De Montfort University is pleased to announce the availability of one Taylor Bursary for its MA in Photographic History. The Bursary offers £5,000 toward the defrayal of tuition and other costs related to the MA, and is open to all students UK, EU and International.

To apply for the Taylor Bursary, please submit your cv and a proposal outlining your MA thesis topic, in English, to the Programme Leader by 15 May 2015. This proposal should be around, but no longer than 4,000 words. For questions about the MA programme or the Taylor Bursary Fellowship please contact Programme Leader, Dr Kelley Wilder at kwilder@dmu.ac.uk

The Taylor Bursary will be awarded to the applicant who will contribute significantly to the field of photographic history.

The MA in Photographic History is the first course of its kind in the UK, taking as it does the social and material history of photography at its centre. It lays the foundations for understanding the scope of photographic history and provides the tools to carry out the independent research in this larger context, working in particular from primary source material. You will work with public and private collections throughout Britain, handling photographic material, learning analogue photographic processes, writing history from objects in collections, comparing historical photographic movements, and debating the canon of photographic history. You also learn about digital preservation and access issues through practical design projects involving website and database design. Research Methods are a core component, providing students with essential handling, writing, digitising and presentation skills needed for MA and Research level work, as well as jobs in the field.

For further details on the course and application process, please see the course description here.

Edinburgh's Stills' presents a two-person exhibition showcasing historically important work by Anna Atkins (1799-1871) and Margaret Watkins (1884-1969), who made pioneering photographic work in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively. All works in this exhibition will be on loan from collections in Scotland.

Fascinated by science and art, Anna Atkins became one of the earliest pioneers of photography. In 1843, she started to produce British Algae; Cyanotype Impressions, the first book ever to be illustrated with photographs. The cyanotype process allowed her to experiment with a new method of accurately depicting botanical specimens in a book.

The modernist photographer Margaret Watkins had a successful career in New York and was active in the Clarence White school of photography before circumstances led to her relocation to Glasgow in the late 1920s. Her work became largely forgotten until, after her death, hundreds of photographs were discovered by her friend and neighbour.

ANNA ATKINS: Cyanotypes

MARGARET WATKINS: Advertising photography

Saturday 25 April - Sunday 12 July 2015

Open daily | 11am - 6pm | FREE

Read more here

Images: (left) Anna Atkins Ptilota Sericea, (circa 1843) cyanotype © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection; (right) Margaret Watkins, 'Hand Cigarette Holder' ('Myers Gloves'), (1924). Courtesy of the Margaret Watkins' Archive c/o Joe Mulholland, Glasgow

Debbie Ireland will talk about Isabella Bird and how she - the nineteenth century’s most renowned woman travel writer - became a photographer. The talk takes place at The Royal Photographic Society in Bath on 5 May 2015 and coincides with the publication of Debbie's new book of the same tile. A student of John Thomson, Bird (who was also a RPS member) recorded her three very different journeys in Chinai including her exploration of the Yangtze Valley and beyond.

At the talk here will be an opportunity to purchase and have signed copies of Debbie's newly published book. Isabella Bird A Photographic Journal of Travels Through China 1894-1896 (£25, Ammonite Press, April 2015) covers three journeys, beginning in the small port of Chefoo in 1894, where she arrived without money or luggage having been expelled from Korea. The photographic journal ends in 1896 with Isabella’s exploration of the Yangtze River and beyond.

This lavish pictorial record, produced in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), features 200 unique photographs taken by Isabella during her final Chinese expedition. The photographs and original observations, commented on by travel expert Deborah Ireland, transport readers to nineteenth century China and the insightful social observations of a passionate, courageous and unstoppable woman.

Deborah Ireland has spent seventeen years working in photography, having held the positions of Assistant Curator of The Royal Photographic Society’s Collection, head of the AA World Travel picture library and a judge for Travel Photographer of the Year since its inception in 2003. Deborah’s interest in the history of travel photography led her to research and write for The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), leading to the publication of Isabella Bird.

- See more at: http://www.rps.org/events/2015/may/05/isabella-bird---photographic-travels-through-china-189496

This two-day symposium will feature presentations by experts from England, France, and across the United States. Topics will include the art form’s early patronage by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the reasons why collectors of American Modernism also collected photographs, photography’s changing fortunes on the art market, and its legitimization as a collectable category in the fine arts. The symposium will conclude with an interview of a major collector of photography today. 

