The year 2015 marked the bicentenary of the birth of Calcutta-born photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.  In eight short statements, researchers and curators will reflect on the status of the Victorian photographer in the history of photography at large while also using her work as a springboard to think about the present and the future of an increasingly globally conceived historical field. Besides historiographical contributions, some speakers will contemplate on their previous research on Julia Margaret Cameron and how they see it today, while others will present new insights, for example on her colonial work made in Ceylon or her intellectual connections with networks of scientists, artists and collectors. Chaired by Geraldine Johnson and Richard Ovenden, with contributions by Mirjam Brusius, Elizabeth Edwards, Nichole Fazio-Veigel, Colin Ford, Pamela Roberts, Larry J Schaaf, Emilia Terracciano and Marta Weiss.

This symposium is accompanied by a small display, 'Julia Margaret Cameron: The Henry Taylor Album', in Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, from early January. 

The photographs of Victoria photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) can be found in a number of albums held at the Bodleian Library, amongst them an album, which she had compiled for Sir Henry Taylor. But beyond her friendship with the dramatist, the Calcutta-born photographer was connected to a wide range of 19th century artists and savants. Some of these friends received albums as gifts specifically compiled for them while others collected her photographs for pleasure or as a means of support of the contested photographer. This display showcases works by Cameron, supplementing the Taylor Album by letters and further photographic items. Tracing the individual histories of these objects reveals much about the movement of photographs over decades and about the intellectual ownership networks in which they circulated. 

Booking

This event is free but places are limited so please complete the booking form to reserve tickets in advance.

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events/2016/jan/julia-margaret-cameron-victorian-networks,-empire-and-the-history-of-photography-today

In March 2016, the V&A will present the first retrospective of the American artist Paul Strand (1890-1976) in the UK for over 30 years. Revered as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Strand defined the way fine art and documentary photography is understood and practiced today.

Part of a tour organised by Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and made possible by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the V&A exhibition will reveal Strand’s trailblazing experiments with abstract photography, screen what is widely thought of as the first avant-garde film and show the full extent of his photographs made on his global travels beginning in New York in 1910 and ending in France in 1976. Newly acquired photographs from Strand’s only UK project will be shown – a 1954 study of the island of South Uist in the Scottish Hebrides supplemented by further works already in the V&A’s own collection.

Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century will encompass over 200 objects from exquisite vintage photographic prints to films, books, notebooks, sketches and Strand’s own cameras to trace his career over sixty years. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition will broaden understanding to reveal Strand as an international photographer and filmmaker with work spanning myriad geographic regions and social and political issues.

Martin Barnes, curator of the exhibition said: “The V&A was one of a handful of UK institutions to collect Paul Strand’s work during his lifetime and the Museum now houses the most extensive collection of his prints in the UK. Through important additional loans, the exhibition will not only explore the life and career of Strand, but also challenge the popular perception of Strand as primarily a photographer of American places and people of the early 20th century.” 

The exhibition will begin in Strand’s native New York in the 1910s, exploring his early works of its financial district, railyards, wharves and factories. During this time he broke with the soft-focus and Impressionist-inspired ‘Pictorialist’ style of photography to produce among the first abstract pictures made with a camera. The influence of photographic contemporaries Alfred Stieglitz and Alvin Langdon Coburn as well European modern artists such as Braque and Picasso can be seen in Strand’s experiments in this period. On display will be early masterpieces such as Wall Street which depicts the anonymity of individuals on their way to work set against the towering architectural geometry and implied economic forces of the modern city. Strand’s early experiments in abstraction, Abstraction, Porch Shadows and White Fence will also be shown, alongside candid and anonymous street portraits made secretly using a camera with a decoy lens, such as Blind Woman.

The exhibition explores Strand’s experiments with the moving image with the film Manhatta (1920 - 21), the first time it has been screened in its entirety in the UK. A collaboration with the painter and photographer Charles Sheeler, Manhatta was hailed as the first avant-garde film, and traces a day in the life of New York from sunrise to sunset punctuated by lines of Walt Whitman poetry. Strand’s embrace of the machine and human form is a key focus of the exhibition. In 1922, he bought an Akeley movie camera. The close-up studies he made of both his first wife Rebecca Salsbury and the Akeley during this time will be shown alongside the camera itself. Extracts of Strand’s later, more politicised films, such as Redes (The Wave), made in cooperation with the Mexican government are featured, as well as the scarcely-shown documentary Native Land, a controversial film exposing the violations of America’s workforce. 

