In recent years, the proliferation of online resources has shifted the balance of research away from physical archives towards online searching and browsing. However, keyword searches do not make it easy to browse for interesting ideas and relevant information when one is not sure exactly what one is looking for, even though it is often easy enough to recognise the potential of such information when one sees it.

Yet arguably browsing behaviour is just as important as targeted searching for developing new ideas and making discoveries, particularly when beginning a new project and before precise questions have been formulated. SERAPH aims to develop a “similarity engine”, a research tool that embodies the serendipitous nature of the physical browsing environment, analogous to browsing library shelves, to support research into photographic history. Users will be able to frame search queries, view results of similarity searches in an interactive 3D network of data nodes, zoom in and out of results, annotate, save and share their results with others. 

The project team invite expressions of interest from researchers, students, scholars, dealers and anyone else engaged with photographic history to join a panel of experts for this project.  Expert panel members will help the project team to understand what a similarity engine needs to do in order to be most useful.  They will help to specify and test the user interface and evaluate the performance of the similarity engine and associated tools.

The total work entailed is a maximum of 10 hours, for which a small honorarium of £200 plus expenses will be available if the funding proposal is successful.

For further details please contact Professor Stephen Brown sbrown@dmu.ac.uk

The Royal Photographic Society is holding two historical process workshops led by Michael Schaaf. The first on 14 February 2015 will allow participants to make ambrotypes. On the second, on 21 February, participants will making wet-collodion negatives and prints. Both take place in Bristol's St Pauls Darkroom. Early booking is advised. 

Read more and book here: 

http://www.rps.org/events/2015/february/14/ambrotypes-workshop

http://www.rps.org/events/2015/february/21/wet-collodion-negatives-and-prints-workshop

Image: Michael Schaaf

Photographic collections or 'archives' from Africa and its diasporas are increasingly en vogue among researchers and curators internationally. What is less often discussed are the sensitive issues involved in repackaging such image objects for display in new contexts and for broader audiences in terms of historical time,  geographical place, or cultural location. For instance, copyright is usually understood to reside with the commissioner of a studio portrait but this has not usually been respected with regard to African collections that often fetishize their authors and individual collectors, with negatives used to reprint original images. Private family photographs are regularly repackaged to represent or condemn national culture.

There are are also rights over personal images, beyond legal definition, which are more moral, spiritual, or cultural in dimension.

In some cases, older images have been subject to local iconoclasm because they are not perceived to fit local definitions of propriety today. And yet, there are good historical reasons for wanting to display these images today, because, as in the case of studio photography, they show the world a kind of kind of positive self imaging as an antidote to afropessimism. This panel will discuss ways to work with this material in new ways, with both empathy for the subjects depicted and sensitivity to contemporary views on images.

CFP: Panel— Photographs, Ethics and Africa on Display

DEADLINE: Friday, 9 JANUARY 2015

Where: European Conference on African Studies, Paris, France

When: 8-10 July 2015

Convened by: John Peffer (Ramapo College) and Kris Juncker (University of Warwick)

Title: Photographs, Ethics and Africa on Display

Please submit your abstract through:

http://www.ecas2015.fr

You will need to provide:

- Your name, first name, email and institutional affiliation;

- The title of your presentation (in English); An abstract of your presentation in English, French or Portuguese (maximum 1500 characters).

If you have questions, please contact: juncker@gmail.com

The March 2011 earthquake triggered a tsunami that ravaged coastal areas, destroying buildings and sweeping more than 19,000 people out to sea. One hard-hit community was Rikuzentakata, a city in IwatePrefecture: 80 percent of homes and more than 1,500 people were lost. The city’s museums, too, were not spared: The Rikuzentakata City Museum, which held an important collection on the history, folklore and natural history of the region, was completely destroyed. Much of its collection was swept away and its entire staff was killed.

