He may be best known as the guitarist for legendary band Queen but Brian May will visit Aberdeen in August to celebrate the work of another great who rose to fame thanks to a very different royal connection.

The musician and song writer will appear at the University of Aberdeen in his capacity as photographic historian and Director of The London Stereoscopic Company for the launch of a new book dedicated to Scotland’s great Victorian photographer George Washington Wilson, who hailed from the city, written by the aptly named Professor Roger Taylor. The university houses the GWW archive. 

Wilson rose to fame after he was appointed to document the construction of Balmoral Castle and became Photographer to the Queen. His innovations in stereoscopic photography during the 1850s created some of the most captivating stereo (3-D) images of the Victorian period.

May has contributed to a new book George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer written by Professor Roger Taylor, the world authority on George Washington Wilson. It will be launched in the city on August 16 at the University of Aberdeen which holds the largest collection of Wilson’s work.

Wilson was a technical and aesthetic innovator and when he began taking two shots of a scene which when viewed together created a three-dimensional image, it quickly became a craze first in Britain and then across the world.

To view the images in their full glory, a special viewer is required and to mark the entry of LSC into book publishing, May created the OWL stereoscope.  This unique viewing device allows modern audiences to see the photographs in the same way as their Victorian counterparts and is included with every book.

May will join Professor Taylor for a celebration of the life of George Washington Wilson at the University of Aberdeen’s King’s College campus. It is a fitting venue for the event as the University holds some 38,000 of the estimated 40,000 glass plate images Wilson captured around the world during his prolific career.

The pair will trace Wilson’s career and show key examples of his work, as featured in the book, using a stunning new 3-D projection system. The audience will also be provided with the highest of quality 3-D glasses to enjoy the images as they were intended.

Professor Phil Hannaford, Interim Senior Vice-Principal of the University of Aberdeen, said he was delighted to be able to celebrate the launch of the book in Wilson’s home city.

“The city of Aberdeen and the University has a long association with George Washington Wilson – a true pioneer of photography – and we are proud not only to hold the world’s largest collection of his work but to have undertaken extensive work to digitise this wonderful collection and make it available to the public.

“The book George Washington Wilson, Artist and Photographer is an outstanding work which will bring his work to new audiences. “We are delighted to be able to welcome Brian May and Professor Roger Taylor to our campus to celebrate the launch of this new work and look forward to hearing their fascinating insights into his life and work.”

Brian May said: “It’s my great pleasure to introduce to you all this beautiful book, at the request of its author, my great friend Professor Roger Taylor. It’s been many years in the making, and I’m confident it will have been worth every minute. It presents the life and work of celebrated Scottish landscape photographer George Washington Wilson, who with great skill and flair, photographed the unique beauties of the Scottish countryside in the 1860s with his stereoscopic camera. The resulting 3-D images proved immensely successful and established Wilson’s national reputation as a pre-eminent photographer. Now, courtesy of the Lite OWL included with every book, Wilson’s images can be experienced in exactly the same way they were enjoyed by the Victorian public.”  

Tickets for the launch event, which will be held in the Art’s Lecture Theatre, King’s College, Old Aberdeen on August 16, are available from www.abdn.ac.uk/events/13419/

George Washington Wilson: Artist and Photographer, by Prof Roger Taylor, Intro by Brian May, The London Stereoscopic Company, publishes on 15 August 2018, £30

Making the collection available to the public

In 2011 the University of Aberdeen made available online more than 35,000 high resolution digital versions of images originally taken between 1853 and 1908 by the Aberdeen photographic firm George Washington Wilson & Co.

The images, taken throughout Scotland the UK and beyond, allow the examination of details previously hidden from the naked eye.

The George Washington Wilson online archive can be viewed at www.abdn.ac.uk/historic/gww/index.htm

At the National Science and Media Museum, Insight is our unique collections facility, a 'treasure-trove' of over 26,000 library, archive and image collections. As a large, informal, learning centrethat is truly open to all, our information ignites curiosity, enhancing the visitor experience for our diverse audiences, researchers and the wider public.

To support our ongoing management and development of these collections, we are looking for an Archive and Library Manager to join us at the National Science and Media Musuem in Bradford, on a permanent basis.

In this role, you will be our senior archivist at the musuem, championing the care of and promoting access to our historic collections in Insight. Aside from managing the daily operation of our centre andany colleagues who support its running, you will assist with digitisation projects, cataloguing and working collaboratively to promote best practice across Science Museum Group.

