Join Mary Phan, V&A Curatorial Felllow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation as she reveals some of the more quirkier nature images from the Royal Photographic Society collection (RPS). Featuring a cast of stuffed animals, intelligent and not so intelligent birds, incredible high-speed images of insects, a one-eyed owl photographer, and the ingenious exploits of the Kearton brothers, who would do anything to get that perfect shot.

The Royal Photographic Society was founded in 1853 with the objective of promoting the art and science of photography. It is one of the largest collections of British photographic history with 400,000 objects, including original prints, archival correspondences and records, cameras and other technical equipment.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAoa4Bn67U8

Fast Forward: Women in Photography together with University of Nicolaus Copernicus in Toruń announces the Polish edition of the Fast Forward conference Beyond The Canon, which is organized in partnership with Vintage Photo Festival.

The research project Fast Forward: Women in Photography aims to explore the work and histories of women photographers, promote opportunities and question ideas dominating the field of photography by initiating thoughtful, new debates. Initiated in 2014 with a panel discussion at Tate Modern, the project has become significant within the world of photography for examining the work of women photographers and for questioning the way that the established canons have been formed. 

The sixth Fast Forward conference that will take place in Toruń, Poland explores the (hi)stories of women in photography with a particular reference to how women’s work is curated, exhibited and collected by museums, institutions, festivals, galleries and individuals. We are interested in the curators, the collectors and the photographers and through this inspiring conference intend to make a unique contribution to the study of women in the field of art by looking in detail about how exhibiting and collecting photography works. 

For years photography was considered as a mediocre medium by the art world, its museums and galleries. Towards the mid 1990s the position of photography in the art world started to change and today it has become the “hot topic” of the global art field with works being exhibited, bought and sold at the highest prices and shown in the most revered exhibition spaces. What place has women’s photographic work taken in this booming business? How have women provoked new discourses concerning the limitations/problems of the canon? How have women been exhibited, collected and conserved?

You are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to apply to make a presentation at the conference. Questions of interest include but are not limited to:

>> How do institution / museum collections address the equal representation of women and non-binary people? What challenges and experiences they face in this process?

>> What are the new ways to preserve and archive the women’s work in photography?

>> What can we do about the glass ceiling in the art marketplace and what effects does this market have on institutions? 

>> What collaborative methods are being used or have been used between individuals and institutions for making a real change?

>> Throughout histories and including the present how have women collected, make visible, and valuable other women? How do we measure the impact of women curators and collectors in shaping the narrative of photographic history?

>> How digital technology and online tolls support the processes of visibility and preservation of women’s photographic work?

We invite submissions that investigate artistic research, curatorial and collaborative methodologies, conservation and archival concerns, as well as new theoretical and practical discussion around women’s work in photographic field. We welcome abstracts from a range of scholars, researchers, curators, archivists, and cultural producers working in and around the above mentioned areas, in different continents and at different stages of their career. 

The conference will include exhibition and collection visits over a three-day period including two-day conference held at the Faculty of Fine Arts Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń, Poland and one day visiting the exhibitions of the Vintage Photo Festival held in Bydgoszcz, Poland. We will also visit the conservation centre of the Nicolaus Copernicus University.

Beyond The Canon: exhibiting, curating and collecting photography by women
10-12 October 2025
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Nicolaus Copernicus in Toruń, Poland
cfp deadline: 227 January 2025

Details: https://fastforward.photography/our-projects/cfp-fast-forward-conference-6-in-poland-october-2025/

Image: Janina Gardzielewska awaiting the opening of the Nicolaus Copernicus House Museum, Toruń, June 1, 1960, a photograph from the family album of Janina and Zygfryd Gardzielewski, from the collection of the University Library in Toruń

The Association of Historians of Nineteenth Century Art (AHNCA) is hosting two virtual salons, one on 17 January 17 and the other on 24 January to learn more about books published in 2024 by AHNCA members. Each author will give a brief presentation about their book, followed by a discussion among the authors and a Q&A with the audience.

of particualr note is the salon taking place on 24 January which will include Jeff Rosen who will be discussing his book Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography. The full programme is: 

