TownsWeb Archiving has just issued a blog about a digitisation project of 1115 glass plates it was involved in for Sherborne Museum. The plates had been gifted to the museum by a local resident with around 300 believed to be the works of Adam Gosney. Gosney was an influential figure within the town during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and left his mark on Sherborne as an established and skilled photographer. 

The glass plates shine a light on an unprecedented and poignant visual narrative of the servicemen and women, including Red Cross nurses and wounded soldiers from the first wolrd war. Further glass plate negatives have unearthed glimpses into the everyday life of Sherborne residents, showcasing Sherborne's iconic buildings, past carnival festivals, and the traditional idyllic countryside surrounding the town.

Read the blog here.

For the first time in the history of the London Blue Plaques Scheme, which has been running for more than 150 years, more plaques will be unveiled to individual women in 2024 than in any previous year, English Heritage has announced. The charity launched its ‘plaques for women’ campaign in 2016, encouraging the public to nominate more remarkable female figures from the past and this initiative is now bearing fruit on the streets and buildings of London. The pioneering women who will be celebrated by English Heritage with blue plaques in 2024 include Christina Broom, who is believed to have been Britain’s first female press photographer; Diana Beck, celebrated as the UK’s first female neurosurgeon; the jazz singer, Adelaide Hall, one of the first Black women to secure a long-term contract at the BBC; and Irene Barclay, the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor. English Heritage will be announcing further blue plaque recipients throughout the year.

Dr Susan Skedd, Blue Plaques Historian at English Heritage, said: “Every year, English Heritage’s blue plaques celebrate the very best of human endeavour. This year we are particularly pleased to be able to honour so many pioneering women who not only became female ‘firsts’ but who were also at the very pinnacle of achievement in their chosen fields"

Christina Broom (1862–1939): Despite only making her first experiments in photography at the age of 40, with a borrowed quarter-plate box camera, Christina Broom went on to become “the most prolific female publisher of picture postcards in Britain” and is widely considered to be the first female press photographer. She was a prominent suffrage photographer; the only woman photographer allowed into London barracks; and the only photographer permitted regularly into the Royal Mews. From 1916 onwards her pictures of the armed forces and royalty were published regularly, with the credit ‘Mrs Albert Broom’. Her plaque will be the very first blue plaque in Munster Road, Fulham where she lived and worked for 26 years.

At the time of writing English Heritage does not have a date confirmed for the unveiling. 

See: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/pr-record-number-of-women-to-be-celebrated-with-english-heritage-blue-plaques-in-2024/

With thanks to Roger Mead for advising of this announcement. 

More than 160 rare vintage prints will be exhibited as part of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In, as the two photographers – who worked 100 years apart – are presented in parallel for the first time. The exhibition will present a thematic exploration of the photographic work produced throughout both artists’ entire careers, including their best known and less familiar work. Artist’s books by Francesca Woodman, which have never been exhibited in the UK, will be on display.

From 21 March to 16 June 2024, the National Portrait Gallery will display a major retrospective exhibition of work by two of the most significant photographers in the history of the medium – Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Bringing their work together for the first time in an exhibition of this scale, it will showcase more than 160 rare vintage prints from galleries, museums and private collections, including 96 works by Woodman and 71 by Cameron, spanning the entire careers of both photographers – who worked 100 years apart.

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In will offer a new way to consider these two artists, by moving away from the biographical emphasis that has often been the focus of how their work is understood. The exhibition challenges this approach in its insistence on experiencing the physical print, taking the picture making of Woodman and Cameron as a starting point for consideration of their work. While neither artist aimed for technical perfection in their printing, for each it was a dynamic and essential aspect of their creative process used to explore and extend the possibilities of photographic image making.

After an extensive curatorial research period, works by Julia Margaret Cameron have been selected for loan from major museums internationally including the Getty, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum, New York City; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and the National Portrait Gallery’s own Collection. Prints made by Francesca Woodman in her lifetime, nearly 20 of which have not been previously published or exhibited, have been loaned primarily from the Woodman Family Foundation in New York, who have collaborated closely on the making of the exhibition and accompanying publication, with further loans from Tate and the Rhode Island School of Design

The exhibition’s title, Portraits to Dream In, suggests that when seen side by side, both artists conjure a dream state within their work as part of their shared exploration of appearance, identity, the muse, gender and archetypes. The title of the exhibition comes from an observation made by Woodman that photographs could be ‘places for the viewer to dream in’. Both Woodman and Cameron produced work that was deeply rooted in mythology and storytelling and each made portraits of those close to them to represent these narratives. Further, both women explored portraiture beyond its ability to record appearance.

