There is a back story to this item. The daguerreotype had been taken into Tennants, a large regional auction house in the north of England, for valuation and authentication. The auction house, properly recognising the daguerreotype’s potential wider interest and possible high value, did some research and made contact with one of the UK’s leading Carroll experts who consulted a second. Both pronounced the subject of the daguerreotype as someone other than Carroll. They made four key points: firstly, Claudet’s Adelaide Gallery was only operating between 1841 and 1847, secondly, by 1858 the daguerreotype process in Britain had been largely superseded by the wet collodion process in commercial photographic studios such as Claudets, and, thirdly, Carroll was a diligent and noted diarist and made no mention of a visit to Claudet’s studio, and finally, the gentlemen shown in the daguerreotype was not Dodgson which was immediately apparent to the experts - as a simple comparison with other known portraits (including a well-known 1857 portrait - see right, below) of Dodgson would reveal. The auction house rightly decided that they were not able to offer the daguerreotype at auction and it was returned to the owner.

It resurfaced on eBay on 3 March 2011 offered by virtually-cameras. As has now been confirmed to me by someone with direct knowledge of the daguerreotype and the authentication (not the expert) the eBay seller was the same person who took it to the auction house for authentication. But Peter described the daguerreotype only as he saw it, albeit misspelling Dodgson as Dodson, Claudet as Claude and Adelaide as Adelade, and quoting the typewritten label in full. He was careful to say only that the daguerreotype was ‘labelled’ and he made no reference to Lewis Carroll. Peter made no mention of the fact that the daguerreotype had been examined by an expert who had discounted any possibility that it showed Dodgson. On 5 May Peter corrected the Claudet misspelling and added some biographical details about Claudet, presumably found on the internet.

As one might imagine an image of Carroll would attract considerable interest and the description contained plenty in it to allow it to be picked up by buyers’ search terms. Almost as soon as the lot was listed ‘Matthew’ asked Peter if he could buy it straight away for £300. Peter, quite properly declined. Ending an auction early to sell it would breach eBay’s terms of business. But Peter was also expressed surprised by the reaction the lot was attracting and said he wanted to let the auction run its course. A couple of further questions followed which he answered including confirmation of the size: ‘the frame size is 7.5 x 8.5 cm. The visible image is 6 x 5.5 cm’.

I was tipped off about the lot by a friend on 12 March. Looking at the description and image something didn’t ring true and I did some checking. I compared the image with others properly identified as Dodgson and I checked material I had on Claudet which confirmed his business addresses. I also knew that by 1857 it was more likely that the image should be a collodion positive or ambrotype.  I emailed Peter via eBay asking one question: ‘what did he know about the provenance of the image?’ pointing out that the label might allow people to make a link to Carroll which could be unfortunate. Peter responded promptly not really answering my question: ‘I'm sure you will realise after giving some serious thought that it's certainly not possible that I could know how the typed label was placed with the photograph,when the typed label clearly appears to be as old as the photograph! Perhaps you are unaware that a Daguerreotype is a negative image unlike the positive images with which you are making comparison.’

In the meantime I did some research on typewriter history and I concluded that the label was post-1870 and probably c1890-1910. I responded to Peter saying that the provenance would have been useful as ‘I was hoping that the image might have come from a source that would have supported the identification of the subject’. I pointed out that the typewritten label was almost certainly post 1870. Peter again replied promptly: ‘The image was purchased some time ago along with another of a girl, an ambrotype, after being sold at auction in Darlington County Durham’. He also asserted that typewriters dated back to the ‘late 1700s’ and that daguerreotypes ‘show a positive image when tilted against the light however the sitters image is reversed onto backing silvered material during exposure making it a true negative image and only by changing the angle of lighting does the Daguerreotype give the impression of being a positive’. Peter decided not to publish my questions and his responses alongside the description (eBay automates this if it is wanted) – unlike those of his other questioners. I decided to leave it at that.

As I stated at the beginning the daguerreotype sold for £3300.

I think there are a couple of lessons here. For the seller, some simple research should have thrown up some concerns about the image's subject. Peter has been on eBay since 2008. Looking at his past sales he appears to mainly sell modern photographic equipment on eBay, for which he has received good feedback, so the daguerreotype was clearly out of his main area of expertise. Some simple checking would have flagged up that the image was unlikely to be Carroll. He was clearly surprised at the interest the lot was generating and this might have acted as a warning. Since originally writing the piece I have been advised by someone who had discussed the matter with Peter was Peter had been the person who took the daguerreotype to the auction house. As such he clearly had a duty to flag the opinion that the experts had raised in his eBay description.  

