The Beijing World Art Museum is hosting an exhibition of photographs of China taken by John Thomson from the archives of the Wellcome Institute in London... reports the Daily Telegraph newspaper. It will be shown in Liverpool early in 2010. Taken between 1870 and 1871 by the Scottish photographer John Thomson, the images reveal with often startling intimacy a cast of characters from orphans and street gamblers, to beautiful peasant girls and their high-born ladies.
Hailed as a pioneer of photojournalism, Thomson spent two years travelling more than 5,000 miles in pursuit of the images that historians say are unique in their empathy towards their subjects As well as shooting traditional, stiff-backed portraits of Manchu noblemen, Thomson plied the streets in search of scenes that would bring the exotic world of China to life for a curious public back in England.
"These pictures are fascinating because they reveal a world that most artists of that period ignored," said Betty Yao, who has organised the exhibition that opens in Beijing next week. "Most material from this late Qing era is stuffy, formal and posed, but Thomson's work is full of life."
What is doubly remarkable, added Mrs Yao, was that Thomson captured such intimate moments while using cumbersome equipment and glass-plate negatives that needed to be coated with emulsion before exposure.
"He was the original photojournalist, and he used incredible persistence and hard work to get precisely the pictures he wanted. He never gave up," she said.
Among the images that testify to that persistence is a rare picture of a woman's bare, bound foot. Thomson later admitted, in perhaps an early example of "chequebook journalism", that he had paid the woman "handsomely" to expose her withered foot.
In other pictures, Thomson captured the sorry inmates of a "foundling" hospital where orphaned children were offered for free to "respectable people", and a public street slide-show where the public could see images from exotic and faraway places often to gasps of amazement.
When he returned to London, Thomson used his pictures to illustrate talks and lectures of his own, which earned him the moniker "China" Thomson.
An early herald of globalisation, Thomson recognised that the days of China's isolation from the world were passing, observing that "through the agency of steam and telegraphy, [China] is being brought day by day into closer relationship with ourselves".
Shortly before he died in 1921, Thomson offered to sell his glass negatives to Henry Wellcome, the pharmacist-philanthropist and keen collector, and it is from the archives of the Wellcome Library in London that the images have been taken, many to be exhibited in public for the first time.
The full report can be found here.Read more…
Francis Hodgson, Sotheby's head of photographs in London has left the company. A company spokesperson was unable to explain the reasons for his departure but did confirm that the the auction scheduled for 19 May would go ahead with Jocelyn Phillips managing the sale. Hodgson's last sale, held in autumn 2008, had disappointing results, reflecting the global financial clash. Sotheby's also announced this week that they were further reducing lots below $5000 to continue focusing on the top end of the market.
Hodgson joined Sotheby's after a long involvement in photography. He worked as the manager of the print room at the Photographers’ Gallery in London and later founded and directed Zwemmer Fine Photographs, a gallery specialised in photography, and has worked with several other galleries.
Hodgson was also director of photography at Photonica, a major stock image library, where he was responsible for opening up the stock photography market to more artistic photography than had been considered possible. He was also at one time director of content at Eyestorm, the online art dealership. He has acted as representative and agent to photographers, and has been a writer and broadcaster on photography for many years.
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The National Media Museum is advertising for a web developer at a salary of £23,759.
Award winning, visionary and truly unique, the National Media Museum embraces photography, film, television, radio and the web. Part of the NMSI family of museums, with a world-leading online presence, we aim to engage, inspire and educate through comprehensive collections, innovative education programmes and a powerful yet sensitive approach to contemporary issues.
You’ll help us enhance our online presence by maintaining and developing the website. Working with designers, content specialists and stakeholders at all levels of the organisation, you will use your creativity, cultural vision and strong technical abilities to help us deliver a truly compelling user experience.
With a good track record of developing websites in a Microsoft environment, you will be at ease with object-oriented languages, content management systems, databases and XML technologies. You should also know how web technologies relate to design, content and information architecture. If you can combine this technical expertise with good communication, teamwork and organisational skills, you’ll have exactly what it takes to help us improve our online offering.