Strand travelled extensively and the exhibition will emphasise his international output from the 1930s to the late 1960s, during which he collaborated with leading writers to publish a series of photo books. As Strand’s career progressed, his work became increasingly politicised and focused on social documentary. The exhibition will feature Strand’s first photobook Time in New England (1950), alongside others including a homage to his adopted home France and his photographic hero Eugène Atget, La France de profil, made in collaboration with the French poet, Claude Roy. One of Strand’s most celebrated images, The Family, Luzzara, (The Lusetti’s) was taken in a modest agricultural village in Italy’s Po River valley for the photobook Un Paese, for which he collaborated with the Neo-Realist writer, Cesare Zavattini. On display, this hauntingly direct photograph depicts a strong matriarch flanked by her brood of five sons, all living with the aftermath of the Second World War.

The images Strand took during his 1954 trip to the Scottish Hebrides reveal his methodical and meticulous approach to photography, much like a studio photographer in the open air. Strand conjured the sights, sounds and textures of the place steeped in the threatened traditions of Gaelic language, fishing and agricultural life of pre-Industrial times. The intimate set of black and white photographs include the V&A’s newly acquired image of a brooding youth, Angus Peter MacIntyre, South Uist, Hebrides; the patinated geology of Rock, Lock Eynort, South Uist, Hebrides and the all-encompassing expanse of the Atlantic Ocean depicted in Sea Rocks and Sea, The Atlantic, South Uist, Hebrides.

From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Strand photographed Egypt, Morocco and Ghana, all of which had gone through transformative political change. The exhibition will show Strand’s most compelling pictures from this period, including his tender portraits, complemented by remarkable street pictures showing meetings, political rallies and outdoor markets. The exhibition will conclude with Strand’s final photographic series exploring his home and garden in Orgeval, France, where he lived with his third wife Hazel until his death in 1976. The images are an intimate counterpoint to Strand’s previous projects and offer a rare glimpse into his own domestic happiness.

Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century
19 March – 3 July 2016
Supported by the American Friends of the V&A
vam.ac.uk/paulstrand | #PaulStrand

Image: Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides, 1954, Paul Strand. © Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation. Photograph Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 

The National Gallery of Canada in conjunction with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation has announced the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute, a national research and exhibition centre of excellence devoted to photography. The Institute will foster transformative partnerships and cooperation opportunities worldwide for the integrated study of its collection, drawing upon a broad range of disciplines interested in social, cultural, aesthetic, scientific and historical issues.

The National Gallery’s ambitious photography initiative will be supported through a partnership of unprecedented scope with collector and philanthropist David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters Corporation. The creation of the Institute is also being made possible by Scotiabank with the largest corporate financial donation ever made to the Gallery.

“These transformative gifts will allow the National Gallery of Canada to take its place among the very deepest, most comprehensive, and broadly useful public collections of photographs in the world. Indeed, the scale of the Canadian Photography Institute is such that we will be able to entirely reimagine how to collect, present, study, preserve and disseminate our photographs collection, while enabling countless others to reach a greater understanding of humankind through the culture of pictures” stated Gallery Director and Chief Executive Officer Marc Mayer. “We are profoundly grateful to David Thomson and to Scotiabank for their magnanimity and for their trust”, he added.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, is delighted to be part of this announcement. “I commend the National Gallery of Canada on the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute. Thanks to its partnership efforts, the visual arts community and Canadians will benefit from a national research and exhibition centre that presents and preserves an outstanding collection of photographic works. This is a fine example of how important philanthropy is to our cultural institutions.”

Housed within the National Gallery of Canada, the Institute will expand upon the renowned national collection of photographs, to establish one of the world’s most important and comprehensive collections covering the entire history of the photographic medium.

Scotiabank has pledged $10 million as the Founding Partner and the exclusive donor from the financial services sector to the Canadian Photography Institute, in support of programs and research. The gift is the largest donation in Scotiabank’s 183-year history and celebrates its ongoing commitment to photography in Canada. In recognition of this outstanding financial support, the National Gallery of Canada also announced today that its Great Hall will be renamed the Scotiabank Great Hall. “Scotiabank has a long history of supporting arts, culture, and heritage in communities across Canada,” said Brian Porter, President and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank. “We are proud to partner with the National Gallery of Canada and David Thomson in the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute, which will showcase Canadian and international photographic works at the National Gallery and through the auspices of the Gallery across Canada and around the world.”

