The photographer Martin Parr and actor Michael Sheen will be discussing Martin’s work and his long-standing relationship to Wales, which is reflected in his current exhibition, Martin Parr in Wales, on display at National Museum Cardiff until 4 May 2020.
To book a ticket: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10999/In-Conversation-Martin-Parr-and-Michael-Sheen/
Image:
Snowdonia, Wales, 1989
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos / Rocket Gallery
The Martin Parr collection of photobooks comprises of over 12,000 items. The collection’s strengths lie in its extensiveness of photobooks from around the world, with a focus on documentary photography and propaganda materials. It includes key works by renowned photographers, alongside self-published amateur work and mass-produced commercial books. The collection is now available to search online and in person in the Tate's reading rooms.
Accessing the Martin Parr Collection
Appointments must be booked in advance; please email the Reading Rooms: reading.rooms@tate.org.uk
To search the collection online see: http://library.tate.org.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/0/0/0/60/28/X/BLASTOFF?user_id=WEBSERVER
Social media platform. Billion-dollar company. Home of fitspiration, avocado brunches, and over-filtered sunsets. Instagram is the place where we share our lives and peek into the lives of others—friends, family, influencers, celebrities. But what does it mean to encounter photographs as part of Instagram’s endless feed? How does this platform shape how we think about contemporary photography as a daily practice and an art form?
Join us as we discuss Instagram as a key context for contemporary art and culture. This half-day public symposium will feature a host of expert speakers, including art historians and media scholars, in conversation with visual artists from South Wales and beyond. Through a series of roundtables and panel discussions, we’ll consider selfies as a new genre of portrait photography, delve into innovative historical or artistic projects developed on Instagram, and explore how practicing artists make use of the platform.
Confirmed speakers include Cadence Kinsey (University College London), Alexandra Kingston-Reese (University of York), Alexandra Georgakopoulou (University College London) Celia Jackson (University of South Wales), Federica Chiochetti (Photocaptionist), Huw Alden Davies (artist), Michal Iwanowski (artist), Dr. Alix Beeston (Cardiff University) and Dr. Bronwen Colquhoun (National Museum Wales)
This symposium coincides with the National Museum Cardiff’s Photography Season and the final weekend of Artist Rooms: August Sander, an exhibition of some of the most important photographic portraiture in the medium’s history. A guided tour of the exhibition is included in the ticket price, allowing participants to reflect on how digital culture connects to the history of photography—inside and outside of the museum.
Presented in partnership with Image Works: Research and Practice in Visual Culture and sponsored by Cardiff University.
See: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/11083/Instagram-A-Symposium/
Image:
August Sander, Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne, Sekretärin beim Westdeutschen Rundfunk in Köln 1931
ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Anthony d'Offay 2010
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur - August Sander Archiv, Cologne / DACS 2019
Photo © National Galleries of Scotland
John Thomson’s photographic vision marks him out as one of history’s most important travel photographers. Featuring dramatic images developed from negatives preserved in London’s Wellcome Library, this exhibition introduces the sights and people of nineteenth-century Thailand as witnessed by Thomson’s camera.
Born in Edinburgh in 1837, the photographer and writer John Thomson travelled to Asia in 1862. Over the next ten years he undertook numerous journeys across the region, spending almost a year in the kingdom of Siam (modern Thailand).
During this time, Thomson was granted unique access to the court of King Mongkut (r. 1851-68). Also known as Rama IV, Mongkut was a progressive monarch. Sincerely interested in Western ideas and sciences, he was keen to exploit the relatively new technology of photography.
The photographs Thomson took in Siam include portraits and palace scenes, religious ceremonies, architecture and cityscapes. Thomson also received special permission to visit Angkor Wat (then under Siam’s control), becoming the first to photograph its famous ruins.
On his return to Britain in 1872, Thomson brought with him more than 600 glass plate negatives. This unique archive reveals the range, depth and aesthetic quality of Thomson’s photographic vision.
Siam through the lens of John Thomson, 1865–66 is part of a travelling exhibition curated by Betty Yao MBE and Narisa Chakrabongse. For more information on John Thomson and this project see the website here.