Contract Type: Fixed Term 2 years, full time (35 hours)
Closing Date: 23rd April 2009
To apply, please write with full CV and covering letter to: The HR Department, National Media Museum, Bradford BD1 1NQ or email: recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/job/845644/web-developer/?grse=grse_1&email=jobsbyemail&lijbeid=9866879Read more…
Colin Harding, curator of photographic technology at the National Media Museum, has a book due out in June 2009 which compiles a series of 75 articles originally written for the British Black and White Photography magazine. The cameras, which are sourced from the National Media Museum in Bradford, are arranged in chronological order, with a chapter for each era and a double-page spread devoted to each camera. Each spread has a large photograph of the camera in question, smaller ilustrations of variants, a potted history giving an insight into the camera's development and a succinct biography and photograph of the inventor where appropriate.
The book is: 192 pages and hardbound. It is available for £25 and is published by Photographers' Institute Press. A review will appear here after publication.
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The Scarborough Evening news reports....Images taken by celebrated Victorian photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe that have never been seen before have been restored to their former glory.
The Sutcliffe Gallery, in Flowergate, Whitby, owns the rights to Sutcliffe's 1,600 images, which depict people and places around the Whitby area. Now the gallery owner, Mike Shaw, has painstakingly restored 200 of his photographs in time for the gallery's 50th anniversary.
Mr Shaw has spent years restoring the images, which were taken between 1875 and 1910, working on each one by hand using computer software.
Prints are now available for sale at the Sutcliffe Gallery. They range from Whitby coastguards on exercise, and Cooper's saddlery shop, to views of Robin Hood's Bay and Staintondale Hunt.
* When Sutcliffe took his photographs he did not keep a record of what he had taken. The Sutcliffe Gallery has identified many of the pictures which now hang there, but there is little information about the "new" photos. If you can help with identification of people or some of the more unusual settings drop into the gallery in Flowergate.
For more information visit www.sutcliffe-gallery.co.uk or call (01947) 602239.
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Frances Lincoln publishers have announced a new book called A Village Lost and Found by Brian May and Elena Vidal. The book is scheduled for publication on 8 October at an online price of £35. Brian May's painstaking excavation of exquisite stereo photographs from the dawn of photography transports the reader back in time to the lost world of an Oxfordshire village of the 1850s.
At the book's heart is a reproduction of T R Williams' 1856 series of stereo photographs Scenes In Our Village. Using the viewer supplied with this book, the reader is absorbed profoundly into a village idyll of the early Victorian era: the subjects seem to be on the point of suddenly bursting back into life and continuing with their daily rounds.
The book is also something of a detective story, as the village itself was only identified in 2003 as Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire, and the authors' research constantly reveals further clues about the society of those distant times, historic photographic techniques, and the life of the enigmatic Williams himself, who appears, Hitchcock-like, from time to time in his own photographs.
The product of more than 30 years research, the mixture of social, photographic and biographical detail is handled with admirable lightness of touch, belying the depths of scholarship which underpin this ambitious enterprise.
Publication Details below and here:
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 9780711230392
Format: 310 mm x 235 mm (12.2 inches x 9.3 inches)
Binding: Hardback
256 pages
560 photographs in colour and black and white
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The British Journal of Photography's blog reports more on the NMeM's London presence and takes a little further the comment posted here in January. The BJP notes that three spaces have been allocated at London's Science Museum: one for large scale exhibitions, one for smaller scale exhibitions and a retail space, and will open in 2011.
The museum will not confirm details but hope to make an annoucement later this year. The BJP's blog report can be read here and a fuller report will be in next week's issue of the magazine.
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The two shortlists have been announced for the 2009 And/or Book Awards, the UK’s leading prizes for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image. A winner from each category will share a prize fund of £10,000. They will be announced during an awards ceremony at the BFI Southbank, London, on Thursday 23 April.
