September 2019 marks the 30th anniversary since the establishment of Street Level Photoworks. To celebrate this landmark anniversary it will be looking back on the history of those who have helped shape Street Level Photoworks. But it also means celebrating the present and in looking forward to the future of what photography offers diverse audiences and artists and all that this means for our ongoing partnerships and collaborations.

Since being founded in 1989 by Glasgow Photography Group, a collective of photographers and those passionate about the medium, Street Level's core aim has remained consistent in providing people with a range of opportunities to engage with photography, as artists, participants, audiences, and sector partners. Over our 30 year history we have worked with a considerable number of artists and facilitators to deliver exhibitions, community collaborations, workshops, talks, residency exchanges and all manner of events in between that champion the diversity and creativity of photography from Scotland and further afield.

Read more here: http://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/article/30-years

The Living Picture Craze: An Introduction to Victorian Film. Film takes a starring role in this free online course from the British Film Institute exploring the emergence of a new medium that was set to capture the world's imagination. 

Explore the birth of film and the end of Queen Victoria’s epic reign. Roll up! Roll up! Take your seats for the ‘Living Picture’ craze! In this course we journey back to the end of the Victorian era; a time of intense modernisation and unprecedented change. Using the BFI’s unique collection of surviving Victorian films we will debate common myths about the period and the materials, as well as examine what the films reveal about the society that produced them.

This year marks the centenary of the death of William Crookes. Journalist, chemist, photographer, spiritualist, businessman, sometime Secretary of the Royal Institution and President of the Royal Society of London, Crookes was a key figure in the science of the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. This meeting, which is part of the ChemFest celebrations of the sesquicentenary of the periodic table, will examine various aspects of Crookes's extraordinary career and his place in science. The AGM of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry will be held before the meeting at 13.15.

He edited the Journal of the photographic Society and Photographic News at various times. 

Programme

13.30     Registration

13:45     Welcome and Introduction: Frank James, (Royal Institution and Chair of SHAC)

First Session Chair: Anna Simmons (UCL)

13.50     Richard Noakes (Exeter University). 'Two Parallel Lines'? The Trajectories of Physical and Psychical Research in the Work of William Crookes

14:30     Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University, Leicester). William Crookes, a life in Photo-Chemistry

15.10     Refreshment Break 

Second Session Chair: Peter Morris (Chair of RSCHG)

15.30     Frank James (Royal Institution and UCL). William Crookes and Michael Faraday

16.10     Paul Ranford (UCL). Crookes’s “Invisible Helper” – George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903)

16.50     William Brock (University of Leicester). The key to the deepest mystery of nature: Crookes, periodicity and the genesis and evolution of the elements   

17.30     Close of meeting

There is no charge for this meeting, but prior registration is essential. Please email Robert Johnstone (robert.johnstone.14@ucl.ac.uk) if you would like to attend. If having registered, you are unable to attend, please notify Robert Johnstone.

William Crookes (1832-1919)

Saturday 19 October 2019, Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BS

http://www.rigb.org/visit-us/find-us

Events:

Short film program Color Moods at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Thursday to Sunday, Nov. 07 to 10, 2019

Special guided tour with Barbara Flueckiger, professor for film studies (University of Zurich), and book launch Color Mania, Saturday, Nov 9, 2019, 2 pm

The interplay between scientific studies and the photographic medium is the theme for this year's St Andrew's Photography Festival. The programme includes a symposium, exhibitions and public events all taking science and photography which draw on the rich collections of the University of St Andrews. A number are of particular interest to those interested in photographic history, including: 

• The Moon; Nasmith & Carpenter
• Tracing Movement: Animal Locomotion, Photography and the Emergence of Cinema
• Animal Locomotion; Edweard Muybridge
• Images of Knowledge: Karl Blossfeldt’s Originary Forms of Art
• Seeing the Past: Digitally Reconstructing and Recording Historic Sites
• Chemistry of Colour
• Shooting Stars: 19th Century Astronomical Photography

Download the full programme here (PDF).

Investigate the fascinating history and theories of photography in this weekend-long course hosted by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and delivered by Professor Mark  Rawlinson. 

