A new episode of the A Photographic Life podcast has been posted every Wednesday since 13 June 2018. Its cuartor Grant Scott is inviting listeners and readers to a special day of all new photography related conversation, discussion and chat. It will be an opportunity to meet fellow photographic travellers, share opinions, ideas and make new friends. All the conversations will be recorded so if you are unable to attend no problem, you will be able to catch up on these at a later date wherever you get your podcasts.

The day will consist of: 

10.00am – Open
10.15am – Introduction: Dr Grant Scott
10.30am – The Story: Alys Tomlinson talks with Dr Grant Scott
Alys Tomlinson is a photographic artist based in London. She works mostly in black and white analogue on a large format camera, exploring themes of faith, ritual and identity. Alys grew up in Brighton and studied English Literature and Communications at the University of Leeds. After graduating, she moved to New York for a year and was given her first commission for Time Out, before returning to London to study photography at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. She later completed an MA in Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage (Distinction) at SOAS, University of London, which tied in with her long-term, personal project about pilgrimage. Her book Ex-Voto was published by GOST Books in 2019, and Lost Summer was self-published in 2020. Alys recently finished work on a feature-length documentary film Mother Vera co-directed with Cécile Embleton. Her latest project Gli Isolani (The Islanders) was published by GOST Books in 2022. She combines commissioned work for editorial, design and advertising clients with personal work, which she publishes and exhibits. Alys’s work is collected privately and is in the following collections: National Portrait Gallery (London), The Rencontres d’Arles Collection, The Bodleian Library, and the Amber Side Collection.  www.alystomlinson.co.uk
11.15am – Q and A

11.30am – Break

11.45am – The Archive: Dr Michael Pritchard
Dr Michael Pritchard joined Christie’s, the fine art auction house, as a photography specialist in 1986 and grew their auctions of cameras and photographic equipment, setting many world auction records. Also working as an auctioneer, Pritchard became Director and International Business Director for collectibles for the auction house. He joined the Royal Photographic Society in 2011 as Chief Executive, becoming Director of Programmes from 2018-2023. During his tenure he brought a renewed public profile for the RPS  and oversaw an expansion in its public activities, growing its membership to the largest in its history. In 2024 he established his own photographic consultancy and continues to support the RPS. Pritchard continues to actively research the history of photography and regularly delivers conference papers and publishes across the field. He has taught the history of photography at De Montfort University and catalogued and organised the Kodak Historical Collection at the British Library.  He edits the British Photographic History website and The PhotoHistorianmagazine. He gives regular talks and has broadcast on a wide range of photographic subjects. His book A History of Photography in 50 Cameras (Bloomsbury) was published by Bloomsbury. https://mpritchard.squarespace.com
12.30pm – Q and A

12.45pm – Lunch

2.00pm The Portrait: Chris Floyd talks with Dr Grant Scott:
Chris Floyd is a British photographer and filmmaker.  His photographic work has appeared in some of the world’s most highly respected publications, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine and Wallpaper* among others. In 2022 he published his first monograph dedicated to the broad sweep of his career Not Just Pictures a 320-page volume, including his portrait work and 60 pieces of text that tell the stories behind some of his favourite pictures. Chris has produced commercial work for Apple, Avis, Glenfiddich, Philips, Sony, The National Lottery, and Virgin Radio. As a director he has produced moving image work for  BMW, Anthropologie, Nissan, Mr Porter, Sleaford Mods, The Smithsonian, Space NK, UBS, and Virgin Radio. https://www.chrisfloyd.com
2.45pm – Q and A

3.00pm – End

A Photographic Life ‘LIVE’ 2025
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, NHBB Building on the Headington Campus
Sunday, 26 October 2025 in the . Admission is free but registration is required
To book: https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2025/09/28/live-a-photographic-life-live-2025/

We’re looking for a Research Fellow in African Film and Visual History to join the international team responsible for the new research project The Uganda Film Unit Archive: Digitisation, Research and Restitution, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project is led by Darren Newbury, Professor of Photographic History, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton and Richard Vokes, Professor of Anthropology and International Development, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia; and involves collaboration with the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation.

