To mark the rebranding and renaming of the National Science and Media Museum, this year’s conference will explore research into sound and vision in museums. It will also showcase research from across the Science Museum Group, its partners, and collaborators in HEIs.

See link below for the full programme, which includes a mix of SMG staff members and CDA students, as well as researchers from UK and international universities.

As well as papers in the plenary sessions, the conference will include round-table discussions, lightning talks and optional live performances, as well as the opportunity to experience the Museum of Portable Sound and ADAPT Live!

Delegates are also invited to a drinks reception and private view of the museum's new exhibition.

See the full programme and book here: https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/whats-on/2017-science-museum-group-research-conference

This autumn, the V&A will explore how trees have been a source of inspiration to photographers all over the world, from the earliest practitioners to the present day. This display features photographs by celebrated artists such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Steiglitz and Agnes Warburg who consistently responded to trees as a subject in their work. Into the Woods: Trees in Photography will be the first display that draws on works from both the recently transferred Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection and the V&A permanent photographs collection ahead of the opening of the new Photography Centre in 2018.

From an early example of manipulated photography made in 1839 by Johann Carl Enslen, a German painter inspired by Henry Fox Talbot’s work in England, to recent photographs such as Tal Shochat’s work in which she applies the conventions of studio portraiture to photographing fruit trees, the display will demonstrate the fascination that trees have held for artists. It will include a study of an ancient oak tree (1854) by William, Second Earl of Craven, who custom-built a horse-drawn van which acted as both camera and darkroom on his estate in Berkshire; recent work by Tokihiro Sato made in the forests of the Hakkoda Mountains in Japan; and prints by Awoiska van der Molen who created long exposures of the dramatic volcanic terrain in the Canary Islands.

Trees were among the first photographic subjects collected by the V&A as a resource for artists and designers, such as Edward Fox’s pairings of summer and winter trees seen from the same vantage point that became part of the collection in 1865. The V&A has continued to acquire photographs of trees in various contexts: within landscapes and forests, as lone subjects, in relationship to humans, in rural and urban settings, and as symbols of cultural significance. The display will also include historic works by Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier Bresson, Paul Strand and Lady Clementina Hawarden, alongside contemporary artists Simone Nieweg, John Davies and Stephen Shore.

While photographs of trees have served as botanical and topographical illustration, contemporary photographic artists have also looked to trees for creative expression. Like portrait subjects, isolated trees convey individual and national identities and can mirror our characters and moods. Robert Adams highlights the human impact on the environment in an image showing a pair of deciduous trees contending with the smoggy Californian cityscape beyond, dominated by rows of palms. Sheva Fruitman captures an urban scene where a pair of tree trimmers appear like a performance of marionettes in silhouette. Gerhard Stromberg’s felled Sussex woodland shows traditional coppicing in action: cutting back to encourage new growth. Carried out in the UK since at least the 16th century, the practice creates poles used for buildings, furniture, fencing, charcoal and many other functions.

The display marks the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, signed in 1217 by King Henry III, to protect the rights of free men in England to access and use the Royal Forests – and the launch of the 2017 Charter for Trees, Woods and People to protect trees and woods in the UK.

V&A Museum, Room 38A
from 18 November
see: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/into-the-woods

Image: Samuel Bourne, Poplar Avenue, Srinuggur, Kashmir, from the end, 1864

At a time when individual rights are being contested and those on the fringes of society feel ever more marginalised from mainstream political and social narratives, the exhibition Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins, celebrates and explores photography’s enduring relationship with individuals and communities who operate on the margins or openly flout social conventions through the work of photographers including Paz Errazuriz, Casa Susanna Collection, Mary Ellen Mark, and Pieter Hugo amongst others.

Driven by motivations both personal and political, many of the photographers in the exhibition sought to provide an authentic representation of disenfranchised communities, often conspiring with them to construct their own identity through the camera lens. Featuring a cast of transsexuals, cross-dressers, prostitutes, hustlers, bikers, junkies, eccentrics, circus performers, street urchins and tearaways, gang members, back-street peddlers and survivalists, the works in the exhibition present the outsider as an agent of change. The non-conventional subject is here a prism through which to view the world afresh. 
 
Artists have historically been instrumental in presenting the image of the outsider for a wider public. Employing a diverse set of aesthetic strategies from portraiture to social documentary and vernacular to street photography, the artists in the exhibition approach their subject with a humanity and empathy that is both empowering and inclusive. 
 
