Auction house Christie's has set a new world record price of $4,338,500 (£2.7 million) for a photograph in an auction in New York. Andreas Gursky's Rhein II was sold on 8 November. The price overtakes the previous record for a Cindy Sherman 1981 print.
The Christie's catalogue entry can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/d7ugw9l
Photograph © Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1991.
Due for release on 2 February 2012 is Professor Elizabeth Edwards' new book: The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885-1918 published by Duke University Press. The book's synopsis reads:
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, hundreds of amateur photographers took part in the photographic survey movement in England. They sought to record the material remains of the English past so that it might be preserved for future generations. In The Camera as Historian, the groundbreaking historical and visual anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards works with an archive of nearly 55,000 photographs taken by 1000 photographers, mostly unknown until now. She approaches the survey movement and its social and material practices ethnographically. Considering how the amateur photographers understood the value of their project, Edwards links the surveys to the rise of popular photography, concepts of leisure, and understandings of the local and the national. Her examination of how the photographers negotiated between scientific objectivity and aesthetic responses to the past leads her to argue that the survey movement was as concerned with the conditions of its own modernity and the creation of an archive for an anticipated future as it was nostalgic about the imagined past. Including more than 120 duotone images, The Camera as Historianoffers new perspectives on the forces that shaped Victorian and Edwardian Britain, as well as contemporary debates about cultural identity, nationality, empire, material practices, and art.
For more information: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=17745
The Harry Ransom Center seeks a curator to provide leadership and vision for an internationally renowned photography collection with strengths in the history of photography, photojournalism, documentary photography, Texana, and literary iconography.
The Ransom Center is a special collections library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin with over 37 million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, over 5 million photographs, and 100,000 works of art.
Salary: Minimum $75,000 depending on credentials.
Responsibilities: Serve as department head and supervise Research Curator in Photography, Associate Curator of Photography, and Associate Curator of Art, in addition to several support staff; work in association with the Academic Curator of Photography. Plan and prepare major exhibitions devoted to photographic materials, placing them in the context of other Ransom Center collections. Engage with scholars and support research and instruction in the photography collections. Responsible for overall direction of acquisition in photography; build relationships with collection donors, photographers, and dealers.
Benefits: Standard state benefits package including annual vacation and sick leave, paid holidays, and health insurance options. Eligible for Optional Retirement Program (TIAA-CREF and other options). Deferred compensation and supplemental tax-sheltered annuity programs also available. Significant professional travel funding.
Required Qualifications: Master's degree in a field related to the collection. A minimum of five years experience in museums or special collections libraries. Experience curating photographic materials. At least five years supervisory experience.
Preferred Qualifications: Ph.D. in a field related to the collection. Ten or more years experience in museums or special collections libraries. Distinguished record of publications, preferably in the history of photography. Experience curating major exhibitions on photography, creating exhibition catalogs, and exhibition-related public programming. Knowledge of the trade in photographic materials. Extensive experience with development and donor relations. Experience with public relations and marketing of photographic collections.
Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Application procedure: Go to https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/hr/jobs/nlogon/111026010606
Applicants must complete the online job application and submit a letter of interest, a current resume, and contact information for three references to: Dr. Richard W. Oram, Associate Director & Librarian, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, PO Box 7219, Austin, TX 78713-7219, roram@mail.utexas.edu. Review of applications begins January 23, 2012 and will continue until position is filled. Security sensitive; conviction verification. EEO/AA.
The Observer and Guardian's photography commentator Sean O'Hagan reports on a scaling back of plans for London's Photographers' Gallery and the National Media Museum's Media Space, due to the difficulty of raising funds in the current economic climate. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/nov/01/london-photographic-spaces-photographers-gallery?newsfeed=true The Photographers' Gallery budget was scaled back from £15.5 million in 2009 to £8.7 million and Media Space has yet to secure the projected £8.7million it needs and has also changed its vision for the space.
Elsewhere in Britain the re-opening of the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool is a sign of activity outside of the capital. O'Hagan's weekend piece in the Observer (reported here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/britain-s-leading-photography-galleries-together) was criticised in the blogosphere for its London-centric perspective, unfair perhaps when his focus was on four London based curators and their spaces. That said, there is plenty happening outside of London that is equally worthy of celebration.