You will be working closely with Professor Newbury and Professor Vokes playing an important role in the content mapping of the digitised Uganda Film Unit archive and related archival and historical research; supporting fieldwork, data collection and analysis relating to the responses to the archival footage among Ugandan publics and communities; and disseminating the project findings through conference presentation and publication.

To be successful in this role, you should have:

• A PhD (or an equivalent level of professional experience) in an area of history, theory or practice central to the focus of the research project
• Experience of researching in African History/Studies, Film or Media History, Visual Anthropology, or Visual Culture Studies
• Sufficient, up to date breadth or depth of specialist knowledge in the discipline and of research methods and techniques to work within established research programmes
• Experience of data collection and data analysis (including visual data) and data management
• Evidence of commitment to engage in continuous professional development including knowledge of methods for data management
• Understanding of equality of opportunity, academic content and issues relating to student need and commitment to ethical research practices
• Competent and relevant IT skills, effective use of IT for research, and ideally teaching and learning purposes 

The appointment is for a fixed term (18.5 hours per week, 0.5 full time equivalent) with an ideal start date of 01/12/25 and an end date of 30/09/28.

Research Fellow in African Film and Visual History (0.5 full-time equivalent)
University of Brighton, School of Humanities and Social Science
Closes 28 October 2025
Details and apply here: https://jobs.brighton.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=HU3231-25-209

What does the photographic image share with synthetic dyes, fertilizer, and pharmaceuticals? Inspired by the city of Basel’s position as a global center of the chemical industry, this symposium investigates photography's chemical relations, tracing the networks shaped by material resources, industrial infrastructure, and scientific expertise, as well as the ecological legacies of photographic production. The symposium will conclude with an artist talk and workshop led by photographer and researcher Alice Cazenave (Goldsmiths, University of London), an advisor to the UK-based collective Sustainable Darkroom and current Ansel Adams Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Chemical Histories of Photography
Symposium organized by NOMIS Fellow Katerina Korola
23-25 October 2025
Basel, University of Basel
Details: https://eikones.philhist.unibas.ch/en/news/events/event-details/chemical-histories-of-photography/

On the occassion of the Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize 2025 we are delighted to present a special event celebrating two exciting new photography book publications about Austrian-British émigré photographers, Edith Tudor-Hart and Wolf Suschitzky. Both publications include many photographs which have been published for the first time.

In their respective talks, presenters Kurt Kaindl (Salzburg), Stefanie Pirker (London) and Julia Winckler (Brighton) offer insights into the photographers’ visual archives, largely now held at FOTOHOF>archiv in Salzburg, and from which these two new publications extensively draw upon. Contextual biographies of the two siblings will foreground the strength and ongoing relevance of their photographic legacies.

This event also coincides with several current exhibitions including the Wolf Suschitzky Retrospective Exile and Journeys, Monschau, Germany (until 21 December 2025), and Through a Bauhaus Lens: Edith Tudor-Hart and Isokon, Isokon Gallery, London, which runs until November 2025.

BOOK LAUNCH - Edith Tudor-Hart: A Steady Eye in Turbulent Times & Wolf Suschitzky: Exile and Journeys
15 October 2025 at 1900
Austrian Cultural Forum London
28 Rutland Gate
London SW7 1PQ
Book here: https://www.acflondon.org/events/book-launch-edith-tudor-hart-a-steady-eye-in-turbulent-times-wolf-suschitzky-exile-and-journeys/

For the first time, you can explore the full breadth of the AmberSide film, photography and paper archive in one place. The catalogue is text-based, allowing researchers, students and the public to navigate the Collection’s themes, projects and stories. While the collective cannot publish most images online due to copyright restrictions, the catalogue provides an unprecedented window into the scope and richness of Amber’s work.

This milestone has been made possible through support from the National Archives and the Pilgrim Trust’s Archives Revealed programme, and represents the result of a full year’s dedicated work. Special thanks to our Project Archivist Mark Cordell, AmberSide Trustee Liz Rees, and an incredible team of volunteers.