Mr. David Thomson has agreed to support the Gallery in building the Institute’s collection through an evolving series of donations and acquisitions over the next ten years. A long-standing patron of the Gallery, Mr. Thomson will have donated in 2015 alone over 12,000 photographs, books and related objects from his own rare Origins of Photography collection. Mr. Thomson hopes that this partnership will attract other major donations and support that will fortify the Canadian Photography Institute as a global leader.

Thomas d’Aquino, Chair of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, saluted the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute “as an historic first for the Gallery, the launch of a centre of national and global importance. It also signals the triumph of a creative partnership of David Thomson, Scotiabank, the National Gallery of Canada and the Gallery Foundation. This is farsighted philanthropy at its best,” he said.

More information about the Canadian Photography Institute can be found on the Gallery’s website: gallery.ca/cpi

Physicist, inventor and businessman, Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) was professor of experimental philosophy at King’s College London for over 40 years, during which time he invented the electric telegraph, the stereoscope and a number of musical instruments. He embodied in his career and accomplishments the developing significance of science as a discipline and its relationship to society during the Victorian era.

King's College, London, is holding an exhibition of material relating to Wheatstone including his stereoscopy, until 19 December 2015. 

See: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/exhibitions/maughan.aspx

Dr Kelley Wilder, currently Reader in Photographic History, has been appointed director of De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre. She will take over from Professor Elizabeth Edwards who steps down at the end of the year. 

Kelley is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice.

Kelley's biography can be found here. 

To coincide with the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron, The Royal Photographic Society in partnership with the National Media Museum and the University of Westminster presents a day of lectures that celebrate women in photography from both sides of the lens.

The talks reflect on the historical and contemporary contribution made by women to photography. We will be discussing their work from the perspective of the photographer, asking how and if gender makes a difference to the way women work, and considering the influence it may have on their subjects.

To book: http://www.rps.org/events/2015/november/21/women-in-photography---bradford

The Talks

• Thomas Galifot: About (some) women photographers 1839-1919

  Thomas Galifot is curator of photographs at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Thomas's talk will look at both amateur and professional women photographers who have played a more significant role in the history of photography than has been accorded to them in the field of the traditional fine arts.

• Antony Penrose: Lee Miller

  Antony Penrose is the Director of the Lee Miller Archives. Lee Miller made the transition from being a top model for Vogue to a photographer for the magazine in less than a year. She was intensely beautiful, highly intelligent and driven to succeed in a man's world. Her early apprenticeship to surrealist photographer Man Ray gave her the skills she needed to start her own studio in New York in 1932, after which she embarked upon an extraordinarily adventurous international career.

• Linda Marchant: Cornel Lucas

  Linda Marchant is a Senior Lecturer in Photography in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. She will take a close look at Cornel Lucas's stunning portraits of female film stars from a golden era of British filmmaking. From Jean Simmons to Joan Collins, Bacall and Bardot, Lucas's lens presented a plethora of female film stars to the cinemagoing public, and a uniquely British vision of stardom.

• Helen Clarke: Vivian Maier

  Helen Clarke is a Lecturer in History and Theory of Photography at Leeds College of Art. The story of Vivien Maier, 'the nanny who took pictures', captured the public's attention after her work was published on John Maloof's Flikr account in 2009. This talk looks at some of Maier's photographic work, particularly her self-portraits, and provides a reading of her character based on the evidence they present.

Image: Joan Collins 1952. © Cornel Lucas www.cornellucascollection.com

Learn the photographic art of bromoil printing from negative to finished print, and leave with a finished bromoil, plus transfer demonstration. Arranged by The Bromoil Circle of Great Briatin. Places are limited to 15. 

The cost is £50 including tea and coffee.

See more at: http://www.rps.org/events/2016/march/05/bromoil-and-bromoil-transfer-workshop

Nuno Pinheiro writes...Thank you for the warm reception on the idea of creating a Network for European History of Photography. I believe this is a project which will help us all.

I hope in the future to have better web housing and better designed site, however the most important is to have a place to share information, to get connected to each other, to have discussions, to present our work, to search for connections. Now we have such a place: A blog, a Facebook page and an e-mail. Their usefulness will be on what we put on there. On the news, on the exhibitions, conferences, call for papers, links, resources, photographs we can place on these media.

Now it is the time for you to have the word. Feel free to post all the information related to European History of Photography in our blog (it will need administrators approval) or in our facebook page (no approval needed, but administration will remove posts unrelated to History of Photography).

This is a place to present texts, individuals, groups and organizations, conferences, talks, books and journals, call for papers or for help, museums, exhibitions, discussions, resources … so, feel free to do it.

