Apollo magazine poses the question do UK museums take photography seriously and provides a useful survey of how photography is looked at in the UK, with comment from Martin Barnes, Colin Ford and Michael Pritchard. The question is contextualised around the move of the RPS Collection from Bradford to London. https://www.apollo-magazine.com/do-uk-museums-take-photography-seriously/
Image: Shop sign, rue Geoffroy-St-Hilaire, Paris, (c. 1900), Eugène Atget. © Victoria and Albert Museum
Bradford's Telegraph and Argus newspaper has an interview with Jo Quinton-Tulloch, Director of the National Museum of Science and Media, formerly the National Media Museum, who discusses the process the museum went through to come up with its new name. The exercise took several years, a short-list of 50 alternatives and the use of three consultancy firms.
Read the interview here: http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/15283691.Revealed__The_alternative_names_which_were_considered_for_Bradford_s_national_museum/
The BBC has a very short film on its website looking at the Getty Images Archive with Matt Butson. The archive houses some 80 million images of which only 1 in 200 is accessible. See the film here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-39918329/inside-the-getty-images-archive
Photographer and Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, Rose Teanby discusses the origins, background and impact of Robert Howlett’s iconic portrait of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by the launching chains of the SS Great Eastern.
Rose Teanby is a photographer specialising in portraiture and Associate of the Royal Photographic Society. Her portrait of shot putter and strongman Geoff Capes was acquired by National Portrait Gallery in 2015. She is the biographer of Robert Howlett and has written articles on him for Photo Historian (spring 2016, No. 175) and Royal Photographic Society Journal (January 2017, Volume 157). She featured in the BBC4 documentary Britain in Focus: A Photographic History, speaking about Howlett’s portrait of Brunel and is currently leading a project to restore his grave.
Public booking will open on Friday, 12 May 2017
Book here: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/event-root/july/lunchtime-lecture-20072017
BPH recently carried news of new research on Thomas Frederick Hardwich, the photographic chemist and author (see here). In addition, a Wikipedia page has recently been created for Hardwich which adds further information about Hardwich and his career. Both correct errors in earlier publications.
Image: Thomas Frederick Hardwich, Wellcome Library, London.
The Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic project at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, is delighted to share news of a forthcoming photographic exhibition; ‘Photography, Alterity and Epidemics.’
This exhibition will be graciously hosted by the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, from 11 May until 30 June 2017. Please join us for the opening night, from 5.30pm, at which Visual Plague project researchers will deliver short discussions about the images displayed in this exhibition.
Based in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, the project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic has been collecting and analysing photographs of the third plague pandemic, which broke out in 1855 in Southwest China (Yunnan) and raged across the globe until 1959, causing the death of approximately 12 million people. As plague (Yersinia pestis) spread via rats and their fleas from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and terror, but also a growing visual archive on the first global pandemic to be captured by the photographic lens. Rather than forming a homogeneous or linear visual narrative, photographic depictions of plague varied from place to place, but also within single outbreaks as these were represented by different actors on the ground. Visual representations of the third plague pandemic played a pivotal role in the formation of scientific understandings and public perceptions of infectious disease in the modern era.
The exhibition focuses in particular on three plague outbreaks, of seminal importance both for the social life of the afflicted populations and for the scientific study of plague: the long plague epidemic in British India (1896-1947), the pneumonic plague outbreak in Manchuria (1910-11) and successive plague outbreaks in highland Madagascar (1921-1949).
Like colonial ethnographic photography, epidemic photography is poised between genres, capturing and containing a range of functions: documentary, journalistic and aesthetic. In attempting to document culture and reveal the world through a scientific lens, epidemic imagery also exposed the preoccupations and priorities of imperialism, modernity and colonial scientific culture.
The exhibition Photography, Alterity and Epidemics examines the role that photography played in pathologising racialised bodies and colonised territories, casting them as potential sources of contagion and catastrophe. The exhibition looks at how ethnographic and anthropological knowledge of “native customs” (hunting practices, burial customs, vernacular architecture, etc.) was integrated into this visual economy and implicated in the spread and maintenance of epidemic disease.
Further details about this exhibition are available here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/27238. Any questions can be directed to the project administrator.
Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic is an interdisciplinary research project funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564. The team consists of Christos Lynteris (PI), Lukas Engelmann, Nicholas Evans and Branwyn Poleykett.
The Curator: Talks & Events post sits within the Programming team at The Photographers’ Gallery that is comprised of Exhibitions and Education staff. Programming staff are responsible for the planning, development, delivery and evaluation of: exhibitions, projects (residencies, web-based activities, off-site sessions and exhibitions), talks, events, courses and workshops for adult groups; and activities for school groups and young people.
Programmes are currently developed and announced over three distinct seasons of 12-13 weeks in length for exhibitions, with a 4-8 month overview for talks, events, courses and workshops. Budgets are drafted and approved on an annual basis, and refined/reported on a quarterly basis. Off-site tours and on-site talks, events and workshops are also programmed by staff in Development and Bookshop. The majority of on-site events, courses and workshops take place on our flexible Eranda Studio Floor (on the Gallery’s 3rd floor). This space is equipped with a data projector and smaller, linked monitor, as well as amplification and recording facilities, tables for workshops and courses, and seats for up to 100 people. The café space is also available for use outside Gallery opening hours for courses and events.
Post: Curator: Talks & Events Team: Programming Line manager: Head of Education & Projects Salary Banding: £26,000 - £29,000 pro-rata Holidays: 25 days per annum pro-rata Contract: 32 hours per week (variable hours, including regular evening and weekend work) Pension: 4% of salary
See more here: http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/vacancies
This summer all over Ambleside are displayed the faces of people who were here long before us - people who lived, worked and visited the area 150 years ago. These historic images are reappearing as photographic portraits throughout the town, as part of the Armitt Museum’s summer exhibition, “Still Lives – The Brunskill Collection at the Armitt and Beyond”
This collection of fascinating portraits is the work of the Brunskill brothers, who from 1865-1906 ran a photographic studio in Bowness. Almost the complete life’s work of this photographic studio is now held by Ambleside’s Armitt Museum and includes a vast archive of 17,800 photographs on glass plates. The survival of this rare and important collection not only gives an invaluable insight into the Victorian world and its inhabitants, but also into the workings of an early photographic studio.
At the heart of the exhibition is the Armitt Museum where the local families are represented. Here the Mackereths, Braithwates, Bensons, Tysons, Birketts and Hawkriggs take centre stage, as they once did in life:
“These are the families most closely associated with the development of the area, the fullers and freeholders whose fortunes rose and fell with those of the woollen industry”, Armitt curator Deborah Walsh said. “This however is an exhibition about community, hosted by the community, and as such it has spilled out through the doors of the Armitt and into the streets of Ambleside.
“The sixty or so portraits to be seen here include the beautiful Miss Midgely, the unsettling Borwick Twins and the defiant Tom Carlisle in the Market Place. On Compston Road there is old Mr Pannington with the face of a man born in the eighteenth century, and sweet little Miss Brown with her soldier doll. Louche Mr Foster with top-hat and tin whistle will take up residence in the Golden Rule, and in the White Lion, the formidable P.C. Greenbank will keep the peace.
“All over Ambleside will be the faces of the people who were here long before us - and of course they will also include that now almost legendary bespectacled, pipe smoking Jack Russell, a truly heroic figure known only as ‘Mr Sedgwick’s dog’”.
However, the exhibition is more than just a rarity for its complete survival and for its value as an important resource for family historians and those interested in photography and social history “It’s also a singularly beautiful and fascinating collection in itself and the portraits, in their quiet austerity, still have the power to fascinate,” Deborah said. “They also have an extraordinary sense of timelessness - the paradox of presence and absence made sharper by the passage of time.”
'Still Lives' is on now and all summer at the Armitt Museum and throughout Ambleside. The Museum in Rydal Road, Ambleside, is open from Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm, details at www.armitt.com
This webinar series, funded by The National Endowment for the Humanities<http://www.neh.gov/>, and presented by the Image Permanence Institute is free and open for all to attend. The first three webinars will discuss the various materials and technologies of photographic prints. The next two will teach a methodology and controlled vocabulary for process identification, as well as a demo of how to use Graphics Atlas<http://www.graphicsatlas.org/>. The last one will include an overview of collections care for prints and photographs including proper storage, handling and display methods, and guidelines for the storage environment. Watching the webinars as a series is encouraged but not required. Recordings of the webinars will be made available.
