An important collection of early colour photography has been donated to the V&A Museum where it will join significant bodies of similar material, notably within the RPS Collection, held at the museum. The V&A has recently announced a PhD studentship in partnership with the University of Liverpool to examine early colour and contexts in Britain from the 1890s to 1935.

The collection was formed by Colin Axon and covers the period c1895 to 1940. It consists of some 1000 items and includes colour work from such luminaries as the Lumière brothers, Otto Pfenninger, Helen Messinger Murdoch, Olive Edis, Arthur Grenier, Hugh C. Knowles, Vero Charles Driffield, Arthur E. Morton,  Arthur Clive Banfield and others. Many of these add to bodies of work already held within the RPS Collection, making the V&A one of the most important centres for the study of early colour photography. 

The collection has examples of many colour processes including Dufay Dioptichrome, Dufay, Lippmann, Paget, Baker Duplex, Thames, Ducos du Hauron Mélanochromoscope and Sanger Shepherd.

Of special note is the photographic archive Dr Kurt von Holleben, the head of Agfa's colour screen development for the Agfa-Farbenplatte, Agfacolor and Agfacolor Ultra processes. This consists of some six hundred 9 x12cm Agfa glass plates from 1924 to 1938 covering the whole of Germany and his travels in Europe and Scandinavia.

Speaking to BPH, Colin Axon explained that "I started out collecting daguerreotypes but switched to early colour about 15 to 20 years ago. Before I started I read Brian Coe’s book Colour Photography: The First Hundred Years, 1840-1940 from cover to cover. I used it as the guide for my collection and I tried to find as many of the different colour processes as I could. I believe that the items I found will sit well alongside the V&A’s other holdings."

The catalyst for the donation was to find a home for the collection where it would be properly stored, in the right conditions, and made available. His initial contact was with the former V&A curator Catlin Langford who was working on a book of autochromes in the V&A collection.  The collection finally arrived at the museum in February. 

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Holleben and https://www.photocollections.org.uk/collections/colin-axon-collection-early-colour-photography

Catlin Langford, Color Mania: Photographing the World in Autochrome (Thames and Hudson, due December 2022) 

With thanks to Colin Axon and Ron Callender. 

Images; 

Top: Otto Pfenninger, Children in the water', Brighton, 6 August 1906. Davidson & Jumeaux Colour Process, lantern slide. 

Left: Autochrome, 13x18cm. Sold as 'one of the little daughters of the Lumière brothers'. Both images courtesy of Colin Axon. 

As first reported on BPH on 21 February the V&A has now announced that Fiona Rogers has joined it as the inaugural Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography. Fiona joins the V&A from Webber, a photographic agency and gallery with offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles, where she was Director of Photography & Operations.

In her new role, Fiona will lead activities for The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project, a major new curatorial programme to support women in photography. The Project, funded by Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol and the Parasol Foundation Trust, encompasses the new curatorial post, endowed for 25 years, alongside acquisitions, research, education and public displays.  It aims to foreground and sustain women’s practice in contemporary photography and highlight the role women have played throughout the history of the medium.  Fiona will also develop a significant online presence for the Project, including a dedicated Instagram account to highlight works by women artists, which launched this week.

 Fiona Rogers is the founder of Firecracker, a digital platform established in 2011 and network that champions women photographers. In 2012 Firecracker launched a Photographic Grant and has since awarded £20,000 in funding to international artists.  In 2017, Fiona published Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now (Thames & Hudson) with co-author Max Houghton.

Fiona has curated exhibitions with a range of artists including Theo Simpson, Marvel Harris, and Zora J Murff and has contributed to books and magazines including Photoworks and the British Journal of Photography. She holds a BA from the Surrey Institute of Art & Design and is an Associate Lecturer in Photography at the London College of Communication. She is a member of the RPS Awards Committee and a Trustee of the Martin Parr Foundation and the Peter Marlow Foundation. Prior to joining the V&A and Webber, Fiona worked for Magnum Photos in a variety of roles, rising to Chief Operations Officer where she was responsible for running the agency and designing and implementing strategies in collaboration with the CEO.  

