Christ Church is seeking an Charles Dodgson Collection Project Archivist. Reporting to the College Librarian, the post-holder will lead on the preparation, cataloguing and promotion of the Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) collection held by the Library.  Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) – better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll – was a mathematics tutor and also Sub-Librarian at Christ Church. The collection includes photographs and some of Dodgson's photographic equipment. 

Cataloguing work includes the appraisal and selection, listing and arrangement and entry into the Epexio catalogue, assessing conservation and preservation needs, adding authority files, numbering and re-housing into preservation packaging as appropriate. The role-holder will also contribute to outreach activities including exhibition planning. Time-allowing, the role-holder will also identify and prioritise items for digitisation and liaise with Digitisation colleagues.

This role would be appropriate for a recent graduate of an archives and records management or similar programme, and applications from new professional in the field are also welcomed. 

Details of the collection are here: https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/college/library-archives/lewis-carroll-collection

Full details of the role are here: https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/vacancies/charles-dodgson-collection-project-archivist-two-year-fixed-term

Image details: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/10ed277d-d972-4517-905c-126bf5edeaa9/surfaces/e01385e6-96e7-4647-bbfd-124cd37a2b11/

Darkroom London is hosting Brett Rogers OBE on ( October 2024. Brett, the former director of The Photographers' Gallery, will be talking about her illustrious career and provide insights into gallery curation and organising exhibitions. 

Brett Rogers talk with Darkroom
Wednesday, 9 October 2024 at 1900
£5
Darkroom London, Unit 10 Murmarsh Workshops, 71 Marsden Street, London, NW5 3JA
Bookings: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule/3369f406/?appointmentTypeIds[]=67686348

Exeter's Bill Douglas Centre is advertising two new jobs at the museum. These are a Curatorial Assistant and a Museum Assistant. They are being funded from the recent award by Research England's Higher Education Museums, Galleries, and Collections Fund and will help extend services to external researchers, as well as assist with general duties in the museum.

You can find the advert and application for the Curatorial Assistant at Grade D here and the Museum Assistant at Grade C here .

The deadline for applications is 9 September 2024.

Barry Lategan who has died after a long illness aged 89 years was one of Britain’s leading fashion, portrait and advertising photographers from the 1960s to the 2000s. He was best known for his portrait of Twiggy, for his Vogue covers, and his advertising work. Many of his photographs are immediately recognisable. He was awarded an RPS Honorary Fellowship in 2007.

Lategan was born in South Africa and came to Britain in 1955 to study at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school. National service with the RAF intervened and it was during a tour in Germany that he joined the camp photographic society and photography took over his life. Lategan retuned to South Africa in 1959 and assisted Ginger Odes.

He returned to London in 1961, working in some of the leading studios, and photographing fashion. In 1966 he was introduced to Twiggy, then 16 years old, and created what became the face of the 60s. This helped propel Lategan’s career and he had his first Vogue cover in 1968 of a fur-clad Lesley Jones. He worked regularly for Vogue until 1981. He set up his own studio in 1967 in Chelsea. His photography was included in Bailey and Litchfield’s Ritz magazine, and he was the subject of a BBC2 Arena programme broadcast in 1975.

In 1977 he moved to New York to focus on commercial and advertising work, including directing television commercials, and personal projects. 

On his return to London in 1989 he continued with his advertising work and TV commercials for companies such as Jaeger, Pirelli, Vodafone and Gordons, winning numerous awards in both mediums. During his career he photographed many well-known models, celebrities from fashion, film and music, and royalty.

In 2006 Lategan suffered a serious fall which caused a serious brain injury and affected his behaviour. He was diagnosed in 2016 with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) which he and his family discussed publicly to raise awareness of the condition.

Lategan was involved with AFAEP, now the Association of Photographers, and helped select the inaugural AFAEP Awards in 1984. He held his first exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, in 1975, and was widely exhibited during his career (including by the RPS). Along with many of his contemporaries he enjoyed a long association with Olympus Cameras.