Reflecting a more diverse, more complex and more authentic view of the world, Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins touches on themes of gender and sexuality, drugs, youth culture and minorities of all kinds and includes bodies of work from Japan to the US, and from Chile to Nigeria. By recording and documenting those on the margins, the images in the exhibition bear witness to how social attitudes change across time and space, charting how visual representation has helped shape current discourse in relation to marginalised or alternative communities.

Another Kind of Life 
Photography on the Margins
Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre
Wed 28 Feb – Sun 27 May 2018 

See more here: https://www.barbican.org.uk/another-kind-of-life-photography-on-the-margins

Over two-days a series of papers will discuss different aspects of French paper negatives including their history, their production and conservation. French institutions and museums hold impressive collections of negatives, and this conference is a way to look at these objects from several perspectives.

The two days are organized in three multidisciplinary and thematic sessions. The historical significance of these negatives will be complemented by their chemical and physical characterization (Session 1). Then, conservation challenges will be discussed, in regards to exhibition matters (Session 2). Finally, a last session will be dedicated to contemporary and artistic practices of paper negative and related processes (Session 3). A panel discussion will close the conference.  

This conference is a follow up on a research programme on French paper negatives (1841-1860) conducted at the Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation, in partnership with the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, funded by the Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine in 2016 and 2017.

The conference will be held on December 7 and 8, 2017 in the Jean Rouch auditorium at the Musée de l’Homme, in Paris, that re-opened in 2015. Registration is free but the seats limited (157 seats). Simultaneous translation into English will be available. This conference is organized with the support of the International Research Network on Photography « Photographs: Perception and Changes », funded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

See more and sign up here: https://calotype-2017.sciencesconf.org/

The sessions will be filmed and will be made available in 2018. 

The life of Robert Hunt FRS (1807-1887), a one-time Falmouth resident who made great contributions to early photography, has been celebrated with the unveiling of a plaque at his former home in Kimberley Park Road.

Robert Hunt was chemist, writer and early photographer, and a blue plaque was officially unveiled at 4 Kimberley Park Road, where Hunt used to live when it was part of Berkeley Vale.

There were speeches by Charles Fox, whose ancestor, Robert Barclay Fox, had a close connection with Robert Hunt, Professor David Hosken of the University of Exeter, and by the mayor, Grenville Chappel, and thanks were given by Professor Mike Jenks, chair of Falmouth Civic Society. The plaque had been initiated by Falmouth Civic Society and sponsored by the University of Exeter.

See more here: http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/15624683.Photographic_pioneer_honoured_with_blue_plaque/

Professor Nina Lager Vestberg (NTNU: Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will be in the United Kingdom this coming week and will give three seminars. On 6 November at the Photographic History Research Centre in Leicester she will discuss Analogue Ancestors and Digital Descendants: On Genealogy and the Archival Cultures of Photography. On 8 November the London School of Film Media and Design Thinking the Image Research Group will host Professor Vestburg who will discuss Photography as a technology of history: the medium and its materialities in the digital museum. On 9 November at Birkbeck's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre she will discuss Images at Work: Digitisation and the Archival Cultures of Photography.

PHRC, De montfort University, Clephan Building, room CL0.17, Monday 5.30-7pm

November 6, 2017, Free, open to all

This presentation addresses genealogy as an epistemological trope in the archival cultures of photography, using case studies both from the historiography of photography and from contemporary digital culture. Some of the classic writings on photography abound with genealogical metaphors and impulses, from Walter Benjamin observing that all nineteenth-century portraits seem to carry a ’family resemblance’ to Roland Barthes recognising photography’s noeme in an image of his own mother. Similarly, online archives and image resources are steeped in the logic of genealogy, from the ’parent directories’ and ’child pages’ that organise content at file level, to content-based search algorithms, like Google Image Search, which retrieve and sort digital image files based on machine-recognisable visual – ’family’– resemblance. Outlining a current research project on online museum collections, which explores how photographic images insert themselves between museum objects and the digital user interface, the presentation invites discussion of how originals beget reproductions, and surrogates perform reproductive services, in the increasingly multi-layered and large-scale image collections that constitute the online avatars of museums and archives.