Buyers also have a responsibility – caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Peter carefully made no link to Dodgson and simply described the daguerreotype as he saw it - allowing buyers to draw their own conclusions. It might be possible that two buyers liked a possible Claudet daguerreotype and were prepared to pay well over the normal price for such an image. That is unlikely. What is more likely is that bidders thought that they were about to get a bargain which they could resell at a profit; or they bid having jumped to their own conclusion that the subject was Carroll and failed to carry out any further research. It would not have been difficult to do and for the eventual buyer it might have prevented an expensive mistake.

A cautionary tale, indeed.

Dr Michael Pritchard

Long-tailed-crowd-sourced-socially-enterprising-game-playing-platform-sensitive-open-sourced-world. Charlotte Cotton is the creative director of the Media Space - a partnership between the Science Museum and the National Media Museum that will open in London in 2012.

Charlotte Cotton began her curatorial practice in the early 1990s, at the start of a growing wave of institutional interest in photography as contemporary art. Concomitant to this cultural ascendance of photography, was the increasing programmatic role photography played in the 1990s and 2000s to create popular visitor-number draws to cultural institutions. In this research seminar, Cotton talks about curating photography and photographic issues in the profoundly transformed landscape of today where the literal majority of images and photography's social meanings get created without the support or necessary validation of cultural institutions and considers how museums and galleries could reframe their engagements with photography.

The History of Photography research seminar series aims to be a discursive platform for the discussion and dissemination of current research on photography. From art as photography and early photographic technology to ethnographic photographs and contemporary photography as art, the seminar welcomes contributions from researchers across the board, whether independent or affiliated with museums, galleries, archives, libraries or higher education, and endeavours to provide scholars with a challenging opportunity to present work in progress and test out new ideas.

Wednesday, 23 March 2011
5.30pm, Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, Research Forum South Room

Contacts:
Alexandra Moschovi (alexandra.moschovi@courtauld.ac.uk )
Julian Stallabrass (julian.stallabrass@courtauld.ac.uk ), or
Benedict Burbridge (benedict.burbridge@courtauld.ac.uk )

An appeal has been launched after a donation of near 90-year-old negatives depicting the construction of one of  RAF Henlow airbase. A base spokesman said: “We would dearly like to reunite these rare photographic examples and bring the whole collection together. We are appealing to you to search your attics or your garden sheds to see whether you can help us to reconstitute the collection and help us to properly celebrate the illustrious heritage of RAF Henlow.”

The donated pictures help bring to life the building of the base and date back to WW1, however a specific year is unknown. David Lloyd George’s government decided to construct repair depots, soley for the then Royal Flying Corps, and Henlow was selected as a site in 1917. Much of the station was under construction when the Royal Flying Corps became the Royal Air Force the following year.

In the original list of RAF stations in April 1918, Henlow counts among only seven other stations that remain open as British bases today. Parish councillor and local history enthusiast Michele Joy urges residents to be on the look out for the remaining negatives, as they help shine a light on the base’s early days. She said: “It’s definitely worthwhile to say that glass negatives or something that could easily be thrown away because they’re not familiar to people these days. If you’re doing a house clearance then don’t get rid of anything that’s of definite interest to people and could be important to Henlow’s history.”

If you can help locate the missing negatives, or know someone who can, contact Denise O’Hara by post, at Building 105, RAF Henlow, Beds, SG16 6DN or by email, on shsa-ast@henlow.raf.mod.uk

See the fulls tory here: http://www.thecomet.net/news/donation_of_ww1_era_negatives_sparks_raf_appeal_1_828022

The Sixth Annual Annan Lecture will take place on Thursday 24 March 2011 at 6pm in the Jeffrey Room, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. John Hume, Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland, will talk about Unknown Scottish Photographers - the role of the works photographer. 

The events has been organised by the Scottish Society for the History of Photography  / www.sshop.org.uk

Ida Kar died alone of thrombosis and penniless in a Bayswater bedsit in 1974, surrounded by boxes of negatives worth £50,000. Her funeral was a quiet affair, in stark contrast to the publicity attracted by an exhibition of her work fourteen years earlier.

Russian-born and of Armenian parentage, Kar arrived in Britain in 1945 with her second husband, Victor Musgrave, an art dealer. He founded Gallery One and the couple became a celebrated part of London’s post-war bohemia.

