The next Photograph Fair takes place at the Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury on Sunday, 24 September from 0930-1500. The venue will also host the Ephemera Fair.
Details: https://etcfairs.com/ephemera-fairs/
Michael Pritchard's Posts (3004)
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When colour photography emerged in industrialised societies in the late nineteenth century it sparked industrial and scientific interest for some and aesthetic and conceptual concern for others. Over the course of fifty years, from 1890 until 1939, the accessibility of colour photography changed dramatically, culminating with the widespread uptake of Kodak Corporation’s Kodachrome colour-coupler technology in the late 1930s. Kodachrome reversal film redefined the photographic industry. It was celebrated as the solution to nearly one hundred years of research and development concentrated on finding a way to make affordable and practical colour pictures, and was so proficient that by the early 1940s it was in position to usurp the majority of competing colour processes established before it.
The flourishing industry of colour photography that existed before Kodachrome was driven largely by improvements in technology, including the introduction of aniline dyes and faster equipment; increased accessibility because of changing economies; and evolving conceptions of colour in public consciousness as it related art, advertising and collective taste. Although most nascent colour photography enterprises failed, the sheer volume of processes introduced signifies an enormous amount of creative velocity attributable to diverse thought and experimentation on behalf of colour photography’s innumerable stakeholders. Through consideration of the meaning of colour in contemporary British society, and the economic and social networks that underpinned the industry, this thesis aims to establish a stronger understanding of the competitive and dynamic market for early colour photography between 1890 and 1939.
Chromatic Imagination: Realising Early Colour Photography in Britain, 1890 to 1939
Hana Kaluznick
Online: 19 September, 1100-1230 (EDT)
Organised by the Color Photography in the 19th Century and Early 20th Century group
Details: https://www.chstm.org/content/color-photography-19th-century-and-early-20th-century-sciences-technologies-empires
In his lifetime, Leeds-born Wordsworth Donisthorpe patented a motion-picture camera, helped found the British Chess Association, wrote prolifically on libertarian politics and even invented a language.
The great What If will tell the story of Donisthorpe’s strange, one-of-a-kind camera, which was based, extraordinarily, on the flax spinning machines in the Leeds mills of his father, George Edmund Donisthorpe. It will look at a film sequence shot by Donisthorpe in 1889, just weeks after another inventor, Louis Le Prince, shot his own sequences in Leeds as well as Donisthorpe’s last-ditch efforts to fund his experiments by attempting to blackmail one of Bradford’s most respected industrialists.
A forgotten pioneer, Donisthorpe’s story will be presented by local historian, Irfan Shah, along with revelatory new material, as we pose the question: would the history of cinema have been different if Wordsworth Donisthorpe had been better at blackmail?
The talk will be given in the wonderful cinema of the Leeds School of Arts at Leeds Beckett University and introduced by Professor Robert Shail.
Details and register here: https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/heritage-open-days/hod-wordsworth-donisthorpe-and-the-great-what-if/
Historic England’s Archive and Library is the nation’s archive of England’s historic environment. It is a national collection with nearly 15 million items, mostly photography and documents. including nationally important collections covering archaeology, architecture, social and local history. It is an accredited Archive and a recognised place of deposit. The collection continues to grow for now, and for the future.
We have an important role in telling the story of England; its shared memories, lived histories and diverse cultural identities. We conserve, save and safeguard, as well as share, collect and generate income.
As Head of Archive & Library, you will lead and manage a specialist team. You will be responsible for shaping the way we collect, manage, conserve and make available archive assets in line with Historic England’s strategic objectives and priorities. You will ensure that we share our collections – both physical and digital - in accessible, inspiring and engaging ways and that our collections are increasingly inclusive and representative. You will be responsible for development of the growing archive of born digital material, working with the Head of Digital Engagement to develop an integrated ecosystem that ensures our collections are held in the most cost-effective way and accessible to the widest possible audience.
Details here: Head of Archive and Library - Historic England - Applied (beapplied.com)
The American photographer and educator John Benton-Harris has died. After completing US military service, in 1965 he settled in London, working as a staff photographer for London Life magazine.