Joining us, you will bring experience of managing library, archive or special collections services and have detailed knowledge of collection management best practice. With experience of and a passion for cataloguing projects, you will be a positive advocate of our collections, being able to work collaboratively and support the development of multi-functional teams.

You will be offered excellent benefits, including 25 days annual in addition to 8 bank holidays, a contributory company pension scheme, BUPA medical and dental care, an interest free loan scheme and numerous staff discounts whilst developing your career in a world class museum group.

Applications close 28 July. See more here

Special Auction Services auction of Fine Photographica on 17 July includes the Mervyn Heard collection of magic lantern slides, optical toys and stereoscopy.Also included are photographs and cameras.  A respected collector and scholar of the popular visual culture and and the lantern Heard died last year.

The catalogue is available here: https://www.specialauctionservices.com/Auction-Calendar/2018/Fine-Photographica-(1)

We are seeking an Assistant Curator to work in the Word & Image Department for 12 months. You will have responsibility for assisting with projects connected to the museum’s important and growing collection of fashion photographs. As a member of a curatorial team, an Assistant Curator provides curatorial support to the museum’s Collections departments and to museum projects, and liaises with the Collections Services teams. (Conservation; Technical Services; Photography Services; and Documentation and Collections Management Services). 

Assistant Curators spend their time working on object-related activity and maintaining documentation which is relevant and integral to the museum’s collections management policy. All posts deal with enquiries from the public – written, by telephone and in person – and Assistant Curators should have a strong commitment to public access. The range of tasks undertaken by Assistant Curators varies considerably at different points of time but it is the museum’s intention that Assistant Curators should gain as wide an experience of curatorial work as possible.

See more here

This new publication by Robin Ansell, Allan Collier and Phil Nichols is not just a dating guide to old photographs, but is also a celebration of Somerset’s photographic history, as seen through the lives and work of nearly 800 photographers. It will appeal to family, local, social and photographic historians, including collectors, as a reliable and indispensable reference source on the subject.

The accompanying DVD contains more than 1,500 images and mini-biographies of each of the photographers. All three authors have experience in local history research and are keen photography collectors.

Secure the Shadow. Somerset Photographers 1839-1939
Robin Ansell, Allan Collier and Phil Nichols
105 pages.  soft covers (297 x 210 mm).  DVD:  4,495 pages, of which 2,746 contain images.
Somerset and Dorset Family History Society, 2018

Available for £12 (plus p&p) from the Somerset & Dorset Family History Society, at its Yeovil offices at Broadway House, Peter Street, Yeovil BA20 1PN (tel: 01935-429609) or via its online shop at shop.sdfhs.org/publications/somerset-books

Photoworks seeks to appoint a Curator. This post is an exciting opportunity for an experienced individual to work with the new Director to help shape the curatorial programme. Within the first six months of taking up the post, the successful candidate will help deliver Brighton Photo Biennial and Photoworks Annual. An ambitious Curator will be able to use this opportunity to build on and develop their existing experience and skill-set.

Download/complete the application documents using the following links:

• Curator Recruitment Pack
• Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form

Photoworks is an equal opportunities employer and committed to encouraging applications from diverse candidates.

See more here: https://photoworks.org.uk/project-news/job-opportunity-curator-june-2018/

For the last year or so a group of volunteers have been doing a stock-take of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science (PSNS) library held in Perth Museum. This is prior to the closure of the museum and removal of its contents to a new collection store to be built as part of Perth and Kinross Council’s proposed cultural programme with the redevelopment of the City Hall. 

Among the library’s collections volunteer David Perry has discovered a copy of Ackermann's Photogenic Drawing Apparatus: Directions for Use. This 8-page pamphlet was published in April 1839 and it was the first photographic instruction book to be printed. It accompanied a box of paper, a printing frame and chemicals for making ‘photogenic drawings’. The pamphlet explained how to use the apparatus to produce photographs according to Henry Talbot’s pioneering paper negative process. Talbot had been experimenting since 1834 and publicised his experiments in January 1839 to the Royal Society in London after hearing about Louis Daguerre’s parallel experiments in photography in France.

The discovery of the pamphlet in the library doubles the number of known copies in existence from one to two. The only other known copy is in the library of the Royal Photographic Society, now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from which a reprint was produced by the Society's Historical Group in 1977.

The pamphlet was unknown because it was bound together with another photographic pamphlet Photographic Printing, in Carbon and other Pigments, by Perth photographer, William Blair, published in 1869. The title in the binding referring only to Blair’s pamphlet. Both pamphlets and the bound book were presented by Thomas Bourke, a Perth photographer, to the Photographic Section of the PSNS shortly after its formation in 1889, although Ackermann’s pamphlet has the inscription that it was presented to the Photographic Section by James Jackson, presumably a relative of Magnus Jackson, the Perth photographer who was a member of the PSNS and its Vice-President.

