In collaboration with the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library, ‘The Media of Mediumship: Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain’s Science, Technology, and Magic Collections’ project aims to transform understandings of the relationship between science, technology, and unorthodox forms of spiritual belief in modern Britain. 

This project will produce a knowledge exchange, events, and creative performance programme designed to showcase the occultural use history of artefacts and collections held by the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library. These activities will explore how seemingly secular technological and scientific instruments— cameras, radios, telegraphs, and other objects— have been used by spiritual practitioners and sceptics alike to probe the existence of an unseen world. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and follows on from the Popular Occulture in Britain, 1875-1947 research network.

The project has published its first blog here: https://mediaofmediumship.stir.ac.uk/2021/04/30/touching-the-past-in-intangible-times/

Image: Quarter plate ‘Cameo’ camera manufactured by W. Butcher & Sons, London (made c. 1915–20).
Image courtesy of Science Museum Group, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced the long and shortlists for its 2021 Photography and Moving Image Book Awards, chosen from over 180 submissions. The books in the running address global issues related to gender, identity, history, social injustices, community and memory.

Ranging from untold stories of contemporary society, to innovative thinking about the future of film from an African perspective, the diverse lists reflect the Foundation’s enduring recognition of attentive and original books that will likely have a lasting impact on their field.

This year’s winners will receive prize money of £5,000 each. For both categories, the shortlist selected by the judging panel aims to showcase innovative and coherent bodies of work with a focus on cultural relevance for our current times and in years to come. The judges also placed emphasis on each publication’s design, texture and haptic qualities, elements indicative of the collaborative approach taken by writers, artists, editors and designers.

The judging panel for the Photography Book Award commented: “This year’s longlist demonstrates that photography books with substance are more powerful than simply beautiful photography. The submissions revealed a strong sense of innovative storytelling about contemporary society, made clear through the way images have been combined as well as the texts included and the design of the books. The longlist is an incredible mix of archive, artists, historians, photographers and theorists.”

Professor Gideon Koppel, Judge, Moving Image Book Award comments: “Now seems to be a particularly relevant time to be thinking about moving pictures and sounds, and how this field interacts with other ideas about humanity. We are in the middle of a technological revolution, where there is an acceleration of new ways to make and experience moving images and sound. So it didn't surprise me to see a noticeable collection of books musing on the future by looking to the past.”

Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation said: “It’s been fantastic to see such a strong year for submissions, and the eclectic range of genres that both longlists encompass. The Awards are an important reflection of contemporary society, and the politics and cultural experiences from the previous year. Photography and Moving Image books continue to give a voice to people and communities across the world.”

SHORTLIST - Photography Book Award

• Centralia by Poulomi Basu (Dewi Lewis Publishing). Basu’s Centralia brings to light the important lives of indigenous women in India and their families, whose voices, stories and fight are rarely heard. Through a highly intelligent combination of texts and powerful images, the book explores the ways that our perceptions of reality and truth are often manipulated.
• Destiny edited by Myles Russell-Cook with contributors (National Gallery of Victoria) In Destiny, Russell-Cook presents a timely monograph showcasing over 40 years of work by photographer and artist Destiny Deacon. Deacon is known for having coined the term ‘blak’, and her work across photography, video, printmaking, mixed media and installation is an interrogation of the way in which Aboriginal people have been, and continue to be,
  misrepresented within popular culture.
• Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear by Maria Kapajeva (Milda Books) Kapajeva’s book is an extraordinary journey through contemporary social history and personal memory. Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear explores the community, of which Kapajeva’s family was part, surrounding a now closed textile mill in Narva, Estonia, that
  suffered deeply after Estonia asserted its independence from Russia. With a focus on women and socio-political matters in post-Soviet culture, the work is beautifully clever and conceptually rigorous.
• Sunil Gupta: From Here To Eternity by Sunil Gupta, edited by Dr Mark Sealy MBE (Autograph in association with The Photographers’ Gallery and Ryerson Image Centre) Sunil Gupta’s life and long career in photography and activism are charted through a rich volume of personal and political archival material. Gupta’s socially engaged projects and works have been instrumental in raising awareness and visibility around the political realities concerning the fight for international gay rights, and the book traces the intersectional histories of migration and gay liberation.

Judging panels
The judges of this year’s Photography Book Award were Patrizia Di Bello, Professor of History and Theory of Photography at Birkbeck, University of London; Anna Fox, acclaimed British photographer and Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts; and Jennie Ricketts, independent photography editor, curator, consultant and mentor.

