Sworder's London auction is offering a lot of London photographs by James Hedderly. The eight photographs are estimated at £1000.

JAMES HEDDERLY (1814-1885)
a collection of seven photographs of Chelsea before the building of the  Embankment in 1871-3; Old Battersea Bridge (as depicted by Whistler); Chelsea Old Church; Cheyne Walk near Chelsea Physic Garden; Monument to Sir Hans Sloane at Chelsea Old Church; Statue of Sir Hans Sloane by John Michael Rysbrack in Chelsea Physic Garden; Houses on Cheyne Walk at the junction of Beaufort Street and Battersea Bridge; Cheyne Walk before the building of the Embankment; largest 20.5 x 42cm, unframed; together with a further photograph by W Brown of the Inspection of the Main Drainage Works at Barking, July 14th 1862 (8)

This collection by the Chelsea born artist James Hedderly gives a fascinating insight to what Chelsea was like in the 1870s, before the building of the embankment which changed the landscape of London so fundamentally. Hedderly's work focused on the Chelsea area and he did much to document the construction of the embankment. It was a time when Chelsea was established as a major artistic centre and community in London based around places like Cheyne Walk, which in 1870 boasted Dante Gabriel Rossetti (no.16) and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (no.96) as residents.

Hedderly's work can be seen in the Kensington and Chelsea Archives and National Monuments Record. Photographs are also published in John Bignall, 'Chelsea seen from 1860 to 1980', London Studio B, 1978.

See more here.

On behalf of Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Curators of Photography, we would like to bring to your attention our current research opportunities within the Rijksmuseum Fellowship Programme – in particular the new Terra Foundation Fellowship in American Photography.

Currently, the team of Photography Curators of the Rijksmuseum is preparing a major exhibition of its collection of American photographs—from the birth of the medium in 1839 to the present—in a wider context. Candidates are invited to submit a research proposal that links to the themes that were chosen for the upcoming exhibition: American landscapes, portraits, the private use of photographs, the application of photography in advertisement, fashion, politics, (decorative) utensils, and a number of social themes – from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement and from poverty to the experience of wars in the Homeland, as well as the relation of photography to modern art (especially after World War II).

The deadline for applications is 17 January 2021. We are hopeful to continue this programme as planned for the next academic year, with fellowships commencing in September 2021.

Marije Spek & Barbara Tedder
Coordinator Academic Programmes
e: Fellowships@rijksmuseum.nl

 You can find all further details and eligibility requirements here:

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/fellowships

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/fellowships/terra-foundation-fellowship

If you have a spare £20,000 then one fascicle from William Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature (1844-1846) - the first commercially published photographic book - can be yours. The fascicle is illustrated with two calotypes - including one view of Lacock Abbey, and one photogenic drawing of lace. Approximately forty complete or substantially complete copies survive. 

If you want to bid check out the lot here. 

UPDATE: The lot remained unsold with no bids, was re-offered and then withdrawn by the seller, suggesting a sale may have been done privately.  

The Icon Photographic Materials Group is delighted to announce that this year’s fourth Round Table discussion will take place online. We hope that a virtual format will allow more people to attend, nationally and internationally. 

As in previous years, the event will consist of a series of five-minute presentations followed by questions and discussion. As always, it is open to anyone with an interest in the care and preservation of photographic materials. 

We invite abstract submissions from conservators and non-conservators working in public institutions, private practice and education. Subjects could include (but are not limited to) treatment practices, preventive conservation, scientific research, education, outreach and funding. 

If you’d like to give a five-minute presentation, please send a titled abstract (c.100 words) with your name and affiliation to phmgicon@gmail.com by the 30th November. Presentations should include around five PowerPoint slides, which should be illustrative rather than textual. Please get in touch as soon as possible for further details or to discuss your idea. 

The Round Table event will be followed by a brief update from the group committee.

A Zoom link and programme for the event will be emailed to attendees closer to the date.

Registration is free. To register please follow this link to our Eventbrite page. A final version of the programme will be available by early December, but you can check our Eventbrite page for updates before then. We look forward to continuing the discussion for another year.

See: https://icon.org.uk/events/call-for-papers-virtual-round-table-discussion

The Reece Winstone Archive is planning to become a charitable trust in order to ensure the corpus remains intact...writes John Winstone. We also have a policy of seeing continuing growth. The Archive presently holds 100,000 images of Britain from the 1930s to the 1980s and, in particular, on Bristol. Included in this tally are some 10,000 collected photographs of Bristol and area down to 1840 and the work of other twentieth-century freelance topographic photographers working across England in black and white and colour.

Reece Winstone FRPS was founder of the RPS Photo-Journalism Group in 1957, a member of the RPS Historical Group and published many photographs of Bristol in 37 volumes in a long freelance career.

We are looking for volunteers interested in undertaking digitising various parts of the Archive, mostly medium format negatives. For reasons of ease of lending material in the pandemic we would like to hear from those living in the south-west in the first instance.

