The History of Art Department of Birkbeck, University of London and the National Portrait Gallery, London, invite applications for a fully-funded doctoral studentship under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. The project will examine the politics of photographic portraiture in Britain during the 1970s and 80s, when, informed by activism and critical theory, photographers challenged preconceptions of gender, class, and race, seeking new ways to portray marginalised people.

The PhD will be supervised jointly by Professor Patrizia Di Bello, lecturer on the history of photography at Birkbeck and co-director of the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, and Dr Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery.

FACT FILE

• Qualification type: PhD
• Location: London
• Funding for: UK students / EU students
• Length: up to four years full time/seven years part time
• Funding amount: subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the funding covers tuition fees and an annual stipend towards living expenses for three years, with the option to apply for an additional six months of funding from the Student Development Fund. The 2019/20 annual stipend is likely to be £17,009 with London weighting, with an additional CDP stipend of £550 a year. Additional support of up to £1000 a year is available for three years from the National Portrait Gallery to contribute to research-related expenses. 
• Hours: full or part-time
• Closing date: Friday 10 May 2019, 12 noon
• Interview date: Wednesday 22 May 2019
• Enquiries: for informal enquiries, please contact Patrizia Di Bello at Birkbeck, University of London (p.dibello@bbk.ac.uk) or Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery (sjaskotgill@npg.org.uk)

THE PROJECT

In the 1970s and 1980s, emerging grassroots photography organisations engaged in a cultural and political struggle over the politics of representation. Informed by, and in turn contributing to, debates around issues of personal and collective identity, photographers experimented with collaborative ways of making, understanding and disseminating portraits as sites of social action. One such collective was the Half Moon Photography Workshop, established in 1972 by a cooperative of photographers as a gallery, workshop and education project; members included Ed Barber, Shirley Read, Peter Kennard and the photographer, writer, and self-defined ‘cultural sniper’, Jo Spence. While the work produced during this period is attracting critical and curatorial interest, less scholarly attention has been paid to this moment in British photography, and on how it opened areas of debate that continue to influence photographic culture and portrait making today.  

With access to the extensive primary sources and visual resources of the National Portrait Gallery and Birkbeck, University of London’s Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, the studentship offers an opportunity to examine the portrait projects initiated by these grassroots movements, shifting attention away from ideas of the single artist and art object towards collaborative ways of making and understanding portraits as sites of social and political action, and the important critical debates that animated this activism in the late 1970s and 1980s. 

The student will be encouraged to pursue their own original enquiries and to decide the scope of their chosen research, situating the project within research questions that include:

• how identity is constructed, undermined or challenged in this period through the practice of photographic portraiture and its changing iconography
• how the work from this period questioned and explored the relationship between photography, biography and identity
• how photography of the period makes visible marginalised communities and identities
• the relevance of this work to audiences today
• the engagement between photography and cultural theory
• new approaches to picturing the self and the community
• collaborative working practices in British photography
• approaches to producing, exhibiting and disseminating photographic portraiture
• mapping the network of community photographers in 1970s and 80s Britain
• the economic and sociological factors that affected the development of photography projects in this period

PROJECT RESOURCES

The studentship is intended to support the work of the National Portrait Gallery and offers unique access to the Gallery’s expertise and collections, including portraits by Jo Spence, Peter Kennard, Tish Murtha, Neil Kenlock, Helen Chadwick and Liz Rideal, supplemented by letters and correspondence, period magazines and journals held in the Gallery's Archive and Library. The student will also have privileged access to uncatalogued materials in the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, which as well as materials relevant to the life and work of Jo Spence and her collaborator Terry Dennett, includes holdings of Camera Work magazine, and a variety of other publications and ephemera - posters, leaflets, postcards and pamphlets. 

The student will be offered practical work-based training in collections and curatorial practice, suitable for a potential career in the cultural sector. There will also be opportunities to develop cataloguing experience and to propose curated displays at Birkbeck's exhibition space, the Peltz Gallery, which could be used to test ideas for experimental modes of display and innovative forms of audience engagement and interaction. Alongside training provided by Birkbeck, University of London, sector-specific training will be offered through the consortium of museums, galleries and heritage organisations affiliated with the AHRC CDP scheme. 