Ruth E. Iskin, Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York: The Making of a Transatlantic Legacy
Sarah Lewis, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America
Kimberly A. Orcutt, The American Art-Union: Utopia and Skepticism in the Antebellum Era
Jeff Rosen, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography
Paul mellon Centre for Srtudies in British Art
ISBN: 9781913107420
292 pages
Rosen examines how Cameron and her family processed news of the rebellion alongside former colonists and government officials, men such as Sir John Herschel, Lord Lansdowne, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and her husband, Charles Cameron. He also demonstrates how Cameron's artistic choices were inspired by the fine art criticism associated with the Arundel Society and the South Kensington Museum. In the process, Rosen analyses the symbolism in Cameron's portraits, the political codes in her imagery of widows and orphans, and the historical narratives that informed her allegories of the revolt and its aftermath.

Attendance for the Salon is free but registration in required.

Virtual Salon
24 January 2025 at 1400 (EST) | 1900 (UTC) | 2000 (CET)
Register at: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlf-ihrDsuEtf3pWA02hVoYI5MJ22Vx45

How can creative practices disrupt power structures within the archive? In March 2025, Autograph and Parse Journal will host a new symposium Encounters: Art, Power and Archives in London to discuss strategies and methodologies to rethink, reimagine and reshape the histories embedded in archival collections.

We are calling for presentations that examine how reactivating archival materials through diverse perspectives and disciplines can challenge dominant narratives. With a focus on decolonial and queer methodologies, the symposium will emphasise approaches that encourage a continual reengagement with archives.

We are looking for a broad range of interdisciplinary voices to present their work. This could include – but is not limited to – proposals that share artistic or scholarly research, creative or social projects, and provocations. You might be a historian, archivist, researcher, educator or artist: or any mix of disciplines. Submissions are encouraged by contributors from all backgrounds.

Encounters: Art, Power and Archives will take place on 18 March 2025 in London.

https://autograph.org.uk/blog/news/call-for-papers-encounters-in-the-archive/

The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art has awarded grants for a number of photography projects. These include: 

• Sara Stevenson for the publication The Two-way Gaze. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’s Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth (author grant - large)
• Whitechapel Gallery for the publication Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey (Exhibition publication grant)
• Lucy Howie for research on the project Franki Raffles and Sandra George: Disability and Community Photography in 1980s Scotland (Research support grant)
• Aindreas Scholz for research on the project Rediscovering Anna Atkins: Illuminating the Forgotten Female Pioneer of British Photography (Research support grant)

See: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/grants-and-fellowships/awarded/autumn-2024/page/1

Spring 2025 sees three films looking at photographers and their work. First up is I am Martin Parr which is in cinemas from 21 February. Since the 1970s, British documentary photographer Martin Parr has fearlessly held out his unique photographic mirror and given us some of the most iconic images of the past century. Through an intimate and exclusive road trip across England with the artist, director Lee Shulman (The Anonymous Project) uncovers the life of Magnum photographer Parr: an ironic chronicler of British kitsch, a fierce critic of consumerism, and a narrator of stories suspended between comedy and tragedy. Compiled from exclusive archival footage alongside interviews from various individuals in Martin’s life - close family, fellow photographers, artists and filmmakers, from artist Grayson Perry to musician Mark Bedford (Madness). The film offers a portrait of an extraordinary photographer who revolutionised contemporary photography by inventing a political, humanist and accessible photographic language.

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is released on 7 March. Winner of the L'Œil d'or for Best Documentary Film at Cannes Film Festival 2024, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is directed by celebrated filmmaker Raoul Peck, best known for his BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro (2016). Narrated by Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield, it documents the life of Ernest Cole (1940–1990), the South African photographer whose groundbreaking work exposed the horrors of Apartheid-era South Africa to a world audience. The film recounts Cole’s wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence and complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. Through his photographs, writings, and audio from the expanded Cole archive, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable photographer who is finally getting his dues.

Finally, on 21 March is Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other. Nominated for two British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), the film is the story of artist couple Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett. Meyerowitz (84) is a world-renowned photographer. British-born Barrett (75) is a talented but less recognised artist and writer. Thirty years after a chance encounter, Maggie and Joel are still very much in love. But there is a knot of unease in their relationship, which is further strained when Maggie falls and breaks her leg and Joel becomes her caregiver. In the shadow of mortality, each with a long and dramatic life behind them, the hard truths of life together provoke in Maggie and Joel an attempt to find a shared inner-peace while there is still time. With unique access to the couple’s lives, directors Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet have created a profoundly moving film about living, creating and loving. 