Register here: https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/process-id-webinars
This project aims to explore the rich history of studio portraiture practiced by women in the UK from the 1890s to the 1960s. In 1890 it is claimed that only one woman ran a leading London West End photography business. By 1911 the number of women employed in the photographic industry had reached over five thousand, offering women newfound independence through the profession of photography. This CDA offers an opportunity to explore the careers of professional women photographers in the commercial sector in this period, and the consequences of their work for British social and cultural history. The project will explore how studio photography develops alongside evolving ideas about the role women were to play in British society. The research will also reflect upon the ways in which women photographers have contributed to and fundamentally changed the practice of studio portraiture.
The National Portrait Gallery’s outstanding Photographs Collection will be a key resource. The student will have unique access to substantial collection holdings of portraits by women studio photographers practicing at the turn of the century in Britain, and early to mid-twentieth century studio portraitists. This visual material is supplemented by letters and correspondence, period magazines and journals held in the Heinz Archive and Library.
The student will be encouraged to pursue his/her own original line of inquiry and to decide the scope of their chosen research, both in terms of the timescale and geographical reach, and the key practitioners to research. The student will engage with a set of research questions, agreed with the supervisors, which explore the subject in its historical and art historical context.
Areas of particular interest include: the economic and sociological factors specific to British women that impacted the development of studio photography; the education of women photographers; networks of professional women photographers in the UK and abroad; the changing economic base for photographic portraiture, notably in the shift from high society to high street; the evolving conventions and iconography of studio portraiture as practiced by women; unpacking the gendered dynamics of the gaze; the studio as a space for the construction of identities; and the ways in which gender identities have been undermined through the practice of studio portraiture.
The supervisors of this project are Lucy Soutter, Ph.D., Principal Lecturer, Photography (University of Westminster) who specialises in the history and theory of photography, with research interests in portraiture, staging and women’s studies, and Phillip Prodger, PhD, Head of Photographs (National Portrait Gallery) who leads the Gallery’s photographic exhibitions and displays programme, and oversees the Gallery’s Collection of photographs.
This studentship offers a fully-funded research project, with unparalleled access to the extensive visual and archival resources of the National Portrait Gallery. The student will be offered practical work-based training in collections and curatorial practice; be encouraged to contribute to the NPG’s Staff Research Seminar programme and to other staff and student training sessions; prepare interpretative text for the NPG website and for collection objects; and propose one or more displays for the NPG galleries. Sector specific training will be provided by the Thames Consortium to develop skills relevant to working in museums and galleries and the student will participate in training provided by the University of Westminster.
We seek applications from outstanding postgraduate students for this collaborative doctoral award, which will begin in September 2017. The studentship will last for three years, with an option to apply for a further 6 months funded under the AHRC’s Student Development Fund. Part time award holders will be funded for a maximum period of 6 years.
A maintenance grant of £14,553 p.a. for full-time study will be paid by the AHRC to the award holder, subject to eligibility criteria. The studentship includes an additional six months of funding from the AHRC’s Student Development Fund, which can (subject to agreement) be used to support appropriate training or a placement based on the student’s individual training needs. The AHRC will make an additional, one-off annual maintenance payment of £550 to cover the special costs of working at two sites. The National Portrait Gallery will also provide up to £1,000 per year for three years (subject to agreement) to support the student’s research-related expenses.
The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) is the UK’s leading centre for research in art and design. The UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) ranked CREAM as one of the top three art and design departments in the UK and number one in the field of UK arts departments with research profiles across both theory and practice. With over 60 doctoral students and more than 30 research active staff, CREAM is a leading provider of both practice-based and theoretical PhD research in photography, film, moving image, digital and experimental media, ceramics, visual art, music, and art-science relationships. We are highly international with research expertise in South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and European media arts. Our students undertake practice-based and theoretical research in contemporary art and in arts and media history.
