Dick Weindling has written an online article titled 'We Photographed Magicians, Music Hall Performers and Royalty' which discusses the London photographic studio of Campbell Gray Ltd. The firm photographed Harry Houdini, David Devant amongst many others. Dick is still looking for additional information on the firm, and its proprietors Messrs Gray and Campbell.
The article can be read here: http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/2022/03/we-photographed-magicians-music-hall.html
A short film is to be released to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Percy Richard Salmon (1872-1959). For a period from the 1890s until his death he was active as a amateur photographer, journalist for the photographic periodical press, freelance writer and as a photographer recording his village of Melbourn, Cambridgeshire. He was sub-editor on the British Journal of Photography and editor of Photographic News (which merged with Amateur Photographer) and contributed to the Cambridge Independent Press and Chronicle. The film has been researched and is presented by Dr David Barber.
See more here: https://rps.org/Salmon
Photographing Protest: resistance through a feminist lens is a new exhibition opening at Four Corners, London, from 18 March, which showcases striking images by photographers from across generations, who have used their cameras to support political struggle and social change in Britain from 1968 to today.
The exhibition centres the voices and perspectives of women and nonbinary photographers, and those who have been making work within a feminist framework, challenging the male-dominated history of protest reportage.
Photographing Protest reveals how images of resistance resonate across generations. The exhibition opens with rarely seen images by activist photographer Sally Fraser, who captured defining social movements of the 1968 era, from the Hornsey Art College student sit-ins to the fiery beginnings of the Women’s Liberation movement. Social protests of the 1980s and 90s are shown through the prolific work of Format, the all-women photo agency: at the Greenham Common women’s peace camp, on the Miner’s strike frontline, at Reclaim the Night marches and more. Alongside, the exhibition explores a new generation of photographers engaging with contemporary struggles: anti-racism, LGBTQI+ community rights and climate justice among others, to ask how feminist protest photography can be an agent for today’s political change.
The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of online talks, FEMINISM, PHOTOGRAPHY AND RESISTANCE, produced in collaboration with Kylie Thomas, researcher at the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam, and the editor of a special issue of MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture journal on photography and resistance (forthcoming). You can read about the full programme by clicking on the link below.
Photographing Protest: Resistance Through a Feminist Lens
18 March 2022 – 30 April 2022
Four Corners, London
See: https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/whats-on/photographing-protest-resistance-through-a-feminist-lens
Thomas Annan of Glasgow. Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph is an open access book by Lionel Gossman and published by by Open Book Publishers in 2015.
It is available for free download here as a PDF .
Bringing together insights from environmental history and photographic history, this lecture will focus on climate and weather as subjects understood in and through photographic images, and the ways in which weather and climate shape the very possibility of photography in the first place. Focussing on specific historical examples, we will explore how weather changes are seen, felt and experienced by people, in relation to the ways in which photography “senses” changes in the atmosphere around it, and also with respect to the emotional atmosphere or collective mood captured by photographs of extreme and unusual weather.
Join Professor Georgina Endfield, Professor of Environmental History, and Professor Michelle Henning, Chair in Photography and Media, for a fascinating illustrated lecture.
Public Lecture Series 2022: Arts, Sustainability and the Climate Crisis
School of the Arts - University of Liverpool
A lens on the weather: historical perspectives on photography and climate
Wednesday 25 May @ 1730-2000 (BST)
Free, book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/public-lecture-a-lens-on-the-weather-tickets-251299733267
For decades, renowned author and photo critic Vince Aletti has accumulated one of the largest private collections of fashion magazines in North America. Join Ryerson Imaging Centre Director Paul Roth and Aletti in conversation as they discuss his most recent publication, Issues (Phaidon, 2019), which features select seminal issues from his archive. He will speak about the history of photography within this medium, explore the intersection of art and commerce, and describe how photographers from outside of the fashion world influenced the magazines they appeared in.
Vince Aletti is a writer, curator, collector and critic whose work can be found in Aperture, Art + Auction, Photograph, Artforum and Vogue Italia. Formerly a music critic for Rolling Stone, Aletti went on to be the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994–2005 and the paper’s photo critic for twenty years, after which reviewed photography exhibitions for The New Yorker. He has published extensively on the impact of fashion magazines on the history of photography, and won the International Center of Photography’s prestigious Infinity Award for writing in 2005. His most recent book is Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines (Phaidon, 2019).