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Birkbeck and the National Portrait Gallery value the diversity of their staff and students, and welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

Essential skills/attributes:

• you will hold at least an upper second class BA in History of Art, Photography, Museum Studies, or some clearly related discipline
• you will hold either an MA in History of Art, Photography, Museum Studies or a clearly related discipline, or have equivalent professional experience that might include working in museums, galleries or archives  
• candidates should also demonstrate evidence of appropriate English language proficiency normally defined as 6.5 in IELTS. For entry requirements please visit http://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/admissions/entry-requirements

Desirable skills/attributes:

• advanced knowledge of twentieth-century British photographic history or British portraiture

The preferred start date is 1 October 2019

HOW TO APPLY

• There are two steps:
  • You need to apply for this studentship by downloading and completing the application form. You will need to send your completed application form and references to Anthony Shepherd, no later than 10 May 2019.

Please note the successful applicant will be required to complete an application for a place of study on the MPhil/PhD History of Art programme at Birkbeck, University of London.

Image: Courtesy of Dominic Mifsud, photograph of Cultural Sniping: Photographic Collaborations in the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, an exhibition at the Peltz Gallery, London, 9 March – 28 April 2018

Special Auction Services is offering an auction of Fine Photographica on 30 April which comprises over 600 lots, including 67 lots from the John Hannavy Collection of photography.

On 26 April Flints is offering Fine Photographica in its auction.

The SAS online auction catalogue can be found here: http://www.sas-auctions.com/catalogues/2018/cm300419/index.html

The Flints auction catalogue can be found here: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/flintsauction/catalogue-id-flints10015

Image: lot 143 from the SAS auction.

Edinburgh's Stills Gallery which has operated since 1977 is under threat from a trebling of its rent from £16,000 to £47,000 over five years. The Gallery occupies premises in the city centre and it is a centre for photography offering exhibitions and production facilities as well as a range of engagement opportunities for anyone to discover, enjoy and understand photography. Stills may be forced to relocate but its central location is crucial to its successes.

It said: "Our city centre location is crucial to making our work as accessible as possible – people travel from all over Scotland and further afield to access what we do, whether that's our exhibitions programme (which is always free), public-access photography production facilities, creative learning work or artist-led photography courses. Our work is unique and vital to Scotland’s cultural ecology. Stills makes a vital contribution to what makes Edinburgh and Scotland such a great place to live, work and visit." 

Stills has launched a petition against the rent rise which supporters are encouraged to sign: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/oppose-the-city-of-edinburgh-council-s-proposed-rent-increase-for-stills

See more here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17568106.photographic-gallerys-fears-over-future-after-city-councils-dramatic-rise-in-rent/?fbclid=IwAR05YLcXr4_oiaa_dOhpQIxMMfb_rRt8fQj010cA_OBEQ7OQeT-6kQ56mNw

and the Stills Gallery website: http://www.stills.org/

Following an extensive digitisation project commissioned by NATO, over 2000 titles of official footage are now available for licensing via IWM Film. This project is part of an exclusive global licensing distribution partnership between IWM and NATO, marking the 70th anniversary of the creation of NATO, the world’s strongest political-military alliance, on 4 April 2019.

The NATO film collection comprises approximately 350 hours of film material taken in the late 1940s through to the 1990s, including documentaries, newsreel, and record footage in both colour and black and white film. Providing a unique insight into the Cold War era, early films depict the rush to create economic, political and military stability in post-war Europe, whilst later films encourage international unity and concepts of shared peace and security.

Hidden gems include colour footage of a divided Berlin in the 1960s and Humphrey Jennings’ final film. Other highlights from the over 2000 titles include the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949, intervention in the Bosnian war (1992-1995), as well as a documentary film about how the alliance works. 

View NATO films currently available on the IWM Film site. The sub-sections include:

Marshall Plan Films (1949-1954)
SHAPE Film Library (1944-1964)
NATO Documentaries (1952-1990)
NATO Log Collection (1965-1994)

David Walsh, Digitisation Preservation Consultant at IWM says: "The digitisation of this important collection was the result of a four-year effort by a dedicated team to sift, sort and catalogue the nearly 17,000 reels of film originally deposited with IWM by NATO. The work has not only resulted in the creation of high-quality 2K digital access files of the films, but also facilitated the storage of original film masters in suitable archival conditions for their long-term preservation."  Ineke Deserno, Head of Archives at NATO says: “It is very timely this film collection is available at the moment of NATO’s 70th Anniversary, with so much reflection now taking place on the long history since the beginning of that transatlantic bond. The materials digitized by IWM represent some of the key moments in time, with some very rare footage, for telling the story of the Alliance to the world. NATO is grateful for the invaluable expertise from IWM to help the Alliance preserve this important collection and make it available for a new generation of storytellers to share NATO’s history.”