A report of the discovery was in the PSNS newsletter for June 2018 which can be read here which is panning to exhibit the find in the  near future. 

With thanks to Paul Adair, Collections Officer, Culture Perth and Kinross, Perth Museum & Art Gallery for alerting BPH to this find and for the images.

With the support of Arts Council England and the Artist Information Company, a-n, Almudena Romero has made a step by step film explaining the chlorophyll printing process.

The process also features in the Photofusion exhibition Growing Concerns. This unique body of work focuses on the subject of migration, making the link between the deregulation of goods and capital and the increasing barriers for movement of people. The images in this series are printed directly onto plants from Asia and the Caribbean Islands by means of the organic process of chlorophyll printing.

See more about the exhibition here: https://www.photofusion.org/exhibitions/almudena-romero-growing-concerns/

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/277634133

The Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg and the Hasselblad Foundation have a long-term partnership for the purpose of supporting the development of critical study and research on photography. As part of this shared programme of work, we are now seeking applications from photo-based artists, photo historians, art historians and practioners in cognate disciplines, with doctoral degrees, to apply for a 2-year postdoctoral scholarship starting from January 2019.

This position is attached to a new joint project between the Hasselblad Foundation and the Academy Valand which seeks to create an experimental photo history centered on photographic practitioners in the interwar period (WWI-WWII), starting from (but not limited to) Sweden, in both art and vernacular photography, as well as advertising and scientific photography. The applications for this post may be focused on, for example: new perspectives on archival material; local and social history and photography as alternative historical source and mediation; and cultural parallels between the 20s and 30s and today.

More information about the Academy Valand is available at www.akademinvaland.gu.se. More information about the Hasselblads Foundation can be found at www.hasselbladfoundation.se.

Applications by 17 August 2018. 

See more here: https://www.gu.se/english/about_the_university/job-opportunities/vacancies-details/?id=2445

With support from Art Fund, the Victoria and Albert Museum runs a programme to help the development of curatorial expertise in the art and culture of photography, working with regional museum partners. The programme has been in place since 2014, and has resulted in collaborations with Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery and Museums Sheffield. The curatorial training post provides practical training in photographs curatorship and equips a Curator with specialist knowledge of photography and the ability to care for and develop photography collections. 

This is a 12 month fixed term contract. You will spend six months in the Photographs Section of the Word and Image Department at the V&A with a V&A Curator as mentor. This will be followed by a six months’ placement at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter working on an agreed project. The post-holder will report to the Curator, Photographs at the V&A.

Interviews will be held on 13 September 2018

More details here.

Over the last 4 years the National Library of Wales has worked with Wikimedia to provide open access to more than 10,000 public domain images. These include the Welsh Landscape Collection, photographs, maps and manuscripts. This partnership has led to more than 455 million views of Wikipedia articles containing National Library images to date.

Images Now the Library is pleased to announce that nearly 5000 portrait prints, photographs and paintings have been placed in the public domain on Wikimedia Commons. Along with the images, the Library’s National Wikimedian has also shared rich metedata for every image as linked open data on Wikidata.

The Library’s main goal in releasing such content is to increase access to our collections and to contribute to the creation and sharing of knowledge about Wales and its people. It is now hopped that the Wikimedia community will begin to use these images to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

The National Library also plans to run a project to increase engagement with this collection, and hopes that volunteers will be encouraged to create Wikipedia articles about the Welsh sitters, artists, printers and photographers involved in the collection. Because all these images are freely downloadable and in the public domain, we also encourage others to reuse them for any purpose they see fit, from education to the creative industries this is a free resource for everybody.

Read the full blog post here which also shows examples of data visualisation: https://blog.library.wales/?p=17811

BPH reported on two auctions which took place late last year.and included material relating to the early photographer and experimenter Alfred Swaine Taylor.  A further, and final group of material is being offered by Lacy Scott & Knight on 5 October as the Alfred Swaine Taylor family collection. The auction is split in to three general areas: personal, science and medicine and photography. 

The auction lots can be seen here: https://www.lskauctioncentre.co.uk/auction/search?au=612

London's Photofusion is running a four-day alternative process summer week where you can learn how to:

Day 1: Make Digital Negatives suitable for Alternative/Historical Processes.
Richard Wills – Tuesday August 21, 11:00 – 17:00.