This is just the beginning: the catalogue will continue to grow and evolve as more materials are documented and made discoverable. It forms an invaluable tool for anyone interested in documentary film, photography, and the social history of the North East and beyond.

See: https://amber.epexio.com/

Edinburgh's Stills Gallery has been given a collection of Creative Camera issues and memorabilia. The collection has donated by the former editor and documentary maker David Brittain who lives in Edinburgh. David has written extensively about photography magazines, and in 1999 he edited Creative Camera: 30 Years of Writing (Manchester University Press).

The donation to Stills's Library includes an almost complete run of Creative Camera (1968-2000) and most copies of the Camera Owner (1966-1968) which was a predecessor to Creative Camera. Also included is a complete set of DPICT/Creative Camera (2000-2001), a successor to Creative Camera which embraced digital printing technologies, in addition to copies of DPICT’s world-record breaking customised covers.

Over the years, Creative Camera was a unique depository of the work and writings of photographers including Raymond Moore, Jo Spence, Lewis Baltz, Robert Frank and many others. Under David Brittain publication became bi-monthly, and attracted a new crop of writers including Marina Warner, Rebecca Solnit and Geoffrey Batchen.

This collection can be consulted in person and also on the library’s online catalogue, where it is also possible to see all the images used on the front covers of the DPICT/Creative Camera launch issue. 

The V&A’s Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection holds around 290,000 photographs and transparencies. It includes early colour processes, hand-coloured albumen prints, and unique historical photographs — each with its own story.

As an RPS Cataloguing volunteer, you’ll help unlock these stories by studying the collection and gathering information to go on our public online database, Explore the Collections. As part of a team of volunteers and supported by staff, you will be key to ensuring the collection can be digitally discovered, understood and enjoyed worldwide, preserving this remarkable photographic heritage for the future.

Based in offices at V&A South Kensington, you will be asked to flexibly give one or two days a week (10:00-16:00). You’ll get the most out of the role if you can commit for up to six months, but we’re happy to consider shorter-term arrangements.

What you will be doing: 

• Using trusted sources at the V&A, research objects in the photographic collection to gather basic cataloguing information
• Record this information in Microsoft Excel to help make the collection digitally accessible
• Learn to handle collection objects with the support and training of our specialist team.

If you are shortlisted, you will need to attend an informal group session at V&A South Kensington on Wednesday 15 October from 2pm - 3.30pm. This is a chance to get to know us and find out more about the volunteer role. If you are invited to join the team, you will need to attend an induction session on Wednesday 22 October from 10am – 12pm.

Full details and apply: https://volunteer.vam.ac.uk/opportunities/97664-royal-photographic-society-rps-cataloguing-volunteer-2025-09-19

Considered one of the most important photo historians of the 20th century, Peter E. Palmquist (1936-2003) had a keen interest in the photography of the American West, California, and Humboldt County before 1950, and the history of women in photography worldwide. He published over 60 books and 340 articles and was a strong proponent of the concept of the independent researcher-writer in the field of photohistory. With co-author Thomas Kailbourn, he won the Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize for their book, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. Professor Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University, wrote that Peter "established new ways of pursuing the history of photography, and with his collections and research notes soon to be accessible at Yale, he will be speaking to and inspiring new generations of students and researchers forever.” Established by Peter’s lifetime companion, Pam Mendelsohn, this fund supports the study of under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present, and under-researched Western American photographers through the Great Depression. 

A small panel of outside consultants with professional expertise in the field of photo history and/or grant reviewing will review the applications in order to determine the awards. Applications will be judged on the quality of the proposal, the ability of the applicant to carry out the project within the proposed budget and timeline, and the significance of the project to the field of photographic history. Past recipients and their projects are featured at palmquistgrants.com.

Range of Awards: $500 - $2,000

Funds must be used for research; grant funding may not be used to cover salaries, pay for books, hardware, or equipment, or for production costs such as printing and bookbinding, podcasts, blogs, etc. November 15, 2025 is the deadline for submissions. Grant recipients will be announced in mid-January 2026. If selected, recipients will be required to submit a digital copy of their work to HAF+WRCF, once complete. 