Our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1475358842794976/?fref=ts

Our e-mail address: histphoten@gmail.com

our blog: https://histphoten.wordpress.com/

To mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising, The Photographers' Gallery, London, presents The Easter Rising 1916, an exhibition drawn from Sean Sexton's photographic collection and curated by Luke Dodd.

This exhibition investigates the significant role played by photography in informing the national consciousness that led to Irish independence, using the 1916 rebellion as a central focal point. It features approximately eighty rarely seen photographs and ephemera including souvenir postcards, albums, stereoscopic views, press and military photographs.

The exhibition encompasses a broad range of photographic documents of key events during the transformative years between 1840s–1930s. These include portraits of executed leaders, scrapbooks, collages and images of rebellion sites collected as memorabilia. Issues of authenticity and manipulation are explored in images of evictions and military drills - possibly staged for the camera. The contribution of women as active participants in the Rising is also addressed as well as that of women who practiced photography early in its development.

These photographic documents were utilised both by those fighting for and against autonomy from Westminster. For Nationalists eviction images in particular provided tangible evidence of British oppression while pictures of Ireland’s precolonial archaeological monuments and contemporary rural life bolstered nationalist sentiments.

Conversely British authorities and the Unionists in Northern Ireland circulated images of the Ulster Volunteer Force and loyal Irish recruits fighting on the front lines of WWI. These images were used to quash rumours of German support for Irish independence and to pave the way for the potential introduction of conscription.

Due to the complicated, costly and cumbersome nature of photography, when the rebellion finally broke out on 24 April 1916, the action itself was largely undocumented. Most of the surviving images were taken in the immediate aftermath and nearly all concentrate on the hostilities in and around the General Post Office on O’Connell St (then Sackville St). These stark scenes depict a bombed-out shell of Dublin, routinely referred to pre-rebellion as ‘the second capital of the Empire’.

Following six days of fierce clashes in which hundreds were killed and injured, the largely outnumbered rebel militias surrendered. Martial law was imposed across Ireland and leaders of the uprising were summarily executed. Before long their portraits, alongside photos of the site of execution in the prison yard at Kilmainham Jail, became widely available and informed a fresh groundswell support for the Republican movement.

Subsequently, and in the brief lead up to the Civil War, photography played an extraordinarily powerful role in establishing archetypes such as the hunger-striker, rebel, martyr, traitor, and spy while also elaborating on the Nationalists’ narratives which informed the new Irish Free State.

The Easter Rising 1916: Sean Sexton Collection

22 January-3 April 2016
The Photographers' Gallery, London

thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Sean Sexton Collection

Sean Sexton immigrated to London from County Clare in 1963. Since then, he has amassed approximately 20,000 early Irish photographs, the most significant collection of such material outside the National Library of Ireland. There have been numerous exhibitions and publications based on the collection including Ireland: ‘Ireland: Photographs 1840- 1930’ (1994) and ‘The Irish: A Photohistory 1840-1940 (2002).

Birkbeck's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre has announced a series of new events and seminars which are open to all. They are free and take place at 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD.

Collecting Our Past: Photographs, History and the Free Public Library 1890-1914

Thursday 19 November 6-7:30
Room B04 (Basement Lecture Theater)
Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)

From the late C19th until the digital revolution collecting photographs of local historical interest was a major function of local collections in English free public libraries. This paper considers the confluence between the emergence of these local studies libraries, amateur photographic survey, and the adoption of open access public libraries in the UK. It argues that it is no coincidence that these three strands are interconnected because all are concerned with the expansion and democratisation of both the production and consumption of local historical knowledge. Such movements have a long history, back to the amateur antiquarians of the 17th and 18th centuries, but they were transformed through the commitment to mass education, as an increasingly large section of the population had to produced as citizens within a democratic society. Access to a sense of the historical past was part of this. I shall explore the role of photographs in the development of the concept of 'local history' for all in public libraries and how the intellectual and material practices of the library ‘performed’ this sense of history for all through the collecting of photographs.

(Some) Women Photographers 1839-1919

Friday 27 November 6-7:30
Room 112
Thomas Galifot (Musèe d’Orsay)

Dates in 2016:

Julia Margaret Cameron: New Discoveries

Tuesday 26 January 6-8
Marta Weiss (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Responding: Colin Ford (Former head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford)

Docile Suffragettes? Resistance to Police Photography

Wednesday 17 February 6-7:30
Linda Mulcahy (London School of Economics)

Picturing Modernization: Vision, Modernity and the Technological Image in Humphrey Jenning's Pandaemonium

Wednesday 9 March 6-7:30
Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University & Birkbeck Institute for Humanities Visiting Fellow)

Law and Photography

Saturday 2 July 2016
Workshop
In collaboration with London School of Economics

For more information contact: 

Dr Patrizia Di Bello
Senior Lecturer, History and Theory of Photography, Birkbeck, University of London,
E: p.dibello@bbk.ac.uk 
www.bbk.ac.uk/art-history
www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/photography

On the Camera Obscura. The obsession with capturing images is an exhibition curated by Montserrat de Pablo. It exhibition shows the work process followed in a research project carried out by Montserrat de Pablo at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin over the course of 2013-2015.

