Sotheby’s is to auction a magnificent collection of 31 albums, containing over 2,000 photographs of India and Southeast Asia, assembled by the distinguished Indian art historian, collector, and dealer, Sven Gahlin during the 1960s.Apart from 8 individual photographs which were exhibited at the Photographers’ Gallery in London in 1983, none of the albums have ever been exhibited or seen in public since their acquisition over 40 years ago.

Fine albums of early photographs of India are becoming increasingly scarce at auction, and so it is a wonderful opportunity to view and acquire these images which range in date from the mid-1850s to the early twentieth century. The collection includes beautiful portraits and landscapes by the celebrated photographers Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne, John Burke, Charles Shepherd, Fred Bremner, and Charles Scowen.

The albums depict views across India (including Bombay, Calcutta, Arni, Cawnpore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Agra etc.), together with stunning views in the Himalayas and Kashmir. The albums also contain fine images of Ceylon, Burma and Southeast Asia (including Singapore), which were then part of the British Empire.

Many of the albums have notable provenances: four finely bound red leather albums (lots 343-346) are believed to have been commissioned by a member of the Curzon family, and one album (lot 350) came by descent from the family of the celebrated artist William Prinsep to Mr Gahlin. Of particular interest is a set of 9 albums (lots 351-359) which were compiled by Lt. Col. Charles Harbord, 6th baron Suffield. Harbord had the privileged position as aide-de-camp to three successive Viceroys of India: Lord Ripon (1880-1884), Lord Dufferin (1884-1888), and Lord Lansdowne (1888-1894). The Suffield albums cover a period of almost 20 years of service in India and Southeast Asia, at work and at leisure; the photographs include formal group portraits of the Viceroys on official engagements, together with images of leisure, such as polo matches, theatricals, picnics in the mountains, hunting, and riding.

View the catalogue online:

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2014/art-imperial-india-l14502.html#&page=1&filter=mediums/Photographs&sort=lotNum-asc&viewMode=list

Auction details: 

Art of Imperial India. Photographs of Imperial India and Southeast Asia: The Sven Gahlin Collection 1857 - 1914

London, Wednesday, 8 October 2014, 2.30pm

Exhibition dates: Friday, 3 October 9am-4.30pm; Sunday 5, 12noon-5pm; Monday 6, 9am-4.30pm;  Tuesday 7, 9am-4.30pm

Treasures from the world’s oldest surviving photographic society are to go on display in South Kensington, the site of one of the UK’s first ever public exhibitions of photography. Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection  will show at the Science Museum's Media Space gallery from 2 December 2014-1 March 2015 and then at  the National Meidia Museum from 20 March-21 June 2015. It will tour to the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany in 2017. 

In 1858, the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) held an open exhibition at The South Kensington Museum, which later became the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Pioneers of photography whose work was exhibited at this first show from Roger Fenton to Lewis Carroll and Hugh Welch Diamond will now be displayed in Media Space alongside remarkable images from some of modern photography’s most influential figures such as Don McCullin, Terry O’Neill and Martin Parr.

This exhibition will also showcase key artefacts from the history of the medium – Nièpce heliographs, Talbot’s camera lucida sketchbook, The Pencil of Nature (the first commercially published book to be illustrated by photographs) and seminal images such as Oscar Rejlander’s The Two Ways of Life.

Founded in 1853, as the Photographic Society, The RPS began making acquisitions following Prince Albert’s suggestion that the society collect photographs to record the rapid technical progress of photography. The society and its membership have developed over time, with its collections now holding some of the greatest examples of photography and photographic equipment and ephemera across all genres and eras.

Now held at the National Media Museum, Bradford as part of the National Photography Collection, the RPS Collection is one of the most important and comprehensive photographic collections in the world, with over 250,000 images, 8,000 items of photographic equipment and 31,000 books, periodicals and documents. It continues to expand today under the management of the National Media Museum, with acquisitions of contemporary work by present members and RPS Award winners.