The speakers include, from the UK, Dr Sophie Gordon, Philippe Garner and Marta Weiss. 

Center for the History of Collecting Symposium, Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York

Friday and Saturday, 8-9 May, 2015, cost $50

The full programme can be seen here. 

The National Gallery of Art’s web feature for the exhibition Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860 aims to preserve the exhibition as an online resource for the artist and includes additional material on the photographic practices of Tripe and his contemporaries.

The exhibition opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 24 June and runs until 11 October.

See the website at the following URL: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/captain-linnaeus-tripe-photographer-of-india-and-burma.html   

Peepshows were introduced in the mid-eighteenth century by Martin Engelbrecht in Augsburg. They called for a long wooden cabinet designed for purpose incorporating a viewing lens and sometimes a mirror. In the 1820s peepshows made entirely of paper appeared on the scene more or less at the same moment in Vienna, London and Paris. The clumsy cabinet was no longer called for. The new peepshow was equipped with paper bellows so it could be expanded or contracted in a trice. Paper peepshows were light; they were comparatively cheap. They fitted neatly into the pocket. Viewing a Paper Peepshow is an intimate, individual experience that, in the age of television and hand-held computers, gives a real sense of personal discovery. The viewer engages by peeping through a tiny hole and thereby discovers inside layers of images, like a pocket-sized stage set.

The format lent itself to a wide variety of subjects: to coronations and to state visits and funerals, to pleasure gardens, to trips up rivers and to the ceremonial openings of new railways, to distant views of cities and to tourist landmarks, to military engagements in exotic places, and to the July Revolution and the fall of the Bourbons in France in 1830. The Crystal Palace, erected in Hyde Park 1851 for the Great Exhibition, inspired the production of very large numbers of peepshows, mostly made overseas and imported. Peepshows made possible visits to sites existing in the imagination, to plunge down Alice's rabbit hole, for example, and to wander through the Garden of Eden in Paradise.

The main center of peepshow manufacture in the nineteenth century was toy-making Nuremburg. Briefly in the 1950s it was Britain. Nowadays it is the United States. Paper peepshows are no longer intended essentially for children but for bibliophiles and art-appreciating adults.

This stunning book charts the history of these charming collectables. The illustrated catalogue section includes the following data where known: country of origin, publisher, date, method of printing (eg chromolithograph), shape and dimensions, and number of scenes. As well as a full description of each piece, the author gives fascinating historical and cultural context for these items - ranging from depictions of the July Revolution (Paris, 1830), or the opening of the Thames Tunnel to the nursery tale of 'Puss in Boots'.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has received about 350 of these fragile toys from the British collectors Jacqueline and Jonathan Gestetner, who own Marlborough Rare Books in London.

ISBN: 9781851498000
Publisher: Antique Collectors' Club
Territory: USA & Canada
Size: 9.25 in x 11.75 in
Pages: 272
Illustrations: 511 color
Hardcover

See more here

The Photographs collection consists of more than 250,000 original photographic images of which at least 130,000 are original negatives. They date from the 1840s to the present day. The department is also responsible for the upkeep of records pertaining to the Photographs Collection as well as records relating to photographic portraiture.

Six month internship

We have an opportunity for a paid intern to work on the addition of past photographic display records (including press releases, review excerpts and hand lists to the Gallery’s website).  This frequently visited web page on the photographs section of the website has become a valuable archival resource detailing important exhibitions and displays dating back to the 1970s.

The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to shadow work of the photographs department and assist with shared tasks such as integrating archival records, retrieving original works and re-housing elements of the collection.

This opportunity will suit someone who has an interest in photographic portraiture and British history and can demonstrate accuracy and attention to detail and is able to work as part of a small team. It will provide the successful candidate with an invaluable insight into how a national photographs collection has been managed, interpreted and exhibited over time.

Main duties

1. The addition of past photographic display records to the website. Ensuring the correct documents are included and filed in the correct manner before past display files are passed to the archive.
2. The integration of records into Notes on Photographers and archive Sitter files.
3. Working with aspects of the Photographs Collection including tasks such as the re-housing of original photographs. This will include re-wrapping original negatives and expanding sequences in our Special Collections Store.
4. Curating a photographs section web featurhttp://www.npg.org.uk/about/jobs/curatorial-internship-photographs.phpe, such as a slideshow or spotlight feature. There may be an opportunity to contribute to a small display within the Gallery.

