After showing at the Getty in Los Angeles from 2 February-6 June 6 2010A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans will be on view at the National Media Museum in Bradford, from 24 September 2010–20 February 2011. The exhibition explores the artist’s images of medieval cathedrals in England and France, rarely seen landscapes of the English countryside, and intimate portraits of Evans’s family and friends.
Through a deep understanding of his subject and a delicate handling of light, mass, and volume, Frederick H. Evans (British, 1853–1943) created photographs of medieval cathedrals that capture the innate spirituality of each stone building. Evans began photographing cathedrals in the mid-1880s. He was able to create magnificent examples of light and shadow through the interior views of historic sites such as Ely Cathedral, York Minster, and Westminster Abbey. More than simply recording their physical features, Evans sought an emotional connection with the spaces he photographed, aiming for a “record of an emotion” rather than a piece of topography. His interiors are often dramatic renderings, paying homage to the inner sanctity of the site while also exploiting the architectonic elements.
He described the cathedral photographs as studies since he approached each building in a methodical, measured way. In documenting these sites, Evans stayed for several weeks studying them from early morning to dusk, pacing around naves and cloisters and recording—first as notations in a notebook and later as photographic images on paper—the changing effects of light as it illuminated dimly lit interiors at various times of day. Choosing to work in platinum for its tonal range, Evans was a purist who did not believe in manipulating the negatives. He advocated, “Photography is photography; and in its purity and innocence is far too uniquely valuable and beautiful to be spoilt by making it imitate something else.” His expert craftsmanship extended to the presentation of the actual prints, which were carefully mounted onto different colored paper supports or featured a series of applied borders.
One of the many highlights of Evans’s architectural photographs is a small selection of prints documenting Kelmscott Manor, home of William Morris, the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. These photographs, central to the Getty holdings, are arguably among Evans’s finest pieces. Although similar to the grand cathedrals in evoking a kind of reverence, the images are much more intimate and reflective. Starting with distant views of the house from the river, Evans leads the viewer across the site, into the house itself, and through the various chambers. He studied the location and considered the architectural space in a series of views that sought to capture the soul of the place, culminating in photographs of the light-filled attic.
Other highlights include A Sea of Steps, one of his most recognizable and appreciated photographs of Wells Cathedral. Evans made several attempts over a number of years to successfully capture the wave-like motion of the worn, stone steps. Today this particular image is among the most renowned architectural renderings in the history of photography. Although lauded for his architectural photographs, Evans was also accomplished in the areas of portraiture, landscape, and photomicrography (photography using a microscope), and he brought to each subject the same intensity that characterizes his cathedral images. A small selection of his photomicrographs will be included in a rare display of the glass lantern slides (photographic images on glass) that Evans used for his public lectures.
From 1890 to 1898, Evans ran a bookshop in London. During this time he came into contact with various literary figures, and over the years many of them sat in front of his camera. Included in the exhibition are portraits of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who shared with Evans an enthusiasm for the pianola (automatic player piano), and the young Aubrey Beardsley, whose graphic talents Evans is credited with having discovered. In his portraits Evans attempted to evoke the sitter’s personality. Using a Dallmeyer-Bergheim lens, because it afforded a greater degree of softness in rendering facial features, he tended to isolate the sitter with little background detail or props to convey their psychological presence.
Also on display in the exhibition are photographs by Evans that capture the beautiful landscapes of the English countryside. Evans began making landscapes in the early 1880s when he was seeking respite from health problems and found himself traveling often to the Lake District in the north of England. His numerous trips to local woodland areas in Surrey resulted in photographs of majestic trees that recalled the soaring columns of cathedrals.
“For Evans the work was clearly an emotional enjoyment that is revealed in this exhibition of his life and work,” says Anne Lyden, associate curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. “He attempted to capture what he called ‘a record of an emotion,’ by invoking the potent symbolism of these awe-inspiring spaces.” In Bradford Curator of Photographs Philippa Wright has been responsible for the show.
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The finest Stereoscope to appear in the last 120 years is the claim made for the British-made and designed Owl stereoscope. It was originally produced to accompany Brian May and Elena Vidal's book on the 1850s photographer T. R. Williams A Village Lost and Found. The Owl is now available to purchase separately and in a range of colours. It works well with traditional stereoscards.
