When Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1860s, delicately hand-tinted photographic prints of Japanese people and landscapes were among its earliest and most popular exports. Understood as both images and objects, the prints embody complex issues of history, culture, representation, and exchange. Hundreds of these photographs, collected by travellers from the Boston area, were eventually donated to Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Join visual anthropologist Dr David Odo, director of academic and public programs, division head, and research curator at the Harvard Art Museums, as he reveals how the images' shifting and contingent uses―from tourist souvenir to fine art print to anthropological “type” record―were framed by the desires and cultural preconceptions of makers and consumers alike.

The Journey of “A Good Type”: From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs
Tuesday, 20 April 2021
5:30pm (EDT) / 2130 (BST)
Tickets are free; donations are encouraged
Book here: https://my.historicnewengland.org/11338/japanese-photo

It is 15 years since the launch of Historical Photographs of China. In that decade and a half about 170 mostly privately-held collections of photographs have been copied, which has generated just over 62,000 unique images in our databank, and published over 22,000 of them on our platform (and its mirror site in China), under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial reuse (with attribution). While something like 7000 came to us digitally, in the main we have taken loose prints, photograph albums, negatives, magic lantern slides, real photo postcards and transparencies (35mm slides), ranging in date from the late 1850s to the late 1960s, and copied them here in Bristol, or on site.

From this month onwards, as our digital holdings are moved into the DAMS, which is hosted within the University Library’s Special Collections and Archives, ‘Historical Photographs of China’ has become one amongst other notable individual collections held within Special Collections. It will no longer have that separate identity as an active project, and will no longer be looking for new materials to digitize. The project has ended, but the collection will last.

Read the full blog here: https://visualisingchina.net/blog/2021/04/13/hpc-a-change-of-pace/

To commemorate the centenary of the death of John Thomson FRGS (1837-1921), the early travel photographer working in China and Asia, and known for his work Street Life in London, and work with the Royal Geographical Society, the RPS (Thomson was also a member) is hosting two free events to commemorate his life and work.

On 14 September 2021 Richard Ovenden will discuss John Thomson: his life, photography and photobooks and on 29 July 2021 Betty Yao will talk about John Thomson and his photography of Asia. 

In September a commemorative bronze plaque to Thomson will be unveiled in Edinburgh. 

Read more and book here: 

14 September: https://rps.org/JohnThomson

29 July: https://rps.org/HistoricalJuly

On the occasion of the sesquicentenary of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass in 2021 we will hold a fully-online conference whose focal point will be the Looking-Glass itself. Aiming to explore the significance of the mirror in literature, science, theology, art and other fields, it hopes to explore any facets of this concept that were relevant to ideas that shaped Carroll’s work, or, which have since been integral to its interpretation at different points in time.

Embracing Lewis Carroll’s polymathic interests, as man of the Church, of science, a collector of scientific instruments, a mathematician, lover of theatre and the arts, we invite submissions from scientists, historians, theologians, philosophers, and art historians as much as those from scholars of literatures of the fantastic, childhood, film, theatre and music, and practitioners, such as curators, educators or artists. This re-appreciation of Through the Looking-Glass will show that, more than a mere sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it is as a mirror of its time and of the mind of its creator. Contributors will be invited to submit proposals for publication after the conference.  

In the context of Through the Looking-Glass, we invite presentations exploring the theme of mirrors, offering fresh approaches to any aspects of the work itself, addressing, in particular, the difference between Looking-Glass and Wonderland, or aspects of Lewis Carroll’s biography, his historical, literary, and epistemological environment, intertextualities with other authors, Carroll’s correspondents or wider circles, which promise to shed new light on his Looking-Glass world. We invite contributions on, but by no means limited to, any fields of

• the Natural Sciences – especially exploring optics, and aspects of mirroring
• Science and Religion – especially aspects of narrative, literature and childhood
• Theology & Religious Studies – especially with an interest in Victorian religion, childhood, mirrors and the meaning of truth and knowledge in religious writing
• the History of Science – especially optical toys, popular science for children
• Literary & Theatre Studies – especially posthumanism, ecocriticism
• Art History & Illustration – especially photography, and adaptation
• Philosophy – especially Victorian epistemology & ontology, animal and childhood
• Psychology – especially dreams, sleep, identity, childhood development
• Childhood Studies – especially Victorian studies, and applications of Looking-Glass
• …and especially interdisciplinary explorations of the intersections of any of these fields.

We particularly invite reflections from practitioners, including creators of adaptations of the text, professionals in translation, museum studies, librarians, fashion, as well as from performers and interpreters, authors, poets and illustrators.