The Rikuzentakata Disaster Document Digitalization (‘RD3’) Project was established to rescue what could be salvaged of the town’s historical photographic collections. Over a period of 31 months, 80 volunteers dried, cleaned and digitalised over 65,000 highly damaged photographs that had been soaked in sea water full of mud, sand and unknown pollutants.

Disasters can happen anywhere, anytime. Keishi Mitsui, who led the project, will share lessons learned so others can plan for future disasters. Of particular interest is the project’s use of volunteers and a cloud-based system for data management and archiving, as well as the solutions found for salvaging extremely damaged photographic materials.

18 November 2014
Event time: 6:00 – 7:00pm

Drinks reception: 7:00pm – 8:00pm

13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle), London NW1 4QP

Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

See: http://www.dajf.org.uk/event/surviving-tsunami-salvaging-and-digitalising-historical-photographs

The release of Mr Turner, Mike Leigh's film about J M W Turner includes a meeting between Turner and the photographer J J E Mayall who takes Turner's daguerreotype portrait. The film scenario notes: Turner visits the London studio of J.J.E. Mayall, a young photographer and maker of daguerreotypes. Turner is fascinated by the camera and the technology, but expresses concern at the implication of this new art.

In Chelsea, he shows Mrs Booth his daguerreotype portrait, and informs her, to her horror, that he has arranged for the two of them to be photographed together in a few days. Although she flatly refuses to go, we soon find her there, side by side with Turner. She is terrified. As Mayall takes their picture, he talks of having photographed the Niagara Falls. Turner reflects ruefully that there will  soon come a time when photography will replace painting.

In the film John J E Mayall is portrayed by Leo Bill who was instructed by modern daguerreotypist David Burder FRPS. 

In 1862, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) was sent on a four-month educational tour of the Middle East, accompanied by the British photographer Francis Bedford (1815-94). This exhibition documents his journey through the work of Bedford, the first photographer to travel on a royal tour. It explores the cultural and political significance Victorian Britain attached to the region, which was then as complex and contested as it remains today. 

The history of photography, perhaps more so than any other art, is a history of technology that is best revealed in the very vehicle that makes it possible – the camera.

Through a selection of fifty landmark cameras, Michael Pritchard tells the story of this ground-breaking piece of equipment that changed the way we saw the world around us. Beginning with Louis Daguerre's daguerreotype of 1839, other entries include the Brownie (1900), the Kodak Instamatic 100 (1963), the Polaroid SX-70 (1972), right up to the Canon EOS 5D Mark III (2012) and the Nokia Lumia camera phone (2013). 

Illustrations show not only the cameras themselves but also the advertising material that accompanied them and some of the well-known images they were used to take. Pritchard uses each camera as a point of entry for talking about the people who created and used them and the kind of photos they produced, from Weegee and his Speed Graphic to Cartier-Bresson and the Leica's role in the invention of photojournalism. In the hands of individual photographers, he reveals, cameras came to represent unique styles of depiction. 

Together, the stories of the fifty cameras gathered here present an approachable and informative take on a medium that continues to fire the imagination, whether we're perfecting the selfie using the modern camera-phone or longing for the days of Fotomat.

The book is available for £20 (or £18 via the Bloomsbury website). Click the link to learn more http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-history-of-photography-in-50-cameras-9781472575388/