During the 1950s photographic exhibitions were uncommon and photography in Britain was at its lowest ebb and entrenched in the Victorian/Edwardian genre. In challenging British photography’s conventions - along with the notion that only sculpture and painting could be considered art - Kar drew upon the avante-garde circles she inhabited while applying the training she received in Paris.

Kar produced large scale confrontational portrait works of key modernist artists and writers of the era, using a Rolliflex purchased in 1957. Compositionally challenging and in black and white, they juxtaposed artistic portraiture and reportage subject matter in non-conventional settings. These re-examined their relationship to their environment, intensifying the relationship between photographer and subject.

Although little has been written about Kar’s work as an art form, her canon is of major interest to academics of postwar English photographic art. Ever the individualist, she photographed leading icons of the 1950s and ‘60s as well as taking to the streets to photograph shopkeepers in the Royal Arcade (London) Metropolitan Music Hall, solemn characters of the demi-mode, and capture life in the Cuban capital, Havana.

Ida Kar, the development of large format editorial magazine photography such as Picture Post and the creation of new galleries as Photographers’ Gallery served to re-examine what a ‘good’ photograph could be. They also helped to expand the boundaries of portraiture and reportage, with Kar’s work in London, Cairo and Havana widely attributed to having broken down barriers to the acceptance of photography as a fine art.

Kar's landmark exhibtion at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1960 marked a turning point in post-war photographic art as she was the first photographer to have a photographic exhibition at a London gallery. The result of a retrospective show of her work was to break the mould of photographic conventions and to spark a debate on whether photography could be considered art.

This exhibition presents nearly 100 works produced by Ida Kar. The Curator, Clare Freestone, sees particular interest in the letters from sitters. Correspondence from as Ivon Hitchens, for example, tell of a longstanding friendship – and a subject unafraid to pepper his correspondence with professional advice. Also noteworthy are may of Kar’s shoots in Petworth, some showing Ida with Mollie and Ivon eating relaxed on cushions and their son John, whom she subsequently spoke to and re-iterated the warmth and friendship of Kar towards the family.

Despite other successful photographers following the same theme as Douglas Glass for the Sunday Times, her vision was unique in the way she interacted with her sitters. Clare Freestone says, “She had a very sharp and instinctive
vision. Her connections (Victor Musgrave her husband, her early years spent in bustling Cairo and Paris of the surrealists) placed her amongst artists rather than fellow photographers.”

Material selected for the exhibition is from the NPG archive which features over 800 of Kar’s vintage prints, 10, 000 negatives, a sitters’ book and a portfolio book made in 1954 of her trip to the artists’ studios of Paris. This was purchased in 1999 in a sale through Christie’s on behalf of Monika Kinley, Victor Musgrave’s widow.

Featuring unseen archive material, the reappraisal provides a valuable record of the international art world as documented by Kar over three decades against a backdrop of wider plastic arts and literary subjects including Doris Lessing, T S Eliot, Man Ray, Jean Paul Satre, Eugene Ionesco and Colin MacInnes to name but a few.

Highlights of the exhibition of nearly 100 works include: An iconographic portrait of artist Yves Klein, shown at his first and highly controversial London exhibition in 1957 in front of one of his famous monochrome works, in the distinctive blue-colour he was to patent as his own. A portrait of the ‘art strike’ artist and political activist Gustav Metzger, taken at an exhibition entitled Festival of Misfits - another discovery in an exhibition which partly chronicles 1950s and 1960s Bohemian London society.  A photograph of Royston Ellis, a poet and friend of John Lennon who inspired the song Paperback Writer and introduced Lennon to ‘Polythene Pam,’ a subject of the Beatles song.  One of Kar’s earliest works, a portrait of the actress and director Sylvia Syms (1953) and a portrait of Dame Maggie Smith on the set of The Rehearsal (1961).  Images of conceptualist artists such as Gustav Metzger and John Latham.  Photographs of life in Cuba and Moscow.  A pack of Metzger negs how from a mislabelled packet of negatives we chanced upon, showing key images of Ida Karr and the first public demonstration of auto- destructive art.

Her later work includes the leading artists of the St Ives modern art movement (Tatler, 26 July 1961), featuring Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth and Terry Frost; documentary portraits of Soho bohemia; artists associated
with her husband’s Gallery One; and Kar’s contact sheet of her portrait of Fidel Castro, taken in 1964.