His work is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and V&A Museum, London, and elsewhere.

The Barry Lategan Archive is now being managed by his son, Dylan.

https://www.barrylategan.com/

Text: © Michael Pritchard
Image: Barry Lategan, c1950s. © Estate of Barry Lategan / Barry Lategan Archive

The Photographic Collections Network has issued the following notice... We regret to announce that after many years of sharing best practice and celebrating photo collections and photo archives across the UK, the Photographic Collections Network will close on 19 August 2024. 

Photographic Collections Network (PCN) has worked significantly in the sector with many amazing people and photographic collections, supported by the PCN Steering Group and our network. We’ve advised on collections placement, copyright, orphaned works, collections care, digitisation, preservation and so much more. We are proud of our extensive events programme of talks, workshops, advice sessions and collection visits that engaged people across the sector. 

Please continue to refer to our website for resources such as other organisations who provide help and support to the sector: https://www.photocollections.org.uk/advice 

From the PCN Manager Debbie Cooper and the wider PCN Steering Group, we would like to thank everyone who has supported us over the years.

Current PCN Steering Group

• Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum 
• Geoff Belknap, Keeper of Science and Technology, National Museums Scotland
• Brigitte Lardinois, Reader in the Understanding of Public Photography, London College of Communication, University of the Arts in London
• Leanne Manfredi, National Programmes Lead, Victoria and Albert Museum
• Michael Pritchard, Photo Historian, formerly Royal Photographic Society
• Tamsin Silvey, Cultural Programme Curator, Historic England 

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

The Network was launched in 2016. See: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-photographic-collections-network

Two pioneering photographers will be commemorated with blue plaques by English Heritage today, Thursday, 8 August 2024. The first will mark the Fulham home of Christina Broom, believed to have been Britain’s first female press photographer, while in Brixton, the second plaque will honour John Thomson, a ground-breaking photojournalist working at the advent of the medium.

English Heritage Historian, Rebecca Preston, said: “These two very different photographers were both pioneers in their own right, both working at the forefront of photography at a time when it was not the accessible medium that it is now. I am delighted to celebrate them today, each at an address associated with the very pinnacles of their respective careers.”

Despite only making her first experiments in photography at the age of 40, with a borrowed quarter-plate box camera, Christina Broom went on to become the most prolific female publisher of picture postcards in Britain. She was a prominent photographer of the suffrage movement; the only woman photographer allowed into London barracks; and the only photographer permitted regularly into the Royal Mews. Her plaque at 92 Munster Road – a terraced house of 1896 – will be the very first blue plaque in Fulham, where she lived and worked for 26 years. From this house, without a public-facing studio or shop, Mrs Broom and her daughter Winifred ran her photographic business. At their busiest, mother and daughter produced 1,000 postcards per day. When she was interviewed in her drawing room in 1937, the reporter from Westminster and Chelsea News was ‘confronted with hundreds of prints from a selection of some of the thousands of negatives – many of them irreplaceable – that are stored elsewhere in the house’. Broom died at number 92 in 1939 and her daughter remained there until she died in 1973.

John Thomson was a leading photographer, geographer, travel writer and explorer. His seminal work, Illustrations of China and its People (1873–4), charted his travels through more than 4,000 miles from Hong Kong to the Yangtze-Kiang, via Canton and the Great Wall, creating a far broader panorama of Eastern culture than had ever been seen in the West. With the permission of King Mongkut of Siam, he took the first-known photographs of the ruins of Angkor Wat in 1866 and the reproduction of his photographs, particularly the innovative combination of text and image, was a landmark in the history of illustrated books. Thomson and his family moved to what is now 15 Effra Road in Brixton in the 1870s. It was while living in this terraced house of 1875­–6 – formerly known as 12 Elgin Gardens – that Thomson published one of his best-known and influential works, Street Life in London (1877–8). With its cast of street characters, such as Covent Garden flower sellers, Italian musicians and ‘Hookey Alf of Whitechapel’, Street Life has been reprinted many times since. Thomson was convinced that photography was ‘absolutely trustworthy’ in its ability to convey accuracy and truth. ‘We are now making history’, he wrote in 1891, ‘and the sun picture supplies the means of passing down a record of what we are, and what we have achieved in this nineteenth century of our progress’.