Click here to see and read more and purchase: http://www.londonstereo.com/shop_home3.htmlRead more…
For those fortunate enough to be in Glasgow before 15th January there is a chance for a rare treat - an opportunity to see the photographs of Margaret Watkins. Born in Canada in the late 19th century Watkins was successful both commercially and artistically as well as being highly regarded by her fellow photographers in New York during the Stieglitz/Steichen era. As the images on view show she was not only a fine portraitist but had a fine eye for still life compositions, many of which pre-date the more acclaimed work of Paul Strand and Edward Weston. Though she did not appear to have printed much of her later work Robert Burns has made an excellent job of printing up a number of her 1930s/40s Glasgow photos.
Her personal story, too long to retell here, much of which comes to us via Joe Mulholland, her neighbour and confidante in Glasgow is the stuff of legend.
As Michelin would say in their famous Green Guides "Worth The Journey"!!
Donald Stewart.
WatkinsPosterMk2161.psdRead more…
This is an international two day conference on early photographers and their studio practices in Asia, and cross-cultural exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to explore the photographic portrait in the first hundred years of the medium in Asia. It intends to promote inter-regional comparative analyses between scholars working in diverse cultural and national contexts. The symposium will not only analyse photographic representations of Asian peoples for the global market, but also consider the domestic adoptions and adaptations of the visual technology for local forms of self-representation and cultural practice. It will also consider the studio photograph as collaboration between photographer and sitter, and the diverse performed identities invoked in photographic sittings.
Possible topics include:
* Early Asian photographers and their studio practices
* The exhibition and reception of photographic portfolios
* Collected portfolios of Asian peoples
* Photographers of the Asian diaspora active in California, Australia and elsewhere.
* Photographic portraiture and identity
* Cross-cultural photographic exchanges within the Asia-Pacific region
* Asian photographic archives and their histories
Presented by the Research School of Humanities, Australian National University and the National Gallery of Australia.
http://www.asia-pacific-photography.com/http://www.asia-pacific-photography.com/gael09/FacingAsia-Call-for-Papers.pdfRead more…
The National Media Museum in Bradford is committed to raising the national profile and enhancing public perceptions of West Yorkshire as a cultural destination and is seeking a Development Manager to support this,
The National Media Museum, part of the NMSI Museums Group, exists to promote an understanding and appreciation of photography, film, television, radio and the web. The Museum is looking for a skilled Development Manager to lead its fundraising function. The successful candidate will be joining a well established development operation and will have the opportunity to take it to the next level of success; securing income for the Museum’s ongoing cultural programme and planned capital developments.
Closing Date: Friday, 27 November 2009.
For further information on this role, please visit www.richmond-associates.com or contact Nina Chu at Richmond Associates: nchu@richmond-associates.com or +44 (0)20 8392 6654.
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Campden & District Historical and Archæological Society has been award an Awards for All grant to bring to life the photographs of Jesse Taylor, the photographer in Chipping Campden from 1896 to 1938. Working in partnership with Gloucestershire Archives, CADHAS is conserving and scanning 1500, mainly half-plate, glass plates depicting of all aspects of life in the town and surrounding villages.
Jesse Taylor was a typical high street photographer taking photographs of everything, from formal family groups, to informal shots of children at play, interiors of houses, exterior shots of well-known Cotswold buildings – and events of all kinds, from football matches to the visit of King Edward Vll in 1905 and Campden’s celebrations for the 1935 Jubilee. Taylor had a shop but seemingly no studio - all the photographs were taken elsewhere. Many of the photos can be matched with accounts in the local paper and with oral history recordings which were started in the 1980s.
An exhibition is planned for 23-24 January 2010 in Chipping Campden Town Hall, where a selection of Taylor's photographs will be displayed alongside the results of the competition to bridge 'life today and life 100 yrs ago'. There will be biographical information about Jesse Taylor's life and family.
See: www.chippingcampdenhistory.org.ukRead more…
A resurgent RPS Historical Group has launched a new brochure outlining the remit of the Group and highlighting its activities and aims, as well as emphasising its close links with the RPS Collection now located at the National Media Museum in Bradford. A pdf version of the brochure can be downloaded by clicking here, and there is more on the Group at: http://www.rps.org/group/historical. The Group publishes The PhotoHistorian and arranges meetings and visits to collections of interest in the UK and Europe.