See more here.

‘Business’ can have many meanings. In the most straightforward sense, it refers to the photographic marketplace, its industry and the commercial relations established among different agents. Some of these actors, such as studios and companies of the like of Kodak and Ilford, are specifically photographic and have featured prominently in histories of photography. But the photographic business also depends on other social, cultural and economic agents like chemical supply companies, image brokers, content providers, commissioning editors, advertising campaign managers and digitization officers, among others.

Especially since the beginning of the 21st century, historians have begun to pay attention to the broader implications of what one might call ‘the business of photography’. In this sense, it is not only about commerce and trade, but also about visual and material economies, where photography and the many worlds and people it affects directly or indirectly negotiate, define or transform social, cultural, political, scientific, and other ideological environments as well as values.

In this 7th annual conference of the PHRC, we intend to stretch the notion of ‘the business of photography’. While not neglecting the transformative role of photographic companies and that of photographers as businessmen and women, we wish to diversify our understanding of ‘business’ to include the circulation of and the impact exerted by photographic images, objects and raw materials.

The conference will feature seven panels – Influencing Taste; Business-Education / Education-Business; Bureaucratic Record Economies; New Markets; Distribution; Business Administration; Causes and Costs – and the selected papers will think outside of the box while addressing themes such as:

• Photographic recycling
• The life of photographic raw materials
• Gender and photographic businesses
• The marketization of individual and collective identities
• Photographic image banks
• Photography in political and financial economies
• Photography in the heritage industry

Registration costs:

DMU students and Staff/ Conference Speakers, one or both days £35

Standard Day, Monday £50

Standard Day, Tuesday £50

Standard, Monday and Tuesday £90

Non-DMU Student or Unwaged, Monday £40

Non-DMU Student or Unwaged, Tuesday £40

Non-DMU Student or Unwaged, Monday and Tuesday £50

Conference Dinner £35

Registration now open until 3 June 2019, Click here

For any queries please email: phrc@dmu.ac.uk

The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art has announced a series of grants and awards which include photography. Of particular interest are: 

• Steve Edwards British daguerreotypes - Antoine Claudet
• Sarah James, for the project The Militant & The Mainstream: Remaking British Photographic Culture - a mid-career Fellowship
• Impressions Gallery of Photography to support the Feed Your Mind lecture series
• Association for Art History to support the Photography & Printed Matter Summer Symposium 
• Shijia Yu Amusing, Interesting and Curious: A Study of English Paper Peepshows, 1825-1851 

See the full list here: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/fellowships-and-grants/awarded/spring-2019/page/1

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) has published numbers for 2018. The National Science+Media Musuem, Bradford, has seen numbers fall by 6.8 per cent to 459,808. The V&A Museum saw numbers grow 5 per cent to 3.7 million. 

The NS+MM numbers for 2017 were boosted by the presence of the Tim Peake's space capsule and new gallery launches and a year-on-year decline was anticipated.

Full details for all the UK's leading museums and galleries and historical numbers back to 2004 are available here: http://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=423

The Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research provides financial support to independent researchers who are studying either Western American photographers before 1900 or women photographers past and present. The Humboldt Area Foundation in Bayside, California, administers this fund, which solicits applications for grants once a year in the fall and awards the grants the following January. A small panel of outside consultants with professional expertise in the field of photohistory and/or grant reviewing determines each year’s awards.

The list of past recipients with their projects has been updated with details from: Stella Jungmann, Josephine Givodan, and a second project by Pippa Oldfield (No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War.)  In addition, other recipients have contributed updates to their projects.

Read them here:http://www.palmquistgrants.com/index.html

With thanks to Pam Roberts for the information. 

Coinciding with an exhibition of the same name Anthony Hamber will be talking on the origins of photography in Salisbury 1839-1918 at the Salisbury Museum on Thursday, 2 May at 1830. 

Tickets available online at £8 (members) and £10 (non-members). 