Following a thematic approach, visitors will experience the work of Woodman and Cameron moving forward and back in time between the nineteenth and twentieth century; and also within the relatively short span of years that each artist was active - neither worked for more than fifteen years. Themes on display will comprise: Declaring intentions & claiming space; Angels & Otherworldly Beings; Mythology; Doubling; Nature & femininity; Caryatids & the classical form; Men and Models & Muses.

Key works on display will include the first forays both artists made into the medium of photography, as they began to portray their unique perspectives and carve out distinctive styles. These include Cameron’s self-declared ‘first success’, a portrait of Annie Wilhemina Philpot in 1864, accompanied by Woodman’s ‘Self-portrait at thirteen’, taken during a summer holiday in Antella, Italy in 1972. Photographs depicting angelic and otherworldly figures will be presented in a dense constellation with pieces from Woodman’s evocative and often abstracted Angel series contrasted against Cameron’s more direct representations of cherubic beings and winged cupids. Not to be missed images by Francesca Woodman will include Polka Dots #5 and House #3 both made in 1976, seen alongside ethereal portraits of the British actress Ellen Terry made by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1864.

Other defining works by Woodman include Caryatid pieces from a major photographic project developed in the last year of her life in which she experimented with large scale diazotype prints, including depictions of herself and other models as caryatids – carved female figures which take the place of columns in ancient Greek temples. The exhibition will be the first to draw significant attention to Woodman’s portraits of men as well as exploring the importance of her ongoing photographs of friends. Providing additional insight into her practice, contact sheets and examples of Woodman’s artist’s books will be on display, exhibited in the UK for the first timThe exhibition will include many of Julia Margaret Cameron’s most famous and much loved portraits, including those of her niece and favorite model, Julia Jackson, who would later be the mother to Bloomsbury artists Virginia Wolf and Vanessa Bell; her striking depiction of Alice Liddell as the goddess Pomona; her portraits of prominent Victorian men including John Frederick William Herschel who she captured as he posed dramatically in The Astronomer (1867); and her frequent muses, May Prinsep and Mary Ann Hillier.

Magdalene Keaney, Curator, said: “Both Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron were utterly committed to the practice of photography and to their practice as artists without reservation. They both worked incredibly hard at times when women were marginal in the history of art and photography. I hope that visitors relish the physical experience of seeing such a large collection of prints that each artist made. They are beautiful, subtle, intricate, and beguiling. Then of course to come away knowing more about these two women artists who have defined the history of photography. I hope it poses questions about how we might think in new ways about relationships between 19th and 20th century photographic practice and what a portrait is and can be.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In by curator Magdalene Keaney, which will include essays and contributions from the collections curator of the Woodman Family Foundation, Katarina Jerinic, and leading photography historian, Helen Ennis.

Portraits to Dream In: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron
21 March – 16 June 2024
National Portrait Gallery, London
Tickets £8.50 with concessions from £4.25
Talks and events based on the ehibition are also available
See: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/francesca-woodman-and-julia-margaret-cameron-portraits-to-dream-in

Image: L-R: The Dream (Mary Hillier) by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869. Wilson Centre for Photography; Untitled, 1979 by Francesca Woodman. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London; Annie (My very first success in Photography), by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Self Portrait at Thirteen by Francesca Woodman, 1972. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London. 

Shining Lights is the first critical anthology to bring together the groundbreaking work of Black women photographers active in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, providing a richly illustrated overview of a significant and overlooked chapter of photographic history. Seen through the lens of Britain’s sociopolitical and cultural contexts, the publication draws on both lived experience and historical investigation to explore the communities, experiments, collaborations, and complexities that defined the decades.

The innovative and diverse work created during this period spanned documentary and conceptual practices, including the experimental use of photomontage, self-portraiture, staged imagery, and photography in dialogue with other media. Shining Lights showcases the breadth of this work, illuminated by ephemera and archival material, historical essays, and roundtable conversations. First-hand experiences and critical reflections are provided by new writings by pioneers of the period, including Pratibha Parmar, Roshini Kempadoo, and Symrath Patti, alongside a foreword by Sonia Boyce. Taous Dahmani’s concluding essay provides a summary of key issues from an art historical perspective.

