Dr Mike Ware is to be awarded the prestigious 2016 Allied Professionals Special Recognition Award at the annual meeting of the American Institute for Conservation of Art and Historic Works (AIC) in Montreal, Canada. 

Ware has been a dedicated and prolific contributor to the science and practice of photography for over 30 years. Educated at Oxford University as a chemist, his academic career was followed by one that revolutionized the collective scientific knowledge of historic photographic processes. He has demonstrated his commitment to the conservation of photographic heritage with more than 60 publications in both the popular and academic literature, including four books. His work has transformed the treatment, storage, and exhibition practices for early silver and cyanotype prints, allowing conservators to set best practices for the preservation of these materials based on scientific principles.

His recent research into of the technical history and chemistry of platinum and palladium prints, soon to be published by the Photographic Materials Group of American Institute for Conservation of Art and Historic Works, provides a scientific foundation for the printing and preservation of this important class of photographs. Mike’s contributions are numerous: he engages in research, teaching, photography, lecturing, and publishing that bring his invaluable contributions to a global audience. But the two qualities that stand out are his incredible generosity of spirit and his impeccable standards of practice. Always accessible and enthusiastic, his love of photography and photographs is contagious.

This award expresses the AIC's deep and sustained gratitude for Mike’s many contributions.

Mike Ware's website can be found here.

The AIC can be found here.

Professor Steve Edwards will be taking up a new post from 1 September as Professor of History & Theory of Photography at Birkbeck, University of London. The job was noted on BPH in December here. Edwards is currently Professor of Art History-Materialism at the Open University.

His OU profile and publications list can be seen here and his recent publications include:  'Beard Patentee: Daguerrotype Property and Authorship', Oxford Art Journal, 36(3) (pp. 369-394); The Making of English Photography, Allegories (Pennsylvania University Press, 2006); Photography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2006); and his book Daguerreotypes: Patents/Portraits/Persons is forthcoming. 

Edwards is the keynote speaker at the PHRC conference Photography: Between Anthropology and History (Leicester, 20-21 June 2016).

Image: Open University

Driven to make a difference & looking for opportunities to lead? At the National Media Museum, we are looking for a creative and driven Partnerships and Learning Projects Manager, to take the lead in developing significant new external partnerships, enabling us to reach new and underserved audiences and collaborate with a wide range of relevant community organisations. This role is at the heart of the Learning Department and the Museum’s vision to engage with local audiences through STEM projects, events and programmes.

You will be involved in the whole lifecycle of projects, from initial conception and engagement with partners /community groups, to managing the delivery of learning experiences reaching new audiences.

You will have experience of successfully engaging with a range of partners, community organisations, sponsors and external funders and have demonstrated your ability to motivate, inspire and lead others in a creative learning environment. You will be used to communicating effectively at all levels and building strong partnerships with key stakeholders.

Fixed term Contract for 3 Years

Closing Date: 22nd May 2016

Interview Date: 6th and 8th June 2016

See more here and apply

With particular focus on photographers of the First World War, such as Olive Edis and Christina Broom, this panel discussion will consider women as photographers and subjects in portrait photography, and the effects of social and technological changes on this photographic medium over the last 100 years. Speakers include photographer Alison Baskerville and curator Brigitte Lardinois.

This debate explores the themes of the Women Create Change photography exhibition.

Oxford Playhouse, 18 June 2016

See: http://www.artsfestivaloxford.org/whats-on/debates-and-discussions/photographic-portraiture

The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonne project requires a Research Project Assistant to assist the project director, Professor Larry J Schaaf, in bringing together the collection of this revolutionary inventor and photographer’s work.

Talbot was one of the earliest pioneers of photography in the 19th Century, and invented the technique of printing photographs onto paper. Professor Schaaf has spent the last 40 years creating a detailed database of Talbot’s more than 4000 unique images, and tens of thousands of prints. The Catalogue Raisonne project aims to bring this database together with images donated from institutions and collectors around the world to create a comprehensive online catalogue accessible by researchers and members of the public alike.

Working in conjunction with colleagues in Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services (BDLSS), you will support Professor Schaaf in reviewing, editing and rewriting database records into a standard format, contact public and private collections with regards to image rights and perform research tasks to improve the quality of database records. You will also be the contact point for the project office in the UK, stand in for Professor Schaaf in project meetings or communications, set up and maintain physical file structures and monitor the progress of the project keeping Professor Schaaf updated.