 The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project furthers the V&A’s mission to nurture contemporary artists and share the museum’s collections, knowledge, and expertise in photography. Through commissioning women to create new work, acquiring photography by women artists, devising women-led displays, and organising talks, educational programmes and events, the Project’s ambition is to support contemporary women artists, develop programming, and investigate the roles of women photographers within the V&A collection. International in scope, there will be a particular emphasis on digital art, and the digital distribution of resources and information via social media.

 he Project is made possible through a major gift from Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol and the Parasol Foundation Trust, a philanthropic trust established in 2004 that supports educational, health, culture and heritage initiatives. In addition to the Trust’s support of the Project, Gallery 97 at the V&A will be named The Parasol Foundation Gallery. This gallery, a space for displaying contemporary photography, is part of the V&A Photography Centre Phase Two development.

 Fiona Rogers, The Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography at the V&A, said: “It’s an honour to join the V&A at such an important and exciting phase in its evolution and continued engagement with photography.  I’m grateful to the Parasol Foundation Trust for their support for the project and look forward to contributing and leading a dynamic program of activities that will support international contemporary practitioners, further the V&A’s commitment to women artists and share the work with a wide and diverse audience.”

 Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol said: “Fiona's appointment as the inaugural Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography curator is a significant step for the project. Together we're aiming to celebrate the achievements of women, open up new opportunities for female photographers and connect and inspire new audiences around the world through our emphasis on digital activities and art.” 

 The V&A was the first museum in the world to collect photographs, beginning with its founding in 1852, and continues to collect and commission new work today. Phase One of the V&A Photography Centre opened to critical acclaim in 2018, sharing the breadth of the V&A’s world-leading photography collection, and Phase Two – with four new gallery spaces – will open in 2023.

The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project Instagram is here: @vamparasolwomenphoto

Image: © Joana Choumali

This Symposium brings together an international group of artists, writers and thinkers and is part of Four Corners exhibition, Photographing Protest: Resistance Through a Feminist Lens.

Talks include:

• Professor Anna Rocca in conversation with Senior Lecturer Dora Carpenter-Latiri about her exhibition on Tunisian women, Tunisian Women of the Book
• Julia Winckler, photographer and academic, on the work of Marilyn Stafford, whose street photographs of children in post-war Paris constitute precious fragments of an underrepresented working-class neighbourhood before being demolished in 1961
• PhD student Gabriella McGrogan on resistance to the war on drugs in the Phillipines
• Historian of photography, researcher and writer, Taous Dahmani on the visual culture of the 1976 Grunwick dispute in the UK
• Tessa Lewin, creative practitioner and researcher, in conversation with South African photographer Dean Hutton
• Associate Professor of Art History, Heather Diack on the work of Civil Rights photographer Doris Derby
• Feminist research artist, Rosario Montero on documentary photography in Chile
• Tara Pixley speaking about her, film Rebel Vision, on the work of Black female and non binary photographers associated with Authority Collective

This event is produced in collaboration with Kylie Thomas of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, editor of a special issue of MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture journal published in Spring 2022.

Feminism, Photography & Resistance Symposium
Thursday 28 April 2022, 3 - 7.30pm GMT, Online
See more and register here: https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/whats-on/feminism-photography-and-resistance-symposium

Image: © ROSARIO MONTERO PRIETO, Protester with a sign that reads: 'we are not ok', October 2019. 

James Hyman has announced the opening of its two new galleries at 48 and 50 Maddox Street in Mayfair, London.  At 48 Maddox Street, it is staging the exhibition Telling Stories. Picture Post and its Legacy. The exhibition presents some of the key photographers of Picture Post magazine as well as a curated selection of some later British photographers who built on this storytelling or documentary tradition.