A trailer for I am Martin Parr is available here: TRAILER

More details or to arrange a screening see here: https://releasing.dogwoof.com/

A new book looks at the history of polar exploration. Of particular note to BPH readers are a number of chapters of photographic interest which show and discuss the Goodsir daguerreotype and Adamson calotype of him, Challenger expedition icebergs, an early Beechey Island image, the Franklin daguerreotypes, Antarctic stereoviews, a pre-1900 Antarctica photo, and Ponting's kinematograph, although historic photography features throughout. The book has been researched and written by Anne Strathie who will be known to BPH readers through her recent biography of Herbert Ponting. 

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects. From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age
Anne Strathie
£22.00
The History Press, 2024
https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/a-history-of-polar-exploration-in-50-objects/

This year - 2025 - marks the fiftieth anniversary of two significant British photography institutions. 2025 marks Four Corners’ 50th anniversary. A programme of events and exhibitions looking into its radical heritage and looking forward to its future. The year also marks fifty years since the Fox Talbot Musuem opened in Lacock on 28 June 1975.The Museum will be hosting an exhibition from May of the little known colour photography of Werner Bischof and has exciting plans for the museum and gardens. A short history is in preparation. 

Separately to British photography, 2025 sees the centenary of the launch of the Leica camera in spring 1925. Leica will, no doubt, be commemorating this significant anniversary in Wetlzar and across the world.   

If you know if other significant anniversaries please comment below. 

Image: the Fox Talbot Museum from the Museum's Newsletter (Summer 1977, No.1)

The photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen received an Member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to photography in the New Year's Honours announced earlier this week. She was also recognised with a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship in November. 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen has worked in Britain since the 1960s. Born in Finland, Konttinen moved to London to study film in the late 1960s at the Regent Street Polytechnic. In 1968, she co-founded the Amber Film and Photography Collective, which moved to Newcastle in 1969. Konttinen’s series Byker (1969–1983) and Writing in the Sand (1978–1998) document the devastating impact of Newcastle’s East End redevelopment on the local community alongside the moments of joy and escapism that the beaches of Whitley Bay and Tynemouth provided. In 1980 Konttinen became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in China. Her next project Step by Step, was a study of girls and their mothers at a dance school in North Shields, and their later lives after leaving the school. This series became a heavy influence in Lee Hall's development and writing for his play Dancer, which later became the cult coming-of-age film Billy Elliot. Her other long-term projects include Byker Revisited and The Coal Coast plus related films.

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's work is in numerous collections and, she has been seen in a number of recent exhibtiions in Britain, Europe and the United States in recent years. She is included in Tate's The 1980s on show until 5 May.  She continues to work and her earlier projects are rightly recognised as seminal and significant documentary photography. 

Sirkka-Liisa ROBERTS (Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen) Photographer. For services to Photography (North Shields, Tyne and Wear)

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen MBE HonFRPS

See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-year-honours-list-2025 and https://rps.org/about/awards/the-rps-awards-2024/rps-awards-2024-recipients/

Image: Portrait of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen by Liz Hingley

Early Visual Media Lab — CICANT, from Lusofona University, together with the International Panorama Council and the Art History Institute (IHA, NOVA-FCSH/IN2PAST) invite scholars, artists, panorama enthusiasts and visual media researchers to submit proposals for presentations that explore the theme “The World at a Glance. Panoramic and Peep Technologies.’” This recasting of Robert Barker’s original title for his invention (1787), “Nature at a Glance” (in French, “La Nature à Coup d’ Oeil”), will explore the modern desire to experience the world visually through panoramic or peep technologies and to embark in virtual travels. Panoramas and panoramic imagery shared these early immersive experiences with (itinerant) peepshows, cosmoramas, neoramas, dioramas, and, among others, in the domestic space, zograscopes, stereoscopic photography, graphoscopes and polyoramas. These theatres of visuality were key achievements in art, education and science, fostering visual curiosity and new skills of looking. Either engaging a distant or a proximate gaze, requiring lenses or a specific vantage point on a viewing platform, these technologies made the world in all its aspects admirable and available at a glance. In addition to challenging the visual sensorium, panoramic and peep technologies often intersected and mobilized a synesthesic universe. By exploring their coexistence and intermediality, new light will be shed on the visual cultures and worldviews they promoted. 