Day 2: Make Salt Prints (and Gold toning).
Paul Ellis – Wednesday August 22, 12:00 – 18:00.

Day 3: Make Kallitypes (poor man’s Platinum) & Platinum Prints.
Paul Ellis – Thursday August 23, 12:00 – 18:00.

Day 4: Make Wet-Plate collodion positive images with Large Format Cameras.
Daniel Barter – Friday August 24, 10:30 – 17:30.

Photofusion provides all chemicals, paper, equipment ‘etc’. You need to bring images on hard-drive which will be made into Digital Negatives on Day 1.

Find out more and book: http://www.photofusion.org/course/alternative-processes-summer-week/

This event accompanies the Radical Visions exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, and the launch of its new digital archive. It will consider Camerawork's engagement, role and influence with community-practice, feminism and representation, and ask how its broader legacy can be understood within the context of today’s cultural politics.

Thursday 28 June, 2:00-6:00pm

Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury. Room to be confirmed.

Radical Visions: the cultural politics of Camerawork 1972-1985

A Collaborative Symposium

Four Corners with History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck

Speakers include:

Mathilde Bertrand, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne

Patrizia Di Bello, Birkbeck, University of London

Steve Edwards, Birkbeck, University of London

David Evans, writer & photo-montage artist

Carla Mitchell, Four Corners

Don Slater, London School of Economics

Amy Tobin, University of Cambridge

The event is free, but we ask you to register: 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/radical-visions-symposium-tickets-47057084005

Image:  Claire Schwob, from Women exhibition, Half Moon Gallery 1974

Canada in the Frame explores a photographic collection held at the British Library that offers a unique view of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Canada. The collection, which contains more than 4,500 images, taken between 1895 and 1923, covers a dynamic period in Canada’s national history and provides a variety of views of its landscapes, developing urban areas and peoples. Colonial Copyright Law was the driver by which these photographs were acquired; unmediated by curators, but rather by the eye of the photographer who created the image, they showcase a grass-roots view of Canada during its early history as a Confederation.  

Canada in the Frame describes this little-known collection and includes over 100 images from the collection. The author asks key questions about what it shows contemporary viewers of Canada and its photographic history, and about the peculiar view these photographs offer of a former part of the British Empire in a post-colonial age, viewed from the old ‘Heart of Empire’. Case studies are included on subjects such as urban centres, railroads and migration, which analyse the complex ways in which photographers approached their subjects, in the context of the relationship between Canada, the British Empire and photography.

Canada in the Frame
Philip J. Hatfield 
June 2018
Open Access PDF
ISBN: 978‑1‑78735‑299‑5
FREE

Hardback
ISBN: 978‑1‑78735‑301‑5
£40.00
Paperback
ISBN: 978‑1‑78735‑300‑8
£22.99
Pages: 260

UCL Press

Download free: https://goo.gl/HxSBrW

The Photographers' Gallery is the UK’s leading centre for the presentation and exploration of photography in all its forms and a dedicated home for an international photographic community. Established in London in 1971, the Gallery has been instrumental in reflecting photography’s pivotal role in culture and society and championing its position as a leading art form through a rich programme of exhibitions, talks, events, workshops, courses and other activities

Team

The Development Team is primarily responsible for fundraising for the annual revenue needs of the Gallery’s programme of activities, beyond what is already generated by the Gallery’s enterprises (Print Sales, Bookshop and Café). The funding relationship with our major stakeholder, Arts Council England (ACE) is primarily handled by the Director and Deputy Director

Role Summary: 

This is an exciting opportunity to join a small, resourceful and dynamic team at The Photographers’ Gallery. The Development Coordinator will have the opportunity to learn about arts fundraising working across all income sources: Individuals, Corporates and Trusts and Foundations. All team members are offered external and internal training for fundraising skill development. The Development Co-ordinator will play a central role in the team, assisting with the day to day administration, patronage fulfilment and administration, coordination of departmental mailings for upcoming events and communications and research projects as instructed by other members of the team. 

To apply please download an application form from https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/about-us/vacancies and email completed applications to  development@tpg.org.uk

Deadline for applications 5 July 2018

A new exhibitions which examines pictorialism has opened at the museée Nicéphore Niépce and runs until 16 September 2018. Curated by Dr Julien Faure-Conorton Artists' Visions offers a new, broader, view of European pictorialist photography. The exhibition presents recent research and discoveries and is the first exhibition dedicated to pictorial photography in France for over a decade. 