This new V&A photography exhibition will feature over eighty photographs celebrating the diversity of photography in the UK since 1945. It is one strand supporting the V&A's major exhibition British Design 1945-2012. Island Stories will look at the narratives told through individual bodies of work by photographers held in the V&A's permanent collections. Featured photographers include Elspeth Juda and Maurice Broomfield, each of whom promoted the image of Britain 'on the up' during the immediate post-war years, photographing manufacturing and fashion industries with an artistic eye. Juda turned 100 this year and her work for Ambassador magazine is celebrated in a new V&A publication. Broomfield donated his extensive archive to the V&A shortly before his death at the age of 94 in 2010.
BPH will publish more details as they become available.
Sean O'Hagan in The Observer newspaper interviews four of Britain's leading photography curators. Martin Barnes of the V&A, Brett Rogers of the Photographers' Gallery, Simon Baker of Tate Modern and Charlotte Cotton of Media Space [the National Media Museum] discuss the place of photography in their respective organisations and more widely. The wide-ranging interviews look at recent developments and, in the case of Media Space, looks ahead to a Spring 2013 opening.
The article can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/30/v-a-photographs-gallery-tate?newsfeed=true
Following from the stunning Reports by the Juries (1852) sold at Bonhams in June this year (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/reports-by-the-juries-brings) another Commissioners' set in being offered by the same auction house on 22 November 2011. This new set was presented to Philip Pusey. Pusey was a politician and agriculturalist and served as a juror for the class of Agricultural and Horticultural Implements. Details of the lot which is estimated at £80,000-100,000 can be found here: http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/WService=wslive_pub/pubweb/publicSite.r?screen=LotDetailsNoFlash&iSaleNo=18992&iSaleItemNo=5157017
The V&A Photography Gallery opened this evening. The display and room was every bit as good as the exclusive BPH photographs showed (see:http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exclusive-the-new-v-a-photography-gallery-opening-tuesday-25th-oc. Shown here is the V&A Director opening the gallery with Curators Martin Barnes and Marta Weiss to his side.
The gallery opens to the public Tuesday morning. Make a date and visit - you won't be disappointed.
The Projection Box was set up by Mo Heard and Stephen Herbert in 1994, to publish books about pre-cinema and early film, and we gradually included further subjects such as fairgrounds and photography. The Projection Box has been slumbering for a while as we pursued other projects, but is now awake again with new publications and fresh editions of old favourites that have long been out of print.
To celebrate the 2012 Charles Dickens Bicentenary, this month sees publication of The Dickens Daguerreotype Portraits by Stephen Herbert - a new colour monograph. The Kinora, moving pictures for the home 1896-1914 by Barry Anthony returns in a new edition, combined with an original Kinora catalogue reprint. The True History of The Ghost by Professor Pepper, has also been republished.
Other new titles are in the works, so be sure to check the website every month. Some of our new books are being made available by the wonders of Print-on-Demand, made possible by Blurb.com - and may be ordered direct from the printer. Details on our website: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~s-herbert/ProjectionBox.htm
The National Media Museum is about to make several important additions to its Collection and will be rearranging Insight: Collections & Research Centre to make space for them. As a result, access to the Museum’s collections will be disrupted. Insight will be closed to researchers from Monday 27 October 2011, and there will be no tours from 14 November onwards. Insight will reopen on 16 January 2012. Requests for information and future access can be lodged via email: research@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk.
BPH has secured photographs of the new V&A Photography Gallery which opens to the public on Tuesday, 25 October 2011. A private view takes place on Monday evening. The Gallery has been installed in a former textile room and the building has been returned to its nineteenth century glory - with wall paintings uncovered and restored.
Installation images of the V&A’s Photographs Gallery © Peter Kelleher, V&A Images.
Charlotte Cotton is creative director of Media Space (a partnership between the National Media Museum and the Science Museum). Previously, she was curator of photographs at the V&A, head of programming at The Photographers’ Gallery, and head of the Wallis Annenburg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is the author ofThe Photograph as Contemporary Art and founder of Words Without Pictures.