Webinar
2 March 2022
1900 (EST) | 0000 (GMT)
Book here: https://ryerson.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BtRaXaS9RiKiMH7t8jUrYQ
See details of the book here: https://www.phaidon.com/store/fashion-culture/issues-9780714876788/
The V&A Museum has appointed Fiona Rogers as the inaugural Parasol Women in Photography curator. Rogers was at Magnum from 2005 to 2020, ending up as Chief Operating Officer, and most recently she was Director of Photography and Operations for Webber Represents. She will start at the V&A on 7 March 2022.
She is the founder of Firecracker which was set up in 2011 to promote women, those identifying as women and non-binary working in photography and has been a powerful voice in bringing women in photography to the fore. She also acts as a trustee of the Martin Parr Foundation and The Peter Marlow Foundation, and advises the Royal Photographic Society. She has authored (with Max Houghton) Firecrackers: Female Photographers (Thames & Hudson, 2017) celebrating contemporary women practitioners.
The Parasol Women in Photography curator was advertised last autumn (see: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/job-and-news-v-a-announces-the-parasol-foundation-women-in-photog)
Details of Firecracker can be found here: https://fire-cracker.org/
The Royal Horticultural Lindley Library is seeking an experienced cataloguer to catalogue its extensive collection of analogue photography relating to the history and practice of horticulture, as part of Heritage Lottery funded digitisation project to increase access to its heritage collections. This is a two year, part-time post working 21 hours a week. The photography collection sits within the RHS Heritage Collections and comprises of prints, transparencies, glass negatives and lantern slides, covering horticultural practise and personalities, plant portraits, gardens and gardening.
Key accountabilities include: cataloguing designated collections to agreed standards using the Library collection management system (currently Axiell CALM); enhancing related documentation, such as accessions and donor records and creating relevant authority files; maintaining good location control; improving housing and storage of collections to conservation standards.
Salary is £16,000 (£26,600 fte). For a full job description and person specification, please visit https://www.rhs.org.uk/about-the-rhs/opportunities. To apply please complete and return the short online application form to: recruitment@rhs.org.uk.
This workshop delivered by The National Archives, Kew, is designed to develop the knowledge and experience of students undertaking research in material culture, and in particular through the use of visual sources.
Students will learn about the different kinds of records held at The National Archives which can be particularly useful sources for material culture research. These comprise designs, images registered for copyright protection, and other artwork, graphic design and photographs produced or collected by government departments.
Our specialists will guide students through the history and structure of the different collections and explain how best to search and browse the online catalogue to find useful results. Students will also learn how to move between indexes and registers to find specific relevant material.
The National Archives is offering hybrid attendance options for its programme of PAST Skills and Methodology workshops in 2022. This workshop, focusing on visual sources, can be attended at two levels:
Day 1 (online) will focus on providing an overview of the kinds of records relevant to material culture research and how they can be used and analysed. It will introduce three key areas of The National Archives visual collections: registered designs, art & graphic design and photographs & film. The day will include demonstrations of the use of Discovery, our online catalogue, and other online resources to access these collections and students will be given practical exercises to tests the knowledge they have acquired.
Day 2 (on site) will give students the opportunity to handle and work with original records from each of the collections introduced in day 1. The sessions will include practical exercises to familiarise students with the use of indexes and registers to find material within the collections. There will also be an opportunity to hear about the research journeys of other researchers who have worked with The National Archives' visual collections to investigate aspects of material culture history.
At the end of the course, you will understand the range of visual records available at The National Archives and how they can be analysed and applied to the study of material culture. You will also feel confident using online search techniques, and original indexes and registers to find records in the different collections.
This event is aimed at current taught postgraduate and PhD students, but other researchers are welcome. Please get in touch if you fall outside these categories and would like to attend.
Each day is a full-day workshop, running roughly from 9am to 5pm. Exact timings for the programme will be confirmed and published on this page a week before the workshop.
Details and booking here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/past-skills-methodology-visual-sources-for-material-culture-research-registration-229349258807
Eric Butler writes...Many people will be aware of the A4 sized paperback book with the pale blue cover, A Faithful Likeness the very informative book by the late Pauline and Bernard Heathcote. It is frequently referenced in publications about early photographers. A Faithful Likeness: The First Photographic Studios in the British Isles 1841 to 1855, has now been made available online by Bromley House Library, Nottingham. It is also accompanied by a five-volume appendix.