Eligible candidates will hold at least an upper second class honours BA degree and preferably a Masters degree. Candidates whose secondary level education has not been conducted in the medium of English should also demonstrate evidence of appropriate English language proficiency normally defined as 6.5 in IELTS (with not less than 6.0 in any of the individual elements). For entry requirements, please visit https://www.westminster.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/entry-requirements
Please note that the studentships are not available to applicants who already have a PhD or who are currently enrolled on a doctoral programme at Westminster or elsewhere.
Prospective candidates wishing to informally discuss an application should contact Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Associate Curator, Photographs, at the National Portrait Gallery, sjaskotgill@npg.org.uk or Dr Lucy Soutter at the University of Westminster, l.soutter1@westminster.ac.uk
The closing date for applications is 5pm 9 June 2017.
Interviews will take place on 20 June 2017.
For further information, including how to apply, please visit
www.westminster.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/research-studentships
The University of Oxford's History of Art department is sponsoring The Photography Seminar with a series of meetings beginning on Tuesday, May 9. The talks start at 1pm in St Luke’s Chapel by the Radcliffe Humanities building on Woodstock Road on May 9, May 16, May 23 and May 30. The final seminar on June 6 will take place in the Department of History of Art. The convenors are Geraldine Johnson and Sajda van der Leeuw. All are welcome.
May 9th (Tuesday, Week 3 – St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Humanities)
Earth in Focus: Photography and Land Art around 1970
Sajda van der Leeuw (University of Oxford)
May 16th (Tuesday, Week 4 – St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Hunanities)
Photosynthesis: Fractals, Algorithms and Wild Matter in
New Forms of Photographic Practice
Dr Daniel Rubinstein (Central Saint Martins)
May 23rd (Tuesday, Week 5 – St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Humanities)
Views on a Photo Studio in a Small Town in Cameroon:
Obsessions and High Fashion as a Response to Insurrection
Prof. David Zeitlyn (University of Oxford)
May 30th (Tuesday, Week 6 – St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Humanities)
Pictorialist Prints: Eduard J. Steichen’s Rodin—Le Penseur,
1902 to 1906
Dr Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck College, University of London)
June 6th (Tuesday, Week 7 – History of Art Dept., Littlegate House, St Ebbes)
How Do We Do Art History?
Photographs and Glass Slides in the Visual Resources Centre
Dr Deborah Schultz (Regent’s University London) and
Francesca Issatt (University of Oxford)
*Wks 3-6: meet in the Math Institute’s café for informal lunch from 12:30pm to 1pm,
followed by talks in St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Humanities, from 1pm to 2pm.
**Wk 7: bring lunch to the History of Art Dept. for informal discussion from 12:30pm to 1pm,
followed by a site visit to the Visual Resources Centre’s photo collections from 1pm to 2pm.
Hackney Archives is looking for enthusiastic and hard working individuals who are passionate about heritage to assist us with digitising a large photographic collection so that it can be made publically available.
It holds a collection of 150,000 negatives captured between 1952 and 1979 by Gibson's photography studio (formerly situated on Lower Clapton Road, Hackney). The Gibson collection records the people of Hackney as they got married, worked, celebrated and mourned and offers a unique insight into life in this diverse London borough over a 27 year period.
You'll gain experience of caring for a historic photography collection, supporting a large scale digitisation project, creating increased access to collections, researching social histories and using a variety of ways to engage the public with archive collections. We have an induction process during which we'll give you further information about the role and initial training.
See images from the collection
For more information and to apply please fill in the application form and return it to etienne.joseph@hackney.gov.uk by Wednesday 10 May. application form [doc, 61.5Kb]
See more here: http://www.hackney.gov.uk/archives
Described as the “greatest photographic document of Caribbean people in post-war Britain ”, the collection of 100 black and white photographs chronicling 40 years of Caribbean heritage in Birmingham by Vanley Burke, known as ‘Rivers of Birminam’, have secured a permanent home in the city, thanks to the Collecting Birmingham initiative.
