CEWE, which is supporting the National Trust as it discovers its photography holdings across its historic properties and sites has released a short film about how photographs are bringing Calke Abbey's history to life. The film features Mort Marsh, Calke's Collections and House officer, and Dr Jayne Knight, Assistant National Curator of Photography.
Check out the film below or at the link here: https://youtu.be/j_TBXyCBHA8?si=EPG_CgQ3DG-D6X4V
BPH has just learnt of the passing of Sidney Ray last year and it is important we remember such significant figures from British photography. Sidney Ray, who died last year aged 85 years, was a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL) for many years and a respected authority on photographic optics and technology.
Born in Aberdeen, he was educated at Owen’s School, Northern Polytechnic and City University, where he gained a degree in Chemistry and a Masters in physiological optics. His career began in 1960 at Johnsons of Hendon as a photographic chemist, before he joined PCL, now the University of Westminster, in 1966. He taught on Britain’s first honours degree for photographic technology. As senior lecturer he focused on optical systems and visual perception with responsibility for applied photography on the BSc course in Photographic and Electronic Imaging Sciences.
His book High Speed Photography and Photonics was commended in the 1998 Kraszna-Krausz book awards and its follow-up Scientific Photography and Applied Imaging won the main prize in 2000. These, his Photographic Optics and others, went through multiple editions becoming standard works on their subjects. With fellow PCL luminaries Ralph Jacobson and Geoffrey Attridge he co-authored the updated [Ilford] Manual of Photography. Many of his publications appeared under the Focal Press imprint. He wrote regularly for the British Journal of Photography.
Sidney gained his Associateship of the IIP in 1967 and then its Fellowship along with two Fellowships of the Royal Photographic Society and one from the Master Photographers Association.
Sidney had a personal interest in the history of photographic optics. In 1989 he presented a paper on this area at the RPS Historical Group’s 1989 conference for photography’s sesquicentennial commemoration which is when I first met him and he was later supportive with my PhD. His work in the field of photographic optics and wider technology was recognised by the RPS in 2001 with an Honorary Fellowship.
Sidney Ray was married and had two children.
Sidney Frank Ray (5 October 1939-18 March 2025)
A story that has been live for a while is the proposed sell off of the archive of the now-closed Centre for Contemporary Arts (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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
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.
The age of photographs. 50 years of image preservation.
9-11 November 2026
Paris, France
See programme, fees and register here