Amongst the fifty-seven photographers included are Maxine Walker, Ingrid Pollard, Claudette Holmes, Mohini Chandra, Carole Wright, Sutapa Biswas, Maud Sulter, Brenda Agard, Anita McKenzie, Mitra Tabrizian, Poulomi Desai, Virginia Nimarkoh, Nudrat Afza, Merle Van den Bosch, and Eileen Perrier.

Edited and researched by Joy Gregory, one of the period’s most influential photographic artists, alongside art historian Taous Dahmani, Shining Lights is an unparalleled contribution to the study of photography and the experiences of Black women artists.

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain
Joy Gregory (editor)
Autograph and Mack Books
£60.00
Order: https://autograph.org.uk/shop/shining-lights-black-women-photographers-in-1980s-90s-britain-1168

Photo London has announced that it will be celebrating French photography with an exhibition The Magic Art of French Calotype. Paper Negative Photography 1846–1860, curated by Robert Hershkowitz. Its title references Francis Wey’s pronouncement in 1851 that “Photography has attained a magic feeling that neither painting nor drawing could have reached.”

Hershkowitz explains the appeal of these early images: “When the pursuit and acquisition of fine photographs became the common passion of a very mixed group of art savvy individuals and American and Canadian museums in the late 1970s, early French paper negative photography was considered the most desirable, the images the most intriguing intellectually, the prints the most delectable. This exhibition introduces this body of photographic work to a British audience; it is almost non-existent in British institutions with perhaps a few dozen examples buried among hundreds of thousands of British ones, and these never exhibited.”

The exhibition will be on show duering Photo London which will show at Somerset House, London from 16-19 May 2024

Details: https://photolondon.org/photo-london-2024-details-revealed/

Image: Charles Nègre, Street Vendor, c.1852. Courtesy of Robert Hershkowitz Ltd. 

The work presented here is the result of a collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and Disruptive Print, then part of the Centre for Print Research at the University of the West of England. The National Portrait Gallery approached us when they were looking for someone who could help them to print colour images taken by Madame Yevonde in the 30s of the last century. Madame Yevonde was the most famous user of the VIVEX process, the photomechanical reproduction process for colour photographs before the second world war in the UK. The VIVEX process was a commercial method and therefore only ill documented. What we know is that the images were taken through red, green, and blue filters on black and white film and then printed by layering pigmented gelatine layers in cyan, magenta, and yellow in top of each other, but how exactly is lost. We will discuss the registration of the three negatives and possible printing methods.

Designed by the Société française de photographie and supported by the Ministry of Culture (Department of Photography/Delegation for Visual Arts/Directorate General for Artistic Creation), ICONOS PHOTO is a portal dedicated to research in French photographic collections and archives. Accessible to all free of charge, ICONOS PHOTO is designed as a work and exchange tool for researchers, photography professionals, curators, independent curators, restorers, students and any public interested in the medium. Through this sharing of data and knowledge, it aims to unite a community around the question of photographic heritage, to offer a showcase to the collections, and to stimulate research into the history of photography.

It was opened in December 2023 and the ICONOS PHOTO directory is a search engine for photographic collections, funds and archives preserved by French heritage institutions. Designed as a referral tool, its objective is to share data in a single tool that allows users to find their way through the funds and be directed to the right institutions for their research. It cross-references information generated by institutions in the form of descriptions of their funds.

The project gives access to the collections of the Société française de photographie, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, and Archives départementales de la Mayenne.

Details: https://iconos-photo.fr/

Spanning eight weeks, this course introduces and explores key themes concerning the photographic sector now. From topics such as curatorial strategies, working with young people and the impact of digital, each session goes behind the scenes at The Photographers’ Gallery to consider what it means to present and work with photography in the 21st century.

Together we will think through the opportunities and obstacles of engaging with diverse photographic practices to push the boundaries of how we interpret the image. Taking place weekly at the Gallery, sessions include a blend of lectures, visits to the Gallery, group discussions and presentations. Each week will feature guest contributions from TPG staff, photographers and artists.

Inside Out: The Workings of a Photographic Gallery (2024)
In person, 1 February-28 March 2024
London: The photographers' Gallery
Led by Dr Sara Dominici
Book: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/inside-out-workings-photographic-gallery-2024

There have always been unacknowledged or under-acknowledged forces that operate around photography. Some of them are human, like family members, camera assistants, darkroom personnel, curators, editors and the like. Others are non-human, like algorithms, chemicals, equipment of various sorts and transportation. The explosion of AI has pushed the field of photography studies to once again consider the practices surrounding photographs, but has at the same time neglected existing assistants like the skills force, the editors, image technicians, programmers, curators, and historians that enable and narrate photographic making. In the face of so many assistants, the primacy of the photographer as a central person through whom we understand photography recedes.