In 1859, Charles Baudelaire famously described photography as “art’s mortal enemy” and argued its proper function was to be the “very humble servant” of the sciences and arts. For Baudelaire, photography’s ability to reproduce nature exactly was its genius but also its fatal flaw. Unlike art, for Baudelaire, photographic representation could not elevate its subject – the sitter of a portrait or the view of a landscape – because it simply mirrored them and made a copy and photography should be to art what the printing press was to literature: a tool.

Such criticisms require us to ask some important questions about photography: what is it? why does it exist? what is it for? And, of course, is photography art? It also asks us to consider the relationship between photography and the arts more widely. For example, how has non-photographic art and architecture influenced photography, and vice-versa?

Photography’s aspiration to be considered equal to painting is obvious in images from the 19th and early 20th centuries which echo and mimic painterly compositions and artistic styles. The emergence of painterly abstraction was paralleled in photography, but rather than simply copy painting, photography explored new visual territory, and on its own terms becoming avant-garde. The 20th century witnessed the birth of self-conscious modes of photography: straight, staged, abstract, collaged, and camera-less photographic techniques were reinvented. So too were the processes of making, printing, and exhibiting photography. Even the truth claims of documentary photography – the genre best aligned to ‘copying’ reality – continue to be reasserted and challenged.

To better understand these questions and relationships, this course explores photographic histories in relation to art history’s own complicated relationship with the medium. Sessions will consider a variety of historical moments where art and photography collide, points in time where art, photography and criticism were irrevocably altered.

From the 19th Century Eadweard Muybridge’s work in photographic studies of motion to the contemporary David Hockney's artworks, the course traces and illuminates the productive relationship between photographic practices and art.

London: Royal Academy
8-9 November, 2019
£420 
See more and book here.

Kresen Kernow holds hundreds of thousands of historic images of Cornwall and of people and events connected to Cornwall. Some of these images are glass negatives, others are engravings, prints and postcards. Some are glued into albums, others are loose in wallets and envelopes. 

Many of the pictures have came through individual family collections. We also have the collection of press photographer George Ellis which contains over 100,000 glass negatives.  Ellis came to Bodmin from London at the outbreak of World War II and stayed, photographing north and east Cornwall and its people throughout the war and into the 1970s.

The Historic Environment Record also contains thousands of images of the historic buildings and features which dot the Cornish landscape. These include images of bridges, windows, bunkers and crosses, as well as an extensive collection of aerial photographs.

Digitising our image collection is an on-going project, mostly carried out by volunteers. We have prioritised digitising glass negatives to make them more accessible. You can browse digitised images here.

Image: Photograph,Cooks Kitchen Mine, 1893.

This one-day symposium at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter invites conversations on photography and photographic collections in the South West and wider UK in relation to aspects of place. Photographs relate to place in various ways including their documenting capacity and the direct inscription of the world on their surface. Therefore, photographs directly inform our imagination of a place. How do collections like this develop? In turn, a specific place can also inspire the work of photographers and photographic artists: the symposium includes a focus on Dartmoor, in particular.

Speakers include Liz Wells (curator, writer and Professor in Photographic Culture at Plymouth University), Garry Fabian Miller (Dartmoor-based photographic artist), Bronwen Colquhoun (Senior Curator of Photography, National Museum Wales), Jo Bradford (Dartmoor-based photographic artist and founder of Green Island Studios), Emma Down (Hidden Histories Project Archivist, Beaford Archive), Catherine Troiano (Curator, National Photography Collections, National Trust), Brendan Barry (Exeter-based photographer, lecturer and educator, founder & director of Positive Light Projects) and Mark Haworth-Booth (former Senior Curator of Photography at the V&A).

The symposium will coincide with a small photography display at RAMM on ‘Rivers, Trees and Landmarks’.