Background
Pauline Heathcote, supported by her husband Bernard, became a full-time researcher into early photographers and their studios. In her quest for information, she searched directories and wrote to librarians, archivists, museum curators and even descendants of the photographers. In addition, she also visited newspaper archives, scouring them for announcements, features, and advertisements relating to early photographers and their studios. Bernard and Pauline would travel around the country visiting archives or museums.
Bernard was, justifiably, extremely proud of his wife’s achievements and in 2015, ten years after her death, he donated the Pauline Heathcote Archive to Bromley House Library. The archive contains notes, letters, marriage and death certificates, and a large number of file index cards under the main headings Names, and Places. Today it is difficult to comprehend that such an extensive research archive had been compiled without using the internet. The archive has been available, by appointment, at Bromley House Library since 2015. Only a few people made use of this wonderful resource, possibly because they were familiar with the title A Faithful Likeness, but not with the name Heathcote.
Although published in 2002 and despite the advent of online resources A Faithful Likeness is still relevant today
Now Bromley House has made A Faithful Likeness and its 5 volume appendix available online. This significant publication lists over 800 photographers and the appendices comprise carefully referenced advertisements and editorial comment from newspapers throughout the country, from Aberdeen to York alphabetically. A total of over 600 pages.
Perhaps I should add that Bernard, until his death in 2020, was very protective of Pauline’s work and always insisted on appropriate acknowledgement!
Access the resource here: https://www.bromleyhouse.org/our-photographic-history/
Ikon was founded in the 1960s and is an internationally acclaimed, independent contemporary art venue located in central Birmingham. Housed in a magnificent neo-gothic school building, it is an educational charity and works to encourage public engagement with contemporary art through exhibiting new work in a context of debate and participation. It offers free entry to all. Ikon’s activity not only reflects the historical circumstances of Birmingham and the country as a whole since then, but also it constitutes a distinct point of view on British post-war art history. The gallery programme features artists from around the world. Ikon’s off-site programme develops dynamic relationships between art, artists and audiences outside the gallery. Projects vary enormously in scale, duration and location, challenging expectations of where art can be seen and by whom. Education is at the heart of Ikon’s activities; through a variety of talks, tours, workshops and seminars, the Learning team aims to build a meaningful relationship with Ikon’s audience that enables visitors to engage with, discuss and reflect on contemporary art. Being based in Birmingham, a super-diverse and young city, Ikon’s partnership working and equality diversity and inclusion is central within all the organisation does, from the Board of Trustees throughout the whole organisation. Ikon’s commitment to the city is to continue to show diverse exhibitions from around the world, and reflect these locally, while working with children and young people and diverse communities who are currently underserved within the region.
Ikon’s long-standing Director, Jonathan Watkins, is stepping down from the role after an impactful twenty-three years with the Gallery and the organisation is now seeking candidates who can lead Ikon into the next chapter of its history. The Director will drive the development of Ikon through effective strategic and operational leadership and deliver the artistic and organisational vision for Ikon whilst also furthering the gallery’s reputation as a major centre for the presentation and promotion of contemporary visual art. Candidates will bring a knowledge of visual and contemporary art and a passion for working with artists. They will have a track record of working with diverse artists and audiences and a commitment to inclusion, relevance and diversity in all aspects of the organisation. The Director will need to be a compelling communicator, able to engage a range of stakeholders, funders (including Arts Council England and Birmingham City Council) and partners.
See more here: https://www.artsjobsonline.com/jobs/ikon-gallery-director/
The V&A is planning a photography exhibition for the spring of 2024 drawing from the Sir Elton John Collection. It will be a spectacular presentation showcasing highlights from the collection and attracting a large and diverse audience. The exhibition will stage work by major photographers and give an insight into the collecting passions of one of the world’s great performing artists.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication and a wide variety of other events. It will be managed between the Exhibition Department and the Photography Section of the Art, Architecture, and Design Department.
The post holder will coordinate research and other activities associated with the project, supporting the creative vision set out by the Head of Photography, and to help develop and deliver the exhibition and accompanying publication.