The exhibition features work by Shirley Baker, Bill Brandt, Anna Fox, Ken Grant, Brian Griffin, Bert Hardy, Nigel Henderson, Paul Hill, Thurston Hopkins, David Hurn, Kurt Hutton, Colin Jones, Dafydd Jones, Chris Killip, Karen Knorr, Marketa Luskacova, Roger Mayne, Daniel Meadows, Jim Mortram, Martin Parr, Charlie Phillips, Tony Ray-Jones, Paul Reas, Grace Robertson, Jo Spence, Wolfgang Suschitzky, Homer Sykes, Jon Tonks.

See: https://www.jameshymangallery.com/

I have a long-standing research interest in the material lives and cultural meaning of glass artifacts in the history of science and the history of photography, from vacuum tubes and chemical glassware to lenses and glass plate negatives. Glass is one of the dominant materials of experimental science.  Its optical and physical properties mediate scientists’ interaction with the natural world. Embodied, artisanal practices around glass-making shape the hardware of experimental science, particularly in chemistry and physics, where test tubes, vacuum tubes, and other laboratory glassware have become iconic symbols of the scientific endeavor. As a photographic material, glass has had a powerful role in both forging and endangering the rhetorical “transparency” of the photographic medium–especially the fragile but powerful glass plate, the primary material for photographic negatives from around 1850 to 1925 (and in the practice of astronomy, until the 1990s). My presentation will range across these various ways that glass artifacts and glass surfaces have been implicated in debates over how we know what we know about the natural world.

GEEX talk
Dr Chitra Ramalingam
4 April 2022, 6:15pm CDT | 0015 5 April (BST) 
Public access: 4 Apri- 2 May 2022
Details: https://geex.glass/programming/geextalks/dr-chitra-ramalingam/

The next Counter Image International Conference taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 13--15 July. The event will focus on ways of decolonizing visuality but a range of topics on photographic culture relating to colonial and postcolonial contexts are possible. The conference will be in persona and will also accepts online participants.

This edition of Counter Image International Conference (CIIC22) proceeds the work of unveiling the ways in which images operate within the power and knowledge structures and systems of truth which tend to constitute hegemonic historical narratives and marginalize or erase those that are conflicting or minoritarian. This originates not only “centres” and “margins” but also tends to silence voices and invisible people, making certain ideias unpronounced. Being a historical process, it demands continuous criticism in line with the many scholars and artists working in Visual Culture, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies traditions in the various disciplines. Establishing counter narratives, counter archives and counter images is then a challenge to hegemonic social, cultural and political systems and a contribution to a much needed dialogue around themes that are difficult and complex, in view of a pluralist, diverse and balanced society.

In a world still deeply marked by colonial images and worldviews, in which the production and mass distribution of visual technologies has contributed to the naturalization of oppressive systems, making the underlying visual codes almost unnoticed, this edition wishes to debate colonial visual heritage and how it impacts the world today.

Photography historian and visual anthropologist, Professor Elizabeth Edwards, will present a keynote. 

at the next Counter Image International Conference taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 13th to 15th July. The event will focus on ways of decolonizing visuality but a range of topics on photographic culture relating to colonial and postcolonial contexts are possible. The conference also accepts online participants.

Deadline for proposals 20 April 2022. See: https://counter-image.netlify.app/#call-link

See more : https://counter-image.netlify.app/

As the British Institute of Radiology marks 125 years join BIR Honorary Historian Dr Adrian Thomas to explore the early days of the society, and how it has developed to match the needs of a changing world. Be transported back to 1897 when seeing inside the body was becoming a possibility for the very first time and the potential of the 'new photography' was slowly being recognised as a diagnostic tool.

Imagine the excitement and anticipation of what the future could hold for the medical profession as these brave pioneers took part in their first meeting. Find out about the characters and personalities involved and discover how the BIR influenced the development of this brand new specialty, through its journal and Annual Congress.

Learn how scientists and doctors worked together, involved radiographers and physiotherapists and how those early values of multi-disciplinary working still continue today.