University of West London, St Mary’s Rd, Ealing, London W5 5RF 

November 8th at 2pm Room BY.01.018

Photographic images function as something between a record and an artefact in online collections of art and cultural heritage. This quality is all the more apparent in digitised objects which themselves represent or form part of photographic culture. Starting from the broad conception of photography as a key technology of history, and focusing on examples from the Norwegian online museum portal, DigitaltMuseum, this presentation will discuss the digital mediation of photographic documents as sources to the history of the photographic medium itself.

ALL WELCOME but please RSVP so we have an idea of numbers to michelle.henning@uwl.ac.uk

History and Theory of Photography Research Centre

Free and open to all, at 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

9 November 2017, 6:00-7:30pm

Room 106 (Vanessa Bell and Lydia Lopokova studio)

The digitised research cultures of today are deeply dependent on technologies that count photography among their immediate ancestors. Whether consulting a digitally scanned image of a book page through the Google Books facility, or examining a digitised photograph of a material object in an online museum collection, professional and amateur researchers alike encounter an overwhelming share of their sources in the form of digital surrogates, which are either derived from pre-existing photographic records or created through lens-based imaging technologies that trace their lineage back to photography. This work-in-progress presentation takes the view that photography and its archival cultures may be seen as active agents rather than passive objects of digitisation. Engaging the work of Steve Edwards (2006) and Mercedes Bunz (2013), it particularly explores how the notion of skill and knowledge as contested territories within capitalist production is equally applicable to recent and ongoing practices of digitisation, as to earlier practices of industrialisation.

Centro de la Imagen is pleased to announce the call for speakers for the II Meeting of Photographic Archives “Photographic Assets: A heritage at risk”, that will be held from May 25th to 27th in Lima, Peru.

Background

On 26th and 27th of April 2016, the First Meeting of Photographic Archives of Lima took place thanks to the collaboration between public and private institutions such as Centro de la Imagen, MALI and the National Library of Peru (BNP) as venue of the event.

With a total of 18 national and international speakers, we managed to have an attendance of about 480 people and address relevant subjects to promote a better approach to the management of photographic heritage in the areas of conservation, dissemination, research, cataloging, digitization and legal framework.

II Meeting of Photographic Archives “Photographic Assets: A heritage at risk”

In this occasion, the Meeting will comprise two days of conferences (May 25-26) and one day of workshops with international specialists (May 27). The topic of this meeting will be around the vulnerability in which much of the photographic heritage is currently found and the urgency to apply preventive conservation measures to promote its long term permanence.

It is intended to address this concern by analyzing and knowing the risks of stability of the material of the photographs. Experiences of the past will also be shared to describe losses, mutilations, falsifications, dismemberment of collections, etc. The dangers to which the photographs are currently exposed will be analyzed and identified such as the geographic and environmental conditions, natural disasters and dangers generated by humans. Emphasis will be placed on the importance of preparing recovery plans in emergency situations specially designed for photographic materials.

The key topics are: 

- Cases that describe losses, mutilations, falsifications dismemberment of collections, looting, negligence, etc.
- Analysis and identification of dangers to which the photographs are currently exposed, such as the geographic and environmental conditions of the country, natural disasters and dangers generated by humans.
- Preparation of recovery plans in emergency situations specially designed for photographic material.
- Knowledge and analysis of the stability risks of the photographic material.
- Projects of recovery, valorization, conservation, dissemination and access of photographic archives at risk.
- Policies for the defense of photographic heritage.
- Fundraising for the recovery and dissemination of archives.
- Educational projects to improve good practices in archives, libraries, collections and museums.
- Importance of photography as a historical and aesthetic document.

The Meeting will have the aim of promoting the reduction of the risks that threaten the permanence of the photographic heritage from a perspective not only of the conservation of photographic material but also of the awareness of the value of their images and the need to implement educational and fund raising projects.

Find our more here: https://centrodelaimagen.edu.pe/blog/ii-encuentro-de-archivos-fotograficos-convocatoria-para-ponentes

This exhibition spotlights the work of Clarence White (1871-1925), a founding member of the Photo-Secession, a gifted photographer celebrated for his beautiful scenes of quiet domesticity and outdoor idylls, and an influential teacher and photographic mentor. The first retrospective devoted to the photographer in over a generation, this exhibition and accompanying publication will survey White’s career from his beginnings in 1895 in Ohio to his death in Mexico in 1925 and, importantly, will locate his work within the contexts of the international Arts and Crafts movement, the development of photographic magazine illustration and advertising, and the redefinition of childhood and the domestic sphere.