A story which did not make the catalogue is that of KarSEC, the collective that Kar formed in 1968. An interview with one member Les Smithers is available in Face to Face, in which he tells of Kar’s continued desire to work professionally and to re-invent herself.

However, within a decade of her fame she was forgotten. Critics claimed that, although Ida Kar expanded photographic vocabulary, she never took photographs of the same clarity or lucidity of her 1950s heyday. She was, according to her
former assistant and PR guru, John Kasmin, a "conventional bohemian". However Kar failed to achieve the success she craved, lacking an understanding of the politics of the art world and who departed it with overwhelming debts.

Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer, 1908-74

The National Portrait Gallery (London)

10 March until 19 June 2011

Copyright: Pippa Jane Wielgos

DISCLAIMER: Pippa Jane PR is a non-profit making platform producing non-commissioned independent freelance arts journalism does not represent theThe National Portrait Gallery.

Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7487 3486. Mobile: + 44 (0) 7957 319 056

E-mail: pippa.wielgos@tiscali.co.uk

The Bournemouth Echo reported that photographer George Courtney Ward has died. Courtney Ward who died at his home in Westbourne on Tuesday, February 15, aged 93, photographed some of the most famous names in cinema during his 30 years working at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, Alec Guinness and Kenneth More were just some of the screen stars in George’s portfolio. Examples of his portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery Collection (http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?firstRun=true&sText=Courtney+Ward&search=sa&LinkID=mp16878&role=art)

He was understood to be a good friend of Lord Attenborough and worked on some of the best-loved British films, including The Ipcress File,  Oliver Twist in 1948, This Sporting Life in 1963 and Great Expectations in 1946, and also designed the artwork for Brief Encounter.

George was born in Christchurch in 1917 and grew up in the town before becoming a stills photographer at Pinewood. At first he commuted, but shortly moved to Fulmer in Buckinghamshire with his mother and aunt. After more than 30 years working at Pinewood, George moved to Elstree studios in 1969 when the photographic department was closed down. But when that studio was taken over in 1972, he decided to sell his house, retire and move back down to Bournemouth. 

George had no close family, but his dearest friend, John Smith, remembers him as his “second father”. The pair met while they were both working in the photographic department at Elstree. “He was a very independent man and he had a great love of music,” remembers John, who would visit George regularly and phone him almost every day.  “He had a wonderful knowledge of music, going back to the 1930 and 1940s, and musical films, he had a great love of that as well. One of his idols was Dick Powell.”  John, who lives in Hertfordshire with his wife Beryl, added: “He was a wonderful listener with a great sense of humour.

Gorge’s funeral takes place at 12pm on Tuesday March 8 Bournemouth Crematorium.

For a full report see: http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8876347.Celebrity_photographer__93_dies_at_his_Dorset_home/?ref=rss

and see: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0911557/ for a resume of his career and films he worked on

The Royal Photographic Society and Birmingham Central Library are holding a practical workshop on researching photographic history on Saturday, 5 March 2011. Amongst the formal presentations will be others from active researchers in the field presenting aspects of their own research.

Researching photographic history is of interesting to many different historians not least of which are genealogists. The day will offer practical advice about undertaking research into all aspects of photographic history from active researchers in the field. Traditional sources and digital sources will be discussed. In addition, genealogists, local historians and photographic historians attending are invited to share their own experiences. 

Speakers will include Dr Michael Pritchard and Dr Ron Callender who have both completed a PhD and a Fellowship in different aspects of photographic history and are active researchers. One session will discuss how photographic history can be used to achieve a RPS distinction.

There is no charge but as places are limited please book in advance. Details of the event are here: http://www.rps.org/events/view/1989?m=3&y=2011&d=&t=workshop&g=0&r=0&reset=reset

The National Media Museum saw its visitor numbers drop by more than 12 per cent last year, a report revealed today. Figures compiled by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions show the museum attracted 526,914 visits – a drop of 12.8 per cent compared to 2009. This follows an 18 per cent drop in 2009 to 613,923 from 2008.

Museum director Colin Philpott said factors such as the Imax cinema closing for maintenance affected numbers but a great deal was still achieved by the museum in 2010. He said: “We broke a world Nintendo DS record, revealed the results of groundbreaking research into some of the world’s oldest photographs which we house and care for in the National Photography Collection, and we hosted an exciting range of film festivals and temporary exhibitions.

“We continue to strive to inspire as many people as possible to learn about and engage with media, and I am confident that a fantastic line-up of forthcoming events, including opening a new gallery exploring the history and impact of the internet in 2012, will put us firmly in the 50 per cent of attractions showing an increase in visitors in the near future.”

