The National Trust has released an Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery which surveys its properties and highlights links between the property, past owners and slavery and colonialism.  Lacock Abbey, one of photography's most important historical sites, is included. 

The report notes: 

Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire
John Rock Grosett MP (c.1784–1866) was a plantation owner who leased Lacock Abbey during the 1820s. He was the son of Schaw Grosett (1741–1820), a merchant of Clifton, Bristol, and Mary Rock (1755–1807). John Rock Grosett married his cousin, Mary Spencer Shirley (1784–1820), and through his father, mother and wife received a combined inheritance of at least three Jamaican estates: Chepstow Pen and Spring Gardens Estate in St George, and Petersfield in St Thomas-inthe East. In 1822, he joined the Standing Committee of The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants and supported planters’ interests in Parliament. By 1831, Grosett had left Lacock to live in Jamaica, elected to the Assembly that year. In 1834, he and his lawyer received compensation totalling £16,143 1s. 9d. for 916 enslaved people. 

H J P Arnold notes in his biography of William Henry Fox Talbot (p. 45-46)  that Grosset surrendered the lease to Lacock Abbey in 1827 and it was made ready for a partial reoccupation by Talbot and the Fieldings, including Talbot's mother, Lady Elizabeth, and his sisters. Lacock itself is unlikely to have benefited directly from Grosset's occupation and there is no suggestion that Henry Talbot or his immediate family profited from slavery or colonialism, other than from Grosset's rental income.     

The full report can be read here: https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/documents/colionialism-and-historic-slavery-report.pdf

Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium with the Contemporary Printing-out Process describes the mechanisms and chemistry of platinum/palladium printing in safe and practical ways. Clearly presented formulae allow the printer to work with platinum, palladium, or varying combinations of both. The printed-out image appears fully during exposure, and only requires simple and safe steps for clearing to a stable, archival state.

Pradip Malde and Mike Ware explain what makes the image, how all necessary components are prepared and used, and the kind of paper and negative needed to make prints. More than just a technical manual, the book underscores the authors' belief that printing is a creative, scientific, and philosophic way of working. The book presents an outstanding collection of prints by over forty artists, all made with this printing-out process. The artists' notes and comments offer insights into their methods and thinking, and a large number of full-page reproductions serve as a valuable reference to the aspiring printer.

Platinotype: Making Photographs in Platinum and Palladium with the Contemporary Printing-out Process 
Pradip Malde and Mike Ware
Rputledge / Focal Press
ISBN 9780367415952
£42.99 (soft), £120 (hard), 304 Pages 177 Color Illustrations,
December 21, 2020 Forthcoming by Routledge

See more here.

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced the two winners of its annual Photography and Moving Image Book Awards. Chicago-based artist LaToya Ruby Frazier has won the Photography Book Award for her eponymous book LaToya Ruby Frazier (Mousse Publishing & Mudam Luxembourg), which brings together three photographic series that comment on racial discrimination, poverty, post-industrial decline and its human costs.

Hannah Frank has posthumously been awarded the Moving Image Book Award for Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons (University of California Press). In this book, Frank takes a frame by frame look at the laborious process behind the pre-digital processes of cartoon-making, enriching understandings of the Golden Age of animation.

In lieu of a physical awards ceremony, the 2020 winning titles will be showcased in a free digital event in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery at the end of September, featuring conversations about the two winning titles, which will be open to the public online.

Artist and Editor Talks – Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 2020 showcase
30 September 2020 [Time TBC]
The Photographers’ Gallery - live streamed event.
RSVP via: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/talks-and-events/kraszna-krausz-book-awards-2020

More information on the work of the Foundation can be found online at kraszna-krausz.org.uk

The Hasselblad camera used by Iain Macmillan (1938-2006) to photograph The Beatles' 1969 Abbey Road album cover is being offered for auction by Bonhams on 13 October 2020. The Hasseblad 500C camera comes with its Zeiss Planar 80mm /2.8 lens and the viewfinder screen is still marked up with lines outlining the Abbey Road crossing.

Accompanying the lot is a  Zeiss Distagon 50mm f/4 lens; a tripod; a number of accessories including filters; lightmetres; and a black Nikkormat camera with four interchangeable lenses; all housed in an aluminium camera case labelled IAIN MACMILLAN, and accompanied by a black and white photograph of Iain with the Hasselblad camera around his neck.  It is estimated at £2000-2500. 