This next IPC conference in Lisbon will showcase such intersections and remediations with the exhibition The Cosmorama: The 19th-Century Hidden Travels, held at the Portuguese Cinematheque. Curated by the research project Curiositas. Peeping Before Virtual Reality, this exhibition will draw on extensive historical research that unearthed the cultural history of the European Cosmoramas. It will include physical and virtual recreations of cosmorama rooms, showcasing Panorama and Cosmorama artists such as Hubert Sattler from Salzburg.

We welcome proposals for field reports, creative presentations, media presentations, and scholarly papers of up to 20 minutes in length that focus on panoramic or/and peep technologies, their specificities, intermedialities, socio-cultural and political roles, as well as their current digital and virtual cultures, and their conservation, display and mediation challenges.    

The IPC conference will present a diverse range of session topics based on the proposals, as well as workshops, round tables and visits. It will be of interest to academics, professionals, students and enthusiasts of art, visual media, art history, conservation and preservation, cultural heritage, design, history, museum practice, panorama management, restoration, virtual reality, and visual culture, as well as to thinkers and makers from other disciplines or whose work is transdisciplinary with an interest in immersive and peep media, media archaeology or any other related field. 

Full details: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/stereo/announcement/view/219

The London Archives and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have announced a unique collaboration that will - for the first time ever - showcase their impressive collections alongside one another. From summer 2025, the London Archives - formerly the London Metropolitan Archives - will host some of the most popular items from the RIBA Collections, one of the largest architectural collections in the world, alongside the archives’ collections of books, documents, manuscripts, maps, images, and photographs.

The partnership will coincide with the temporary closure in April 2025 of RIBA’s renowned library to enable the refurbishment of RIBA’s London headquarters at 66 Portland Place, as part of its House of Architecture transformation programme.

The collaboration will help ensure that RIBA’s collections currently housed at Portland Place remain accessible to users, and within short distance, during the building’s closure period.

The partnership will allow RIBA to utilise our state-of-the-art conservation and digitisation spaces, ensuring that vital work on conserving rare books and digitising RIBA’s collections continues seamlessly during the refurbishment of 66 Portland Place.Executive Director of Architecture Programmes & Collections at RIBA, Oliver-Urquhart Irvine said: 'Our partnership with The London Archives is an exciting step towards ensuring that our invaluable collections are as widely accessible and well-cared for as possible. This collaboration is not only about preserving access to RIBA’s collections while we undertake the transformative refurbishment of 66 Portland Place, but also inspiring new discoveries and connecting more deeply with architectural professionals, researchers, students, and the public – indeed, anyone with an interest in, or passion for, architecture. Together, we will unlock exciting opportunities that showcase the dynamic interplay of architecture, history, and culture.'

See: https://www.thelondonarchives.org/your-research/riba-at-the-london-archives

Image: Oaklands Estate, Poynders Road, Eastman House, 1936. London Picture Archive - 265971

Professor Annebella Pollen's covid-delayed inaugural professorial lecture will take place on 5 March in Brighton. She will be talking through and reflecting on some of her core interests and major projects of the last 20 years, and pose the questions: What kind of stories can historic images and objects tell us about the past? When objects and images are preserved, in personal collections or in institutional archives, what kinds of futures are they expected to serve? And what happens when those stories get lost, or those histories are forgotten?

For over two decades, Professor Pollen has built a series of studies that reinterpret undervalued collections and examine visual and material culture that has been pushed to the margins. From photographs found in end-of-life house clearances to the visual archives of utopian movements, she questions what gets wasted and saved, what gets culturally consecrated and what gets overlooked. The lecture reflects on how we use images and objects to narrate our lives, and how seeing and feeling historic images and objects can offer fresh perspectives for the present day.

The talk will be recorded and made available after the event. 