Table Of Contents

Introduction
1. Talbot 'Mousetrap' Camera (1835)
2. Daguerreotype Camera (1839)
3. Ottewill Collapsible Camera (1853)
4. Sutton Panoramic Camera (1859)
5. Enjalbert Photo-Revolver de Poche (1882)
6. Rouch Eureka Detective/Hand Camera (1888)
7. The Kodak Camera (1888)
8. Stirn Vest Camera (1888)
9. Scovill Book Camera (1892)
10. Goerz Anschutz Camera (1894)
11. Thornton-Pickard Royal Ruby Field Camera (1895)
12. Brownie Camera (1900)
13. Sanderson Hand Camera (1904)
14. Soho Reflex Camera (1905)
15. Ticka Camera (1906)
16. Vest Pocket Kodak (1912)
17. Thornton-Pickard Hythe Camera/Gun (1917)
18. Voigtlander Prominent Camera (1932)
19. George Washington Kodak Camera (1932)
20. Zeiss Ikon Contax I Camera (1932)
21. Canon Hansa Camera (1935)
22. Leica I Camera (1935)
23. Coronet Midget (1935)
24. Kine Exakta Camera (1936)
25. Minox Camera (1937)
26. Compass Camera (1937)
27. Kodak Super Six-20 Camera (1938)
28. Eastman Kodak Co, Matchbox Camera (1944)
29. Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16 (1948)
30. Polaroid Model 95 Camera (1948)
31. Hasseblad Camera (1948)
32. Speed Graphic Camera (1950)
33. Viewmaster Personal Stereo Camera (1952)
34. Leica M3 Camera (1954)
35. Nikon F Camera (1959)
36. Rolleiflex 2.8F Camera (1962)
37. Topcon RE Super Camera (1963)
38. Kodak Instamatic 100 (1963)
39. Pentax Spotmatic Camera (1964)
40. Olympus OM1 Camera (1972)
41. Kodak 110 Instamatic (1972)
42. Polaroid SX-70 Camera (1972)
43. Canon A1 Camera (1978)
44. Sharp J-SH04 Camera/Phone (1980)
45. Sony Mavica (1981)
46. Fuji QuickSnap Camera (1986)
47. Canon RC701 (1986)
48. Kodak / Nikon DCS100 (1991)
49. Apple Quicktake Camera (1994)
50. Camera-phone (2013)
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Credits

- See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-history-of-photography-in-50-cameras-9781472575388/#sthash.DR44nFHV.dpuf

The Royal Asiatic Society, London, hosted a book launch for Christopher Penn's The Nicholas Brothers & A. T. W. Penn: photographers of South India 1855–1885. 

The Nicholas Brothers & A. T. W. Penn: photographers of South India 1855–1885 is published by Quaritch. It is available at a special price of £40 until 1 December 2014. Contact: Alice Ford-Smith: a.ford-smith@quaritch.com Read more about the content here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/publication-the-nicholas-brothers-a-t-w-penn

This ground-breaking book by Kathryn Morgan examines the 1877-78 publication Street Life in London,by journalist Adolphe Smith and photographer John Thomson, which aimed to reveal, through the innovative use of photography and essays, the conditions of a life of poverty in London.

Now regarded as a pioneering photo-text and a foundational work of socially conscious photography – “one of the most significant and far-reaching photobooks in the medium’s history” (The Photobook: A History) – Street Life in London did not achieve commercial success in its own time. However, in Street Life in London we see the start, but not the conclusion, of a conversation between text and image in the service of education, reportage and social justice. This book is the first-ever in-depth analysis of the genesis, development and context of Smith and Thomson’s innovative publication. 

More information: http://bit.ly/museumsetc005

The author, Dr Emily Kathryn Morgan, is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at Iowa State University. 

Full details of this richly illustrated, 556-page, full-colour publication, sample pages and free worldwide shipping are available here: www.museumsetc.com/products/street-life-in-london-context-and-commentary

This 556-page full-colour book, with 75 illustrations, includes the following chapters:

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Revisiting and Re-examining Street Life In London
• John Thomson: Life and Writings
• Adolphe Smith: Life and Writings
• We Are Not The First On The Field
• Making Street Life in London
• True Types of the London Poor
• Street Life in London as Photo-Text
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

“As sustained and ambitious as the primary source itself… This engaging, astute account makes [Street Life in London] available to numerous other fields of study: urban history, sociology, media studies, and more.”

Britt Salvesen, Curator, Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Museums Journal reports that the National Media Museum is consulting on a restructure that could see it make up to five posts redundant across its senior management team and film department.