The lot is offered by the Iain Macmillan Archive.  Having met John Lennon at the Indica Gallery with Yoko Ono in 1966, Lennon later invited Macmillan to photograph the Beatles for the cover of their final album 'Abbey Road'. Given the Beatles recorded most of their music at the EMI Studios on Abbey Road, St John's Wood, London, they decided to name their last album after the road. Armed with a sketch Paul McCartney had given him a couple of days before of what the picture should look like, Iain knew he didn't have long to get the right shot for the world's most famous band.

On 8th August 1969, at around 11:30 am, a hired policeman stopped the traffic, Iain climbed up a large stepladder in the middle of Abbey Road and took just six pictures of the Beatles crossing the street. In approx 10 minutes Iain shot the band in various orders, but it was frame no.5 that was used for the cover of the album - the only photo where all four of them are striding in perfect formation.

See: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/25996/lot/185/

There was a paradigm shift in the way photography was taught in Britain in the 1960/70s. In How Change Happens: Photography Education and Society May McWilliams uses four colleges - Derby College/Trent Poly, Newport College, London College of Printing, Regent Street Polytechnic -  as case studies to illustrate the change. Oral history accounts of the main players bring the story to life. She sets the changes in photographic education within the broader context of changes in higher education and society.  

Another shift is taking place now. In the final chapter she considers the challenges for photography educators today and draws parallels with the 1970s.

How Change Happens: Photography, Education and Society
May McWilliams, with a foreword by Dr Michael Pritchard
September 2020
ISBN: 978-1-71-538597-2
£27.95, 166 pages with 33 illustrations
Available through Amazon

Fotografiska London, the Museum of Photography, which was originally due to open in 2018 has been cancelled as the investment group behind it, Fotografiska London Ltd / AB, has ended its efforts to open at the Whitechapel High Street location. Originally scheduled to open in 2018, and then postponed, uncertainty around Brexit, coupled with current COVID-19 concerns, have now made it untenable for the London-based licensee to successfully establish a franchise.  The earlier delays suggest that issues around the financing predate COVID-19.

Fotografiska International sees London as a leading cultural city, and will evaluate other opportunities in London directly in conjunction with real estate partners.

Footgrafiska's other locations in Stockholm, Tallinn, and most recently in New York, continue as before. Fotografiska in Stockholm, which was founded in 2010, stages between 20 and 25 large-scale exhibitions per year and attracts some 500,000 visitors per year. Part of its mission is “inspiring a more conscious world” through its photography exhibitions and programming.

See: https://www.fotografiska.com/london/

Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: Discovering the work of Female Photographers is an online conference being held on 24 October as part of Photo Oxford. It will explore the critical work of women writing about, collecting, and curating photography by women.

Key questions include how women’s voices are heard in the history and criticism of photography, the influence of the feminist movement on women photographers’ careers, and the role of museums in shaping the legacies of women photographers. The day also foregrounds strategies for emerging photographers to find themselves in a supportive network of ideas and practice.

Speakers include Val Williams, Patrizia di Bello, Anna Fox, Fiona Rogers, and others. 

Attendance is free. Booking and the programme can be seen here: https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/let-us-now-praise-famous-women

Although he would come to be best known as a member of the British royal family, Lord Snowdon was first, foremost and to the end, a photographer. A selection of his prints and other personal possessions are offered in a Christie's auction:  Snowdon: A Life in Art and Objects running online from 4-24 September. 

See: https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/snowdon-life-art-objects/lots/1797#browse-lots

https://www.christies.com/features/The-photographs-of-Lord-Snowdon-10855-1.aspx?lid=1

Bailey and Snowdon are in conversation, shortly before Snowdon's death: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/david-bailey-lord-snowdon-in-conversation

Roger Watson, curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock, is to retire at the end of this month. In a Facebook post to friends he said: 'After 20 years at the Fox Talbot Museum it seems the right time to go. I leave with so many great memories. This has been the most significant portion of my career and I’ve enjoyed it so much. The best memories were my talks with the artists, working out plans for their exhibitions, and then to see it come to fruition on the walls. There is so much more I’d like to do. I still have a long list of artists I would have liked to work with, so many exhibitions that would have been fun to create.'

Watson's imminent departure comes as the Fox Talbot Museum and Abbey grounds re-open to the public after lockdown and the National Trust, which owns the Abbey, museum and village, weathers a storm around proposed changes to its public remit. Specialist jobs and the way it presents its properties and collections to the public are under threat.     