This vacancy is available as either a secondment or fixed term contract and is open to internal applicants only.
Closing date for receipt of applications is Monday 21 February at 09:00.
See more here.
The Imperial War Museum is building new art, film and photography galleries at IWM London, opening to the public in late 2023.The new galleries have been made possible with support from the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Like previous developments at IWM London, the Galleries will be free to enter.
The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will explore how artists, photographers and filmmakers together bear witness to, document and tell the story of conflict, and demonstrate how artistic interpretation can uniquely shape our understanding of war.
New acquisitions will be exhibited alongside renowned works from IWM’s existing collection, including Gassed by John Singer Sargent, They Shall Not Grow Old by Peter Jackson and Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country.
The development of these Galleries is the third phase in the dynamic transformation of IWM London and will enable IWM to share works from its exceptional art collection, one of the most important representations of twentieth century British art in the world. They will also showcase some of IWM’s vast and era-defining film and photography collections, which include over 23,000 hours of footage and over 11 million photographs.
Read more and see highlights from the photography collections here: https://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-london/blavatnik-art-film-photography-galleries
Henry Brooks and his family are hardly remembered these days, yet they lived in High Street, Salisbury, for nearly a century. Henry was in turn a wood turner, a carver and gilder, a picture restorer, a frame maker and a painter. He was also one of the earliest Salisbury photographers, opening his studio around 1855, and his business was carried on by his sons well into the twentieth century.
Photo historians Denis Pellerin and Rebecca Sharpe, from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy, will bring the Brooks family back to life for this evening.
Henry Brooks & Sons, Salisbury Artists and Photographers
Denis Pellerin and Rebecca Sharpe
Thursday, 17 March 2022 @ 1930 (GMT)
The Salisbury Museum, 65 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EN
£9 (members) and £12 (non-members)
Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/talk-henry-brooks-sons-salisbury-artists-and-photographers-tickets-242248982227
19, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary study in the long nineteenth century and based at Birkbeck, University of London, has published a paper by Helen Trompeteler titled Queen Victoria and the Photographic Expression of Widowhood.
The abstract reads: After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria began an extended period of mourning that remains indelibly linked to perceptions of her identity and visual representation. This article firstly addresses the place of photography in the construction of family memory and examines how Victoria used photography to articulate her private grief and to remember Albert in the context of both her immediate and extended family. Secondly, I seek to establish the ways in which this private image is made public and is circulated by Victoria to generate popular empathy and support for political ends. Lastly, I touch on the global reach of this, and question how mourning and widowhood are implicated in international royal networks and imperial power. Thus, the article reveals the photograph of the mourning widow as more than just an illustration of Victoria and her grief; rather, it shows how the medium shapes that grief and makes it useful for monarchy and empire.
Trompeteler, H., (2022) “Queen Victoria and the Photographic Expression of Widowhood”, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2022(33).
doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.4717
The online journal is open access and the paper can be read here: https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/4717/
Image: John Jabez Edwin Mayall, Group Portrait with a Bust of Prince Albert, April 1863, albumen print, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2022.
This paper will explore relationships between ecology, sexuality, and decolonisation in the portrayal of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) by queer Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt and queer British anti-imperialist filmmaker Basil Wright, who collaborated together in the 1930s prior to the country’s independence in 1948. In the nineteenth century British colonisers outlawed homosexuality as ‘against the order of nature’ and shifted the island’s economy to mass plantations. At a time when homosexuality was also illegal in the UK, Wendt and Wright’s collaboration reveals how imperial control over desire and the landscape were challenged by photography and film.