BIR at 125 Years: A Celebration
1 April 2022 at 1300-1400 (GMT)
Register here

Photography, both in the form of contemporary practice and that of historical material, now occupies a significant place in the citadels of Western art culture. It has an institutional network of its own, embedded within the broader art world, with its own specialists including academics, critics, curators, collectors, dealers and conservators. All of this cultural activity consolidates an artistic practice and critical discourse of photography that distinguishes what is increasingly termed 'art photography' from its commercial, scientific and amateur guises. But this long-awaited recognition of photography as high art brings new challenges. How will photography's newly privileged place in the art world affect how the history of creative photography is written?

Modernist claims for the medium as having an aesthetic often turned on precedents from painting. Postmodernism challenged a cultural hierarchy organized around painting. Nineteenth-century photographs move between the symbolic spaces of the gallery wall and the archive: de-contextualised for art and re-contextualised for history. But what of the contemporary writings, images, and practices that negotiated an aesthetic status for 'the photographic'?

Photography and the Arts revisits practices both celebrated and elided by the modernist and postmodernist grand narratives of art and photographic history in order to open up new critical spaces. Written by leading scholars in the fields of photography, art and literature, the essays examine the metaphorical as well as the material exchanges between photography and the fine, graphic, reproductive and sculptural arts.

Photography and the Arts Essays on 19th Century Practices and Debates
Juliet Hacking and Joanne Lukitsh
Bloomsbury, 2021
now in paperback at £21.49
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/photography-and-the-arts-9781350048553/

Applications are invited for an AHRC funded CDP studentship offered by the University of Liverpool and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), to start in October 2022.

The studentship will be based in the V&A in London (in the Photography Section) and also in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, and attached to the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life at the University. The successful applicant will work on a collaborative PhD led by Prof. Michelle Henning with co-supervision from Dr. Duncan Forbes at the V&A. Second supervisors are Professor Peter Buse (UoL) and Martin Barnes (V&A).

Applicants are asked to propose a project investigating the colour photography collections at the V&A, focussing on the period 1890 to 1935, a crucial period in the development of early colour photography in Britain. Focusing on the collections of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in particular, it will address innovation in the technology and aesthetics of colour photography in the context of changing cultural understandings and experiences of colour in the wider environment and culture of the period. We would encourage you to consider questions about the nature of the photographic industry in Britain, and wider social and economic developments. You are invited to narrow the focus to particular contexts, specific research questions, and possibly a shorter historical period within the timeframe. You should also specify your research methods, which should involve empirical research within the archive as well as developing a conceptual framework. It is intended that the student’s research has a direct impact on display and interpretation strategies at the V&A, and there will be opportunities to engage with the public, especially in relation to displays in the Photography Centre.

The V&A is arguably the richest archival resource in the UK for early colour photography. Source materials include the Colin Axon colour photography collection (acquired in 2022), the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) archive, a vast selection of photographic journals and books from the RPS library, and an array of early colour processes themselves. There is extensive source material relating to the 1931 exhibition ‘Colour Photography in the Service of Man’, the RPS Colour Group, as well as correspondence relating to key figures such as Friedrich Paneth, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alvin Langdon Coburn.The collections include a wide range of colour processes (such as Autochrome, Lippman, Vivex, Dufaycolor, Agfacolor and Kodachrome). Important colour photographers (not already mentioned) held in the RPS collection include Madame Yevonde, Agnes Warburg, Helen Messinger Murdoch, Otto Pfenninger, and D. A. Spencer.

Furthermore, there is a broader context for the study of colour at the V&A, with objects and expertise held in the textiles, prints, and conservation sections. Cross-referencing with collections outside the V&A (in the Science Museum Group, city and national archives and in smaller or private collections) is also possible.

The team supervising this project provides a unique combination of expertise in photography, including knowledge of photographic history and photographic curatorship, specialisms in periodicals, and broader cultural histories. With their support, the student will develop their own research questions and trajectory. They will identify their own case studies and work with supervisors at the V&A to find ways to maximise the public impact of their research, perhaps contributing to cataloguing, displays, interpretation or online content. The student will also bring a prior interest and engagement with photography history and theory. We particularly welcome applications from Black and POC candidates.