Eligibility:
Individuals and nonprofit institutions conducting research in either of the fields below are eligible to apply: 

• Under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present.
• Under-researched Western American photographers through the Great Depression.

Application and information can be found at The Humboldt Area Foundation

In August this year, a new organisation was founded, Vintage Photo Fairs Europe. On the initiative of Barnabé Moinard, promoter of the 24.39 Classic Photography Fair (Paris), Mila Palm, Reinhold Mittersakschmöller and Stefan Fiedler, promoters of Vienna Vintage Photo Fair, Eric Bos Waaldijk, promoter of Dialogue Vintage Photography (Amsterdam) and Michael Diemar, editor-in-chief of the magazine The Classic. Since then, two more fairs have joined the organisation, Bloomsbury Photograph Fair (London) and Fiera di Senigallia (Senigallia, Italy).

Barnabé Moinard explains, 'The growth of tabletop fairs in Europe in recent years has made the creation of this organisation and its platform an absolute necessity. These independent fairs already operate and interact with one another: this organisation and its platform will serve to unify the network, enabling more effective and impactful communication. Our ambition is to raise awareness about these fairs, spread knowledge about classic photography and hopefully inspire others to start tabletop fairs of their own.' The tabletop fairs attract both new and seasoned collectors, as well as curators from leading museums, but they fill important functions beyond commerce, as Barnabé Moinard points out, 'The world of photography has increasingly moved online and the fairs are among the few opportunities for the community of classic photography to meet up in the physical world to share their passions and exchange information and ideas.'

The website will launch a few weeks before the next edition of Dialogue Vintage Photography, which takes place on 20 September. Barnabé Moinard continues, 'The website is still quite basic. It has interviews with the promoters of the five fairs, a fair calendar, useful links, contact information and our social media details. Later in the year, we will add interviews with photography dealers and collectors, plus a section called “Collecting Matters”, covering a wide range a topics and practical information about photographic processes, how to take care of a collection and much else.'

The website also has a heading called 'Starting a fair?' Barnabé Moinard continues, 'We are inviting promoters of new tabletop fairs for classic photography to join as members, and it’s also an invitation for those who are thinking about starting a fair to contact us if they need practical advice about choice of venues, promotion strategies, etc. As fair promoters, we have built up a lot of knowledge over the years and we are more than happy to share it.'

The name Vintage Photo Fairs Europe makes it clear what the organisation is about. But why just Europe? There are tabletop fairs elsewhere. Barnabé explains, 'We decided that covering a larger geographical area would become too unwieldy. Vintage Photo Fairs Europe is a non-profit organisation, there is no membership fee, and the work is carried out on a voluntary basis by our members. We would welcome if fair promoters in other parts of the world started their own organisations, and we would of course be happy to collaborate with them.'

e: info@vintagephotofairseurope.com
w: www.vintagephotofairseurope.com

Image: 24.39 fair, Paris. Courtesy: Stefan Fiedler

The Haas collection, homed at the Library of Birmingham archives, consists of 258 boxes. This is made up of around 90 boxes of developed photographic prints, 93 folders of celluloid negatives, 45 boxes of glass negatives, and around 30 boxes of miscellaneous documents including invoices, letters, lecture notes and more. The collection is yet to be fully catalogued - at the moment, items are boxed, but more work is needed to re-organise them, highlight preservation needs, and digitise highlights. Supported by a National Archives https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-revealed/cataloguing-grant/current-and-past-projects/2024-2025/ - 'Archives Revealed' cataloguing grant, Bertz Associates, in collaboration with the Library of Birmingham, aim for the collection to be fully catalogued and promote public awareness of Haas and her work.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about making archives more accessible to local communities and exploring what they can mean for people today. You must be willing to be an active member of the team, an enthusiastic collaborator, and excited to learn and share expertise with others.