Thursday, 2 May at 1830
The Salisbury Museum, The King’s House, 65 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EN
t: 01722 332151
www.salisburymuseum.org.uk

Image: Harnham Mill by William Russell Sedgfield c. 1858.
Collection of Anthony Hamber

Art History News reports that the European Parliament has voted in favour of a new Copyright Directive. It seeks to create common law on copyright matters across the EU. Many aspects of it are controversial. But one element is extremely important for art historians; Article 14. It prevents new copyright being claimed in reproductions of artworks which are themselves out of copyright (also referred to as being in the public domain.) This new ruling effectively heralds the end of image reproduction fees, because copyright is the glue which holds the whole image fees system in place. The new directive therefore represents an important victory for art historians.Photographs of historic artworks taken with the intention of faithfully reproducing them will not be covered by copyright across the EU. Member states have two years to implement the directive into domestic law.

Read the full report here: https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/5362_The_end_of_museum_image_fees

The Somerset Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury is presenting a celebration of photography in Somerset, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. It will feature experts in historic Somerset photography. The day will conclude with a talk from artist Matilda Temperley, who will discuss her subjects and how she approaches her practice. An exhibition of new images by the award-winning photographer is on now at Somerset Rural Life Museum.

See more here.

An AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between University of Brighton and the Science Museum Group. This studentship is offered under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. The partner institutions are the University of Brighton and National Science and Media Museum. This studentship is fully funded for three years (or part-time equivalent) at standard AHRC rates. The project is due to begin October 2019.

Dominic Winter auctions are to offer six lots, including a camera, from Christine Lynch, the daughter of Frances Griffiths, the younger of the two cousins who first perpetrated the hoax back in 1917. The material is expected to realise over £50,000.  The consignment includes photographs of the fairies, a Cameo camera. 

It can be seen here: https://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/Auction/Search?st=cottingley&sto=0&au=671&w=False&pn=1

Two other cameras are in the collection of the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. 

The auction includes other vintage and collectable photographs, stereoscopy and photographic equipment. The catalogue can be seen here: https://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/Auction/Search?au=671

For its second survey of photography, the Barnes Foundation is presenting nearly 250 early photographs—most of which have never been exhibited before—created by British and French photographers between the 1840s and 1880s. Curated by Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes, From Today, Painting Is Dead: Early Photography in Britain and France is drawn from the private collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg and spans the invention of the daguerreotype to photography on paper and beyond. The show is on view in the Barnes’s Roberts Gallery from February 24 through May 12, 2019.

From Today, Painting Is Dead: Early Photography in Britain and France is sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal.

Following the production of the first photographs in the 1830s, and before the advent of Kodak’s point-and-shoot camera in 1888 and the industrialization of photography, artists experimented with photography, creating innovative processes and uniquely compelling representational tropes.

“When the influential French painter Paul Delaroche saw a photograph for the first time, he proclaimed, ‘From today, painting is dead!’ This sentiment captures the anxiety with which photography was greeted by artists, though it would be nearly 50 years before technology evolved enough to approximate the work Delaroche and his fellow painters were already doing,” says Collins. “This exhibition explores the very fertile period in the early history of photography, when the medium’s pioneers were grappling with the complex inheritance of official, state-sponsored visual culture.”

For the better part of the 19th century—before rebellious groups like the impressionists challenged the status quo—powerful fine arts academies in Paris and London governed the official style for painting and even guided what subjects artists should depict. Some themes were considered more important than others, based on their cultural significance and the skill required to render them. Moralizing historical subjects were generally the most valued; next came portraiture, then genre (or scenes of daily life), then landscape, and finally still life.

Photography developed amid this stringent artistic climate. Between 1840 and 1870, photographers of all stripes—both amateurs and an emergent class of professionals, makers of vernacular pictures and those aspiring to create fine art—experimented with the new medium, not only its mechanics and chemistry, but also its representational potentials. In doing so, they inevitably absorbed—and transformed—the well-established tropes of the dominant academic painting tradition.

From Today, Painting Is Dead: Early Photography in Britain and France features over 60 photographers, including such masters as William Henry Fox Talbot—the scientist and inventor credited with developing the first photographic prints on paper; Félix Nadar, the great portraitist of Paris high society; Roger Fenton, the English painter turned celebrated photographer who achieved widespread recognition for his photographs of the Crimean War in 1855; Gustave Le Gray, the leader of 1850s French art photography; and Julia Margaret Cameron, whose literary and biblical-themed figure studies and captivating portraits were unprecedented in her time.

