The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in London from May to Ocbober of 1851, was the genesis of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Published to accompany the opening of the V&A Photography Centre, this book makes extensive use of the V&A collections and archival material related to the 1851 Great Exhibition.

Photography and the 1851 Great Exhibition is the first comprehensive study of the seminal gathering of photographs and photographic equipment that marked the global launch of the form. It examines the role and impact of photography at the 1851 Great Exhibition and beyond, drawing together two decades of research to create a broader understanding of the step-change in image making and distribution represented by that event. With a Foreword by Tristram Hunt and an essay on photoscience by Nicholas Burnett.

While the Great Exhibition has received a variety of examinations, its role in exhibiting and furthering the cause and exploitation of photography and its impact on illustration, printing, publishing, and the arts has been largely underappreciated. More broadly, 1851 saw a massive change in information management: in the creation and dissemination of visually based graphic information characterized by images of the building, its contents and their display that collectively constituted the Great Exhibition. Photography played a critical role in this quantum leap.

The scale and scope of photography of the Great Exhibition is made evident through reproductions of images produced by a wide range of amateur and professional photographers who documented the Great Exhibition, some of which are the only known images of now lost works of art. Also shown and examined are prints produced by traditional reprographics and lithographs and the photographic originals from which they were derived.

The result of more than twenty years of research, this study is based on a number of contemporary sources including official publications, the archive of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, the correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, letters, newspapers, books, and articles in serial and periodical publications, as well as the Reports by the Juries, from which all 154 photographic images are reproduced in these pages.

Anthony Hamber is an expert on 19th century photography and the illustrated book, the contribution of photography to other forms of illustration, and the application of photography to art publishing. His first monograph, A Higher Branch of the Art; Photographing the Fine Arts in England 1839-1880 (Gordon & Breach, 1996) is a fundamental source of information in its field.

Available in the UK and Ireland from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Price: £65
Order online: https://www.vam.ac.uk/shop/photography-and-the-great-exhibition-155372.html

Boots Archive are delighted to announce the second phase release of the online catalogue of the Walgreens Boots Alliance archive collections. This digital resource, which launched in 2017 has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, through their Research Resources programme. The archive includes phootgraphy and material relating to Boots' involvement with amateur photography.

The catalogue currently comprises around two fifths of the total archive holdings (c5,000 boxes) with over 27,000 entries and 4,500 digitised images.  Subsequent additions to the catalogue will be made on an annual basis over the next three years until the entire collection is incorporated.  The majority of the entries on the site relate to the Boots UK collection, and the material charts the development of the business into large scale manufacturing, product development, research and healthcare and beauty retailing. Information relating to product development, which includes employee training, formulations, packaging and merchandising records, is a particularly strong element within the collection. The holdings also include a large number of store and factory photographs and building plans.

In addition to the material relating to the history of Boots UK, other significant holdings also include the business records of Walgreens; Dollond and Aitchison; Optrex Ltd; Timothy Whites and Taylors Ltd; Unichem and E Moss Ltd.

The archive catalogue can be accessed here: http://archives.walgreensbootsalliance.com/ 

In this lecture Deborah Ireland explores how the Royal Geographic Society's first instructor in photography, John Thompson, applied images to the science of geography, to guide and influence a new generation of travellers. Thomson had a career as a photographer in China and elsewhere in Asia and took the photographs for Street Life in London.

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2AR15 October 2018
at 6.30pm. Ondaatje Theatre doors open at 5.30pm

See more here.

The first day open to the public was a busy one for the V&A Museum's new Photography Centre as the pictures here show. Phase one of the Photography Centre more than doubles the space dedicated to photography at the V&A, spanning four new galleries. It opens with the major display Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital, beginning in the newly named The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery (formerly Gallery 100). The show explores photography as a way of ‘collecting the world’, from the medium’s invention in the 19th century to the present day.

Drawn from the V&A and Royal Photographic Society collections of over 800,000 photographs, the display showcases some of the most exciting contemporary photography being created today. It also shows seminal prints by pioneers William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron and Roger Fenton, alongside negatives, camera equipment, photographic publications and original documents to tell a broader story about the history of international photography. In The Modern Media Gallery (formerly Gallery 99), a frequently changing selection of new acquisitions, a ‘Light Wall’ for displaying screen-based photography, and a ‘Dark Tent’ projection area complete the space.