Co-curated by Colin Harding, Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, and Claude W. Sui, Curator and Stephanie Herrmann, Associate Curator of the Forum of International Photography of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany, this exhibition is the first major London show highlighting the contents of this internationally-renowned collection.

Revealing the stories behind some of the most famous photographers and their photographs, Masters of Light will feature exquisite landscapes, still lives, nudes, portraits, photo-reportage and composites from some of the art’s most important practitioners, from William Henry Fox Talbot to Ansel Adams and Madame Yevonde to Edward Weston.  

Colin Harding, Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, said: ‘The Royal Photographic Society Collection is one of the greatest resources for the study and appreciation of photography anywhere in the world. Working with this collection is daunting but it is also an incredible privilege. The collection reveals how photography has fundamentally shaped our perception of the world and illustrates photography’s enduring power, richness and variety over nearly two hundred years of innovation and creativity.’

Claude W. Sui, Curator and Head of the Forum of International Photography of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany, said: ‘As a curator it is a dream to work with these tremendous items from The Royal Photographic Society Collection. There is a fascinating contrast of well known and unknown treasures by the same photographers all belonging to one of the oldest existing photographic societies, which shows a wide range of different categories from landscape, architecture, portrait, journalism to experimental and artistic approaches. A whole range of photographers are represented, as are all the significant movements from the history of photography; from the beginning of the form to the present, from pictorial photography to the trend for straight photography, the new vision, the new objectivity. Immersing oneself in the depth of this collection is like diving for pearls – it’s an exciting adventure to bring to light the highlights and the hidden treasures.’

Michael Pritchard, Director-General, The Royal Photographic Society commented:  ‘The RPS Collection is one of the world’s outstanding photography collections and The Society is excited that the public in the UK and Germany will have the opportunity to see highlights in two very special exhibitions. There is nothing like seeing original photographs and objects, and those being shown, covering both the art and science of photography from the 1820s to the present day, are amongst the best anywhere.’

Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection is the third major exhibition to open in Media Space and the exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany where the exhibition will go on display in 2017.

Image, top: Rudolf Koppitz, Bewengungsstudie (Movement Study), 1926; centre: Refugees: A Mother and Her Child in Bangladesh, Don McCullin, 1971; below: Eastern Madonna, Walter Bird, 1935 / The Royal Photographic Society Collection © National Media Museum, Bradford / SSPL.

- See more at: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/july/masters-of-light-exhibition#sthash.EJ0sxYJq.dpuf

UPDATED: originally published 9 July,  the exhibition now has a new title and is called: Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection. (see: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/drawn_by_light) 

A hard-hitting collection of photographs taken by Nick Hedges for Shelter between 1968 and 1972 are to be shown together for the first time in a new exhibition in the Virgin Media Studio, Media Space, London, from 2 October 2014-18 January 2015. 

The Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group has announced an essay prize for younger photographic historians. The competition has been funded to promote interest in the history of photography amongst students and researchers and is open to anyone who will be aged under 25 years on 28 February 2015. 

See more at:http://www.rps.org/special-interest-groups/historical/about/hall-marriott-prize

Hello. A group of us in Australia are trying to work out the identity of this Aboriginal girl, location in Australia, date of this tin type, photographer/studio ...  - all thoughts/information very welcome. 

Currently haven't obtained any further information than the article - link is:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-26/tintype-photo/5687622

Contact: Julie Gough

The National Archives (TNA) keeps a year-by-year track of UK (+ Channel Islands) accessions to archives, categorised by subject. There were two directly photo-history related accessions in 2013: 

Kingston Museum and Heritage Service

• Kingston Photographic Society: minute book 1901-1906 (KX543)

National Library of Wales: Department of Collection Services

• Angus McBean, Welsh photographer: visitors' book from his Endell Street, Covent Garden studio with over 1000 signatures incl Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Marlene Dietrich, Spike Milligan and all four Beatles c1949-1987 (NLW MS 24041D)

Take a look for previous years and across different categories here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/accessions/

The Northern Photography Consortium (NPC) is a group of 6 organisations funded by Arts Council England’s Catalyst programme: Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, Amber Side, Redeye, Look Festival and North East Photography Network. A key aim of the Catalyst programme is to support arts organisations to diversify their income streams and to build robust business models.