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William Henry Fox Talbot is usually remembered as a photographic inventor and influential early voice on photographic aesthetics, but like many of his contemporaries Talbot’s interests covered a wide range of intellectual endeavours. This two-day interdisciplinary workshop will bring together historians of science, art historians, and practitioners of the many scholarly fields to which Talbot contributed. Featuring new research based on Talbot's manuscript collection, recently made available at the British Library, the workshop will present the opportunity to explore Talbot's participation in the wider networks and institutions of Victorian science and scholarship, and to rethink the relation between photography and these other fields.
The workshop is being organised by Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) in Cambridge from Thursday, 24 June to Saturday, 26 June 2010.
Convenors: Mirjam Brusius (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge and the British Library), Chitra Ramalingam (Mellon/ACLS Fellow, CRASSH, University of Cambridge), Katrina Dean (Curator for the History of Science, British Library).
Further details of the programme will be available in due course, in the meantime for administrative enquiries please contact: mm405@cam.ac.uk.
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London design consultancy Carter Wong has been appointed to design an integrated signage system for the National Media Museum in Bradford, having come through a two-month tender process, put out by museum group NMSI. The NMSI invited the group to tender in August following work it carried out for an orientation map at the Science Museum.
Ten groups applied to the tender and five were shortlisted, according to Carter Wong creative director Phil Carter, who said, ‘A new signage system is needed through the foyer and across seven floors. Clarity and simplicity’ are needed within the space, which also houses three cinemas, an Imax and the museum. The Museum holds unique collections and offers fantastic visitor interaction but currently doesn’t help its audience make the most of their trip. We look forward to the challenge of elevating this space to become one of the UK’s most enjoyable and inspiring museum experiences.”', he added.
The consultancy’s proposal has included a review of the way visitors navigate their way to the museum, both from Bradford railway station and through the institution’s website. Three-dimensional design and lighting are also being reconsidered within the space and Carter expects to work with ‘other specialists’.
Private functions are hosted within the building at night, often making use of the cinema spaces, according to Carter, who says, ‘There’s a dual ambition for the museum to create a day and evening environment, so we’ll need to think about things like softer lighting and how to engage both types of customer.’
The signage is expected to be completed ‘early next year’, said Carter.
See: http://www.designweek.co.uk/carter-wong-works-on-national-media-museum-signage/3006077.articleRead more…
The British Library formally opened it's landmark photography exhibition Points of View last night at a well-attended private view. The exhibiton marks the librarys first ever photographic exhibition. It opens to the public from 9.30am this morning.
At a risk of running out of superlatives Points of View is quite simply the best exhibition that the library has ever put on. It is a large show, but never feels unapproachable. It is well designed and laid out and presents a wealth of the library's treasures. It covers many themes from the photographic history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and will please the specialist historian as well as be accessible for the non-specialist.Although it includes a great deal of material the exhibition does not feel crowded. In fact, I left wanting to see more. The show includes wonderful material that hasn't been seen in other exhibitions from the library's collections supplemented with early cameras and equipment from the National Media Museum. I suspect from what I know of the library'c collections there are many more future shows like this of equal standard, or perhaps more usefully more shows which take some of the themes and approach them in more depth. There are a few minor niggles: there are a couple of areas that look empty and the Kodak section at the end feels like a last-minute addition but these are very minor points and do not detract from the overall exhibition.
Make the effort to see it. This is simply the best photography exhibition in London at the moment and the best for many years. You will not be disappointed. Accompanying the exhibition itself is a wonderful series of public lectures and events, a book by curators John Falconer and Louise Hyde and plenty of souvenirs in the bookshop.
I cannot praise the exhibition enough. I, for one, will be going back several times to re-view it.
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Further to an earlier posting reporting a series of lectures on early projection and the magic lantern (click here) full details of the programme have been published. The programme can be downloaded by clicking here: Pepper'sGhost_II_.pdfRead more…
At the international launch yesterday, Brian May and Elena Vidal presented their book A Village Lost and Found, which brings together the complete annotated collection of the original 1850s stereoscopic photograph series Scenes in Our Village by T. R. Williams. A full report and review of the book will appear here shortly. The launch was held at Hinton Waldrist, the village where T. R. Williams originally made the series of photographs.