See: https://www.johnbenton-harris.com/
Aeon, the digital magazine, has just published online a fascinating essay on slum photography which was at the heart of progressive campaigns against urban poverty, and was also a weapon against the working class poor. It is written by Sadie Levy Gale a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University, Wales. The paper mainly uses examples from London.
See: https://aeon.co/essays/slum-photos-were-weaponised-against-the-people-they-depictpublishes
Image: Southwark slum, London Metropolitan Archives
There are a series of visits and online collection talks coming up over the next few months organised by the RPS's Historical group. First up on 2 September is a visit to the John Rylands Library where Tony Richards will discuss advanced heritage imaging techniques, which will be followed by a look at highlights from the library's photography collections.
Following on are:
- 7 September - the RIBA photography collection (online)
- 19 September - the William Graham collection at the Mitchell Library (online)
- 4 October - Little Woman. The art of being Jane Wigley, daguerreotypist (online)
- 6 October - Visit to Bradford Industrial Museum and its photography collection (live)
- 22 October - Celebrating the Bromoil Circle Archive - demonstration, talk and display (live)
Full details and registration are here: https://events.rps.org/en/celebrating-the-bromoil-circle-archive-4a2N4Lhk0L/overview
Image: Ken Hill FRPS, Welsh Moor, Bromoil print, c.1980s.
As Collections Assistant (Data,) you will prepare, conserve, digitise and catalogue historic photographic material from the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP_
The National Collection of Aerial Photography – ncap.org.uk – is one of the largest collections of photography in the world, a centre of excellence and standard-setter for the custodianship of historic aerial photography. NCAP holds over 30 million
aerial images that record key moments in history and places throughout the world.
Part of Historic Environment Scotland, NCAP sits within the Marketing and Engagement Directorate. Now at risk from environmental and historic deterioration, the DOS and ACIU Projects are preserving and digitising our collections using collaborative robots (cobots).
As a Collections Assistant (Data), you will prepare and conserve historic photographic material for digitisation to prescribed standards and will ensure that sufficient record is available for digitisation using robotically-operated digitisation workstations. You will load, unload and program workstations and prepare records for return to remote storage upon satisfactory completion of digitisation. You will undertake geospatial cataloguing, associated image processing, and quality assurance to prescribed technical standards. Key responsibilities and duties will include;
Process and conserve historic photographic material to NCAP record handling standards so as to minimise risk of damage during digitisation and storage.
- Create digital images using cobots and scanners, handling original aerial photography, and associated records, for the DOS and ACIU Projects.
- Ensure the quality of digital images produced meet NCAP standards for the creation of digital surrogates.
- Undertake post-processing work including renaming, cataloguing and metadata to NCAP standards.
- Work to and meet production targets and deadlines.
- Maintain and update administrative records associated with the digitisation workflow, notably process tracking systems.
- Adherence to established standards, practices and procedures is essential; thoughtful and informed modifications are welcomed.
- Working across several teams, positive collaboration and cooperation is essential.
- Frequently moving relatively heavy boxes of archival material is required, as is at times working in a climate-controlled/cold room.
See job details here
Read more on the National Collection of Aerial Photography here: https://ncap.org.uk/
Image: Muirhouse; Edinburgh; Midlothian; Scotland, 1991
Historic England has just released 20,000 photographs captured by reconnaissance aircraft over England during the Second World War. The photos show airfields, military bases, towns, and countryside in England between 1943 and 1944. The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) reconnaissance aircraft flew hundreds of sorties over England during the Second World War.
he Historic England Archive’s USAAF Collection comprises over 20,000 photographic prints taken by USAAF photographic reconnaissance (PR) aircraft during the Second World War. Nearly 19,000 frames have been catalogued.
Most of the photographs are vertical aerial photographs measuring 8 x 7 inches, 9 x 9 inches and 18 x 9 inches. Additionally, over 400 oblique 9 x 9-inch aerial photographs have been catalogued. Many of the photographs in the collection show areas of the English countryside that include military sites amongst patchworks of fields. There are views of villages and towns, with coverage extending from Cornwall to the Wash, and from the Sussex coast to urban Lancashire.
See the interactive map and information here to explore the collection: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/photographs/usaaf-collection/
Image: Anti-tanl ditch surrounding Cissbury Ring Iron Age hill fort, Worthing, West Sussex, 22 April 1944.
