A unique and irreplaceable visual record of twentieth-century Exeter has been secured for the South West Heritage Trust thanks to a £178,579 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. A project is underway to conserve, catalogue and digitise the collection - and to make it available online and directly across the region.  

The Isca Photographic Collection Project will rescue and preserve 24,000 images depicting the city and its inhabitants during the first half of the twentieth century. The acetate negatives are suffering from vinegar syndrome; an irreversible chemical deterioration process that destroys the negative. The project to save the collection will digitise the images before they are lost forever, and make them available to researchers.

In the 1970s the Wykes archive was purchased by local photographer and historian Peter Thomas, who created the Isca Photographic Collection, supplementing Wykes’ work with other collections of local interest (including a photographic archive from the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital). Thomas added his own photographic work capturing Exeter’s story in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, notably 4,500 images recording the demolition and rebuilding of Exeter’s Princesshay Shopping Centre. 

The full collection of almost 50,000 images is mainly comprised of the life’s work of the Australian-born photographer Henry Wykes (1874-1964). Wykes opened his first studio in Exeter in 1914, quickly establishing himself as the city’s foremost photographer, a status he held until his retirement in 1962, by which time he was Britain’s oldest working photographer. Wykes’ images chart the growth of the city in the 1920s and ‘30s and the wartime carnage wrought by the devasting ‘Baedeker’ raids. The collection is also a uniquely personal record of the residents of Exeter with thousands of images of individual and family portraits. Many hundreds of other images document local residents at work and play in shops, factories, at weddings, sporting and other social events. It captures the lives of inhabitants of the city whose stories have too often remain unexplored, including those of the residents of St Loye’s College and School of Occupational Therapy, who navigated physical disabilities and learning difficulties.

The project to catalogue the images and make them available online will be supported by a team of volunteers. There will be an exhibition at Custom House in Exeter and community events will take place. The images will be used for reminiscence sessions in residential homes and for work in schools to raise environmental awareness.

See more here: https://swheritage.org.uk/news/isca-collection-of-photographs-saved/

The role of Isca Project Officer is also be advertised (closes 3 March 2025). See her: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/job-isca-photographic-collection-project-officer-closes-3-march-2

Image: Workers at the Bodleys Foundry on Commercial Road, Exeter. 

David Bailey's studio is looking for an intern to help with ongoing extensive archive projects. You need to be organised and have a real attention to detail. A good understanding of digital cameras for archiving is essential. Ideally you will have archive experience and/or training and be happy working within a small team.

No indication of whether it's paid or not, but one wouild expect it to be. Send your CV and a covering email to: gallery@camera-eye.co.uk

Recent news reports have suggested that the British Council's art collection is under threat as it struggles to manage a £197 million debt and potential insolvency. Half of the 9000-item collection is protected by agreements with donors that restrict work being sold, but the remainder are potentially under threat of disposal, unless the government steps in to support the Council. As Jenny Waldman from the Art Fund notes if the British Council were to sell off art work it would set a precedent that could see cash-strapped local authorities and even national museums consider raising funds from sales. 

The British Council has been collecting works of art, craft and design since 1938. It has no permanent gallery and uses the collection to promote British culture overseas through loans and touring exhibitions. A photograph was first added in 1969 with a Euan Duff print of a Richard Hamilton work The Critic Laughs (1968), but the first photograph collected in its own right was Sir George Pollock's Cibachrome print Spectrum No. 6 in 1970. Thereafter photography was actively collected to support exhibitions and acquired through donation, as examples, in 1972 twenty-five Bill Brandt prints were acquired and in 1975 forty-five David Hurn prints, amongst many other examples. 

The photography collection numbers some 630 photographs.*  From its initial rapid expansion in the 1970s, the arrival of Brett Rogers OBE at the British Council in 1982 until 2005, saw the collection added to in a more managed way. During her tenure she was Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and curated an acclaimed programme of international touring exhibitions on British photography, using the Council's own collection and loans.  

From a photography perspective the collection includes a significant number of photographs from well-known British photographers and artists using photography including Martin Parr, Chris Killip, Richard Hamilton, Richard Arnatt, Victor Burgin, Homer Sykes, Patrick Ward, Chris Steel Perkins, Sharon Kivland,  Hamish Fulton, Paul Hill, David Nash, Paul Trevor, Fay Godwin, Cecil Beaton, Bob Chaplin, George Rodger, Bert Hardy, Thurston Hopkins, Tony Ray-Jones, Ian Berry, Bryn Campbell, Raymond Moore, Laurence Cutting, Calum Colvin, Richard Long, Helen Sear, Boyd Webb, Matt Collishaw, Michael Landy,  Clare Strand, Angus Bolton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rut Blees Luxenburg, Mark Power, Lala Meredith-Vula, Sarah Lucas, Tacita Dean, Jane Simpson,  Marcus Haydock, Ann Doherty, Adam Chodzko, Peter Liversidge, Dominic Pote, Shirley Baker, Gabriella Sancisi, Martin Creed, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Tracey Emin, Hew Locke and many others.

(*) The graph above is based on the searchable online collection database and shows acquisitons of photographs from 1969 to the last recorded acquisition in 2018. This includes a small number of photographs of artwork, and, of course, the work of artists using photography as part of their wider practice. Not all work, includign recent additions may be online.  