You will have familiarity and interest in the early history of photography, knowledge of 19th Century history and photographic technology as well as experience of dealing with photographic curators, managers of image rights and private owners of originals. Able to use Microsoft Office software with experience of using a database, you will also be self-motivated, possess excellent organisational and communication skills and have the ability to organise own workload.

This is a full-time post on a fixed-term contract for 12 months.

This post is part of a pilot scheme testing a new Supporting Evidence form in place of the more usual ‘supporting statement’. Please ensure that you carefully read the How to Apply section provided in the Job Description, which you can download below along with the required Supporting Evidence form. CVs will not form part of the selection process.

Only applications received online before 12.00 midday on Wednesday 11 May 2016 can be considered. Interviews are expected to take place on Monday 23 May 2016.

Full details here

A compelling, visually striking 3-D exploration of one of fashion’s most disastrous yet most celebrated garments, the Crinoline, featuring contributions from Vivienne Westwood and Zandra Rhodes – has been published to coincide with the V&A’s highly anticipated exhibition, Undressed: 350 Years of Underwear.

Crinoline: Fashion’s Most Magnificent Disaster, by Brian May & Denis Pellerin, is published in hardback (with a slipcase and 3-D front cover, accompanied by Brian May’s patent 3-D viewer, the Owl) at £50, and available to buy from all good bookstores and online at: www.londonstereo.com.

“A very special and wonderful book with enlightened research unveiling fascinating facts such as crinolines being considered an extremely dangerous form of clothing at one time. Great examples of 3-D pictures totally in keeping with its historical importance, complete with 3-D viewer.” Dame Zandra Rhodes

“Crinolines and Stereoscopic photographs were twin sensations of the mid 19th century. We, the authors of this book, decided it was fitting that they should be reunited in the 21st century, and their intimate association recognised at last. This book explores the history of crinoline ‘in depth’. It’s also an attempt to fathom the unique appeal of this dangerous fashion, which, surprisingly, is alive and well in the present day, and its place in popular culture.” Brian May & Denis Pellerin

The voluminous crinoline underskirt was immensely popular between the years of 1856 to 1867, but was by its very nature severely impractical: a strong gust of wind would blow the dress up exposing the woman’s legs and undergarments; worse still, the crinolines were cumbersome, caused accidents and proved to be a serious fire hazard. As the shapes of crinoline garments grew more and more extreme, artists were inspired to capture the absurdities and misfortunes of the wearers through stereo photos, as well as in cartoons and drawings. Just as Crinoline came into fashion, the stereoscope – the equivalent of TV and Film for the Victorians – became a huge craze. Stereo photographers capitalized on the ridiculous spectacle of the women in crinolines, giving impoverished Victorian husbands some consolation in laughter. Although the hoops and inflatable frames disappeared, this wonderful humorous imagery produced during the Crinoline decade has lasted intact over the centuries – and is rediscovered in this book.

The London Stereoscopic company, reborn in the 21st Century, explores 'fashion’s most magnificent disaster' in the form of a delightful, lavish coffee table book, containing high quality reproductions of the original stereo images from the period. Brian May and Denis Pellerin have spent decades collecting and digitally restoring the stereo cards that are published here. Viewing the result through the supplied OWL stereoscope, readers will thrill to the magical three-dimensional realism of these scenes, just as the Victorians did.

Crinoline – the book – begins with the emergence of the steel petticoat and the initial onset of the 'Crinoline Age', and then takes the reader on a fascinating visual journey, including a wealth of colourful 3-D imagery, to the historical moment when women began to protest against the 'cage' and it was eventually phased out. However, contemporary designers such as the late Alexander McQueen, Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood have reintroduced the crinoline to the catwalk, bringing the dramatic garment of the 19th century all the way into the 21st century with a modern twist.

Dame Vivienne Westwood says: "The crinoline idea had been with me for quite some time before I developed it into a collection. I wanted to save experimenting with the crinoline for a rainy day, so to speak…. The first time I ever saw a crinoline was in the ballet Petruschka and I was immediately drawn to it. The mini crinoline encourages you to walk with a certain swing and it swiggles, which I also like.”