Drawing on the Clarence H. White Archives at the Princeton University Art Museum, and thus uniquely suited to development by Princeton, as well as loans from other public and private collections, Clarence White and His World will juxtapose White’s skillfully posed portraits and studies of his family and friends with those of his colleagues, such as Paul Haviland, Gertrude Käsebier, and F. Holland Day, and will also be the first exhibition to explore a little known series of nudes and figure studies done with Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. White’s two decades as a teacher will be highlighted by the work of artists who studied with him and by extensive documentation of his schools in Maine, Connecticut, and Manhattan. Completing White’s visual world, the exhibition will also feature a selection of paintings and prints by William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing, Max Weber, Edmund Tarbell, John Alexander, and others. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925
Saturday, October 7, 2017 - Sunday, January 7, 2018
Princeton University Art Museum

See: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/1751

Since its very beginnings, professional as well as non-professional photographers have used photography in Central and Eastern Europe to record all aspects of life. Photography has thus participated in spreading and shaping knowledge about the region, its people, and the rest of the world. In spite of the central role photography has played in the diverse socio-cultural environments of Central and Eastern Europe, research on its history in this part of the continent is still little appreciated and remains understudied. The 2018 conference in Ljubljana will be the third in a series of international conferences initiated in Warsaw in 2016 with the aim of developing and promoting interdisciplinary studies about photography and its histories in the region.

In 2018, we seek to enhance understandings of the mechanisms and realities that have influenced the development of local photographic practices and their relationship with uses of photography elsewhere. We also aspire to expand knowledge about social and cultural customs that facilitated the circulation and legacies of photographs throughout the medium’s history in the region. Paper proposals may therefore address a range of interrelated topics, including but not limited to:

• The history and state of photographic collections/archives, the opportunities they present and the challenges they face
• The history and state of local research practices and academic discourses on photography (research topics, theory and methodology)
• The circulation of photographs and photographic images in public and private spheres and their impact on collective imaginations in Central and Eastern Europe (e.g. the uses of photography in art, media, politics…)

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations from scholars working in areas such as: photography, art history and theory, visual sociology, anthropology, museology, philosophy, ethnography, cultural studies, visual and media studies, communications, and fine and graphic arts.

To propose a paper, please send your abstract (no less than 250 and no more than 300 words including the title) by the 31st December 2017 to photographycee@liberproarte.eu

In addition, please include a short biographical note of no more than 150 words with full affiliation, the title of your presentation and contact details as a separate document.

The presentation will be given in English

Submission deadline: 31 December 2017

Notification of acceptance: 1 February 2018

Registration: 15 February-30 April 2018

Venue:

The City Museum of Ljubljana, Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Gosposka 15, Ljubljana, Slovenia   http://www.mgml.si

See the full call here: https://photographycee.wordpress.com/call-for-papers-2018/

Royal Collection Trust is embarking on a major project exploring the life, works and legacy of Prince Albert. The Collection, formed of prints and early photographs, is an indispensable resource for the study of the many works collected and commissioned by Prince Albert.

As part of our Photographs team, you'll research this relatively unexplored area of the Royal Collection, uncovering fascinating stories and bringing them alive through catalogues, presentations and new resources.

Developing your own expertise, as well as the teams' knowledge, you'll also share your discoveries with a wider audience through presentation and interpretation.

At the same time, you'll make sure the photograph collection has proper custodial control, and will edit and update existing online records, ensuring they are accessible and easy to navigate.

Drawing on expertise from teams across Royal Collection Trust, collaboration will be part of your daily routine and will be key to your success.

But, above all, your passion for stewardship and interpretation will help to preserve the photographic heritage of this unique collection.

The Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group is holding its annual research day. It will consist of presentations by new and experienced photographic history researchers. presenting results and conclusions from completed projects. Each presentation will be allocated 20 minutes. Those wishing to talk about new projects or work in progress will be allocated 10 minutes. 

The aim, as always, is to provide researchers with an opportunity to present their work in a friendly and supportive environment. Contributions from new researchers are particularly welcome and there will be several experienced members on hand to give advice if sought.

Confirmed speakers:

Dr Ron Callender FRPS - “Land Ahoy!” Experiments on the Land effect and digital processing – surprises and puzzles.

Rose Teanby ARPS – The life and work of Thomas Frederick Hardwich.