To mark the opening, the V&A has commissioned two internationally-renowned artists to produce major new works. German photographer Thomas Ruff, known for taking a critical and conceptual approach to photography, has created a monumental series inspired by Linnaeus Tripe’s 1850s paper negatives of India and Burma, held in the V&A’s collection. Digitally reinterpreting photographs made over 160 years ago, Ruff gives Tripe’s important and haunting images a new context, emphasising their hidden details and resurrecting them with spectacular new life. Alongside Thomas Ruff’s new series, American artist Penelope Umbrico has created 171 Clouds from the V&A Online Collection, 1630 - 1885, 2018, the first work to feature on the Light Wall. Umbrico works mostly with images she finds on the internet, presenting them in ways that reveal the fluidity of digital photography. For this video, she sifted through the V&A paintings collection online and extracted details of clouds. The work explores the transition from fleeting clouds to material paint, and then from digital code to physical screen.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “I’m delighted to open the V&A’s new Photography Centre. The transfer of the historic Royal Photographic Society collection provided the catalyst for this dramatic reimagining of photography at the museum. Our collection – established by the V&A’s visionary first director Henry Cole - now seamlessly spans the entire history of photography, telling the story of the medium from the daguerreotype to the digital. Our new Photography Centre provides a world-class facility to re-establish photography as one of our defining collections. In an era when everyone’s iPhone makes them a photographer, the V&A’s Photography Centre explores and explains the medium in a compelling new way.”

Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the V&A, said: “The new Photography Centre brings to life some of the V&A’s most beautiful original picture galleries and provides a permanent home for one of the finest and most inspiring collections of photography in the world. The spaces and facilities allow visitors to access, explore and enjoy photography in its many forms. The Photography Centre encompasses more than a new gallery space. Beyond its walls lies an associated programme of research, digitisation, learning activities, publications, exhibitions, access to items in stores, and collaborations with other UK and international partners. Photography is one of our most powerful forms of global communication, and I’m thrilled that we can contextualise the past and present of this powerful medium in new and exciting ways.”

Visitors enter the new Photography Centre through a spectacular installation of over 150 cameras spanning 160 years. Nearby, an interactive camera handling station offers visitors an understanding of how photographers view the world through their equipment. Inside the gallery, focused sections look at a series of collections and collectors. This includes an important group of William Henry Fox Talbot’s cameras and prints; 1850s fine art photographs collected by Chauncey Hare Townshend, friend of Charles Dickens; Pictorialist photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn’s collection of photographs by his predecessors and contemporaries; and a selection of some of the most significant photojournalism of the 20th century collected by Magnum Photos’ UK agents, John and Judith Hillelson. A stereoscope viewer gives an immersive 3-D experience of Crystal Palace alongside some of the first photographs ever taken of Japan.

Over 600 objects made across Europe, the US, Africa, the Middle East and Asia have been brought together for Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital. The display features images by early colour photography pioneers, Agnes Warburg, Helen Messinger Murdoch and Nickolas Muray, and recent acquisitions by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cornelia Parker, Linda McCartney, Marco Breuer, Pierre Cordier and Mark Cohen. A ground-breaking botanical cyanotype by Anna Atkins, images by the world’s first female museum photographer, Isabel Agnes Cowper, and motion studies by Eadweard Muybridge, join photographs by some of the world’s most influential modern and contemporary photographers, including Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Edward Steichen, Cindy Sherman and Martin Parr.

The Photography Centre also features the Dark Tent, a flexible multimedia projection and lecture space inspired by 19th-century photographers’ travelling darkrooms. Here, specially commissioned films revealing early photographic processes, including the daguerreotype, calotype and wet collodion process, are screened, along with a slideshow of rarely-seen magic lantern slides revealing the first attempts to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1921 and 1922, among other photographic projections.

The opening of the V&A Photography Centre kick-starts a month-long Photography Spotlight across the V&A. Highlights include talks by leading photographers Mary McCartney, Rankin and Chris Levine; the premiere of the collaborative performance piece Last Evenings by artist Garry Fabian Miller and musician and composer Oliver Coates; a screening of Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Love Cecil; and special performances, events, courses, workshops and a photography-themed Friday Late on 26 October.

Admission is free. 