Roger Watson was born in rural Tennessee and received a BA in Communications and later a Fine Arts degree in Photographic Arts from Michigan State University, where he first encountered the history of photography. He began his museum career at the Kresge Art Museum. After several years of consulting work with various private and institutional collections he returned to the museum world working at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York under the direction of Grant Romer, a world authority on the history of early photography. During his time there Roger curated several exhibitions, wrote numerous articles for photo history journals and helped create the Historic Process Workshops which revived 19th century photographic practices.

He joined the Fox Talbot Museum in 2000, originally to catalogue the archive of images and manuscript material left by William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, He was also appointed Corresponding Editor for the Talbot letters project based first at University of Glasgow and now at De Montfort University. In 2007 he was appointed curator of the museum and has overseen the revival of the museum’s exhibition program and brought the Historic Process Workshops to a new home in Lacock. His book Capturing the Light – The Birth of Photography (with Helen Rappaport) which examined Talbot and Daguerre was published in 2013.

Image: © Michael Pritchard

The National Trust has re-opened Lacock Abbey grounds and the adjacent Fox Talbot Museum. Admission is by pre-booked timed ticket. The Abbey rooms remain closed.

Admission is £10 and at the time of writing there are slots available at half-hourly intervals until 13 September. Tickets are released weekly each Friday and must be booked by 1500 on the day before the visit. .

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lacock-abbey-fox-talbot-museum-and-village

The National Trust continues to attract comment regarding its future plans. See more here.  

One of the more heart-warming stories coming out of the UK's COVID-19 lockdown was the fund-raising garden walk of centenarian Tom Moore, who raised over £30 million and was knighted for his efforts. There is a photography angle to this and the following text from the Keighley and District Photographic Association is used with permission: 

In May 2020 we were contacted by Amy Roth, a Producer from North One Television, who was working on an ITV documentary about Captain Sir Tom Moore. North One Television had interviewed Captain Sir Tom and he had mentioned that he had been a member of our club between 1934 and 1936. Amy wondered if we could help track down some of his work.

As one of the oldest camera clubs in the country our club archives include several hundred glass slides that date from the 1890s to the 1950s. In 2016, having found that some of these glass slides were beginning to show signs of deterioration, we had decided to digitise them so that the images were not lost. We had completed nearly two  hundred slides by the time Amy contacted us; the digitisation process being tackled in batches of 25, as and when we had time. Amy’s contact spurred us on and the next twenty five slides were pulled out and we were immediately attracted to two slides in particular; one slide was marked as the work of W Moore and the other the work of T S Moore. Amy was asked to confirm with Captain Sir Tom’s family if W or TS were relevant initials for members of their family. Their response was that TS was not relevant, as Captain Sir Tom has no middle initial, but W could be his father, Wilfred, who was a keen photographer.

By luck, in the glass slides already digitised there were two that captured our teams that, in 1920 and 1955, had won Yorkshire Photographic Union’s prestigious Keighley Trophy, named in honour of Alexander Keighley, our co-founder. These two images were sent to Amy in the hope the Moore family could identify one of the members as Wilfred. They could! He was part of our team that won in 1920. So, one hundred years ago, in the year that Captain Sir Tom was born, his father helped us win the Keighley Trophy.

We renewed the search of our archives and made a significant find - a box labelled ‘Wilfred Moore Slides’ containing over one hundred of his glass slides. Amy selected twenty that she wanted us to digitise for possible inclusion in the documentary. The production deadlines meant that we only had a few days to do the necessary work and Club President, John Raven, rose to the challenge.

In July North One Television held their second interview with Captain Sir Tom and they showed him the prints of his father’s images. In one of the images he was able to identify his grandfather. In the 1920s Keighley Trophy team photo Captain Sir Tom remarked that his father was younger than in any other photo he had ever seen. This is the picture above - Wilfred Moore is back row, left. On August 13th ITV broadcast their documentary ‘The Life and Times of Captain Sir Tom Moore’ and we were delighted to see a number of our Wilfred Moore images were included and that we were listed in the credits.

We have invited Captain Sir Tom to become an Honorary Member; it would be wonderful to welcome him back after all these years.

Text and image used with permission and © Keighley & District Photographic Association. With thanks to Alan Peacock.  See: https://www.kdpa.co.uk/

This first, of a three-part series, led by Colin Pantall, consists of eight lectures. It will introduce you to the contemporary practice of photography through examples that link the historical, the contemporary, and the theoretical in a way that is dynamic, visual, and accessible to everybody.

Touching on major photographic genres such as landscape photography, portraiture, and conflict, it will look at some of the key photographers and ideas that have shaped how we see the world today and will also present a global, pluralist outlook on both the wonderful expressive and artistic qualities of the photographic image, as well as its darker side.