See also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bradford/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9406000/9406686.stm

The National Portrait Gallery has a number of events connected with its two photographic exhibitions the first dealing with E O Hoppé is open now and the next on Ida Kar opens in March. The events are summarised below but see the NPG website for more information and to book (www.npg.org.uk) In my experience events tend to fill up quickly so I would recommend early booking in order to secure a place.

HOPPÉ PORTRAITS: SOCIETY, STUDIO AND STREET
Until 30 May 2011

Exhibition Tour: Free with a timed exhibition ticket.
Friday 4 March 2011, 19.30
Join Curator of Photographs Terence Pepper for a tour of the exhibition.
Workshop
Hoppé’s London: Whitehall and St. James’s
Saturday 19 March 2011, 11.00 - 15.00
E.O. Hoppé’s camera lens was drawn towards the unusual and quirky sides of London and Londoners. Led by a Blue Badge Guide, this walk will explore the London that Hoppé knew. Walk lasts approximately 2 hours. Tickets: £15/£12.
Talk: Picturing Everyman
Thursday 24 March 2011, 18.30
Writer Geoff Dyer and artist Dryden Goodwin take the exhibition as their starting point in a discussion on photography and portraiture’s search for ordinary, representative subjects.
Tickets: £5/£4. 
 

IDA KAR: BOHEMIAN PHOTOGRAPHER
Opens 10 March 2011
Tickets: £3/£2.50/£2

Kar stood at the heart of the creative avant-garde and was the first photographer to have a retrospective exhibition in a major London Gallery. As one of the shining stars of the 1950s art world, Kar’s work has remained surprisingly hidden. This exhibition re-presents this key twentieth-century figure and offers a unique opportunity to see iconic works, which have not been exhibited publicly since the 1960s.

Curator Tour: Free with an exhibition ticket
Friday 18 March 2011, 19.30
Curator Clare Freestone takes a look at some of the highlights in the exhibition.

Finally one other photography events is:

Guardian Eyewitness Event: Photojournalism into the new Millennium
Thursday 3 March 2011, 19.00
Join Roger Tooth, the Guardian’s Head of Photography and editor of Eyewitness Decade, for a whirlwind tour of photographic journalism and its role within a national newspaper.
Tickets: £5/£4.

Greenway Associates has reported that it is now working with the Science Museum, London in partnership with the National Media Museum, on Media Space a substantial exhibition and events space in London. The space offers not only a re-presentation of NMSI’s photography, film, and television collections, via temporary exhibitions and new programming, but also a space that is physically and programmatically geared towards adults and visitors coming to the South Kensington site. This is the previously designated National Media Museum's London presence.

Charlotte Cotton, the creative director of Media Space which is opening in 2012 will be giving a free history of photography seminar at the Courtauld, Londonm on 23 March (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/xn/detail/2680769:Event:17694?xg_source=activity) and http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2011/spring/mar2_histphoto.shtml

As noted here (http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/antiques-roadshow-amp-early) the BBC's Antiques Roadshow programme featured an item of photographic interest in this evenings programme. A descendent of J B B Wellington brought along a selection of photographs and exhibition medals that belonged to Wellington. Described as 'museum quality' by expert Marc Allum the archive was valued at £10,000-15,000.  The programme can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z1h04 (the segment starts at 11m 24s in) for the next seven days.

As many BPH readers will know Wellington was Kodak's factory manager at Harrow for a short period in the 1890s before establishing his own paper and plate manufacturing firm Wellington and Ward at Elstree. The firm was eventually absorbed into Ilford Ltd. Wellington was also an accomplished amateur photographer and had his house, The Leys, in Elstree designed by George Walton, who also worked for Kodak and W & W.

Street photographs are at the heart of our understanding of London as a diverse and dynamic capital. They are characterised by an element of chance – a fortunate encounter, a fleeting expression, a momentary juxtaposition, capturing an ever-changing city.

This major new exhibition at the Museum of London showcases an extraordinary collection of London street photography with over 200 candid images of everyday life in the street. From sepia-toned scenes of horse-drawn cabs taken on bulky tripod-mounted cameras to 21st century Londoners digitally ‘caught on film’, explore how street photography has evolved from 1860 to the present day. Examine the relationship between photographers, London’s streets and the people who live on them, and reflect on the place of photography on London’s streets today as anti-terrorism and privacy laws grow ever tighter.