BPH has been advised that John Benjafield, the former dealer in photography and photohistorian has recently died. Based in Norwich, John had a successful career as a dealer in vintage and collectible photography, photographic illustrated books, and was a regular at auctions and fairs from the 1980s to 2000s. He was a regular exhibitor at the former London Photograph Fair, held at the Bonnington Hotel.
More recently, John had turned his attention to sharing his extensive photographic knowledge, especially that of East Anglia and contributed text to A Victorian Gentleman's North Norfolk about the Norfolk photographer W J J Bolding (1815-1899), and in 2016 he set up a website Early Norfolk Photographs 1840-1860
Please share your own memories of John.
The Science Museum Group has published its 2022-23 accounts and performance metrics. Of particular note are those relating to the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. The headline number relates to visitor which have yet to rebound across the SMG. Those for the NSMM are at 187,000 for 2022-23 compared with 421,00 pre-pandemic.
| Year | Visitors |
| 2019-20 | 421,000 |
| 2020-21 | 11,000 |
| 2021-22 | 139,000 |
| 2022-23 | 187,000 |
The SMG has set a target of a return to the pre-pandemic numbers although the NSMM will be impacted by the closure of the museum pending the opening of the Sound and Vision Galleries in 2024.
The full report can be seen here
An interdisciplinary symposium and study day organised by The National Archives and the V&A Museum is being held over 13-14 September 2023). It consists of an online symposium and a study day. The event seeks to explore the materiality of the institutionalised photographic object.
Photographs are ubiquitous within many collections-holding institutions and as physical objects they engender a multitude of activities, many of which are centred on their status as a visual record with a unique documentary capacity. However, the material pervasiveness of photographic objects in collections obscures significant variations in their status and use in different institutional contexts. For example, at The National Archives in Kew, UK, photographs are primarily collected as visual records illustrating the various activities of the British government. As a consequence of their inclusion in what is primarily a text-based repository system, little critical attention has been paid to their status, or materiality, as photographs. The collection comprises around 8 million items and its subjects range across documentation of infrastructure projects, photographs registered for copyright to early colonial photography. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, UK, also holds a significant collection of photography, estimated to contain around 400,000 objects.
For more details, and to book the online symposium please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-materials-of-photographysymposium-tickets-668419258997.
Through the lens of the pages of the Architectural Review magazine, Wide-Angle View is an exhibition on the Manplan series, a ground-breaking exploration of architecture’s impact on society.
This exhibition of over 70 original photographs, some that have never been seen before, offers a unique insights on society in the late 1960s. The magazine was bold and innovative in its tone and style, incorporating pioneering graphic and print techniques and radical photojournalism to analyse the state of society in Britain at the turn of the decade. It initiated a new outlook and approach to architectural debate and journalism that is still relevant today.
The Wide-Angle View photography exhibition looks at Manplan and presents photography from renowned professionals such as Ian Berry, Patrick Ward and Tony Ray-Jones at our Architecture Gallery in central London which is free and open to all.
Curated by Valeria Carullo, RBA, Photographs Curator. A smaller version of this exhibition was shown at The Photographers' Gallery.
Wide-Angle View. Architecture as social space in the Manplan series 1969-70
13 September 2023-24 February 2024
Architecture Gallery - ground floor
RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD
Details: https://www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/exhibitions/Manplan-Wide-angle-view
Photograph: Classroom window, Wales (Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections)
There was an unusual sense of urgency in the telephone ringing as we tumbled into the house. What we saw at the theatre that evening has long since gone into obscurity, while the content of that telephone call will remain in my mind forever.
It all began in November 1989 when I interviewed Stefan Lorant at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford. It was his first visit to England for over fifty years. I had met Lorant the previous day, interviewing him for about one and a half hours. He asked me to send him a copy of my article that was being written for the British Journal of Photography. This I did after Christmas and promptly forgot about this intriguing episode.
Life moved on. It was mid-March and we had just returned home from an evening at the local theatre when the telephone rang. A mid-European voice, immediately recognisable, introduced itself as ‘Stefan Lorant from America’. ‘I like what you write. It was good. It cheered me up. But I am not egotistical!’ The fact that he was egotistical was both evident and obvious and was to become more so as the days passed. We talked and he said he would like me to see his archive in Lenox, Massachusetts and continue our conversation. He saw it as a time to get the story correct, not just for himself but for his friends who were now all deceased. ‘If I send you the ticket, will you come?’ Answering in a dazed affirmative I wished him ‘good night’. Had I really given the impression this was another everyday event? Regaling the story to colleagues, family and friends, all agreed that this was an opportunity not to be missed.
