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.

The National Archives has digitised thousands of unique images of Africa and published them on Flickr this week. The collection spans more than 100 years of African history, from as early as the 1860s, including images of people, places, national and imperial events, conflict and natural disasters.

The images were transferred to The National Archives from the Colonial Office Library's photographic collection and offer a unique insight into life in the colonies. Approximately 10,000 images, a third of the entire collection, have been digitised so far.

As some of the images have minimal context, the public is invited to contribute to these historical assets by adding comments and captions, filling in knowledge gaps.

Oliver Morley, Acting Chief Executive of The National Archives, said: 'An online collection like this reaches beyond the academic world and into people's living rooms, enabling everyone to contribute to our understanding of past events.'

The 'Africa through a lens' collection is available now to view. Find out more and access the images here: nationalarchives.gov.uk/africa.  There is also a news report here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/10/national-archives-empire-era-photos

People looking to uncover the true spirit of the iconic and currently ubiquitous wartime poster, Keep Calm and Carry On, may want to head to the Royal Air Force Museum to see the real backdrop of this chirpy wartime notice. The Mayor of London’s photographic and image based exhibition, commissioned by Boris Johnson for City Hall to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the London Blitz, is heading from its temporary home for a spell at the historic Hendon site.
Dedicate to the individuals involved in the emergency, volunteer, transport and specialist services who kept London going during the darkest days of the War, the exhibition features hard-hitting wartime images together with histories culled from the collections of various London organisations.
Each of dramatic photographs vividly portrays the story of London’s people, their determination and ‘Blitz Spirit’ at time when 30,000 Londoners were killed, entire communities destroyed and countless thousands left homeless.
The aerial bombing campaign on London during the Second World War ran from September 7 to May 11 1941. During this period 50,000 bombs and millions of incendiary devices fell on the city.
“We are particularly honoured to display this collaborative effort,” said Ian Thirsk, Head of Collections at the Royal Air Force Museum, “Iwhich narrates the story of how so many of the capital’s organisations were central to the on-going delivery of vital public services during late 1940 and early 1941.”
Mayor of London Boris Johnson also welcomed the exhibition's showing at the RAF Museum and similarly paid tribute to the “bravery and dogged determination of the men and women who battled to keep London going in the face of a terrifying and unremitting bombardment. This tremendous spirit and resilience remain at the very heart of the capital and we owe a huge debt of gratitude and respect to all those who helped secure London's future.”
The rarely seen images have been provided by London Transport Museum, the Museum of London, the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection, the Fire Brigade Museum, London Ambulance Service, Barts and London NHS and the Royal Pioneer Corps Association.

The London Blitz 70th anniversary Exhibition, The Bomber Hall of the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon until May 31 2011.

Robert Leggat who researched and maintained one of the first useful photographic history resources on the internet died on 20 January 2011. His A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s (http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/index.html) was designed for school and college students and started in 1995. It is still available today and was being maintained by Leggat until shortly before his death. Put many historical photographic terms or personalities into a search engine and the chances are that Leggat’s website will be somewhere near the top of the results list.

Since its launch the site has had nearly 10 million visitors and the online guestbook from the early years (the guestbook was later discontinued as Leggat was unable to keep up with responding to questions and queries) was full of praise and thanks from students who had made use of it.

Leggat was involved in photographic education throughout his career and took an active role in the Royal Photographic Society as its Honorary Education Officer amongst other positions. A fuller obituary has been prepared but if anyone has any recollections or further knowledge of Robert's career and life please contact Michael Pritchard (email: michael@mpritchard.com)

De Montfort University is recruiting students for the 2011/12 intake on its MA History of Photography and Practice course. The programme started in 2009 and his been widely acclaimed for its distinctive approach to the teaching of photographic history and its focus on handling original objects. The course has established close links with various photographic collections such as the National Media Museum, British Library, Birmingham Central Library and Wilson Centre of Photography.

Download the course poster here high res AAD_161_FINAL_High_Res.pdf or low res: AAD_161_FINAL_Low_Res.pdf.

The Royal Collection has two cataloguing vacancies available both of which involve working with photographs held in the Collection.

• Cataloguer Twentieth Century Photographs.
• Based in the Royal Photograph Collection the role will entail working under the direction of the curator on cataloguing the remaining material in the collection, which is primarily 20th century. This ranges from official works by leading British photographers like Beaton, Snowdon and Lichfield, to press photographs and to personal snapshots taken by members of the Royal Family. . The role is for a fixed term of two years.
  Required: A broad knowledge of 20th-century British history and the history of photography;  relevant graduate or post-graduate qualification or equivalent experience; sound IT skills and a familiarity with art-collection databases.
  