London Street Photography brings together the works of 59 photographers including:

• Valentine Blanchard experimented with a small-format stereoscopic camera in 1860s London to produce the first photographs of busy city streets in which everything in motion was arrested in sharp definition.
• John Thomson produced a ground-breaking survey of London’s poor with the publication of Street Life in London in 1877.
• Paul Martin pioneered candid street photography in London when, in the early 1890s, he began using a camera disguised as a parcel to photograph people unawares.
• Horace Nicholls was an early independent press photographer whose candid photographs of well-to-do Edwardians at leisure are particularly revealing.
• Wolf Suschitzky came to London from Vienna in 1935 and began a personal project to photograph the life of Charing Cross Road, both day and night
• Roger Mayne sought to record a way of life as he photographed a rundown area of North Kensington before it was redeveloped in the 1960s. Mayne became a familiar figure as he hung around the streets, camera at the ready.
• Henry Grant was a freelance photojournalist with a profound interest in the everyday lives of ordinary peoples. He photographed London’s changing streets from the 1950s to the 1980s
• Paul Trevor moved to Brick Lane in the East End in the early 1970s and photographed life on the street almost every day for the next 10 years. His photographs are a unique record of the area before large-scale immigration and gentrification wrought their changes
• Paul Baldesare frequents London’s busy shopping streets, looking for remarkable gestures and expressions by individuals going about their everyday lives.
• Nils Jorgensen is a professional news and celebrity photographer who always has his camera to hand to capture street images in between assignments.
• Stephen McLaren seeks out quirky and colourful street images, while also leading a career directing and producing for television. He is co-author of the book Street Photography.
• Nick Turpin is a great advocate for contemporary street photography, founding the In-Public collective in 2000 as well as a publishing company to promote the genre.

Click here for more information and details of related events

London Street Photography runs from 18 February – 4 September 2011 at the Museum of London and entry is FREE.

A museum is trying to trace biographical details for a commercial photographer called David Kronig who was working from a London studio at 1 Marylebone Street. London W1,  Telephone: WEL 6985 c1960s. If anyone is able to assist with any information (dates work and where, date of death, details if he is still living, or any other information) if would be gratefully received. Please contact me at michael@mpritchard.com or comment here. I will pass the information on.

Thanks!

A copy of Antoine Claudet's will has just been sold on eBay. The will was described by the American seller as: UK 19th C probate of the will of Antoine Francois Jean Claudet dated 30th January 1868, extracted by Scadding & Son, London, 100 pounds for filling, excise stamp, fold-out seal, 3 pages plus small page, 22" x 27" on vellum, left most of estate to wife, (even liquors and looking glasses noted) complete.

The link will take anyone interested to the full eBay entry: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300523505412&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT or search on item number: 300523505412

Speakers will include Dr Michael Pritchard and Dr Ron Callender who have both completed a PhD and RPS Fellowships in different aspects of photographic history and are active researchers. There will also be presentations from other researchers presenting their research. One session will discuss how photographic history can be used to achieve a RPS distinction.

Admission is free but please register in advance. Click here for more information: http://www.rps.org/events/view/1989?m=0&y=2011&d=&t=0&g=Historical&r=0&reset=reset

Ashley Givens from the V+A, London, will be presenting a short paper about her research titled Painted and Photographic Portraits of Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie at the Courtauld's Postgraduate symposium in London on Friday 11 March. Details are here: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2011/spring/mar10_phdsymposium.shtml. Entry is free.

Her abstract is below:

Painted and Photographic Portraits of Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie
This dissertation explores the issues surrounding the public display and circulation of portraits of one of the mid-Nineteenth Century’s best-known figures, the Emperor of France, Napoléon III. The purpose is to understand how images of Napoléon III were conceived and created in various modes, and how they were then assessed by critics and disseminated among constituents. Many portraits of the Emperor were officially commissioned or sanctioned as appropriate depictions of France’s sovereign. These provide some sense of the range of roles played by the Emperor (and his wife and son).
In this symposium paper the roles include military commander, diplomat and redeemer of the people. This paper analyses a range of depictions which were broadly considered genre paintings. Alongside the portraits, genre paintings present a parallel means of relaying and, further, reinforcing information about the sovereign to his people. Themes of the paper include the relationship between nature and artifice and efforts to find a rhetoric for inscribing Napoléon III in France’s unfolding history. It examines which events of the 1850s and 1860s were chosen for commemoration, or as opportunities to showcase the work of the Emperor, as well as the reception of the resulting paintings.