See more here, including details of special events and a symposium: https://www.vam.ac.uk/season/2018/photography-spotlight#highlights

Image below: © Will Pryce.jpg / above: © Michael Pritchard

Make exquisite rich brown images using this 19th century print technique.  Lead by photographic artist Catriona Gray who specialises in alternative processes, this short, three-hour workshop, will show you all you need to make gorgeous and unique Van Dyke Brown prints.

You will learn how to coat your own photographic paper, and expose it to light using the photogram technique of placing objects directly onto the paper. There will also be the opportunity to make a photographic print from a digital negative (if you want to do this, please email your image in plenty of time before the workshop).

We encourage you to bring your own objects, leaves, flowers etc. along to the workshop, to make the images truly personal.

All materials included in the fee.

Darkroom London
Unit 10 Burmarsh Workshops
71 Marsden Street
London, NW5 3JA

See more and book for either workshop here. 

An image of Alice and the Fairies taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright, and one of the hoax photographs known as the Cottingley Fairies sold for £15,000 (plus 20% buyer's premium) at Dominic Winter auctions on 4 October. 

First in the series of five Cottingley Fairies photographs, a hoax that deceived a number of eminent figures, most notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The story of the Cottingley Fairies began as a practical joke in Cottingley, near Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1917 and the fairies were actually drawings by Elsie, secured in the ground with hat pins. It was a secret the girls decided to keep until the 1980s to protect the public reputations of those who believed in the 'truth' of the images. Alice was probably the name given to Frances by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) in an attempt to conceal the girls' identities when he published the photographs.

A second image Iris and the Gnome sold for £5400 (plus 20% buyer's premium).

See more here: https://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/sale/-photo18b/lot-922

Yesterday saw the dispersal of the Alfred Swaine Taylor family collection and archive at Lacy Scott & Knight auction house in Bury St Edmunds. BPH reported on the auction back in June and an earlier disposal which highlighted the importance of the material and acted as the catalyst for this final sale.

The auction was split in to three parts: science and medicine; photography, and personal effects. Swaine's importance as a medical man, in medical jurisprudence and, particularly, as a pioneer of forensic science garnered much pre-sale publicity, but he was equally important as an early practitioner of photography applying his scientific expertise to the nascent medium which he remained interested in until the 1870s. Representatives from the Science Museum, Royal College of Physicians and Royal Institution were in the saleroom and there was active participation online and on commission. 

The photography material was lots 2124-2174 and consisted of three copies of his On the Art of Photogenic Drawing (1840), correspondence with Michael Faraday and others about this publication, family carte-de-visite albums and other portraits, and a small selection of photographic manufacturers' trade catalogues. Some of the highlights, with hammer prices, include: 

• On the Art of Photogenic Drawing (1840), copy with author's notes £3,600; two other copies £3,400 and £2,600. 
• Letter from Michael Faraday to Taylor complimenting him on his photographic art - £1,900
• Family carte-de-visite album - £700
• Manuscript notes on photography - £620
• Two collodion negatives showing a skull and a skeleton - £620
• British Journal Photographic Almanac 1862 - £620
• J H Dallmeyer 1863 catalogue and others - £420
• Mansell's Catalogue of Frith's Photo Pictures (1869) and others - £600

all prices are plus 20% buyer's premium and VAT. 

The complete online catalogue and sale results can be seen here. 

Are you as passionate about photography, film and the moving image as you are about books? The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation which was created by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the founder of Focal Press in 1995, is looking for an Administrator

Duties

• Administer the Foundation itself, organising and administering up to 5 Trustee meetings and away days per annum and keeping content for the website and other communications channels up-to-date
• Project manage and administer the annual Book Awards and Book Awards ceremony, liaising with publishers, photographers, writers and artists, venues, partners and press, as well as with the advice of the Trustees inviting specialist judges in the chosen fields
• Potentially, and subject to agreement by the Trustees, develop additional culturally-engaging activities in the fields of photography, film and the moving image

Please see further details regarding the Job Description and duties below.

The Person

The ideal candidate will be an accomplished arts administrator with a minimum of 3 years’ professional experience and ideally with experience of the administration of an arts-based prize. It is desirable that you also have knowledge and / or experience of the medium of photography or the moving image although an enthusiastic commitment to develop specialism in these field will be welcomed by applicants with other relevant experience.