The judges of this year’s Moving Image Book Award were Erika Balsom, Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London; Steven Bode, Director of Film and Video Umbrella, the UK’s leading makers of artists' moving image; and Gideon Koppel, Professor of Film at Manchester School of Art.

Upcoming events
● 20 May, The Photobook Sessions, a free day-long programme of talks about photobook publishing. Presented in partnership with Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
● 1 June, digital winners event 1, in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery.
● 3 June, digital winners event 2, in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery.

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation
The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation was created in 1985 by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the founder of Focal Press. Since 1985 the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Awards have been the UK’s leading prizes for books on photography and the moving image. More information information on the work of the Foundation can be found online at www.kraszna-krausz.org.uk.

Farleys House & Gallery is pleased to present The Road is Wider than Long, an exhibition exploring surrealist artists Lee Miller and Roland Penrose’s travels through the Balkans in the Summer of 1938, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Photographs taken by Miller and Penrose during this trip will be displayed together, including many by Miller which have never been seen before. The couple’s photographs capture the surreal landscapes they encountered whilst travelling through Greece, Romania and Bulgaria, and document the traditions of local people such as the Roma, whose ways of living would later fall victim to political turmoil and world events of the mid 20th century.

The exhibition will provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives of two artists and their journey of discovery in a world that would soon be transformed forever. Lee Miller’s camera in particular quietly observed the local traditions they encountered along the way and pictures of Miller by Penrose often show her immersed with the people they met. Miller made a particular attachment to a group of Roma who, before she parted, made her a special ceremonial sheepskin coat, hand embroidered with decorations and her initials which is now part of the collection at Farleys House & Gallery. When Miller returned to Romania in 1946 following the Second World War, she found that most of the Roma travellers she had met almost a decade earlier had been sent to the Nazi death camps.

On their return, the trip would form the basis of Penrose’s book The Road is Wider than Long, one of the earliest examples of a British Surrealist photobook, created as a love poem for Miller who had returned to her life in Cairo, Egypt and Roland to London. Drawn from his own memories and records of the couple’s trip, the original handwritten photobook was bound in shoe leather. This intimate publication has an important place in the history of Surrealist literature and Roland soon adapted it for self-publication through his London gallery.

The first edition of 510 copies included ten that had photographs tipped in, and small illuminations Penrose had added in watercolor which he gave as gifts. A copy bearing the personalised inscription “For Lee who caught me in her cup of gold” was gifted to Miller, with other copies going to artist friends including Paul and Nusch Éluard, Man Ray and Max Ernst.

Facsimile copies of both the handwritten and the first printed edition of The Road is Wider than Long dedicated to Lee Miller have been specially printed by the Lee Miller Archives to accompany the exhibition.

The Road is Wider than Long
ISBN 9780 9532389 9 6 / 9781 914298004
£15.00 / £19.50
Published by the Lee Miller Archives. See: https://www.farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk/product-category/books/

Gallery opening hours & ticketing information

The exhibition will be on view from Thursday 20 May – Sunday 31 October 2021.

Farleys House & Garden is open every Thursday and Sunday, 10am to 4.30pm

Tickets are available to pre-book from www.farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk/product-category/tickets/ 

A series of major publications in recent years have shed fresh light on the early British film business, from the 19th century pioneers up to the boom in cinema building before the First World War. Do these require revision of the standard histories by Rachael Low and John Barnes, which were pioneering in their time? And how are new historical insights best distributed, accessed, and debated in the digital era?

Speakers at this two-day symposium will include Barry Anthony, Tim Boon, Stephen Bottomore, Simon Brown, Zoë Viney Burgess, Jon Burrows, Ian Christie, Malcolm Cook, Bryony Dixon, Peter Domankiewicz, Frank Gray, Luke McKernan, Lawrence Napper, Simon Popple, Laraine Porter, Deac Rossell, Vanessa Toulmin

The symposium will run between 14.00-18.00 over two days on Microsoft Teams hosted by Birkbeck. It is free to register. 

Organisers: Ian Christie and Malcolm Cook

Contact i.christie@bbk.ac.uk or m.cook@soton.ac.uk for any queries.

Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/remapping-early-british-cinema-registration-151945849125?fbclid=IwAR30X_OAdXkIFvwv7cVfVTwqL28oS1NCkhQ9d_vKGwmcIDcZeSNbGc48Ii0

Messums, the London art dealer, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Julie Bonzon and the launch of our photographic department with a programme of online and physical exhibitions picking up in September 2021. Our curatorial and public programme featuring international, renowned and emerging artists and photographers working in various parts of the world encourages dialogue between contemporary imagery and archives, reflecting on the evolution of photography as a storytelling genre.

Messums Photography is delighted to confirm the representation of the following artists: Angela Williams (UK), Alexander Lindsay (UK), Dod Miller (UK), Jeffrey Milstein (US), Jean-Vincent Simonet (France), Justin Keene (South Africa), Nii Obodai (Ghana), Polly Penrose (UK), Tif Hunter (UK) and Yan Wang Preston (UK, China); commissioned works by Ingrid Pollard (UK) and Shohei Fujimoto (Japan); and up-coming exhibitions featuring works by Sophie Green (UK) and Laura El-Tantawy (Egypt, UK). The department will explore contemporary narratives in photographic practices with the benefit of lateral perspective across different artistic medium.

Julie Bonzon writes: 'Johnny Messum and I are working towards producing high-calibre online and physical exhibitions and talks programme featuring international, renowned and emerging artists and photographers and encouraging dialogue between practitioners, as well as between archives and contemporary imagery.'

As well as a site for selling, Messums Photography offers clients, members and broader audience expertise in the genre of photography through a monthly series of online conversations with each of our artists as well as critical interrogations into photography making techniques and lens-based narratives today. Messums Photography aims to present compelling content across its online and physical platforms that is timely and relevant, encouraging us to think photography as a way to navigate, comprehend and question how history has been depicted and remembered.

Alongside exhibiting contemporary photography, Messums Photography is partnering with the Kogan Collection on a ground-breaking series of exhibitions. The Kogan Collection is one of the largest private collection of conflict photography in the UK and has to this date, never been shown. With more than 350 prints dating from 1895 to 2015, a group of 800 vintage NASA photographs, first and limited-edition photography books, Life, Picture Post and Time magazines and artefacts, the Kogan Collection offers an in-depth and comprehensive view of the history of photojournalism and documentary photography in Europe and North America. These works will be the frameworks of an exhibition programme that explores the varying approaches and artistic choices compiled under the label of documentary photography and the wider narratives surrounding the history of press photography as an industry and photojournalism as a profession.

The launch of the Photographic Department is marked by ‘Close Conflict’, a touring exhibition featuring unique vintage photographs by Robert Capa from the Kogan Collection. Capa is a legend in the history of photo-journalism and possibly the most famous war photographer of the last century. This exhibition will feature a succession of iconic stories made throughout his career, from the altogether varying contexts in which he found himself. ‘Close Conflict’ starts its journey at Photo London in September 2021, and expected to tour our London, Wiltshire and Yorkshire venues.

See: https://messumslondon.com/exhibitions/exhibitions-events-messums-photography/

Image: Marianne Faithful, 1964 / © Angela Williams / Messums

The history of Kodak in Coburg 1961-2004, and staff recollections is presented by Fiona Kinsey, Senior Curator of the Images and Image Making, including the Kodak Heritage Collection at Museums Victoria. The museum houses the Kodak Australia archives and collection. 

https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/2882

The Zoom link is here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89706637372?pwd=Y3N4WXRWODVuVEx6WGsxTURhb1Zmdz09

Meeting ID: 897 0663 7372

Passcode: 651400

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 at 1900 (Australian) 1000 (BST)

As a fitting conclusion to the current  LSC Book of the month promotion, photo historian Denis Pellerin, from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy, will be giving a FREE 3D online talk, entitled “The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery: the Search goes on”, on Wednesday May 26th at 7.00 pm. Whether you have already got a copy of the book (we love you!) or have not purchased it yet (there is still time to visit our online shop !), there will be a lot to look at and learn in this colourful, entertaining and educational presentation.

Denis will examine the reasons that prompted the publication of the book in the first place and how all the original connections that are made in it between high art, popular art and stereoscopic photography, make it a unique volume that goes far beyond a simple survey of some of the best-selling Victorian stereo cards. Although the book was released some years ago, the search for more connections still goes on and the speaker will disclose some of the latest avenues he has explored and the numerous new links between paintings and stereo views he has discovered, and written about, since.