The shortlisted titles for the 2009 And/or Photography Book Award are:
• Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900 by Corey Keller, Jennifer Tucker, Tom Gunning and Maren Gröning (Yale University Press)
• From Somewhere to Nowhere: China’s Internal Migrants by Andreas Seibert (Lars Müller)
• Susan Meiselas: In History edited by Kristen Lubbin (Steidl)
• The World from my Front Porch by Larry Towell (Chris Boot)
The shortlisted titles for the 2009 And/or Moving Image Book Award are:
• Photography and Cinema by David Campany (Reaktion Books)
• Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and the Early Cinema by Dan Streible (University of California Press)
• Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor by Dan North (Wallflower Press)
Over 150 titles were submitted across the two categories for the awards, which have been narrowed down to a final seven books by the two judging panels chaired by Martin Parr (Photography) and Mike Dibb (Moving Image). The judges were looking for works which make a significant contribution to the understanding of photography and/or the moving image and which use photographs as more than a means of illustration.
The photography shortlist includes: a book which steps back to a time when the new visual technologies of photography, x-rays and microscopes captivated scientists and the public alike; a photo essay by Andreas Seibert investigating the lives of China’s internal economic migrants; an in depth look at Susan Meiselas’ esteemed career in socially engaged documentary photography; Larry Towell’s personal photo album comparing his family life in rural Ontario with his photojournalist work the world beyond. Martin Parr comments: “It is reassuring that despite the internet and the credit crunch, so much effort and care goes into the making of these books, all of which reflect the application and passion of individual photographers or curators.”
The moving image shortlist includes: David Campany’s missing history of the connections and influences between photography and cinema; a revelatory investigation into the importance of boxing films in early cinema by Dan Steible; Dan North’s exploration of the essential role of illusion to the process of movie making. Mike Dibb comments: “When I first worked in cinema there were so few books available on the subject, now I am amazed that there are so many. We all agreed on the shortlisted titles though, which all demonstrate insightful academic analysis, written clearly and without jargon.”
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Note has already been made of this exhibition under 'Events'. A review has appeared in The Independent newspaper on 25 March and written by Hannah Duguid and a small part is reproduced below. The exhibition is open until 19 April.
It took Thomas Annan three years to take 31 photographs inside the city centre slums of Glasgow during the late 1860s. Only rarely did the pale Scottish sun provide the light he needed for his large plate camera. Conditions may have been appalling but Annan very subtly tells us that the people were not.
In Close No 101, High Street, Glasgow, a pair of trousers hangs from a washing line strapped across the street. They are tatty – there's a hole in the leg – but they are clean. It was difficult to get water in the slums yet the people are able to uphold the Victorian ideal that cleanliness is next to godliness.
The ghostly face of a young boy – his face blurred by the long exposure – peeps out from a shabby doorway. Child mortality was high, and he is a reminder of all the dead children, but there is hope for him: the street leads down towards an opening filled with light. It is an exit; there is a way out.
The photograph belongs to the Scottish National Galleries, which is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its photography collection...
The full article can be seen here:
25 years of photography: Celebrating the anniversary of the national collection, National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh from The Independent
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The British Library has put online an exhibition of photographically illustrated books. The development of photographically illustrated books parallels the explosion in communications technology during the 19th century. In a period of unprecedented advances in science, exploration, travel, tourism and industry, photography provided an exciting, innovative and accurate alternative to conventional methods of book illustration, such as woodcuts, etchings and engravings. Click here to take a look.Read more…
An unparalleled collection of documents and photographs charting the development of photography from a gentlemen’s pursuit to a mass popular pastime has been donated to the British Library and De Montfort University.
The Kodak Ltd Archive, dates back more than 120 years and represents a treasure trove of primary material for historians and researchers of the history of photography.
Kodak Ltd’s British company archives have been handed to the British Library and its research department’s library of important photographic journals to De Montfort University in Leicester.
The earliest items in the archive date back to 1885, when the Kodak Company – a subsidiary of the US-based Eastman Kodak Company – opened its first UK offices in Soho Square, London. It adds to the already outstanding photographic collections of the British Library, which hold around half a million photographs dating from the birth of the medium up to the present and which will be staging a major exhibition showcasing these collections in October 2009.