Collecting regions - Photography and a sense of place
Wednesday, 18 September 2019
1000 - 1700 
Further information here: https://exeterramm.admit-one.eu/?p=tickets&perfCode=3498&ev=4189

In a new blog post 'from the vaults' Rachel Nordstrom, Photographic Collections Manager, at St Andrews University's special collections discusses the restoration of two daguerreotypes in the collections using the new technique of electro-cleaning which was first described in 2016. Two daguerreotypes subjected to the technique: one showing a man with a scientific instrument, now identified as a ‘spark generator’; the second, was a group of four men (J D Forbes, Rev. William Brown, Hugh Lyon Playfair and Dr George Buist), by Antoine Claudet.

The before and after photographs show the effectiveness of  the technique. The work was undertaken by Dr Mike Robinson.  

You will be able to see the results  during the St Andrews Photography Festival as the theme for this year is Science & Photography. Check the festival website events line up for further details, specifically on the ‘Science Treasure from Special Collections’ visit on 22 October at Martyrs Kirk.

Read the full blog here: https://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/electrifying-daguerreotypes/

Dr Mike Robinson is taking his highly acclaimed daguerreotype workshop to St Andrews, the birthplace of Scottish photography. Co-hosted by the University of St Andrews, the three-day daguerreotype workshop is the first time a mercury-based daguerreotype workshop has been held in the country.

The course is limited to six participants and each participant will have two finished and housed daguerreotypes to take with them at the end of the workshop. 

The course fee is $1250 and all equipment and materials are provided. Early booking is advised. 

Delivered in partnership with the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock. 

To book: https://centurydarkroom.com/education

The V&A’s acquisition of the Royal Photographic Society collection from the Science Museum in 2017 has raised major questions about the place, role and nature of photography in museums, the shape of ‘collections’, the role and status of ‘non-collections’ of photographs, the practices and styles of history of photography, and the assumptions of museology.

The conference explores the dynamics of such themes across analogue and digital media, and considers the sprawling practices and deposits of photography in museums and galleries.  It will focus on the mass of photographs in museum holdings that fall outside formal ‘collections of photographs’, and explore the epistemic force and hierarchies of value to which photographs contribute as they remake, reproduce and solidify institutional values. What is ‘collected’ and what is not?  What are the shifting boundaries between ‘collections’ and ‘non-collections’?  How do ‘collections’ emerge and how are category shifts realised? How are photographs put to work within museums?  How do photographs form and cohere institutions and their practices? How are museum meanings made through photography? Finally, what are the interdisciplinary implications of these debates across, for instance, museum studies, history, art history, history of science and anthropology? 

With distinguished international speakers, including Dr Geoff Belknap (NSMM), Dr Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institute, Florence) and  Dr David Odo (Harvard University Collections) the conference gathers curators, conservators, academics and other specialists to consider the saturating role of photographs in museums, changing practices, and broader implications.

The conference is organised by the V&A Research Institute (VARI) and generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Institutional Life of Photographs

Victoria and Albert Museum, Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre

December 6-7, 2019

To book see: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/Vvq9oLvj/the-institutional-lives-of-photographs-dec-2019

Bodleian Library Publishing is publishing a new book Now and Then tying in with an exhibition of the same name. Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings made over forty-five years, capture the life of England's ‘great ordinary’. Challenging the status quo by working collaboratively, he has fashioned from his many encounters a nation’s story both magical and familiar.

His new book covers the full range of his ground-breaking projects, drawing on his archives now held at the Bodleian Library. Fiercely independent, Meadows devised many of his creative processes. He ran a free portrait studio in Manchester’s Moss Side in 1972, and then travelled 10,000 miles making a national portrait from his converted double-decker bus called the Free Photographic Omnibus, a project he revisited a quarter of a century later.

Alongside the portraits of people, Daniel Meadows also portrays the landscape of England, then and now, and the work people did, many now long-forgotten trades such as the engineer for a steam driven cotton mill and the steeplejack.

At the turn of the millennium Meadows adopted new ‘kitchen table’ technologies to make digital stories: ‘multimedia sonnets from the people’, he called them. He sometimes returned to those he had photographed, listening to how things were and how they had changed. Through their unique voices he finds a moving and insightful commentary on life in Britain and how much it has changed since he began his life’s work.

Daniel Meadows’ photographs have been exhibited widely with solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London (1975), Camerawork Galley (1978), the Photographers’ Gallery (1987) and a touring retrospective from the National Science and Media Museum (2011). Group shows include Tate Britain (2007) and Hayward Gallery Touring (2008).