The photographs are by far the largest and most significant collection of work by the celebrated photographer in any public collection. The 100 photographs were selected and grouped together by Vanley Burke and curator Lynda Morris for the ‘By the Rivers of Birminam’ retrospective exhibition, held at the MAC in 2012, and reflect Burke’s photographic work across over 40 years, from 1968 to 2011. A selection of these will initially be displayed at Soho House in the community gallery, which explores the extraordinary lives of everyday Birmingham people.
“These photographs are seminal in their representation of Birmingham’s Caribbean communities and the Handsworth area of the city from 1967 – they provide a unique window into the social politics of Birmingham from the 1960s onwards, recording the fight against racism through anti-National Front demonstrations and rallies, and also include Mohammed Ali’s visit to the city in 1983 as well as intimate portraits of communities and individuals such as the iconic photograph ‘Boy with a Flag’” comments Lisa Beauchamp, curator of modern and contemporary art at Birmingham Museums Trust.
“Vanley is a remarkable photographer, able to capture poignant and arresting moments through the medium of black and white photography. His ‘Rivers of Birminam’ series are unparalleled in their recording of Britain’s Caribbean communities, and tell a story of Birmingham and Black British history that feels as relevant and important now as they did when the photographs were first taken. We’ve had a small number of photographs by Vanley in Birmingham’s collection for a while, but it has been a long ambition of ours to be able to represent his practice more fully. To have ‘The Rivers of Birminam’ series of 100 photographs in Birmingham’s collection is incredible and I’m sure they will be cherished and enjoyed by our audiences.”
Burke’s photographs are taken from a unique perspective; arriving in Birmingham from Jamaica in 1965 at the age of 14, he has experienced first-hand the changes in his community and the city. His work offers an intimate view of the people around him, and remains rooted in these communities even as his reputation grew nationally and internationally. Whilst he has displayed his work at solo exhibitions in galleries in London, New York and Mali, he also exhibits his photographs in local venues such as community centres, pubs and schools.
Vanley Burke, said: “I am delighted the collection has found a permanent home in the city with Birmingham Museums. The photos reflect an important era of migration and settlement in Birmingham and it feels only right that the people represented in the images and their families can appreciate them for many years to come. In fact, I feel like the photos belong to the people of Birmingham as so many people feel connected to the stories and experiences documented in them and I’m very pleased they will now be part of the city’s collection.”
The works were acquired as part of the Collecting Birmingham project, a three year initiative run by Birmingham Museums Trust which looks to local communities to share their views on what items should be added to the city’s collections to represent them and their lives. “We are creating a unique record of life in our city for future generations – this isn’t just about our history but also the contemporary world in which we live, which will be our children and grandchildren’s history. Through focus groups involving many different communities within the city, Collecting Birmingham identifies a host of key items – from ancient relics to contemporary photographs – that will help us tell the stories relevant to people in the city today,” adds Lisa.
The ‘Rivers of Birminam’ images will go on display at Soho House on 27 April 2017 in the community gallery as part as part of The Extraordinary Lives of Everyday People exhibition, which includes a suitcase and objects from Mrs McGhie-Belgrave to reflect her arrival in Birmingham from Jamaica and her life and work in the city.
Soho House is open Wednesdays, Thursday, and the first Sunday of the month from 11.00am to 4.00pm, and entry to the visitor centre (including the community gallery), café and gardens are free. Admission to the house itself is £7.00 for adults, £5.00 for concessions and £3.00 for children; family tickets are also available.
Image: © Vanley Burke, Boy with a flag, Wilfred, in Handsworth Park, 1970.
The Scottish Society for the History of Photography is presenting Zelda Cheatle as its 2017 Annan lecturer. Zelda has had a close association with Scotland and Scottish photography for many years and will talk about her experience of photography here from the early 1980s onwards, at a time when she ran the Print Room of The Photographers’ Gallery. She will go on to talk about her experiences as a gallerist in the 1990s, and how universities, art colleges, institutions and galleries in Scotland contributed to the excellence and diversity of photographic practice up to the present day.
She will then go on to talk about various experiences of collecting photography, collections, and how to enjoy all aspects of collecting.
Zelda Cheatle is renowned for her pioneering work in establishing photography as art, as a curator, lecturer, editor and publisher (Zelda Cheatle Press).