Sourced in the collections of the musée Nicéphore Niépce that preserves works by Robert Demachy and Charles Lhermitte, as well as prints by Constant Puyo, José Ortiz-Echagüe and Alfred Fauvarque-Omez, the exhibition brings together over two-hundred vintage prints. They are the work of various authors, some well-known, others less so. Most of the prints are being shown for the very first time. They were created over a seventy-year period, from the early 1890s to the late 1950s, showing that pictorial photography did not disappear after the First World War, contrary to the established histories of photography would lead us to believe.

Offering an updated, broader vision of the pictorialist endeavour on a European scale, Artists’ Visions results from recent research and discoveries and is the first exhibition dedicated to pictorial photography for over a decade in France. This exhibition challenges the established narrative and offers a new history acknowledging the permanence of the pictorialist ideals. These ideals were built on a shared ambition: to create photographs that wanted to do more than simply reproduce the real, photographs that truly interpreted it, like an artist’s vision.

Pictorial photographers, in their quest to free photography from the simple function of documentary reproduction to which it had been reduced since its invention, strove to create images where personal feelings took precedence, images that expressed something poetic or dreamlike, that suggested more than they showed, producing, above all, an impression, aiming to provoke a feeling, an emotion in the viewer. To do so, pictorial photographers resorted to interpretation, meaning the intervention of the artist in the photographic process using various technical tools aimed at transforming the aesthetics of the image so that the original photograph (the negative) gave birth to an artistic picture (the exhibition print). At the turn of the 20th century, pictorial photography was extremely popular worldwide with thousands of followers who spread their works in ambitious international exhibitions and luxurious publications.

The exhibition is curated by photography historian Dr Julien Faure-Conorton in connection with Sylvain Besson at the musée Nicéphore Niépce.

A catalogue is available and can be had by emailing: jfc.photohistory@gmail.com

Musée Nicéphore Niépce
28 quai des messageries
71100 Chalon-sur-Saône
+33 [0]3 85 48 41 98

www.museeniepce.com

The DGPh History of Photography Research Award 2018 will be open for all elements of research into photography's many aspects. Besides aspects of traditional history and theory of photography, topics will be considered that deal with photography's social meaning, or the impact that the medium has had on society. The applicant's work should represent an autonomous, innovative, and original contribution to these areas. The award is particularly aimed at young scholars.

The award is open to researchers from all fields. Applications and manuscripts for the DGPh History of Photography Research Award may be submitted in either English or German. Applications should consist of a published or unpublished manuscript produced during the last two years before the deadline. Project outlines, or yet unfinished manuscripts etc. will not be accepted. Allocation will be the decision of an expert jury. The award is endowed with a total of 3,000 Euro. The jury holds the right to split the prize between two applicants in equal parts. The award will be handed over at a public event organized by the DGPh.

Submission requirements are the following pdf-files:

- A complete manuscript as electronic file form
- An abstract of the submitted work (approx. 300-500 words)
- A curriculum vitae
- A list of publications

The final date for submissions is the 30 September, 2018.

Submissions should be send online under: https://www.dgph.de/sektionen/geschichte_archive/ausschreibung-dgph-forschungspreis-photographiegeschichte-2018

More information about the German Photographic Society: www.dgph.de

The National Portrait Gallery has acquired eleven portraits, including one self portrait, shown right) by Philippe Garner. Garner will be known to many as an auctioneer who started the first auctions of photography in the United Kingdom in 1971 at Sotheby's before he moved to Christie's, where he is remains a consultant. 

Garner had kept his interest as a phootgrapher discretely hidden during his auction career but his subjects reflect his involvement with photography, and include curators, photographers and critics. He felt the time was now right to make his own photography public. 

Read an interview with Garner here where he talks about his own photography.

See his 11 images here: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp124605/philippe-garner?search=sas&sText=garner&role=art

We are recruiting for a full time Curatorial Project Manager, a key role in our newly expanded curatorial and archive team of four.

You will provide the project management and logistical support necessary to develop and deliver our dynamic curatorial programme of exhibitions on and off site, publications, artist commissions, residencies, special projects & associated archive, collection and editions related activity.

You will also have the opportunity to make curatorial proposals for possible inclusion our programme.

Application deadline: Monday 9 July 2018 by 5pm.

Download the job pack and application form below. If you have any questions about the role or application process, please contact info@autograph-abp.co.uk or phone 020 7729 9200.

Read more here: http://autograph-abp.co.uk/news/curatorial-project-manager?mc_cid=e6e0483bcb&mc_eid=dee88b2478