The exhibition Daniel Meadows: Now & Then celebrates the work of one of Britain’s foremost photographers who worked from the 1970s onward, authentically capturing British life. The exhibition comprises 17 pairs of portraits which depict the same people 25 years apart (1970s – late 1990s), taken as part of Meadows' Free Photographic Omnibus project in the 1970s for which Meadows originally toured the UK in a double-decker bus capturing the lives of ordinary people. The display also features 16 short films about his subjects as well as giant news clippings showing how Meadows reached out via local media to find his subjects. The exhibition marks the recent and important gift of Daniel Meadows’ photographic archive to the Bodleian Libraries. Daniel Meadows: Now & Then, Weston Library, 4 October – 24 November 2019. For more information visit www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whatson

NOW AND THEN: England 1970 - 2015
Daniel Meadows
Publication: 4 October 2019, £25.00

Exhibition: 4 October–24 November 2019 at the Bodleian Libraries.

BPH member Rob Crow is seeking assistance to help identify the members of this group of eight photographers. Seated nearest the camera is Walter Benington (1872-1936) the Pictorialist photographer and leading member of the Linked Ring in its later years.  He was a member of the Ring’s “Hanging Committee” from 1907.  Margaret Harker (1979: 109) has a photograph of the 1909 Committee so this one may possibly be from earlier.

The print is from a collection of family and miscellaneous portraits from a collection of Benington’s work now in Australia.

Any suggestions warmly welcomed. Please comment below. 

A new exhibition and book will mark the important contribution that Tony Ray-Jones (1941–1972) and his legacy, have made to British documentary photography.

The exhibition and book will focus on photographs taken between 1966–1969 as Ray-Jones, driven by curiosity, travelled across the country to document English social customs and what he saw as a disappearing way of life. This small but distinctive body of photographs was part of an evolutionary shift in British photography, placing artistic vision above commercial success. In this short period of time, Ray-Jones managed to establish an individual personal style. He constructed complex images against a uniquely English backdrop, where the spaces between the components of the image were as important as the main subject matter itself.

Ray-Jones’ skills were gleaned from a generation of street photographers he encountered whilst living in New York in the mid-1960s. These photographers included Garry Winogrand, Joel Meyerowitz and others associated with the circle of legendary Harpers Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch. Their pictures defined the era as they used the street as a framework. Ray-Jones applied this new way of seeing to his native England and photographed his observations as they had never been seen before.

In 2012, Martin Parr alongside curator Greg Hobson, revisited Ray-Jones' contact sheets from this period and found previously unseen images. These new discoveries will be exhibited and published alongside iconic early images, including vintage prints from the Martin Parr Foundation collection.

RRB Photobooks / Martin Parr Foundation
Publication: 16th October 2019
Hardcover, Red Cloth
30 x 25 cm, 128 pages
Essay by Liz Jobey
Introduction by Martin Parr
Pre-order together with the forthcoming Martin Parr - Early Works for £85

The exhibition opens at the Martin Parr Foundation in October. 

See more here.

Registration for the Charles Piazzi Smyth Bicentenary Symposium at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and associated events, is open until 30 August. Smyth (1819-1900), the second Astronomer Royal for Scotland who established Edinburgh's One O'Clock Gun, was a pioneer in meteorology, metrology, photography, mountaintop observation and Egyptology. The symposium will explore his life, work and contested legacy.

There will be two full days of talks by historians of science, Egyptology and photography, astronomers and curators on 3-4 September, including a plenary lecture by Professor Simon Schaffer. On Monday 2 September there is a tour, visits and a screening of the 2016 film “A Residence Above the Clouds”, and on the Tuesday evening a public lecture by Denis Pellerin (London Stereoscopic Company), where the audience will have stereo viewing glasses to enjoy the projected images.

See https://www.piazzismyth.org/piazzi-smyth-symposium/ for an overview and a link to registration for individual events or the full programme. See https://www.piazzismyth.org/symposium-details/ for details of the academic programme and abstracts. 