The Bradford museum has been forced to scale back its five-year masterplan and reduce its operational costs due to ongoing government cuts. The museum’s parent organisation, the Science Museum Group, needs to find savings of £3.7m by 2015-16, in addition to a further £787,000 cut announced in last year’s autumn statement.

The National Media Museum launched a consultation into the proposed changes last Friday. A spokesman from the museum said: “We have started consultation with five members of staff affected by proposed changes to structures and roles within the National Media Museum senior management team and film department. 

“We recognise that this is an extremely difficult time and will ensure that this will be conducted with the utmost consideration for those staff members who are affected.”

Read the full story here: http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/29102014-nmm-consults-on-senior-level-redundancies

The former Picture Post photographer Thurston Hopkins has died aged 101 years. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2000.  Godfrey Thurston Hopkins trained as a magazine illustrator at Brighton College of Art, but discovering that the camera ‘paid better than the brush’ he began working as a Fleet Street press photographer from 1930.

However the cliché ridden imagery and ruthless tactics required by successful press photographers of the period didn’t satisfy his creative mind and, disillusioned, he returned to his home town to set up his own successful photographic business.

When war broke out Thurston joined the RAF Photographic Unit and in Italy he acquired a Leica ‘the first camera I can recall handling without a certain feeling of distaste’. After the War he freelanced for newspapers and magazines all over Europe, exploring the new visual world offered by the small format camera. Inspired during the war years by the ‘new breed’ of photographers such as Kurt Hutton, Felix Mann and Leonard McCombe, Thurston finally attained his ambition in 1949  – working exclusively forPicture Post, first in a freelance capacity before becoming a ‘staffer’ in 1951 until the magazine’s demise in 1957,

Travelling on assignments in Africa, India, Australia and the Pacific he received two British Press Pictures of the Year awards for his reportage work during this period. Thurston’s photographs are marked by his sensitive and creative approach, creating first class records of the human condition.

After following a successful career in advertising in the 1960s he taught and lectured in photography in a number of academic institutions before returning to his first love, painting. He lived on England’s south coast with his wife, Grace Robertson – another ex-Picture Post photographer.

The text above is taken from the Getty Images website: http://www.gettyimagesgallery.com/collections/archive/thurston-hopkins.aspx

See also: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/audioslideshow/2013/apr/19/picture-post-thurston-hopkins

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/apr/12/thurston-hopkins-picture-post-photography

The Society for Imaging Science and Technology has announced a call for papers for Archiving 2015. The conference is to be held the week of 18 May at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Read more and download a PDF version of this Call for Papers at www.imaging.org/archiving.

About The Conference

The IS&T Archiving Conference brings together a unique community of imaging novices and experts from libraries, archives, records management, and information technology institutions to discuss and explore the expanding field of digital archiving and preservation. Attendees from around the world represent industry, academia, governments, and cultural heritage institutions. The conference presents the latest research results on archiving, provides a forum to explore new strategies and policies, and reports on successful projects that can serve as benchmarks in the field. Archiving 2015 is a blend of short courses, invited focal papers, keynote talks, and refereed oral and interactive display presentations.

Proposed Program Topics

Prospective authors are invited to submit abstracts describing original work for presentation at the 2015 conference in technical areas related to the general fields of:

• Digital Preservation
  Infrastructure, Repositories, Web Harvesting and Archiving
• Creating and Preserving Dynamic Media
  Sound, Film, Digital Art
• Imaging Technology
  Including digital documentation and forensic analysis of art
• Using Tools, Systems, and Services
  Quality Assurance, Managing file formats including image compression and Digital Forensics
• Managing Content and Digital Curation
  Policies, processes, metrics for services, illustrating value and ROI, and systems
  Access rights management
  Data privacy and PII (personally identifiable information)
• Share Economies and Partnerships
• Innovative Software, Projects, and Services

All submitted proposals will be peer reviewed by the program committee to assure that the program provides significant, timely, and authoritative information.