Exhibition highlights include:

• Original calotypes from 1840 to 1845 by William Henry Fox Talbot, including still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and street scenes from both England and France.
• The earliest war photographs, taken of the Crimean War by Roger Fenton, including his iconic Valley of the Shadow of Death as well as the 11-plate panorama of Sebastopol.
• An 1844 daguerreotype of Jerusalem—one of the first of the city—by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey.
• A full-plate daguerreotype of the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris by Baron Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gros from 1850.
• Some of the earliest existing travel photographs of the Middle East, Southern Europe, Africa, India, Burma, Ecuador, Mexico, and New Zealand.
• Portraits by Félix Nadar, Napoleonic Paris’s great portraitist and larger-than-life personality, with subjects ranging from literary legends—including an oversize 1885 deathbed portrait of Victor Hugo—to the first official Japanese delegation to France (1864). Also included are Nadar’s 1860s photographs of the Paris catacombs and sewers, which represent one of the first uses of artificial lighting in photography.
• Pre-Raphaelite allegorical portraiture by Julia Margaret Cameron.
• French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey’s 1880s motion studies of athletes, which prefigure the development of motion pictures, much like Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies in the US.
• Seascapes, landscapes, photographs of military maneuvers, and other works by Gustave Le Gray, the leader of the 1850s French movement of fine art photography. 

All works are from the collection of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg. This exhibition was organized by the Barnes Foundation in association with art2art Circulating Exhibitions. The presentation at the Barnes Foundation is curated by Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes.

This exhibition was produced as part of a new educational venture between the Barnes and the University of Pennsylvania led by Thom Collins and professor Aaron Levy, with curatorial contributions from students in the 2018 Spiegel-Wilks Curatorial Seminar “Ars Moriendi: Life and Death in Early Photography.”

See more here: https://www.barnesfoundation.org/whats-on/early-photography

Bruce Castle Museum presents an exhibition dedicated to British film pioneer Robert W. Paul, who founded an innovative studio on Muswell Hill in the late 19th century. Celebrating Paul's 150th anniversary, the show includes fascinating early cinema technology, historical photographs and a look into Paul's early popular films, many of which were made in Haringey and which set the template for the earliest film genres.

Haringey residents will be surprised to know that Paul’s company even recreated scenes from the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) on the Muswell golf course, in the North London district where he would create an innovative studio and produce close to 800 pictures.

Paul’s cameras aimed to show the world: the roaring sea at Dover, the mysterious landscapes of Portugal and Spain, and the first screen drama made in Britain ('The Soldier’s Courtship', 1896) were only a few of the influential moving picture shows he produced.

The exhibition is curated by Ian Christie, noted Birkbeck, University of London film scholar and broadcaster, and will travel to other venues later in the year. As part of the exhibition, visitors will also find the graphic novel Time Traveller: Robert Paul and the Invention of Cinema, by Christie and the artists ILYA.

Animatograph! How cinema was born in Haringey
5 April - late July 2019 / Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm to 5pm
Price details: Free
Venue: Bruce Castle Museum, Lordship Lane, Tottenham, N17 8NU
See: https://www.haringey.gov.uk/events/34237-animatograph-how-cinema-was-born-haringey

The magazine print sector has been hit extremely hard over the last ten years, with closures and cutbacks, but it's not all doom and gloom. Small, specialist magazines have found a way of surviving independently of the media giants. Most of the new photography magazines that are starting up are however, devoted to contemporary work and are focused on aesthetics, ideology and critical theory.  

The Classic is different, the only magazine of its kind. It's devoted to the market for classic photography. The term used to be applied to certain styles of photography and the venerated names in the history of the medium. These days, it's used as a moniker for just about everything that isn't contemporary photography. The Classic is also free, available at photography fairs and selected distribution points in the major cities and through subscription.

The magazine was founded on the 17th of December 2018, by Bruno Tartarin, the French dealer and promoter of the biannual fair Photos Discovery, and Michael Diemar, the London-based collector, consultant and writer. Tartarin explains, "I felt that the classic photography market needed a real boost, something substantial. Having thought about it for a while, I decided to start a magazine. While the web is very useful, there is nothing like holding a beautiful magazine in your hands."