Further telephone calls and the arrival of that essential airline ticket now saw me on Virgin Atlantic Flight 001 out of London, Heathrow bound for Newark, New Jersey.
This was pure theatre!! The overture had only just faded away and there was a nervous ‘first night’ anticipation with the curtain about to go up…. There was never a dull moment. This book are the edited diaries from 1990 to 1999.
Never a dull moment
Michael Hallett
CrabApple Publications, 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-3999-4566-0.
Softback. 344 pages, £22 plus postage & packaging.
Available from http://www.michaelhallett.com
Under a turbulent sky is an exhibition of prints by Fay Godwin, one of the most respected and significant British photographers of the 20th century. Zelda Cheatle, gallery owner and friend of Fay Godwin, describes her as having been ‘an independent, intelligent and courageous photographer’ and Roger Taylor, in his essay for the retrospective publication Landmarks (2002), referred to her ‘mastery of the elusive grammar of greys.’
This exhibition represents a selection from what photo-historian Ian Jeffrey has described as a unique photographic ‘survey’ of the landscape of Britain, carried out by Fay Godwin for exhibitions and books between 1972 – 1994 and
particularly celebrates her pioneering attention to environmental issues.
Today, as landscape continues to be a subject photographers turn to when contemplating the ways we relate to where we live and the impact humans have on the land, Fay Godwin’s work continues to influence.
In 2016, Peter Cattrell, landscape photographer, teacher and fine printer, who printed for Fay Godwin’s books and exhibitions throughout the 1980s, made eighteen new Fay Godwin prints from the original negatives held in The British Library archive. These were first shown in 2017 at MoMA Machynlleth, in mid-Wales, curated by Diane Bailey and Geoff Young.
The prints have been personally selected by people who knew or worked with and were influenced by Fay Godwin; by curators, collectors and historians of photography as well as by close friends and members of her family who were invited by Diane Bailey and Geoff Young to make their selection.
The Kestle Barton exhibition of Fay Godwin’s photography, Under a turbulent sky (9 Sep – 28 Oct) includes the eighteen analogue prints from the initial exhibition, along with another nine new digital prints; again from the original negatives held in The British Library archive and accompanied by an additional nine contributors’ captions.
Fay Godwin (1931-2005) is an internationally acclaimed photographer who began her professional career as a portrait
photographer in the 1970s. During this period she collaborated on books with a number of writers; perhaps the best known is Remains of Elmer (1979), a book of poems and photographs produced with Ted Hughes. It was these poetic interpretations of the British landscape that established her reputation as one of Britain’s most accomplished photographers.
Her approach was distinct from that of other landscape photographers at the time; essentially descriptive, recording the
specific and objective: the man-made landmark, the characteristic lines of a particular stretch of worked land.
While Fay walked the land, her interrogation of those people who made their living from the land and her challenges to those who despoiled it or owned and co trolled unfair proportion of it, informed and amplified her practice as a photographer. Her environmental campaigning through both her landscape photography and her writing, singles her out and gives the work in this exhibition added meaning today.
Kestle Barton is an ancient Cornish farmstead situated above the Helford River. Following an award-winning conservation and conversion project the beautiful old farm buildings have new uses, one of the barns becoming an elegant gallery that opened in 2010. From early April to late October each year, the gallery, garden and wildflower meadow beyond, hosts a programme of three free exhibitions and a number of other events. Surrounding barns and the old farmhouse have been converted into stylish and comfortable holiday accommodation, all profits from which go towards funding the exhibition and event programme.