The archive includes financial ledgers dating back to the company’s earliest years in the UK, advertising photographs and original line drawings used in advertising campaigns, Kodak publications including catalogues, newsletters and calendars, correspondence and minutes of meetings, photographs of buildings and employees and research reports dating back to 1928. Books and journals from the archive, which are largely duplicates of items already held by the British Library, are to be donated to De Montfort University, Leicester, which is this year launching a Masters degree in Photographic History and Practice.
The archive was formed in 1977, when the holdings of the Kodak Museum (established 1927) were divided between items of significance to the history of photography generally and those relating to the history of the Kodak Company (The Kodak Ltd Archive). The former items – including photographs, photographic apparatus, products and processes – were donated to the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 1985.
John Falconer, Head of Visual Materials at the British Library, said, “The Library is delighted to acquire such a significant collection as the Kodak Ltd Archive – which we will make available to researchers in our St Pancras Reading Rooms in perpetuity. It will form a unique resource for the study of the growth and development of photography as a professional tool and popular amusement from the 1890s onwards.”
Chairman & Managing Director of Kodak Limited, Julian Baust said “The earliest items in the Kodak Ltd Archive date from around 1885 when the first Kodak offices were opened in Soho Square. The Archive contains some excellent photographs from Kodak’s history. Kodak Limited is very excited to be relocating our valuable archive over to The British Library, where it will be available to historians and researchers alike.”
Dr Gerard Moran, Dean of DMU’s Art and Design Faculty, said: “De Montfort’s growing reputation as an International Centre in this area of study has been boosted by this generous donation. Postgraduate students at De Montfort University’s Centre for Photographic History will benefit greatly from having immediate access in Leicester to this tremendous resource. I’m grateful to colleagues at Kodak, the British Library and here in the University who have worked very hard to make this happen.”
Amateur Photographer magazine has also run a news story on this with different information. Click here to see.
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Harry Hammond, described as the first great photographer of British rock'n'roll has died aged 88. Hammond chronicled the first decade of that music up to and including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and photographed every major American star who visited Britain.
A number of exhibitions of his work, including one at the Victoria and Albert Museum, were held from the 1980s. The V&A also acquired his archive.
A full obituary is available here.
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The National Media Museum, Bradford, and National Railway Museum, York, - both part of the National Museum of Science and Industry - are recruiting a Senior Development Executive - Trusts & Public Bodies at a salary of £28,000pa and located in Bardford.
The role is described: A number of exciting capital projects are currently underway at both museums and your role will be to identify and apply to appropriate grant giving bodies to help us reach our aim.
You will help us achieve our goal by contributing to the development and delivery of an effective fundraising strategy. Working with the Head of Development in the North, you will agree on funding priorities, develop action plans and research future prospects, as well as monitor KPI’s and report on progress. You will also build strong relationships with donors, supporters and strategic partners and lead on approaches to trusts, foundations and public bodies.
With a good track record of securing funds in a similar environment, you already know how to maximise opportunities, write funding applications and follow relevant legislation. You’re an experienced project manager too, with the ability to meet deadlines, engage important supporters and make commercially sound decisions. So you’ll quickly help us secure important funding that improves our cultural offering.
Details are available by clicking here. The deadline for applications is 27 March 2009.
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The collections held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, are among the richest in the world for the study of polar environments. Work began in April 2007 on the Freeze Frame project to capture and preserve its archive of historical images in digital form. This launched on 4 March 2009 and includes some of the most iconic polar images by Herbert Ponting, through to daguerreotypes and modern prints and slides.Click here to visit the website.
Over 20,000 photographic negatives and positives from 1845-1960, representing some of the most important visual resources for research into British and international polar exploration are represented. The work is still on-going so, for example, some of the earliest material from 1845 has yet to be added to the site. The digitisation of related documents - information from personal journals and official reports from expeditions on which these photographs were taken - will provide historical and cultural context for the images.