For this conference we would like speakers to consider the role and agency of human and non-human assistants in the making, collecting and dissemination of photographs. We look for papers from diverse methodological perspectives that not only enlarge the notion of the photographic assistant, but also consider the role of those assistants (or that assistance) in the formation of photographic practices, images, archives and histories.

We welcome 15-minute papers on topics that address themes like (but not limited to):

• Technological, physical or chemical photographic assistants
• Catalysts like War and Conflict, the Environment, and Race as assistants to photographic practices
• Non-human assistants and AI
• Senses as photographic assistants
• History of assistants and their changing roles
• Agency of the Assistant
• Issues of authorship
• Practice as a collaborative endeavour
• Supply lines and transportation

Please send paper proposals to phrc@dmu.ac.uk by Friday the 2^nd of February 2024, embedding in the document your name, contact details, up to 5 keywords and institutional affiliation (when applicable).

Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University
Conference: 17-18 June 2024
Hybrid event, Online and at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Details: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2024/

This new exhibition will explore the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day.

Examining the relationship between the sitter and the photographer, as well as the change in status of both the photographer and photography itself, the display will feature over 150 stunning portraits of the Royal Family.

More details to follow when available

Royal Portraits: A century of photography
17 May-6 October 2024
London: King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
See: https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/royal-portraits-a-century-of-photography/the-queens-gallery-buckingham

Sometime off, but worth making a diary note for is this forthcoming exhibition from Tate Britain. Travel back to the 1980s in the UK through an exhibition spotlighting photographers, collectives, and publications that responded boldly to the tumultuous Thatcher era. Amidst race uprisings, miners' strikes, section 28, the AIDS pandemic, and gentrification, witness the power of photography as a catalyst for social change and artistic experimentation.

The images capture the essence of protest and societal shifts, amplifying voices of marginalised communities such as the Black arts movement, queer experience, South Asian diaspora, and women. Delve into the influential photography journals like Ten 8 and Cameraworks and explore the impact of collectives like Autograph ABP, Half Moon Photography Workshop, and Hackney Flashers.

Photographing 80s Britain: A Critical Decade
Tate Britain, London
21 November 2024 - 5 May 2025
https://www.artfund.org/explore/exhibitions/2024/11/21/photographing-80s-britain

Image:  © Paul Trevor, Outside police station, Bethnal Green Road, London E2, 17 July 1978

London-born photographer Bert Hardy (1913-1995, UK) was an influential English press and documentary photographer known for his work as chief photographer for Picture Post magazine. Born into a working-class family in Blackfriars, Hardy was self-taught and worked as both a combat photographer and an advertising photographer during his illustrious career. 

Discover the key moments in Hardy’s unparalleled career – from self-taught news and sports photographer, to serving combat cameraman, renowned Picture Post photojournalist and successful advertising entrepreneur.  

As well as historic material from his work for Britain’s leading photo-magazine, Picture Post, this retrospective includes photographs during his time in the Army Film and Photographic Unit, including imagery from the Blitz in London to the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and war in Southeast Asia.  

Hardy’s extensive social documentary work in mid-century Britain in cities including London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast, Tyneside and Glasgow, his travels across postwar Europe and images from the many conflicts he reported on will be on show, alongside a rich selection of material from Hardy’s archive, complemented by some of his lesser known colour work.

The archive, now held by Cardiff University, includes press passes, correspondence, diaries and original publications, as well as camera equipment. 

Bert Hardy: Photojournalism in War and Peace
Friday, 23 February 2024 - Sunday, 2 June 2024
London: The Photographers' Gallery
See: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/bert-hardy-photojournalism-war-and-peace

Image: Sugar Ray Robinson, 1951. © Bert Hardy

Sean Sexton is the subject of an interview by Orla Fitzpatrick on RTE's website and a television documentary. The interview focuses on Sean's collection of photographs of Ireland, arguably the most important of such material anywhere in the world. The collection of over 20,000 images spans the history of photography covering post-famine Ireland right through to the turbulent revolutionary years. The collection will be the subject of a forthcoming RTE documentary.