We actively encourage applications from the groups listed below who are currently under-represented within our sector. These are people from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups, people who identify as LGBTQ, as well as deaf, partially sighted and Disabled people.

Time commitment and fee

This work usually requires the equivalent of about 50 days per annum, spread unevenly thought the year. The ability to work flexibly is a requirement. Because of the phasing of the awards, the time input is currently heavily focussed on the period November to May each year. Remuneration is paid on a day-by-day basis at £200 per day.

Application

Please send an email via the button below addressed to The Board of Trustees, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation.

Please include your CV with a concise covering letter of no more than one page outlining your interest, experience and suitability for the position by Monday 15 October 2018 at 11.59pm.

See more here.

At the National Science and Media Museum, striving to develop our digital collections as a leader in the interpretation and impact of sound and light technologies on human life, we are currently in the midst of a 5-million pound 'Masterplan' project which will ignite a new sense of curiosity for our diverse audiences, seeing new gallery spaces and our exhibition range transformed.

In order to lead the ongoing delivery of our broad range of exhibitions and events, we are looking for a creative, innovative and strategic leader to join us at the Musuem, in Bradford, in a newly created role of Head of Exhibitions and Interpretation, on a permanent basis.

In this role, you will lead a dedicated and driven team of colleagues across exhibitions, content development and interpretation, ensuring our collections and knowledge are shared through story-led, innovative, visitor-focussed design. 

As part of the Museum Senior Management Team, you will interpret information, support the design of narrative and deliver unique gallery content throughout the museum and beyond, collaborating with colleagues to bring our curatorial voice to life and ensure authenticity of the stories we tell.  

Joining us, you will have excellent leadership skills and experience of managing and developing a team, budgets and creating genuine opportunities through creative collaboration. You will bring unparalleled experience of using interpretive methodology and audience focussed data to deliver creative projects for museum exhibitions, galleries or interactive public spaces. You will also be a strong communicator and skilled influencer, able to work positively and proactively with internal and external stakeholders.

You will be offered excellent benefits, including 27 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays, flexibility with work (including the ability to work from home and agile start/finish times), a contributory pension scheme, BUPA medical and dental care, an interest free loan offer and numerous staff discounts whilst developing your career in a world class museum group.

Click here to view the Vacancy Information Pack which provides you with details of the role and supporting statement questions.

See more here.

This autumn, the remarkable photographs of suffragette Norah Smyth will be returning to the East End after one hundred years. East End Suffragettes: the photographs of Norah Smyth opens at Four Corners Gallery on 2nd November.  Smyth's photographs, never exhibited in the UK, reveal the little-known story of the radical, ‘breakaway’ East London suffragettes. 

Smyth was a central member of Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes, which broke from the main suffragette movement and fought for working women’s rights throughout the First World War.  Faced by the increasing war poverty in East London, they set up cost price restaurants, babies’ milk clinics, nurseries and a cooperative toy factory, run largely by and for local women.  Alongside the vote they called for profound social changes: equal pay, a living wage and better housing. 

A talented artist and organiser, Smyth used her photographic skills to provide images for the East London Federation of Suffragette’s newspaper, The Woman’s Dreadnought, promotional flyers, postcards and catalogues, focusing in particular on local women and children living in poverty. These images provide an intimate record of Sylvia Pankhurst and the ELFS’ activities during 1914-18, an extraordinary moment in women’s social history.  

East End Suffragettes: the photographs of Norah Smyth will include over 100 original photographs, generously loaned by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, alongside other unseen archival material.  A programme of accompanying talks and walks will explore the history and local area where Sylvia Pankhurst and Norah Smyth lived and worked. The exhibition and talks are all free of charge.

The exhibition is part of The Women's Hall project, celebrating the little-known history of the East London Federation of Suffragettes 1914-18, and the centenary of British women first winning the right to vote. 

East End Suffragettes: the photographs of Norah Smyth
2 November - 9 February 2019

See more here: http://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/East-End-Suffragettes

Image: Cost price restaurant at The Women's Hall. Photograph: Norah Smyth

Photography has always been a powerful tool of communication and has developed into an instrument of our everyday experience: Through photographs we are able to communicate quickly and easily with each other. As a medium of social interaction, photographic images are used as a handy alternative to language, supplementing or even replacing it. They transport us to sites and individuals, connecting the distant and the temporally remote. This far-reaching development is increasingly driven by the digitization of our everyday culture. Photography is both part of this process, and its most visible expression.