The Freeze Frame project is developing an online database of freely available visual and textual resources to support learning, teaching and research into topics relating to the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration and science. Through a series of interpretative web pages and e-learning resources the project will provide access to hidden collections for all educational levels. We will encourage users to discover polar environments through the eyes of those explorers and scientists who dared to go into the last great wildernesses on earth.
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De Montfort University, Leicester, has launched the course brochure for it's new full-time MA course titled Photographic History and Practice which starts in October 2009. The university is currently recruiting students for what is the only course of it's type within Europe or the United States. A scholarship is available to fund, in part, one place. Full details are due to be announced shortly and will be posted here.
DMU has been active over recent years in making four online photographic databases available which have received international recognition. As exclusively announced the university has been given Kodak's research library which includes nineteenth and twentieth century journals which will further augment the primary source material available for students and for further research. The course brochure can can downloaded as a PDF by clicking here.
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The National Media Museum has praised its collaboration with Flickr, the online photograph sharing website...Joanna Drag reported in the British Journal of Photography.
The full article is available by clicking here. Part of the article is reproduced below:
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Initially started by the US Library of Congress and Flickr in January 2008, the project aims to give the public easier access to thousands of archived photographs while helping the library to categorise them through Flickr’s photo tagging system, in effect harnessing the power of social networks. The initiative was expanded to other institutions such as the National Media Museum in Bradford, who joined The Commons in August 2008.
‘Internally, we felt that the National Media Museum, with its web remit, needed to be in the vanguard of museums on the “social web”, and The Commons fulfilled this aim perfectly,’ says senior online marketing executive for the museum, Peer Lawther. ‘We didn’t want it to be a purely commercial or promotional opportunity but rather an opportunity for us to utilise the vast curatorial knowledge we hold and to use The Commons to show some of the breadth of our holdings.’
Since joining the project, the three initial groups of images made available online by the museum has received over 400,000 views. The groups consist of Peter Henry Emerson’s ‘Pictures from a life in Fields and Fen’ (1887), a selection of Kodak No.1 circular photos (c.1890) and a set of ‘Spirit’ photographs taken by William Hope (c.1920).
‘The Commons has confounded our expectations,’ says Lawther. ‘We’ve been featured on hundreds of blogs, “friended” thousands of fellow photographers and chatted with countless fans about our work. In showing discrete selections from our collection we’ve received a huge amount of goodwill from the community.’
To find photographs or to get more information visit flickr.com/commonsRead more…
The National Media Museum in Bradford has shown an increase of 4 per cent in visitors. The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions survey showed 745,857 people visited the museum in 2008 compared with 2007. The museum, which has had free admission since it first opened in 1983, has seen a gradual increase in visitor numbers over recent years as new galleries have been opened and existing ones refurbished, reversing a previous decline.
A remarkable collection of autochromes, photographs and diascopes by Mary Olive Edis Balsworth (1876-1955), whose self-portrait is shown right, is being offered at auction on 5 March 2009. All of the items have been at Edis's studio and house in Sheringham since her death under the ownership of Cyril Nunn and, until now, rarely seen. The autochomes include a number of rare Canadian scenes.
Nunn died last year and recently Olive's collection of Sheringham and Norfolk photographs and autochromes was acquired by Cromer Museum where they are due to be put on public display later this year. Many of these images were reproduced in Face to Face – Sheringham, Norfolk: The Remarkable Story of Photographers Olive Edis & Cyril Nunn, by Alan Childs, Cyril Nunn and Ashley Sampson (Halsgrove, 2005). A few of the Canadian images are reproduced in black and white and some were reproduced in colour in the e-newsletter for The Photographic Historical Society of Canada (March 2006).
The same auction features material from the estate of Robert 'Bob' Lassam, the former curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock. The material from Lassam's estate includes photographs from the Kodak exhibitions he helped arrange as well as cameras.
The catalogue is available on line at http://www.dominic-winter.co.uk/. The sale takes place at 5 March at 11am.