For the young Brian May, a fascination with 3-D picture cards given away in Weetabix packets led to a lifelong passion for ‘stereoscopic’ images. Soon May was taking sequential pictures with his Woolworth’s 2/6d camera and making pairs of sketches that transformed into 3-D scenes when he ‘relaxed [his] eyes and let the images float together’. Later, he scoured antique shops and auctions for stereoscopic photographs and the ‘viewers’ that enabled him to see the images in all their glory. It was in this way that May discovered the work of Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871), who, in the 1850s, had created a series of 59 stereo cards depicting life in a small English village – Scenes in Our Village.
In A Village Lost and Found, the product of more than 30 years’ research, May and his co-author, photographic historian Elena Vidal, present an exhaustive study of Scenes in Our Village. The village, whose identity was lost for 150 years, was only recently rediscovered by May, in 2003, still in existence in Oxfordshire. The complete series of images is collected here for the first time in living memory, along with extensive related material, including many corresponding photographs of the village as it is today.
The OWL Stereoscope Viewer
Their research is amazingly in-depth, but the book is utterly readable, and the pictures leap into glorious 3-D, when viewed in the new focusing stereoscope viewer, named the OWL, which May has designed and produced, to bring the stereos to life, and also folds neatly into the slip-case of the book.
"A Village Lost and Found is a significant contribution to our understanding of photographic history and the Victorian period. These three dimensional studies of rural village life are so evocative that one can almost smell the new-mown hay, and feel the warmth of the very sun that illuminated these scenes 150 years ago. To quote the 1850s London Stereoscopic Company's maxim, "No home should be without one!" - Roger Taylor, Professor of Photographic History, De Montfort University, Leicester.
The book gives an exceptional insight into everyday village life at the time - with a woman at her spinning wheel, the blacksmith outside his smithy, three men at the grindstone sharpening a tool, the villagers in the fields, bringing in the harvest as well as often taking time to enjoy a good gossip.
In every case the original verse which accom-panied the view is reproduced, enriching the picture by revealing the inner thoughts of the subjects, or transforming it into a comment on Life, Nature, or the Spiritual World. In addition, May and Vidal have researched and annotated all the views, revealing another layer of meaning, by exploring the history of these real characters, this idyllic village and its links with the present day. The result is a powerfully atmospheric and touching set of photographs.
A Village Lost and Found provides an extraordinary insight into English society in the mid-Victorian era, explains historic photographic techniques and explores the life of the enigmatic T. R. Williams, who appears, from time to time, Hitchcock-like, in his own photographs.
"This is a picture book: an annotated book of photographs which tells a unique story – a story that has fascinated me for more than half a lifetime." - Brian May
Biographical information:
Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871) began his photographic career in the early 1840s as an apprentice to the renowned photographer and inventor, Antoine Claudet, where it is said he excelled in the art of tinting photographic images. Shortly after the Great Exhibition he opened his first photographic studio in Lambeth, London where he specialised in making stereoscopic daguerreotype portraits. He also started to produce stereo still lifes and artistic compositions, and in 1856 he published, with the London Stereoscopic Company, the First Series which included the launching of HMS Marlborough in 1855 - a forerunner of press photography as we know it today. His second series published by the LSC was the Crystal Palace set which included the inauguration of Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854.
His third series was Scenes in Our Village, perhaps his most defining work, and completely original in concept. T. R. Williams’s stereo portraits where so popular that his fame reached the ears of the Royal Household, and on 21 November 1856 he was commissioned to photograph Princess Victoria on her 16th birthday. Over the coming years, he took more Royal portraits including one for Princess Victoria’s wedding. At the end of the 1850s, the stereoscopic craze reached huge proportions. Views were produced, printed and published at an almost alarming rate, sometimes at the cost of quality. True to his standards and disenchanted by the turn of events, Williams decided to cease producing stereo cards; he felt they had become vulgarised by imitation. He still continued photographing highly covetable stereoscopic portraits for a select clientele, but also produced the ‘cartes de visite’ and whole-plate vignetted heads and busts, which earned him accolades at photographic exhibitions. Through his work, Williams is now widely recognised as pivotal in the history of stereoscopic photography.
Brian May, CBE, PhD, FRAS, is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer. Brian had to postpone a career in astronomy when Queen's popularity first exploded, but, after an incendiary 30 years as a rock musician, was able to return to astrophysics in 2006, when he completed his PhD, and co-authored his first book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Stereography has been a life-long passion for Brian.
Elena Vidal has worked as a conservator of paintings in Florence, Spain and the UK. She graduated as an MA in Photographic Conservation at the Camberwell School of Arts, and has subsequently specialised in the history of stereoscopic photography. Since meeting Brian May in 1997, Elena has collaborated with him on a long-term study of Thomas Richard Williams, and has published a number of articles.