The images will be displayed side-by-side for parallel viewing. You can watch the whole presentation in 2D but if you want the 3D experience you need a Lite Owl, a Steampunk Owl, an Owl VR kit, or any other lorgnette-type viewer. If you haven’t got a viewer there is still time to order one from our online shop (https://shop.londonstereo.com/)

To book click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-poor-mans-picture-gallery-the-search-goes-on-tickets-154817562497

Chiswick Auction's auction of photographs 1840-2020 contains a number of lots of daguerreotypes and early photography. Two lots in particular are of special note, including a portrait of John Goddard and one that it is suggested may be a portrait of Frederick Scott Archer.

Lot 17. A portrait of John Frederick Goddard, the scientist and photographer, taken by Jabez Hogg. The image is reproduced in John Werge's Evolution of Photography. The description reads: AN IMPORTANT PORTRAIT OF PROFESSOR JOHN FREDERICK GODDARD (1795-1866), c.1841-1850, Sixth plate daguerreotype, in French bevelled gilt mount, inscribed with a caption on the cover glass; "Dr. John Goddard dis. Bromine Inventor of Polariscope" (sic) with taped edges, and later manuscript label in ink, on verso reading; "Professor Jon Goddard, discoverer of the quickening effect of Bromine in the production of the Daguerreotype picture. Jabez Hogg 1. Bedford Square. It is estimated at £35,000-40,000. 

Lot 18. Contains a series of thirteen experimental collodion studies including what the auction house suggests is a previously unknown portrait of Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857). The lot description notes: Ambrotypes, (13), a collection of experimental outdoor portrait studies of Children (11), one image of an elderly Gentleman (1), and a previously unknown portrait, most likely of Frederick Scott Archer himself, the inventor of the wet plate collodion photographic process. Plate sizes approx. 90 x 90mm or slightly smaller, with contemporary paperbacks and taped edges, three examples with notes regarding exposure and process in an unknown hand, pencil verso; "Effect of oblique .... light, Eleven O'clock A.M", "Effect of direct sunlight Midday", "Effect of Evening light". Estimate: £5000-6000. 

See the full catalogue here: https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/details/28%20May%202021%20C-photographs-1840---2020/?au=669

Don’t Press Print is an annual conference organised by the University of West of England's Centre for Fine Print Research and the Royal Photographic Society. In 2020 the conference looked at the collodion process and its contemporary practice through the eyes of twenty artist-printmakers and photographic historians.

In 2021 Don't Press Print will take as its theme the history of photographic and photomechanical print reproduction and processes from both an historical and contemporary perspective. A call for papers has been made. Some of the potential areas for papers are, but not limited to are:

Reconstruction:

• Approaches to the photomechanical transfer of images to the printed page from Talbot onwards
• Specific processes, in particular the Woodburytype, Photogravure, Photolithography and Collotype
• The impact of new methods of photomechanical reproduction on printed publications

Deconstruction:

• Contemporary artistic practice of historical analogue photomechanical printmaking processes
• The application of historic photomechanical processes to innovative modern use
• Hybrid digital /analogue approaches that open up the potential of photomechanical print processes in a virtual world

The organizers welcome proposals from practicing printmakers and photographers, historians and process specialists, visual artists as well as image and print scientists, to present their theoretical and/or practical research and working methods and artworks.

Proposals and final papers will be peer reviewed. 

Presentations will be 25 minutes, if you are reading your paper this equates to approximately 3000 words, but please adjust for your own style and take account of your visual materials.

Read more here: https://rps.org/photomech

De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre's annual conference is now open for registration.The programme, including keynotes from Kim Timby and Emily Mark-Fitzgerald is now available.

Recent scholarship surrounding the development, use, and reuse of colour photography has highlighted the need for more research and debate about photographic colour, in terms of histories, technologies and the emotions they have affected. Long told as merely a triumphalist history of technological achievement, colour photography is steeped as well in controversy, in the re-telling of history, in activism, in politics of individuals, communities and countries. Colour photography, while a boon to some, has been developed and deployed at the expense of others. As well as seeking to delve to broader issues and concerns, Photography and Its Many Colours wishes to create a platform for the voices of such individuals and communities to be heard.

The 9th annual conference organized by the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK) will thus address contemporary debates in and around colour photography through discussion of themes such as:

• Historical and contemporary uses of colourisation
• Emotional and affective responses to colour photography
• Industrial histories
• Activist and political uses of colour in photography
• Colour photography in race and identity politics

Full details and registration can be found here: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2021/

Colin Ford explores the surprisingly large number of world-famous and influential photographers who were originally Hungarian, many of them Jewish.