Siam Through the lens of John Thomson 1865–66
Chester Beatty
Dublin Castle
Dublin 2
D02 AD92
Admission is free
21 Feb 2020 – 17 May 2020
Now in its 35th year, The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have a long history of profiling talent, celebrating outstanding new publications alongside their authors and creators. At the heart of each edition of awards is a team of judges who select the Best Photography Book and the Best Moving Image Book from the past year.
The 2020 judging panel brings together a broad spectrum of expertise and authority on the subjects and is comprised of writers, industry leaders, academics, and creatives.
Previous winners of the Kraszna-Krausz Awards have gone on to be recognised with prizes such as the Deutsche Börse photography prize (Susan Meiselas, 2019 Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship Award) and Photo London Master of Photography (Edward Burtynsky, Kraszna-Krausz Best Photography Book, 2010), whilst last year’s edition of the awards highlighted such exceptional works as Jane Giles : Scala Cinema 1978 – 1993 (FAB Press) and Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (Aperture).
The 2020 Photography Book Award will be judged by:
● Elizabeth Edwards, visual and historical anthropologist and independent scholar
● Peter Fraser, contemporary British photographer at the forefront of colour photography
● Shoair Mavlian, Director of Photoworks.
The Moving Image Book Award will be judged by:
● Melanie Hoyes, Industry Inclusion Executive, Film Fund at the British Film Institute (BFI)
● Geoffrey Macnab, author, and contributor to Screen International and The Independent
● Dr Andrew Moor, Reader in Cinema History, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Books are judged on their content, presentation, texture, quality and design and the panel will be looking for the best original works published in 2019.
The long and shortlists for both awards will be announced in March. The winners will be revealed at a ceremony hosted at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) on 14th May 2020.
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of these prestigious awards, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation will be hosting a public lecture presented by internationally renowned writer, public speaker and curator, David Campany : Photography and Cinema, from A to Z. The lecture will take the form of twenty-six short reflections on still and moving images and is hosted by Birkbeck, University of London, 30 March 2020.
See more: www.kraszna-krausz.org.uk
Scotland’s Photograph Album: The MacKinnon Collection, the exhibition showcasing highlights of an exceptional collection of historic photographs which capture over a century of Scottish life, will see its opening time extended for another two months, due to its remarkable reception with the public.
The display, which features more than 250 photographs from the treasure trove of over 14,000 images that the BBC recently described as, “one of the most significant photography collections in decades”, has proved popular with visitors, it will now run at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until Monday 13 April, extending well beyond its original end date of 16 February. Admission for visitors remains free throughout.
The National Library of Scotland’s concurrent MacKinnon display, At the Water’s Edge, will close as scheduled on 15 February 2020.
Further to this, the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the National Library of Scotland are delighted to announce today that visitors from all across Scotland will get the chance to enjoy the MacKinnon Collection, with a national tour set to take place in three Scottish locations across the country from later this year.
Exhibitions showcasing these remarkable photographic documents of Scotland’s social and cultural history will commence in Kirkcudbright at Kirkcudbright Galleries before heading to Museum nan Eilean in Lews Castle in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, before culminating in Duff Hose in Banff in 2021. The nationwide tour starts in September 2020 and further information will be released in due course.
The MacKinnon Collection was jointly acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the National Library of Scotland in 2018, with assistance from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Scottish Government and Art Fund. The collection was slowly acquired by photography enthusiast Murray MacKinnon and began when he ran a successful chain of film-processing stores in the 1980s, starting from his pharmacy in Dyce, near Aberdeen. The images celebrate Scottish life and identity from the 1840s through to the 1940s and feature some of the earliest and most significant photographs not only in Scottish photography history, but in the history of photography itself.
Many of the first practitioners and visionaries who pushed the medium forward were based in Scotland or were inspired by Scottish subjects, and their works are on display in the exhibition. These include photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Roger Fenton, George Washington Wilson, and others who created stunning images of Scotland’s people and places and established precedents for photographers worldwide.
In a recent review, The Scotsman’s art critic Duncan MacMillan hailed the MacKinnon Collection as, “an extraordinary record of Scotland’s past, from the beginnings of photography until around 1940s” and awarded five stars to both the National Galleries and National Library’s displays.