So why does the classic photography market need a boost? Tartarin says, "When the modern photography market as we know it today was established around 1970, the focus was very much on works from the past, the 19th century, the Avant Garde of the interwar years. Around 2000, the focus changed and contemporary photography became increasingly dominant, at fairs, auctions and in the press. But as a photography dealer with over 20 years experience, I can tell you that it's still the classic photography, the Man Rays and the Gustave Le Grays, that underpins the whole of the photography market and gives it credibility."

 It seems somewhat extravagant to make it a free magazine but as Tartarin explains, "My ambition is to bring new people to the market, as well as rekindle enthusiasm among established collectors. There is no entrance fee at my fair, Photos Discovery, and I felt that the same spirit should be applied to the magazine."

Tartarin asked Michael Diemar to create the new magazine from scratch. Diemar says, "Bruno gave me a completely free hand, with regards to both its name and contents. I decided to call it The Classic, it described what it was about and was also memorable.  There were a number of things I wanted to avoid. I didn't want it to be an academic journal, nor did I want it to be a promotion brochure, full of articles about "golden investment opportunities" and graphs showing market expansion and price increases for individual artists. Because it wasn't the investment opportunities that turned me into a photography collector many years ago. It was the images, the prints, the Polaroids, the cased images, the wonder of the photographic object. And while books and museum exhibitions taught me a lot, they didn't provide me with nearly enough of the information I needed to operate as a collector. That information came from all the conversations I had with dealers, collectors, curators, auction experts, conservators, archivists, editors etc. And it's those kinds of conversations I have tried to replicate in the magazine."

The first issue of The Classic has lengthy interviews with leading names in classic photography, Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography at The Victoria & Albert Museum, David Fahey of Fahey/Klein Gallery about The Dennis Hopper Archive, the 19th century photography dealer Robert Hershkowitz about his career and his exhibition "The Essential Roger Fenton", Alex Novak about his collection of early negatives and Christophe Goeury, the French independent auction specialist. In addition, there are articles about exhibitions, processes, conservation issues, book reviews and more.

Getting the content right was a balancing act Diemar says, "The magazine had to be of interest to experienced collectors as well as first-time buyers. With regards to the latter, I didn't want to clog up the pages with basic but essential information, explaining the difference between "vintage print", "printed later" and "posthumous", supplying mounting and framing advice etc. I would have had to include that information in every issue. Instead, all that information will be supplied under "resources" on our website."

The Classic will be launched in the US at AIPAD, New York City 3-7 April
In France at Photos Discovery, Paris 13 April
In the UK at The Special Edition of The London Photograph Fair, 18-19 May

For more information: www.theclassicphotomag.com

The National Trust is seeking a Project Curator in photography. Our ambition to curate at a national scale and develop our research priorities has seen us provide more investment to our collections.

The National Trust has outstanding collections in photography, across a wide range of properties. As the Project Curator you will use your experience in the field of photography and your expertise in curation and collections management to raise the profile of our excellent collections, a significant number of which are un-catalogued.

You will raise the profile of our photography collections, developing and supporting cataloguing and conservation programmes, research projects and contributing to publishing, exhibition and display projects. It's an ambitious plan and we need you to have significant experience to help us achieve our goals.

See more here. 

A forgotten treasure trove of Victorian photographs showing the construction of parts of one of Scotland’s most important pieces of infrastructure has been unearthed. The Katrine Aqueduct, which takes water to treatment works that supply 1.3 million people in Glasgow and west central Scotland, was built in the Victorian era to help transform the health of citizens and continues in full use to this day.

As modern day engineers are starting a multi-million pound refurbishment project on part of the aqueduct, the recently-discovered photos provide a fascinating insight into the mega-structure which was officially opened by Queen Victoria almost 160 years ago in October 1859.

The glass lantern slides, which have not been seen before by Scottish Water experts with decades of experience of working on the local water network, were recovered from a skip along with some books and drawings when the utility was closing one of its offices.

They include remarkable images of pioneers boring through rocky mountainsides with drills during the construction of the 23.5 mile-long second aqueduct which began in 1885 and was completed in 1901 to increase capacity and meet demand as the population of Glasgow burgeoned to more than one million.