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Terry King writes...As people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the ability of digital photography to meet their creative needs, there is a corresponding revival of interest in the craftsmanship and the aesthetic of the hands-on or alternative photography included my Wedgwood to Bromoil course of workshops. Examples of processes included in the workshop can be found on www.hands-on-pictures.com.The course gives everyone hands-on practical experience.
The excitement of the workshops is that the ‘students’ are inquisitive people who want to know the science and history of the processes so that they can use them more effectively.. Apart from London’s professional printers and amateur printers of the highest standing, those attending the ‘Wedgwood to Bromoil’ course usually include people from undergraduate to PhD level.
The programme covers:
• Wedgwood’s process presented to The Royal Institution in 1804
• Niepce’s asphaltum prints (1822-26)
• The cyanotype and chrysotype (gold) and the revised versions the Cyanotype rex and the chrysotype Rex
• Salt printing (1841)
• Albumen
• Carbon
• Platinum printing
• Gravure and photo-etching
• Kallitypes
• Gum bichromate
• Bromoil and bromoil transfer
Hands-on-Pictures will still be running workshops on individual processes on request, see www.Hands-on-pictures.com
My work in alternative processes has been described as ‘awe inspiring’ and of ‘great beauty’ and my teaching as both inspiring and practical
The course will be for one day a week for fifteen weeks. There will be a maximum of six students. If there is a demand we will run a second course on a different day ( this has engendered some friendly rivalry between those on the different days).
The workshops are provisionally planned for Fridays over fifteen weeks starting in January. The weeks will not be consecutive but grouped according to the needs of both the course itself and those of the students..
The workshops will take place at the Hands-On Pictures studio in Richmond, Surrey..
The cost will be £1,000 for the fifteen days.
Demonstration materials are included in the cost students will need to get their own materials and tools should they wish to make their own prints during the workshop. I will be able to supply the more expensive chemicals and metallic salts.
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The Magic Lantern Society & The University of Westminster will present a second series of six evenings of optical magic at the old Polytechnic, fortnightly from Thursday 12 November – Thursday 10 December 2009, and from Thursday 28 January – Thursday 25th February 2010, at The Old Cinema, University of Westminster 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW.
The Programme
Thursday 12 November @ 7pm
Phantasmagoria-mania
‘Professor’ Mervyn Heard
An exploration through the playbills and other ephemera of the bizarre ghost-show entertainment known as the phantasmagoria as witnessed in London and the provinces at the turn of the 18th century.
Mervyn Heard is a magic lantern showman and the author of ‘Phantasmagoria : The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern’. He is also Chairman of the Magic Lantern Society www.heard.supanet.com
Thursday 26 November @ 7pm
Lavater – The Shadow of History
Simon Warner
The noted physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) returns for one night only to reclaim his place at the centre of European culture, armed with magic lantern, silhouette apparatus and a curious tale of photographic experimentation in his Zürich cellar.
Simon Warner is a photographer and video artist with interests in the history of photography and visual media. With a NESTA Fellowship he has created a series of impersonations of key figures in European culture and took part in the Arts Council England touring exhibition Alchemy (2006-7). www.simonwarner.co.uk
Thursday 10 December @ 7pm
Grappling with Ghosts: Staging ghost effects in the modern theatre.
Paul Kieve
Hours in dark theatres, expensive quotes from Pilkington’s glass, ill tempered Opera singers in Hamburg and perhaps the world’s first ghost doves. This talk explores the fascinating tale of how the original impractical Dircksian Phantasmagoria of the 1850‘s came into its in the 1860‘s and how, even with huge advancement in stage engineering and lighting, is still spookily difficult to stage.
Paul Kieve is one of the UK’s most prolific designers of theatrical illusions (The Lord Of The Rings, Zorro, The Invisible Man). He is the only magician to appear in and consult on the Harry Potter movies and is the author of the internationally published book Hocus Pocus. His current projects include Zorro at The Folies Bergere in Paris and the forthcoming musical ‘Ghost’. www.stageillusion.com
Christmas Break
Thursday 28th January @ 7pm
Visualising the Marvellous: G. A. Smith and his film 'Santa Claus' (1898)
Dr Frank Gray
G. A. Smith (1864-1959) was one of the great early film pioneers. A stage mesmerist and an associate of the Society for Psychical Research, his six 'spooky' films of 1898 represent his fascination with the 'other side' and his close association with late Victorian paranormal culture.