The MacKinnon Collection has begun to be digitised by both the Galleries and Library and digitisation of the entire trove of photographs will be completed in 2021.
The landmark exhibition, 黎芳 Lai Fong (c.1839–1890): Photographer of China presents nearly 50 Lai Fong photographs made in the 1870s and 1880s of China. The photographs have been selected from more than 400 Lai Fong photographs in the renowned Loewentheil Collection, which includes more than 21,000 early photographs of China. These photographs include magnificent views of a rapidly growing Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou, and Xiamen, and important early portraits of the diverse people of late Qing Dynasty China.
The leading Chinese photographer of the nineteenth century, Lai Fong began his photographic career in Hong Kong in 1859. His professional studio, Afong operated for nearly a century. Lai Fong established and ran his studio for three decades until his death when he passed the studio on to his son and daughter in-law. Its artistic legacy, grounded in traditional Chinese art, influenced generations of photographers including contemporary Chinese image-makers.
黎芳 Lai Fong (c.1839–1890): Photographer of China presents a unique glimpse of China’s rich past through these early photographic masterpieces depicting the people, landscapes, cities, architecture, monuments and culture of China. This unprecedented exhibition provides a rare opportunity to see China and its people through the lens of the Chinese master photographer at the historical moment before the epochal transformations of the 20th century.
黎芳 Lai Fong (1839–1890): Photographer of China
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York, 6 February 2020–14 Jun 2020
https://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/lai-fong-photographer-china
The exhibition was curated by Kate Addleman-Frankel and Stacey Lambrow. Rare early photographs of China by the Chinese photographer Lai Fong, from the Stephan Loewentheil China Photography Collection
It is supported in part by the Helen and Robert J. Appel Exhibition Endowment.
This exhibition will reveal for the first time an extraordinary group of women who helped reshape Britain's photographic culture. A unique group of photographers, encompassing established figures such as Dorothy Bohm, Gerti Deutsch, Elsbeth Juda, Lotte Meitner-Graf and Edith Tudor Hart, as well as lesser-known photographers such as Elisabeth Chat, Laelia Goehr and Erika Koch. Ranging from portraiture and social reportage to advertising and architectural photography, the exhibition covers work which appeared in magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput and the Geographical, plus book design and illustration.
The women photographers were amongst the 80,000 refugees fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for Britain and the majority of these photographers were from Jewish backgrounds, escaping from anti-Semitic and sometimes political persecution. Often established practitioners, they brought fresh, modernist perspectives that opened up British photography in the decades that followed.
Highly enterprising despite the traumas of their exile, war-time privation and frequent lack of male support -they overcame their personal struggles to build new lives in Britain with many setting up their own studios, producing portraits capturing elite and cultural society of the time; some documented architecture to promote national visual education; others worked in social-reportage, political documentary, fashion, advertising and publishing. Their work played a significant role in representing British national life anew as part of the post-war social democratic reconstruction.
The exhibition provides a unique insight into a range of photographic work, and explores how the experience of these female, mostly Jewish outsiders shaped their practice.
Another Eye: Women refugee photographers in Britain, after 1933
28 February-2 May 2020
Four Corners Gallery
121 Roman Road, London, E2 0QN
http://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye
Image: Portrait of Lore Lisbeth Waller in her studio in Leamington Spa, circa 1945. Courtesy of Anne Zahalka.
Another Eye is part of Insiders/Outsiders Festival - this year-long nationwide arts festival runs until March 2020 and pays tribute to the indelible contribution that refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe have made to British culture. insidersoutsidersfestival.org
The impact of refugee artists in shaping British visual culture between the wars and in the post-war period is relatively well documented. Far less well-known is the fact that among the refugees fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for Britain there were many women photographers. The work of these women, some well-known, many unrecognised, brought a fresh approach to British photography in the decades that followed.