We encourage applications from current students and recent graduates. If you do not meet all points listed below, we would still encourage you to apply and demonstrate your interest in developing those skills and learning.

The job is fixed-term, from November 2025 to September 2026, and part-time, you will work on average two days a week.
Role: Cataloguer for the Lisel Haas collection
Terms: Fixed Term contract, November 2025 - September 2026 
Salary: £27,000 - £35,000 (depending on experience) pro rata, two days a week (approx 82 days)
Other information: We are open to freelance proposals
Location: In-person role, Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2ND
Details and apply: https://sites.google.com/bertzassociates.net/bertzassociatesltd/work-with-us

To oversee the archival management and curatorial understanding of the photographic collections of the University of Edinburgh, managed as part of its Heritage Collections, to internationally recognised standards. To improve finding aids and contextual information in collaboration with archivists, librarians and curators, and media specialists. To develop relationships with academic and local communities to share and disseminate content and research scope out work required for further understanding these collections and to lay foundations for future activity in this area.

Main responsibilities 

• Undertake a survey of photographic material to enable progression of cataloguing and management of the photographic collections in physical or digital formats to international standards such as ISO, and including digital preservation. Structure and disseminate any research findings in catalogue data, systems and in written and verbal form. (30%)
• Development of specialist collections knowledge such as understanding of the history of photographic processes and principles, by working with academic, technical, cultural or community partners to create, manage, teach with and evaluate collections-based collaborative and/or interdisciplinary projects. Manage interns and project staff that result from working with the Research Collections Discovery and Projects Team to develop grants and projects. (30%)
• Conduct collections-based or professional sector research which will further engender a research and collections culture within the Research Collections team and the wider University. (20%)
• Input into the curatorial development of the University’s Heritage Collections including new acquisitions, planning and policy development; working with relevant conservation and collections management staff to ensure that Accreditation standards are upheld in maintaining the security and preservation of the collection while facilitating access for researchers, students, and the public. (10%)
• Monitor professional developments and draw on expertise to represent and promote the University through knowledge and contributions to the heritage, cultural and engagement sector both nationally and internationally. (10%)

 This post is full-time (35 hours per week) fixed term contract for 36 months. However, we are open to considering part-time or flexible working patterns. 

 The salary for this post is £41,064 to £48,822 per annum (UE07).

Your skills and attributes for success:

• Postgraduate Degree in field of Archival, Library or Museum Management.
• Experience of managing photographic collections to internationally recognised standards.
• Ability to apply relevant knowledge, skills and techniques in research, discussion and dissemination.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to form and cultivate strong relationships with people from a wide variety of backgrounds based on credibility, trust and mutual respect. 
• Excellent written and oral communication and presentation skills, including the ability to explain complex topics simply and compellingly to non-specialist audiences.

Full details and apply here

The British photographer and Magnum member and former president, died on 8 September at his home in Japan aged 78 years. He was a member of the Exit Photography Group in the 1970s. 

His archive will be held with the Bodleian Libraries. 

We are the nation’s Archive of England’s historic environment.  We are everyone’s archive.  We commit to be open, relevant and reflective of all stories so we can better understand the historic environment and how it has shaped our rich and diverse cultural identities.  We curate a dynamic collection that tells the story of the shared memories and lived histories of places in England.

In this role, you will catalogue and manage engagement of the Janette Rosing Photographic Collection c.1853-1950s.  This unique collection of 8,436 original prints was the life's work of respected collector Janette Rosing, who specialised in photography from the 1850s onwards.  

Project Officer (Janette Rosing Collection)
Historic England
Swindon, full time, fixed-term contract for 15 months
Follow the link for a full copy of the job description and application

BPH reported on Historic England's acquisition of the Janette Rosing Collection here.

A new initiative for 2026, the CCA’s Photography Research Fellowship Program supports advanced research to reexamine the spectrum of interactions between photography and architecture and our photographic holdings.