Three of these organisations, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery and Redeye: The Photography Network, wish to capitalise on their directional influence and knowledge of contemporary photography to explore the possibility of establishing a print sales business of original, limited edition photographs whose profits would support public programmes of the participating organisations. This group of three partners is seeking to appoint a consultant who can provide comprehensive research into establishing this print sales business.

Note that the successful candidate must have a substantial knowledge and operational experience of the photographic print or broader fine art sales market in the UK. This research is to be submitted by the end of November 2014.

For further information please see the attached pdf document or contact Anna Taylor |anna@redeye.org.uk

BPH reported in July about the project to put art in to public spaces. Julia Margaret Cameron's Iago is one of the artworks to be featured (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/art-everywhere-to-feature-cameron-s-iago. Sophie Gordon Goodchild has spotted Iago across the tracks at Pinner station. 

If you spot him elsewhere please take a photo for BPH 

Image courtesy: Sophie Gordon Goodchild

Morphets of Harrogate is offering at an album of seventy albumen prints by Oscar Gustav Rejlander from the former estate of Surgeon Commander Herbert Ackland Browning RN on 11 September. The album is estimated at a modest £7000-10,000 and the complete album is to be re-created as a page turner pdf book on the Morphets website shortly, see:  www.morphets.co.uk. 

Details of the album are below: 

REJLANDER (OSCAR), AN ALBUM OF SEVENTY ALBUMEN PRINTS, CIRCA 1865-66

A rare and interesting folio of seventy portrait and figurative photographs by this pioneer, the albumen prints mounted on gilt-edged card leaves in a single volume with gilt and tooled black morocco bindings, the sitters including Rejlander himself, Mary Rejlander (nee Bull), Sir Henry Taylor, Hallam Tennyson (son of Lord Alfred Tennyson), John and Minnie Constable, the youngest of Lord Hawarden's children, possibly including Elphinstone 'Eppy' Maud and other unidentified subjects, album 30cm x 25cm, prints varying in size from 12cm oval up to 21cm x 15cm, some with titles or annotations in pencil. 

Provenance: This album was part of the estate of Surgeon Commander Herbert Ackland Browning RN and thence by descent to the vendor.  Commander Browning served throughout the First World War, never married and died at the family home in Dawlish in 1955.  Herbert's father, Captain George Browning RN, was a naval hydrographer and married Elizabeth (nee) Kendal, daughter of Dr Marsters Kendal of Kings Lynne, honorary surgeon to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, at Sandringham.  It is possible that the album belonged to him and was thus lent to the Prince of Wales and others as annotations indicate. 

Footnote: Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1813-1875), known as the Father of Art Photography, was born in Sweden and studied art in Rome, settling in England in the 1840s.  He lived in Lincoln and later Wolverhampton, working as an artist and portrait miniaturist.  He took an active interest in photography, seeing its potential for assisting artists and in 1853 attended lessons in the London studio of Nicholas Henneman.  This inspired him to develop his own techniques experimenting with portraiture although it is his pioneering work in photo-montage, combining several negatives to form one image, that brought him to wider renown.   His best known work The Two Ways of Life comprised thirty-two negatives and took six weeks to produce.  Following its exhibition in Manchester in 1857 a copy was ordered by Queen Victoria for Prince Albert.  Rejlander became a member of the Royal Photographic Society, regularly lecturing and publishing on the subject and in 1862 he moved to London where he built a photographic studio designed to make the best use of natural light for his subjects.  During his work he came into contact with Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), Lady Clementina (Maud) Hawarden and Charles Darwin.  In the early 1870s he worked with Darwin on illustrations for his treatise on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Although Rejlander sold volumes of his photography through book shops and art dealers it is unknown if the album in this lot was obtained thus by Captain Browning.  One pencil annotation suggests it may have been bought directly from the photographer as it reads 'Rejlander had refused to sell this copy (the only one obtained from the negative taken) at any price: but the offer of £2.2.0 for the Swedish poor was too much for his nerves and I obtained it DEO GRATIAS'.