Images, objects and their afterlives
Professor Annebella Pollen
Wednesday 5 March 2025 at 6.30pm
Sallis Benney Theatre,
University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade,
Brighton, BN2 0JY
Free event. All are welcome, but register: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research/research-news/films-and-publications/inaugural-lectures/professor-annebella-pollen.aspx

The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum is recruitng for two postdoctoral posts to support the work of Professor Helen M Hanson (Project Lead), and the project team on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project: Women’s Screen Work in the Archives Made Visible (2024-2028). The two roles are: Postdoctoral Research Associate (Archives) and Postdoctoral Research Associate (Curation). 

The Project researches the work of British women filmmakers in the British Film Institute National Archive at the Conservation Centre, Berkhamsted and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter. It aims to make their work more discoverable in film-related archives through innovative archival practice, and to translate their work to public audiences through curation of exhibitions in film museum contexts

You will work primarily with the Project Lead (Helen M Hanson) and BFI Project Co-Lead (Wendy Russell) in the BFI National Archive (Conservation Centre, Berkhamsted), spending approximately 3 days per week at the archive during the project. You will become familiar with archival practice at the BFI and will have the opportunity to apply this to agreed collections. You will innovate and test feminist approaches to archiving and will contribute to cataloguing collections of selected women filmmakers (such as Tina Gharavi, and Gurinder Chadha). You will also disseminate the research findings of your work by engaging a range of audiences: the archival community, academics and wider publics.

Details: https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/etrec179gf.open?WVID=171839ediw&LANG=USA and https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/etrec179gf.open?WVID=171839ediw&LANG=USA

Dogs in Early Photography  is based on Koh’s extensive collection of early dog photography, now donated to the Bodleian. Dogs explores the physicality of the dog, the human obsession with breed, and how pet dogs came to reflect the status and personality of their owners. Most importantly, this collection celebrates the unique relationship between humans and dogs, as photographs, either purposely or accidentally, capture the charm and endless appeal of dogginess across breeds, class, roles, and time.

The selections from the collection that prompted this book show a variety of dogs in settings ranging from the studio to the field and stream. They demonstrate the difficulty in capturing a moving subject in early photographic formats ranging from unique daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes in the 1850s to popular cartes de visite after the middle of the century. It also explores the physicality of the dog, the human obsession with breed, and how pet dogs came to reflect the status and personality of their owners. But most importantly, this collection celebrates the unique relationship between humans and dogs, as photographs, either purposely or accidentally, capture the charm and endless appeal of dogginess across breeds, class, roles and time.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Library said: 'This book is most eloquent in celebrating the art of collecting. Having been a librarian involved in special collections for almost 40 years (and for 35 of those a customer of Bernard Quaritch), I have never encountered such a niche collecting area so beautifully executed into a fully-fledged collection (and in such a short space of time).’

A noted book collector, John Koh has spent years building a vast private collection of photographs and other historical ephemera, including the many nineteenth-century photographs of dogs which are presented in this new book. John Koh is the owner of Bernard Quaritch Ltd and has long been a Friend of the Bodleian and a member of the Bodleian Advisory Board.

Dogs in Early Photography
John Koh
Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2024
£50
See: https://www.quaritch.com/books/koh-john/dogs-in-early-photography/U68/

From popular photo-magazines published for British citizens, to wall newspapers and pamphlets addressing Indian audiences, a wealth of dynamic visual propaganda in multiple languages and formats was produced to communicate Allied war aims and progress across the globe. Following the surrender of Japan, the machinery of ‘public information’ directed its work (including the network of photographers and the range of photographic outputs) towards the question of colonialism in the postwar world. 

The enormous resources commanded by this initiative, as well as the wealth of institutional archives and published artefacts left behind, evidence the faith placed in visual communications in this period. The continued postwar commitment to the value of visual propaganda is seen in the public relations work of the United Nations. Yet, its relevance for the era of decolonisation has yet to be researched in depth. 

This project addresses the use of official photography and commercial photojournalism in visual propaganda concerning British India (now Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) during the Second World War and up to Partition.  

This project invites candidates to: 

• Assess the centrality of photography to the evolution of public information campaigns about British India and for diverse Indian audiences.  
• Critically analyse the aims and activity of the people and institutions involved in producing visual propaganda, and the photographic material circulated. 
• Examine the interactive roles of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, the MOI (London) and the Bureau of Public Information (Delhi).  