See more and apply here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/news/stories/title,1311134,en.html

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. The V&A’s Collections Division comprises six curatorial, research, and conservation and collections care & access teams. The curatorial departments are arranged as Decorative Art and Sculpture; Performance, Furniture, Textiles & Fashion; Art, Architecture, Photography & Design; and Asia. The staff in these teams are at the heart of the founding purpose of the museum: to care for, research and develop the collections, to exhibit them to the public, to make them available for study and research, and to broaden access to the collections.

This is one of nine Assistant Curator posts that sit in the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design Department. As such, the main purpose of the job is to provide curatorial support in the development, care of, documentation and research, presentation and interpretation of a part of V&A’s Collection, in this case the Photography Section. Assistant Curators spend a significant portion of their time working on object-related activity that pertains to the care and display of collections, maintaining documentation and developing interpretation to allow for their presentation to wide audiences.

As a member of the Department, the postholder will also play a role in the wider work of the V&A, contributing to policy, projects and public programmes and supporting fundraising and income generation. Assistant Curators also play a role in their relevant department and will be part of the community supporting the museum’s scholarship in the Photography Section. In short, this is a wide-ranging role in which the postholder will be able to develop their skills in all aspects of museum curation. 

See details and apply here.

Today, Historic England launches its new Aerial Photography Explorer - which for the first time allows users to search and explore an online map showing aerial photographs of England over the past 100 years. Aerial imagery provides a fascinating insight into the development and expansion of the nation’s urban centres and changes to the rural landscape. It can also reveal striking discoveries - such as ‘cropmarks’ showing hidden, archaeology beneath the surface. New imagery available online includes: 

• The remains of ancient archaeology such as a Neolithic long barrow near Broughton, Hampshire, as well as remains of Iron Age forts such as Pilsdon Pen in Dorset and medieval villages such as Old Sulby in Northamptonshire.
• Second World War anti-invasion measures such as anti-aircraft obstructions (ditches and earthworks) at Hampton Court Palace in 1941, and images from the same year of RAF Kenley showing camouflaged runways.
• War-time adaptations to sites, for example, images of Greenwich Park in 1946 show it covered in a patchwork of allotments to grow food and aid the war effort. A modern photograph from August 2006 shows the outlines of the allotments appearing through the grass in hot weather.
• Bomb damage such as images of central Liverpool and the Albert Dock from 1941, 1946 and 1948 with flattened areas and buildings with roofs blown off. By contrast, aerial images from 2017 show the development of the area since.
• 20^th century industrial sites such as the construction of Tilbury power station in 1955, and its demolition in 2017.
• Famous buildings such as views of St James’ Park football stadium, Newcastle from the 1920s and St Paul’s Cathedral after the war.

Over 400,000 images from 1919 to the present day have been added to the tool, covering nearly 30% (c.15,000 square miles) of England, allowing people immediate digital access to Historic England’s nationally important collection of aerial photographs.

Around 300,000 of these are the work of Historic England’s Aerial Investigation and Mapping team. Established in 1967, the team takes photographs of England from the air to discover new archaeological sites, create archaeological maps and monitor the condition of historic sites across the country.

The remaining 100,000 images come from the Historic England Archive aerial photography collection, which numbers over two million images in total, and includes important historic photography, including interwar and post-war images from Aerofilms Ltd and The Royal Air Force.

By opening up these images to the public through this accessible online tool, Historic England hopes that people will use it to research their local areas, offering an insight into a century of changes and development. This will allow them potentially to make their own discoveries about their local areas. It will also provide industry professionals and local authorities with a useful resource to help planning, heritage projects and archaeological investigation.

Over the coming years, Historic England aims to expand the platform, as more of the six million aerial images in Historic England Archive are digitised.

The Aerial Photography Explorer joins Historic England’s recently launched Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer to offer an unparalleled insight into England’s archaeology and the nation’s development.