Colin Ford CBE was Deputy Curator of the National Film & Television Archive (1965-72) before becoming the first senior curator of photography in any British national museum or gallery (National  Portrait Gallery, London, 1972-82). He then became founding Head of The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (now The National Science and Media Museum), Bradford. A decade later, he became Director of the The National Museums & Galleries of Wales (1993-98). 

Colin was first involved with Hungarian photography when he curated the first exhibition in Britain of André Kertész (Serpentine Gallery, 1979). This was followed by The Hungarian Connection (NMPFT 1987). The most recent of his Hungarian exhibitions, Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century, was the first photography show ever originated by London’s Royal Academy.

Photography: Hungary’s Greatest Export?
with Colin Ford
60 minutes
Thu 20 May 20217:30pm 
£10
Details, booking etc. on https://www.jw3.org.uk/whats-on/festivals/yivo-series.

Join former V&A Museum ciurator Susanna Brown for a journey back in time to the elegant world of photographer George Hoyningen-Huene (1900–1968).  A pioneer in the fields of portraiture and fashion photography, Hoyningen-Huene worked during the golden age of Vogue and Vanity Fair, and his images define the glamorous aesthetic of that era. He collaborated with the stars of the artistic milieu in Paris, including Man Ray and Salvador Dalí, before embarking on a new career as a colour consultant for Hollywood movies.

He was also an avid traveller, publishing illustrated books of his journeys through Africa, Greece, and Mexico. His stylish photographs remain an enduring source of inspiration for today’s photographers and artists and his work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the RPS Collection at the V&A, MoMA, and the Pompidou Centre.  

To book a place visit: https://rps.org/events/bristol/2021/may/george-hoyningen-huene-1900-1968/

Two events took place last week to commemorate William Friese-Greene. In Bristol a short ceremony was held at the commemorative plaque to WFG in the city and John Winstone talks about it below. The other was an online discussion arranged by the Kennington Bioscope and the Cinema Museum with Ian Christie, Stephen Herbert and Peter Domankiewicz The event was recorded and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62OiHjLlAl4

John Winstone of the Reece Winstone Archive writes the day after the centenary of F-G's death: The last time I stood under the plaque was in 1955, in a schoolboy's striped blazer, when Reece Winstone FRPS had arranged for Lord Mayor Harry Crook (Mr Kleen-eze) to unveil the plaque to F-G on his birthplace behind Bristol Council House and had made a plea that the house be saved from the Council's agenda to demolish. The family thought it prudent to describe Willie as the Pioneer of Cinematography on this more public plaque in the face of a then very recent publication by a photo-historian with ulterior motives denouncing F-G's reputation. Yesterday, at a somewhat poorly attended gathering without any press present, and with representatives of just two of the original seven organisations who had paid for the plaque, but now more optimistic for F-G's place in history I said a few words, looking at the site of the grade II Georgian house, still a car park. My wife and I left a few flowers. F-G's eldest surviving son in 1955, Graham, an artist in architectural metalwork, had made the bronze plaque. Now bereft of its green patina,  doubtless a result of Bristol's polluted air, the plaque is in need of conservation (if only the HLF would consider more carefully when awarding grant related to cinematography!).

The two of us moved up to St George's church, Brandon Hill, now a music venue. Here beneath the gallery F-G's second 1955 plaque by Graham is affixed, funded by the Old Boys of F-G's charity school, QEH. We left a posy from the rest of the flowers. This plaque, which speaks in the privacy of F-G's church and where he married Helene Friese, makes the assertion the Inventor of Cinematography, just as Reece had dared to describe him in his speech at the unveiling of the birthplace plaque,

A short film of the 1955 unveiling is now on our website to view at www.reecewinstone.co.uk.

Join Angie McCarthy and Tony Richards from our Imaging Team as they explore how portrait photographic jewellery has always been a sentimental favourite, a place to hold memories of loved ones, kept close to the heart or simply held in the palm of a hand.

They will discuss items from the newly created Photographic Jewellery Manchester Digital Collection (MDC)  and consider the life cycle of the object and ask how a face from the past can still intrigue and connect with us today. 

This event will include a 30 minute talk followed by 15minute Q&A . The talk will take place on Zoom, the link will be sent to you on the morning of the event.

You can also find our Photographic Jewellery Manchester Digital Collection at the following link.

Lunchtime online talk: Manchester Digital Collections: Tokens of Affection

Check out "Re-Scheduled Lunchtime Online Talk: MDC : Tokens of Affection" on Eventbrite

Date: Thu, May 6 • 12:00 BST

Book here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/re-scheduled-lunchtime-online-talk-m...