Dr Frank Gray is the Director of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton and a specialist in late Victorian cinema. www.brighton.ac.uk/screenarchive/
Thursday 11 February @ 7pm
Geared to the Stars – Victorian Astronomy through the Magic Lantern
Mark Butterworth
Lectures on astronomy were a common form of popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. With an original Victorian magic lantern projector and delicate, hand painted glass slides from the 1840's, Mark Butterworth recreates one of these illustrated lectures. Using complex and intricate mechanical "rackwork" slides to illustrate astronomical concepts, it gives an introduction to mid-19th century astronomy.
Mark Butterworth researches astronomical history and specialises in understanding how popular astronomy was presented to the general public in the 18th and 19th century. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. www.markbutterworth.co.uk
Thursday 25 February @ 7pm
From Anorthoscope to Zoopraxiscope – an A-Z of Victorian animated cartoons
Stephen Herbert
Moving image 19th-century ‘toys’ – philosophical instruments for the drawing room, intended to promote intellectual discussion and provide amusement for adults as least as much as for children – come to life with this illustrated talk.
Stephen Herbert is a Visiting Research Fellow, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Kingston University London. www.stephenherbert.co.uk
Admission is free, commencing 7pm sharp. As this series of talks is entirely free it is advisable to come early, Tickets will be issued from 6pm. For further online information about the talks visit : www.magiclantern.org.uk
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2 October 2009 – 11 April 2010, The Queen's Gallery, Edinburgh
This exhibition of remarkable Antarctic photography by Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley marks the 100th anniversary of Captain Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole. Ponting’s extraordinary images record Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910-13, which led to the tragic death of five of the team on their return from the South Pole. Hurley’s dramatic icescapes were taken during Ernest Shackleton’s Polar expedition on Endurance in 1914-16, which ended with the heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Presented to King George V and today part of the Royal Photograph Collection, these sets of photographs are among the finest examples of the artists’ works in existence.
Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) set sail for Antarctica on Terra Nova in 1910, determined to be the first to reach the South Pole. His team included Herbert Ponting (1870-1935), the first official photographer to participate in a polar expedition. Ponting was already a well-known and successful travel photographer when he was introduced to Scott in 1909. As the ship sailed south from New Zealand, Ponting began work immediately, recording the first icebergs encountered in December 1910 and scenes on board. He photographed as much as possible during his time in Antarctica, producing around 2,000 glass plate negatives between December 1910 and March 1912. A selection of his pictures of the expedition crew, wildlife and spectacular landscape is included in the exhibition.
Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) had travelled with Captain Scott on an earlier voyage to Antarctica, before leading his own unsuccessful attempt to reach the South Pole in 1907-9. In 1914, galvanised by the achievement of the Pole and Scott’s death, he made a bid to cross the southern continent on foot. Among his team was the Australian photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962), who joined Shackleton’s ship Endurance in Buenos Aires.
Hurley photographed activity on board, even climbing the rigging to obtain the best viewpoints. When the ship, crushed between ice floes, began to disintegrate in October 1915, the photographer spent almost three days on the ice, determined not to miss the final moments of the vessel. His images of Endurance listing into the frozen depths are included in the exhibition, along with photographs of Shackleton’s rescue party as it set sail from Elephant Island.
Also included in the exhibition are the Union flag presented by King George V to Shackleton, which the explorer carried with him throughout his epic journey; Polar medals; and books from the Royal Library, including a unique example of Aurora Australis, the first book to be printed in the Antarctic.
There is a lecture series accompanying the exhibition. Details here: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=74
The exhibition microsite is here: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/HOTGA/Read more…
The And/or Book Awards, the UK’s leading prizes for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image (including film, television and new media), are inviting publishers to submit titles for the 2010 awards. With prize money of £10,000 divided between the Best Photography Book Award and the Best Moving Image Book published in 2009, the And/or Book Awards celebrate excellence in photography and moving image publishing.
Established in 1985 by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the Hungarian founder of the influential publishing house Focal Press, 2010 will mark the 25th anniversary of the awards. It is also the 25th anniversary of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, the charitable organisation set up to support them. All titles that meet the award guidelines and have been published or distributed in the UK between 1 January and 31 December 2009, are eligible for submission to the 2010 And/or Book Awards. The initial deadline for entries is Monday 2 November 2009, but any book published by 31 December is eligible and can be submitted up to this date.