We encourage a breadth of forms for presentations, from ‘classic’ academic papers or paper panels, short papers, proposed themed round tables, informal talks, presentations of or reflections on artistic interpretations.

One of the keynote speakers is Diane Waggoner, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She has contributed to several publications on photography and curated numerous exhibitions, including The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848-1875 (2010) and East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography (2017). In 2020, she published the monograph, Lewis Carroll’s Photography and Modern Childhood (Princeton University Press).

See more here: https://throughthelookingglasssesquicentenary.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Abstracts for presentations of up to 300 words, including up to 5 keywords, should be sent to lookingglass2021@gmail.com by 15 June 2021

The BFI National Archive was established in 1935 and holds one of the largest and most significant film and television collections in the world. 

It has commissioned The Audience Agency, in partnership with AMION Consulting and Golant Innovation, to carry out an evaluation of the economic, social and cultural impacts of the BFI National Archive.

If you have previously viewed or accessed BFI National Archive collections, we're reaching out to gain a better understanding of how you do so and why, and the benefits gained as a result.

See more here.

Homer Sykes (b.1949) is a celebrated British documentary photographer whose work has been widely exhibited including at the Tate, Arnofini and  V&A. His career includes long term personal projects, many based on the customs and traditions of the British. Homer’s early interest in photography started at school and in 1967 he went to study at The London College of Printing.

In the early 1970's Homer started his research into documenting traditional British folklore customs and annual events, which has become the largest long-term project of his career. Homers’ unique survey on British customs is an iconic series which contrasts age old traditions with the modernity of the every day life. He says: "My pictures are about people, what they wear, how they look, how they interact with each other, against a background that sets the scene.".

Once a Year, Some Traditional British Customs was published in 1977 by Gordon Fraser. In 2016 Dewi Lewis Publishing re-published this volume with over 50 'new' images from Homer’s archive. Signed copies, will be for sale at the gallery during the exhibition. Homer Sykes is also the author of of thirteen books about Britain. 

Once A Year - Homer Sykes
3 May 2021-26 June 2021
Lucy Bell Gallery
St Leonards-on-Sea
See: http://lucy-bell.com/exhibition/once-a-year-homer-sykes

Headstone Manor Museum is looking to document and interview former employees and relatives of employees who worked at Kodak's Harrow factory from 1891-2017. This could cover working life, the social activities to home life. 

The research will form part of the museum collection and some will become part of an upcoming exhibition opening in September 2021 to mark 130 years since the factory opened.

If you have a story to share, or are interested in recording an oral history email: collections@headstonemanor.org by 31 May 2021. 

David Hurn has donated a significant part of his archive to the Martin Parr Foundation collection. The gifted works include vintage press prints, exhibition prints, book layouts, and a complete set of David Hurn photographs made in Wales. This material joins a number of other David Hurn prints already housed at the Martin Parr Foundation.

Hurn has donated a significant part of his archive to the Martin Parr Foundation collection. The gifted works include vintage press prints, exhibition prints, book layouts, and a complete set of David Hurn photographs made in Wales. This material joins a number of other David Hurn prints already housed at the Foundation.

David Hurn projects accessible in the MPF Collection include, among others, Land Of My Father, Living In Wales and Carvings And Controversies: Sculpture Exposed. In addition, there are photographs from many press assignments, such as the Aberfan Disaster, The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night and Churchill’s Funeral.

Much of David's archive is in the National Museum Wales, Cardiff. 

See more here in this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0hNJgl34xk

The Kennington Bioscope, in conjunction with The Cinema Museum, presents another episode of KBTV, available on YouTube, at the KBTV channel. William Friese-Greene (1855-1921) was a pioneering British experimenter with moving pictures, whose monument in Highgate Cemetery hails him as “The Inventor of Kinematography”, and whose life – and death – were famously charted in the 1951 film The Magic Box, starring Robert Donat.

This online event, marking the hundredth anniversary of Friese-Greene’s death, features contributions from three experts on early moving pictures, who will talk about his life, his achievements, and his waxing and waning reputation. They are Peter Domankiewicz, Stephen Herbert and Ian Christie. 

See more here: http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/2021/kennington-bioscope-online-back-in-focus-the-centenary-of-william-friese-greene/#more-29318

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD jointly hosted by the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and University of Brighton. The project will examine the ways in which a collection of apartheid-era photographs from South Africa held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, can be of value to South African and British audiences today. The photographs, taken by Bryan Heseltine and his aunt Irene Heseltine in the 1940s and early 1950s, are of particular importance to the visual history of South Africa. The research will establish a comprehensive digital research catalogue for the collections and use this as the basis for fieldwork in South Africa. Fieldwork will consist of local exhibitions, reception analysis, interviews, and historical research, to critically examine the range of meanings and uses for such historical imagery in the region.