See: https://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/search-9

News reports: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/feb/06/the-british-council-will-trash-a-precious-national-asset-if-it-sells-its-art-collection and https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/02/03/british-council-art-collection-at-risk-debt-to-government and https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-council-considers-selling-half-collection-debt-1234731681/

A new exhibition at Crawley Museum featuring photographs by the renowned photographer Wolf Suschitzky (1912-2016) of the early development of Crawley are returning to the town and being shown to the public for the first time since they were taken six decades ago.

The photographs were commissioned to capture life in the New Town ten years after construction had begun. Along with images made in the other emerging New Towns around the country, a small selection of images was featured in an exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 1959 to highlight the progress of the first wave of home building and new town development following World War Two.

They were discovered in the Fotohof archives, Salzburg Austria, by photographer and researcher Dr Julia Winckler who immediately recognised their significance: “The archival collection comprises of more than 100 images featuring Crawley’s architecture, businesses, factories, shopping arcades, houses, schools, nurseries, residents and green spaces. A key feature and strength of Suschitzky’s photographs is that the architecture primarily acted as a backdrop to human interactions. From my previous research and writing on earlier phases of urban development, I knew this evocative series of images of the original British new towns really needed to be seen.”

Along with exhibition curation partners Dr. Kurt Kaindl, Co-Founder of Fotohof Salzburg, and Ms Georgia Wrighton, a colleague at the University of Brighton specialising in Town Planning, Crawley Museum was approached to host this exhibition, co-curated by Jo Pettipher, Learning & Liaison Officer, Crawley Museum and Trustee Mick Waters.

Incorporating artefacts and documents from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition provides new insights into the early phases of the town’s development and the photographs reveal fascinating details of the lives of the first generation of inhabitants as they commute, work, shop, learn and play. The photographs serve as a valuable cultural and visual archive not only for town planners or photography and architectural historians, but most importantly, they constitute an invaluable resource for contemporary residents and communities, offering a rare glimpse into everyday life in Crawley at a pivotal point in its evolution, and as a reminder of the optimism of this period of urban development and how it might inspire a vision for the future.

Georgia Wrighton commented: “Wolf Suschitzky’s photographs help us to uncover and celebrate the early beginnings of Crawley, and the sense of optimism at that time and illustrate why the history of the New Towns should be valued and cherished as part of the UK’s town planning and architectural heritage.” Jo Pettipher said: "We are delighted to be able to bring these photographs back to the people of Crawley and display them alongside objects from the museum’s collection. As Crawley enters a new period of change, we hope these beautiful photographs and fascinating objects will spark a new optimism and hope for the town’s future. A chance for us all to feel a sense of pride in the town and to work together to build a bright, sustainable future.”

Kurt Kaindl: “Wolf Suschitzky’s photographs are what every archivist dreams of: the output of a very long and active life as a photographer. In his photographic work, he observed a classical formal language and utilised photography with its ability to cover small details and portraits of individual people as well as expansive overviews of specific themes.”

A public talk takes place on 22 February from 1400-1600, alongside a series of talks, community events, gallery tours, school visits, half-term activities and workshops.

Crawley New Town seen through the lens of Wolf Suschitzky
6 February-29 March 2025
Crawley Museum, 103 High St, Crawley RH10 1DD
https://crawleymuseums.org/crawley-museum/

Image:  Wolf Suschitzky, Tilgate Shopping Arcade, 1959, from the Crawley New Town series. Courtesy Fotohof Salzburg/ © Suschitzky / Donat Family

Lucia Moholy (1894 -1989), a Bauhaus photographer, was a pioneer of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) art movement in the early 1920s in Germany. Her photos bear important testimony to the ideas and visions of the legendary art school, the Bauhaus, that continue to influence architecture and design around the world, from IKEA to Apple. Lucia’s pictures not only capture buildings and objects, but also the Bauhaus spirit and atmosphere.

Lucia and her husband László Moholy-Nagy spent five years living and working at the Bauhaus. László became world famous for his photograms, a photo without film. Lucia’s part has only recently surfaced.

When Lucia, born a Czech Jew, had to precipitously flee Germany in 1933 after the Nazis seized power, she couldn’t take her most valuable belongings with her, her glass negatives. In London she struggled to make ends meet by working for the British secret service, microfilming valuable documents. After the war, she set off in search of her photos. Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, now a professor of architecture at Harvard, with whom she shared a friendly correspondence, long neglected to tell her that he had her negatives and was using them diligently to augment Bauhaus’s reputation – without ever mentioning her name. It wasn’t until after three years of legal negotiations that Gropius sent her a box with 230 negatives. Lucia had to pay for the transportation costs herself. 330 glass plates were missing.

Lucia’s story is as admirable as it is tragic. Even today artists are moved by her fate and in the USA and Europe are inspired by her work.

Dr Sigrid Faltin is the film’s director. She studied English, German, and History in Bonn and Freiburg. After training as a journalist, she worked as a regional correspondent with the German South-West TV station SWF, and as an anchorwoman for radio and TV. Today she is a book author, a writer, director, and producer for television and an independent documentary filmmaker. Her films are shown on film festivals and on TV worldwide.