Fay Godwin. Under a turbulent sky
9 September – 28 October 2023
www.kestlebarton.co.uk
Learn about the Fay Godwin Archive at the British Library here
Image: Top: Fay Godwin, Above Lumbutts, Lancashire, 1978 chosen by Zelda Cheatle. Copyright: The Fay Godwin Archive - The British Library; Lower: Fay Godwin, Pett Level, East Sussex, 1988 chosen by Brett Rogers. Copyright: The Fay Godwin Archive - The British Library
In this new book Charmaine Toh, who is a former Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Singapore, looks at pictorial photography in Singapore from the 1950s to 1970s, through the optics of the local photographic societies, exhibitions and salons. Her work is based on contemporary sources, interviews and an examination of the extant archives of the photographers of the period. The period was one which Toh notes 'saw an incredible explosion of local photographic practice via camera clubs’ and a ‘vibrant photographic scene’.
This is the first study of pictorial photography from Singapore, and it is intimately linked with a narrative of Singapore’s move to independence with many camera club members being associated with the ruling People’s Action Party. The (new) Singapore Camera Club, later Photographic Society of Singapore (PSS), was formed in 1950 and that year the Singapore Art Society held its first open photographic exhibition, which was rooted in the prevailing pictorial amateur style of the period. How this evolved into a distinctive ‘Singapore pictorialism’ is explored in Toh’s wider narrative.
The book’s introduction sets out Toh’s main arguments that photography during the period took on multiple roles, acting as a symbol of democracy and modernity, staging a national identity and providing a mechanism for Singaporeans to engage with ideas of the past, present and future. These are explored in detailed in the following chapters.
She proposes that these effected a particular Singaporean experience which led to a distinct variant of pictorial photography, she calls ‘Singapore pictorialism’, to distinguish it from European pictorialism from the 1890s and modernist photography which developed in America from the 1920s. This section of the book also provides a useful contextual discussion of pictorialism and reminds us that the term has always been a fluid one with a fuzzy boundary with modernist photography.
Chapter 2 explores this concept of a distinctive Singapore approach. Toh positions it as the start of a modernist practice of photography that was predicated on the notion of a fully self-conscious and autonomous art form. This coincided with Singapore’s key nation-building years, occurring after the Japanese occupation from 1942-45, with Singapore gaining independence from the British to join Malaysia in 1963, its separation in 1965 to form an independent republic, and the associated societal upheavals.
Toh makes a strong case for a distinctive post-1950 Singaporean pictorialism rooted from the first exhibition of 1950 and the situating of photography outside of a traditional art narrative. This resulted in a more open attitude to photographic styles from a younger generation of amateurs who were self-taught, and were, arguably, democratic and open in race and class. The photographs explored beauty and positive images of people and scenes, with Singapore pictorialism, overlain by a modernist discourse as photography was co-opted to support Singapore’s efforts to be recognised as a modern society.
In chapter 3 Toh tackles one of the main criticisms of Singapore pictorialism that its subject matter was repetitive. She investigates the role of the camera clubs and salons and how new amateurs learned to make photographs and the role of salons and judges in reinforcing the selection of certain types of photography.
The photographic club she says ‘acted simultaneously as the academy, the museum and the critic, while also providing a social setting for its members.’ The competitive nature of the salon encouraged photographers to make their pictures to win awards rather than to reach new artistic standards. This was reinforced by salon jury members who came from those same clubs which encouraged entrants to produce work which would appeal to senior photographers.
In chapter 4 – Toh looks at the international dimension of Singapore pictorialism, particularly the connection to nationalism, and the close ties between the Photographic Society of Singapore, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and the Photographic Society of America. In 1960, the South-East Asia Photographic Society (SEAPS) organised the first International Pictorial Photography Exhibition of Singapore, and photographs from Singapore circulated more widely through international networks of club competitions and salon exhibitions.
It is clear that, like the rest of Singapore, photographers were conscious of the changing status of the nation, along with a growing sense of national identity beyond that of a British colony. Recognition of the state played a huge role in the way salon photography was presented. Furthermore, Toh contends that it was the international aspect of pictorial photography – its networks – that allowed the salon itself to represent the state and to feed into Singapore’s burgeoning sense of nation.
Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew observed in the catalogue of the 1963 Singapore International Salon: ‘The Society, through its regular activities for members and sponsorship of local and international photographic competitions in Singapore and participation in photographic events overseas, has helped to raise the standard and prestige of Singapore photographers’. And one might add Singapore itself.