Looking to the present, Looking to the past
Online course, eight weeks, 9 September 2020-28 October 2020
£100 / £90
See more of the programme: https://rps.org/looking1 

From Banff to Balmoral: The photography of George Washington Wilson is an online talk by Paul Stonell from the Royal Collection Trust, for Aberdeen University museums and special collections. 

See: https://youtu.be/JbYsSvTBf1U

The announcement in The Chemist (March, 1851) of Frederick Scott Archer’s wet-collodion process transformed how photography was practiced professionally and by amateur photographers for much of the nineteenth century. Photography’s reach broadened socially, grew artistically and extended geographically.

The Helen Muspratt archive has been the subject of various BPH blogs in the past, most recently in connection with the upcoming Photo Oxford Festival exhibition Women & Photography: Ways of Seeing & Being Seen. Jessica Smith, Muspratt's daughter, writes to say that Oxford's Bodleian Library has accepted the gift of the Helen Muspratt Archive. This consists of over 2000 original prints, 30 old biscuit tins of negatives covering almost 30,000 sittings from her Oxford studio, and numerous documents and letters.

The Bodleian has decided to celebrate the gift with an exhibition of the work in the newly refurbished Weston Library.  The exhibition will be accompanied by a book of Muspratt's photographs and there will also be an online lecture.

The exhibition will be part of the Festival which will also host an online conference: Let us now praise Famous Women: Discovering the work of female photographers on 24 October when Jessica will give a talk on how she researched her book and assembled the archive. Other speakers include: Val Williams, Erika Lederman, Jessica Sutcliffe, Patrizia Di Bello, Deborah Cherry, Fiona Rogers, Max Houghton and Anna Fox. 

See: https://sites.google.com/view/photooxford2020/whats-on/exhibitions

and the conference: https://sites.google.com/view/photooxford2020/whats-on/events

Britain's photographic heritage is likely to be adversely impacted if proposals in a leaked National Trust discussion document come to pass. Written by the Trust's visitor experience director Tony Berry, it sets out a ten-year vision that will directly impact historic properties, curatorial and conservation posts and put collections in to storage. The Times newspaper (21 August 2020, p.5) reported on the paper and art historian Bendor Grosvenor, who also had sight of the document, flagged it on his Twitter account @arthistorynews

National Trust Director-General Hilary McGrady responded to the claims (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/blogs/directors-blog/our-vision-for-places-and-experiences) as partial, but as Grosvenor noted she failed to deny a number of the claims, including that the Trust will 'dial down' its status as a 'major national cultural institution', make specialist curatorial staff redundant and take objects off display.

The Trust has been significantly impacted by COVID-19 not least a loss of £200 million in income caused by the closure of many of its 550 houses, parks and gardens and has already announced significant redundancies affecting some 13 per cent of its workforce, putting 1,200 employees at risk. The Trust has £1.3 billion in financial reserves, although much of these are designated and cannot be used for general purposes. 

So, what does this mean for photography? The short answer at the moment is that it is unclear. The Trust has significant collections of historic and important photography - at least 50,000 images, although more is yet to be documented, across its historic properties. This includes material that is significant in its own right, along with photographs collected and made by individuals associated with its many properties.

The following are areas that the wider photographic community should be aware of, and be prepared to support, should the need arise:

• The Trust appointed its first National Photography Curator in July 2019, providing oversight of photography across the Trust's properties. As a specialist curator this new role, which was a two-year appointment, appears to be under threat. 
• Roger Watson, curator of the Fox Talbot Museum is a specialist curator and, again, this role may also be under threat.  
• The Trust employs specialist photographic conservators. Photographic materials are fragile and susceptible to environmental deterioration, more so than many other objects, and it is important that light sensitive materials continue to properly assessed, conserved and stored. The National Photography Curator's role was - and remains - key in surveying the Trust's collections and identifying important material and that which needs urgent conservation. It also has a key part in opening up the Hardman House collections (see below).
• The possible closure of Trust properties (see below) and the move of photographs and photographic equipment into storage will limit access to material that is of national importance, beyond the Trust's own interests. 
• Although photography is in many of the Trust's properties two are particularly important:
  • The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, was opened in 1975 to show and interpret objects relating to William Henry Fox Talbot, his life and the development of photography,  and to exhibit photography.  In recent years the museum has broadened its remit to contextualise Talbot within a broader history of photography and the acquisition of the Fenton Collection in 2016 has allowed it to show a history from the 1830s to the 1990s.
  • Adjacent is the Grade 1 listed Lacock Abbey, Talbot's home, where many of his experiments were undertaken and the location of many of his early photographs. It is the birthplace of negative-positive photography. The house and the surrounding village of Lacock were given to the National Trust in 1944.
  • E. Chambré Hardman House, Liverpool. Opened by Burrelll and Hardman in 1923 the company remained in business until c1965/6. The building and negatives were acquired by a charitable trust and later transferred to the National Trust. 
  • in addition, many of the National Trust's other properties contain significant smaller groups of photographs. 