  This is a fixed term post from April 2011 to April 2013. At a salary of £19,100. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/6klg6zp The deadline for entries is 13 February 2011.
  
  
• Raphael Collection Cataloguer
• The Print Room is part of the Royal Library section of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. It is responsible for the works of art on paper in the Royal Collection, including old master drawings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century watercolours, and prints – over 150,000 items in all. Among this material is the Prince Consort’s Raphael Collection, a unique assemblage of over 5,000 prints and photographs begun by Prince Albert in 1853 and intended to record every work by or after Raphael and his workshop.
  
  Although the Raphael Collection was catalogued in 1876 it has never been widely accessible, and the intention is now to record it on the Royal Collection’s Collections Management System (CMS) and make it available on the Royal Collection’s website. We are therefore seeking a cataloguer on a fixed-term basis, who will be responsible for entering information about each item to a uniform scholarly standard on the CMS.
  
  This is a fixed term post from April 2011 to April 2013. At a salary of £19,100. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/63zng4a Download a job description here: http://tinyurl.com/5tcq3gl

The National Media Museum is one of the leading museums in the north of England, receiving over 500,000 visitors a year and we want you to contribute to our ongoing success.

We are looking for extrovert, engaging and entertaining communicators to fill these stimulating roles. With your excellent presentation and performance skills and your keen interest in media, you will help bring the galleries to life for our diverse range of visitors. As part of the Explainer team in the Learning Department you will present live shows and use your creative skills to develop and deliver art, craft and media based activities for families and groups. It will be up to you to ensure visitors including families, school groups and teachers have an enjoyable, safe and educational visit.

If you have a passion for media, for communication, and for engaging children and adults of all ages, we’d love to hear from you.

This post is 4 days per week including one weekend day.

Part time - 28.8 hours per week
£10,674.40 per annum (£13,343 FTE) plus weekend allowance
Fixed term until January 2013

Closing date for applications: 5 February 2011

For a full job description please email
recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

Interested? Please send your CV and covering letter to recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

Photographic collections are found in libraries, archives and museums all over the world. Their sensitivity to environmental conditions, and the speed with which images can deteriorate present special challenges. This one day training session is led by Susie Clark, accredited photographic conservator. It is aimed at those with responsibility for the care of photographic collections regardless of institutional context.

The day provides an introduction to understanding and identifying photographic processes and their vulnerability, information on common conservation problems and solutions, and the preservation measures that can be taken to prolong the life and accessibility of photographic collections. Contact with real examples of different photographic processes is an important feature of this training session which is therefore limited to only 16 places. At the end of the day participants will be able to:

• identify historic photographic processes
• explain how damage is caused
• implement appropriate preservation measures
• commission conservation work.

Feedback from previous participants

• I learned how to store photographic material, how to identify different photographic processes and techniques to preserve photographic stock.
• Very worthwhile due to practical nature of the training day. I am able to leave here today confident that we can improve and upgrade basic preservation solutions, particularly storage, based on information learned about photographic processes and supports.
• I will review our approach to preserving photographic collections, upgrade storage media, and survey collections to identify preservation priorities.

Programme

Preservation Advisory Centre Training Day

Friday 20 May 2011

British Library Centre for Conservation
96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB
 

Click below for details of the event:

http://www.bl.uk/blpac/photographic.html

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/events/preserving-historic

For anyone with an interest in the market for historic and contemporary photography internationally The Photograph Collector is a monthly newsletter of required reading. Published in the United States since 1980 The Photograph Collector has an international reach is is concerned with auctions, dealer activity, exhibitions and relevant news and reviews globally. Of particular interest is the PC's annual index of photograph values based on a basket of regularly offered material.

Editor Stephen Perloff reports in the current issue dated December 20 2010 that the newsletter will no longer appear in print from January 2011 and instead will be mailed as a PDF to subscribers which will benefit international readers and allow for more timely information to be included. As postage is no longer an issue all subscription rates are being equalised at $149.95.

Email: info@photoreview.org or www.photoreview.org for more information about the newsletter and other publications.