Edis was born in 1876, her father was Dr. Arthur Wellesley Edis, professor of gynaecology at UCH and her mother was Mary Edis (neé Murray, the sister of John Murray.) They lived at 22 Wimpole Street, London, where Arthur had a medical practice. Olive had twin sisters, four years younger than her, Katherine and Emmeline. Olive's great uncle was Dr. John Murray (1809-1898), a surgeon with the Bengal Medical Service. He photographed Mughal architecture in India, making some 600 images, often 18 x 14 inches (salted paper prints from paper & collodion negs.), many of which are now in the BL collection. He retired to Sheringham in 1871. His descendents sold their collection at Sotheby's in 1999.
Olive photographed John Murray's daughter Caroline (said to have been her first photograph) in 1900. In 1893, when Olive was 17, her father died and in 1905, Olive & Katherine, as partners, opened a studio at 39 Church Street, Sheringham. Olive used only natural light when making photographs. Her printing, first done by her sister Katherine and later by Lilian Page, included platinotype, sepia platinotype or autochrome. In 1910, Olive's photographs were regularly appearing in the Illustrated London News and in 1912 she started making autochrome images. She became an RPS member in 1913 and in that year won a medal for her autochrome portraits in the RPS exhibition. In 1914 she was elected FRPS and designed an autochrome viewer, known as a diascope, which she patented (GB17132).
Although her income came from her work as a studio portraitist in March 1919 she was commissioned by the National (later Imperial) War Museum to photograph the work of British women in France & Flanders and, at the same time, made deeply moving images of the desolation of war. In 1920 she was asked to undertake a commission to make advertising photographs for the Canadian Pacific Railway and did the work during July to November. The plates were exhibited at the 1921 Toronto Fair, and at the Canadian Pacific Offices in London in 1922, but apart from a few 'seconds' offered here there is no trace of the main body of work. These are probably the earliest known colour images of Western Canada.
In 1928, when she was 52, Olive married Edwin Galsworthy a solicitor and director of Barclays bank. This family connection opened doors into society and she photographed many people of national importance. Olive and Edwin had a residence in 32 Ladbroke Square, London and in Sheringham they moved to a new house in South Street. Olive extended her business to include the printing and sale of real photographic postcards. In 1951 Olive exhibited photographs of fisherman at Sheringham. She died in 1955.
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Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection – and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.
The book will be available in March 2009, 224pp, 200 colour illustrations, £9.99.
National Galleries of Scotland
ISBN: 978 1 906270 20 9
The authors:
Dr Sara Stevenson is Chief Curator of the Scottish National Photography Collection, National Galleries of Scotland
Dr Duncan Forbes is Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland. A nineteenth-century specialist, he also writes on aspects of contemporary photography, with recent articles and reviews appearing in the Oxford Art Journal, History Workshop Journal, Portfolio, History of Photography and Third Text. Recent curatorial projects include Joanna Kane’s ‘Somnambulists’ and Dieter Appelt’s ‘Forth Bridge – Cinema/Metric Space’. He is currently finishing a book on the early Scottish photographer John Muir Wood, titled Holding the World Together Within.
Read more…
The collections held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, are among the richest in the world for the study of polar environments. Work began in April 2007 on the Freeze Frame project to capture and preserve its archive of historical images in digital form. This launched on 4 March 2009 and includes some of the most iconic polar images by Herbert Ponting, through to daguerreotypes and modern prints and slides.Click here to visit the website.
Over 20,000 photographic negatives and positives from 1845-1960, representing some of the most important visual resources for research into British and international polar exploration are represented. The work is still on-going so, for example, some of the earliest material from 1845 has yet to be added to the site. The digitisation of related documents - information from personal journals and official reports from expeditions on which these photographs were taken - will provide historical and cultural context for the images.
The Freeze Frame project is developing an online database of freely available visual and textual resources to support learning, teaching and research into topics relating to the history of Arctic and Antarctic exploration and science. Through a series of interpretative web pages and e-learning resources the project will provide access to hidden collections for all educational levels. We will encourage users to discover polar environments through the eyes of those explorers and scientists who dared to go into the last great wildernesses on earth.