She has worked in photography since graduating and opened her own gallery, Zelda Cheatle Gallery, in London in 1989. For 16 years, the gallery exhibited work by established and eminent photographers of the early 20th-century and supporting emerging photographers. The gallery helped build collections and Zelda continues to work with museums and public collections nationally and internationally.
She is on the board of the Koestler Trust and their Arts Committee, helped create the John Kobal Foundation (now Taylor Wessing at National Portrait Gallery), established The Photography Fund which collected over 6000 prints, and is a nominator for Deutsche Borse and Prix Pictet competitions, in 2016 chaired the judges for Sony World Photography Awards, also curating the show for Somerset House.
Zelda now works internationally, most recently in China, Dubai, UAE, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Also working with Autograph Archive in London, making acquisitions of vintage works from black photographers working in the UK during the 70s and 80’s.
She is currently working with Photo London leading a course ‘On Collecting Photography’ March – May 2017.
Tickets cost £5 and the event takes place at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow. See more here: http://sshop.org.uk/project/annan-lecture-2017-zelda-cheatle/
Colin Harding who is researching a PhD on the photographer Horace Nicholls has written two blogs about his work so far. The blogs can be read here: http://blogs.iwm.org.uk/research/2017/02/happy-birthday-horace/#more
Image: A female coke heaver at the South Metropolitan Gas Works, Old Kent Road, London. Photograph by Horace Nicholls © IWM
The Spring 2017 edition of the Science Museum Group Journal carries two articles of interest to photographic historians. Elizabeth Edwards discusses Location, location: a polemic on photographs and institutional practices which poses the question what are photographs doing in collections. Michael Terwey, Head of Collections and Exhibitions at the National Science and Media Museum, discusses Contexts for photography collections at the National Media Museum. In an open and direct way, he looks at the process that led to the transfer of the RPS Collection from the National Media Museum to the V&A Museum, examines some of the controversy it generated and sets it in to a wider context.
Read them both here: http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/issues/spring-2017/
Image: © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
A three-day conference exploring the practice, profession, scholarship, preservation and access to photography’s history, present day expression and projected opportunities and challenges for the future. Sponsored and organized by RIT Press, the Rochester Institute of Technology’s scholarly book publishing enterprise, and The Wallace Center at RIT, the conference is a forum for reporting research findings, sharing current professional and scholarly practices, and discussing subjects pertinent to the broadly defined, multifaceted history and future of photography, including motion pictures.
The conference will engage practitioners, librarians, archivists and the diverse scholarly disciplines on historically
significant subjects and topics of future interest.
Call for Papers: We invite scholarly papers and panel proposals for presentation consideration at PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture. Paper and panel proposals must be submitted through the conference website and received by November 15, 2017.
Acceptance notification will occur by December 31, 2017. The complete conference program will be published on February 1, 2018. www.rit.edu/photohistoryconference
The conference is an opportunity for the presentation, analysis, interpretation and assessment of original scholarship on photography’s history and future including applications, education, connoisseurship, preservation, and accessibility as viewed through multiple disciplinary lenses. PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture subjects to be explored include, but not limited to: Advertising & public relations, Documentary & fashion, Bodycams & traffic cams, Legal protection & infringement, Art and design, Biography & portraiture, Copyright & copywrong, Journalism & sports, Photographic technology, Environmental, architectural & landscape, Social & commercial dimensions of photography, Medical & industrial, Amateur, Social reform & advocacy, Preservation & access, Public policy & public access, Collecting &
hobbyist interests.
We invite attendance by a wide range of academic disciplines and by practitioners from an equally broad range of professions. Examples of professions are: archivists, image preservation and conservators, information managers, data and metadata specialists, photographers, museum curators, library and museum administrators, and managers from the for-profit and the not-for-profit sectors. Examples of academic disciplines are: history, archives, photography, communication, digital humanities, criminology and criminal justice, computer science, public policy, imaging, economics, museum studies, fine arts, and library science.
PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture
A Three-day Conference on the Archaeology and Future of Photography
April 20 – 22, 2018, Rochester, NY
www.rit.edu/photohistoryconference
For more information: Bruce Austin (585) 475-2879, BAAGLL@RIT.EDU or Laura DiPonzio Heise (585) 475-5819, LMDWML@RIT.EDU
Rose Teanby who has been researching Robert Howlett has turned her attention to one of Howlett's contemporaries, collaborator and close friend T Frederick Hardwich. Hardwich was an important figure in early British photography and lecturer in photography at Kings College, London, before he abruptly left to take up holy orders. He is perhaps best known today for his manual of photographic chemistry.
Rose's research can be read here: http://www.photohistories.com/Photo-Histories/75/the-two-lives-of-thomas-frederick-hardwich-1829-1890.
Hardwich's work at KCL was commemorated in a memorial service held in King's College chapel (seen below) on 26 April.
Image of King's College chapel, © Rose Teanby ARPS; portrait of Hardwich from the Photographic Society Club album, 1856, held at the Wellcome Library, London
Beetles+Huxley are pleased to announce an exhibition of over 70 vintage Cecil Beaton photographs. The photographs have been held in an American private collection for over 60 years and this April they will finally be brought back to London, where this unique group will go on display for the first time.
Originally purchased in the early 1950s, the works form a complete survey of Beaton's early photography ranging from portraits of the "Bright Young People" in the 1920s, innovative fashion pictures for Vogue, portraits from Hollywood in the 1930s, to his lesser-known wartime documentary photographs commissioned by the British Ministry of Information.
Portraits included in the exhibition include figures such as Queen Elizabeth (subsequently the Queen Mother), The Duke and Duchess of Windsor on their wedding day, Salvador Dali, Vivien Leigh, Augustus John, Charles de Gaulle, Orson Welles, H G Wells and Aldous Huxley.
Photographer, artist, designer and socialite, Cecil Beaton was born in Hampstead, London, on 14 January 1904, into the family of a wealthy merchant. Whilst at Harrow School, he developed a passion for both photography and social advancement which, combined with his natural talent for aesthetics, subsequently propelled him to the heights of fame.
As a prominent member of the "Bright Young People" during the 1920s a set he had purposefully adopted Beaton photographed a generation of glitzy young socialites and artists with unique style. His sparkling photographs provide a fascinating record of this enduringly popular group, but his ambition was not satisfied. In the late 1920s, he headed for Hollywood and New York, working for Condé Nast as a portrait and fashion photographer, and quickly created a formidable reputation, and an international demand for his work.
During the Second World War Beaton worked, like many artists, for the British Ministry of Information taking photographs that recorded various aspects of the war effort, from ship builders on the Newcastle docks to commandos in the African Desert.
After the war Beaton continued as before, albeit altering his style to fit with changing times. He also earned acclaim for his costume designs, winning Oscars for "Gigi" in 1957 and "My Fair Lady" in 1964. Beaton's brilliant eye, theatrical persona, ruthless ambition and addiction to social advancement kept him in work for over six decades.
More information is here: http://www.beetlesandhuxley.com/exhibitions/cecil-beaton.html-0
During the rise of industrialization in mid-19th century Scotland, Thomas Annan ranked as the pre-eminent photographer of Glasgow. For more than 25 years, he prodigiously recorded the people, the social landscape, and the built environment of the city during a period of rapid growth and change.
Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow, on view 23 May-13 August, 2017 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, presents the first exhibition to survey Annan’s prolific career and legacy as both a photographer and printer via his engagement with Glasgow as his photographic subject. The exhibition includes more than 100 photographs, the majority on loan to the Getty, providing a rare opportunity to view key series by this photographer in the United States. Among the works to be featured are recently rediscovered prints Annan made at the end of his career and numerous photographically illustrated books that demonstrate technical innovations he perfected and championed.
“This exhibition is the first to explore Annan’s deep fascination with Glasgow and fully contextualize his contributions within the city’s history,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “His work effectively recorded the transformation of greater Glasgow over the course of several decades, during an era when this ‘second city of the empire’ flourished. Annan’s photographs underscore the notion of progress that dominated this era and directed urban growth in the 19th century.”