The idea sprang from her doctoral thesis La cámara oscura como prehistoria de la fotografía (The camera obscura as a prehistory of photography), defended at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) in 2014 and completed during her time at the MPIWG. This is a monograph thesis on the camera obscura, which provides a broad overview of its evolution by means of a timeline and a database of illustrations related to the camera obscura.

Working with the MPIWG’s camera obscura, the artist was able to verify the experimental and artistic dimension of the camera obscura in a practical way and to study its functions and different uses throughout history; from the old questions about how an image is formed through a small aperture (pinhole) and why the image appears round even though the aperture is irregular, to various innovations such as the use of lenses, diaphragms, mirrors, etc., and onto the early days of photography when optics and chemistry were combined and the image produced by the camera obscura was captured in a direct and mechanical way, allowing nature to replicate itself with all its lights and shadows, just as the forefathers of photography had dreamed.

When the light reflected off an object placed inside a dark space passes through a pinhole, an exact image of the object is projected upside down on the opposite wall. The scientist, artist and philosopher observe the image formed inside the camera obscura and try to hold onto it, to make it their own. Throughout history, the camera obscura has been used as a model for explaining human vision, as a scientific research tool, as a means of faithful representation, as a means of amusement and popular entertainment and as a philosophical metaphor. A technical precedent of visual culture, it evolved alongside the changing ways of seeing, representing and understanding the world.

The documentary section, which is on display in the library, features the timeline in an enlarged format and a selection of images from the database, in the form of a visual map that summarises the history of the camera obscura and shows the important milestones attained within each historical period, allowing the observer to see how they are interrelated. A selection of old books on the history of the camera obscura, which belong to the MPIWG library, are on display in the Rare Books section.

The purpose of this exhibition is to illustrate the whole work in progress, the practical as well as the documentary aspects. Drawings and photographs produced with the MPIWG’s camera obscura; internal and external perspectives, different variations of the same theme and a series of portraits of members of staff at the MPIWG, produced with the camera obscura in the form of a group portrait.

On the Camera Obscura. The obsession with capturing images
02 November 2015 - 31 December 2015
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin +49 30 226670
www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

Download an information sheet here. 

Montserrat de Pablo. Ph.D. Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cuenca, University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Artist in Residence at the Max Planck Institute for the Hi story of Science
www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/content/Artists-Residence

Who is afraid of Women Photographers? 1839-1945 Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie 14 October 2015-24 January 2016. The first of its type in France it pulls together histories of photography that, re-evaluated the contribution women made to the medium's development. It displays the singular and progressive relationship between women and photography, in historical and sociocultural contexts.

The first part of the exhibition, curated by Thomas Galifot, covers 1839-1919 and is housed in Musée de l’Orangerie. This substantial exhibition is cleverly organised and exquisitely hung bringing together known and unknown masterpieces by the female practitioners in the Anglo-Saxon sphere. Starting with Constance Talbot, and Anna Atkins, and including the photojournalism of Frances Benjamin Johnston and the artistry of those like Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Käsebier. The work of the 75 women included in this location shows how liberated, adventurous and creative they were unconstrained by conventional traditions including to films from 1896 and 1906. The works range from amateur’s personal albums and studio practitioners to pioneers who influenced art, commerce and international politics. Finally, the exhibition ends with pioneers in documentary photography and photojournalism who questioned social and ethnic minorities, education, work, women suffrage, in the representation of the events on the very front of the First World War.

The exhibition assembles French and internationally sourced images many of which are familiar, however, a considerable number are works are not and their presence adds considerably to the range of women photographers. Each area of the exhibition is introduced impartially to allow viewers to draw their conclusions to their contents and this is complemented by insightful essays in the weighty catalogue by Museum staff, Abigail Solomon Godeau, Patrizia di Bello and Sandrine Chene, which will hopefully be published in English.