Submission Procedures

Prospective authors are invited to submit abstracts describing original work for presentation at the 2015 conference in any technical areas related to digital preservation, image capture and workflow, and digital curation.

All papers presented at Archiving 2015 will be published in the conference proceedings, indexed with various services, filed with the US Library of Congress, and made available as downloadable PDFs through the IS&T digital library. Authors may propose either a 20-minute oral or an interactive discussion presentation format. This enables presenters to engage with other delegates at the conference in the mode best suited to their content and desires. Oral and interactive papers are considered of equal importance and merit.

Papers presented at the conference should be authoritative and complete in regard to advancing the state of knowledge in the area of digital preservation and archiving. The conference language is English.

Abstract submissions must:

• use the template found on the submission page and feature a total length of 1-2 pages
• clearly identify the technical content of the paper, including information explaining how the material is new or distinct from previously presented/published work on the same topic
• include name of author and all co-authors, and supply a maximum 50-word bio for each
• provide complete contact info (address, phone, fax, e-mail) for the primary author, and indicate the format preference (oral or interactive).

A web-based form and instructions for submitting a proposal will be available athttp://www.imaging.org/ist/newpapers/2015arch/authors/. Use of this process is strongly encouraged, although submissions will be accepted via e-mail at papers@imaging.org. Please put your LAST NAME and ARCH15 SUBMISSION in the subject line.

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 8, 2014.

Notification of acceptance/rejection:February 16, 2015

Upon notice of acceptance, authors are sent detailed instructions for submitting the full text of the paper for publication in the conference proceedings, including forms for "transfer of copyright." Please note that each author is responsible for obtaining appropriate clearance as necessary.

Final Manuscript Deadline: March 31, 2015.

Tate Britain's Victorian and Edwardian Art Research Centre is holding a research seminar on 4 November based around the upcoming BP Spotlight Display ‘Poor Man’s Picture Gallery’: Art and Stereoscopic Photography.  Exploring how the reproduction of fine art imagery through the intimate hand-held form of stereoscopy has affected our understanding of both forms of art, the display raises questions about realism central to the nineteenth-century arts. This seminar will provide an opportunity to share research on the works in the display, and to consider the relationship between stereoscopes and fine art.

In 1846 William Henry Fox Talbot provided probably over 6000 original Talbotype images to the Art Union journal in a promotional effort which today is largely overlooked.  The images were provided to popularise his photographic method and the publication was the first journal in the world to include photographs.   Due largely to the haste of production, today, the images are often badly faded and this has contributed to the poor reputation of the feat.

The Project seeks to undertake a census of extant copies of the 1846 Art Union and Calotype images. Read more about it and download the census/information form here: http://www.1846artunion.org/

The Photographers' Archives and Legacy Project is planning to add more material to the project website - www.photolegacyproject.co.uk - and it would like to hear from photographers whose work has a social, archival interest. It is particularly interested in: 

a) Photographers who are involved in or are about to start a commissioned project or residency, or a commissioning agency. We would like to be able to follow one or more projects, to get a picture of the potential, dynamics, issues and problems that you encounter as you work on a commissioned project and perhaps consider a legacy for the work that is made. These may become case studies or short profiles for the website;

b) Photographers who have a story to tell about their photographic work and archive and what they are doing with it. The stories will feed into the blog, which is to become more active. 

Contact: 

Val Millington

Project Coordinator

Photographers' Archives Research Project

info@photolegacyproject.co.uk

www.photolegacyproject.co.uk

Papers are welcome from all career stages. The PHRC can offer three small bursaries of £100 to help Ph.D. students with travel and accommodation expenses. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you would like to be considered.

Abstracts of no more than 200-­‐300 words should be sent to: phrc@dmu.ac.uk by December 1st 2014.