Lucia Moholy: Bauhaus Photographer
7 March 2025, 1730-1900
Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2
Free, but booking essential
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/lucia-moholy-bauhaus-photographer-london-film-premier-and-qa-with-director/

Image: Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus facade from the Southwest, 1926. Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, VG Bildkunst 

Registration is open for a 24-hour long conference-a-thon to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) on 8 March 2025. The event will feature the work of over sixty photography scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts in a free, online, global, 24-hour symposium dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to the medium of photography from photography’s announcement in 1839 to contemporary practitioners in 2024. This unique event aims to highlight the diverse and impactful work of women and female-identifying photographers, and those working with photography, across many different cultures and time zones.

The conference-a-thon had been put together by scholars Dr Rose Teanby from the UK and Dr Kris Belden-Adams of University of Mississippi. It features speakers from across the globe including New Zealand and Australia, Asia, Europe and the UK, Canada, North and South America, following IWD as it moves through the Earth's time zones. All time zones enter International Women’s Day, 8 March, from 0800-1100 (UTC).

Split into three sections, the 15-minute papers, plus two longer keynotes, look at different themes and techniques through the lens of women from photography's announcement in 1839, others focus on individual women photographers from the C19th, C20th and C21st centuries, soem take a geographical approach, and other papers provide an opportunity to hear from contemporary women photographers, artists and practitioners. The keynotes are being delivered by South African/UK-based photographer Jillian Edelstein who will discuss her own practice and what photography means to her; and Dr. Katherine Manthorne who will discuss Civil War era New Yorkers. 

All the speakers will be recorded and the rceordings will be made available to registrants only, allowing them to catch up with any talks that they might miss. 

The programme, paper abstracts and speaker biographies are all available to review. 

Take a look at the full programme and register here: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/

Washington DC's National Gallery of Art has recently acquired the library of noted photography and photobook collector, designer, and author Manfred Heiting. The Heiting Library, which includes more than 4,500 items, will expand the National Gallery’s remarkable holdings of illustrated books, bound volumes of photographs, and photobooks from around the world and complement its collection of photographs. Made possible in part by a gift from Heiting, this acquisition also underscores the museum’s commitment to supporting photography research and scholarship and continuing to expand the breadth and depth of the nation’s art and research collections. Of particular note to BPH is Anna Atkin's British Algae. 

At the core of the Heiting Library is an extraordinary concentration of bound volumes of 19th-century photographs and 20th-century photobooks of exceptional quality, scope, and significance. These works, along with earlier 16th- to 19th-century publications adorned with woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, enable the Heiting Library to offer many insights into the development of illustrated books. Notably, the collection shows how earlier examples propelled the rise of the groundbreaking photographically illustrated European, American, Japanese, and Soviet modernist photobooks of the 1920s through the 1970s. The Heiting Library also includes pioneering examples of late 19th- and 20th-century art and design periodicals and rare 20th-century publications from Iran, China, and Latin America.

“The Heiting Library presents an exciting opportunity for the National Gallery to deepen public understanding and appreciation of our artistic and cultural history, enabling our visitors to access foundational examples of photobooks, illustrated books, and periodicals,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “These extraordinary objects demonstrate the global reach of photography, and they highlight the deep connection between photography and modern art. We are grateful to Manfred Heiting and his family for the care they took in building this unparalleled resource and for their generosity, which made this acquisition possible. By joining the ranks of those who have contributed to the National Gallery’s legacy of artistic preservation and cultural enrichment, Mr. Heiting becomes part of a storied group of dedicated patrons and benefactors. We look forward to sharing these objects more broadly as part of the nation’s collection.”

As he built his collection over the last 35 years, Heiting’s primary goal was to demonstrate that the illustrated book was a work of art. He focused not just on the artists whose practice was illustrated but on the entire team—including authors, designers, typographers, printers, publishers, and bookbinders—who transformed an idea into an artwork that could be disseminated around the world. His collection includes pristine copies of seminal volumes as well as deluxe editions, often signed, with extra plates or additional printed information that give further understanding to the scope, importance, and distinction of the publication.

Illustrated books have played an essential role in shaping humanity’s understanding of the world since the 16th century. Photobooks, which are characterized by the careful sequencing and editing of photographic images to convey visual arguments, expanded this role in the 19th and 20th centuries by challenging traditional ways of reading and seeing. They are now a dominant form of presentation and circulation of photographic images and are a vital mode of artistic expression for contemporary photographers.

The acquisition of the Heiting Library brings to the National Gallery important bound volumes of photographs, including works by women photographers, and books exploring prescient concepts like the environment, land use, European colonial power, and global exchange. It also gives the museum one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese photobooks in the world and transforms the museum’s ability to convey the crucial impact of Japanese photography on global art and culture.

This acquisition further complements the National Gallery’s 19th- and 20th-century photography collection by allowing scholars, researchers, and the public to view and study original prints along with their published reproductions. Especially in the 20th century, photographers often aspired to have their pictures published in books, which enabled their art to circulate around the world.

Heiting has been a long time collector of photography and photography books. When he began collecting in the 1970s, he first focused on prints, but in 2002, after selling the majority of his collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), he shifted to photobooks. Since then, he had acquired a collection that traced the history of photobook publishing from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. In 2012, the MFA acquired about 24,000 of the books. A few thousand items had already been transferred to the museum, the remainder were at the Heiting's home for research purposes until 2023, but were destroyed in the 2018 Woolsey California wildfire (see links below).