The second part of the exhibition 1918-1945 is curated by Marie Robert and is situated across the river in the Musée d’Orsay, opens with a collection of bold, colourful portraits by Madam Yevonde setting a very different attitude reflecting the emergence of the ‘new woman’ in the aftermath of World War 1. The hang is full of variances that create an edgier tone, veering away from traditionally assigned genres of portraiture, botany and cherished scenes its focus is on those subverting and transgressing artistic and social codes with work from Imogen Cunningham, Aenne Biermann and Helen Levitt. This section is followed by perspectives on relationships between the sexes, their identities and gendered bodies, illustrated by photographers such as Claude Cahun, Elisabeth Hase, and Ilse Bing. Finally, the evolving modernist photographic practices are illustrated by Germaine Krull, Margaret Bourke-White, Tina Modotti, Barbara Morgan, Gerda Taro, Dorothea Lange, Lola Alvarez-Bravo, etc., who became embedded in the emerging broadcast markets of reporting and journalism, illustrating, fashion and advertising in the first half of the 20th century. The moving images from World War 2 are a testament to their unfettered access as photographers to previously inaccessible locations and events. Once again each category is complemented by essays from specialists in the catalogue.

Although this is an exhibition of two very distinct parts in location, style and atmosphere, their differences add to the illustration of the evolution of photography’s applications socially, technologically and aesthetically. They are both stunning in their way and well worth several hours of consideration each. Open until January 2016 I can highly recommend the experience there is so much to appreciate and discover.

Centenary describes two landmark exhibitions supported by The RPS Historical Group, which commemorate the lives and times of two 19th century photographic pioneers. In 1915, the Royal Photographic Society’s Council initiated a surviving three-part tribute to honour the memory of Ferdinand Hurter and Charles Vero Driffield, and which consists of a memorial volume, occasional lectures and an archive.

Drawing on his accumulation of photographs, illustrations and documents, Dr R M Callender FRPS, has produced displays for Widnes Public Library during November and December 2015, and a six-week exhibition for Gallery Two at Castle Park Arts Centre, Frodsham, which opens on 12 January 2016. The Centre will host an Open Evening on 15 January and the exhibition closes on Sunday 21 February.

Ron Callender is happy to answer questions and enquiries via his email at: finlaggan@hotmail.com. As part of Centenary, he has also revised his booklet, Mr Driffield and Dr Hurter, which is despatched for £4 by first class postage. Castle Park Arts Centre has a website which is regularly updated at: www.castleparkarts.co.uk

Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery is opening a new exhibition P.H. Emerson: Presented by the Author on 20 November 20, 2015  at 6 pm. The following day there will be a symposium P.H. Emerson: photographer and author on from 10 am to 4 pm, organised in partnership with the V&A and supported by the Art Fund.

For more details see the links. Places to the symposium are limited to 30 people and booking via Eventbrite is highly recommended. For those travelling from London East Midlands Trains is offering a discount with the code: NCM1516. 

Peter Henry Emerson (Cuba 1856 – UK 1936) was one of the most pioneering photographers – and opinionated writers – of the late 19th century. His interests were eclectic, and included medicine, sports, genealogy, anthropology, and ornithology. Between 1881 and 1895 he devoted his life to photography and writing about rural life in East Anglia, particularly the Norfolk Broads.

Defined by one critic as “The Courbet of England”, Emerson argued for naturalism in photography and developed influential photographic techniques, such as ‘selective focus’. Inspired by early theories of perception, he wanted to preserve the way the human eye sees nature – not as sharply as a photographic lens. His fervent and public opposition to other, more ‘artificial’, Victorian photographers, such as Henry Peach Robinson, has become a classic episode in the history of photography. Unexpectedly, in 1890 Emerson recanted his view that photography was an art, although he continued to publish incredible pictorial books, accompanying his images with his writing until 1895.

With works drawn from the V&A and the Castle’s own collections, and presented in our new temporary exhibition gallery, this exhibition explores the artist’s modes of presenting his photographs to the public. Published as exquisite portfolios of photogravures, or as beautiful bound pictorial books, or as stand-alone large scale prints, the objects on display will reveal Emerson’s fascinating editorial vision and intriguing writings. Furthermore, the inclusion of archival documents from the V&A will shed light on the ways in which Emerson carefully controlled the circulation of his work.

The exhibition is curated by Federica Chiocchetti as part of Nottingham Castle’s partnership with the V&A via their Curatorial Fellowship Programme, supported by the Art Fund.