William Blackmore (1827-1878) remains a little knownmillionaire mid-Victorian polymath. He was a successful lawyer based in Liverpool and subsequently London. An international financier involved in numerous North American land grants, he was also principal financier of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. His reputation by the mid 1870s within London financial circles was that he ‘has means of obtaining information in the City such as very few men possess.’ Blackmore visited Salt Lake City and met Brigham Young (1801-1877), president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and wrote a confidential report on the ‘Mormon Empire’ for the Cabinet of the British government and independent industrial leaders; in April 1872 Blackmore dined at the White House with United States President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885); he funded and populated with artefacts perhaps the leading ethnographic museum in 19th century Great Britain, located in his home town of Salisbury; he was an early patron of the leading Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and the commissioner of an influential set of watercolours of the Yellowstone region by Thomas Moran (1837-1926); and he was acknowledged by contemporaries to have so effectively exploited photography to document North American Indians that his photographic collection was copied to form the basis of the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Yet Blackmore’s legacy was to be comparatively limited. He went bankrupt and committed suicide in 1878. Shortly after his untimely death, his papers and other materials were consigned to storage and lay apparently unused for almost half a century. William’s other art collections were subsumed within those of his brother and loyal ally, Humphrey. Following Humphrey’s death in 1929 a major dispersal campaign began in earnest. While some of William’s business documents were saved, a significant number were apparently destroyed, and artefacts were subsequently dispersed through auction and sale to other public and private institutions. The Blackmore Museum was incorporated with that of the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum after Blackmore’s death, and was amalgamated in 1902; it remained something of a place of pilgrimage to American archaeologists until the early 20th century. While a new gallery was built in 1933 linking the buildings of the Blackmore Museum to the Salisbury Museum, William’s museum was already in terminal decline and its collections were to be broken up and dispersed over a period of over four decades.

Anthony Hamber has written the first biography of William Blackmore to cover the wide gamut of his professional and private interests and the significance and impact of his wide ranging achievements. With reproductions of many Victorian photographs, and a diligently researched text, fully referenced with bibliography and index, Hamber’s work is a major contribution to understanding an important but neglected figure and his world.

Collecting the American West: the Rise and Fall of William Blackmore, by Anthony Hamber is published by Hobnob Press, December 2010, 320pp paperback, many illustrations,

The flyer can be downloaded here: Collecting%20the%20American%20West%20%20A5%20flier.pdf

I spotted this on Luke McKernan’s excellent blog which deals with silent and early cinema which can be found at  https://bioscopic.wordpress.com/. I can do no better than take Luke's words: A new tool from Google Labs offers interesting ways of analysing silent film subjects (or any other subject, for that matter). The Ngram Viewer uses data taken from the 15 million books and other documents scanned by Google Books to trace the occurrence of words or phrases (up to five words) between 1800 and 2000, showing how often they occur each year.

All you do is enter your search term or phrase, then choose a time period and your language, and you get the results presented as a graph. Having searched for your term, below the graph you are given the option to search Google Books itself for your term by particular time periods or universally. You can also compare your term with others, by adding a comma-separated second term into the search box. You can compare any number of terms, though there are only five colours available.

There seem to be any number of interesting applications for this as a tool, even if the results are approximate and erratic. The frequency of appearance of terms in books is not necessarily a reliable guide to their importance, and some terms register no scores at all (e.g. Gaumont, Muybridge, Mary Pickford), presumably because Google Books hasn’t indexed them yet. But there is more than enough there to encourage imaginative searches and to yield interesting discoveries.

I have included some examples here. Most of us have some awareness of the origins of the word Photography and a Ngram produces an expected graph. If one adds ‘imaging’ then it’s clear how, with the rise of digital photography, this word has begun to supersede photography. Another interesting graph was produced by showing platinotype and palladiotype (the subject of discussions on BPH) the others are self-explanatory.

Although there are issues with the data (it’s dependent on the books google has scanned and the use of which words or phrases to use needs careful consideration) this could be a useful tool for representing trends

Do have a go, and let me know of any interesting Ngrams that you are able to create.

One of the great paradigm shifts in contemporary art over the past 20 years has been the movement of photography into the realm of fine art. The critical and commercial success of artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, who are represented by contemporary art galleries, and the appointment of photography curators to top public galleries such as Tate Modern and Guggenheim, has ensured that the medium is increasingly regarded as a vital part of contemporary artistic practice. With digital techniques of manipulation becoming more and more advanced, photography stands to continually develop and change as a tool for artists.

Given that the first photograph was produced in 1826, why did it take so long for photography to be accepted by the art world? How reliable is a photograph as evidence of the real world? What makes a documentary photograph different from a 'fine art' photograph? How will the increasing impact of digital manipulation impact upon the medium? What might the future developments in photography be?

These are some of the questions that curator Charlotte Cotton, photographers Anne Hardy and Clarisse D'Arcimoles and artist and writer David Campany will discuss as they explore the most pressing questions regarding photography today.

Click here to book: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/photo/

New Directions in Contemporary Photography
Charlotte Cotton, Anne Hardy, Clarisse D'Arcimoles and David Campany in conversation
7.30pm, Monday 17 January 2011

Tickets are £10 / £6 students and each ticket admits one person. There are only 300 seats available so please book early.

World renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz visited the National Media Museum on Tuesday 14 December - the latest stop on a personal journey she is undertaking looking at places relating to inspirational and culturally significant people. Her travels, which will be documented in an upcoming book titled Pilgrimage, brought her to Bradford to view and photograph items belonging to Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879), part of the Royal Photographic Society Collection in the National Photography Collection which is held here.

Annie looked at personal letters, photographs, albums and a folio, all of which belonged to Cameron, one of the earliest pioneers of photography. Cameron, like Annie, was celebrated as a great photographer and for her work producing portraits of famous people and historical figures of the era.

Annie said: "I am very impressed with how you care for such legacies – of Julia Margaret Cameron's work and items from the Royal Photographic Society period. There really are treasures here. It is one thing to take care of such work but to give this access to anyone who wants to study or see it is fantastic."

http://nationalmediamuseum.blogspot.com/2010/12/world-renowned-photographer-annie.html

Annie is shown in the photograph with Curator Colin Harding.



The full blog entry can be seen here:

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has issued its 2009/10 Acceptance in Lieu Report. Of interest to BPH is the acceptance of 49 prints from the twentieth century which was settled in August 2009 and are now in the Tate Gallery, London. The collection was used to settle tax worth £227,290. The collection consists of the material described below:

The offer comprised 49 photographs by the following artists: Bernice Abbott (1898-1991), 3 prints; Richard Avenden (1923-2004); Roger Ballen (b.1950); Herbert Bayer (1900-1985); Hou Bo (b.1924); Dorothy Bohm (b.1924); Bill Brandt (1904-1983), 4 prints; Brassaï (1899-1984), 3 prints; Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902-2002); Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004), 2 prints; Calum Colvin (b.1961), 12 prints; Martin J Cullen (b.1967); František Drtikol (1883-1961); Elliot Erwitt (b.1928); Robert Frank (b.1924); Jo Alison Feiler (b.1951); Lee Fridlander (b.1934); Tim Gidal (1909-1996); Lucien Hervé (1910-2007); Paul Joyce (b.1944); Dorothea Lange (1895-1965); Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), 2 prints; Yau Leung (1941-1997); Man Ray (1890-1976); Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989); Dario Mitidieri (b.1959); Irving Penn (1917-2009), 5 prints; Sebastião Salgadio (b.1944); W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978); Peter Suschitzky (b. 1941); Edward Weston (1886-1958), 2 prints and James Van der Zee (1886-1983).

The collection has been assembled over the last 30 years by Barbara Lloyd and the photographers represented include many of the greatest names in photography from the 20th century. Of particular significance are the five images by Irving Penn which include two New York cityscapes of 1947 and 1985; two portraits from New Guinea and Morocco; and a portrait of the French writer Colette of 1960. The Mapplethorpe is a 1976 portrait of the New York singer-songwriter Patti Smith. One of the Edward Weston photographs, taken in 1924, is a dramatic image of the Mexican senator and general, Manuel Hernández Galván, titled Galván Shooting. Galván fought by the side of the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. When Weston took the photograph, Galván was campaigning for political office, but was assassinated shortly after their meeting.

Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1935 is one of the outstanding images of the 1930s. In 1960, Lange spoke about taking the photograph: “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

The Panel considered that the collection met the second and third criteria that it was in acceptable condition and fairly valued. The photographs have been permanently allocated to Tate in accordance with the condition of the offeror.

The full AIL Report is here: http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/~/media/Files/pdf/2010/AELU/MLA_acceptance_in_lieu_report_2009_2010

Colin Harding reports on the National Media Museum blog that the museum's Fay Godwin exhibition 'Land Revisited' has recently received a welcome addition when a delayed loan from the British Library was finally installed. These include two of her cameras, together with some of her original printing notes and contact sheets. There are two of Fay Godwin's cameras on display - a Hasselblad 500C/M camera fitted with a Planar f2.8 50mm lens and a Leica M6 camera fitted with a Summicron f2 35mm lens. Both of these cameras would have been used to produce some of the images included in the exhibition.

Also on display is a folder containing some of Fay Godwin's contact sheets. Contact sheets show an unaltered positive print of the original negative that has not been enlarged. They are useful to show the quality of the negatives and are used by photographers to select which print to enlarge. Colin has chosen to show the contact sheet for one of Fay Godwin's most celebrated images, Flooded tree, Derwentwater (1981). Careful study of the contact sheets reveals that she photographed this location several times on different occasions, waiting until the conditions were exactly what she wanted.

A folder containing Fay Godwin's original negatives is also added to the display, open at the page containing her negatives for the Flooded Tree image. She made careful notes on a pencil sketch of the photograph to remind her how best to print from the chosen negative. These notes show areas highlighted to 'hold back' and others which need additional exposure. Such detailed attention resulted in the final exhibition print, framed and on show next to the display case.