Other lives of the image: examining the meanings of an apartheid-era collection of photographs in South Africa today
The studentship start date is 1 October 2021.
The deadline for applications is: Monday 26 April 2021 (16.00)
See mnore here:  https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/postgraduate-research-degrees/funding-opportunities-and-studentships/2021-ahrc-cdp-other-lives.aspx

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD studentship titled Amateurs, Scientists, Tradesmen, and Artists: The Royal Photographic Society (RPS), 1853-1914 to research the early history of the Royal Photographic Society supervised at Birkbeck University of London, in partnership with the V&A Museum, supervised by Professor Steve Edwards, Birkbeck, and Dr Duncan Forbes at the V&A.

The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) is the oldest surviving photographic society in the world. In parallel to the Victoria and Albert Museum it is the oldest institution in Britain dedicated to the historical preservation and promotion of photography. However, despite this venerable heritage, the Society has no substantive written history and its important collection remains in large part unexplored. This CDP aims to remedy this situation by rethinking the early evolution of the RPS against formations of culture, class, and the rise of the professions and professional societies in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It pursues research central to the V&A's work in engaging the public with the RPS collection in the coming years.

Founded in January 1853 as a society open to 'ladies and gentlemen interested in Photography', the RPS was set in motion by a complex array of factors. These included the legacy of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (with its public display of photography as art and science), the desire of amateur photographers to escape patent restrictions imposed by W. H. F. Talbot, and the urge to forge an autonomous space for photography alongside established cultural institutions such as the Society of Arts and the Royal Academy. Initially an elite formation, the doctorate will begin to unpick the pathways of specialisation within the institution against the wider framework of mid-Victorian formations of commerce, art, and science. The aim is to connect the RPS to an existing historiography focused on the rise of the nineteenth-century middle class in Britain.

The student will be able to access a diverse range of training and professional development opportunities at Birkbeck and V&A.

See more here: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/financial-support/phd-funding/ahrc-cdp-royal-photographic-society

The outcome of the second round of the UK government's Culture Recovery Fund funding has been announced with photography organisations in receipt of funds for both the first time and, for some, in line for a second tranche of funding,

Arts Council England which has been reviewing applications and disbursing funds claims that it has made some £751 million of investment. 

Amongst the photography bodies and galleries showing photography in receipt of second round funds are: 

• Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol - ££169,149
• Autograph ABP, Derby - £89,777
• Derby QUAD, Derby  - £122,000
• Farleys House & Gallery, Wealden - £85,000
• Four Corners, London - £45,000
• Ikon Gallery, Birmingham - £129,473
• Photo London Ltd - £100,000

For a full list of funded organisations see: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/culture-recovery-fund-data

A summary of the first round funding can be seen here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/culture-recover-fund-supports-photography 

Ryerson Image Centre has acquired the Francis Bedford Research Collection which has been assembled by Toronto-based architectural photographer and collector Steven Evans  It encompasses the life’s work of Francis Bedford (1815-1894), one of the pre-eminent English architecture and landscape photographers of the nineteenth century.

The collection comprises 1269 individual photographs in a variety of formats, six albums and 28 publications with original tipped-in photographs, and related ephemera. It also includes 16 lithographic publications, reflecting Bedford’s initial training as an architectural draughtsman and reproduction lithographer.

Ranging from the mid-1840s to 1870, the Francis Bedford Research Collection features views from the photographer’s extensive travels throughout the United Kingdom and the Middle East, where he famously served as official photographer for the Prince of Wales’ tour in 1862. Scarce early photographs, variant prints from the same negatives, examples of numerous stereographic formats, view albums and rare sales catalogues offer an unparalleled resource for scholarly study of Bedford’s working methods, the dissemination of his work through various commercial channels, and historical context.

Read more here: https://ryersonimagecentre.ca/collection/francis-bedford-research-collection/

Ed Bottoms has posted on Twitter that the first phase of the digitisation of the Architectural Association lantern slide collection has been completed.

He writes... Pleased to announce completion of the first phase of digitising the historic Architectural Association Lantern Slide Collection. One of the most important surviving holdings of architectural lantern slides in the UK. 20,000+ glorious slides built up between 1890s-1940s...

The collection was at the heart of AA teaching and also operated as a hub for the loan of slides to numerous institutions and architecture schools across the UK- including Cambridge, Birmingham, Aberdeen and, closer to home, Bartlett, LCC School of Building, and the Courtauld...