The one-day symposium explores Emerson’s fascinating life, his photographic vision and writings. Speakers include: Martin Barnes (Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A, London), Dr Hope Kingsley (Curator of the Wilson Centre for Photography, London), Prof David Matless (Cultural Geography, University of Nottingham), Edith Marie Pasquier (Artist and Researcher, Royal College of Art, London) and Stephen Hyde (Nottinghamshire-born great-grandson of P.H. Emerson).

Booking and pre-payment essential on Eventbrite.

Thames & Hudson has published Lives of the Great Photographers, an original new title profiling thirty-eight celebrated photographers, which traces the evolution of their art in relation to their biography. Intelligently written and researched to the highest standards, this biographical compendium is the work of the photographic historian, Juliet Hacking.

Lives of the Great Photographers gives detailed insights into the lives and careers of the greatest photographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and acts as a fresh and accessible introduction to the history of photography itself. Engaging, authoritative and thought-provoking, Lives profiles such masters of the medium as Diane Arbus, Claude Cahun, Lewis Carroll, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Robert Mapplethorpe. By evoking their lives and backgrounds, Hacking sheds new light on the experiences and motivations that shaped their art. Each of the lives is illustrated with a portrait or self-portrait of the artist and one or more of their exemplary works. Spanning the full gamut of photographic practice from documentary to fashion, portraiture to fine art, this volume is a timely reminder of the pleasures of biography in relation to visual culture.

The biographies form a holistic study that not only traces the contributions of each artist to the medium but also adroitly guides the reader through the major innovations, movements and developments in the history of photography. Bound in a single compact and portable volume, Lives of the Great Photographers is a perfect introduction to the story of photography itself.

Juliet Hacking is Programme Director of the MA in Photography (Contemporary and Historical) at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. She is the general editor of Photography: The Whole Story, also published by Thames & Hudson.

Lives of the Great Photographers
Juliet Hacking
Price: £28.00
304pp, 120 illustrations, Hardback
ISBN 978 0 500 544440

www.thamesandhudson.com

The future of the historical archives of Agfa-Gevaert, Mortsel, Belgium, has been secured with their deposition with Antwerp's Fotomuseum (FoMu). The collection includes photos, posters, films and other memorabilia, back to founder Lieven Gevaert, an industrialist who was also important for the history of Flanders. The archive had been kept in Varenthof, a castle next to the former factory since 1985. The transfer will take place in several phases and FoMu will develop a program of preservation and access for the collection.

The different sub-collections, which have their origin in, among others, the personal archives of Lieven Gevaert, Frans Van Cauwelaert and other company employees, as well as in the company archives and those of business clubs.

The collection is one of the largest such archives in Belgium. "Agfa -Gevaert is to this day an understanding and a company that for many people in the region and throughout our province forever remain associated with photography and film rolls," said deputy Luke Lemmens (N -VA) . "The role played by Lieven Gevaert is also going much further than the creation of an international company. As the founder of , inter alia, the Flemish Economic Association , he has played a role unmatched by the Flemish Movement and the cultural, economic and intellectual emancipation of Flanders."

The province of Antwerp will fund the €160,000 transfer in collaboration with the Center for Technical, Scientific and Industrial Heritage (ETWIE) and the Archives and Research Center for Flemish movement and nationalism (ADVN). The province wants to protect the collection and add it to the Flemish masterpieces list.

See: http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/regio/antwerpen/1.2455736

Photohistorian Denis Pellerin will share his passion for the ingenious art of stereography in a public talk at the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. Stereoscopy was a nineteenth century craze with millions of inexpensive stereographs circulating worldwide. The event promises to be engaging and informative, with 3D glasses provided! The talk supports the museum's exhibition: Photography: A Victorian Sensation. 

Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland
21 October 2015 at 1830
Call 0300 123 6789 or book online

See more here: http://www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-scotland/whats-on/stereography-a-talk-in-3d/

Rochester, N.Y., October 6, 2015 —The George Eastman Museum has today announced its new name and launched a new website at eastman.org. Formerly George Eastman House, the institution encompasses one of the world’s foremost museums of photography and cinema and the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. The museum’s robust exhibition schedule features contemporary and historic photography, film screenings, and collaborative projects with cultural and educational institutions. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program and makes critical contributions in the fields of film preservation and photographic conservation.

“The three-part mission of the George Eastman Museum remains leadership in the fields of photography and cinema; preservation and development of our collections, including the historic mansion and gardens; and service to our communities, in Rochester and beyond,” said Bruce Barnes, the Ron and Donna Fielding Director. “Our new name better conveys our institution’s core identity as a dynamic museum with world-class collections in the fields of photography and cinema.”