The conference will consider the contribution of these women émigré photographers to British visual culture. In so doing, it will analyse the nature of the European cultural practices they brought with them and investigate their work across portraiture, social-reportage, architectural and still-life photography; it will also look at their work for magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput, The Radio Times, The Listener and Vogue, and for book jackets, record sleeves and the documentation of artworks at the Warburg institute. Many set up their own studios, producing portraits of the British cultural elite; others observed the more socially diverse world of the city. In the 1940s they played a significant role in representing British national life anew as part of the post-war social democratic reconstruction. A primary aim of the conference is to consider how their experience as both (mostly Jewish) outsiders and women shaped their practice.
The conference, organised by the History & Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck and Four Corners in association with the Insiders/Outsiders Festival (https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/), accompanies Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s, a major exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, London, which runs from 28 February to 2 May 2020 (https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye).
Proposals for papers, which will be 20 minutes in length, are invited from postgraduate students, academics and independent scholars on topics including, but not limited to:
Individual Photographers
New research being done on relatively well-known figures such as Dorothy Bohm, Gerti Deutsch, Elsbeth Juda, Lotte Meitner-Graf, Lucia Moholy, and Edith Tudor-Hart. Papers focussing on those who only stayed in England for a relatively short time (such as Grete Stern, Ellen Auerbach, Trude Fleischmann, Lore Kruger, Margarete Michaelis and Erika Anderson née Kellner) will also be considered.
However, priority will be given to lesser-known figures such as Inge Ader, Alice Anson, Anneli Bunyard, Elizabeth Chat, Bertl Gaye (née Sachsel), Laelia Goehr, Lisel Haas, Adelheid (Heidi) Heimann and Hella Katz, Germaine Kanova, Erika Koch, Erna Mandowsky, Betti Mautner, Ursula Pariser, Gerty Simon, Lore Lizbeth Waller (née Back) and Gisele Zinner.
Disrupted career paths
The Exile Photographer’s Career – a collective look at the paths into exile and in and out of photography.
Critical evaluation of work in different genres
Portraiture, photo-essays, photojournalism, photography of art objects, fashion, and advertising.
The convergence of British documentary with European photojournalism
As seen in the work of Gerti Deutsch, Edith Tudor-Hart and Elisabeth Chat among others.
Networks of support (or not), both personal and institutional, including publication outlets
These might include Picture Post, Lilliput, Weekly Illustrated, Georg Fayer studio, Report photographic agency (Simon Guttmann), the Warburg Institute, the Reimann School, The Ambassador, The Radio Times, The Listener, Tatler, Vogue, The Diplomat, Queen, Women’s Journal, The National Geographic, The Geographical Magazine, The Royal Photographic Society.
The intersection of Jewishness, class and gender
Legacies and influence:
To include the nature of these photographers’ influence on later women photographers, the process of their rediscovery and the role of archives, both institutional and personal, both in the UK and abroad.
Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s
Conference, Birkbeck, University of London, 1 May 2020
Abstracts of no more than 300 words, and a short biography of no more than 100 words should be sent to Carla Mitchell (carla@fourcornersfilm.co.uk) by 2 March 2020.
More than 2,300 photobooks from the Charles Chadwyck-Healey collection including publications from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Diane Arbus are included in this vast gift of photobooks to the Bodleian Library. The collection adds considerably to the photography holdings that includes William Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature (1844–46) – one of the earliest examples of a printed photobook.
According to the Bodleian's librarian Richard Ovenden an exhibition is planned but the collection is still being catalogued and that is the immediate priority.
How have women photographers in Scotland taken control of their own image? This 2nd Morton symposium will reveal neglected stories of Scottish women in photography, including feminist social documentary photographer Franki Raffles, folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw and more.
Inspired by and featuring collections from The National Trust for Scotland and Glasgow Women's Library, this event explores photographic portrayals of women through time and will challenge institutions to better use photographic collections to tell women’s stories.
The NTS photographic holdings feature many women as takers, collectors, preservers and subjects. These include the collections of folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw, aristocrat Violet Brodie and Glaswegian typist Agnes Toward, all of which frequently depict women.
At the library for one day only before it’s showing at Tenement House, Shutter Hub brings together an exhibition of women’s photography in response to the ‘Ways of Seeing’ symposium with an informal reception between 5pm and 7pm, open to all.
