The Magic Lantern Society has announced preliminary details of its 11th international convention which will take place in Birmingham from 29 April-1 May 2022. It will take place at its regular venue, the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
See more here: http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/convention2022/
Earlier this year, the School of Scottish Studies Archive and the Centre for Research Collections teamed up with renowned Scottish photographer, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, to add a landmark collection of photos to the School’s documentary collections. Sutton-Hibbert has worked as a freelance photographer and photojournalist for over 30 years and in 2012 co-founded Document Scotland – a collective of Scottish documentary photographers.
Sutton-Hibbert’s documentary work focusing on Scotland filled a natural gap in the Archive’s extensive photographic holdings, and the team worked with him to identify three series of photographs which would best suit the collection. Selections were made from his North Sea Fishing (1992-1995), the recently demolished Longannet Colliery (2001), and Paddy’s Market (2000) which echoed with coastal working life, Scottish industrial cultures, and urban living which can be found throughout the School’s archive.
Read a full account here: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/sssa/jeremy-sutton-hibbert/
Image: Tam Gay repairs torn nets aboard the Mairead, North Sea, February 1993 SSSA/JSH1/20
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has published a short film about Caroline Douglas’s research project which focuses on a series of calotype salt prints made by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in Edinburgh in the late nineteenth century. Hill and Adamson’s series of portraits of Newhaven fishwives are one of the world’s earliest examples of photographic portraiture. Through her research and her own photographic practice, Caroline makes an exciting discovery after uncovering a series of outtakes from the calotype portrait of Mrs Elizabeth Johnstone Hall.
This project was supported by an Andrew Wyld Research Support Grant.
See the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAknd5DDmJw&t=3s
The Guardian newspaper reported that Bonhams New York was to sell an albumen photograph of the Rossetti Family at home (detail, right), dated 1863. The catalogue entry noted ' No similar quality original Lewis Carroll photograph of the Rossetti family has sold on the open market in recent years. Of the three known complete images of this photograph, only this and one other exist in private hands.' The photograph was offered in New York with an estimate of US$ 50,000 - 70,000 (£38,000 - 53,000). It failed to find a buyer.
See The Guardian news story https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/14/extremely-rare-photograph-of-the-rossettis-taken-by-lewis-carroll-up-for-auction
See the lot description: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/26898/lot/177/
In the early 20th century, fashion and photography were indelibly wedded through the efforts of a number of photographers, fashion designers, and magazine publishers. Once these cultural power shapers created the form, fashion photography took on a life of its own and became—perhaps always was—art. This art form has since been elevated to heights such that being a fashion photographer can be seen as very important chapter in many well-known photographers’ career: designers rely on them; models request them; magazines use their work: celebrities choose them for shoots; and the power they have to represent others is beyond compare in today’s, 21st century image-driven world.
Following our first Fashion and Photography conference in Palermo in 2018, we are further broadening the interdisciplinary mix and range of potential discussions and activities. Whether dance, theatre, drama theory, directing or performance practice, the different aspects of the performing arts will be explored and developed alongside previous discussions, especially with the new challenges of technology along with the changes in audiences and performers in the 21st century.
Our Fashion and Photography: 2nd Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary event will examine the dynamics of all these (and related) fields. In a world which is experiencing the transforming realities of globalization, with people engaging at all levels and in diverse ways, the intersections and engagements created at the interface of all the modes of representation involved in these areas and activities are paramount. They involve cultural, social, commercial, artistic, financial, and political issues, and from the bottom to the top can determine power relations, careers, sexual norms and deviance, and more.
We live in a period of so-called hyper-consumption which encourages individuals to consume for their own personal pleasure. Fast fashion, trends in sustainable and recyclable fashion, the rise of performance fashion and fashion as performance art denotes a society now defined by movement, fluidity, and flexibility. Performance from ballet to theatre, the catwalk to festivals, is increasingly oriented towards pleasure and satisfaction, a fleeting hedonism which quickly changes focus. The experience is mixed with tensions, conflicts, and even anxiety. The uncertainties and fears of 21st century living are reflected in fashion, performance and all forms of visual representations.
This conference aims to consider ways in which we can re-imagine our practices in relation to others, our history, and the environment with a view to forming a selective innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further collaboration and discussion, whilst also continuing the evolution of the project.
Unlike other conferences or gatherings, our event proposes to step outside the traditional conference setting and offer opportunities for photographers, designers, practitioners, theorists, independent scholars, academics, performers, writers, and others to intermingle, providing platforms for interdisciplinary interactions that are fruitful and conducive to broadening horizons and sparking future projects, collaborations, and connections.