The CCA holds one of the most significant photography collections in North America. Founded in 1974, before the formal establishment of the CCA, the collection has been integral to the development of new understandings of the relationship between photography and architecture and to establishing this relationship as a distinct field of visual and historical scholarship. It is rich in names and images canonized in traditional histories of photography as well as in unpublished works and series by understudied or unidentified photographers. The collection’s roughly 65,000 photographs document their subjects—buildings and building sites, infrastructure works, archeological sites, built environments and their inhabitants, landscapes, architectural details—but also, crucially, reveal the subjectivities of their photographers and the historical conditions in which they worked. While the subjects and photographers represented are mainly Western, the collection includes thousands of photographs made across Asia, in North Africa, and elsewhere, primarily in the context of nineteenth-century European and British expansionist aspirations and colonial rule.

For the CCA Photography Research Fellowship’s inaugural year, we seek applications from researchers investigating any aspect of nineteenth-century photography—the most substantive part of the collection—as it intersects with the natural and built environment. We are particularly interested in the role of photography in visual and architectural culture, especially in relation to evolving technologies; the relationship between photography and the environment; and the functions of photographs in imperialist frameworks. Proposals may address materials held in our archives and library as well as our photography collection. Photographs in a variety of formats can be found across all three of these collection areas.

Photography Fellows are offered a residency at the CCA between June and August for a period of one to two months, with the goal of creating a community of researchers on site, particularly alongside our Research Fellowship Program, Indigenous-led Design Fellowship Program, and Doctoral Research Residency Program. Each Fellow will receive a monthly stipend of CAD 5,000, as well as additional financial support for travel expenses.

We welcome applications from photographers and artists with a research-driven practice, researchers from all disciplines whose current projects are oriented specifically toward photography, and historians of photography and image making. This program builds on The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project, which was the first of a projected trilogy of research and exhibition projects exploring the medium of photography as a means to investigate the built environment.

For full details and to apply see: https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/100679/cca-photography-research-fellowship-program

The University of St Andrews is applying to the Recognition Scheme to have the photography collection formally recognised as being of national significance. The Recognition Scheme (administered by Museum Galleries Scotland) is an opportunity for non-national museums, galleries and heritage organisations to officially have their collections recognised as being of equal quality and importance as those held by national bodies. 

As part of the process, applicants are required to submit letters of support from people who know the collection and can vouch for its importance and quality.  Laura Brown, Curator, Photography, is seeking your support by writing a letter in support of the application. Because of the breadth of the photography collection which numbers some 1.5 million photographs the application will focus on three themes which are particularly strongly represented:   

• Early photography (defined loosely as pre-1860)
• Scottish landscape
• Scotland at home and abroad

If you have used the photography collection at St Andrews and feel able to write a one page letter of support in 12pt Laura would be pleased to hear from you. The letter might simply be a list of lectures or publications that reference the St Andrews collection.  

The application guidance asks for certain information to be included in the letter: 

• How, when and where you encountered the collection
• Why the collection is important to you, your field of research, or your community. 
• Reference to a particular aspect of the collection which you find particularly significant. 

To allow Laura time to assemble everything before the final application deadline, she would ask for the letter to be with her by 25 October 2025. The letter can be sent by email (as Word of PDF file) to her at lb317@st-andrews.ac.uk or by post to:  Laura Brown, Wardlaw Museum, 7a The Scores, St Andrews KY16 9AR. 

See more of the collection here: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/collections  

Image: Thomas Rodger (attr), Bronze Age Pottery Urns found at Law Park, St Andrews, 1859. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums, ID: ALB-49-51-1

As part of the 2025 Photo Oxford Festival historian Dr Rose Teanby will be talking about the life of Constance Talbot, wife of William Henry Fox Talbot. Recent research into artworks and photographs from the Bodleian and British Library Talbot collections throw a new light on her status as one of the earliest women photographers in Britain. Drawings from her family home in Derby, sketches at Lake Como and watercolours of Lacock Abbey show Constance's lifelong dedication to art. Re-creating her first documented photograph also brings a twenty-first century insight into the challenges she faced as an early photographer. Combining her preserved letters with artworks and photographs brings us closer to the truth about Constance Talbot's unique place in photographic history.