Please contact John Winstone at reecewinstonearchive@gmail.com.

Image: Reece Winstone in Queen Square, Bristol, on 9 October 1948 taken by Bristol CC member N. Dibble.
 

The Cinema Museum, established three and a half decades ago by Martin Humphries and Ronald Grant, is at once a visitor attraction, heritage site and sporadic cinema. While this means it carries broad appeal to a range of audiences, straddling several sectors has posed a problem when emergency pandemic funding programmes are staunchly siloed.

The venue, a Grade II Listed former Victorian workhouse that counts Charlie Chaplin among its previous residents, is now crying out for public support via a Crowdfunder page – with great success thus far.

Read more here: https://advisor.museumsandheritage.com/features/people-power-cinema-museum-reliant-on-crowdfunder-campaign-after-missing-all-government-support/

The Crowdfunder can be seen here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/reopen-and-reimagine-the-cinema-museum

The long history of the renowned Alinari photographic firm, founded in 1852 in Florence, reached a turning point in December 2019 as the regional government Regione Toscana acquired the company's millions of photographic objects, documents, specialized publications and historical technical equipment; the acquisition of the digital assets will soon complete the process.

The Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia (Alinari Foundation for Photography) was established on July 16, 2020. The shift from private to public ownership represents not only a management challenge, but also a unique opportunity to root the activities of the newly created Fondazione into the fabric of the vibrant international scientific community at the highest intellectual level. So as to facilitate this transition, the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in partnership with Regione Toscana and Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia will host a study day with prominent international scholars in dialogue with artist Armin Linke.

The goal of the event is to identify new directions and outline new research scenarios that will connect the past, present and future of the Alinari project.

The recordings from the individual presentations made at the study day are now available here: https://vimeo.com/khiflorenz

The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Global History's seminar series is hosting Dr Luke Gartlan of the University of St Andrews who will be presenting a paper Bringing Empire Home: St Andrews and the Global Networks of Victorian Photography on 18 November at 1600. Registration is free and open to all.  

Details here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/centre-global-history/events-and-seminars/current-programme

Rebecca Gowers uncovered a fascinating story within her family tree - that of Harry Larkyns. She learnt that Harry was an attractive cad who lived a charmed life right up until the moment he fell in love with the wife of noted photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Rebecca will discuss the scoundrel Harry Larkyns and will be joined by our The National Archives collections expert Katherine Howells, who will showcase some of the Muybridge pictures held within our collection at The National Archives. This talk will conclude with a live Q&A with Rebecca Gowers and Katherine Howells.

Presented by The National Archives
Online, 18 November 2020 at 1930
Book here.

An online event with Dr Jan Graffius, curator of collections at Stonyhurst College, who will be talking to Gilly Read FRPS about Roger Fenton and his photographs of Stonyhurst and the surrounding countryside.  

Although Roger Fenton (1819-1869) is best known for his images of the Crimean War, he trained as a painter and photographed many varied subjects. He lived near Stonyhurst at Crimble Hall and took many landscape photographs around Stonyhurst as well as photographs of the College itself. Fenton was also the first secretary of the Photographic Society, now the Royal Photographic Society. 

The talk is free and can be booked here: https://rps.org/stonyhurst

BPH reported the death of Chris Killip recently. Mark Haworth-Booth, the former curator of photographs at the V&A Museum, has a written a blog which corrects that assertion in some of Killip's obituaries that he was not properly recognised and considered during his lifetime.

The V&A, perhaps exceptionally, purchased work by Killip from 1978 and later purchases included all 69 photographs from his first book, Isle of Man: A Book about the Manx, published in 1980. Haworth-Booth was also consulted over his appointment as Professor at Harvard in 1991. 

The full blog can be read here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-life/chris-killip

A BPH correspondent has been trying to find a reference to a photographer whose glass negatives were found in a friend's loft. The negs are all apparently marked 'H.M. & S.' and appear to date from the late 1890s or early 1900s. Does anyone recognise the initials?

In 2021 The Photographers' Gallery, London, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. A new online resource looks at the history of the Gallery's print sales from 1971.From the Gallery's outset founder, Sue Davies, recognised that selling photography could  help support its programmes at Great Newport Street.

The text is accompanied by audio - interviews with former managers of print sales Helena Srakocic Kovacs (1975-1980), Zelda Cheatle (1981-1989) and Francis Hodgson (1989-1993). 

Read and listen to more here: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/printsaleshistory

Cambridge University's Whipple Museum collections are now fully online. Like other museums, only a small proportion of our collection is on display at any one time and, in the current public health situation, physical access to museums has become very challenging. But now you can search and browse through records and images of close to 7,000 objects, as well as records of its trade literature - all from the comfort of your own home.

In addition, the Researcher Portal allows you to download images, book research visits, request permission to publish images, and suggest ways to correct or improve the published records.

For photographic historians the Whipple collection includes some important photographic equipment. 