2nd Global Conference. Fashion and Photography. An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Project
Friday 8th July 2022 - Saturday 9th July 2022
Athens, Greece
See more here: https://www.progressiveconnexions.net/interdisciplinary-projects/global-transformations/fashion-and-photography/conferences/
The nature, form, and impact of the book changed dramatically with the introduction of photography, altering the way books would be made, would appear, and would help transform the communication of ideas in visual form. In parallel to this phenomenon, the ability of the photograph to reach its widest audience would entail an essential partnership with the form of the book. The nomenclature of photography remains tied to the book: we think of the photographic “print” and of “printing” a photograph, even in an era where digital imagery dominates.
Alongside these intertwined histories is the current phenomenon of the “photobook,” with a great resurgence and flowering of studies on photobooks, and of contemporary photography’s increased creative engagement with the format of the book through dealers, fairs, specialized auction sales, and publications, and through a wealth of practice.
This course is designed to explore the history of the photographic book since Anna Atkins’s Photographs of British Algae was first privately circulated in 1843. It will be comprised of six two-hour sessions delivered online, based on the collections of Oxford’s Bodleian Library and delivered by Richard Ovenden.
The five sessions will emphasise the physical form of the photographic book, an element neglected by most of the recent studies of the genre. It aims, therefore, to bring together the twin disciplines of the history of the book and the history of photography. Classes will be structured around the examination of exemplar cases—and will examine these case studies through paying close attention to the materiality of the books: paper, printing techniques, and design, as well as distribution, sales, and prices. Many of the examples will be illuminated through supporting archival evidence.
I-45v. The Photographic Book since 1843
Richard Ovenden
Course Length: 12 hours
Course Week: 5–10 June 2022
Format: online only
Fee: $800
See details here: https://rarebookschool.org/courses/illustration/i45v/
This event will focus on photographic archives and histories of empire. Three speakers will present short interventions (10 minutes) on the challenges and opportunities of working with such material today. The speakers will address methodological, ethical, and cultural considerations, offering case sy reflections on the changing research landscape for histories of empire in the archive.
Speakers:
Helen Mavin, Head of Photographs at Imperial War Museum;
Maria Creech, PhD student at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture; AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award Student in partnership with the Imperial War Museum;
Tom Allbeson, Lecturer in Cultural History at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture.
Chair:
Claire Gorrara, Dean for Research and Innovation for Cardiff University’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of French Studies at the School of Modern Languages.
Rethinking Histories of Empire: Visual Cultures in/or the Archive
Wednesday, 8 December 2021, 14:00-15:00
Free information and book here: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/events/view/2584682-rethinking-histories-of-empire-visual-cultures-inor-the-archive
An online roundtable event as part of the Global Language-based Area Studies research theme at the School of Modern Languages.
Atelier Éditions has announced announce the release of Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th Century Britain by Annebella Pollen, available in the UK/Europe at the end of November, 2021 and the USA/Rest of World early January, 2022.
Annebella Pollen’s richly illustrated study examines the idiosyncratic phenomenon of social nudism, or naturism, in 20th-century Britain, a place known for its lack of sunshine and conservative attitudes to sex. By bringing naturists’ own words and images to light, Nudism in a Cold Climate tells this little-known but fascinating history for the first time.
From the 1930s, thousands of people appeared nude in books and magazines associated with the nudist movement, drawing attention to the cause, attracting public curiosity and inciting moral panics. Naturist nude photography offers a fascinating lens on moral, legal and aesthetic shifts over a century of dramatic social change, including national beliefs about sex and gender, ethnicity and class, pleasure and power.
Nudism in a Cold Climate offers readers a fascinating glimpse behind British veils of propriety and a unique view inside an enduring experimental culture that sought to radically challenge, liberate and ultimately transform conventional attitudes to bodies and their representations.
Details here:
Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in mid-20th Century Britain
Annebella Pollen
272 pages including over 100 archival photographs
Printed sustainably in Belgium
ISBN # 978-1-7336220-6-6
See: http://atelier-editions.com/store/nudism-in-a-cold-climate-by-annebella-pollen
Read The Guardian review here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/dec/03/from-utopian-dreams-to-soho-sleaze-the-naked-history-of-british-nudism
As part of the British Society for the History of Mathematics meeting being held at the University of Warwick on 11 December Deborah Kent will give a paper “Fit for making a decent observation”? Photography and the British eclipse expedition of 1871.