She will be talking as part of the ICA's Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence. Join curators, artists, critics and other cultural practitioners on a tour through work in the exhibition, each tour offers a unique perspective on emergent art practice and the state of cultural production in the UK today.
See: http://www.ica.org.uk/?lid=30943 to book.
The archive of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain which contains photographs and documents has been lodged with Birmingham Central Library and David Moore is working with the staff there to catalogue it. The PAGB archive has recently been joined by the donation by the Surrey Photographic Association of the collections of the defunct Central Association of Photographic Societies which includes the F J Mortimer Collection of prints. This will now form part of the PAGB Archive although it will be catalogued separately. Mortimer's personal archive is in private hands.
Once the catalogue has been prepared the PAGB will establish procedures for accessing and adding to the Archive.
The Royal Photographic Society reports that John Chittock OBE FRPS has died. John was a long-standing member of The Society joining in 1955 and gaining his Associateship in 1961 and Fellowship in 1966, remaining a member until his death.
Born on 29 May 1928, John Dudley Chittock's career started as an editor at Focal Press, the leading imprint on books devoted to photography, film and television. Subsequently he became a producer, writer and director of sponsored documentary films with over 30 productions to his credit. His work as industrial columnist on the Financial Times from 1963 to 1987 gradually took over.
With his late wife Joy he founded the international trade publication Screen Digest which he edited from 1971 to 1996. John's association with Focal Pressled to him later to become the founding trustee of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation.
Joy Chittock died in 2001 and John is survived by his second wife Margaret.
A funeral Service and burial at St Mary’s Church Cavendish, Suffolk, CO10 8BP will take place on Friday 21st October 2011 at 1pm. All welcome afterwards at The George, donations in lieu of flowers gladly received by St Nicholas Hospice, BSE, IP33 2QY.
More biographical information is available: http://homepages.which.net/~john.chittock/biog.htm
The ‘long 19th century’, identified in the West with the age of the rise of nation states, is also the century of the ‘invention’ and diffusion of photography, as well as the birth of modern archival science. Photography was soon placed at the service of the iconic needs of nation states. The photographic collections and archives, both public and private, founded between the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, thus had the function of restoring and creating the fragmented image of the nation, on the one hand, and helping to construct the image of a nation, on the other. Yet the problem of the representation of the national identity is clearly not limited to this period. Following the Second World War, the subsequent disintegration of the world colonial system, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the national question was once again placed at the centre of attention but now in a planetary dimension. The debate of the contemporary world is thus torn between globalization and forms of national, or even sub-national, particularism. It is also having to face the question of the proliferation of images in a globalized world, in the age of digital media and internet, with its simplification of production (or over-production) of images and access to them. Despite these changing historical conditions, however, photographs have continued, and will continue, to be gathered in collections and archives, with the aim of giving visual substance to the image world of the national identity, and contributing to its formation.
The conference is aimed at studying the relation between photography or photographic archives and the idea of nation, yet without focusing on single symbolic icons and considering instead the wider archival and sedimental dimension.
The conference forms part of a series of international meetings dedicated to photographic archives and the interaction between photography and the academic and scientific disciplines, with a particular focus on the history of art. After London (June 2009), Florence (October 2009) and New York (March 2011), the fourth meeting in the series will once again be held in Florence (October 27-29, 2011).