Tom Harrison (Lecturer, SHU) - In the footsteps of Maxwell and Stone (followed by practical demonstration)

Andrew Robinson (Senior Lecturer, SHU) - Lilliput, Brandt, and the Photo Essay.

Pete James FRPS ASICI - George Shaw of Birmingham.

Howard Bagshaw ARPS - The research approach leading to the production of the award-winning AV Migrant Mother, which will be shown at the conclusion of this paper.

Steven Joseph FRPS - Development of the online database: Directory of Belgian Photographers.

Darcy White (Principal Lecturer, SHU) - Awesome Topographies: tensions and speculations on the role of the expressive and factual in landscape photography.

Janine Freeston ARPS - A tour of the first Exhibition of Colour Photography in Britain.

Colleen Aveston (Recent Graduate, SHU) - Hybrid Cyanotypes – a brief introduction to the use of a digital/analogue workflow in the production of contemporary Cyanotype prints (followed by a presentation of work).

Kate O’Neill - Photography and domestic service 1850 – 1920.

To book a place click here: http://www.goo.gl/xGbnVm

The birth of abstract art and the invention of photography were both defining moments in modern visual culture, but these two stories are often told separately. Into the Light is the first major exhibition to explore the relationship between the two, spanning the century from the 1910s to the present day. It brings to life the innovation and originality of photographers over this period, and shows how they responded and contributed to the development of abstraction. Key vintage prints are brought together from pioneers like Paul Strand, László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, as well as lesser-known experimental works and those of contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten and Thomas Ruff. Their work is shown alongside abstract paintings, sculptures and installations by major figures in abstract art, from Georges Braque and Jackson Pollock to Carl Andre and Bridget Riley.

See more here here and book tickets: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/light-photography-and-abstract-art

Image: Guy Bourdin, Untitled 1952 © The Guy Bourdin Estate

London's Cinema Museum occupies a NHS-owned building, the former Lambeth workhouse in Kennington -  which housed the child Charlie Chaplin. The premises are now under threat and a petition has been launched to ensure that this important museum, archive and collection can remain in such an important and relevant building. It is important not simply for London, but for Britain and international film history. 

Over 13,000 people have signed, find out more and lend your support here: https://www.change.org/p/matthew-patrick-slam-nhs-uk-love-cinema-save-the-cinema-museum/

The Royal Collection has over 450,000 photographs . They have been acquired by British monarchs, their consorts and other members of the royal family from 1842 to the present day. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Prince Albert (1819–61) laid the foundations of the collection, acquiring and commissioning new works from some of the finest early photographers, including Francis Bedford (1815–94), Roger Fenton (1816–69), Nicolaas Hennemann (1813–98) and Oscar Rejlander (1813–75), among many others.

Queen Victoria was particularly keen to acquire portraits that reflected the diversity of human experience, society and culture from across Britain and the British Empire. This trail highlights lesser known Black and Asian history in Victorian Britain, told through the individual narratives of Maharaja Duleep  Singh (1838–93), Prince Alamayu (1861–79), Sarah Forbes Bonetta (1843–80) and Cetshwayo, King of the Zulu (1826–84). Their stories, seen through selected photographs and works of art from the Royal Collection, connect with broader colonial and imperial histories and with the expansion of Empire during the nineteenth century.

The representation of Black and Asian individuals and communities within early photography in the Royal Collection is the focus of ongoing research as part of a partnership with Autograph ABP.

See more and explore the Collection here: https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/themes/trails/black-and-asian-history-and-victorian-britain#/

Image: Dr Ernst Becker (1826-88), Maharaja Duleep Singh of Lahore (1838–93) 23 August 1854. RCIN 2906149

The Girona City Council through the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion (CRDI) and the Museum of Cinema, in collaboration with the Friends of UNESCO, commemorate once more the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage with two online proposals:

1. CRDI presents a new audiovisual product, created using 3D technology, for a better understanding of the technical procedure of formation of the gravure on copper plate from the original technique of Talbot-Klic (1879). Script by Carles Mitjà. Project execution by CIFOG (Escola de Cicles Formatius de Girona).
2. Part of the bibliography collection about Photography Technique it's available online for researchers and for all users. This collection belongs to the specialized library of the Municipal Archive and to the one from the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya. The digitisation and online publication aims to offer full access to 127 books dated before 1950.

The exhibition William Henry Fox Talbot. At the Origins of Photography will be held from February, 5 to April, 9, 2018 at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. As part of this a conference will be held.