The Photographers’ Gallery, in partnership with global technology company Ricoh, presents a major UK retrospective of acclaimed British photographer, Terence Donovan (1936-1996). 

Terence Donovan was one of the foremost photographers of his generation, with a career spanning almost 40 years. He came to prominence in London as part of a post-war renaissance in the creative industries, representing a new force in fashion and, later, advertising and portrait photography. He operated at the heart of London’s swinging sixties, both as participant in and observer of the world he so brilliantly and incisively captured with his camera. Gifted with an unerring eye for the iconic as well as the transformative, Donovan was a master of his craft, a technical genius who pushed the limits of what was possible with a camera.

Presented over two floors, Speed of Light reflects the breadth of Donovan’s career and the originality of his work across different genres and mediums. Incorporating a compelling mix of vintage material and previously unpublished works, the exhibition will also include the ground-breaking films and videos he produced for musicians such as Robert Palmer and Malcolm McLaren. Guest curator Robin Muir with the assistance of Alex Anthony of the Terence Donovan Archive, have conceived an immersive installation that offers insight into the little-seen processes behind Donovan’s work.  This will include ephemera comprising early magazine spreads from Man About Town (later Town), contact sheets, cameras used by Donovan, studio notes and previously unseen sketches and diaries.

Speed of Light was an expression Donovan used frequently and democratically, for those who knew and worked with him the words became indelibly linked to the man himself.  It was a phrase deployed to energise and provoke; a figure of speech suggestive of transformation and progression. As a title for the exhibition, Speed of Light encompasses the myriad and dynamic facets of the man, the work, and the pace of the changes he oversaw and instigated.

Born in East London, Donovan was part of a working class influx into the previously rarefied worlds of fashion, media and the arts, Donovan’s iconoclastic and sometimes irreverent photography established a new visual language rooted in the world he knew best – the streets of London’s East End. Taking his models to bomb-ravaged wastegrounds or balancing them off industrial building sites, his gritty and noir-ish style resembled reportage rather than fashion photography. Donovan’s passion for photography remained undiminished throughout his long career, remarking to a young Jean Shrimpton in 1963: Photography fascinates me. Instant fascination every time. When the fascination leaves me, I’ll give it up.

Javier Diez-Aguirre, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Ricoh Europe, said: 
Ricoh is extremely proud to be working in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery to celebrate the ground-breaking work of Terence Donovan through this major retrospective. As a global technology leader with a rich history in innovation, we pride ourselves on our use of imaginative thinking to drive positive change for the world we live and work in. Our involvement in this exhibition reflects a core belief in harnessing creativity and forms an integral part of our Ricoh imagine. change. Challenge programme, in which we challenge our employees and others to tap into their imaginative potential to inspire and drive change.
 
As part of the exhibition experience, Ricoh have enabled a dedicated space for audiences to explore some of the techniques and styles employed by Donovan and use them as a springboard for creating their own images.  The Ricoh imagine. change. studio offers visitors access to the latest Ricoh imaging equipment and will present a series of activities to encourage experimentation with fashion and portraiture and provide platforms for sharing and comment.

Image: Terence Donovan Terence Stamp, British Vogue, July 1967. Photographed on the set of John Schlesinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd. © The CondéNast Publications Ltd Courtesy of the Terence Donovan Archive

Two workshops by Michael Schaaf on behalf of the Royal Photographic Society will give participants the opportunity to learn about and make wet-collodion negatives and positives (17-18 June, Lacock) and Ambrotypes (19 June, Lacock). 

Find out more here: http://www.rps.org/events/2016/june/17/wet-collodion-two-day-workshop  and http://www.rps.org/events/2016/june/19/ambrotypes-workshop

The Yale Center for British Art has put a call out for a conference which will take place in November. The conference seeks to investigate the various ways in which ideas about Britain have been communicated, inflected, and contested through the photographic image. How has photography been used at “home” and “abroad” to create a variety of images of Britain and Britishness, defined as much from the outside as the inside? How do photographs mirror, reinforce, or interrupt what constitutes “Britishness,” in national, local, imperial, colonial, and post-colonial contexts? What national and regional cultures and conflicts does the construction of British identity subsume? Can “Britishness,” indeed, have a photographic referent or it is itself an effect of representation?