Highlights from The Heiting Library

• Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne and Jacob Cats, Proteus, ofte, Minne-beelden verandert in sinne-beelden (1627 [1618]). One of the few copies with Adriaen van de Venne’s illustrations hand-colored by a contemporary hand, possibly Van de Venne himself. This is the first edition to include the first two engravings and Cats’s Dutch poetry alongside his prose, and the only edition of these emblem books printed in the larger quarto format.
• Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Historique et description der procédés de Daguerréotype et du diorama (1839). This is the first edition, first issue, first printing, and one of only three known copies of Daguerre’s manual for his process of photography, issued on August 20, 1839.
• Anna Atkins, Photographs of British Algae (1843–1850). A milestone in the history of photography, this work is considered the first photographically printed and illustrated book. Issued in fascicles, it contains 71 cyanotype prints, a process invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842.
• Gustave Le Gray, Souvenirs du Camp de Châlons (1857). A unique album given by Emperor Napoleon III to his highest-ranking officer, Comte Auguste Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély, the commander in chief of the Imperial Guard and marshal of France, it includes 66 albumen prints of Le Gray’s photographs of the Imperial Guard’s exercises at the inauguration of the Camp de Châlons, more than any of the other six copies of the “grand albums” known to exist.
• Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz, The Steichen Book (1906). Inscribed by Stieglitz to his friend Heinrich Kühn, this bound volume of photogravures was later acquired from the Kühn family by the equally famous German photographer Otto Steinert, who gave it to his assistant a few days before he died.
• Adolph de Meyer, Le prelude à L’Après-midi d’un faune (1914). One of only seven known copies of de Meyer’s sumptuous, handcrafted book on the Ballets Russes’s scandalous production of Vaslav Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un faune. De Meyer claimed that the book was on board a ship bound for New York that was sunk by a German submarine, but it is also possible that the full edition was never printed.
• Alfred Stieglitz, Agnes Ernst Meyer, Marius de Zayas, and Paul Haviland, 291 (March 1915–February 1916). Stieglitz sent this deluxe edition of his avant-garde magazine, which included original artwork, essays, and poems by Francis Picabia, John Marin, Max Jacob, de Zayas, Stieglitz, and others, to Georgia O’Keeffe while she was teaching in Canyon, Texas. She kept it until her death in 1986.
• Fukuhara Shinzō, Pari to Seinu (1922). This exceedingly rare publication by Fukuhara, one of the most influential Japanese modernist photographers, is the main source of information on his early pictorial photographs; most of his other work was destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923.
• Louis Aragon, Une vague de rêves (1924/1938). A special edition with unique original binding by Paul Bonet using original photographs on the recto and verso. He made only six special covers, all slightly different in 1934, 1938, 1939, 1942, and 1962. 
• CCCP na stroika (USSR in Construction) (1935). A monthly magazine, USSR in Construction brought together some of the most celebrated Soviet artists of the time, including El Lissitzsky, Nikolai Troshin, Alexsandr Rodchenko, and Varvara Stepanova, who used photographs to promote the vast transformation of their built environment in the 1930s. A deluxe annual  edition printed on heavier paper and intended for members of the Politburo, this 1935 annual has some of Rodchenko’s and Stepanova’s most celebrated designs, including the famous “parachute issue,” with a printed, folded-up parachute designed by Rodchenko.
• Laure Albin Guillot, La Cantate du Narcisse (1936). From an edition of eight, this portfolio of 20 original Fresson charcoal prints illustrates Paul Valéry’s poem of the same title with innovative photographs of nudes by Albin Guillot.
• Barbara Brändli, Sistema nervioso (Nervous System) (1975). An innovative photobook described as a visual poem to the city of Caracas by the Swiss-born Venezuelan photographer Brändli, Sistema nervioso was made in collaboration with screenwriter Román Chalbaud and artistic director John Lange, both Venezuelan, and is recognized as one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century.
• Kitajima Keizō, Photo Express Tokyo, Nos. 1–12 (1979). These booklets were published to accompany Kitajima’s legendary monthly exhibitions at the CAMP gallery in Tokyo in 1979, in which he covered every inch of the gallery walls with his photographs.

About the National Gallery of Art Library

The National Gallery of Art Library contains a collection of more than 500,000 books and periodicals on the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture, and an extensive image collection of more than 16 million single images. The general collection includes a broad selection of monographs on individual artists; international exhibition, museum, and private collection catalogs; and European and American auction catalogs from the 18th century to the present. The library’s special collections include rare collection catalogs, biographies of artists, festival books, emblem books, artist books, travel literature, and manuals on technique and materials, as well as books on architecture, color theory, and the early history of photography. The image collection’s strengths include American, Dutch, French, and Italian art, the arts of Asia, and the architecture of France, Italy, and Germany. Since 1990, the library has significantly expanded its holdings of books and periodicals related to photography. The library and image collections are available for study by any individual, including staff and interns of the National Gallery, members of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the broader scholarly and artistic community.

About the National Gallery’s Collection of Photographs

The National Gallery began to collect photographs in 1990 and has since established one of the most distinguished collections of photographs and programs for photography in the world, with numerous groundbreaking and award-winning exhibitions and publications. The collection now includes more than 23,000 works made from 1839 to the present by photographers working around the world. It has deep, often unrivaled holdings of work by Robert Adams, Ilse Bing, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Allen Ginsberg, Graciela Iturbide, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Eadweard Muybridge, Gordon Parks, Alfred Stieglitz, and Paul Strand, among others, as well as strong holdings of press photographs, snapshots and other vernacular photographs, and a significant collection of 19th- and early 20th-century photographs of and by African Americans. It also includes works by many of the photographers whose books are included in the Heiting Collection.