The Singapore government also saw the potential of photography as a tool of nation-building and responded accordingly. Photography was appropriated into the state’s narrative of multiculturalism and was also seen as a tool of soft diplomacy. Government agencies organised their own competitions to emphasise Singapore’s modernity.
Chapter 5 returns the reader to a local audience. Toh positions pictorial photographs away from being historical records, arguing instead that they demonstrate the way the historical imagination of Singapore was negotiated visually. Singapore pictorialism offered its practitioners a way to ‘control’ their environment, presenting a ‘visual comfort’ during a period of social upheaval. Photographs allowed the new nation to re-imagine a new, modern Singapore during a critical period of change, to reflect on its history, and to navigate Singapore’s past, present and future within a post-colonial world.
She shows how composite photographs and shows examples of work from photographers that were ostensibly depicting the past, but were always about the present, and formed a crucial part of the new modernity. Photographs of the rural operated to simultaneously show both the past and the present, which was part of the process of re-imagining Singapore during a critical period of change. Images of ‘past’ Singapore showed the rural, images of modern Singapore focussed on scenes of building and construction.
In her conclusion brings her themes together and, additionally, notes the male-centric nature of Singaporean photography in the period with an absence of female, Indian or Malay voices, although they were probably present. Despite an avowed democracy, Singapore pictorialism remained a middle and upper-class endeavour. Her work supports and explains the concept of a distinctive Singaporean pictorialism.
Charmaine Toh’s account of Singapore pictorialism adds to a wider understanding of pictorialism outside of Europe and America, as well as showing how the movement evolved locally into the later twentieth century. Her book is an exemplar of how a study of a local photographic practice, can be set into a national cultural and political context and a wider international scene. Its publication highlights the need for a similar study looking how amateur photography in Britain evolved from the 1930s into the postwar period. It is a important contribution to photographic literature and the study of Asian photography and is highly recommended.
If there is any criticism it is that the book’s price will put it beyond the reach of individuals which is a shame as it is eminently readable, well-illustrated, and it fully deserves a wider audience.
© Dr Michael Pritchard
Imagining Singapore. Pictorial Photography from the 1950s to the 1970s
Photography in Asia series, no. 2
Charmaine Toh
Brill, 2023
ISBN 978-90-04-51341-9 (hard back)
ISBN 978-90-04-53863-4 (e-book)
€128.00
Details: https://brill.com/display/title/62135?contents=editorial-content
Illustrations: Top: Fook Leun Yan, Dawn of Spring, from Photograms of the Year, 1956, plate 82, and Lower: Yip Cheong Fun, Dance while the sun is bright, from Photograms of the Year 1960, plate 50.
Bradford-born photographer Ian Beesley has donated his archive created over the past fifty years to Bradford's Industrial Museum. It consists of some 200,000 items including negatives, prints, notebooks, posters, books and cuttings. Bessley said in a Twitter post that that he wanted it to 'be free for future generations to access'.
Ian has just published Life. A retrospective, a book that looks back at his work. An exhibition of the same name and Born in Bradford are at Salts Mills, Saltaire over the summer.
See: @IanBeesleyphoto
For the book: https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/life/
Details of the exhibition: https://www.saltsmill.org.uk/#
John Ward who has died aged 82 years, was a Science Museum curator and a key figure at the centre of a network of British photography collections and collectors between the 1970s and 1990s.
John was born in 1940 and attended Manchester Grammar School between 1952 and 1960. He joined the Science Museum in November 1968 as part of a new generation brought in to modernise the institution, by supplementing a post second world war group of curators. He remained there until 2000, just one month short of 30 years’ service.
John initially worked under Dr David B Thomas (1928-2010), Keeper in the department of physics, as his research assistant. Both men had a strong interest in photography and Dr Thomas had published a small booklet on the camera collection in 1966 and in 1973 a booklet on the origins of the motion picture.[1],[2] In 1969 The Science Museum Photography Collection was published under Thomas’s name, incorporating research work from John.[3] John would later produce an updated edition The Science Museum Camera Collection (1981) when the Arthur Frank collection was acquired although he expressed disappointment noting that it had largely been produced to satisfy the donor.[4]
The period from 1968 until the move of the photography collections from London was significant with John’s own role growing into a curatorial one from 1974. The Science Museum through Dr Thomas and John was part of a close network of photography collections which included the Kodak Museum under Brian Coe, the Royal Photographic Society with Arthur Gill and Margaret Harker, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fox Talbot Museum led by Bob Lassam; private collections such as the Barnes Museum of Cinematography and Fenton Museum of Photography, and individual collectors such as Bernard Howarth-Loomes, Cyril Permutt, and others. Those inter-institution and personal connections led to acquisitions and loans, at a time when collections’ management was less formalised than now.[5] That with Howarth-Loomes (1931-2003) was particularly strong.