A further annotation inside the front cover reads 'This album has the honour of being submitted in 1866 to HRH The Prince of Wales by Colonel Teesdale (3 weeks), in 1870 at the request of Cardinal Antorelli to HH Pope Pius IXth by Monsignor Pacca (1 week), into 1871 to Her Majesty by Lady Elgin (several weeks)'.  

Some of the prints herein are well known examples also held in the collections of the Royal Photographic Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

For more information contact: Fran Hazlewood on 01423 530030 or email enquiries@morphets.co.uk.

Images: courtesy Morphets of Harrogate

BPH recently previewed the Linnaeus Tripe exhibition which opens in Washington DC in September and comes to the UK in June 2015. The book of the exhibition by Professor Emeritus Roger Taylor and Crispin Branfoot is now available. Listed at £40 it is being offered on Amazon as low as £22 including postage. Needless to say, the book is superbly produced with essays from Taylor, Branfoot, Sarah Greenough and Malcolm Daniel and it is extensively illustrated. High recommended.  

Read more about the exhibition here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exhibition-captain-linnaeus-tripe-photographer-of-india-and-burma

Running from 1 November 2014–11 January 2015, Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century will be Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum’s first ever photography exhibition to showcase the outstanding collection of 20,000 20th-century works that it has amassed since deciding in 1994 to extend its photographic holdings beyond the 19th century.

In a display of more than 400 images, the exhibition will trace photography’s key developments during the 20th century, including the introduction of colour, the growth of documentary and news photography, and photography as a pure art form. A wide-ranging overview, it will also explore photography’s role in fashion and advertising and will feature some amateur works.

Rare photographs by Brassaï, Ed van der Elsken, John Gutmann, Lewis Hine, William Klein, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Joel Meyerowitz, László Moholy-Nagy, Eadweard Muybridge, Man Ray and W. Eugene Smith will be displayed as part of the exhibition Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century. This major photographic survey will inaugurate the Rijksmuseum’s newly renovated Philips Wing, the final stage in the museum’s recent acclaimed transformation.

The exhibition and its accompanying publication, Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, have been made possible thanks to the long-standing sponsorship of Baker & McKenzie.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is the Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history. The Museum’s Philips Wing, newly renovated by Spanish architects Cruz y Ortiz, will open its doors for the first time on 1 November 2014 with the launch of Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, the inaugural exhibition, which will occupy all nine of the Wing’s new exhibition rooms.

A richly illustrated publication will be released for the exhibition. Also entitled Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, it will be available in the Rijksshop, through the webshop and in bookstores.

Responsible for both the exhibition and its accompanying publication are Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Curators of Photography at the Rijksmuseum.

Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century 
1 November 2014 – 11 January 2015
Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands

Image: Modeportret van Rita Loonen, Paul Huf, 1961. 

There has been a photography studio in Midland Road, Derby since at least 1857. This was owned by Monsieur Emmanuel Nicholas Charles who employed our founder, Walter William Winter. Winter eventually took over the business and in 1867, he opened his new purpose built studio directly across the road. The business has been here ever since. In 1896, William Henry King joined the business as a photographic assistant and by 1910, he and Henry Bernard Sheppard formed a partnership buying the business. The company is still in the King family to this day. What this means is that W W Winter is a photo studio with a rather exciting past.