Read more and apply here: http://www.npg.org.uk/about/jobs/curatorial-internship-photographs.php

Leicester's De Montfort University Photographic History Research Centre's (PHRC) Annual International Conference will address the complex and wide ranging question of ‘photography in print.’ The conference aims to explore the functions, affects and dynamics of photographs on the printed page. Many of the engagements with photographs, both influential and banal, are through print, whether in newspapers, books, magazines or advertising. Photography in Print will consider what are the practices of production and consumption? What are the affects of design and materiality? And how does the photograph in print present a new dynamic of photography’s own temporal and spatial qualities? In addition, photography can be said to be ‘made’ through the printed page and ‘print communities’. Therefore, the conference will also explore what is the significance of photography’s own robust journal culture in the reproduction of photographic values? How has photographic history been delivered through the printed page? What are the specific discourses of photography in the print culture of disciplines as diverse as history and art history, science and technology? In this sense, Photography in Print continues the theme of previous PHRC conferences, which have explored photographic business practices and flows of photographic knowledge.

Keynote Lectures:

22 June 2015 – Professor Jennifer Green Lewis (George Washington University Washington DC USA)

23 June 2015 – Professor Thierry Gervais, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

See the provisional programme and register here 

Sir Harold Evans, former Sunday Times editor and prolific writer on photojournalism is to receive the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation’s Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award at a ceremony on 18 May 2015, while South African photographer David Goldblatt will be awarded the first ever Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship in recognition of his extraordinary work in books throughout a distinguished career.

The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards are the UK’s leading prizes for photography and moving image books. Judged by a panel of prominent experts, they celebrate the books which have made original and lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contributions to the field. The longlisted and shortlisted publications for The Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award and The Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award will be revealed at the opening of the awards display in Media Space’s Virgin Media Studio on 20 April 2015. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 18 May 2015, with a £10,000 prize split between the two categories.

On Sir Harold Evans’ naming as recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award, Michael G. Wilson, Chairman, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation said ‘With a distinguished career spanning many decades and both sides of the Atlantic, Sir Harold Evans represents the very highest standards of professional journalism. He has been both a writer and editor for many of the great periodicals of our time as well as author of books about the recent history of America. It is our great pleasure to award him the Kraszna-Krausz Outstanding Contribution to Publishing prize.’

On the awarding of the Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship to David Goldblatt, Wilson said: ‘David Goldblatt is the 2015 inaugural Kraszna-Krausz Fellow in recognition of his incredible achievement as a photographer working in the medium of the photography book. Throughout his career, Goldblatt's projects have exemplified the highest standards of intellectual rigour and creative production. His photography books have inspired multiple generations of photographers and are among the most influential of the 20th and 21st centuries.’

The First Book Award is the world’s leading book prize for emerging photographers. The Award was established in 2012 by MACK and the National Media Museum and is open to photographers who have not previously had a book published by a third party publishing house. Media Space will present a display of the winning project, together with an overview of the winners from the first three years of the Award and this year’s shortlisted projects. The winning project will be published by MACK on 20 April at the opening of the display accompanying the awards.

The photographers (and works) shortlisted for the First Book Award 2015 are announced as: Ciarán Óg Arnold (I went to the worst of bars, hoping to get killed but all I could do was get drunk again), Fine Bieler (Traumkaßte Bilder mit Anspruch auf Wahrheit), Marguerite Bornhauser (Plastic Colors), Ivars Gravlejs (Early Works), Tine Guns (The Diver), Kevin Lear (A Glass Darkly), Vittorio Mortarotti (The First Day of Good Weather), Musa Nxumalo (I, II, III, IV, In search of …), Charlotte Tanguy (In a Sense), Ofer Wolberger (billie).

Lucy Kumara Moore, Director, Claire de Rouen Books and First Book Award judge, said: ‘For me, the pleasure of judging this prize was in knowing that I could focus on the quality of the work contained within the submitted book dummies, rather than the material and conceptual ways in which the dummies had themselves been assembled. Michael Mack's understanding of photo book publishing is exceptional, and this is the strength of the First Book Award - it allows a talented practitioner to begin to refine the way in which their work is presented to the world. Importantly, this year the prize also involves an exhibition at Media Space for the winner, thereby foregrounding further the sensitivities of different formats of presentation - the book, the exhibition, etc - and how these might complement each other.’