Search the Library collections here: https://library.nga.gov/discovery/search?vid=01NGA_INST:NGA&lang=en

Works in the National Gallery’s collection of photographs can be viewed by appointment. Contact photographs@nga.gov or 202-842-6144.

See also: https://www.1854.photography/2018/11/heiting-collection-destroyed/ and https://www.artforum.com/news/major-collection-of-photobooks-destroyed-in-california-wildfire-241390/

Images (top to bottom): 

Gustave Le Gray, Souvenirs du Camp de Châlons, 1857, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Anna Atkins, Photographs of British Algae, 1843–1850, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Kitajima Keizō, Photo Express Tokyo, Nos. 1–12, 1979, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Historique et description der procédés de Daguerréotype et du diorama, 1839, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library. Image courtesy of Manfred Heiting
Barbara Brändli, Sistema nervioso (Nervous System), 1975, National Gallery of Art Library, Manfred Heiting Library

Alternative Photograpy is running a tribute to Sir John Herschel during 2025, including a call for images. Alternative Photography has been working with alternative processes since 1999 and is led by Malin Fabbri. 

Malin says: Many historians and researchers have written accounts of Sir John Herschel’s life. I will not make another attempt at this, but provide a place to find out more and point you in the right direction to material well worth reading if you are interested in Sir John Herschel’s life and his discoveries. The history of the anthotype, the chrysotype as well as the history of cyanotype are of course closely linked to Herschel. So, whether you are a curious artist or a researcher of the history of alternative photographic processes, I hope you find something worth digging into. If you have more valuable sources, please leave a comment or contact us and we’ll include this too.

Before we start I just want to highlight that we are currently running our Calendar & Journal event. This year the theme is “A tribute to Sir John Herschel” and here is how to take part (before the 31st of March). The images - using any alternative process - will be on display in our Sir John Herschel tribute gallery.

See: https://www.alternativephotography.com/sir-john-herschel/

Ben Harman was appointed Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland in 2024. In this illustrated talk, he will share his thoughts on the current status of photography in Scotland with reference to its history and the background to recent developments, current practices and trends. He will also look forward to the challenges and exciting future ambitions of curating Scotland’s photography collection.

Past, Present, Future: Curating Scotland’s Photography Collection
Tuesday 11 February, 12.45-1.30pm.
National Galleries of Scotland, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL and online
Free, but registration required: register here for the: live event or streamed live

BPH has just been made aware of the passing of R Derek Wood. He was an important researcher in to the early history of photography and microscopy, in addition to his day job in medical imaging and research. He maintained an important website that housed his photography papers and writings published from c.1970-2008. 

Wood's career was in research on electron microscopy in bio-medical research laboratories in London and he published extensively in this area. Away from work he undertook important and meticulous research into the early history of photography mainly over the period from 1820s to 1860s. His subjects ranged from Niépce, Daguerre, Beard and Talbot, legal disputes, Herschel, J B Reade, daguerreotypy, and others. This was all undertaken at a time when there was little similar research taking place, and when digitisation and online resources were decades away, necessitating long visits to local archives, the Public Record Office, learned societies, and the British Museum reading room. His publications date from 1970 although he had an interest prior to this. His papers remain a valuable source of information. 

Wood was a member of the Royal Photographic Society for a time from 1966 and its Historical Group which was founded in 1972, leaving in 1972. He published a paper with Mrs E D Shorland on 'The Daguerreotype Portrait of Dorothy Draper' in The Photographic Journal, December 1970. His research appeared in a variety publications including Annals of Science, History of Photography, History Today and British Journal of Photography. 

He was member of the European Society for the History of Photography from its inception in 1977 and was editor/compiler of the ESHPh’s bibliography Photohistorica 1993/94 and he published in PhotoResearcher. He presented a paper 'Fourteenth March 1839, Herschel's Key to Photography, the Way the Moment is Preserved for the Future' at the ESHP's 30th anniversary congress, Vienna, in 2007. 

He was married to Alison. 

Rupert Derek Wood
Born: Romney Marsh, 1933- died: Bromley, Kent, 2024)

See archived website with papers at https://web.archive.org/web/20180314160924/http://www.midley.co.uk/

A long list of photography and medical papers can be seen at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UAIzhg4AAAAJ&hl=en

Details of his website archive can be seen here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/midley-history-of-early

Thanks for European Society for the History of Photography for advising of R Derek Wood's death. 

Professor Steve Edwards has been appointed Manton Professor of British Art. Beginning in April, he will serve as the inaugural Director of The Courtauld’s new Manton Centre for British Art, the new home for The Courtauld’s research and teaching on British art. Edwards is currently Professor of the History and Theory of Photography at Birkbeck, and before that had been at the Open University. 

Named after British art collectors and philanthropists Sir Edwin Manton and Florence, Lady Manton, The Manton Centre for British Art will serve as an intellectual hub for art historians, curators, artists, and students nationally and internationally, providing a platform for sharing world-leading research and teaching the next generation of British art specialists. It will be located initially at The Courtauld’s current campus at Vernon Square and will later be housed in purpose-designed premises at Somerset House.