The new tool can be found here: Aerial Photograph Explorer tool

Images: 

 East Hecla steelworks and Meadowhall in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

Multivallate Hillfort, West Hills -

BPH has been contacted by a representative of Ana Briongos. In 1967 Prince Emmanuel travelled to Spain with his wife where he enrolled in the Escuala Massana art school. Three years later the married couple left Spain and moved to London. They never returned to Spain or reclaimed the precious suitcase, full of photographs and artworks from his time in Barcelona. 

Today, Emmanuel Adele Oyenuga must be in his eighties, and his wife Elisabeth Olayemi Oyenuga a little younger, and their children, son Adedoyin ‘Doyin’ Oyenuga, born ca. 1964 and daughter Oyinade “Oyin” Oyenuga, born 1968.

The materials found in the suitcase point to different social and cultural moments in the history of Nigeria and beyond: the Nigerian Civil War, the cultural ties between two countries, Nigeria and Spain, the legacy of the artist, the story of emigration, Nigerian studio photography of the 1970s and first and foremost, to restitution

The suitcase is in the safe keeping of Luisa Guadayol’s daughter – Ana Briongos and together with the African Artists’ Foundation they have begun the quest to find relatives of Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga or indeed the Prince himself.

If you can assist in finding, or have any knowledge of the Nigerian photographer please email: michael@mpritchard.com so information can be passed on.

• An exhibition of Oyenuga's work is on view at FORMAT, Derby. See: https://formatfestival.com/event/unpacking-the-suitcase/

In researching their Madame Yevonde holdings, the National Portrait Gallery is on the hunt for a Vivex System / Taylor-Hobson three colour camera. A ‘One-shot’ camera used for exposing three plates at once. It is the camera Yevonde is shown with in a celebrated self-portrait, and the camera is reproduced here.

Please contact Clare Freestone cfreestone@npg.org.uk with any leads.

The Royal Photographic Society’s Historical Group was formed on 22 March 1972 at a time when photography in Britain was undergoing a significant transition. The RPS, itself, was in a process of modernisation as it sought to remain relevant to British photography. The way photography was taught in higher education reflected a move away from the technical to a focus on approach and the content of the picture. New galleries showing photography were established, national museums and galleries began to take photography seriously and the Arts Council appointed its first photography officer. The period also saw major upheavals for the industry and the profession with recessions, a move to digital, and new ways for commissioners to source content. The way photography was experienced, shared and disseminated changed dramatically later in the period with the advent of new digital technologies.

The conference will examine how these changes have impacted British photography and photographers over the fifty years from 1972-2022. Papers may also look at how particular photographers’ work has evolved over the period. Some of the possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• Museums, galleries and collections: broadly and within specific institutions; the independent gallery scene; how the art world embraced photography; curatorial practice and presentation; the RPS Collection
• Education: how photographic higher education has changed; how photographic history has been used across disciplines and taught; the independent photography sector; photography in schools
• The market for photography: auctions, commercial galleries, dealers, collecting by individuals; the loss of photographic heritage; fine art photography
• The law: Intellectual property: photographers’ rights; privacy and surveillance
• Community groups: collectives; camera clubs
• Geographical perspectives: specific changes in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England; Britain’s position in international photography
• The public and photography: the popularisation of photographic history on television, genealogy, and local history; experience through newspapers, publications, and online
• Photography as a profession and industry: the markets and changes to industrial, commercial and social photography; photojournalism and advertising and editorial; manufacturing and retailing; the photographic periodical press; publishing and the photobook
• Photographers and Photography: changes to individual practice; new approaches to genres of photography e.g. documentary, landscape, etc
• Digital: its impact; new ways of sharing and engaging with photography

Proposals should be focused on the period from 1972 to the present and the British experience.

Submission

The conference welcomes proposals from academics, early career researchers, postgraduate students;  those working within photography, education and heritage, and photographers.

Proposals of up to 300 words with a short biography should be sent to photohistorian@rps.org has been extended to 28 March 2022.Papers should be 25 minutes in length. Papers will be grouped by theme at the conference.