Call for Papers: PHOTOGRAPHY IN PRINT

22-­‐23 JUNE 2015

Photographic History Research Centre De Montfort University, Leicester, UK 

Leicester's De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre has reported that Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Director of the PHRC, has been honoured by The Society for Visual Anthropology. The Society has given Edwards its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014. 

See: http://photographichistory.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/prof-elizabeth-edwards-2014-lifetime-achievement-award-winner-sva/

Oxford, 6 October 2014 – The Bodleian Libraries have secured the final funds needed to acquire the Personal Archive of William Henry Fox Talbot.  The final funds come via a legacy donation to the Libraries.   

The Bodleian’s appeal to acquire the Fox Talbot Archive was launched two years ago in late 2012 with an aim to raise the £2.25 million needed to purchase the Archive.  A significant grant of £1.2 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) in December 2012 gave the appeal a vital boost with further gifts from the Art Fund along with donations from numerous other private individuals and charitable trusts helping to increase the tally to £1.9 million. The recent legacy donation has allowed the Bodleian Libraries to now reach its target of £2.25 million.  

The campaign to raise funds has been widely supported by many well-known names across a variety of disciplines for which the Talbot archive has particular significance. These include: photographers Martin Parr and Hiroshi Sugimoto, artist David Hockney; Director-General of the Royal Photographic Society, Michael Pritchard; scientists Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society; Sir Michael Berry, FRS, Melville Wills Professor of Physics, (Emeritus), University of Bristol; and historians Colin Ford, CBE, Founding Head, National Media Museum and Prof Martin Kemp, FBA former Prof of Art History, University of Oxford. 

Announcing the news on Sunday 5 October at the Photography Oxford Festival 2014, Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian said:  ‘We are so pleased to have reached our fundraising target and are at last able to secure the Fox Talbot archive. We are extremely grateful for all the donations we received, from the grants awarded by the Art Fund and the NHMF to all the individual donations and for the unwavering support we’ve had in our campaign. We look forward to making this fascinating and important resource available to scholars, students and the photographic community.’ 

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) was one of the greatest polymaths of the Victorian age, and is most famous today for being the British ‘founder of photography’. The Archive contains enormous potential for greater understanding of the breadth of Talbot’s scholarly activities, and of the influences exerted by the women in his family, in particular their educative roles, their shared interests in botany, languages, art, travel and history which are so central to Talbot’s work, and their roles as practitioners, supporters, and collectors of the new art.    

The Talbot Archive also includes artefacts such as glassware and artworks that Talbot photographed for the ground-breaking publication The Pencil of Nature, the first book illustrated with photographs. There is a strong connection to Oxford as the Archive includes some of the first pictures of the city.

Alongside items related to his pioneering work in photography, the Archive also sheds valuable light on his personal life, his role managing his estate at Lacock, his life as a Member of Parliament, and his range of intellectual interests from science to ancient languages. 

About the Personal Archive of William Henry Fox Talbot

The Fox Talbot archive includes:

• original manuscripts by Talbot
• family diaries
• family drawing and watercolour albums and sketchbooks, including images made  by Talbot’s mother, his wife,  and by his sister
• correspondence
• early photographic images made by Talbot
• an image made by Talbot’s wife, c. 1839, which may be the earliest image made by a woman
• several hundred photographs received by Talbot - by other photographers from Britain and across the continent, contemporaries of Fox Talbot who shared their images and attempts at early photography
• portraits of Talbot and his family
• materials and artefacts related to the Lacock estate including estate plans, bills etc
• books from Talbot’s personal library
• musical scores from Talbot and his immediate family
• scientific instruments from Talbot’s own collection
• botanical specimen albums made by Talbot and members of his immediate family.

Having now acquired the Archive the Bodleian Libraries plan to run a series of public events to support access to the Archive, including a major exhibition in 2017. Highlights from the Archive will also feature in the opening exhibition for the Weston Library and in a number of smaller displays.