As Orla notes: 'Sexton's collection includes all formats, genres and processes, from early salt-paper negatives and once-off daguerreotypes through to snapshots and spy cameras. Portraits, landscapes and even nudes are in the collection.'  He began forming the collection from 1973, later funded, in part, by his purchase in Bermondsey market of a trove of photographs by Charles Jones. 

The collection has been featured in two books and is still awaiting a permanent home in Ireland where it rightly belongs.  

Framing Irish History - The Sean Sexton Collection will be screened on RTÉ 1 on December 28th at 6.30pm and on RTÉ Player

Read the article here: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2023/1217/1422502-sean-sexton-photos-collection-ireland-history/ 

Print World magazine has an interview with Stuart Humphryes who posts on Twitter using the handle BabelColour @StuartHumphryes discussing his book The Colors Of Life which was published in September. Humphryes  discusses his practical approach to enhancing the colour of early images. 

See: https://www.printweek.com/content/features/reliving-the-colours-of-an-earlier-world

Tony Richards writes on Instqgram... Deep in the uncatalogued depths of The John Rylands Library sits original photographic plates of the vast collections. These are 12x16 inch plates of a Persian Manuscript, but the box labels I found of interest. R W Thomas & Co Limited, Dry Plate Factory. Originally a chemist, R.W. Thomas began to specialise in photographic goods in the 1850s. Later, the company began to produce dry plates, including one of the first nonhalation plates. These, if I remember rightly, mention nonhalation somewhere elsewhere on the packaging.

The Imaging Archive Project will start in January 2024. We aim to eventually catalogue, clean, digitise, rehouse, and create metadata of the full collection for investigation and comparison when linked to recent digital capture versions of the original works.

#johnrylandslibrary #librartspecailcollections #library #heritageimaging #digitisation #collectionsmanagement #photoconservation #metadatahttp

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1FI-SAoC_L/?igshid=YzZhZTZiNWI3Nw%3D%3D

The government's Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) Scheme and Cultural Gifts Scheme (CGS) enable UK museums, galleries, libraries and archives to acquire significant objects, in most cases at no cost to themselves. Managed by the Arts Council of England the 2023 report has just been published and there are two entries of particular interest to BPH readers. All applications and need to meet the Waverley pre-eminence criteria which is used in assessing objects offered under both schemes:

1. Does the object have an especially close association with our history and national life?
2. Is the object of especial artistic or art-historical interest?
3. Is the object of especial importance for the study of some particular form of art, learning or history?
4. Does the object have an especially close association with a particular historic setting?

The two photography collections are: 

• The Bernard Howarth-Loomes collection of early photography has been accepted in lieu of tax. The daguerreotypes; daguerreotypes made into jewellery; a plate scene of Niagara Falls by Platt D Babbitt; ambrotypes and tintypes; cartes-de-visites, including the portrait by Robert Howlett of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, set against the background of the chains of the Great Eastern; and pre-photographic equipment. Bernard Howarth-Loomes (c.1931-2003) was a photographic collector specialising in stereoscopic views. This collection encompasses many different photographic techniques including 13,000 stereographs and early and rare images. It provides a unique learning opportunity for the study of the history of photography and optical science, particularly stereography. It also provides a social insight into how the Victorians explored their world and how they chose to present themselves to their friends and family.
  
  The Panel considered the collection from the estate of Ethel Alma Howarth-Loomes, pre-eminent under the first, second and third criteria, in acceptable condition and fairly valued. The collection has been permanently allocated to National Museums Scotland in accordance with the condition attached to its offer.
• The Janette Rosing collection of photographs of Cornwall. This Cornwall and Scilly Isles-focused collection was carefully selected by Janette Rosing (1942-2021) over a 50-year period and comprises over 3,800 photographs dating from the early 1850s to the early 1900s. There are seven rare photographs by or attributed to Linnaeus Tripe (1822-1902) as well as a range of images not held in other public collections. The topographical nature of many of the photographs in the collection offers a visual history of Cornwall over the 19th century. The photographic postcards from the early 1900s provide social-historical insights into recreational and leisure activities in the region.
  
  The Panel considered the collection, accepted from the estate of Miss Janette Rosing, pre-eminent under all four criteria, in acceptable condition and fairly valued. It has been permanently allocated to Kresen Kernow in Cornwall in accordance with the condition attached to its offer. 