It’s a strange fact, but British inventor William Friese-Greene is as well-known among serious film buffs for not having invented cinema as he is for inventing it. Now, on the centenary of his sudden death at 65, mid-flow at a meeting of film distributors, admirers of this controversial pioneer from Bristol are at the centre of a new drive to establish his international legacy once again.

Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and George Méliès, the Frenchman whose story was told by Martin Scorsese in the hit 2011 film Hugo.

Read the full report in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/02/historian-fights-to-establish-william-friese-greene-as-true-father-of-cinema

To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Tom Wedgwood on 14 May 1771, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and the Royal Photographic Society have organised a virtual meeting on the afternoons of 14 and 15 May 2021, starting at 2pm BST (3pm CEST, 9am EDT). 

Tom Wedgwood, fifth child of the midlands potter Josiah Wedgwood, is now best remembered for his 1802 paper in which he outlined a chemical method of creating an image. By the middle of the nineteenth century this had become widely recognised as major precursor to the development of photography in the 1830s. But Wedgwood’s short life (he died aged 34 in 1805) encompassed much more. A member of the loosely defined radical romantic movement, he associated with such major figures at William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Beddoes, Humphry Davy and many others.  

The speakers who will discuss these and other aspects of his life and work, as well as his enduring legacy as a founder of photography, are the current Tom Wedgwood, Geoffrey Batchen (keynote), Lucy Lead, Michael Gray, Brian Dolan, Tim Fulford, Catrin Jones, Michael Pritchard and Rose Teanby. 

The full programme and registration details can be found at https://rps.org/wedgwood250 

William Henry Fox Talbot’s gift of his photography and photo-illustrated books to his sister Horatia Gaisford has sold at Sotheby's New York for $1.6 million ($1.96m with charges). The lot was described here and has been estimated at $300,000-500,000. Efforts by  British institutions to secure this important group of early photography with such wonderful provenance came to nought.  Sotheby's have yet not released any information about the buyer.

Read more about the lot content here: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/50-masterworks-to-celebrate-50-years-of-sothebys-photographs-2/william-henry-fox-talbots-gifts-to-his-sister

UPDATE: Antiques and the Arts Online has reported than Hans P Kraus was the buyer of the lot. 

Since the advent of film in the late nineteenth century, moving images have been integral to making and communicating science. A rich interdisciplinary literature has examined such representations of science in the cinema and on television and investigated how scientists have used moving images to conduct research and communicate knowledge.

Responding to growing interest in science and the moving image, this online workshop uses the concept of ‘intermediality’ as a starting point to discuss new approaches and methodologies. Intermediality, coined by media scholars to describe the interplay between different media, magnifies their multiple meanings and heterogenous interrelations. Moving images especially invite intermedial analysis because they are often composed of interrelated visuals, speech, music, and text; film can also be cut into stills for reproduction in newspapers, advertisements, and journals.

Intermedial approaches thus allow scholars to assess not only the relationship between scientific practices and media forms, but also the afterlives, circulation, and reception of these media in a richer historical context. With its attention to relations and movement between media, intermediality also expands our understanding of the visual cultures of science, including in parts of the world and among groups that are underrepresented in current scholarship. We particularly invite submissions that use intermediality to engage critically with the scope and limits of science and the moving image.

Possible themes might include:

• Processes of translation between different media, including film, television, radio, and print
• Intermedial practices and histories of specific scientific disciplines
• Moving images in science education
• Transnational and comparative approaches to scientific image-making
• Time-lapse, frame-by-frame analysis, and other analytical methods as intermedial practices
• Representations of science in multimedia entertainment industries
• The relationship between moving images of science and the history of empire and colonization
• Amateur uses of moving image media, including citizen science
• The cultural reproduction through scientific images of gender, race, and class.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Tim Boon (Head of Research and Public History, Science Museum Group)

We welcome talks from postgraduate students, early-career researchers and established scholars. We are looking for abstracts (max. 250 words) for 15-20 minute talks, which will be arranged in thematic panels. Submissions should be sent to movingimagescience@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is June 28th, 2021 and we aim to respond to proposals within four weeks.

This workshop will take place online via Zoom and is hosted by postgraduate members of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

Science and the Moving Image: Histories of Intermediality
Location: Online (Zoom)
Date: November 2nd and 3rd PM (UK time), 2021
Organised by: Miles Kempton, Max Long, Anin Luo

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/