The conference will open for registrations on 14 April 2022. It takes place at RPS House, Bristol, on 1 and 2 July 2022. 

British Photography since 1972: Commemorating fifty years of the RPS Historical Group
Conference: 1-2 July 2022, Bristol, UK

See: https://rps.org/1972

#Britishphoto1972

Image: a cover of The Photographic Journal from 1972. 

BPH has learnt that Dr John Lambert Wilson who was active in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s for his researches on the photographically illustrated book died on 1 March 2022, aged 79 years. John, who was then based in Oxford, built up a formidable collection of books on early photography and those illustrated with photographs.

His PhD was titled Publishers and Purchasers of the Photographically-Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century, (University of Reading, 1995). John also compiled in 1992 Catalogue of a collection relating to the literature of photography, 1639-1905 which is unpublished in two volumes.

John also helped arrange an exhibition of photographic books and associated conference in Oxford and supported the British Library's mid-1990s project to catalogue its photographically-illustrated books where it acknowledged 'the use of his two catalogues of The Literature of the History of Photography'. He was an independent scholar and he was also a volunteer assisting with cataloguing the RPS Collection, then in South Audley Street, London.

John's interests shifted to early agrarian history, particularly the history of sheep breeding.  He is described by one friend as "a fine bibliophile and sterling English eccentric". 

Details are of his funeral are not yet available. 

In 1888 in Leeds, Louis Le Prince shot what many now consider to be the world’s first films. Film-maker and researcher Irfan Shah will be talking to writer Paul Fischer about his ground-breaking new biography of Le Prince and trying to discover the truth about the many myths surrounding the man behind the camera.

Complimentary drink on arrival

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures
Paul Fischer
Thursday, 28 April 2022 at 1900
Leeds Central Library, Local and Family History, Second Floor, Leeds, LS1 3AB
Book here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/leedslibraryevents/the-man-who-invented-motion-pictures/e-yvbvmq

Details of Paul Fischer's book are here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571348640-the-man-who-invented-motion-pictures/

The Muslim woman has been a consistent subject of representation across regimes of historical colonialism and Orientalism, in events such as the Arab Spring and post-9/11, and mediated widely via news and social media. These have included variegated representations from the odalisque to the ‘oppressed’ which have converged the identity of the Muslim woman to the single image and symbol of the hijab (veil).

Spanning across different bodies of work, this lecture will introduce and plot Nurul’s photographic, annotative, and participatory research that have engaged with representations of Muslim women from the daguerreotype to data. These projects will be discussed alongside the medium of photography and the data shift, which transforms the self into data, rendering those in the margins as ‘absent data’. Through self-reflexive means and methods, the context of ‘absent data’ will become site for artistic explorations and aspire towards a recalibration of Muslim women identifies via the role of the Muslim woman as ‘actor’ in rethinking processes of image-making.

Nurul Huda Rashid (she/her) is a researcher-writer currently pursuing her PhD in Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on images and narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them. These have been articulated through projects such as Women in War (2016-ongoing), unknown woman/wanita kami (2021), Hijab/Her (2012-2014), and through collaborations such as Pulau Something (2021) and New Curriculum for Old Questions (2019). Nurul loves smelling old books, looking after plant babies, and hopes to adopt a cat someday.

Image, Data, Actor: Unpacking Images of Muslim Women 
moderated by T:>Works’ Artistic Director Dr. Ong Keng Sen
T:>Works, free with registration
Thursday, 31 March 2022, 200 (SGT) | 1300 (BST) | 1400 (CET) | 0800 (EST)
Online: register here: https://tworkssg.wordpress.com/digital-lecture-image-data-actor-unpacking-images-of-muslim-women-by-nurul-huda-rashid/

Dr Mirjam Brusius, best known to BPH readers, as a scholar with a focus on W H F Talbot and his work, has won the David Dan Prize for history, alongside eight other outstanding early- and mid-career scholars of history.  A selection committee of eminent scholars assessed hundreds of nominations from around the world as part of a rigorous process to select the winners, who will each receive $300,000 to recognize their achievements to date and support their future work.