Other photographers commemorated by the Blue Plaques Scheme include Bill Brandt, Lee Miller, Camille Silvy and Cecil Beaton.

The English Heritage London Blue Plaques scheme is generously supported by David Pearl and members of the public.  The London-wide blue plaques scheme has been running for 150 years. The idea of erecting ‘memorial tablets’ was first proposed by William Ewart MP in the House of Commons in 1863. It had an immediate impact on the public imagination, and in 1866 the (Royal) Society of Arts founded an official plaques scheme. The Society erected its first plaque – to poet, Lord Byron – in 1867. The blue plaques scheme was subsequently administered by the London County Council (1901–65) and by the Greater London Council (1965–86), before being taken on by English Heritage in 1986. www.english-heritage.org.uk/discover/blue-plaques/

See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9wpy787y1o

Main image: (l-r) Jamie Carstairs, David, Caroline and Jessica Thomas (Thomson descendents) and Betty Yao below the blue plaque for John Thomson.  © Michael Pritchard

This autumn, Tate Britain will present The 80s: Photographing Britain, a landmark survey which will consider the decade as a pivotal moment for the medium of photography. Bringing together nearly 350 images and archive materials from the period, the exhibition will explore how photographers used the camera to respond to the seismic social, political, and economic shifts around them. Through their lenses, the show will consider how the medium became a tool for social representation, cultural celebration and artistic expression throughout this significant and highly creative period for photography.

This exhibition will be the largest to survey photography’s development in the UK in the 1980s to date. Featuring over 70 lens-based artists and collectives, it will spotlight a generation who engaged with new ideas of photographic practice, from well-known names to those whose work is increasingly being recognised, including Maud Sulter, Mumtaz Karimjee and Mitra Tabrizian. It will feature images taken across the UK, from John Davies’ post-industrial Welsh landscape to Tish Murtha’s portraits of youth unemployment in Newcastle. Important developments will be explored, from technical advancements in colour photography to the impact of cultural theory by scholars like Stuart Hall and Victor Burgin, and influential publications like Ten.8 and Camerawork in which new debates about photography emerged.

The 80s will introduce Thatcher’s Britain through documentary photography illustrating some of the tumultuous political events of the decade. History will be brought to life with powerful images of the miners’ strikes by John Harris and Brenda Prince; anti-racism demonstrations by Syd Shelton and Paul Trevor; images of Greenham Common by Format Photographers and projects responding to the conflict in Northern Ireland by Willie Doherty and Paul Seawright. Photography recording a changing Britain and its widening disparities will also be presented through Anna Fox’s images of corporate excess, Paul Graham’s observations of social security offices, and Martin Parr’s absurdist depictions of Middle England, displayed alongside Markéta Luskačová and Don McCullin’s portraits of London’s disappearing East End and Chris Killip’s transient ‘sea-coalers’ in Northumberland.

A series of thematic displays will explore how photography became a compelling tool for representation. For Roy Mehta and Vanley Burke, who portray their multicultural communities, photography offers a voice to the people around them, whilst John Reardon, Derek Bishton and Brian Homer’s Handsworth Self Portrait Project 1979, gives a community a joyous space to express themselves. Many Black and South Asian photographers use portraiture to overcome marginalisation against a backdrop of discrimination. The exhibition will spotlight lens-based artists including Roshini Kempadoo, Sutapa Biswas and Al-An deSouza who experiment with images to think about diasporic identities, and the likes of Joy Gregory and Maxine Walker who employ self-portraiture to celebrate ideas of Black beauty and femininity.