The prime objective of the conference is an analytical comprehension of a new phenomenon in the history of photography of the 19th century – negative-positive process, invented and patented by British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841.

In this regard it is planned to discuss the next range of questions:

1. Concept photographical in sociocultural and art meaning;

2. The peculiarities of the calotype process: the negative and the print;

3. The first cameras of the 19th century;

4. Copying: technical process and its possibilities;

5. The peculiarities of the one-layer printing technologies of the 19th century.

The conference aims to consider the unique phenomenon of early analogue photography as an aesthetic category. Equally important is the range of issues related to the uniqueness of the historical prints, and therefore to the problems of their historical existence, collecting, study and advanced storage: a) the problems of restoration and preservation of the early negative-positive prints and negatives; b) the problems of identification of early photographic processes; c) the problems of cataloging and storage of the photographs.

The subject of the conference allows for interdisciplinary approach. We invite researchers of history of photography, art historians, curators of early negative-positive prints, conservators, photographers, culturologists, philosophers, experts in related fields to participate in the conference.

The time limit on speeches is 20 minutes.

The conference reports will be published on the website of The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

The travel expenses are at the cost of the speakers.

Deadline for submissions: December, 15, 2017.

For registration please contact marina.davydova@arts-museum.ru

Please specify:
1. Name
2. Place of employment, position (academic rank)
3. Contact details: telephone, e-mail
4. Title of the report, the abstract (1,000 characters or 180 words)

The Organizing Committee forms the conference programme in accordance with its objectives.

For all questions, please contact:

Olga Averyanova, Head of the Art of Photography Department, The Pushkin State
Museum of Fine Arts
olga.averyanova@arts-museum.ru
Tel. +7 (495) 697 60 35

Marina Davydova, Curator of the conference, Researcher of the Art of Photography Department, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
marina.davydova@arts-museum.ru
Mob. +7 (926) 652 38 91

For more information: http://www.arts-museum.ru/events/archive/2018/talbot/conference/index.php?lang=en

Four Corners announced last year its new archive project, which was made possible by a generous grant of £100,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).The project will explore and document the heritage of film and photographic work of Four Corners and Camerawork that flourished in Bethnal Green, East London from the 1970s.

An extensive public programme will provide access to this history for the first time, offering screenings, talks, study days and a final exhibition. Volunteers will gain skills in archive research, digitization and oral history techniques; record the memories of early participants and help collate archival material.

This project marks the 40th anniversary of Four Corners in East London, and 40 years since the first issue of Camerawork magazine. It will create a lasting account of Four Corners’ early work within independent filmmaking, and Camerawork’s unique contribution to photographic practice; bringing unique archival resources into the public realm to make this important contribution to British cultural history widely accessible.

Loraine Leeson, Chair of Four Corners said: “I am delighted that this significant work will at last be documented and made available to the wider public. The impact that Four Corners and Camerawork had on the UK’s independent film and photography sectors cannot be underestimated.”

Stuart Hobley, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund London, said: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this exciting project will explore and digitise an archive of work relating to 1970s and 1980s East End film and photography. HLF is pleased to support Four Corners as it strives to make the British history of community-arts movements more accessible to audiences.”

Four Corners was founded by four filmmakers - Joanna Davis, Mary Pat Leece, Ronald Peck and Wilf Thust, who came together to develop a new kind of independent filmmaking, to “bring films and filmmaking to those who had previously been excluded from the whole practice”. In Roman Road in 1976 they set up a film workshop and cinema, screening films to local audiences. Early films documented diverse communities: East End, working-class women, first generation Bangladeshis, people from London’s gay community. One of the earliest film workshops in Britain, it was part of a broad oppositional film culture that promoted ‘independent’ filmmaking.

The Half Moon Photography Workshop (later Camerawork) was created in East London by a cooperative of photographers in 1972. Wendy Ewald, Ron McCormick, Julia Meadows, Paul Trevor, Mike Goldwater, Tom Picton, Jo Spence and Terry Dennett, set up a gallery and workshop project with a strong emphasis on social documentary. They began publishing the highly influential Camerawork magazine in 1976, whose aim was to “demystify the process” of photography, and its innovative approach drew on the social and political upheavals of the time. HMPW also brought an extraordinary range of photography to UK and worldwide audiences through the use of innovative laminated touring shows.