Read the full 2023 report and case studies here

Dogs have been a subject matter within photography since it was first introduced. Was this by hapless accident or have dogs been a central theme within photography since the beginning and why? Looking at the parallel trajectory of dogs (most notably pedigree dogs) and photography in Great Britain, Heidi Hudson, Curator of Photographic Collections at the Royal Kennel Club, will examine the role the dog plays out in early photography as subject matter, muse, prop, and symbolic representation.

Heidi Hudson is Curator of Photographic Collections at the Royal Kennel Club and holds a Master of History of Art with Photography from Birkbeck College. Heidi is a specialist on Victorian dog photography as well as contemporary dog photography. Heidi manages all photography on behalf of the Kennel Club including the world-famous Crufts dog show. Heidi owns a Portuguese Water Dog named Bob.

Lunchtime Lecture: Promoting the Dog through Photography- The making of man’s best friend in early British photography
Thursday, 8 February 2024 at 1300-1355
Free
Book here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/1pxJ5oVv1b/p23096-lunchtime-lecture-dog-photography-feb-2024

Image: W. G. Campbell, 'The Lesson', 1856, albumen print. Print taken from the 'Photographic Album of the Year, 1857' RPS.1211-2018. The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund.

Dancing Through Time: from Pop to Punk in the City of Derby is an exciting new heritage project, made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which will explore the social clubs, dance clubs, dance movements and music scenes in Derby from the 1960s to the late 1970s.  

In preparation for a series of FORMAT related exhibitions in 2024 and 2025 showcasing the project, Déda and QUAD are asking for help from the people of Derby and Derbyshire. They’re asking for those involved in the dance, clubs and music scene in Derby between 1960 and 1979 to submit any photos, memories and memorabilia they have of the venues, the people or anything that captures the overall feel of the scene. Were you there, or did you know someone who was? 

The project hopes to bring these venues alive once again and allow people to share memories while making sure this period of social change in the city is never forgotten. Due to this, an online archive will also be created with the images and is due to be launch in mid 2024. 

To get involved with the project, scan and share your images, memorabilia and stories via the online form, by emailing oceanf@derbyquad.co.uk or by following the @DancingThroughTimeDerby Instagram page and submitting  your images using #IWasThereDerby. Updates on upcoming public events will be announced periodically via the QUAD and FORMAT newsletters, social media and websites to stay tuned and get ready to dance through time. 

Image: Dancing on the stage at Clouds,1966. Photo: Eric Chapman

This two day course, led by Laura Clarke Oaten, will provide an introduction to Photopolymer Gravure plate making and printing. The course will allow participants to expose, develop and print their own plate using imagery they have bought with them, be it a drawing or a photograph. Once the plate has been made, they will learn how to print their plate, and leave with a beautiful original print of their own making.

Participants of the course will leave with their own hand printed artwork. They will also have a good understanding of the process of photopolymer gravure which would give them the confidence to return for future workshops, or to enter any print room and know what to do.

Introduction to Photopolymer Gravure Printing
Led by: Laura Clarke Oaten
Course Duration: 2 Days, 10am to 4pm
Dates: 18th & 19th April 2024
Price: £249.00 full price / £199.00 concessionary price
Details and booking here

Photographer Arai Takashi was born in the late 1970s in the Japan of the Cold War. During his youth he was exposed on a daily basis to representations of nuclear technology in films, anime, manga, and novels. The zeitgeist of the Atomic Age and its inseparable fears of an apocalypse formed the background sentiment of his childhood, while nuclear power plants mushroomed in the Japanese islands under the slogan ‘Atoms for Peace’. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, followed by the Fukushima nuclear accident, was the first moment when his worst fears seemed to come true after Japan retreated into the amnesia of the bubble and post-bubble economy.

Since he started to make frequent visits to Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other nuclear sites in Japan and the US, he has been considering the complex disparities between the different levels of narrative told by individuals, communities, and nations. Like Svetlana Alexievich (awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature), he asks how we can break out of our shells and expand our imaginations to encompass the invisible, global, and multi-generational threats of nuclear catastrophe.

In this talk moderated by Simon Baker (Director of MEP: Maison Européenne de la Photographie and former Senior Curator, International Art at Tate), Arai will discuss his interdisciplinary approach to nuclear issues utilising the uncertainty of the daguerreotype, one of the earliest photographic techniques, and the instability and fragility of his body and mind as an individual artist.

The Daguerreotype at the End of Our World
18 January 2024
Live event: 1800-1900
Daiwa Foundation
See: https://dajf.org.uk/event/the-daguerreotype-at-the-end-of-our-world