PHOTO ARCHIVES IV: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE AND THE IDEA OF NATION
Programme
THURSDAY, 27 OCTOBER 2011
14.30: Alessandro Nova (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz): Welcoming remarks
14.45: Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Introduction
15.00, Opening Keynote: Elizabeth Edwards (DeMontfort University, Leicester): The Invisibility of History: Photography, the Colonial, and the Refiguring of Nation
16.00: coffee break
16.30: Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Cultural Heritage, Nation, Italian State: Politics of the Photographic Archive between Centre and Periphery
17.15: Bernhard Jussen (Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt): Towards an Iconology of Medieval Studies: Approaches to the Pictorial Formation of Historical Knowledge in Modern Scholarship
19.00, Evening Keynote: Joan M. Schwartz (Queen's University, Kingston): Images and Imaginings: Photographs, Archives, and the Idea of Nation
FRIDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2011
9.30: Roberto Mancini (Università Iuav di Venezia): La fabbrica degli albanesi. Lo studio fotografico Marubi e la definizione della identità nazionale del ‘paese delle aquile’ tra età moderna e contemporanea
10.15: Ewa Manikowska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): Turning local into universal. Museums, Photography and the Discovery of Poland’s Cultural Patrimony (1918-1939)
11.00: coffee break
11.30: Justin Carville (Dublin / Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire): Performing Ethnography/Projecting History: Photography, Archives, and Irish Cultural Nationalism
12.15: Josko Belamaric (Institut za povijest umjetnosti – Institute of Art History, Split, Croatia): Il ruolo della fotografia nel Kulturkampf attorno al 1900 in Dalmazia
lunch break
15.00: John Mraz (Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico / Princeton University): Archives & Icons: Constructing a Postrevolutionary Identity in Mexico
15.45: Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame, Indiana): A War without Pictures: Japan's Official Photography Magazines as National Archive
16.30: coffee break
17.00: Pietro Clemente (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Resistenza, memoria e fotografia nei processi identitari dell’Italia postbellica
17.45: Rolf Sachsse (Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar): Microfilm Services and Their Application to Scholarly Study, Scientific Research, Education and Re-Education in the Post-War Period: a Draft Proposal by Lucia Moholy to the UNESCO Preparatory Commission, 1945, and its Prehistory in Modern Art
18.30: Patricia Hayes (University of Western Cape, South Africa): The 'struggle archive' and the Loss of the Subject: Portraits of Namibian Contract Workers by John Liebenberg, 1986
SATURDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2011
10.00: Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University): Majestic Landscapes and Disappearing Indians: Photography and the Invention of an American West
10.45: Martina Baleva (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin): Von der fotografischen Inflation zur nationalen Revolution. Konstruktionen bulgarischer Nationalrevolutionäre im fotografischen Bild
11.30: coffee break
12.00: Lucie Ryzova (University of Oxford / Cairo): Mourning the Archive in Egypt: Vintage Photographs in the Age of Neoliberalism and Digital Reproduction
12.45: Round Table / Final Discussion
Organization: Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, caraffa@khi.fi.it) and Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze, tiziana.serena@unifi.it)
Location: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, Photothek, Via dei Servi 51, 50122 Florence
Contact: Maja Häderli (haederli@khi.fi.it)
More information on http://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung313/index.html.
BPH exclusively revealed that London's V&A Museum was to open a new photography gallery in October (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exclusive-vampa-to-open-new). The opening is scheduled for 25 October 2011.
A permanent new gallery to show highlights from the V&A’s internationally renowned collection of photographs will open this autumn, considerably extending the space dedicated to photographs at the Museum. The gallery will launch with a display of works by key figures of photographic history including Victorian portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and significant works by Henri Cartier-Bresson,Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn.The gallery will chronicle the history of photography from its invention in 1839 up to the 1960s,after which developments in scale, concept and technology mark a shift in approach andappearance. The display will be re-curated every 18 months.
Temporary displays, primarily showcasing contemporary photography, will be shown in the V&A’s existing photographs gallery.A broad range of works will be displayed in the new gallery, including the oldest photographin the V&A collection, a daguerreotype from 1839 of Parliament Street from Trafalgar Square in London.
Other highlights will be an early botanical photograph created without a camera by Anna Atkins (1854); a dramatic seascape by Gustave Le Gray praised at the time for its technical and artistic accomplishment (1856); and a commanding portrait by Robert Howlett of Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing in front of the chains of The Great Eastern ship (1857). Laterworks on display will include Curtis Moffat’s camera-less photograph of a dragonfly (about 1925) influenced by Man Ray’s pioneering style and an astonishing scientific photograph by Harold Edgerton of the coronet formed by a single milk drop falling into liquid (1957).