The aqueduct scheme, comprising the two aqueducts, takes water by gravity from Loch Katrine to the Milngavie and Balmore water treatment works before it is distributed to customers across a large swathe of Glasgow and west central Scotland. The first aqueduct includes tunnels through mountainous terrain in the shadow of Ben Lomond and bridges over the valleys. The second aqueduct was constructed to accommodate the rapid expansion of Glasgow in the late 19th century. The two are as much as six miles apart on some stretches.

The remarkable images, which are inspiring Scottish Water workers on the modern-day £12.5 million project to refurbish part of the overall aqueduct scheme, include:

• Endrick Valley picture showing a close-up of the three trunk mains of the old aqueduct and the supports for the new aqueduct near Balfron.
• Craigmaddie trench showing workers excavating a trench for the new aqueduct near Craigmaddie reservoir.
• Katrine tunnelling 1892 showing workers tunnelling through rock with machinery to prop up the ceiling of the excavation. The two last pictures would give modern-day health and safety officials sleepless nights   
• Steam engine showing a steam engine and horse used by workers to transport and move materials
• Steam engine workers Mugdock showing workers using a large steam-driven trencher for digging trenches

And, from later in the aqueduct project, Loch Arklet pulley system showing a pulley system used by workers to take materials from the Inversnaid area of Loch Lomond to Loch Arklet where a dam was built as part of the Katrine Aqueduct project and siteline worker showing one of many observatories which were constructed along the route of the aqueduct which were up to about 60ft high and were used by workers operating theodolite-like devices to measure and check the route of the aqueduct. ie siteline worker viewing showing a worker doing so from a smaller observation post.

Steven Walker, a leakage field technician with Scottish Water who discovered the photographs with a colleague, said: “I found these fragile glass slides from the construction of mainly the second aqueduct in a skip when we were moving to new offices. They were in two boxes or cases among all sorts of items that were to be thrown out. I suspected they were of interest but their true historical value was only confirmed when a colleague who works for us in the Loch Katrine area analysed them. The pictures give a fascinating insight into the construction of the second aqueduct and some of the methods used which might appear archaic, and even dangerous, to us now but were the ‘new technology’ of the day at that time.

I like to think that the heart of Glasgow is not George Square or somewhere else in the city centre but 8.5 miles to the north in Milngavie where the two aqueducts end. The boom in shipbuilding that helped Glasgow ‘flourish’ was able to happen only because of the two amazing aqueducts that bring water from Loch Katrine to the two reservoirs at Milngavie and the water treatment works there.

It’s remarkable to think that the first aqueduct was so successful, and Glasgow grew so quickly, that within 30 years they had to repeat the process and build a second aqueduct to double the output. These pictures are an important part of that story and I’m delighted we were able to save them.”

In the construction of the second aqueduct, the engineers were able to take a more direct line because they had available improved boring and blasting equipment. When the second aqueduct was constructed, the pneumatic drill and gelignite were available and progress was much more rapid than during the first aqueduct, increasing from 35 to 44 yards per month.

The possession of more efficient plant enabled the engineers, by tunnelling, to take a straighter line through the hills in the construction of the second aqueduct. This meant only eight bridges were required on the second aqueduct compared with 22 on the first.

The entire Katrine Aqueduct scheme cost £3.2m to build which would be about £320m in today’s prices.

The current refurbishment project on the Katrine Aqueduct is expected to be completed in 2020 and is being carried out for Scottish Water by contractors George Leslie. It includes structural repairs of three stretches of tunnel and a bridge, improvements to the lining of tunnels and repairs and refurbishments of control valves.

When, in 1982, Fred Gandolfi decided to close the family camera-making business, photographer Ken Griffiths thought the Peckham workshop, and the Gandolf’s unique way of of life should be recorded for posterity. Joined by his brother David as cinematographer and supported by a passionate team of film-makers and photographers, they crafted a nostalgic feature film of startling beauty, recording the passing of the old Victorian industry.

At last, after a new 2K high resolution scan & sound-track enhancement, the film will be available on DVD for general distribution. Produced in the DigiPak format, the DVD package is an elegantly designed collectible production, including a 36 page booklet featuring many of Ken’s pictures, the making of the film, and Fred Gandolfi’s own description of their camera making techniques.

DVD Price: £ 15.95 Inc VAT + P&P £ 2.50 Inc VAT for UK Highlands & Islands. 

See more and order here.