Join us to peak behind the scenes at a history of photography and photographic ephemera. A must for the photo enthusiast and fans of local history.

Book and see more here: http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory/w.-w.-winter-photographers

More about Winters here: http://www.wwwinter.co.uk/historyandheritage.html

This is the first book to study the history of photography via international exhibitions. The foremost historians of the medium describe the most important shows and set them in the context of their times: London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) in the 1850s, the magnificent Vienna International Exhibition of 1891, and Film und Foto in Stuttgart in 1929, organized by the Deutscher Werkbund, feature in a wide-ranging global survey.

In the United States, the Museum of Modern Art took a lead in the 1930s; in the postwar period, The Family of Man toured over sixty countries and drew nine million visitors, and as the twentieth century drew to a close, curators began to make formal links between photography and contemporary art. In this century, the photographic aftermath of 9/11 is marked here by an interview with Charles Traub, co-founder of Here is New York; dubbed ‘a democracy of photographs’, it remains possibly ‘the most seen exhibition in history’. In the age of Flickr and other internet hosting services, curating photography is one of the most dynamic activities in our visual culture.

Edited by Alessandra Mauro, with contributions by and interviews with Quentin Bajac, Gerry Badger, Paul-Louis Roubert, David Spencer, Francesco Zanot, Michel Frizot, Alessia Tagliaventi, Charles Traub, and based on conversations with Robert Delpire, Sebastião Salgado and Gilles Peress, among many others, this is the most important history of photography from its earliest days up to the present, told via a tour of the most significant photography shows that have ever taken place. It will be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in photography and curating, and provides the most informative and wide-ranging survey available of the era’s defining medium.

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd (Published October 6, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500544425
• ISBN-13: 978-0500544426

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, 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.

A book launch and drinks reception will follow a lecture on 5 October (See: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/event-lecture-the-work-of-henry-fox-talbot) at the Divinity School, Bodleian Library. Tickets can be booked for the lecture at the link above.  If you wish to attend the book reception only please contact: mirjam.brusius@history.ox.ac.uk

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.

Sir Benjamin Stone: Observations in Brazil 1893 presents 50 previously unpublished photographs by the noted Victorian photographer taken during his journey to Brazil in 1893.

Curated by Rodrigo Orrantia and Pete James from the Stone archive at the Library of Birmingham the exhibition tells the notable Englishman’s journey as part of a Royal Astronomical Society scientific mission to view and record a full solar eclipse.  In addition to recording the natural phenomenon, Stone also made a large series of photographs documenting his journey by sea to Brazil and the people, places and sites which greeted him throughout the expedition. 

A keen observer of people and customs in England, Stone’s images convey the different stories of Brazil on the eve of industrialisation. A land of extreme contrasts, this exhibition reveals recently freed African slaves, indigenous tribes of the Amazon, European settlers, the wealthy and dispossessed, and those venturing to this land in search of a promising future.  In many of these images his subject’s quizzical gaze make it evident that Stone was as much the observed as the observer.

This exhibition is an invitation to travel back in time and witness a nation in the eve of modernisation, a unique contrast between the untouched wilderness of the Amazon, and the relentless pace of industrialization, flourishing in cities like Manaus, capital of the rubber trade at the start of the Twentieth Century.

Sir Benjamin Stone: Observations in Brazil 1893
Venue: Sala Brasil, Embassy of Brazil, 14-16 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5BL
Dates: 11 September - 7 November, 2014

Image: Sir Benjamin Stone, Solar Eclipse Station, Paracuru, Brazil, 1893

The Oxford Photography Festival 14 is presenting a lecture and panel discussion on The work of Henry Fox Talbot.  The discussion will include Richard Ovenden, Professor Larry Schaaf and Dr Mirjam Brusius and comes after the Bodleian Library secured Talbot's personal archive.