We seek papers that consider how photography—as opposed to, or in tandem with, other modes of image-making—has been invested with the capacity to visualize, articulate and contest ideas about Britain. Papers may consider any period in the history of photography, and focus on individual case studies or broader historical questions. Proposals might address the work of individual photographers, photo agencies, or photographic archives; the photographic print or album; different photographic technologies such as lantern slides, stereoscopes, or digital photography; the uses of photography in pedagogy, advertising, news, propaganda; photography as a tool of surveillance and record; the display and exhibition of photographs; photography as art and document.

We invite proposals for papers from scholars in any field. Graduate students and early career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the organizers.

Friday 4 November -  Martin Parr, keynote.

Please e-mail abstracts of no more than three hundred words and short CVs or bios, no more than 2 pages.

email: ycba.research@yale.edu

Deadline: May 16, 2016

More here: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/photography-and-britishness

An important display of photographs, which will reveal some of the stories of Black and Asian lives in Britain from the 1860s through to the 1940s, opens next month at the National Portrait Gallery. Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 (18 May-11 December 2016), has been organised in collaboration with Autograph ABP, a London-based arts charity that works internationally in photography and film, and will bring together some of the earliest photographs of Black and Asian sitters in the Gallery’s Collection.

These will be exhibited alongside recently discovered images from the Hulton Archive, a division of Getty Images. The display of over 40 photographs will highlight an important and complex black presence in Britain before 1948, a watershed moment when the Empire Windrush brought the first group of Caribbean migrants to Great Britain.

In addition, Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 will highlight new acquisitions including a series of portraits by Angus McBean, of Les Ballets Nègres, Britain’s first all-black ballet company and a selection of photographs of the pioneer of classical Indian dance in Britain, Pandit Ram Gopal, by George Hurrell.

Individuals with extraordinary stories, from performers to dignitaries, politicians and musicians, alongside unidentified sitters, will collectively reveal the diversity of representation within 19th and 20th century photography and British society, often absent from historical narratives of the period.

They will include the celebrated portraits by Camille Silvy of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, one of the earliest photographic portraits of a black sitter in the Gallery’s Collection. Born in West Africa of Yoruba descent, Sarah was captured at the age of five during the Okeadon War. She was thought to be of royal lineage and was presented to Queen Victoria, as if a gift, from King Gezo of Dahomy. As Queen Victoria’s protégée, Sarah was raised among the British upper class and educated in both England and Sierra Leone. In 1862, she married the merchant and philanthropist James Pinson Labulo Davies.

Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 will also feature Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a celebrated British composer of English and Sierra Leonean descent who was once called the ‘African Mahler’; Dadabhai Naoroji, the first British Indian MP for Finsbury in 1892; members of the African Choir, a troupe of entertainers from South Africa who performed for Queen Victoria in 1891; international boxing champion Peter Jackson a.k.a ‘The Black Prince’ from the island of St Croix; and Ndugu M’Hali (Kalulu), the ‘servant’ of British explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who inspired Stanley’s 1873 book My Kalulu, Prince, King and Slave: A Story of Central Africa.

Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 will include original albumen cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards from the Gallery’s permanent Collection, presented alongside a series of large-scale modern prints from 19^th century glass plates in the Hulton Archive’s London Stereoscopic Company collection, which were recently unearthed by Autograph ABP for the first time in 135 years and first shown in the critically acclaimed exhibition ‘Black Chronicles II’ at Rivington Place in 2014.

Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London says: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate with Autograph ABP and present this important display - bringing together some of the earliest photographs from our Collection alongside new acquisitions and striking images from Hulton Archive’s London Stereoscopic Company collection.”

Renée Mussai, Curator and Head of Archive at Autograph ABP, says: “We are very pleased to share our ongoing research with new audiences at the National Portrait Gallery. The aim of the Black Chronicles series is to open up critical inquiry into the archive to locate new knowledge and support our mission to continuously expand and enrich photography’s cultural histories. Not only does the sitters’ visual presence in Britain bear direct witness to the complexities of colonial history, they also offer a fascinating array of personal narratives that defy pre-conceived notions of cultural diversity prior to the Second World War.”

Liz Smith, Director of Participation and Learning, National Portrait Gallery, says: “Beyond the significant display, the partnership with Autograph ABP will enable the National Portrait Gallery to provide a rich programme for schools, families and young people and a one-day conference. This will enable a fuller exploration of perspectives on identity and representation and for the images to reach a wider audience.”

Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 (18 May - 11 December 2016). The display is shown across three Collection rooms: Floor 1, Rooms 23, 31 and 33. Admission free

Les Ballet Negres (On display from 18 May – 4 September 2016) in Room 31

Pandit Ram Gopal (On display 5 September – 11 December 2016) in Room 31

In conjunction with the display will be a programme of events to engage young people and schools, including talks, lectures and a conference. 

More here: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/late-shift-1/tour-of-black-chronicles-19052016.php

Kodak Alaris has announced that it is likely to close it's Harrow site by the end of the year. The site - Kodak's first manufacturing plant outside of Rochester - was purchased in 1890 and started operations in 1891. Since the 1980s the site has been gradually been reduced as the business has contracted and today only makes colour photographic paper.

Much of the site has been sold for light industrial units and housing.  

See: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/closure-of-unviable-kodak-factory-in-harrow-could-cost-250-jobs-a3227811.html and http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/west-london-news/looking-back-125-year-history-11185897

and http://markoandplacemakers.com/blog/harrow-industrial-stories-kodak

This is an opportunity to use your great organisation skills and passion for cultural events to support the delivery of two exciting festivals in autumn 2016; Widescreen Weekend (October) and a new Games Festival (November)

You will have had experience in project coordination and project logistics ideally for film or cultural events. You will have fantastic communication skills and an ability to deal with a wide range of people. You will have experience of using administrative systems, including being able to create your own and be able to manage and prioritise information.

The National Media Museum is part of the Science Museum Group and is situated in the heart of Bradford, UNESCO City of Film. It contains one of the world’s greatest collections relating to photography, film and television, and holds three cinemas including the UK’s first IMAX theatre.

See more here: https://vacancies.nmsi.ac.uk/VacancyDetails.aspx?FromSearch=True&MenuID=6Dqy3cKIDOg=&VacancyID=1306

In partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum this doctoral project will combine scholarly research on Maurice Broomfield’s photographic archive with the exploration of digital media (both online and in-gallery) to conceptualise new ways of curating and interpreting institutional historic photographic archives in the digital realm. This project engages with emerging questions around the materiality of institutional photographic archives, their nature as collections and/or groups of individual ‘assets’, how they might be interpreted for audiences, and their capacity to converse with other cultural content/products in the digital realm, i.e. their ability to become connected.

The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Broomfield archive provides an ideal locus for this research, containing around 30,000 negatives of various formats, contact prints, press cuttings, exhibition prints and works order ledgers, documenting a pivotal period in post-war British industry from the 1950s to 1970s.

The successful candidate will have a large degree of freedom in developing her/his project, but it is envisaged that this PhD will undertake theoretical and empirical action research with a variety of stakeholders to (a) explore ways of engaging with historic photographic archives through digital media, while (b) posing questions around the curatorial and interpretive mechanisms that enable and/or challenge these new potentialities of engagement.

Media, Culture, Heritage PhD Studentship – Maurice Broomfield goes digital: curating and interpreting institutional photographic archives in the digital realm

See more and apply here: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/sources/ukeustudents/sac20.html

The National Media Museum is looking for a creative Associate Curator to join the team in this exciting new role.  Working across the museum’s internationally significant collections of photography, film and television, the Associate Curator of Science and Technology will lead the museum’s contemporary collecting efforts, build partnerships with industry and universities, and curate thought-provoking exhibitions and events for different audiences.

We have ambitious plans at the National Media Museum including new galleries as well as new collecting and research initiatives. We are looking for someone who is motivated and driven to make a significant impact; to rise to the challenges and seize the opportunities at this exciting time.

The successful candidate will have demonstrable knowledge of the relevant subject areas gained through post graduate study and/or strong experience in a similar role. The right person for this role will have experience in collections management and in developing events or exhibitions relating to science and technology.

Closing Date: 8 May 2016

Interview Date: 17 May 2016

Full details here: https://vacancies.nmsi.ac.uk/VacancyDetails.aspx?FromSearch=True&MenuID=6Dqy3cKIDOg=&VacancyID=1300

Now in its seventh edition, NPS 2016 is organised this year in partnership with FORMAT International Photography Festival off year and QUAD. It explores three main themes: new online photographic communities that are revolutionising learning and showing of work; the challenges of making – and forgetting – visual history in an age when everything is recorded. It takes place in Derby from 20-22 April. 