See: https://collections.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/ 

A free new online picture archive from Reach plc, the owners of The Mirror and The Express newspapers, has been launched as the nation goes into lockdown. Despite events being cancelled nationwide the new tool allows people to celebrate and share historical moments like fireworks night, Remembrance Sunday. Memory Lane is backed by broadcaster, author and historian Professor Kate Williams.

The launch of Memory Lane follows a YouGov survey carried out for Memory Lane suggesting that the past is in danger of being lost because 80% of Brits haven’t digitised all their photos.

According to the newly commissioned nostalgia survey for Memory Lane almost a third of the population (31%) are looking at old photographs to get themselves through these times. So Memory Lane is asking the public to preserve, discover, celebrate and share images which matter to them as we enter another challenging time during the pandemic.

However, BPH would highlight the T&Cs of the site and warn potential users to be mindful of this if choosing to upload images:

If you post or upload content to the Site, you grant us a perpetual, royalty free, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and licence to use, reproduce, publish, communicate to the public, translate, create derivative works from and distribute such content into any form, medium or technology now known or hereafter developed. In addition, you waive any and all moral rights in such content.

See: https://www.memorylane.co.uk/

A new resource describes the history of photography and photographic studios in South Africa. It is accompanied by a gazetteer of studios for the same period. The text and resource has been compiled by Carol Hardijzer. 

See: http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/operators-mirrors-memory-south-african-photographers-1846-1915?fbclid=IwAR3isIOP6e1voF0SUGI61PPC3Bz5A9O9jtq9YrKH7uFPc-CQv7euhJoo_Zs

The latest edition of The Classic - a free magazine about classic photography is now available. In addition, the publishers have also launched The Classic Platform, an online resource with articles from Denis Pellerin and Richard Meara, and more due to go up shortly. Also available is an auction calendar. 

See:  https://theclassicphotomag.com/the-classic-04/

https://theclassicphotomag.com/the-classic-auction-calendar/

An early album of salt prints by Rev George Bridges is being offered in an online auction by Sotheby's from 3-17 November 2020. Bridges was a contemporary of Talbot and these show some of the first Calotypes of Greece, Turkey and Italy. It is estimated at £20,000-30,000. 

The lot description reads: 

BRIDGES, GEORGE WILSON

Album of photographs titled 'Talbotype album Mediterranean', 1846-48

oblong 4to (208 x 275mm.), 24 SALTED PAPER PRINTS (each 150 x 208mm., or the reverse), each mounted by the corners without adhesive through slits in pale blue laid paper (no visible watermarks), recto only, each with contemporary manuscript captions in pencil and/or ink, one of Athens dated 1848, one of Pompeii dated 1847, contemporary black half morocco gilt, green cloth boards, upper cover with black morocco gilt label, flat spine gilt, patterned endpapers in green, purple and gold, preserved in a modern green cloth folding box, cloth boards cockled and dampstained, binding slightly rubbed

AN IMPORTANT ALBUM OF PIONEERING TOPOGRAPHICAL PHOTOGRAPHS WITH SOME OF THE FIRST CALOTYPES OF GREECE, ITALY AND TURKEY, comprising views of Athens (15), Rome, Naples, Pompeii (3), Sicily (Messina, Mount Etna, and Palermo), and Constantinople.

George Wilson Bridges (1788-1863) was the first photographer to use William Henry Fox Talbot's "Talbotype" (calotype) paper photographic process in Greece and Constantinople, and was one of the earliest calotype photographers in Italy. Bridges was an English clergyman who had lived in Jamaica and Canada and on his return to England came to know William Henry Fox Talbot. In December 1845 Bridges was instructed in the art of the calotype photographic process by Nicolaas Henneman (valet and assistant to Talbot), at Talbot's home of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. In March 1846 Bridges embarked on what was to be a seven-year tour of the Mediterranean, joining two other calotype pioneers, Calvert Jones and Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot in Malta. He then set out and travelled to Sicily, Italy, Greece, and the Holy Land, and during his travels he also visited Constantinople. Although Bridges produced around 1,700 calotype negatives during this seven year tour his photographs are rare.

PROVENANCE:

Unknown owner, "Malta, Februari, 1849" (ink inscription on verso of preliminary blank, with the original owner's name inked-out); in the 1850s this album was gifted to a friend in whose family this album was preserved until 2012 when acquired by the present owner

Details are here: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/travel-atlases-maps-natural-history/bridges-album-of-talbotypes-photographs-of-athens

Join us for an online in-conversation with Prof Geoffrey Batchen and Dr Lena Fritsch, discussing the work of pioneering British photographer and botanist Anna Atkins (1799-1871). Her innovative use of new photographic technologies linked art and science, and exemplified the potential of photography in books.

Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford and Dr Lena Fritsch is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. The talk is supported by TORCH through the Humanities Cultural Programme.

Details and booking here: https://sites.google.com/view/photooxford2020/whats-on/events

Read more about Anna Atkins here.