The display accompanying The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards and the First Book Award 2015 will run from 20 April to 28 June 2015 in the Virgin Media Studio, Media Space, Science Museum, London. Visitors will have a unique opportunity to look through copies of the newly and soon-to-be-published books by each of the shortlisted entrants and award winners, alongside a selection of striking images from the previous First Book Award winners.

Details can be found at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediaspace<http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediaspace>.

Image: Children on the border between Fietas and Mayfair, Johannesburg, c.1949 © David Goldblatt, courtesy The Goodman Gallery

The exhibition Drawn by Light. The Royal Photographic Society Collection was opened today by photographer John Swannell HonFRPS at the National Media Museum after a very successful showing at Media Space, London.

The exhibition spans Gallery 1 and 2 in the museum and admission is free. It is open until June.

The Bradford showing includes new works recently added to the RPS Collection, including photographs by Swannell and Susan Derges. A series of public events are planned over the next three months. 

Find out more here.

Photos: John Swnnell opens the exhibition; left, Colin Harding the exhibition curator with John Swannell / Credit: Michael Pritchard.

Last year BPH reported that George Eastman House was changing the status of the library within the institution. A consequence of this was the departure of Rachel Stuhlman after nearly thirty years. One year later and BPH can report that Virginia Dodier was appointed Associate Librarian of the Richard and Ronay Menschel Library at George Eastman House last June and that the library continues to provide a service to GEH and to external researchers. 

Dodier will be familiar to many in the UK as she worked on the V&A's Clementina, Lady Hawarden: Studies from Life, 1857–1864 exhibition and book. Hawarden was also the subject her MA thesis. 

George Eastman House announced [2 June 2014] that Virginia Dodier has joined the museum as associate librarian for its Richard and Ronay Menschel Library. A specialist in libraries, archives and museums (LAM), she will maintain the research library and rare books collection of George Eastman House; serve as chief cataloger of the library’s collections and acquisitions; contribute to exhibitions, publications, and public programs developed by museum curatorial staff; and collaborate with other staff to provide an integrated approach to technology and other museum initiatives.

Dodier brings more than twenty years of professional experience to her new role at George Eastman House. She previously served as director of the Carlsbad Museum and Art Center in New Mexico for ten years. Prior to that, she was the study center supervisor in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where she facilitated access to the museum and departmental collections, oversaw library acquisitions, and assisted researchers.   

She received a master’s degree in the history of art from Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, as well as a master’s degree in library science with an archives studies certificate from Emporia State University in Kansas. Recently, Dodier worked with the independent press archive at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in Rochester as part of her practicum for her master’s degree in library science. She is the author of Clementina, Lady Hawarden: Studies from Life, 1857–1864, which accompanied an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

She can be reached :

George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607

e: vdodier@geh.org

t: 001 585 271-3361 x307, x336

Photo; Michael Pritchard, October 2014

Kate Bush, the Science Museum Group's Head of Photography and Dr Jonathan Miller opened Revelations. Experiments in Photography last night at Media Space, London. The exhibition has been curated by Dr Ben Burbage and Greg Hobson.

The exhibition looks at how photography was used to record and measure phenomena which lay beyond human vision from the 1840s to contemporary artists. The show is fills the three galleries of Media Space. 

To read more about the exhibition or to book tickets click here

Right: Dr Jonathan Miller opens the exhibition (left and below)

The Royal Photographic Society's Documentary and Visual Journalism Group is running a one-day conference on war photography on Sunday, 19 April 2015, at the Discovery Centre, Winchester. Speakers include Dr Hilary Roberts, Research Curator of Photography from the Imperial War Museum. A supporting exhibition Then and Now, is on show at the same venue from 17-28 April.

The conference, which is open to everyone, features five respected speakers who will discuss different aspects of the genre

Read more about the speakers and event here. 

The inaugural Photography Oxford Festival in 2014 offered a wide-ranging programme of exhibitions and events throughout September 2014, including a number of historic shows. The Festival trustees are inviting applications from interested groups or consortia to submit proposals to manage the Festival for three years, the first of which will take place in 2016. 

An invitation to tender is available here Photography%20Oxford%20Invitation%20to%20tender_Festival%202015-17.pdf.