This event is for open to all and is free to attend. Please book below (you will be taken through the shopping cart but no charge will be made) or you can call us on 0141 550 2267. If you have booked a place and are no longer able to attend please let us know so that we can make your place available to someone else.
A new publication continues Terry Bennet's fascination with east Asian photography, mostly recently his three-volume History of Photography in China. Just published is Early Photography in Vietnam which is a fascinating and outstanding pictorial record of photography in Vietnam during the century of French rule. As with Terry's previous volumes the book is carefully researched and referenced. In more than 500 photographs, many published here for the first time, the volume records Vietnam’s capture and occupation by the French, the wide-ranging ethnicities and cultures of Vietnam, the country’s fierce resistance to foreign rule, leading to the reassertion of its own identity and subsequent independence.
This benchmark volume also includes a chronology of photography (1845–1954), an index of more than 240 photographers and studios in the same period, appendixes focusing on postcards, royal photographic portraits, Cartes de Visite and Cabinet Cards, as well as a select bibliography and list of illustrations.
Thoroughly researched and illustrated the book will be the definitive volume on Vietnamese photography up to 1954 for many years, as well as providing a structure for other researchers to build upon.
Early Photography in Vietnam
Terry Bennett
Renaissance Books, 2020
ISBN 978-1-912961-04-7
£70.00, 404 pages.
See: https://www.renaissancebooks.co.uk/Forthcoming-Titles/171-/Early-Photography-in-Vietnam
The Science Museum has announced its research seminar series for winter and spring 2020. They are free to attend and open to science museum staff, students, museum professionals and academics with a research interest in the history of science, technology, medicine and museums as well as material and visual culture more broadly. Admission is free.
Of particular note is Merrick Burrow discussing the Cottingley Fairies and Conan Doyle.
In the December 1920 issue of the Strand Magazine Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, published what he considered to be conclusive photographic proof of the existence of fairies. He followed up this article with another one the following March, which featured three more photographs by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, the same young women who had taken the two original pictures. As a result of Doyle's patronage these five photographs of ‘the Cottingley fairies’ became a global cause célèbre.
Doyle, though widely mocked, maintained his view that the photographs were genuine. Frances and Elsie refused for decades to bow to pressure to confess to faking the pictures. Eventually they admitted the hoax in the 1980s, though Frances maintained to the end that one of the photographs was genuine.
In this talk Dr Merrick Burrow will explore the background to the Cottingley fairies photographs and the peculiar circumstances that turned them into the world’s greatest photographic hoax.
Dr Merrick Burrow is Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield. He is curator of a major exhibition on the Cottingley fairies at the Brotherton Library, Leeds, running from September 2020.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Cottingley Fairies: Merrick Burrow (University of Huddersfield)
Date: Tuesday 31 March 2020, 13.00–14.00
Dana Research Centre & Library
165 Queen’s Gate, London, SW7 5HD.
Feel free to bring a packed lunch to eat during the seminar.
See: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/research-seminar-series
The Art Newspaper has reported that the Alinari photographic archive which was under threat of dispersal has been acquired by the regional government of Tuscany. It will create a new foundation in Florence to preserve its more than five million items.
The world’s oldest photographic firm, Alinari put its historic Florentine headquarters up for sale last May after years of financial difficulty. The collection—ranging from daguerreotypes to 200,000 digital images, as well as photographic equipment and thousands of books—was moved to a private storage facility while politicians brokered a deal to save it for the Italian nation. The Tuscan Soprintendenza for archives, part of the Italian culture ministry, had placed the holdings under export ban in December 2018 for its “primary importance” to the history of photography.
Besides “guaranteeing the care and correct conservation” of the archive, the region plans to renovate Villa Fabbricotti, an 1860s estate in the hills north of Florence currently used as government offices, as its permanent home and exhibition space. A new foundation dedicated to managing the archive will be created by May, with a committee of photography experts—including former Alinari employees—and the possible involvement of the culture ministry.
The project is estimated to cost around €15m, with at least €2.4m due to Fratelli Alinari. The figure is, however, a fraction of the €138m valuation placed on the collection by the Italian photographer and historian Italo Zannier in 2008.
