Greater China Photographic Society aims to unite the efforts of cultural enthusiasts, scholars, photographers and photographic followers of the art of photography, for all people of the world who love Chinese Culture. Our mission is to promote the photographic arts, Chinese culture and charity for the benefit of Society and the World. Our vision is to create unlimited new vistas.

This new appointment of Chief Executive Office Worldwide of the Greater China Photographic Society (GCPS) is located in Hong Kong and is available immediately.

1. The post is for a creative person well acquainted with the photographic arts who could promote opportunities between the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States and, with or without support, with China (Mainland and Taiwan). They would be well acquainted with the photographic venues of the world including museums and galleries. He/she must be willing to travel, especially throughout China. Additionally, the person would be expected to design and run photographic courses/workshops/, photographic events and.

2. The successful candidate will be from a photographic or similar media background with appropriate academic qualifications and distinctions. He/she will demonstrate exceptional management and communication skills. The fluency of English to a good standard is required plus Mandarin and /or Cantonese would be an advantage.

 The First Contract will be of 6-12 months duration, offering a salary of HK$30,000- (approximately sterling pound 2,400- or USD3,900-)/month plus quarter allowance of HK10,000- (Pound 8,000- or USD 1,300-). For information, if the applicant have no other Hong Kong income, Annual Salary Tax is about HK$33,000- for single and HK$15,000- for married. The GCPS would pay one round trip air ticket between UK, USA or Europe Airport and Hong Kong.

 For further information regarding this post contact The President.  Applications in confidence should be sent by email to adm@gcpshk.com or by letter to Suite 5401, Central Plaza, No. 18 Harbour Road, Hong Kong and consist in the form of a full curriculum vitae, supporting letter and names of two referees. The closing date for applications is 20 January 2012

James Garfinkle advises...After 31 years of being the custodian of Mathew Brady's Studio Wet-Plate Camera, I have decided to let another person or institution have the pleasure of owning 'the most iconic piece of photographic Americana.' The camera was used to take portraits of Lincoln and other notables in the Civil War period.

Its provenance is unmatched: Meserve / Kunhardt collection, then at auction at Christie's in 1980, to me.  Two owners in about 100 years.  The serial number on lens matches that in Brady's bankruptcy filing, included with the lot. The camera has a reserve of $25,000. 

It was most recently displayed at the 'Lincoln in New York' exhibition at the New-York Historical Society.

The sale is Wednesday, November 30th in Dallas. James Garfinkel can be reached at: jamesgarfinkel@gmail.com. The sale is part of a Heritage Auctions Americana sale. More details here: http://historical.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=6066&lotNo=38365

St Andrews University is advertising two jobs for a Photographic Golf Collection Project Curator and a Photographic Golf Collection Digitisation Officer. The role requirements are: 

Photographic Golf Collection Project Curator - JC1049

Department of Special Collections, University Library, £24,370 - £29,099 per annum, Start: February 2012, Fixed term 4 years, Hours of work - 36.25 per week

We are seeking an individual to fulfil the role of Photographic Golf Collection Project Curator in support of the digitising, cataloguing and exhibition of an extensive golf photography collection over the period of four years from February 2012 to December 2015.   

Within a dynamic department during a time of exciting change, you will work under the direction of the Photographic Archivist. You will be responsible for the systematic cataloguing, intellectual arrangement, interpretation and exhibition of over 200,000 images on the subject of golf. This collection is the work of Lawrence Levy.  In direct support of the promotional and fundraising ambitions of the University, you will curate a series of high-calibre photographic exhibitions which represent the collection’s unique documentation of golf’s history from 1978 to 1994. As part of an externally funded project, you will directly contribute to the creation of access and awareness to an unsurpassed collection of great scale and cultural significance whose character is tied to St Andrews’ place in the world as the home of golf.   

For further details about the project and post please contact Marc Boulay, the Photographic Archivist for the Department of Special Collections via email at mdab@st-andrews.ac.uk or by telephone at 44 (0)1334 462326.

Photographic Golf Collection Digitisation Officer - SB1059

University Library, Department of Special Collections, £17,179 - £19,822 per annum, Start: January 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter, Fixed Term: 4 years

The University of St Andrews Library Department of Special Collections is seeking 1 full-time or 2 part-time (one full-time equivalent) staff to fulfill the role of Photographic Golf Collection Digitisation Officer in support of the digitising, archiving, and physical preservation of an extensive golf photography collection over the period of four years from January 2012 to December 2015. 

Within a dynamic department during a time of exciting change, the post-holder(s) will work under the direction of the Photographic Archivist. They will be responsible for the systematic preventive conservation, digitisation, physical arrangement, and electronic record creation of over 200,000 images on the subject of golf. As part of an externally-funded project, the post-holder(s) will directly contribute to the creation of access and awareness to an unsurpassed collection of great scale and cultural significance whose character is tied to St Andrews’ place in the world as the home of golf. 

For further details about the project and post please contact Marc Boulay, the Photographic Archivist for the Department of Special Collections via email at mdab@st-andrews.ac.uk or by telephone at 44 (0)1334 462326.    

Ref No: SB1059
Closing Date: 8 December 2011

Fuller details are here: https://www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/login.aspx?enc=vDVLPY6BrOnmx9szwB5icMU/Bp97ap1BlI/jb0LhRYVeoh/cn5bYgvW+9EbbSw7a

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.

About The Author

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 19^th 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 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th 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)

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.