Photo-historical research can contribute important observations to this diagnosis of our own time. From the moment photographic images became a matter of public interest, they served as objects of circulation and social connection. Already by the middle of the 19th century photography had opened global routes of image-based economies, providing and distributing our interpretations of visible worlds. As commodities or gifts, they are traded and exchanged, distributed and collected. The proliferation of photographically based information and the trading of photographic objects constitute important aspects of social interaction in the early stages of globalization.

These observations are our point of departure for the course titled “Circulating Photographs: Materials, Practices, Institutions”. Our aim is to develop a focused, multi-disciplinary analysis of the photographic image as an object of circulation, especially over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries (up to 1950). In the context of photo-historical research it is common practice to ask about processes of production or reception. In contrast, by putting circulation modalities at the center of our interest, we would like to accentuate the importance of such interactions for the production of photographic meaning. Acts of transmission constitute an important framework for the semantics of photographic imagery. Thus, we are interested in the realm of photographs as a foundation and tool for social interaction and in the practices that lead to our current understanding of image exchange. The vernacular image and its everyday practices are as important as highly professional appropriations within the domain of the arts and sciences. We are particularly interested in strategies of networking that have been enabled, shaped, modified or rejected by photography.

Looking for historical conditions that enabled photographs to circulate requires a closer investigation of premises related to such interactions:

1. The material foundations of photography, i.e., its historically shifting concreteness in terms of production processes and technologies.
2. The ensemble of practices, i.e., the methods and channels that have been developed, cultivated and refined for the circulation of photographs.
3. The diversity of institutions that have been created or adapted to this purpose.

Examining the variety of connections between these aspects will provide a new understanding of photo-historical developments that lean on the idea of exchange within the domain of visual media. We are especially interested in practices and strategies that have been developed in photography’s pre-digital era and we ask whether, and how, they can be regarded as a foundation for current media practices of transmission and exchange. Such an interest stimulates a variety of questions:

–   What types of circulation can and should we distinguish?

–   How does the materiality of photographic images affect and shape their circulation? And how does the circulation of photographs have an impact on their materiality?

–   What differences are there in professional and private practices among the networks of circulation?

–   What kinds of channels have been developed and used for the circulation of photographs?

–   In what ways do modes of circulation differ – modes such as sending, exchanging, transferring, sharing, dissemination, dispersion, etc.? How do we perceive and evaluate these historical practices today, and vice versa, how does our current practice shed light on the meaning of past exchanges of photographs?

–   How can we conceptualize the difference between circulating photographs as original prints on the one hand, and circulating reproductions of them on the other?

–   How does the photographic picture become a social entity in the process of its circulation?

–   How is meaning produced and altered through processes of circulation?

–   How can we describe the ongoing media change of photography from the point of view of circulation?

–   What conclusions can be drawn by examining specific time periods regarding the processes of circulation?

–   What kind of media practices of transmission from previous periods of media history are still in use today?

The course is aimed at advanced M.A. students, Ph.D. candidates and recent post-docs in art history and related disciplines with a strong photo-historical component. The course will be held in English. During the course, all participants will present their current research project, which should exhibit a close connection to the course subject matter. The course is supplemented by visits to photographic archives in Rome.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana will offer lodging and reimburse half of the incurred travelling expenses. In addition, participants will receive a daily allowance.

Please send the following application materials as a single PDF-document to Fototeca@biblhertz.it (subject “Studienkurs”) by October 22 2018:

–   Abstract of proposed subject/case study

–   Brief CV

–   Brief summary of your master’s thesis, dissertation or postdoctoral project

–   Names and contact details of two references

For further information please contact: Fototeca@biblhertz.it

The course is organized and led by Tatjana Bartsch (Bibl. Hertziana, Rome), Maria Antonella Pelizzari (Hunter College, CUNY, New York), Johannes Röll (Bibl. Hertziana) and Steffen Siegel (Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen).

See more here: http://www.biblhertz.it/en/news/call-for-papers/

Circulating Photographs: Materials, Practices, Institutions

A photo-historical course organized by the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History), Rome, and the Folkwang Universität der Künste, Essen

Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, March 18–22, 2019

Deadline: October 22, 2018

Cambridge University Press has just published Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image by Dr Elena Cooper. The book is the first in-depth study of the history of copyright protecting the visual arts, especially photography.