Against the backdrop of Section 28 and the AIDS epidemic, photographers also employ the camera to assert the presence and visibility of the LGBTQ+ community. Tessa Boffin subversively reimagines literary characters as lesbians, whilst Sunil Gupta’s ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships 1988, juxtaposes portraits of queer couples with the legislative wording of Section 28. For some, their work reclaims sex-positivity during a period of fear. The exhibition will spotlight photographers Ajamu X, Lyle Ashton Harris and Rotimi Fani-Kayode who each centre Black queer experiences and contest stereotypes through powerful nude studies and intimate portraits. It will also reveal how photographers from outside the queer community including Grace Lau were invited to portray them. Known for documenting fetishist sub-cultures, Lau’s series Him and Her at Home 1986 and Series Interiors 1986, tenderly records this underground community defiantly continuing to exist.

The exhibition will close with a series of works that celebrate countercultural movements throughout the 80s, such as Ingrid Pollard and Franklyn Rodgers’s energetic documentation of underground performances and club culture. The show will spotlight the emergence of i-D magazine and its impact on a new generation of photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans and Jason Evans, who with stylist Simon Foxton pioneer a cutting-edge style of fashion photography inspired by this alternative and exciting wave of youth culture, reflective of a new vision of Britain at the dawn of the 1990s

The 80s: Photographing Britain
21 November 2024 – 5 May 2025
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
Open daily 10.00–18.00
Tickets available at tate.org.uk and +44(0)20 7887 8888

In celebration of International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2025, we invite scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts to submit abstracts for participation in a free, online, global, 24-hour symposium dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to the medium of photography from photography's announcement in 1839 to contemporary artists in 2024. This unique event aims to highlight the diverse and impactful work of women photographers, and those working with photography, across all cultures and time zones.

We seek 15-minute papers that explore a broad range of topics related to women’s contributions to photography. These may include but are not limited to:

• Historical and contemporary profiles of influential and underappreciated women photographers.
• The impact of gender on photographic practice and representation.
• The role of women in shaping the photographic medium or its exhibition.
• Cross-cultural perspectives on women’s contributions to photography.
• Challenges and achievements of women photographers in various global contexts.

Our goal is to foster a rich, international dialogue that underscores the significant yet often overlooked achievements of women in the field. Presentations will be scheduled to accommodate various time zones, ensuring a truly global exchange of ideas.

To participate:
Please submit a 300-word abstract outlining your proposed paper by 1 October 2024. Abstracts should be submitted to celebratingwomeninphotography@gmail.com. Please also include your name, affiliation, time zone of anticipated residence on International Women’s Day, and a brief (100-word) biography. Selected papers will be notified by 1 November 2024, and detailed guidelines for presentations will be provided.

We encourage contributions from diverse perspectives and regions to create a comprehensive and inclusive representation of women in photography.

Join us in celebrating the vibrant and transformative work of women photographers worldwide!

Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025
Convenors: Kris Belden-Adams, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Mississippi and Dr Rose Teanby, Independent Scholar, UK
Call for papers - close 1 October 2024
Notification of acceptance - 1 November 2024
Conference-a-thon - 8 March 2025
Website coming shortly

Sefton Samuels who has died aged 93 years was a documentary photographer and photojournalist who documented the city of Manchester from the 1960s. Samuels' work is held in the National Portrait Gallery and V&A Museum collections. Some of his Manchester work was gathered in his book Northerners (2011)

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefton_Samuels and https://www.seftonphoto.co.uk/

Obituary here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/aug/08/sefton-samuels-obituary

A launch event of the AHRC Research Network, The Ethics of Medical Photography: Past, Present and Future, has just been announced. The first in a series of online seminars brings together Beatriz Pichel (De Montfort University, project PI), Katherine Rawling (University of Leeds, project Co-I), Toni Hardy (Wellcome Collection) and Andreas Pantazatos (University of Cambridge) to introduce the network and its aims, as well as discuss some of the main ethical dilemmas that historians, heritage specialists and collections managers are facing in relation to medical photography.