The abstract reads:
Nineteenth-century mathematical innovations revolutionized eclipse prediction to allow ample time for organising viewing expeditions. From the 1850s onwards, developing technologies of photography and spectroscopy offered new tools to train on open questions about the size of the universe and the chemical composition of the corona. After opportunities to observe eclipse totality in India in 1868, in North America in 1869, and in Spain in 1870, hopes ran high for additional insights in 1871. The utility of photography was particularly under scrutiny in anticipation of a much rarer Transit of Venus in 1874. The work of British observing parties in 1871 not only confirmed and extended prior results, but also gained some notoriety for an indigenous Indian astronomer and solidified the significance of photography as a research tool.
Details and registration here: https://www.bshm.ac.uk/events/christmas-meeting
The annual Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards celebrate excellence in photography and moving image publishing. They recognise individuals who have made an outstanding or original contribution to the literature of, or concerning the art and practice of, photography or the moving image. Two winning titles are selected: one in the field of photography and one in the field of the moving image. The author/s or editor/s of each winning book receive a £5,000 cash prize.
Submissions are welcome from publishers, authors, collectives and individuals self-publishing their work. There is no entry fee.
Further details, terms and conditions, and the entry form for the 2022 Awards can be downloaded here.
A conference based upon the research project “Forms and Formats of Photography’s Institutionalisation” at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI), will take place on Thursday and Friday, 23/24 June 2022, organised by Anja Schürmann (KWI Essen) and Kathrin Yacavone (University of Cologne). A call for papers has been issued below:
The term ‘institutionalisation’ refers to a process in and through which things, people, actions, and relationships are typified, standardised, and thereby fixed for a longer period; in the process the appearance, reception and interpretation of the physical objects which are part of institutions are shaped and defined. In the context of the current debate surrounding the foundation and possible functions of a Federal German Photography Institute, the conference is dedicated to the historical, political, sociological, aesthetic and photo-historical discourses on the institutionalisation of photography as a medium, a cultural and social practice, as well as an art form, document and technology. The forms and formats, as well as the traditions and practices, of the classification, collection, exhibition, conservation, archiving and sale of photographic images will be examined from various cultural-critical perspectives and taking into account diverse methodological approaches, both theoretical and practical.
The starting point is not primarily individual images, monographic groups of works, modes (portrait, landscape, etc.) or genres (art photography, advertising and scientific photography), but rather the question of how various practices in dealing with photography as an art and medium have (co-)shaped these categories and to what extent they are subject to historical and cultural value shifts and changes that are tied to issues of institutionalisation (without being completely absorbed by them). The temporal and geographical focus of the conference will be Germany since 1945, while comparative perspectives, drawing international comparisons between different (European) countries, are equally welcome.
We invite proposals (in English or German) for 20-minute presentations. Abstracts of approximately 400 words, including a short biography (of max. 100 words) should be submitted by Monday 10 January 2022 by e-mail to fototagung2022@gmail.com. Any queries should also be directed to the conference organizers using this address. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the end of January 2022.
Four Corners seeks a Curatorial and Archive Coordinator to join our team. This is an exciting opportunity to work on Four Corners' public exhibition and archive programmes. Four Corners is a centre for film and photographic arts, based in East London for over 40 years. Our Gallery and Archive programmes engage audiences with issues emerging from radical histories, and stories from the margins that might not otherwise be told. We recognise that access to the arts is not always equal, and we aim to change that by championing creative expression and new voices through skills, mentoring and production opportunities.
Four Corners is a registered charity. We are a team of twelve part-time staff, and we work closely with volunteers, freelancers and partners in visual arts, film and TV, archives, community and higher education to deliver our programmes.
Background to this post
This post is part-funded through Four Corners' Hidden Histories project, which is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Four Corners Archive comprises the film and photographic heritage of Four Corners, Half Moon Photography Workshop and Camerawork magazine, 1972 to 1987. The collection and online archive offer a rich source of material on working lives, protest, feminism and the lived experience of communities. The project aims to develop Four Corners Archive as an active site for community-engaged practice, research and public programmes that explore radical and untold social histories.
We are seeking applicants with a background and expertise in archives, museums or galleries working within fields of photography, curation, visual arts or related sectors.
The post is offered on an 18-month contract from January 2022 to June 2023 in the first instance.