Initial deadline for entries: Monday 2 November 2009.
Details: http://www.andorbookawards.org/Read more…
R. Derek Wood published a series of important and carefully researched papers between 1970 and 2008 on early photographic history. His interests lay mainly in the early pioneers of photography, with a focus on dioramas and early experiments between 1830 and 1850 including William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre and topics such as patents. His website http://www.midley.co.uk/ collated these papers and made them available, alongside unpublished correspondence and a few items that never reached printed publication.
Sadly, his website is due to close early in 2010 and Wood is encouraging researchers to made a note of where the original papers were published. Much of the material is available as PDFs and purely for research purposes it may be worth taking a look at the site and making a copies of relevant material before it disappears. As Wood notes "Midley History of early Photography will be preserved online to some extent as it has been automatically archived at the 'Wayback Machine' at http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.midley.co.uk and (for individual files that might be missing from the chronological presentation of the whole site) at web.archive.org/*/www.midley.co.uk/* ). The earlier site (originally at www,midleykent.fsnet.co.uk from July 2001-Jan 2007) is also archived online at web.archive.org The author has also archived onto CD the full site as at 1 March 2009"
The site is highly recommended. Visit while it remains.
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The Royal Society is holding two lectures that will be of interest to blog readers:
'Photographing ancient Mesopotamia: Talbot, Fenton and the British Museum'
Friday 23 October, 1-2pm
Mirjam Brusius
Around 1850 A.H. Layard excavated several ancient Mesopotamian sites, the artefacts of which were brought to the British Museum. Here the trustees discussed the use of photography in the field and in the museum. W. H. Fox Talbot, inventor of the Calotype photographic process and a fellow of the Royal Society, became a strong supporter of the application of photography in archaeology. However, the trustees were not immediately convinced. This talk will explore early debates about the use of photography for research purposes.
Mirjam Brusius is writing her doctoral thesis on William Henry Fox Talbot at the University of Cambridge. She is a researcher on the British Library project 'Science and the Antique in the Work of William Henry Fox Talbot', and is currently a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
The lecture is free, but space is limited, to reserve a space, use the Society's online booking form or telephone +44 (0)20 7451 2606.
The Nine Lives of William Crookes
Wednesday 18 November, 6.30pm
Chemist, photographer, editor, public health campaigner, business man, electrician, gold miner, glassworker and occultist: how did Sir William Crookes combine these, and other, "lives" to forge a scientific identity and become President of the Royal Society in 1913?
William Brock is Emeritus Professor of the History of Science, having taught history of science and also directed the interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester. His most recent book is William Crookes (1832-1919) and the Commercialization of Science (2009).
To book a space for this event please email library@royalsociety.org or telephone 020 7451 2606.
The Society's current photography exhibition, From Fossils to Photography, continues. The exhibition is open during Library working hours (10am - 5pm, Monday to Friday) until November 2009. Entry is free but by appointment only - if you would like to visit please email: library@royalsociety.org or telephoning 020 7451 2606.
For more information visit: http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=7242Read more…
A landmark exhibition of photography from 1840 to the present day from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is an unprecedented survey of South Asian photographers and their presentation of culture and modernity. Historic early photographs from the important Drik Collection in Bangladesh and the Alkazi Collection in Delhi are given a rare platform on the world stage, while images from private, familial records will be seen for the very first time. The exhibition includes over 300 works by more than 50 artists.
Whitechapel Gallery, London
Jan 21 - Apr 11, 2010
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At the international launch yesterday, Brian May and Elena Vidal presented their book A Village Lost and Found, which brings together the complete annotated collection of the original 1850s stereoscopic photograph series Scenes in Our Village by T. R. Williams. A full report and review of the book will appear here shortly. The launch was held at Hinton Waldrist, the village where T. R. Williams originally made the series of photographs.
For the young Brian May, a fascination with 3-D picture cards given away in Weetabix packets led to a lifelong passion for ‘stereoscopic’ images. Soon May was taking sequential pictures with his Woolworth’s 2/6d camera and making pairs of sketches that transformed into 3-D scenes when he ‘relaxed [his] eyes and let the images float together’. Later, he scoured antique shops and auctions for stereoscopic photographs and the ‘viewers’ that enabled him to see the images in all their glory. It was in this way that May discovered the work of Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871), who, in the 1850s, had created a series of 59 stereo cards depicting life in a small English village – Scenes in Our Village.