UPDATES >>

This piece by Grosvenor is worth reading and does not bode well for Lacock Abbey https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/5685_Inside_the_National_Trusts_Beeching_Plan In the absence of anything from the National Trust one fears the worst. 

See also: https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2020/08/national-trust-defends-restructure-plans/

See also: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/national-trust-restructuring-plan-job-cuts   

Images: © Michael Pritchard. Top: the entrance to the Fox Talbot Museum; lower: entrance to Hardman House.

Note: none of the individuals mentioned above have spoken to BPH in connection with this blog piece.   

This three-day course will investigate and highlight the role of women photographers from the 19th century to today and their influence in the field of photographic portraiture. Beginning by exploring the use of the camera by women during the birth of the medium, the course will go on to examine how 20th century women photographers embraced and challenged the documentary traditions of portraiture. We will end by looking at how staging, costumes and props became the recurring tools of photographic self-portraiture. The course will introduce a wide range of artists, covering works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Annie Lebovitz, Sally Man, Nan Golding, Carrie Mae Weens and Zenele Muholi.

This course will be delivered online via Zoom. All participants will receive information in advance about how to access the course before it commences.

What you will learn:

• Growing confidence in looking at and interpreting photographic portraiture

• Thorough knowledge of key women and non-binary artists working in photography

• Understanding portraiture as a core application and technique of photography

Christie's Education
17-19 November 2020
1330-1430, daily
£210

See more and sign up here

Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY, is hosting process historian Mark Osterman who will share techniques from the history of photography and demonstrating some of the methods.used. 

The talks are being held over four months and are free to attend, although pre-booking is required. They will take place via Zoom.  

The four demonstrations are: 

• Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 1300 (1800 BST). Clouds and combination printing. Many nineteenth-century landscape photographs are cloudless. Early photographic negatives documented light blue and white as the same value, resulting in blank skies. In this live online program, Process Historian Mark Osterman will discuss the reasons for these cloudless skies and demonstrate the nineteenth-century technique of combination printing from two separate negatives.
• Tuesday, 13 October 2020 at 1300 (1800 BST). Early optics in photography. Before there was photography, there was the study of light and lenses. In this presentation, Process Historian Mark Osterman will demonstrate how light can be manipulated and used for photography and share the basics of optics that were foundational in the invention of photography: from classifying simple lenses to using a camera obscura for gazing, drawing, or photographic experiments. 
• Tuesday, 3 November 2020 at 1300 (1700 GMT). Early silver processes. The first successful process used for photography was based on the light sensitivity of silver chloride. Experiments in silver chloride date to the eighteenth century, but the chemistry was not fully understood until William Henry Fox Talbot conducted and documented his exhaustive tests in the 1830s. In this virtual talk, Process Historian Mark Osterman will share what Talbot built upon and then perfected.
• Tuesday, 3 December 2020 at 1300 (1700 GMT). Nineteenth century retouching techniques. The limited sensitivity of nineteenth-century photographic materials gave rise to a number of curious but effective techniques to make photographs appear more natural. In this live presentation, Process Historian Mark Osterman will show examples of early negative retouching and then demonstrate some of these rare techniques. 

The talks are free, but must be pre-booked. Click the link here.

They are supported by Art Bridges and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The E. Chambré Hardman House in Liverpool is a photographic time-capsule and has been looked after by the National Trust since 2003. Currently closed due to COVID-19 the Trust has released a guided-tour film showing what is inside and how the collection of negatives and prints is being conserved.

Take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsIEwC5OJOc&feature=youtu.be

With thanks to John Marriage for flagging it up. 

Amber Film & Photography Collective which includes Side Gallery, Newcastle-on-Tyne is recruiting for a series of part-time positions. 

• Audience Development Coordinator - https://www.amber-online.com/job-opportunity-audience-development-co-ordinator/
• Fundraising Manager - https://www.amber-online.com/job-opportunity-fundraising-manager/