Mirjam is a cultural historian with an interest in the circulation of objects and images in and between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She specializes in the history of photography, museums, collecting and race in colonial contexts. Her most recent book on the inventor of photography, W.H.F. Talbot, Science, and Empire, will be published with The University of Chicago Press. This is an expanded version of her monograph Photography and Museological Knowledge: William Henry Fox Talbot, Antiquity, and the Absence of Photography (De Gruyter, 2015). She is also the co-author of William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography (Yale University Press, 2013, with Katrina Dean and Chitra Ramalingam).

She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, and is a regular media contributor on issues related to memory culture in Britain and Germany.

She is particularly interested in where museum objects come from and where they go, why some objects are displayed while others remain in storage, and what happens to repatriated objects. She also explores the scientific misuse of antiquities and the afterlife of objects beyond museums. 

Brusius started writing about the ‘journey’ of museum objects more than a decade ago, before the topic was at the heart of public debate. Today, the public increasingly questions where objects that adorn European museums really come from, but Brusius tries to focus on the less obvious answers, exploring the “in-between” spaces – what happens between archaeological excavation and the museum display, for example. 

As co-founder of the “100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object” grassroots project, Brusius combines historical research with curatorial practice to facilitate a more egalitarian dialogue between Western museums and communities of origin. The project began as an alternative history to the British Museum’s collection, but thanks to collaborators in and from the Global South, the project has become more: it is now a global network that aims to enrich current debates on repatriation and decolonization by foregrounding voices that were formerly underrepresented.

After completing a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, Brusius held postdoctoral fellowship positions at the Max Planck Society, Harvard University, and the University of Oxford. She is currently a Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History at GHI London. She is also a member of the Global Young Academy. She is in the process of completing a book on the movement of ancient artefacts from the Middle East to Western museums (Oxford University Press) and a short monograph on the politics of museum storage.

See: https://dandavidprize.org/laureates/mirjam-brusius/

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirjam_Brusius

The Bodleian Libraries have announced the appointment of Phillip Roberts as the Bern and Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography. Phillip joins the Libraries from 7 March. He had been Associate Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Science and Media Museum (NSMM) since 2019. 

Phillip holds PhDs from Cardiff University and the University of York. Before joining the NSMM he was Research Assistant (Science and Industry) at Birmingham Museums Trust. He sits on the board of directors for the Amber Collective and has published widely on the histories and cultures of photographic media. His PhD from the University of York (2018) was titled The Emergence of the Magic Lantern Trade in Nineteenth-Century England and that from Cardiff (2013) Cinema and control.

As part of the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections team, he will develop the Bodleian’s growing photography collection through strategic acquisitions, collaborate with specialist conservation staff and work with scholars in the University to help to make the collection accessible to students and researchers. The role also includes a major commitment to sharing our holdings with the public through exhibitions, public programmes and digitisation. The curatorship was made possible by a transformational gift from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation.

On his appointment, Phillip Roberts, said: "I could not be more proud to be the Bodleian's Curator of Photography. Over the last few years, the Bodleian has cemented itself as one of the key guardians of our photographic heritage. We have recently acquired vast new archives of work by WHF Talbot, Helen Muspratt and Daniel Meadows. The Hyman collection offers a wonderful history of 20th century British photography, and the Chadwyck-Healey collection is the world's greatest collection of photobooks. Securing such riches in a short amount of time is remarkable, and speaks to the Bodleian’s commitment to preserving our photographic history.  I look forward to building on this work, and making the Bodleian home to one of the world's great collections of photography."

Susan Thomas, Head of Archives and Modern Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, said: "Photography exists in the Bodleian's collections in many different ways. These materials – both astounding and everyday – have been an important part of the Bodleian's holdings for years, and it is exciting to now be in a position to share them more widely with the world. Phillip comes to us at a time when we are actively developing our photography collections for the future, and we are thrilled to welcome him to Oxford."

Separately, the NSMM Head Curator, Geoff Belknap, is leaving to join National Museums Scotland.