See the report here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/alinari-photographic-archive-saved-by-tuscan-government
and the Alinari website: https://www.alinari.it/en/about-us
The History and Theory of Photography Research Centre is announced it spring seminar programme. All are free and open to all to attend.
Thursday 20 February 2020, 6-7:30pm
Room 106, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
Jason Bate (Falmouth University)
The Politics and Ethics of Emerging Medical Collections from the 'Great' War
This paper explores the archival afterlives of photographs of the facially injured and disfigured ex-servicemen of the 'Great' War, focusing on the prolific records of reconstructive surgery and aftercare in military hospitals. From the scientific quest to record and understand these wounds and their treatment, to soldiers’ post-war reintegration, the photographs have struggled to shed the conditions of their making as specimen and records of surgical technique. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, partly to safeguard them in the public’s interest, such collections were transferred from Army museums to better-resourced institutions. Their move away from closed holdings within a military-medical context, made them more widely accessible. This talk explores how these photographs have been repurposed in archival space, where they seldom serve as mere surgical documents. Over time, these remediated images have been reclaimed by descendants of patients into a kind of ‘redemptive power of domestic love’, in an effort to welcome loved ones back in a relationship with kin or friends and away from their dehumanised portrayal in clinical settings. Retooling surgical photographs of disfigured soldiers as ancestors, these remediations embrace an expanded range of collections whose family practices and archives will always confound the reduction of that person to only a medical subject, an institutional object.
Thursday 26 March 2020, 6-7:30pm, followed by drinks
Room 106, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
Liz Wells, Derrick Price, and Nicola Brandt
SERIES AND BOOK LAUNCH: Photography, Place, Environment (Bloomsbury Academic Publishing) presents Coal Cultures by Derrick Price, and Landscapes Between Then and Now by Nicola Brandt.
Photography, Place, Environment publishes original scholarship and critical thinking exploring ways in which photography contributes to, or challenges, narratives relating to geography, environment, landscape and place, historically and now. By critiquing relationships between land, aesthetics, culture and photography, and by placing imagery as both the object and the method of enquiry, the books in this series also foster debates on photographic methodologies, theory and practices.
Liz Wells, series editor for Photography, Place, Environment, Bloomsbury Academic, will discuss the genesis, context and visual cultural compass of the series. Derrick Price, author of Coal Cultures and Nicola Brandt, author of Landscapes Between Then and Now will introduce their respective publications, noting specific histories, geographies and contemporary critical issues relevant, respectively, to images of miners and mining communities, and to photography’s contribution within processes of reconciliation and memorialisation in Southern Africa.
See https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/photography-place-environment/
Dr. Nicola Brandt is an artist from Namibia. Her work engages innovative documentary practices in relationship to the role of memory, landscape and positionality. During 2019, she was a visiting professor at the Institute of African Studies and Iwalewahaus (The University of Bayreuth, Germany).
Dr. Derrick Price is a freelance writer and independent scholar who has published widely on photography and film. He worked for many years in higher education and was for more than a decade the Associate Dean of Art, Media and Design at the University of the West of England.
Professor Liz Wells’ publications on land and environment include Land Matters, Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (2011) along with many catalogue essays and exhibitions as curator. She is Professor in Photographic Culture, University of Plymouth, UK.
Monday 30 March 2020, registration 6pm, lecture 6:30, followed by drinks
Clore Lecture Theatre (CLO B01), Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London, WC1E 7JL
KRASZNA-KRAUSZ LECTURE 2020: ‘Photography and Cinema, from A to Z’ presented by David Campany
The inaugural Kraszna-Krausz Lecture will be given by internationally renowned writer, public speaker and curator David Campany. Titled Photography and Cinema, from A to Z, the lecture will take the form of twenty-six short reflections on still and moving images. The lecture series, newly established by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, will provide a platform and space for fresh voices and perspectives on photography and the moving image.
Presented in partnership with the The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, which was created by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the founder of Focal Press, an influential specialist publishing house for books on photography. Since 1985 the annual Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have been the UK’s leading prizes for books on photography and the moving image. More information on the work of the Foundation can be found online at www.kraszna-krausz.org.uk.