Dr Edwin Coomasaru is a historian of modern and contemporary art. He has been awarded Postdoctoral and Research Fellowships at Edinburgh University (2022), the Paul Mellon Centre (2020-22), and the Courtauld Institute of Art (2018-19) — where he earned his PhD in 2018 and co-convenes the Gender & Sexuality Research Group. In 2021 he also worked as a Freelance Research Assistant on an anti-racist and decolonial resource portal for the Association of Art History. He has contributed to Third Text, British Art Studies, Oxford Art Journal, The Irish Times, Irish Studies Review, The Irish Review, Photoworks Annual, Burlington Contemporary, Architectural Review, Source Magazine, and the Barbican’s Masculinities (2020) exhibition catalogue. History of Art Research Seminar Series: Sri Lanka’s Queer Tropics: Lionel Wendt’s Ceylon (1950) and Basil Wright’s Song of Ceylon (1934)
History of Art Research Seminar Series: Sri Lanka’s Queer Tropics: Lionel Wendt’s Ceylon (1950) and Basil Wright’s Song of Ceylon (1934)
University of Edinburgh / Edinburgh College of Art
30 March 2022 at 1330-1430
Online. Open to all
Details here: https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/event/history-art-research-seminar-series-sri-lankas-queer-tropics-lionel-wendts-ceylon-1950-and
For enquiries, contact Malene Nafisi, malene.nafisi@ed.ac.uk
This year's McKenzie Lecture will explore the intersection between book history and the history of photography, and will look at the possibilities of such a combined view of the photographic book from 1843 to now.
Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, has published widely on the history of collecting and the history of photography since 2014. He is the author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack (2020) and of John Thomson (1837–1921): Photographer (1997), a major study of the Scottish photographer.
Photography and the Book
Richard Ovenden OBE
17 February 2022 at 1700-1800 (GMT)
Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, St Cross Building, Oxford
Live and streamed live, free
Register: https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/feb22/photography-and-the-book
As part of the City of Culture programme, Photo Miners are presenting Richard Sadler's photography of the immediate years after the Second World War in Coventry. In this period, Coventry not only recovered from the horrors of the multiple bombings that devastated the city but also renewed its character through hard work and forgiveness. Coventry became a city of the future, a welcome home to displaced and migrant people and one that pioneered new ways of living through its architecture and planning and innovative industry.
Richard lived through this period and, in a time of scarce photographic resources, committed to documenting Coventry's story. Thanks to his work, we have high-quality visual evidence of 1950s Coventry. At the Old Grammar School, Hales Street, Coventry, Photo Miners are working with communities to curate three sequential exhibitions that try to do justice to both Richard and that time.
The exhibitions are:
Pioneering People: Sadler and the City / 8 February - mid-March 2022
In this first exhibition, we present the people of post-war Coventry: the children, teenagers and young adults that inherited a damaged city and set the common ground to transform Coventry into a city of peace and reconciliation.
You'll see the Umbrella Club, opened by the Goons in 1955 as well as Foleshill Jazz Club from earlier in the decade. We'll show you dancing in the streets too, as well as how to hang out at the precinct in 1950s Coventry.
We also present some photography of Coventry at the time, the damage and the recovery, including a series on the famous Godiva Cafe and Broadgate - to illustrate Coventry's belief then that it is a city of the future, a belief we believe applies today.
Pioneering Industry: Sadler and Courtaulds / End March - end April 2022
Courtaulds was an internationally-renowned man-made fibre manufacturer, producing products used by the military as well as by civilians. It was so strategically important that, as a condition of the USA joining the Second World War, the Courtaulds Company had to give up its manufacturing base and product rights in America.
Courtaulds had facilities across the UK but Coventry was its beating heart - its research centre that developed the products that made its name.
In this second exhibition, we use Sadler's 1951-54 photography to showcase the scientists, workers and processes that made the company such a huge success.
In particular, we focus on how Courtaulds in Coventry employed more women than men, and in particular Vera Furness, who led the research team which eventually created another world-changing product - carbon fibre.
Coventry remains an innovative city and elements of the Courtaulds Company, and their specialisations, have been inherited and built upon, and so we also feature a few examples about specialist companies today.
Pioneering Arts: Sadler and the Cathedral / May - mid-June 2022
The new Cathedral appeared in Coventry not just as an extraordinarily high-quality building designed and built to last for a thousand years but as one that was home to new art. In a time when so much of the past was lost, and so the clamour to return to known ways was strong, the committee that oversaw the new cathedral was steadfast in its commitment to new art. Today we know they made the correct decision and are grateful for it.
This third exhibition, held to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the consecration of the cathedral, celebrates the time when the cathedral was new. We present unseen images of the Sutherland tapestry being offloaded and moved to the cathedral, of it being hung before the internal space was complete. We see the Ramsey-Hoskins nativity scene, now partially lost, making its first appearance. We also present previously unseen images of early mystery plays performed in the ruins. As with the City of Culture today, we're seeing in this exhibition an investment in emerging and new artists whose ways of seeing provide fresh but unfamiliar perspectives. Trust in art and you will be rewarded for years to come.