The free History of Astronomy walking tour and visit to the archives of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh can be booked here: https://www.piazzismyth.org/symposium-extras/. ​

Thousands of photographs, prints and letters that reveal the private passions and public interests of Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert have been published online to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth. 

The Royal Collection Trust has digitised 17,500 documents for a new website, the majority publicly available for the first time. The website will bring together 10,000 photographs collected and commissioned by Prince Albert; the Raphael Collection, the Prince's study collection of more than 5,000 prints and photographs after the works of Raphael; and official and private papers relating to Prince Albert. They are presented in groups that frequently reflect Albert’s vision for the development and organisation of his collections and papers.

Of particular interest is the photographs collection. Prince Albert played an integral role in the advancement of photography. During a stay in Brighton in 1842, Albert attended the photographic studio of William Constable. The resulting portrait is the earliest surviving photograph of a British royal family member. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were joint patrons of the (later Royal) Photographic Society shortly after its foundation in 1853.

During his lifetime, Prince Albert cultivated a collection of some 10,000 photographs by pioneering nineteenth-century photographers such as Frances Sally Day, Roger Fenton, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Charles Thurston Thomspon and George Washington Wilson. Together these photographs reflect Prince Albert’s unwavering belief in photography as an art form, and his advocacy of its value as a historical record and a means to share knowledge.

See: https://albert.rct.uk/

and news report: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/23/prince-albert-passions-digitised-website-photos-200th-anniversary

Image: WILLIAM EDWARD KILBURN (1818-91)
Prince Albert (1819-1861) 1848
Hand-coloured daguerreotype | 8.6 x 6.3 cm (image) (image) | RCIN 2932487

James Furnival sheds some light on the significance of the Jewellery Quarter and the developments of the photographic industry as we know it.  Birmingham and the Jewelllery Quarter played a very important role in the development of something that we all take for granted now. Through the evening, James will tell us about the key involvements of the JQ and the wider area of Birmingham and its contribution to the way we use and enjoy photography, at the touch of a button.

Gary Stone will be talking about the photographer James A Brimble, author of London’s Epping Forest and owner of Brimble’s bookshop/newsagent in Chingford from the 1940s-70s. Brimble was a member of the Royal Photographic Society from 1941 and Associate from 1942. The talk takes place at Chingford Historical Society, on 19 September, in Chingford, London, from 1930.

See: http://chingfordhistory.org.uk/16226.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*

The Trustees are seeking to appoint a new Chief Executive to lead the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). This prestigious Society, established in 1853, exists to educate members of the public by increasing their knowledge, understanding and appreciation of photography and in doing so to promote the highest standards of accomplishment in this art form.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the RPS and to help take the organisation forward to the next stage of its strategic development. Together with a supportive Board and an ambitious staff team, you will help the Society to become an ever more efficient and impactful organisation for its beneficiaries. 

We are seeking an inspirational senior leader who will share the vision and principles of the Society. You will provide robust leadership to the RPS and support its ambitions for growth, development, collaboration and innovation.
You will have demonstrable senior management experience and a clear track record of driving organisations forward from existing positions of strength. Significant experience of transformational leadership and change management from within the visual arts, photography or charitable sectors would be advantageous.

Details here: https://jobs.theguardian.com/job/6955654/chief-executive/

The V&A is advertising for an Assistant Curator, Photographs, to replace Catherine Troiano who has moved to a curatorial role at the National Trust. Applications are required by 9 September 2019. 

The V&A is the world's leading museum of art, design and performance. We enrich people's lives by promoting the practice of art and design and increasing knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of the designed world.

We are currently recruiting for the post of Assistant Curator in the Photographs Section of the Word & Image Department (WID). The post holder will care for and provide physical and intellectual access to the permanent collections.

The successful candidate will be educated up to at least degree level with substantive experience of work or volunteering within a museum or other relevant cultural organisation. Excellent grammatical English, computer skills and a knowledge of the history of photography are essential.

Please note that the V&A is unable to sponsor visa applications.

See more here.

Closing date for applications: Monday 9 September 2019 at 5pm.

Interviews will be held on Tuesday 24 September 2019.