Thomas Annan, who opened his own photographic firm in Glasgow in 1857 and remained active until his death three decades later, worked at a time when the city’s population increased dramatically and industry neared its peak. Initially Annan garnered attention for work that ranged from studio portraiture and reproductions of artwork to landscapes, but he also quickly emerged as an important documentarian of Glasgow and its outskirts. Near the outset of his career, Annan was tasked with documenting the construction of a 35-mile long aqueduct—located in a picturesque wooded glen called the Trossachs—from Loch Katrine to Glasgow. His photographs reveal how this colossal feat of engineering impacted the scenic landscape of the Scottish countryside, underscoring the industrialization associated with this era in British history, as well as the somewhat tenuous relationship between man and the natural environment. Annan continued to record the development and effects of the aqueduct for more than two decades.
One gallery in the exhibition explores his extensive commitment to the subject, featuring rare views from his 1859 documentation of the aqueduct scheme that will be on view for the first time since the 19th century. Today, Annan is remembered principally for his haunting images of tenements and passageways, known as closes, slated for modification or demolition as a result of the Glasgow City Improvements Act of 1867. Considered a precursor of the social documentary tradition in photography, Annan’s Photographs of Old Closes and Streets series (1868-71) not only reveals the difficult living conditions of working-class residents of central Glasgow, but also suggests progress underway as a result of the Improvements Act.
Despite challenges posed by weather, sanitation, lighting, and the labor-intensive photographic equipment/process he employed, Annan produced highly detailed, enigmatic photographs of the closes and the tenement dwellers that are testament to his technical and artistic mastery. On view will be albumen silver prints from the Old Closes and Streets series, including an original glass plate negative and publications that feature the closes. Throughout his career, Annan photographed construction efforts, engineering works, buildings, and other subjects that related to concurrent municipal initiatives. Among the civic projects that he documented, and that will be showcased in the exhibition, are the relocation of the University of Glasgow, the re-navigation of the River Clyde and the construction of Queen’s Dock at Glasgow harbor, and the beautification of Glasgow Cathedral. He also photographed numerous country estates and houses that were demolished or repurposed as part of the outward expansion of the city and the rising industrialist class. Transformation of the built environment in Glasgow during this time largely shaped the appearance of the city as we know it today, and Annan effectively documented this evolution.
Annan is also credited for promoting various photographic processes, specifically carbon printing and photogravure, for which he owned the licensing rights within Scotland. His legacy was extended by his eldest sons, James Craig and John, who worked as photographers and managed their father’s photographic firm upon his death. While James Craig pursued fine art photography and emerged as a leading figure in the Pictorialist movement, John carved out a steady career photographing architecture and industrial machinery in Glasgow. Their discrete areas of expertise reflected their father’s myriad interests and may have constituted the division of labor at the firm as well. “Though a pioneer in his field, Annan has remained a relatively marginalized figure in the history of photography,” says Amanda Maddox, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “This exhibition seeks to highlight the breadth of his output and the extent of his contributions to the medium, which we hope will prompt further scholarship and greater appreciation for this important 19th century practitioner.”
Thomas Annan: Photographer of Glasgow, on view 23 May-13 August, 2017 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, will coincide with the presentation of Now Then: Chris Killip and the Making of In Flagrante. Together these exhibitions represent a century of industry in Britain, from its height to its demise. A scholarly publication that shares the title of the exhibition and is focused on Thomas Annan’s photographically illustrated books about Glasgow will be released by Getty Publications in spring 2017.
Images:
Piping across the Balfron Road (1859). Thomas Annan (Scottish, 1829 – 1887). Albumen silver print. Image: 20.9 x 28.6 cm (8 ¼ x 11 1/4 in.); Sheet: 38 x 48.5 cm (14 15/16 x 19 1/18 in.); Mat: 40.6 x 55.9 cm (16 x 22 in.). Lent by Glasgow Life (Mitchell Library Special Collections) on behalf of Glasgow City Council. Image © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collection: The Mitchell Library, Special Collections
High Street from College Open (1868 – 1871). Thomas Annan (Scottish, 1829 – 1887). Albumen silver print. Image: 40.5 x 54 cm (15 15/16 x 21 1/4 in.); Mat: 50.8 x 60.9 cm (20 x 24 in.). Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. © Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