The Manton Centre was established by the Corutauld in 2024 with a $12 million donation. The Centre, named after British art collectors and philanthropists, Sir Edwin Manton and Florence, Lady Manton, will help secure The Courtauld’s ambition of becoming a world leader in the field of British art, and marks the continued commitment of the Manton family to arts education. The Manton Centre for British Art will serve as an intellectual hub for art historians, curators, critics, artists and students nationally and internationally, providing a platform for sharing world-leading research and for teaching the next generation of British art specialists.

Located initially at The Courtauld’s current campus at Vernon Square, King's Cross, the Manton Centre will later be housed in the purpose-designed premises at Somerset House, providing the physical and intellectual home for The Courtauld’s research and teaching on British art. The Courtauld’s specialists in British art will become members of the Centre and help shape its activities and development. The Centre will operate as the base for students taking modules in British art as part of their MA degree and also provide a home for The Courtauld’s PhD students researching British art.

The Centre will present an ambitious and dynamic programme of events including:

• An annual lecture in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton
• An annual international conference devoted to a major topic in the field
• Regular workshops devoted to specific areas of British art
• An annual programme of seminars and lectures enabling scholars, curators, critics and artists to share their thinking and research
• An annual ‘scholar in residence’ programme, designed to host a leading figure in the field of British art.

The Manton Centre for British Art will also pursue collaborations with other scholarly and artistic institutions both in the UK and around the world. In pursing these collaborations and partnerships, the Centre will engage with all areas and periods of British art, and with a wide range of partners and interlocutors.

See: https://courtauld.ac.uk/news-blogs/2025/executive-dean-and-deputy-director-and-manton-professor-for-british-art-announcement/ and https://courtauld.ac.uk/news-blogs/2024/the-manton-centre-for-british-art-announcement/

https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/#overview

Edwards' Birkbeck biography notes:  Steve grew up on a council estate and he was a manual worker before going to art school with the intention of becoming a great artist, instead he found politics and theory. He studied the MA in Social History of Art at the University of Leeds with John Tagg and Griselda Pollock, receiving a Distinction, and then did PhD research at Portsmouth Polytechnic and the University of Leeds with Adrian Rifkin (and for a short while with the late Robbie Grey). Between 1991 and 1997 he was Head of Historical & Theoretical Studies in Photography at the University of Derby. In 1997 he was a visiting scholar at the Victoria & Albert Museum; the same year he moved to the Open University, where he contributed teaching material on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art to a variety of courses and edited three Open University textbooks. In 2006 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan. Steve was made Professor at the OU in 2013 and, between 2012 and 2016, he was the Head of the Department of Art History. He joined the Department of Art History at Birkbeck in 2016 as Professor of History & Theory of Photography.
Administrative responsibilities: Research Director and REF lead; Co-Director History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
Visiting posts: Visiting Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 01-2016 to 03-2006; Visiting Professor, Université Bordeaux-Montagne, 10-2018 to 12-2018
Professional activities: Senior Teaching Fellow HEA; Editorial Board: Oxford Art Journal; Editorial Collective Historical Materialism Book Series (Brill/Haymarket); Co-convenor Research Seminar Series 'Marxism in Culture', Institute of Advanced Studies, Senate House
Professional membership: Senior Teaching Fellow HEA; AHRC Peer Review College
He has published extensively on photography and is currently working on the book looking at the early business of photography. 

Image: © Michael Pritchard. Steve Edwards delivering a paper at A New Power symposium, Bodleian Libraries in March 2023. 

The National Stereoscopic Association is pleased to announce its sixth annual "Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography" at the 51st annual 3D-Con held at the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul on 7 August, 2025. Presentations are welcome on any art historical, visual studies, humanities or social science scholarship in stereography from its inception to contemporary stereo-media. We project stereoscopically on the 3D-Con's big screen, and our growing community of international scholars represent diverse research from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Please fill out the contact information form on the web page below. Then upload on a separate file your abstract of 600 words maximum, followed by a biography of no more than 300 words, and up to five images (optional).

National Stereoscopic Association’s 51st Annual 3D-Con
cfp: Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography VI
Thursday, 7 August 7, 2025
cfpdeadline: 21 May, 2025
https://3d-con.com/history.php (Press the tab for “Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography.”)
Notification of acceptance by 6 June, 2025

Image: John Heywood, 1864

There are two conservator jobs being adevrtised at the moment. The V&A Museum is looking for a paper and photographs conservator (closes 9 February) and the British Film Institute is seeking a Senor Conservator - Film Laboratory (closes 5 February). Details on the links. 

A monograph on the photographer W J A Grant has just been published. Grant is best known for his photography with the expeditions of Benjamin Leigh-Smith, Sir Henry Gore-Booth and the Dutch national exploration vessel 'William Barents'. His first Arctic voyage took place in 1876. Grant was elected to membership of the Photographic society of London in 1863 and he exhibited in Society exhibitions from 1869. He was also a member/subscriber of the Amateur Photographic Association. 

W J A Grant (1851-1935). Arctic Photographer
Arthur G Credland
Illustrated, A4, 47-pages, privately published, 2025
Details of availability and price from the author: e: bracer@bracer.karoo.co.uk

The Scottish Society for the History of Photography has just published the latest number of Studies in Photography (Winter 2024). As ever it includes range of articles from across photography's history up to the present day, alongside reviews and interviews. Photographers featured include Calum Colvin, Ian Phillips McLaren, Nan Goldin, Alexander Hamilton and Mike Weaver. There are interviews with with Rebecca Hicks of Purdey Hicks Gallery and Frank Mckenzie from the Jospeh McKenzie Archive. Reviews include the V&A's Fragile Beauty and Zelda Cheatle presents her curator's choice. 