From 1978 both organisations were based on Roman Road, just two doors apart. When Camerawork closed in 2000, Four Corners extended its remit to cover photography, with a successful tender to the Arts Council to run the photographic resource. Today Four Corners supports community-based learning, production and exhibition in both film and photography.

The project runs over two years from autumn 2016, comprising:

1. Public programme of screenings, talks, study days, and exhibition.

2. Oral history project with early participants.

3. Online archive including digitization of the Camerawork magazine.

4. Volunteer programme with skills training in research, oral history, and darkroom printing.

5. Physical archive to be lodged at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Call out for material and oral history interviewees

Four Corners is seeking to meet and interview practitioners and participants who would be willing to share their memories, as well as offer access to collections of archival material for digitization and potential deposit at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Four Corners is looking for volunteers who would be interested in participating in the project at many levels, including research, cataloguing, oral history recording, and a wide range of related activities.

Further information contact: info@fourcornersfilm.co.uk

The Martin Parr Foundation (MPF) was launched with an opening party on the 20 October attended by photographers, curators, archivists, academics, writers and others from the world of British photography.

The following day continued the celebration with a seminar on British photography. After a short introduction by Martin Parr, Emma Chetcuti of Multistory spoke about the organsation's work using photography to engage with the local community in West Bromwich and the Black Country. Parr’s own contribution to their work, Black Country Stories, was on display as the MPF’s opening exhibition.

Paul Trevor, an important and remarkable photographer, quit a job as an accountant to become a photographer in the early 1970s. In 1973 he joined the Exit Photography Group, was a founder of the Half Moon Gallery and in 1975 launched the Camera Obscured seminar series. He was a key player in the seminal publication Camerawork which launched in 1975 and ran for 32 issues over a ten year period. His own publications such as Down Wapping remain important books documenting London’s East End.

He has never had the recognition of some of his contemporaries but has continued to work and is currently working with Four Corners to put the Half Moon archive and Camerawork online.  He made a call for anyone with knowledge of any extant exhibitions and the Half Moon slide archive to come forward.  His career to date was summed up in the title of his presentation: Doing the wrong things the right way.

Chloe Dewe Mathews, a young, rising British photographer, and highly regarded by Parr, spoke about her two recent projects documenting the Caspian Sea and the on-going Thames and the traditions and rituals associated with it. This latter work will be published by Aperture in 2018.

Another of Britain’s, perhaps Manx would be more accurate, influential post 1970 photographers Chris Killip (below, left) gave an overview of his career from the perspective of having lived in the United States for the past twenty-six years. He retold stories associated with the people he photographed on the Isle of Man and on the north-east and Cumbrian coasts: tough people, suspicious of incomers (and photographers), working in tough jobs associated with coal and fishing. Having re-investigated his own archive and discovering images that he had overlooked and never printed from he posed the question “who’s pictures are these?”. His, or the subjects and the communities in front of his camera? In Chris’s view it was clearly the latter.  His distinctive photography and avoidance of particular subjects was, as he said, to avoid becoming becoming labelled a 'nature' or 'industrial' photographer.

Recently he had been looking anew at his work of Newcastle’s Harland and Wolff shipyards and The Station, a Newcastle punk music venue which arose after the 1984-5 miners’ strike. He aims to publish these pictures for the first time in a book, The Station, and showed a dummy. He is currently seeking funding.

The day concluded with a panel discussion on British photography in the twenty-first century, chaired by Parr and with Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern,  Val Williams, from PARC, Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery and Susanna Brown, a curator of photography at the V&A Museum.  

Each gave a short introduction to their institution. Brown highlighted the V&A’s history of collecting photography and noted the opening of the first phase of the museum’s new galleries and research centre at the end of September 2018. Morris highlighted the absence of photography from the Tate until 2009 and claimed it was now centre stage. Unlike the V&A the Tate did not have a department of photography as it integrated lens-based practices (photography?) in to everything that the Tate did.  

Rogers noted the Gallery’s fiftieth anniversary in 2021 and its historical position along with Impressions, Stills and Amber/Side. All institutions needed to collaborate to create larger audiences for photography. She flagged the pressure from commercial galleries “doing our jobs and competing with us and not helping us”. She considered online and digital as offering an opportunity which the Gallery had recognised in 2011 when she appointed a Head of digital photography.

Williams felt slightly melancholic after hearing the day’s presentations and how much of 1970s photography had been forgotten. She felt British photography was largely neglected and betrayed by larger institutions. She considered that all institutions needed photography because of its accessibility for audiences.  Parr added that national gallery directors did not attend the major photography festivals such as Arles in the same way as they did art festivals such as the Venice Biennale.