Last night saw the launch of Ken and Jenny Jacobson's Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin's Lost Daguerreotypes at the publishers, Quaritch. The long-awaited book more than lived up to everyone's expectations - it is a stunning volume, well-research and well-illustrated as one would expect. BPH will carry more on the content shortly.

You can read more about the history of the book here and how to purchase a copy. It remains at a special price of £75, until 31 March 2015. Contact: Alice Ford-Smith at Quaritch (a.ford-smith@quaritch.com) to order. The United States launch will be in New York at AIPAD in April.  

The images show Ken and Jenny with their book, with their daughter, and views of the launch.

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions visitor figures for 2014 have brought mixed fortunates for photography. The National Media Museum showed a 10 per decline from 2013 with 431,328 visitors and a 63rd ranking.

More positively, particularly in the light of the proposals to cut hours and staff, the Library of Birmingham had 2,414,860 visitors and was ranked 10th - the only non-London venue to appear in the top ten. 2014 was its first full year of opening. 

The original data can be found here: http://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423

Today's Google doodle celebrates Anna Atkins' 216th birthday. Atkins was a botanist and created a series of cyanotypes of ferns other specimens. She is considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Atkins

There's an interesting Q+A with Colin Harding, the curator of the exhibition Drawn By Light which opens at the National Media Museum on 20 March (admiission is free) after a very successful run at London's Media Space. There is an associated day of events and activities at the Museum on 21 March.

See: http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/q-a/11032015-q-and-a-colin-harding

More information on Drawn by Light and Museum events around the exhibition can be found here: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/planavisit/exhibitions/drawn-by-light/about

The annual William Herschel Society President's Lecture will take place on Saturday, 14 March 2015 at 7pm at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, 16-18 Queen Square,Bath BA1 2HN. It will be given by Dr Alan Chapman, Wadham College, Oxford, titled: John Herschel: Optician, Natural Philosopher & Astronomer by Inheritance.  

Sir John Herschel was a scientist and astronomer like his father, Sir William Herschel. In 1809 he entered the University of Cambridge; in 1812 he submitted his first mathematical paper to the Royal Society, of which he was elected a Fellow the following year. An accomplished chemist, Herschel discovered the action of hyposulfite of soda on otherwise insoluble silver salts in 1819, which led to the use of "hypo" as a fixing agent in photography. In 1839, independently of William Henry Fox Talbot, Herschel also invented a photographic process using sensitized paper. It was Herschel who coined the use of the terms photography, positive, and negative to refer to photographic images. In 1820 Herschel became a founding member of the Royal Astronomical Society. From 1833 until 1838, his astronomical investigations brought him and his family to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where he met Julia Margaret Cameron, who became a lifelong friend. In 1850 Herschel was appointed master of the Mint, but he resigned six years later due to poor health. His remaining years were spent working on his catalogues of double stars and of nebulae and star clusters.

Allan Chapman has been based at Oxford University for most of his career, as a member of the Faculty of History, Wadham College. He is an accomplished lecturer and public speaker (including as visiting professor at Gresham College in London). In January 1994, he delivered the Royal Society History of Science Wilkins Lecture, on the subject of Edmund Halley.

He is also a television presenter, notably 'Gods in the Sky', covering astronomical religion in early civilisations, and 'Great Scientists', presenting the lives of five of the greatest thinkers. Not averse to other forms of television, he also participated in the TV quiz 'University Challenge – The Professionals' as part of the Royal Astronomical Society team, broadcast in June–July 2006

Tickets on the door: Students £4, Visitors £5

See: http://www.williamherschel.org.uk/events.htm

The current issue of Source magazine 81 (Winter 2014/15) takes a look at the future of photography archives. It has collated the visitor numbers for some of the UK and Ireland's principal archives - Imperial War Museum, Birmingham Central Library, English Heritage, National Portrait Gallery, National Library of Wales, National Photographic Archive (Ireland), National Media Museum and National Museums (N.I.) - between 2009 and 2014, Nearly all show a decline in user numbers which can possibly be attributed to digitisation and new ways of making those archives available. More cynically, but perhaps realistically, the fact that in many cases the cut in opening hours and staffing have prevented public access. A second chart gives a snapshot of the costs of those archives and the number of staff, where the institution has provided the information.

Sarah Macdonald, formerly curator of the Getty Images Archive and Roger Hargreaves, a curator for the Archive of Modern Conflict in London, are quoted.