On Friday, 22 April the NPS will examine the decision by the National Media Museum (NMeM) in Bradford to transfer a major part of the National Photography Collection, including the Royal Photographic Society Collection, to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, and the consequences and possibilities this opens up. For the fist time since the announcement, representatives from principal parties involved, the NMeM, the V&A and the RPS, will be present.

Confirmed speakers for the day are:

Michael Terwey, Head of Collections & Exhibitions at the National Media Museum
Martin Barnes, Senior Curator, Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum
Michael Pritchard, Director-General of The Royal Photographic Society
Colin Ford, first director of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
Anne McNeill, Director of Impressions Gallery, Bradford
Francis Hodgson, Professor in the Culture of Photography, University of Brighton
Jo Booth, artist and researcher

In addition Graham Harrison, Sarah Fisher and Paul Herrmann will take part.

See more here: http://www.uknps.org.uk/

London's Photofusion has a series of historical and alternative process courses coming up over the next few months. These including salt printing, Van Dyke printing, platinumn printing, wet-collodion and making digital negatives.

See more here: http://www.photofusion.org/course-category/upcoming-courses/alternative-processes/

As histories of photography are increasingly taking into account photographic practices beyond the Western canon, it remains unclear which methodological tools scholars should take on that journey. Categories and concepts such as colonial photography (including ‘the colonial gaze’) and cultural difference are under critique because they have proven inapplicable in many cases. As a result, the lines between insider/outsider and local/colonizer in imperial and other contexts are increasingly blurred.

Established concepts such as authorship are also in flux as power relations of photographic commission and patronage prove to be complex in some less-explored places. Furthermore, previously canonical models in photo theory seem incompatible with hitherto unknown locally-specific sources that enter the story, for example in the myriad ways photography was perceived in relation to reality. Finally, critical awareness of the self-perpetuating dynamics of archives from former colonial legacies that scholars are using complicates the story further. Just as problematic is the uncontrollable digital realm in which photographs are perceived and circulated globally.

This study day will allow anthropologists, (art) historians, and artists to present and debate case studies from across the globe that will serve as platforms for exploring possible avenues for future research. The regions and countries that will be considered by speakers and invited discussants include the Middle East, Central America, Japan, Egypt, India, China and Uganda, although other places and traditions will also be brought into the conversation.

Weston Library, Visiting Scholars Centre (2nd floor), Broad Street, Oxford, May 11, 2016 11am-5pm

Study Day sponsored by The Photography Seminar (Centre for Visual Studies, Dept. of History of Art, and Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) Hosted by the Bodleian Libraries’ Centre for the Study of the Book

Space for audience members is limited. Registration details will be published in early April on: http://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/events.html

Read more details here.

Image: Photographs being hand-coloured in T. Enami’s studio in Yokohama, c. 1895-97.

PROGRAMME

Chair (morning sessions): Mirjam Brusius (Dept. of History of Art/Bodleian Libraries)

11am-12pm: COLONIAL ARCHIVES: SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND SYSTEMS OF CONTROL

Christina Riggs (University of East Anglia) This is how we’ve always done it: Photography, Archaeology, and the Colonial Archive

Duncan Shields (De Montfort University)

Colonialism and Photography as Archaeological Conservator in Central America

12pm-1pm: THE EFFECTIVE IMAGE: THE SUBJECT AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Lucie Ryzova (Birmingham University)

Camera Time: Reflections of Photography and Cultural Difference in Egyptian Studio Photography

Emilia Terracciano (Ruskin School of Art, Oxford) (A)civil contract? Famine photography in Colonial India (1890-1943)

1pm-2pm: LUNCH BREAK

Chair (afternoon sessions): Geraldine Johnson (Dept. of History of Art)

2pm-3pm: MARKETS: TECHNOLOGIES AND THE POLITICS OF DISSEMINATION

Luke Gartlan (St Andrews University)

Negating Desire: Circumscriptions of Yokohama Photography

Richard Vokes (University of Adelaide)

Administrative Photography, Futurism, and the Politics of Affect in Late-Colonial Uganda