David Campany’s books include On Photographs (forthcoming this year); So Present, So Invisible – Conversations on Photography (2018); Walker Evans: The Magazine Work (2014), Gasoline (2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2010), Art and Photography (2003) and Photography and Cinema, which received the 2009 Kraszna-Krausz Award. He has written over two hundred essays for, among others, Tate, MoMA New York, Centre Pompidou, The Photographers’ Gallery London, and the Stedelijk Museum. Many of his touring exhibitions have combined still and moving images, including A Handful of Dust (2015-2020),The Open Road: photography and the American road trip (2016-2019); The Still Point of the Turning World: Between Film and Photography (2017); Victor Burgin: A Sense of Place (2013); Anonymes: Unnamed America in Photography and Film (2010); and Hannah Collins: Current History (2010). He is the curator of the three-city Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, (Mannheim/Ludwigshafen/Heidelberg, Germany) opening in February 2020.
The lecture is free to attend but spaces are limited. Tickets must be booked: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/?tag=80
The second release of historic photographs of people, equipment and events, mostly from the early history of the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, up to about 1970, is now available on line. The combined PhotoArchive now contains 406 images, 367 in black and white and 39 in colour. The first release contained images of many famous pieces of equipment.
In this second release, there are more images of experiments and equipment, but there are also letters and writings, more portraits of many of distinguished staff members and, in particular, many images of daily life in the Laboratory.
See more here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/cavendish/
Image: Rutherford's research room, c.1933. (P551)
Today, the V&A announces the appointment of renowned photography curator and scholar Duncan Forbes as Director of Photography. Forbes will take up the newly-created role in April 2020 to drive forward the V&A’s reputation as one of the world’s leading institutions for the research, exhibition and understanding of international photography.
Forbes will lead the V&A’s team of photography curators on its mission to bring new photographic narratives and histories to light through new acquisitions, artist collaborations, international partnerships, research projects and exhibitions. He will also spearhead a major cataloguing and digitisation programme to further enhance public access to the V&A’s photography collections – one of the largest and most important in the world.
In addition, Forbes will oversee the development of Phase Two of the V&A Photography Centre, opening in 2022 and led by Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photographs. The V&A Photography Centre is designed to showcase the museum’s expanded photography holdings following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection in 2017. The first phase, encompassing a suite of four galleries, was opened by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge in October 2018 with a display spanning a history of photography from the daguerreotype to digital, a digital wall for screen-based media, a screening room, newly-commissioned work by leading contemporary artists and space to showcase new acquisitions. Phase Two will add a further four rooms, including two climate-controlled galleries suited to the display of large-scale contemporary works, interactive features and a reading room dedicated to the enjoyment of photographic books.
Previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, Forbes has researched, exhibited and published prolifically on the medium. He returns to the UK from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography.
Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “Photography is one of our most powerful forms of global communication, and a medium that we have been collecting and interpreting since our founding in 1852. We now care for one of the most important international photography collections in the world, and we’re on a mission to share it with audiences across the globe. With Duncan at the helm, we’ll drive forward our support of emerging and established practitioners and develop our contemporary collecting programme through the generosity of the V&A Photographs Acquisitions Group. Through the expansion of the V&A Photography Centre, ground-breaking UK and touring exhibitions, artist collaborations, pioneering research and international partnerships, we’ll open up photography to new perspectives and possibilities like never before.”
Duncan Forbes said: “I’m thrilled to be joining the V&A at such an exciting moment in the development of its photography holdings. The addition of the Royal Photographic Society collection in 2017 has lent further weight to what is already one of the world’s great photography collections. The challenge of bringing new histories to light in collaboration with partners around the world is a compelling one. I can’t wait to get started.”