In response to a question about how institutions purchased photography Brown said the V&A looked to fill gaps in its collections and bought when it had an exhibition upcoming and after an exhibition had closed. The V&A curators met photographers and visited graduate shows.  For the V&A storage space was a problem and limited acquisitions of acrhives.  Williams highlighted the importance not just of photographs but also the contextual material such as notebooks and letters. She noted that there was a whole group of photographers in the room who were reaching a point when they needed to consider what happened to their own photography archive. Morris said that the Tate only collected for display and did not collect archives, in part, because of the responsibility of looking after them and providing public access. There was a challenge around collecting digital media.

Rogers opined that there was a need for a philanthropist in the UK to fund a space to store and protect photographers’ archives as Pier 24 was doing in New York. The ensuing discussion focused largely on photographers’ archives and how they should be preserved.  Chris Killip (left) said he was tempted to select 1400 of his best images and burn the remainder so that his legacy was not misrepresented by future curators. Jem Southam noted that there were proposals for a dispersed national photography collection and a common strategy but, ultimately, it was for photographers to solve the problem and not the big institutions.  Four Corners, which houses the Half Moon Archive, suggested that market forces would determine the shape of an archive.

Parr said that he looks at work from young, British photographers to collect when they are “cheap and under-rated” . He endorsement can help establish careers. He noted that the MPF will house the Peter Mitchell archive. 

The Martin Parr Foundation is a new centre for British photography and the work of Martin Parr. It is open to the public and will be running regular events. For more information and to sign up to its mailing list visit: http://www.martinparrfoundation.org/

On Saturday, 14 October around 30 people came together in the small parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Wendling, to remember the photographer Robert Howlett (1831-1858) who died on 2 December 1858, aged 27 years. A year long project which was crowd-funded, but initiated and realised by Rose Teanby culminated in the restoration of Howlett's grave and its re-dedication led by Reverend Julia Hemp. 

The proceedings were attended by Teanby, representatives of the Royal Photographic Society, descendants of Howlett and Thomas Hardwich, Howlett's great friend and collaborator. Along the way Teanby has dispelled misconceptions about Howlett'ds life and work, corrected oft-repeated facts and revised attributions of photographs. She has also rewritten the history of Howlett's most famous photograph showing Brunel in front of the chains of the SS Great Eastern. 

Saturday's ceremony was a fitting culmination of this work and a tribute to an important figure in photography's early history. Some further work is in hand including a catalogue raisonné of Howlett's photographs and there is the possibility of another grave retsoration project of another early, forgotten, photographic figure. 

See: http://www.photohistories.com/Photo-Histories/51/robert-howlett-and-the-power-of-photography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Howlett

The final Workshop of the Million Pictures project will be held in Exeter, south-west England, on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 January 2018, with an additional meeting of the research group on the morning of Saturday 13 January.

The project is a collaboration between magic lantern researchers in five institutions in different European countries, examining the uses of lantern slides and technologies in educational and institutional contexts. More details are at http://a-million-pictures.wp.hum.uu.nl/.

The detailed workshop programme will be available a little later, but the outline plan is:

Thursday 11 January

-- 14.00-17.00 (approx.), presentations and panel discussions

-- 18.00 - evening reception, performance, dinner

Friday 12 January

-- 09.00-17.00 (approx.), presentations and panel discussions

-- 18.30 (approx.), buffet dinner

-- 20.00 magic lantern spectacle at local theatre (also open to the public).

Saturday 13 January

-- 10.00-12.00 (approx.), research team assembly

The venues will be the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (www.rammmuseum.org.uk), the Barnfield Theatre (www.barnfieldtheatre.org.uk) and the Devon and Exeter Institution (www.devonandexeterinstitution.org).

Everyone is welcome to join us for discussions and presentations on all aspects of lantern slide use in educational contexts, plus reflections from the project teams and thoughts on how we should build on the excellent progress made in the course of the project. There is no charge for attendance, and the evening events are included for workshop participants, but if you are interested please register your attendance with us by 31 October 2017 so we can plan the catering and other arrangements.

If you would like to join us, or have any questions (including travel, accommodation etc.) please contact Richard Crangle (r.crangle@googlemail.com) or Joe Kember (j.e.kember@exeter.ac.uk).