3pm-4pm: ELUSIVE IMAGES: LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Oraib Toukan (Ruskin School of Art, Oxford) When is the Present Concerned? Depicting and Disseminating the ‘Cruel Image’ in the Middle East

Ros Holmes (Christ Church, Oxford)

Is that Leg Loaded? Ai Weiwei, Instagram and the Politics of Networked Images in China

4pm-5pm: COMMENTARY AND FINAL ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION (tea/coffee provided)

Commentary: Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)

Discussants: Craig Clunas, Anthony Gardner, Hanneke Grootenboer, Chris Morton, Richard Ovenden, Anita Paz, David Zeitlyn

Bob Crow's PhD thesis on Walter Benington, who started working as a portrait photographer for London studio Elliott and Fry and was a member of the Linked Ring, is now available and can be read, or downloaded, from the University of Gloucestershire's research repository. The abstract is reproduced below and the link to download the full PhD thesis is here: http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/2996/

Abstract: Walter Benington (1872-1936) was a major British photographer, a member of the Linked Ring and a colleague of international figures such as F H Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Alvin Langdon Coburn. He was also a noted portrait photographer whose sitters included Albert Einstein, Dame Ellen Terry, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and many others. He is, however, rarely noted in current histories of photography. Beaumont Newhall’s 1937 exhibition Photography 1839-1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is regarded by many respected critics as one of the foundation-stones of the writing of the history of photography. To establish photography as modern art, Newhall believed it was necessary to create a direct link between the master-works of the earliest photographers and the photographic work of his modernist contemporaries in the USA. He argued that any work which demonstrated intervention by the photographer such as the use of soft-focus lenses was a deviation from the direct path of photographic progress and must therefore be eliminated from the history of photography. A consequence of this was that he rejected much British photography as being “unphotographic” and dangerously irrelevant. Newhall’s writings inspired many other historians and have helped to perpetuate the neglect of an important period of British photography. As a result, the work of key photographers such as Walter Benington is now virtually unknown. Benington’s central involvement with the Linked Ring and his national and international exhibition successes demonstrate his significance within post-1890 British photography. Recent moves in the writing of histories of photography have called for the exploration of previously unknown archives and collections. A detailed examination of a cross-section of Benington’s work will illustrate that he was a photographer of great distinction and marked individuality fully worthy of a major reappraisal.

Image: Walter Benington, Fleet Street, 1905. Royal Photographic Society Collection / National Media Museum.

The New York Public Library has announced the launch of Photographers’ Identities Catalog (PIC), a collection of biographical data for over 115,000 photographers, studios, manufacturers, dealers, and others involved in the production of photographs. PIC is world-wide in scope and spans the the entire history of photography. So if you’re a historian, student, archivist, cataloger or genealogist, we hope you’ll make it a first stop for your research. And if you’re into data and maps, you’re in luck, too: all of the data and code are free to take and use as you wish.

Each entry has a name, nationality, dates, relevant locations and the sources from which we’ve gotten the information—so you can double check our work, or perhaps find more information that we don’t include. Also, you might find genders, photo processes and formats they used, even collections known to have their work. It’s a lot of information for you to query or filter, delimit by dates, or zoom in and explore on the map. And you can share or export your results.

How might PIC be useful for you? Well, here’s one simple way we make use of it in the Photography Collection: dating photographs. NYPL has a handful of cabinet card portraits of the actress Blanche Bates, but they are either undated or have a very wide range of dates given.

The photographer’s name and address are given: the Klein & Guttenstein studio at 164 Wisconsin Street, Milwaukee. Search by the studio name, and select them from the list. In the locations tab you’ll find them at that address for only one year before they moved down the street; so, our photos were taken in 1899. You could even get clever and see if you can find out the identities of the two partners in the studio (hint: try using the In Map Area option).

But there’s much more to explore with PIC: you can find female photographers with studios in particular countries, learn about the world’s earliest photographers, and find photographers in the most unlikely places…

Often PIC has a lot of information or can point you to sources that do, but there may be errors or missing information. If you have suggestions or corrections, let us know through the Feedback form. If you’re a museum, library, historical society or other public collection and would like to let us know what photographers you’ve got, talk to us. If you’re a scholar or historian with names and locations of photographers and studios—particularly in under-represented areas—we’d love to hear from you, too!

See: http://pic.nypl.org/