s story still evades official colonial records. As Taika Waititi’s film project suggests, the next layer of interpretation must be driven by indigenous voices.

Elisa deCourcy, Australian National University and Martyn Jolly, Australian National University

The authors would like to acknowledge the late Roger Blackley (Victoria University, Wellington), Chanel Clarke (Curator of the Maori collections, Auckland War Memorial Museum), Nat Williams (former Treasures Curator, National Library of Australia), Dr Philip Jones (Senior Curator, South Australian Museum) and Professor Geoffrey Batchen (Professorial chair of History of Art, University of Oxford) for their invaluable help with their research.

Elisa deCourcy, Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow 2020-2023, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australian National University and Martyn Jolly, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Art and Design, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The British Library’s Talbot Collection comprises a major archive of correspondence, notebooks, photographs and other material relating to the life and work of the British inventor of photography William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). This was formerly held at Talbot’s family home at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire and was presented to the British Library in 2006 by Petronella and Janet Burnett-Brown. These collections illustrate the breadth of Talbot’s cultural and scientific interests and achievements, in fields as diverse as mathematics, botany, astronomy and the decipherment of Assyrian cuneiform.

The photographic component of the collection comprises approximately 1,500 papers negatives and prints by Talbot and his circle made between 1839 and the mid-1840s. In addition to Talbot’s own photographs, the collection includes important work from the 1840s by contemporaries such as Rev Calvert Richard Jones (1804-1877) and Rev George Wilson Bridges (1788-1863). There is also a small collection of daguerreotypes which includes portraits of Talbot, his children and his manservant and assistant Nicolaas Henneman (1813-1898). This material is complemented by albums of drawings and prints by members of Talbot’s family.

While the William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonne Project brought the wider holdings of Talbot and his wider together on a single platform, the individual paper negatives and prints held in the British Library's collection are now digitally accessible through the Explore Archives and Manuscript online catalogue (select digital object). These can be magnified and downloaded under the Creative Commons Public Domain license. 

For direct links to the Talbot Collection through the Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue or the Universal Viewer:

Talbot Photo 1: Talbot Collection: Negatives. Photographer: William Henry Fox Talbot, Nicolaas Henneman, Calvert Richard Jones, George Wilson Bridges and others - please note that the individual images can be accessed through the individual record (359 images)

Talbot Photo 2: Talbot Collection: Prints. Photographer(s): Talbot, William Henry Fox (759 images)

Talbot Photo 3: Talbot Collection: Stabilised Prints. Photographer(s): Talbot, William Henry Fox (188 images) 

Talbot Photo 4: Talbot Collection: Daguerreotypes and glass plates. Photographer(s): Beard, Richard and Antoine Claudet (15 items)

Talbot Photo 7: The Talbot Collection: The Pencil of Nature, Part 3. Photographer(s): Talbot, William Henry Fox

Talbot Photo 8: The Talbot Collection: The Pencil of Nature, Part 3. Photographer(s): Talbot, William Henry Fox 

Talbot Photo 9: The Talbot Collection: The Pencil of Nature, Part 4. Photographer(s): Talbot, William Henry Fox

British Library Talbot Photo 1(1) Articles of china. Photographer: William Henry Fox Talbot (bl.uk)

As more of digitised photographic collections are made available through Explore Archives and Manuscripts, we will share updates when possible.