The Talbot Archive will also provide rich material for a related project based at the Bodleian Libraries, the development of a Catalogue Raisonné of Fox Talbot’s photographic work.  The Bodleian recently appointed Professor Larry J Schaaf as Project Director for the Catalogue. The goal is to make more than four decades of Schaaf’s research available to a wider public audience through an online resource, and to invite scholars from a range of fields to add to the catalogue by contributing their knowledge and research related to Talbot’s life and work. 

Schaaf is also the founder and Editor of the Online Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot which includes fully annotated transcriptions of more than 10,000 of Talbot’s letters at www.foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk.

At a public meeting held at Oxford’s Bodleian Library today, Head Librarian Richard Ovenden (right) made the first announcement of three initiatives that will support William Henry Fox Talbot studies in the United Kingdom and internationally. At the same time they will make the Bodleian central to Talbot studies and the lead of the world’s three principal Talbot archives held at the National Media Museum, Bradford, the British Library, London, and the Bodleian, Oxford.

Ovenden was able to announce, firstly, the completion of the acquisition of the Talbot family archive for the Bodleian which completes the £2.2 million purchase, saving the archive for the nation. (Click here for the previous BPH report on the archive appeal).  

Secondly, he introduced Dr Mirjam Brusius (left) as an Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Bodleian. Brusius will lead a renewed focus on the history of photography in Oxford, centred on the Bodleian and will lead work on cataloguing, digitising and interpreting the Talbot archive.

Thirdly, he announced that Professor Larry Schaaf’s long mooted project of preparing a catalogue raisonné of Talbot’s photography had secured funding and would be housed at the University of Oxford and Bodleian Library. He described this as a ‘major scholarly venture’. Schaaf, who is the world’s foremost Talbot scholar, had long had hopes of preparing such a catalogue.

The catalogue raisonné, along with the recent cataloguing of the British Library, Bodleian and National Media Museum Talbot holdings, and the availability of Talbot’s online letters, has the potential to radically inform and revise Talbot’s role in the development of negative/positive photography and will help support a new chronology of his work.

Schaaf, speaking to the audience, (right) said the catalogue raisonné would allow researchers to ‘associate things we’ve never seen before…[and] reveal variations  never studied before’. Schaaf, who has been researching Talbot for more than forty years, has produced a series of landmark books, catalogues essays and papers on Talbot, his circle and his photography. He is project director for the Talbot letters project at now hosted by De Montfort University. He paid tribute to past Talbot historians including Harold White who’s work had prepared the ground for his own and to Matilda Talbot, who did much to ensure his legacy was preserved.

Schaaf currently has some 25,000 Talbot negatives and positives recorded in a DOS-based database and one of the new project’s tasks will be to migrate this data to a new platform that can also support images.

He concluded his presentation by saying, partly tongue-in-cheek, that ‘Digital photography is Talbot’s invention’.

More information will be made available by the Bodleian Library shortly. 

Oxford today saw William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography launched at a reception at the Bodleian Library. William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was a British pioneer in photography, yet he also embraced the wider preoccupations of the Victorian Age—a time that saw many political, social, intellectual, technical, and industrial changes. His manuscripts, now in the archive of the British Library, reveal the connections and contrasts between his photographic innovations and his investigations into optics, mathematics, botany, archaeology, and classical studies.

Drawing on Talbot’s fascinating letters, diaries, research notebooks, botanical specimens, and photographic prints, distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines, including historians of science, art, and photography, broaden our understanding of Talbot as a Victorian intellectual and a man of science.

Edited by Mirjam Brusius (shown right), Katrina Dean, and Chitra Ramalingam; With essays by Katrina Dean, Eleanor Robson, Mirjam Brusius, Graham Smith, Larry J. Schaaf, Simon Schaffer, Herta Wolf, Vered Maimon, Anne Secord, Chitra Ramalingam, and June Barrow-Green.

See: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300179347

Mirjam Brusius is postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Harvard University.Katrina Dean is a university archivist at Melbourne University. Chitra Ramalingam is postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.