The connection with the Kodak Museum and Brian Coe (1930-2007) was especially productive with Coe producing salted paper prints from over 600 negatives in the Science Museum’s Talbot collection for an exhibition Sun Pictures marking the centenary of Talbot’s death in 1977. The exhibition showed at the Science Museum and toured internationally. In the catalogue John wrote of the value of the association between a national museum collection and a private museum with laboratory and research facilities.[6] By the early 1980s the Science Museum was showing Kodak Ltd exhibitions.
John was responsible for the design and installation of the Science Museum’s new photography and cinematography galleries which opened on 10 April 1979. These told the technical history of both through the museum’s significant collections, supplemented by a significant loan of early case photographs, photographic jewellery and stereographs from Howarth-Loomes. The opening of an adjacent new Optics gallery complimented them. The new galleries had short life and were dismantled soon after the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT) was fully established.
John’s time at the museum marked the setting up of the NMPFT, now the National Science and Media Museum, in Bradford, in 1983. This included the transfer of the Science Museum’s photography and cinematography collections from London. Although John was offered a move to Bradford he declined and remained a sceptic of the project, although he remained supportive of colleagues and remained professionally engaged with its activities. He wrote a chapter for the museum’s book commemorating the transfer and opening of the Kodak Museum collection at the NMPFT in 1989.[7]
The launch and expansion of the NMPFT meant that John’s role as London photography curator disappeared and he had a temporary role researching and cataloguing the museum’s Talbot collection.[8] He later took on a new role responsible for training, in particular for new graduates, within the museum. He retired in 2000.
During the latter changes, John remained professionally engaged with photography especially early British photography. The resulted in perhaps his most significant achievement, with Sara Stevenson, the exhibition and book Printed Light: the scientific art of William Henry Fox Talbot (1984) which opened at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1984 and brought together 100 of the Science Museum’s Talbot prints and objects.[9]
Outside of his professional roles at the Science Museum John was actively involved with the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists trade union at the Science Museum which took a lot of his time. As his wife Sue noted he was a man of principles and integrity and never hesitated to ‘speak truth to power’.
After retirement he continued to be consulted on early photography and wrote entries for the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography (Routledge, 2007) and for the Encyclopedia of 20th Century Technology (Routledge, 2004).
Quiet and understated, John was not an easy or eloquent orator, but he more than made up for this in the fluency of his written words and he was supportive of others. Colin Harding who joined the Science Museum working with John noted “I have great affection for John. He set me on the road to becoming a photohistorian and was always very supportive - although he thought that I was making a big mistake when I decided to take a job in Bradford.” He continues, “[Dr] David Thomas kept a low profile and it was through John that I met such luminaries as Brian Coe, Bernard Howarth-Loomes and Larry Schaaf. My friendship with John meant that I was subsequently able to negotiate the sometimes difficult political landscape between Bradford and South Kensington. John actively encouraged me to research and write.”
Roger Taylor who was recruited to the NMPFT in 1985 to open the Kodak Museum to Bradford noted the later support of John who acted as his advocate with senior management. He says “I will always be grateful for his intervention.” For other such as Alison Morrison-Low, then curator at the National Museums of Scotland “it is thanks to him that the Howarth-Loomes collection came to the National Museums of Scotland. He introduced me to Bernard, and also to Brian Coe… I learned a lot.”
And for me, I was at Christie’s in South Kensington from 1986, as a photography specialist and met John when the museum would buy photography for the collection. I would meet John regularly for lunch at his favourite Italian restaurant just down from the museum, where he would offer news, advice and share his knowledge. Later, in 2007 when I started a PhD John acted as an advisor and after he had left the museum we continued to meet and discuss photographic history.