Tickets costs £5 and the event will take place on Sunday, 5 October 2014 from 1130-1400 at the Bodleian's Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG. Bookings can be made here: http://www.rps.org/events/2014/october/05/pof14-the-work-of-henry-fox-talbot

More information about the range of exhibitions and events at the Festival can be found here: http://www.photographyoxford.co.uk/events.html

Beyond the View. New Perspectives on Seaside Photography is the title of a delightful publication edited by Rob Ball and Karen Shepherdson offering an exposition of images from the Sunbeam Photography Company. It includes two useful essays by Shepherdson and Colin Harding of the National Media Museum who has done a great deal of original work on beach photography. Shepherdson was the organiser of a recent conference on the same theme. Needless to say the book is well illustrated with archive photography from the company. 

The book is beautifully produced with great texts and photography and a 'photobook' in its own right. It is an important contribution to the subject and the editors and contributors are to be congratulated on producing an original publication that adds to our knowledge of this genre, in such an accessible way.

BPH understands that the book has been selling well but copies should still be available here at £13 including postage: http://shop.canterbury.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=209&prodid=1781

Read more about the wider seaside photography project here: http://www.seasphotography.org.uk

An exhibition on the same subject continues until 22 August 2014. 

Hold Still, Madame. Wartime Gender and the Photography of Women in France during the Great War is a PDF ebook under a Creative Commons License by Dr Nicole Hudgkins. It investigates French images of women during the First World War, the feminine postures and roles captured by photographers, how female images were used in the wartime media and by the state, and how captions and other textual modes strengthened an overarching message of total consent.

By analysing the three most prominent genres of female imagery during the period – women in distress, feminine devotion, and women toiling for the war effort – this book seeks to demonstrate how photography assisted in the gender work of the war. Photographers and publishers showed how traditional feminine traits could contribute to a male-designed and directed war effort, while also concealing instances of female dissent, which included feminist, socialist, popular and pacifist objections to the war. Yet, although the archives contain few wartime images created by French women themselves, this work also introduces a small group of period photographs, lithographs, articles and literary works that disrupted the visual narrative of subordination.

See: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/5016

In the first major exhibition of photographs by Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822–1902), some 60 works will include early pictures he took in England as well as the outstanding body of work he produced in India and Burma (now Myanmar) in the 1850s. The exhibition has been co-curated by Professor Emeritus Roger Taylor.

Introduced to photography by those who saw it as a pastime, he recognized that it could be an effective tool for conveying information about unknown cultures. Under the auspices of the East India Company, he took many photographs of archaeological sites and monuments, ancient and contemporary religious and secular buildings, as well as geological formations and landscape vistas not seen before in the West. His military training gave his work a striking aesthetic and formal rigor and helped him achieve remarkably consistent results, despite the challenges that India’s heat and humidity posed to photographic chemistry.

Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, it opens in Washing DC on 21 September 2014-4 January 2015; then travels to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 24 February-25 May, 2015 and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 23 June–11 October, 2015.#

Image: Linnaeus Tripe, Madura: The Vygay River with Causeway, across to Madura, January–February 1858, albumen print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Carolyn Brody Fund and Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel

Tate Britain is to hold the first exhibition in Britain devoted to salted paper prints, one of the earliest forms of photograph. A uniquely British invention, unveiled by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839, salt prints spread across the globe, creating a new visual language of the modern moment.

This revolutionary technique transformed subjects from still lifes, portraits, landscapes and scenes of daily life into images with their own specific aesthetic; a soft, luxurious effect particular to this photographic process. 

The few salt prints that survive make brief appearances on the gallery wall due to their fragility, and so this exhibition, a collaboration with the Wilson Centre for Photography, is a singular opportunity to see the rarest and best early photographs of this type in the world.

Tate Britain, 24 February–7 June 2015. 

See: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/salt-and-silver-early-photography-1840-1860

Image: Jean Baptiste Frenet, Horse and Groom 1855. © Wilson Centre for Photography.