Studies in Photography
The Scottish Society for the History of Photography
126 pages
ISSN 1462-0510
Details here: https://studiesinphotography.com/

BPH has just become aware of the passing of Mike Weaver on 24 June 2024. For many he will be remembered as the co-editor with his partner Anne Hammond between 1991 and 2000 of History of Photography. From 1978 to 1983, he worked as chairman of the Photography Advisory Group of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was a photographer in his own right, although he would claim otherwise.

Amongst other titles, he authored The Photographic Art: Pictorial Traditions in Britain and America (London: Herbert Press, 1986) and The Art of Photography 1839-1989 (Yale, 1989), and edited British Photography in The Nineteenth Century: The Fine Art Tradition (CUP, 1989). His published works stretched from Talbot, Cameron and Coburn, to Strand and Mapplethorpe.

I was fortunate to hear several of his conference lectures. They were always interesting and often provocative, offering a distinctive perspective and reading the work of historical photographers. As Geoff Batchen notes: 'Mike Weaver was always a powerful presence in any gathering devoted to the study of photography: learned, single-minded and articulate (and sometimes also irascible) and determined to bring the focus back to pictures and their artistic capacities, where he thought it belonged.'

An obituary by Geoffrey Batchen was published on History of Photography website on 10 December 2024: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03087298.2024.2417527?src=exp-la

Anne Hammond writes about Mike's own photography in 'Mike Weaver. The Eye of the Photo Critic' in Studies in Photography (Scottish Society for the History of Photography, Winter 2024, 122-123) 

A Polaroid portrait of Mike Weaver by Mark Haworth-Booth is in the NPG collection. See: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp152263/mike-weaver

Image: © Mark Haworth-Booth. Mike Weaver, colour Polaroid print, 1978-1983. NPG Collection, London, given by Mark Haworth-Booth, 2005. NPG x199233. Reproduced with the photographer's permission. 

You will lead a large multidisciplinary customer facing department. At IWM Visual Resources deliver a museum-wide service for multimedia digitisation of our collections for access and preservation, as well as marketing photography and video for on brand events and marketing. These outputs form key aspects of the IWM’s: public, commercial, collections access, collections preservation, and learning programmes.

You will inform the strategic development of this service, maintenance of the Collections Digital and Digital Futures Strategies and delivery of its access and preservation digital outputs. You will be skilled in commissioning specialist advice from internationally recognised experts on digital access and preservation, your team and liaison with senior management to recommend and deliver strategic programmes of work (running over several years) from concept to completion.

The post holder is responsible for all elements of management of this team including staff, equipment and systems.

Note that members of the Creative team are located at IWM London, and the Digitisation team at IWM Duxford; you will be expected to travel in this role. This post will be based at Duxford.

Head of Visual Resources
IWM, based at Duxford
Closes 10 February 2025
Details here

Barry Taylor, who was managing director of Olympus Optical Co (UK) from 1977 until 1999, has died aged 87 years. During his career at Olympus Barry was behind a series of memorable advertising campaigns, the establishment of Olympus’s London photography galleries, and through Olympus supported photography more widely across Britain.  

In 1975 Japan’s Olympus Optical Company took over an existing distributor – David Williams (Cine Equipment) Ltd and from 1 July 1975 it became the first Japanese manufacturer to distribute its own range in the United Kingdom. Headhunted from Polaroid, Barry became interim managing director and was the first managing director of Olympus Optical Co (UK) Ltd – later Olympus Cameras – when it became the first wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese parent company in 1977. The firm moved from Glasshouse Yard to the familiar Honduras Street address. For the next twenty-two years Olympus, under Taylor, put itself in the public consciousness through a series of popular television and press campaigns, and partnerships including the London Marathon in 1993 and JPS Lotus.

Taylor and Ian Dickens, his marketing director, established Olympus as the leading photographic brand in the UK. Part of this was down to a series of memorable TV campaigns from 1977-1991, the most famous being for the Olympus Trip camera and featuring David Bailey and a range of celebrities including Michael Elphick, Eric Idle and James Hunt. Bailey appeared in over ten television commercials, and the phrase “David Bailey? Who’s he?” still resonates amongst a certain generation.

In addition to Bailey, Olympus forged relationships with many of the leading photographers and photojournalists of the 1970s and 1980s. They included Terence Donovan, Terry Fincher, Duffy, Patrick Lichfield, Lord Snowdon, Lord Lichfield, Barry Lategan, John Swannell, Don McCullin, Jane Bown, Mirella Ricciardi, Eric Hosking, Don Morley, and Bob Carlos-Clarke. Celebrities such as Peter Sellers were also brought to promote the Olympus OM camera range.

In many ways Olympus was ahead of its time when it established a photographic gallery, under the direction of Geoff Ash, in the colonnade next to London’s Ritz Hotel in 1979. The RPS’s Photographic Journal noted it brought a welcome addition to London’s limited gallery scene. It proved so popular that a larger gallery space in Princes Street, off Regent Street, London, under curator Martin Harrison, was opened in 1983 with the two spaces running concurrently for a period. Exhibitions had a five-year waiting list and featured the likes of Elliot Erwitt, Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Jacque Henri Lartigue. Today such brand-building spaces are more common.