John was a sportsman who ran, particularly cross country, played football, badminton and cricket. He would keep an eye on Chelsea FC while reading a book and possibly dip in and out of an England cricket match, but would be equally happy to stop and watch a village cricket match. He learnt to play the violin at school and picked up the ability to play the piano both with music and by ear. He loved classical music and reading with particularly interests in the history of the World Wars, social history, politics and of course photography. John was also a great gardener, sowing seeds and growing plants on, particularly vegetables but also annual plants for the garden.
John’s contribution to British photographic history was largely curtailed with the opening of the NMPFT and later acquisition of the Kodak Museum collection. But the remains a significant figure through his work at the Science Museum, and through his wider role engaging with other institutions and individuals during a period of rapid growth in interest in photographic history. Look through many books on British photographic history published during the period 1974-1990s and John is often acknowledged. He was personally supportive of a generation of curators and researchers which has left an enduring legacy.
He leaves Sue, his wife of more than fifty years, and is survived by three sisters. His brother predeceased him.
© Dr Michael Pritchard
16 June 2023, updated 15 July 2023
With thanks to: Sue Ward, Tim Boon, Colin Harding, Hope Kingsley, Alison Morrison-Low, Roger Taylor.
Photo: Richard Morris FRPS. John Ward, 1978, a contemporary calotype made at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.
Notes
[1] David B. Thomas, Camera Photographs and Accessories. A Science Museum illustrated booklet, London: HMSO, 1966.
[2] David B. Thomas, The origins of the motion pictures. An introductory booklet on the pre-history of the cinema, London, HMSO, 1964.
[3] David B. Thomas, The Science Museum Photography Collection, London, HMSO, 1969.
[4] The Science Museum Camera Collection incorporating the Arthur Frank Collection, London, Science Museum, [1981].
[5] Michael Pritchard, ‘many interesting and valuable gifts of apparatus for preservation in the Museum’. The Royal Photographic Society and networks of collecting photographic technology’, paper presented at the V&A Museum conference, 16 & 17 November 2018.
[6] Michael Pritchard et. al., ‘In memoriam. Brian Walter Coe’, History of Photography, 32 (2), Summer 2008, p. 208-210.
[7] John Ward, ‘The beginnings of photography’, in Colin Ford (ed.), The story of popular photography, London, Century and NMPFT. 1989, pp. 10-41.
[8] ‘Photohistorical and club news’, Photographica World, no.48 (March 1989), p.2.
[9] John Ward and Sara Stevenson, Printed Light: the scientific art of William Henry Fox Talbot and David Octavius Hill with Robert Adamson. London, HMSO, 1986.
The latest number of The PhotoHistorian, the journal of the RPS Historical Group has recently been published. The two papers present a detailed study of the woman photographer and studio owner Madame Clementina Brunner *1837-1887) ‘sole pupil of Mayall’ by Rebecca Sharpe. The second presents new discoveries and letters relating to Antoine Claudet. Published are plans of his 'temple of photography' in Regent Street (first noted by Steve Edwards), evidence that the disastrous studio fire left behind some material, a new letter from Claudet and H L Pattinson, and details of Claudet's will; and from Deborah Ireland are letters between Claudet and Hugh Lee Pattinson, who's daguerreotype of Niagara Falls appeared in Excursion Daguerriennes. The letter's are all transcribed.
The PhotoHistorian is available to members of the Group or on subscription. See: https://rps.org/groups/Historical
One of three drawings of Claudet's Temple of Photography, 107 Regent Street, reproduced in The PhotoHistorian. Courtesy, The National Archives.
The 14th International Seminar on the Origins and History of Cinema is titled Visions of the sick body. Physical and Mental Pathologies' Representations in Photography and Early Cinema. Details of the programme are now available and registration is open until 2 November 2023.
The conference is international and includes speakers from the UK: Louise Radinger Field (U. Reading, UK) The Strange Case of Madeleine Lebouc: Capturing and Projecting the Iconography of Madness at Salpêtrière; and Jason Bate (U. London) Introducing the Optical Lantern into the Medical School Classroom, 1880-1910,
Visions of the sick body. Physical and Mental Pathologies' Representations in Photography and Early Cinema
9 and 10 November 2023
Universitat de Girona
Details: https://museudelcinema.girona.cat/eng/institut_seminari_2023.php