Each year, the George Eastman Museum presents at least ten new gallery exhibitions—including three exhibitions of contemporary artworks in its Project Gallery—and screens more than 300 films at its Dryden Theatre, including the Nitrate Picture Show, an annual festival of film preservation. The museum’s current main exhibition is an Alvin Langdon Coburn retrospective, with most objects drawn from its own collection. Major photography exhibitions next year will include Taryn Simon: Birds of the West Indies and Photography and America’s National Parks. The Eastman Museum also actively organizes traveling exhibitions, including Glorious Technicolor: From George Eastman House and Beyond, a film series that was presented earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival, Austrian Film Museum, and Museum of Modern Art.

Founded in 1947, the institution is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the oldest film archives. Its holdings comprise more than 450,000 photographs, including the estates of Lewis Wickes Hine, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Nickolas Muray; 28,000 motion picture films, millions of film stills, tens of thousands of film posters, and extensive archival holdings, including the Technicolor archive; the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, recently named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema; and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman.

“The George Eastman Museum is actively building our collections, with a particular emphasis on photographic and moving image works by contemporary artists from many cultures to complement our great strength in works from the past,” Dr. Barnes continued. “At the same time, we are committed to the preservation and interpretation of George Eastman’s estate, a National Historic Landmark, and are currently making a substantial investment in restoration projects for its original structures.”

The Eastman Museum is a longtime leader in photographic conservation and film preservation. From the late 1980s through 2009, its advanced study programs in photographic conservation, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, trained dozens of conservators, who transformed their field. In 2013, the Eastman Museum restored the long-lost film Too Much Johnson, directed by Orson Welles in 1938. Last year, the museum commenced operation of a film digitization laboratory donated by Eastman Kodak Company.

As a research institution, the George Eastman Museum has an active publishing program, including The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915–1935, released earlier this year, and two photography books—Photography and America’s National Parks and In the Garden—to be published next year in collaboration with Aperture Foundation. As a teaching institution, the Eastman Museum, in partnership with the University of Rochester, offers graduate degree programs in film preservation and in photographic preservation and collection management; graduates from these programs are now contributing to their fields at institutions around the world. The museum also offers renowned workshops on photographic processes, attracting participants from across the globe.

A member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, an accredited member of the American Alliance of Museums, and a member of the International Federation of Film Archives, the George Eastman Museum is supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the County of Monroe, and with private contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations.

A collection of material relating to H G Ponting including his Emerson medal and correspondence with Buckingham Palace and the Royal Household between 1910 and 1929 is being sold on 3 November at Bonhams, London.

The catalogue footnote reads: 

• SCOTT'S 'CAMERA ARTIST'S' COMMAND PERFORMANCE
  
  Ponting was the first professional photographer and film-maker to accompany an expedition to the Antarctic. On his return he lectured extensively in London on the ill-fated Scott expedition and wrote reluctantly that "the outbreak of the Great War ended what had been a highly successful beginning to a novel feature in the entertainment world". In his account of the ill-fated Scott expedition The Great White South, published in 1921, he writes "I had the honour to receive the Royal Command to show my kinematograph record, and tell the story of the Scott Expedition at Buckingham Palace, before Their Majesties the King and Queen, the Royal Family, the King and Queen of Denmark, and several hundred guests". The present correspondence reveals that Ponting was presented with a scarf pin by the King in thanks and in return Ponting presented the King with a portfolio of photographic prints and subsequently copies of his books, although it was noted that "His Majesty prefers to receive books in the same form in which they are issued to the public and not specially bound" and that he shouldn't send films to Balmoral as, contrary to rumour, they don't have the equipment to play them.
  
  Ponting's Emerson Medal is one of only 57 awarded to photographers who had gained the admiration of P. H. Emerson, the well-known photographer of the life and landscape of the Norfolk Broads. He began awarding these in 1925 and Ponting thereby joined the illustrious ranks of Julia Margaret Cameron, Hippolyte Bayard, Alfred Stieglitz and Nadar.
  
  Provenance: Thomas Baker McLeroth, Ponting's executor, and by descent.

Read the full catalogue text here: http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22811/lot/145/

The Aperture Digital Archive is a fully searchable online resource containing every issue of Aperture magazine since its founding in 1952. Users will be able to access all 220 issues of the magazine from their desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device.

“Aperture is a document of great artistic, cultural, and scholarly value,” says Dana Triwush, the publisher, “and the archive is designed as a dynamic, interactive tool in keeping with the high standard of content and image quality for which the magazine is known.”

See more and access here. http://archive.aperture.org/