Constance Talbot, early photographer and lifelong artist
Dr Rose Teanby
Wednesday 5. November at 1300-1400 (UTC)
£5 (in person); £2 (concessions and online)
Live: Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre ,The Bodleian Library, Oxford and Online
Book here: https://fienta.com/rose-teanby-talks-about-constance-talbot-early-photographer-and-lifelong-artist

Check out Photo Oxford Festival and other talks and events here: https://www.photooxford.org/home

Image: Portrait of Constance Talbot, from Bodleian Librararies, MS WHF Talbot photogr 27.  

Rose Teanby has produced a short blog about Anna Atkins's visit to Chatsworth in 1851 and her cyanotyping of ferns. The blog connects to the current Chatsworth exhibition The Gorgeous Nothings: Flowers at Chatsworth which is on view until 5 October. The exhibition is showing a borrowed copy of Photographs of British Algae, Cyanotype Impressions by Anna Atkins in the Oak Room at Chatsworth (see photo above) and previously reported on by BPH. 

Read the blog here: https://www.chatsworth.org/news-media/news-blogs-press-releases/anna-atkins-at-chatsworth/

Photo: Rose Teanby / Chatsworth.

Surrey had many psychiatric and learning disability hospitals, and their archives inform our understanding of historic attitudes to mental illness, epilepsy, and a wide spectrum of learning disabilities.  Medical case notes telling the personal stories of thousands of people, young and old, who were admitted to these vast institutions are often accompanied by a photographic portrait of the patient, bringing us face to face with a person long dead through the emulsion held in negative on a fragile glass plate or sepia image captured on paper. 

Often taken on admission to the hospital, we see them at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives and their gaze both challenges and resonates with us through shared emotions and experiences. They are an important resource for the history of asylum photography, shedding light on the history of mental health, the social background of patients and the approaches to care and treatment provided by different institutions in Surrey over more than a century.

Picturing the Patient: Photography in Surrey Hospitals, 1850-1960
Online, 8 October 2025, 1730 -1845      
Cost: £6 - book this event

Image:  Hugh Welch Diamond, Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, 1850–58 / Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Terra Nova, the ship immortalised by Herbert Ponting, has been filmed for the first time since it sank in 1943. The ship which was resdiscovered in 2012 carried Captain Scott's doomed polar expedition in 1912. The BBC's report used Ponting's images but failed to credit him, only the commercial picture libraries and collections housing his work. Ponting died in 1935 and his work is out of copyright, but deserves credit for creating images that retain their power today. 

See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwyvyqkx9yo

Image: Herbert G. Ponting, Terra Nova Icebound, 1912.     

Autograph is looking for an experienced curator to work with our collection and our contemporary exhibition programme, which focuses strongly on photographic practice and engages with audiences in the UK and abroad.

We strongly encourage applications from global majority* candidates who are underrepresented in curatorial roles within the gallery and museum sector. Global majority in this context refers to people who identify as Black, Asian, mixed and/or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’; these groups represent over 80% of the world’s population.

Based at Rivington Place, in Shoreditch, London which houses our two public project spaces, a learning studio and our specialist photographic collection, you will:

• Develop and deliver selected aspects of Autograph’s artistic programme which includes: exhibitions, publications, commissions, residencies, collection displays, and digital programmes.
• Identify options in Autograph’s photography collection to engage other institutions in partnerships locally, nationally and internationally.
• Contribute to realising Autograph’s strategic and business development objectives: key stakeholder engagement, development and income generation.

This is a new role and is initially offered for a three-year fixed term, with potential to renew – subject to resources available. It is suitable for someone who has gained experience in curatorial practice already, and who is interested in taking the next steps towards developing broader organisational leadership experience, in a medium-scale visual arts organisation. We are looking for someone who identifies strongly with our values and mission, has extensive knowledge of contemporary commissioning and exhibition practice, a genuine desire to engage with collection research to produce new projects and a particular interest in curating photography.

Details and apply here: https://autograph.org.uk/blog/news/were-hiring-curator/