See more here: https://fourcornersfilm.co.uk/work-with-us
Antonella Russo provides an incisive examination of Neorealist photography, delineates its periodization, traces its instances and its progressive popularization and subsequent co-optation that occurred with the advent of the industrialization of photographic magazines. This volume examines the ethno(photo)graphic missions of Ernesto De Martino in the deep South of Italy, the key role played by the Neorealist writer and painter Carlo Levi as "ambassador of international photography", and the journeys of David Seymour, Henry Cartier Bresson, and Paul Strand in Neorealist Italy. The text includes an account the formation and proliferation of Italian photographic associations and their role in institutionalizing and promoting Italian photography, their link to British and other European photographic societies, and the subsequent decline of Neorealism. It also considers the inception of non-objective photography that thrived soon after the war, in concurrence with the circulation of Neorealism, thus debunking the myth identifying all Italian postwar photography with the Neorealist image.
This book will be particularly useful for scholars and students in the history and theory of photography, and Italian history.
The V&A has released the first in a series of films about photography processes based on its collection. The first deals with the the autochrome and is presented by curator Catlin Langford. Invented by the Lumière brothers in 1907, the Autochrome revolutionised photography. Bringing soft, natural colour into images for the first time, this technique made photographs the most realistic that they had ever been.
Find out about the careful handling of these delicate, light sensitive plates, how the photography process works, and see collection highlights from photographers such as John Cimon Warburg and Helen Messinger Murdoch.
Auction house Reeman Dansie will offer an exceptional archive of photographs, ephemera and related artefacts from the studio of mid-20th century high-society photographer Pamela Chandler (1928-1993). Pamela Chandler's position as a leading London based photographer of this vintage era led to commissions from Royalty, stars of stage and screen and literary figures, including becoming the photographer of choice for the publicly evasive J. R. R. Tolkien, she has the distinction of being the first female photographer to produce an official portrait of a Prime Minister when she photographed Harold Macmillan.
This extensive archive comprises a lifetime’s work, together with related letters and memorabilia from her glitterati subjects, many of the images are to be offered together with copyright passing to the successful bidders. The collection will be sold on 1 December 2021
Pamela worked briefly as a film extra at various studios including Pinewood, Denham and Elstree, before a chance meeting led her to secure an photographic apprenticeship at the Landseer Photographic Studio in the heart of the West End. After only six months, Max Andrews, a magician friend of Pamela’s father, contacted her and explained that he had taken premises for a magic shop which also included a photographic studio and that he required a photographer, so Pamela went into partnership with Max at his South Molton Street premises. Max concentrated on running the magic shop, leaving Pamela free rein to run the photographic studio. In these early days, she did all the photography and printing herself which gave her a solid bedrock for her career. After a year or so Max disappeared and Pamela was forced to wind up the business,
Pamela joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1949. At the RPS she met the then curator and subsequent President, J. Dudley Johnston. He was impressed by her work and enthusiasm, and she was commissioned to take his official portrait for use by the RPS, they became friends and corresponded right up until his death. In 1951, Pamela found new studio premises at 33 Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, and this was to be her base for the principle part of her photographic career.
The catalogue will be available in print and online shortly.
See more here: https://www.reemandansie.com/news-item/the-pamela-chandler-1928-1993-collection/?pc=42
Skewed, cynical, and socially ambiguous, the photographs of Garry Winogrand epitomised the experimental style and irreverent attitude of post-war American street photography. This, along with the support of the Museum of Modern Art and its influential director of photography John Szarkowski, granted his work a significant presence in New York’s art world during the late 1960s and ‘70s. However, at the height of his fame, Winogrand turned his camera back on this world, producing a withering depiction of the exclusive art openings, functions, and balls held at institutions such as MoMA and The Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Vietnam war. In a seemingly bizarre development, this body of work would go on to be exhibited at MoMA in 1977 – alongside his shots of protests, sporting events, and press conferences – putting the museum’s institutional framework on display within its walls.
Simon Constantine's paper will consider the extent to which this exhibition and its accompanying photobook, Public Relations, can be understood as evidence of a little-recognised strain of institutional critique within Winogrand’s street photography. In doing so, it will seek to offer a non-formalist understanding of American street photography as a practice forged in dialogue with the wider post-war avant-garde. It will also attempt to explain the presence and status of these apparent critical tendencies within the work of an otherwise establishment photographer.
Simon Constantine is Lecturer in History of Photography at Birkbeck, University of London. His work addresses street photography and recent documentary photography, with a particular focus on large-scale projects and photobooks which seek to map, criticize, or conceptualize the contemporary global economy. He has presented papers at SOAS, the University of Birmingham, Roma Tre University, and the Institute of Historical Research, and worked as an editor for the journal parallax. His writings have been published in the Oxford Art Journal, Arts, and The Burlington Magazine.