About the Network:

This multidisciplinary network brings together historians, ethicists, archivists, heritage scholars, artists, photographers, social scientists, and the public to generate theoretical and practical resources to research, curate, and disseminate historical medical photographs in an ethical way. To balance the ethical needs of heritage institutions, researchers and the public, this network will move beyond the looking/ not looking dilemma [Moeller, 2009] to ask:

• how does our understanding of the ethics of medical photography, and of medical photography itself, change when we focus on race, disability, gender, class and age rather than consent, privacy and anonymity?
• how can we widen access to early medical photographs while respecting the dignity of both historical subjects and present viewers?

For any questions about the seminar please contact empnetwork24@gmail.com

You can join the Network mailing list here

English Heritage, with the support of the John Thomson steering group and the Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group will be unveiling an English Heritage Blue plaque to John Thomson (1837-1921). The ceremony will take place at 12 noon at 15 Effra Road, Brixton, where he worked on Street Life in London. It will be followed by several short presentations and light refreshments, just a few hundred metres away in the new premises of Photofusion at Unit 2, 2 Beehive Pl, London SW9 7QR. Photofusion has supported photographers since 1990.

Places are limited and prior registration is required here.

This year marks 110 years since Britain declared war on Germany and the start of the First World War. To mark the anniversary, Blenheim Palace has revealed it has a special album of letters, photographs and entries from when the UNESCO World Heritage Site was used as a hospital, between autumn 1914 and May 1915.

The 9th Duke of Marlborough opened up his home for use as a convalescence hospital in the early months of World War One; it was run by Sister Amy Munn. In the hospital album, she noted: ‘Blenheim Palace was closed as a hospital on May 31st, 1915 and the numerous letters received from the trenches since then are eloquent of the affection of the men for their ‘Home’ and to the Duke of Marlborough for his unfailing kindness and sympathy to them.’

The album lists the name, rank and age of each patient as well as his regiment and ailment or complaint. There is also a column in which the patient could make his remarks upon discharge - the date of which is also noted. The complaints of the teenagers and young men vary greatly, from gunshot wounds, gas poisoning and shrapnel to haemorrhoids, influenza, rheumatism and even frostbite.

Photographs and letters of thanks are also included in the album, and it becomes apparent that Sister Munn wrote a postcard to each of the men who had been under her care to find out how they had fared once they left Blenheim. The responses are many and varied - some write from the trenches, others who were sent to recover elsewhere compare their present treatment to the care they had received at Blenheim.

Some of the letters are from distressed and grieving relatives who, having seen photographs of the patients in a newspaper article of the time, write in the hope that the familiar looking man in the image will turn out to be a son, husband or father who has been reported as missing in action. There are also letters notifying Sister Munn of the death of someone who had previously been in her care.

It also becomes apparent that the Duke presented Sister Munn with a diamond brooch in recognition of all her care and hard work.

Antonia Keaney, Social Historian at Blenheim Palace, said, “The album is an absolute goldmine and is an amazing snapshot of the early days of the First World War when the men and their families couldn’t have begun to imagine the horrors that lay ahead or how long it would drag on for. The letters all contain expressions of gratitude to the Duke and Sister Munn, so it is incredible to be able to share this fascinating piece of history which is very important to us here at Blenheim Palace.”

The album is going to be displayed at Blenheim Palace in the Long Library for the weekend of the 3rd-4th August.