Aiming to deliver a new cultural history of public information work between war and empire and assessing the relevance of wartime experience to postwar developments for the first time, this project will make a significant contribution to a developing research field addressing visual propaganda and British imperialism (e.g., Chandrika Kaul, James Ryan, Gabrielle Moser).  

Research questions

Drawing on the successful student’s interests, expertise and language skills, the project will bring exciting new interdisciplinary perspectives to the study of pioneering visual propaganda both catalysed by the anti-fascist struggle, but also marked by twentieth-century European colonialism.  

The project will address the following key research questions: 

• Which professional photographers, publications and networks were engaged in the production and circulation of visual propaganda depicting and directed at soldiers and civilians in British India?  
• What was the relationship between official departments such as the Ministry of Information (London) and the Bureau of Public Information (Delhi) in this period? 
• To what extent were Indian photographers being trained, commissioned or employed to record the war effort and the impact of the conflict?
• What photographic publications, pamphlets and artefacts were produced? And what differences can be traced in how the war and the postwar moment were represented in the UK and India?  
• What research methods and historiographical frameworks best facilitate critical examination of the genesis, aims and legacies of visual propaganda across the British Empire? 

Supervisory team

• Helen Mavin, Head of Photographs, IWM hmavin@iwm.org.uk.  
• Dr Gajendra Singh, Exeter University, g.singh@exeter.ac.uk.  
• Dr Tom Allbeson, Cardiff University allbesont@cardiff.ac.uk. 

Full details here: https://www.sww-ahdtp.ac.uk/collaborative-doctoral-award-cda-projects-2024-2025/war-photography-empire/

Photographic historian Dr Rose Teanby FRPS, discusses the binding and photographic significance of the Linnean Society's three precious Anna Atkins Cyanotype volumes. The blog post also coincides with the Linnean Society's three Atkins volumes being on display at their home in Burlington House, London.

The exhibition Still Life ranges from carved woodblocks of the early modern period to the new technique of X-Rays in the twentieth century, the exhibition Still Life reveals how different methods of representing nature have furthered our understanding and knowledge of the natural world.

The exhibition showcases manuscripts, rare books, specimens, and rare books from our collections that indicate the many techniques that have been used to depict nature in the last five centuries: woodcuts, engravings, drawings, paintings, nature printing, dried specimens, photographs, X-rays, and finally digital art.

Read the blog post here: https://www.linnean.org/news/2024/12/05/a-secret-treasure-anna-atkinss-photographs-of-british-algae

Still Life
London, Linnean Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly
Tuesdays to Fridays, 10.00–17.00 until Friday 28 February 2025
See exhibition details here: https://www.linnean.org/research-collections/on-display/still-life-depicting-nature-from-woodcuts-to-x-rayshttps://www.linnean.org/research-collections/on-display

Thanks to Rose Teanby for flagging these. 

Images: (top) Part of the display of three volumes of Anna Atkin's cyanotypes. (left, foreground)  one print from Mrs Glaisher's British Ferns c.1855. 

The National Archives (TNA) holds a collection over 400,000 individual forms deposited to the Stationers’ Company between 1842 and 1912 to register ownership and copyright of photographs, paintings and drawings.

The forms include a description of the work being registered, along with the name and place of abode of the copyright owner (or proprietor of copyright) and the name and place of abode of the copyright author (the artist or photographer). The forms were then dated and signed by the owner and in many cases a copy of the work (in the form or a print or sketch) was attached to the form.

The entire photography collection has been catalogued at item level and we have access to the full metadata. This however is only semi-structured and it requires complex data manipulation to be effectively used for digital research, let alone visualisations.

As part of an internal project running from October 2024 to February 2025, we have decided to use this metadata to organise a hybrid digital hackathon to test data cleaning and processing methodologies, to experiment with visualizations and interesting forms of storytelling related to the world of early photography, as well as to find out the benefits and constraints of running a hybrid collaborative hackathon.

By experimenting collaboratively with tools such as AI, network analysis, entity disambiguation, and visualization we want to bring new perspectives to exploring archival collections through metadata.