About Richard Sadler
Dr Richard Sadler was the official photographer at Coventry Cathedral, Belgrade Theatre, RSC and Courtaulds for many years. He also undertook arts projects, exhibiting locally, nationally and internationally, finding fame in particular with his portrait of Arthur Fellig, known as WeeGee, the American crime photographer.
Richard exhibited regularly, both locally, nationally and internationally. His website, www.richardsadler.co.uk, has more details on his many accolades and successes.
In 1968 he joined what is now Derby University as a member of the arts faculty and remained there until his retirement in the 1990s. Richard sadly died in 2020 aged 93.
Pioneering Coventry: the post-war photography of Richard Sadler
Old Grammar School, Hales Street, Coventry, between 8 February-30 May 2022
https://photomining.org/
The National Portrait Gallery has announced a major partnership with the global leader in family history, Ancestry. Over 125,000 digitised portraits from the Gallery’s extensive Collection will be made available to Ancestry users, and to celebrate, the National Portrait Gallery is working with Ancestry to launch The Nation’s Family Album – a search for undiscovered portraits of everyday British people collated into a representative online album. The initiative invites people of different ages, backgrounds and cultures in the UK to delve through suitcases in attics, scour photos on walls or flick through albums on bookshelves and submit their favourite family images.
Entrants will be in with the chance of having their own family photographs and stories included in an online exhibition, as well as a display at the iconic National Portrait Gallery in London when it reopens in 2023, following the completion of its Inspiring People redevelopment project.
The Nation’s Family Album is set to be an important record of our collective history, as it will highlight, celebrate and capture the rich and diverse family stories across Britain, making it easier for future generations to find out more about their family history.
Entries open today and submissions must be uploaded digitally by Thursday 30 June 2022. Any person in the UK may submit a maximum of three images that relate to the following themes: Belonging, Legacy, Connection and Identity.
Later this year, a panel of experts – including the National Portrait Gallery’s Chief Curator, Dr Alison Smith, and family history expert Simon Pearce from Ancestry – will shortlist a selection of portraits that best encapsulate the themes of The Nation’s Family Album.
The UK, Portraits and Photographs, 1547- 2018 collection, launching on Ancestry today, captures British history and culture in a variety of mediums, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, and prints. The National Portrait Gallery showcases the work of many acclaimed artists and photographers, but portraits in the Collection are selected primarily for their subject matter and the sitter’s importance to British culture and history. As well as many iconic portraits of famous figures, the collection includes images of individuals from all walks of life, including:
For more information about how to submit your family photographs, entry Terms & Conditions and to explore the collection, visit www.ancestry.co.uk/FamilyAlbum. To buy copies of the portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, please visit www.npg.org.uk/shop/npgprints.
A new book by Jason Bate has just been published by Bloomsbury Academic. Photography in the Great War asks what is it to study historically positioned vulnerabilities in regard to patients in emerging medical photograph collections? What is the impact of the violent nature of institutional archives and imperial modes of ordering on marginalised and suppressed communities? Who exactly is being protected by the ethical protocols and conventions here? Is it the institution, the author, the reader, the deceased historical figure or distant relatives? At what point does or should the subject’s confidentiality take effect? When does a person, their name, their image have a right to privacy and anonymity and when not, and who gets to decide?
In Photography in the Great War, Jason Bate draws on a rich set of materials to examine postwar experiences of ex-servicemen who were facially-disfigured during the First World War. Weaving together medical, institutional, amateur and family photographic practices and processes under a social history framework, he underscores overlooked aspects of these men’s continued hardships after returning home from the front. In particular, a focus is on the private sphere of the family and the complicated world of employment that disfigured veterans navigated on their return.
Little attention has hitherto been paid to the aftercare of disfigured veterans once discharged from the army, or the long-term impact on individuals, and the sense of burden felt by families and local communities. In addressing this neglected area, the chapters here illuminate different practices of photography by doctors, nurses, press agencies, and families across the generations to challenge our perceptions of the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians.
Photography in the Great War. The Ethics of Emerging Medical Collections from the Great War
Jason Bate
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022
See more here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/photography-in-the-great-war-9781350122062/