For more information and to book tickets visit, https://www.blenheimpalace.com/whats-on/events/hospital-albums-ww1/ and www.blenheimpalace.com

​

Kenneth Grange who has died just a few days after his 95th birthday was one of Britain's most significant postwar industrial designers. For thirty years he was design consultant for Kodak Limited developing cameras and a range of other products during the 1950s-1980s. These included the Kodak Instamatic 33, the Brownie Vecta, and Kodak Brownie 44A and 44B, Pocket Instamatic cameras, and the Kodascope 40 projector. The Brownie 44A, Kodaslide 40 and Vecta won Design Centre Awards in 1960, 1961 and 1964 respectively. 

He told The Guardian in 2011 about his work for Kodak. "I couldn't yet make a living from product design, so I was working doing the displays for the Kodak pavilion at the World Trade Fair. I was arranging the products on the stand and someone overheard me say, 'It's a shame these are so ugly; I could make this really good if they weren't.' The next day, the phone rang. It was the head of development at Kodak, and he said, 'I understand you're going to design a camera for us.' It was thrilling, but I was scared, too, because I didn't know cameras. But again, there was an element of luck involved. I just happened to be in the right place at the moment when Kodak decided to start selling cameras for profit. Up until this point, their cameras were sold at a loss in order to shift film."

Grange's Instamatic design was credited by the British Journal of Photography (12 December 1969) with its phenomenal sales: 'The success of the camera at home and abroad is thought to be largely due to the elegant appearance of the Instamatic 33 range, which was designed by the developments department of Kodak in association with Kodak AG; Kenneth Grange FSIA was the styling consultant'. Over one million were exported in the year to 31 October 1969. 

Away from photography Grange was responsible for a range of product designs including the Kenwood Chef food processor, the Manganese Bronze London taxi and the HST 125 train.

An exhibition about Grange and his work - Kenneth Grange - Designing Modern Britain - was held at the Design Museum in 2011 and reported on in BPH.  

His archive is now housed at the V&A Museum, London, gifted by Grange in 2022.  In an interview at the time of its acquisition Grange noted 'Another favourite commission and one of my most successful designs was the Kodak Instamatic camera 55x. The basic invention was brilliant and was a breakthrough which made loading film into a personal camera much simpler and more straightforward. My role was to decide what visual characteristic this new camera would have, and I felt it should owe something to the long history of photography. The most expensive camera at the time was the Leica Camera – it had a particular shape to it that had become the definitive shape and way of using a camera. This new camera I was designing for Kodak owed its lineage to the Leica and is how the shape came about.'

See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Grange and https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1194586/kodaslide-40-slide-projector-slide-projector-grange-kenneth/ and https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/17/kenneth-grange-british-design-exhibition

Main image: Michael Pritchard / Kodak Instamatic 33. Left: Brownie Vecta camera

Ben Harman, formerly Director of Edinburgh's Stills Gallery has been appointed to the role of Senior Curator (Photography) at National Galleries Scotland, based in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. The role was was advertised in March. He takes over from Anne Lyden who took up the role of National Galleries Scotland's Director-General on 1 January 2024. She had been Senior Curator since 2013. 

Harman who started in his new role last Monday joined Stills Gallery as Director and CEO in January 2014.  

Stills Gallery is curently advertising for a Director and that remains open for applications until 16 August. 

Image: Ben Harman / LinkedIn

Join Philippe Garner, former Christie's and Sotheby's auctioneer, and photography expert, and Alessandro Nasini, Senior Curator of Photographs and exhibition curator of Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, as they discuss how photography became accepted as fine art.

The discussion will be followed by an opportunity for guests to view the exhibition and your ticket will also include a glass of wine or soft drink to enjoy while you explore the gallery.

Your ticket will also include a 1-Year Pass, allowing you to visit our current and future exhibitions at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace as many times as you like within the next year. See here for more information about the 1-Year Pass 

In conversation: Photography at Art with Philippe Garner and Alessandro Nasini
Thursday, 8 August 2024 at 1830-2000, followed by a private exhibition view until 2100
King's Gallery, London
£35
See: https://www.rct.uk/event/in-conversation-photography-as-art-08-2024

Image: Princess Alexandra by Cecil Beaton

The Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper has reported that the National Science and Media Museum will be re-opening to the public in January, in time for Bradford's 2025 year of culture. The museum closed in June 2023 and re-opening had been delayed until summer 2025 after some unforeseen major structural issues were uncovered. The museum will open with two major new £6 million galleries dealing with sound and vision, new lifts and a remodelled front entrance.