There will also be two ‘In Focus’ sections, each featuring a photographer represented in depth in the V&A collection. The first will be dedicated to British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who used long exposures and soft focus to create some of the most powerful portraitsof the 19th century. The second will present Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most influentialphotographers of the 20th century, who used a small hand-held camera to capture the extraordinary in the everyday.
In 1856, the V&A became the first museum to collect photographs and in 1858, was the first to exhibit them. The V&A is home to the UK’s national collection of the art of photography, one of the largest and most important in the world. The gallery, formerly a study space, is being designed by the V&A’s design department as part of the V&A’s FuturePlan to transform the Museum through new galleries and redisplays of itscollections. Architectural details will be restored, including ten magnificent semi-circular paintings, commissioned in the 1860s as part of the original decorative scheme, to illustrate the principles of art education and show the highest achievements from the history of art.
Image: Julia Margaret Cameron, Circe, 1865.
These pictures of children from the 1950s and ‘60s, are a mere fraction of John Chillingworth’s work, but remain as fresh today as they were when picture magazines were at their zenith. In the 1950s John was a member of the ‘star’ team of photographic journalists whose images told stories for the seminal British picture magazine, Picture Post. During the celebration of 150 years of photography, at the National Museum of Photography,Film and TV (now the National Media Museum), he was described as a ‘maker of photographic history’.
His earlier images, held by the London-based Getty Images-Hulton Archive, are still reproduced in publications around the world. All are available to dedicated collectors of classic photography, both in the UK and abroad. “Like so many great British photographers,” says Matthew Butson, vice-president of London-based Getty Images/Hulton Archive, “the work of John Chillingworth deserves wider recognition today.”
Far from being a mere ‘journeyman’, John followed the path trodden by the great miniature camera pioneers and as he did so, helped bring a fresh dimension to the craft of ‘story-telling’ photography. It has been said that his way of seeing pictures influenced the visual development of subsequent generations of photographers. ‘Memory Lane’ it may be for some and surprising to others, but each one of this selection of his images from around the world still has its own story to tell.
The Innocence of Childhood Photographs by John Chillingworth Hon FRPS - 3rd October - 28th October 2011
Free Entry: Monday–Friday. 9.30–16.30
The Royal Photographic Society, Fenton House, 122 Wells Road, Bath BA2 3AH For further information please contact Lesley Goode. 01225 325720 lesley@rps.org.
Image: John Chillingworth, Whitechapel girl, London, 1953, Getty Images-Hulton Archive.
John's own website is at: www.johnchillingworth.co.uk
A small display featuring portraits of children by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79), one of the most influential figures in early photography, opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Museum of Childhood, London on 15 October 2011. It closes on 13 February 2012
The images explore Cameron’s vision of childhood, in which children are sacred and the embodiment of innocence. She strove to establish photography as an art form, using soft focus and compositions inspired by Renaissance paintings, and incorporating the irregularities of early photographic processes in her pictures. In doing so, her portraits succeed in conveying the emotional and spiritual aura of the sitter.
After the Museum of Children showing the exhibition will move to Cameron's former home, Dimbola, on the Isle of Wight which is dedicated to her life and is home to a gallery.
Image: Florence [Fisher], Julia Margaret Cameron, 1872, from the V+A Collection.
For more information see: http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/exhibitions_and_displays/julia_margaret_cameron/index.html
The V+A has a small display running - curated by Marta Weiss - that explores photographs that make reference to themselves, other media and texts. It aims to demonstrate how such Postmodernist approaches to photography have persisted for over 30 years. Spanning the mid-1970s to the present day, it shows work by some of the most influential artists associated with Postmodernism, such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, alongside more recent work by Anne Hardy, David Shrigley, Clare Strand and others.
The showing is show at the V+A in London until 27 November 2011 in Gallery 38A and admission is free.
See the links here for more information:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/signs-of-a-struggle-photography-in-the-wake-of-postmodernism/
and reviews:
http://i-donline.com/2011/08/say-cheese-in-a-postmodern-way/
Image: Clare Strand, from the series Signs of a Struggle, 2002. Gelatin silver print.