During the hackathon we will encourage collaboration between teams, each working on different parts of the problem but sharing data, tools and ideas. To read more about the metadata collection and what we plan to do during the events, visit: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/exploring-early-photography-through-collaborative-digital-experimentation/

The hackathon will take place over two days, on 27-28 January 2025 both onsite and online.

Exploring early photography through collaborative digital experimentation
London, The National Archives and and online
27-28 January 2025
Details: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/collaborative-digital-experimentation-copyright-and-early-photography-tickets-1105454266469

John Thomson is one of the great figures in the history of photography, an extraordinary photographer, traveller, author, translator and teacher. Between 1868 and 1872 he spent four years in China and it is his photography from that period that is the subject of this illustrated talk. He travelled from Macao in the South to the Great Wall of China in the North. Recording the North River, the Min and the Yangtze and the people who lived and worked on them.

Thanks to the work of photographic conservators at the Wellcome Collection it is possible to revisit Thomson’s original negatives and see the China recorded through Thomson’s lens accompanied by his words, taken from his three books on China.

Deborah Ireland is a freelance curator and author specialising in the history of photography with an interest in travel photography. Her previous posts include assistant curator at the Royal Photographic Society and director of photography at AA publishing. She has curated exhibitions and written for the Royal Geographical Society, including Isabella Bird, a photographic journal of travels through China 1894 – 1896. A fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, she has been a judge on Travel Photographer of the year since its inception in 2003. Deborah Ireland is leading a tour in October 2025, following in John Thomson’s footsteps from Guangzhou (Canton) to Beijing (Peking).

John Thomson - through China with a camera
6 January 2025
Bath, and online
Book here: https://www.brlsi.org/whatson/john-thomson-through-china-with-a-camera/

Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery and Side Gallery are looking for a Network Coordinator to work to establish a new pilot network across the North for photographers and organisations that are working with photography.

Specifically, the Photo Connect network aims to support those interested in amplifying or expanding photography provision across the North. It is open to anyone wishing to collaborate – individuals, community groups, organisations and educational institutions – and will provide mechanisms to:

• Share information about photography exhibitions, workshops, and events, across the North.
• Manage Photo Connect communications, e.g. Instagram account.
• Share information from photography courses in the north.
• Share photography related news and opportunities.
• Support bespoke carbon literacy training for photographers.
• Provide at least one Photo Connect networking event in each of the 3 north areas North West, Yorkshire and North East.
• Champion the benefits of collaborating to increase reach and impact.
• Better understand the current photography ecology and demand for increased provision.

We know that photography is under-funded in the north, with just two organisations receiving core support from Arts Council England – Impressions Gallery and Open Eye Gallery – which is at odds with the public’s engagement and interest in photography. The Network Coordinator role is critical to establishing the Photo Connect network and driving forward this ambitious 12 month year-long pilot. The Network Coordinator will provide managerial capacity to identify the photography ecology across the North, connect with potential collaborators, and play a key part in planning and delivering the aims and objectives of Photo Connect.

The deadline for expressing interest is 12pm noon on 31 December 2024.

See: https://www.impressions-gallery.com/opportunity/photo-connect-network-coordinator/

Photo Connect is made possible by Arts Council England project funding

The British Library has published a guest blog titled Revisiting Early Photography: Ethics, Legal Constructs, and the Seligmans’ Legacy. It is written by Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra, Adjunct Professor at UNIMAS, Institute of Borneo Studies, Malaysia, and Associate Academic, History of Art, University of Oxford. It is an abbreviated form of a presentation at workshop held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, The British Empire in the Art Gallery: Practises, Discourses and Publics, 27 September, 2024. 

The use of photography in anthropology has a complex history, particularly when it comes to representing indigenous communities through early ethnographic research. When viewing collections such as the early 20th-century images of Sri Lanka’s Vedda community captured by Charles and Brenda Seligman, it is crucial to evaluate them not just for their historical significance but also through the ethical and legal frameworks that apply today...

Read the blog here: https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2024/11/revisiting-early-photography-ethics-legal-constructs-and-the-seligmans-legacy.html

Image: ‘The Vedda country, view from Bendiyagalge rocks’. Photograph from C.G. and B.Z. Seligmann, The Veddas (1911). British Library, T 11173, facing title page.