The collection's original order and classification system (invented 1923 by AA Principal + couple of tutors) has also survived, revealing the intellectual framework, biases and categorisation behind construction (and transmission) of a British inter-war architectural canon...

The provenance records embedded in the collection provide a wealth of information on the networks of architects, artists, archaeologists, students and travellers engaged in architectural photography or slide collecting during this period...

In 2019 we begun making this remarkable collection fully accessible once more to researchers. A team of volunteers started cleaning, re-housing and digitising the collection - and over the last 12 months Lexi Frost overseen the completion of the first phase of the project...

As the slides are now being re-catalogued, the original order, inter-war categorisation, toponymy and terminology is also being preserved alongside - as evidence of the linguistic and classification structure underpinning the collection. 

See: @EdBottoms

A collection of 224 autochrome plates made by Robert Bird from c1915-1920 has been given to the Royal Photographic Society more than one hundred years since the RPS first exhibited some of them in its annual exhibitions between 1915 and 1917. A few of the plates have only been seen publicly once since then in the 1950s when they were shown at a RPS Colour Group meeting. The plates were made by Robert Bland Bird and represent his entire oeuvre, before his business and political commitments took him away from autochrome photography, and his photographic interests moved on to cinematography. He was a member of the RPS from 1915 until his death in 1960.  

The RPS has produced a short film about the collection which is housed at its headquarters in Bristol. The film can be seen here: https://youtu.be/nYajirV_VU4 

The collection was also featured in the March/April 2021 issue of the RPS Journal and a copy can be had on request here. 

Sotheby's New York is celebrating fifty years of photograph auctions with a sale of fifty masterworks online between 12-22 April 2021, closing at 1801 (BST). Work ranges from Gustave Le Gray to Irving Penn and Martin Parr. 

Of particular interest is a group of  nearly 200 photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, given by him to his half-sister Henriette Horatio Maria Gaisford (née Fielding) in the 1840s. The collection was remained with the family in Ireland since then and this is the first time that it has come to auction. 

It consists of loose photographs, albums The Pencil of Nature, Sun Pictures in Scotland and Horatia's personal sketchbook and sheet music. Sotheby's describe the lot as 'arguably the most important lot of 19th century photographs to ever come to market'. It is estimated at US $300,000-500,000. 

Included are: 

• a group of 71 salt prints, several with manuscript captions in a contemporary hand in ink, two credited 'from nature H. F. T.' and 'H. F. Talbot,' likely by the photographer, and most with manuscript captions in a modern hand in pencil on the reverse; 
• Horatia's Album, comprising 25 salt prints, most with manuscript captions in a contemporary hand in ink on the mount; an album comprising 32 salt prints, most with manuscript captions in a contemporary hand in ink on the mount, inscribed 'Talbotypes 1843' in ink on the front pastedown;
• an album comprising 24 salt prints, most with manuscript caption in a contemporary hand in ink on the mount;
• the complete volume Sun Pictures in Scotland (London, 1845), 23 salt prints, on mounts with hand-ruled borders, each plate numbered in ink on the mount, 1844. 4to, gilt-lettered green cloth with a gilt-decorative cartouche, stamped 'A Tarrant Binder 16 Great Queen St' on the front pastedown, with the title page, plate list, and 'Notice to the Reader' inserted; 
• The Pencil of Nature, (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1845-46), Parts II (plates 6-12), III (plates 13-15), IV (plates 16-18, with plate 16 in duplicate), and V (plates 19-21), 17 salt prints on mounts with hand-ruled borders, 15 numbered in ink on the mount; each with printed wrappers, Part II inscribed by its owner ‘Horatia Feilding / given me by Henry’ in ink on the front free endpaper, accompanied by letterpress text and two ‘Notice to the Reader’ pasted in; and 
• Horatia's Sketchbook, with more than 20 pencil sketches and watercolors of botanicals, variously dated from September 18, 1820, to April 24, 1824 various sizes to 7½ by 9 in. (19.1 by 22.9 cm.)

Details of the auction are here.

For the Talbot lot see: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/50-masterworks-to-celebrate-50-years-of-sothebys-photographs-2/gifts-to-his-sister-horatia-gaisfords-collection

Film 2021, is a new year-long programme of activity celebrating the many aspects of Bristol’s film and moving image credentials launched by Bristol Ideas and Bristol City of Film, supported by the city’s film studios, cinemas, filmmakers and festivals.