Street Photography as institutional critique? Gary Winogrand's photographs of the art world
30 November 2021 at 1800 (GMT)
43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre
Image: Garry Winogrand, Opening, Frank Stella Exhibition, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970
Belfast based photographer Donovan Wylie will deliver an artist talk at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol on his creative practice, followed by a book signing. This talk will also be streamed live via Zoom. Donovan will address questions around process, touching on how conversations begin and evolve within the medium of photography, both conceptually and through methodology.
Talking through many of his projects – such as The Maze and Outposts – he will also discuss how processes develop (or do not develop!) and how one project leads into another.
Donovan Wylie talk and book signing
23 November 2021 at 1900 (GMT)
Gallery Ticket - £6 - Zoom Ticket - £3 / £5 / £10 (pay what you can)
See: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/events/donovan-wylie-2/
Image: G40. S Armagh. From Project British Watchtowers 2005 © Donovan Wylie
Youth of Yesterday is an exhibition featuring photographs taken of young people in Bethnal Green from the 1970s by photographer Philip Cunningham. In the mid-1970s Philip was a youth worker at Oxford House while studying art at Ravensbourne College of Art. While a student, Philip became interested in photography and Oxford House had a fully equipped dark room and was home to Tower Hamlets Arts Group. Philip took hundreds of photographs of local people at a time when Bethnal Green was seeing great change. These photographs capture daily life, friendship, streets, and youth culture in the late 1970s.
In this talk Philip will be showcasing and discussing more of his images about the East End and the stories behind them. This talk accompanies the exhibition... YOUTH OF YESTERDAY, 22 September - 17 December at Oxford House
Photographing the East End: Philip Cunningham In Conversation
25 November 2021
1830-1930 (GMT), live event, free
Oxford House in Bethnal Green
Derbyshire Street
London, E2 6HG
See more and book here
MACK, the book publisher, has announced its new annual research fellowship, in which it invites proposals for books that investigate an area of cultural history which is deserving of and lacking in critical attention.
It is especially interested in projects that include, but are not limited to, untold historic lineages, overlooked collectives and communities, specific movements of activism and collaboration, and artists who work in the intersection of art, photography and literature in new ways. The successful candidate will research, edit, write the primary text for, and manage the production of a book on the subject to be published by MACK.
The role can be adapted to the work and life commitments of the successful candidate, but we anticipate that it will either involve an estimated 2 days a week commitment over a 6-month period, or a block of approximately 40 - 50 days within an agreed time frame. The successful applicant will receive a fee of £8,000 plus funding for agreed costs.
Applicants should send a covering letter with their CV and the names of two referees to fellowship@mackbooks.co.uk by no later than 20 January 2022, outlining their proposed research project (including key thesis, figures, events, movements and so on), together with relevant past research and proven track record in no more than two A4 pages maximum. Successful candidates will be invited for an interview.
Thanks to a transformational gift of £2 million from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, the Bodleian Libraries are recruiting a Curator of Photography for the first time. Your will increase the impact of our photographic holdings by carrying out a full range of curatorial work including: answering enquiries; teaching and public engagement activities with the collections; cataloguing; and collection development.
You can expect to work with incredible collections, documenting photography from its earliest days through to contemporary photography. You will be passionate and knowledgeable about photography, possess the strong communication skills needed to share these collections with the Libraries’ many audiences, and the know-how to ensure the collections are managed in-line with the Libraries’ curatorial standards.
The candidate we are looking for could be an experienced curatorial professional with an extensive professional network in the world of photography and photographic collections, or a talented individual with less experience in either curation or photography, but the clear potential and desire to address any gaps in your current skillset.
Benefits include 38 days’ leave (including bank holidays and fixed closures), a generous pension scheme, extensive training and development opportunities, access to travel and childcare schemes, and much more. See https://www.jobs.ox.ac.uk/benefits#/ for further details.
You will be required to upload a supporting statement as part of your online application. Your supporting statement should list each of the essential and desirable selection criteria, as listed in the further particulars, and explain how you meet each one. Please do not include CVs in your application.
Only applications received online before 12.00 midday (GMT) on Friday 19 November 2021 can be considered. Interviews are expected to take place on Thursday 9 December 2021.
For further particulars, and details of how to apply, please click here.