The V&A was the first museum in the world to collect photographs, beginning with its founding in 1852, and continues to collect and commission new work today. Comprising over 800,000 photographs, the collection charts the global history of photography from its invention to the present day. Spanning fine art, fashion, journalism, documentary, portraiture, sport, architecture, medical and landscape photography, alongside many other genres, highlights include:
Duncan Forbes was previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photograph at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. He has most recently been based in Los Angeles, working as a Researcher at the Getty Research Institute, where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography. Forbes has published widely in the history of photography and curated exhibitions across three centuries of photographic history, including with leading contemporary photographers. His most recent books and exhibitions include Provoke: Between Protest and Performance: Japanese Photography 1960–1975 (Steidl, 2016), Beastly / Tierisch (Spector Books, 2015), Manifeste! Eine andere Geschichte der Fotografie (Steidl, 2014), and Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny (Hatje Cantz, 2013). His latest essays have appeared in Camera Austria International (Graz, 2018 and 2019), Helen Levitt (Kehrer Verlag, 2018), Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (Prestel, 2018), ZUM (São Paulo, 2017), The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990 (Steidl, 2017), and History Workshop Journal (London, 2017).
Image: Duncan Forbes / V&A handout.
Hyperallergic has reported that Paris Musées is now offering 100,000 digital reproductions of artworks in the city’s museums on open access — free of charge and without restrictions — via its Collections portal.
Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image.
Images are currently available of 2D artworks, such as paintings or photographs, and are being made available under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license, which allows creators and owners of copyrighted or database-protected content to place those works in or as close as possible to the public domain. Works still in copyright will be available as low definition files.
Paris Musées has significant holdings of photographs, including the work of Atget, Nadar, and photographically illustrated books.
Image: Portrait de Bautain, Eug., (photographe), c.1870-90. Musée Carnavalet.
How do scholars use photography in their research? What can they learn from photographs? What can we understand from them about our relationship with the photographs that we make and those that we encounter almost everywhere we go?
Edited by Dr Gil Pasternak from the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University (UK), The Handbook of Photography Studies has now been published by Bloomsbury, featuring and discussing work by some of the most influential photography scholars of our generation in 28 chapters and 6 contextualizing essays.
A state-of-the-art overview of the field, The Handbook of Photography Studies examines the thematic interests, dynamic research methodologies and multiple scholarly directions of this exciting area. It is a source of well-informed, analytical and reflective discussions of all the main subjects that photography scholars have been concerned with, as well as a rigorous study of the field’s persistent expansion at a time when digital technology regularly boosts our exposure to new and historical photographs alike.
Featuring the work of international experts, and offering diverse examples, insights and discussions of the field’s rich historiography, the Handbook provides critical guidance to the most recent research in photography studies. Split into five core parts, each with an introductory text that gives historical contextualization and scholarly orientation, this volume:
A systematic synopsis of the subject, this volume will be an invaluable resource for photography researchers and students from all disciplinary backgrounds in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
‘This book is a most useful contribution to the study of photography, with many excellent contributions. Chapters are much more substantial than is usual with works of this type, allowing authors to explore their topics in some depth and explore a range of approaches. Pasternak has done a wonderful job.’ Steve Edwards, Professor of History and Theory of Photography, Co-Director of the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
‘This is a book designed for twenty-first-century students, one that will prepare them to ask well-informed, timely questions about the medium’s histories and historiography.’ Tanya Sheehan, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, Colby College, USA
Gil Pasternak is Reader in Social and Political Photographic Cultures in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University (UK). A member of the advisory board for the journals Photography & Culture and Jewish Film & New Media, earlier in life he worked as photojournalist, photography archivist and fine art photographer, and in 2016 he was consultant for the BBC film Smile! The Nation’s Family Album (2017).
Chapter contributors:
Marta Braun, Douglas Nickel, Melissa Miles, Costanza Caraffa, Jae Emerling, Luc Pauwels, Ben Burbridge, Daniel Rubinstein, Elizabeth Edwards, Christina Riggs, Gil Pasternak, Jennifer Tucker, Paul Frosh, Sarah Parsons, Annebella Pollen, Martin Hand, Jane Lydon, Stephen Sheehi, Oliver Moore, Eva Pluhařová-Grigienė, Darren Newbury, Louis Kaplan, Margaret Denny, Thierry Gervais, Susan A. Crane, Joan M. Schwartz, Martha Langford, and David M. Frohlich.
Visit the Handbook’s webpage to find out more about its aims, aspirations, and content: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-handbook-of-photography-studies-9781474242219/
Dr Kelley Wilder, Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University has been awarded a Professorship in Photographic History at the same university. Details of her inaugural lecture will be announced in due course.
More to follow...