Another project that Barry supported was the Olympus/Royal Photographic Society commemorative blue plaque scheme for photographers which was announced in 1995. Dickens notes: ‘Bailey had pushed English Heritage to put one of their plaques on the London house once owned by Roger Fenton and it eventually happened - the first for a photographer. We all agreed there should be many more, but the application process was very slow. As such, we came up with our own scheme in conjunction with the RPS. The plaques were blue and hexagonal in shape and we commissioned ten, each of which were unveiled by notable folk.’

The ten Olympus plaques commemorated: Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson, Eadweard Muybridge, Samuel Bourne, James Craig Annan, Anna Atkins, Angus McBean, Lee Miller, Edward Chambré Hardman, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Olympus, with Westminster City Council, supported a plaque for Terence Donovan in 1999. 

Olympus was also instrumental in saving Dimbola by purchasing the house when it looked like it would be demolished, and it remained committed to the project for many years. The house opened to the public in 1994. Olympus also supported various other causes including The Photographers’ Gallery appeal and the RPS’s National Centre of Photography appeal.

Barry was awarded a Royal Photographic Society Fenton medal and honorary membership in 1993 for his distinguished commitment to photography and the photographic industry. At the time of his award the British Journal of Photography’s (28 October 1993) Hector Crome commented ‘Olympus is fortunate indeed to posses such a charming, urbane and gracious gentleman to front its UK operations’

Dickens noted ‘working closely with Barry was a real privilege as the medium of photography was our focus’ and on the occasion of the Ritz gallery opening the RPS’s Journal noted that Olympus had ‘an almost unequalled record when it comes to supporting good photography’. Much of the credit for this belonged to Barry who recognised the wider value of supporting photography, building a brand and raising public awareness to grow sales.

He leaves a wife, Wendy, and three children to whom BPH sends its condolences.

Dr Michael Pritchard

POSTSCRIPT: Dr Brian Hinton MBE, Executive Chair, Julia Margaret Cameron Trust writes...

"I think it is only right to say that without Barry's support both personally and at Olympus the very existence of Dimbola as a flourishing museum and arts centre, with photography at its heart would not have been made certain. Barry was a wam and approachable man, while no one was in any doubt about his business acumen and drive. I could see the obvious affection and respect from the likes of Bailey, Lichfield, Lategan et al   He reassured a very shy Mary McCartney at Dimbola when we showed her Sadlers Wells project, and she blossomed in his presence.

We miss him dearly, both as a benefactor and a friend, and want to mark his life in some way in house, in a permanent way. 

The photographic world will not see his like again."

--------------------------

With thanks to Ian Dickens, former Olympus Cameras marketing director 1979-2000.
See nine of Olympus’s Bailey television advertisements here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnU91RWv8hkIm
Images: (Top:)  Barry Taylor, at the 1985 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Olympus was the co-sponsor of the JPS Lotus team; (middle:) two examples of Olympus celebrity advertising from 1976 with Peter Sellers and Patrick, Lord Lichfield; (Lower:) Blue plaque CC Simon Harriyott.

A paper just published in Studies in Conservation by Kim Bell and Robin Canham of Queen's University Library, Canada, has analysed the card mounts of stereocards, based on a limited sample of North American cards recently donated to the library. Their analysis by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy has indicated the significant presence of different heavy metals in the mounts, reflecting the chemistry used to colour them. This should not be a particular surprise as Victorian wallpapers, book cloths, papers and textiles have long been recognised as problematic. Bell and Canham's research is the first time XRF has been applied to stereograph card mounts. 

It is worth quoting part of their conclusion: While this is an initial study, this research identified the significant presence of potentially harmful heavy metals, specifically arsenic-, lead-, and chromium- based pigments on nineteenth century stereograph cards and highlights the pervasive use of toxic substances in Victorian-era consumer goods. These findings extend our understanding of the historical usage of toxic pigments beyond popular previously recognized mediums such as wallpapers, textiles, and books, and demonstrates the prevalence of health hazards in historical collections. and, they add, it is imperative that GLAM [galleries, libraries, archives, and museums] workers know the inherent risks present in their collection materials to protect themselves and their communities.

Although Bell and Canham do not make any assessment of the direct risk to individuals handling cards, by being in proximity with stereograph card mounts, or the risk through inhalation or ingestion, this new knowledge should act as a prompt for collections to update their risk registers, and ensure that staff and visitors are properly attired, made aware of the risk with handling or storage, and that any risk is mitigated.

Toxicity in 3D: XRF Analysis for the Presence of Heavy Metals in a Historical Stereograph Collection at Queen’s University Library, Canada
Kim Bell and robin Canham
Studies in Conservation, published 14 January 2025, online, open access
Taylor and Francis
See: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00393630.2025.2450976

Image:  The desktop setup of the Bruker III-SD pXRF with sample stage accessory on top. The stereograph card was placed on top of the sample stage with the edge of the card just covering the examination window. A sheet of Mylar® polyester film was placed on top of the stereograph to prevent abrasion. The accessory shield was placed on top of the film. Photo credit: Robin Canham.

With thanks to Rebecca Sharpe for drawing attention to the paper.