In A Village Lost and Found, the product of more than 30 years’ research, May and his co-author, photographic historian Elena Vidal, present an exhaustive study of Scenes in Our Village. The village, whose identity was lost for 150 years, was only recently rediscovered by May, in 2003, still in existence in Oxfordshire. The complete series of images is collected here for the first time in living memory, along with extensive related material, including many corresponding photographs of the village as it is today.
The OWL Stereoscope Viewer
Their research is amazingly in-depth, but the book is utterly readable, and the pictures leap into glorious 3-D, when viewed in the new focusing stereoscope viewer, named the OWL, which May has designed and produced, to bring the stereos to life, and also folds neatly into the slip-case of the book.
"A Village Lost and Found is a significant contribution to our understanding of photographic history and the Victorian period. These three dimensional studies of rural village life are so evocative that one can almost smell the new-mown hay, and feel the warmth of the very sun that illuminated these scenes 150 years ago. To quote the 1850s London Stereoscopic Company's maxim, "No home should be without one!" - Roger Taylor, Professor of Photographic History, De Montfort University, Leicester.
The book gives an exceptional insight into everyday village life at the time - with a woman at her spinning wheel, the blacksmith outside his smithy, three men at the grindstone sharpening a tool, the villagers in the fields, bringing in the harvest as well as often taking time to enjoy a good gossip.
In every case the original verse which accom-panied the view is reproduced, enriching the picture by revealing the inner thoughts of the subjects, or transforming it into a comment on Life, Nature, or the Spiritual World. In addition, May and Vidal have researched and annotated all the views, revealing another layer of meaning, by exploring the history of these real characters, this idyllic village and its links with the present day. The result is a powerfully atmospheric and touching set of photographs.
A Village Lost and Found provides an extraordinary insight into English society in the mid-Victorian era, explains historic photographic techniques and explores the life of the enigmatic T. R. Williams, who appears, from time to time, Hitchcock-like, in his own photographs.
"This is a picture book: an annotated book of photographs which tells a unique story – a story that has fascinated me for more than half a lifetime." - Brian May
Biographical information:
Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871) began his photographic career in the early 1840s as an apprentice to the renowned photographer and inventor, Antoine Claudet, where it is said he excelled in the art of tinting photographic images. Shortly after the Great Exhibition he opened his first photographic studio in Lambeth, London where he specialised in making stereoscopic daguerreotype portraits. He also started to produce stereo still lifes and artistic compositions, and in 1856 he published, with the London Stereoscopic Company, the First Series which included the launching of HMS Marlborough in 1855 - a forerunner of press photography as we know it today. His second series published by the LSC was the Crystal Palace set which included the inauguration of Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854.
His third series was Scenes in Our Village, perhaps his most defining work, and completely original in concept. T. R. Williams’s stereo portraits where so popular that his fame reached the ears of the Royal Household, and on 21 November 1856 he was commissioned to photograph Princess Victoria on her 16th birthday. Over the coming years, he took more Royal portraits including one for Princess Victoria’s wedding. At the end of the 1850s, the stereoscopic craze reached huge proportions. Views were produced, printed and published at an almost alarming rate, sometimes at the cost of quality. True to his standards and disenchanted by the turn of events, Williams decided to cease producing stereo cards; he felt they had become vulgarised by imitation. He still continued photographing highly covetable stereoscopic portraits for a select clientele, but also produced the ‘cartes de visite’ and whole-plate vignetted heads and busts, which earned him accolades at photographic exhibitions. Through his work, Williams is now widely recognised as pivotal in the history of stereoscopic photography.
Brian May, CBE, PhD, FRAS, is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer. Brian had to postpone a career in astronomy when Queen's popularity first exploded, but, after an incendiary 30 years as a rock musician, was able to return to astrophysics in 2006, when he completed his PhD, and co-authored his first book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Stereography has been a life-long passion for Brian.
Elena Vidal has worked as a conservator of paintings in Florence, Spain and the UK. She graduated as an MA in Photographic Conservation at the Camberwell School of Arts, and has subsequently specialised in the history of stereoscopic photography. Since meeting Brian May in 1997, Elena has collaborated with him on a long-term study of Thomas Richard Williams, and has published a number of articles.