Marking the centenary of the death of Bristolian inventor William Friese-Greene (1855-1921), a pioneer of early motion pictures, Film 2021 will include film screenings across the city, walking tours exploring cinema buildings, photography exhibitions, talks and panel discussions, and the launch of a special publication recounting the public’s memories of cinema-going throughout the past 70 years.

William Edward Green was born in 1855 in a house that used to stand behind the current City Hall, in College Street. He won a four-year scholarship to Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital School on Brandon Hill, leaving on his 14^th birthday and going on to an apprenticeship with Marcus Guttenberg, a successful photographer at what is now 67 Queens Road. A plaque there credits Friese-Greene as ‘the inventor of the moving picture camera’. In 1874 he married a German woman, Helena Friese, adding her name to his. In the ten subsequent years Friese-Greene went on to establish two studios in Bristol, one in Plymouth and another in Bath.

William Friese-Greene 

Friese-Greene and fellow inventor John Rudge collaborated to create magic lanterns that gave an illusion of movement by showing a series of photographic images in quick succession. There is a plaque marking the location of Rudge’s home and a larger joint plaque for Rudge and Friese-Greene on the corner of New Bond Street Place, Bath. Friese-Greene is credited here as ‘the inventor of commercial kinematography being the first man to apply celluloid ribbon for this purpose’. Around mid-1891, Friese-Greene filmed the street life outside the King’s Road studio. It is one of the earliest films shot of a London street currently known, pre-dating the films of Lumière, Edison, Birt Acres and Robert Paul by several years. There are eye-witness accounts from neighbours and colleagues of him projecting films in that basement workshop, including one of the street. From the late 1890s Friese-Greene was working on a variety of systems to create motion pictures in colour.

On 5 May 1921, Friese-Greene attended a meeting of film distributors to discuss the future of the British film industry. After giving a speech urging unity to an audience who had little idea who he was, he sat down and died of heart failure. At the time of his death the 1 shilling and 10 pence in his pocket was thought to be the only money he possessed. He was given a grand funeral, funded by the British film industry, and cinema projectors across the country were switched off for two minutes in tribute. A highly imaginative film of his life and work, The Magic Box, was released in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. Martin Scorsese said: “the film that I think created the biggest impression on me about film and about filmmaking – the one that prompted me to say ‘maybe you could do this yourself’ – was The Magic Box.”  

About Film 2021

Film 2021 is a programme of activity celebrating Bristol’s film and moving image credentials, coordinated by Bristol Ideas and Bristol UNESCO City of Film. It marks the centenary of the death of Bristolian motion picture pioneer William Friese-Greene (1855-1921).

Film 2021 will include:

• Footage of Bristol on film being shown at sites across the city
• Film screenings in the city’s cinemas and film festivals
• A day of talks and panel discussions on the city’s links to film, past present and future, presented as part of Festival of the Future City
• Walking tours of the city’s film locations and former cinema building
• A new poem specially written by the City Poet, Caleb Parkin
• Special events across the city as part of Bristol Open Doors (https://bristolopendoors.org.uk/)
• More activity and events will be added to the programme as it is developed over the coming months.

Film 2021 is backed by Bristol Film Office, The Bottle Yard Studios, Cary Comes Home, Bristol Photo Festival, Watershed, Destination Bristol, Bristol Libraries, Encounters, South West Silents and many others. Follow Film 2021 on Twitter using the hashtag #BristolFilm2021 and on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/bristolfilm2021

Follow Film 2021 on Twitter using the hashtag #BristolFilm2021 and on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/bristolfilm2021

The ISO Technical Committee 42 (Photography) looks after all the International Standards for Photography. It would like your help in relation to glass plates sizes used in photography; legacy and modern, collodion and gelatine, new and old equipment.

The standard is being updated to take into account some modern manufacture. Here is your chance to read the work for free and comments through the BSI portal.

Proposal: ISO 14548 Photography -- Dimensions of glass plates. Please visit http://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/projects/2021-00138

If you have not used this system before, you will need to register https://identity.bsigroup.com/StdDevRegistration/Register?bpurl=https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/

The Guardian newspaper has profiled Charlie Phillips,a British photograoher of Jamican heritage, living in London from the 1950s.

Charlie Phillips never planned to become a photographer. His childhood dream was to be an opera singer, or a naval architect. But then a camera fell into his lap. It was 1958. The 14-year-old had arrived from Jamaica two years earlier and was living in Notting Hill, west London, at that time the first port of call for many Caribbean immigrants. The area was also a destination for African American soldiers stationed at nearby military bases, who didn’t feel so welcome in central London’s white venues.

Read the full piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/25/charlie-phillips-why-did-it-take-so-long-for-one-of-britains-greatest-photographers-to-get-his-due