The galleries, accompanied by a programme of activities, will showcase key objects and stories from the museum's world-class collections of photography, film, television, animation, videogames and sound technologies.

Separately, museum director Jo Quintoch-Tulloch has been awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bradford. Jo started at the museum in 2013, and her focus has been to forge partnerships across the city, including the University of Bradford, making it a centre of excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. The awarde was given ‘In recognition of demonstrating significant impact on the City and beyond, and contribution to STEM in partnership with the University.’

See: https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24458906.national-science-media-museum-reopen-january-2025/ and https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/about-us/sound-and-vision-project

Image: Jo Quinton-Tulloch / KM Images Ltd. 

The forthcoming Bristol Photo Festival features a number of exhibitions that use archival material in its own right or to inform contemporary practice. Of particular note is the exhibition: Herbert Shergold: Now Keep Quite Still. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Herbert Shergold operated a commercial photography studio in Bristol to create highly stylised portraits of actors as well as of his local community. In Shergold’s studio, Bristol’s working class residents were styled to appear as Hollywood film stars.

Little is known of Shergold, although he lectured to Bristol Camera Club in 1952 with a preentation titled 'Accent on Glamour'. After his death, his photographs largely disappeared from view, falling into the possession of private collectors in the US, The Netherlands, as well as Bristol. From the latter collection, curator and photo historian Hedy van Erp has curated the first exhibition of Shergold’s work. This exhibition takes place close to the site of his original studio and is supported by Marcel Brent (Vintage Photographs) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Herbert Shergold: Now Keep Quite Still
The Laundrette Gallery, 145 Cheltenham Rd, Cotham, Bristol BS6 5RR
16 October-17 November 2024

Details of the Bristol Photo Festival are here: https://bristolphotofestival.org/

Image: Herbert Shergold’s collection. © VintagePhotographs

Over six weeks, this practical course explores what it means to archive collections today – working with physical and/or digital material. Course leader Kathryn Tollervey starts by exploring the need for an archive and who it is for. Then we look at guidelines on cataloguing and metadata, as well as the processes of digitisation and preservation for both digital and physical material. We discuss what digital solutions are best for different types of collections. Throughout the course we focus on access and legacy of the archive.

Taking place weekly on Zoom, sessions include a blend of lectures, group discussions and presentations. Participants are provided with lecture slides and a list of resources for further study. The course is open  to all, especially photographers who are interested in starting the process of archiving their material, whether of personal value or historical public interest.

Starting an Archive
Online: 06:30pm, Mon 16 Sep 2024 - 08:00pm, Mon 21 Oct 2024
£185/£165 members and concessions
Details: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/course-starting-archive-online

Photography Database is a new implementation and major extension of work done by editors Andrew Eskind and Greg Drake while at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, beginning in the 1980s.  It provides basic factual information about more than 100,000 photographers, as well as public photographic collections, commercial galleries, photographic exhibitions, and citations to the many published sources used to compile the data. The scope is international, and the time frame runs from the beginnings of photography to contemporary. Data is continually updated -- actively tracking photographer obituaries, new and expanding collections, exhibitions, galleries, reviews, catalogs, and reference literature. At the time of writing it shows 11,500 exhibitions from 1840, 108,450 photographer obituaries. 

The database is both a useful reference too and provides an opportunity to analyse disparate data which it brings together to provide new insights in to how the work of photographers has been exhibited. It has been added to the resources at the bottom of the home page. 

Photography Database
Basic Biographical Information about Photographers, Public Photography Collections and Their Photographic Exhibitions
Access here: https://photographydatabase.org/