Exploring legal developments during an important period in the making of the modern law, the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, in relation to four themes – the protection of copyright ‘authors’ (painters, photographers and engravers), art collectors, sitters and the public interest. It uncovers a number of long-forgotten narratives of copyright history, including views of copyright that differ from how we think about copyright today. As well as considering the distinct nature of the contribution of copyright to the history of the cultural domain accounted for by scholars of art history and the sociology of art, Art and Modern Copyright examines the value to lawyers and policy-makers today of copyright history as a destabilising influence. In taking us to ways of thinking that differ from our own, history can sharpen the critical lens through which we view copyright debates today.

The book will be launched at an event at the Victorian Picture Galleryat Royal Holloway, University of London, at 6.15pm on Wednesday 5 December 2018, where Dr Cooper will draw on the rich collection of nineteenth century paintings in the Gallery to illustrate the central themes of her research.

If you are interested in attending, please contact Dr Cooper: elena.cooper@glasgow.ac.uk . Members are warmly invited to the launch and are entitled to a 20% discount on the purchase of a copy of the book (available for a limited time only). 

If you are interested in attending contact Dr Cooper: elena.cooper@glasgow.ac.uk .

A full review will be published shortly.

Starting from the analysis of the article ‘The Camera on Wheels’, which was published in the magazine Amateur Photographer in December 1885, Sara Dominici explores the relation between photography and cycling in late Victorian Britain. It looks, in particular, at how the confluence of new ways of moving and seeing influenced photographic practices. As contemporary accounts reveal, despite the significant difficulties of carrying fragile cameras on unstable machines, combining cycling and photography was incredibly popular: amongst the reasons was the possibility to reach a wider choice of locations, and thus subjects to photograph, and to do so in a way felt as entirely under one’s control.

The talk examines the profound influence that this had on how photographers thought of camera practices, leading to the desire for a camera apparatus that could benefit from the freedom and independence associated with their newly embraced mobility, as suggested in the title itself ‘The Camera on Wheels’.

‘The Camera on Wheels’: the Emergence of New Mobile Practices of Vision in Late Victorian Britain
08 Nov 2018, 17:30 to 08 Nov 2018, 19:30
IHR Peter Marshall Room, N204, Second Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Lund Humphries presents the latest volume in its series of Handbooks in International Art Business, an essential guide to the development of photography as an art form and how to navigate this growing market. Photography and the Art Market charts the transition of photographs created for aesthetic ends from a hobbyist pastime to a core component of the international fine art scene.

This essential handbook explores the structural elements that supported this shift (including dedicated galleries, museum and private collections, festivals, fairs and academic scholarship), most of which have come into being within the last 50 years, and appraises the state of the market for photography today.

The first part of this essential handbook provides an art-business analysis of the market for art photography and explains how to navigate it; the second is an art historical account of the evolution of art photography. In tracing the emergence of a robust art-world sub-system for art photography, sustaining both significant art-world presence and strong trade, the book shows the solid foundations on which today’s international market is built, examines how that market is evolving,
and points to future developments.

This pioneering handbook is a must-read for scholars, students, curators, dealers, photographers, private collectors and institutional buyers, and other arts professionals. 

Photography and the Art Market
Juliet Hacking
ISBN 978-1-84822-148-2
256 pages
£30.

This autumn, London's Photographers' Gallery will be running a series of events focused on the particulars of collecting photography and understanding its position in the wider art market today. Offering top tips and guidance from a range of industry experts, we will provide insider’s advice on how the photography market works and how to begin a collection.

Image: Churchgate Station, Bombay, India, 1995, from Migrations © Sebastiao Salgado/Amazonas, Courtesy of NB Pictures

Marie-Angélique Languille et Céline Daher have announced that the videos of the conference French paper negatives: production, characterization, preservation which took place from 7-8 December 2017 have been uploaded here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9EOqTTdlIr0EMJPfh4oH5slFO8eQKC6

This was an important conference with a range of speakers, delivering papers in English and French on a range of subjects dealing with French paper negatives. 

Newly discovered albums from the National Science and Media Museum collection form part of a new exhibition at the Science Museum The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution. Investigating the role of science in the lives and deaths of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, this exhibition takes visitors behind the scenes of one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. 

Set against a turbulent backdrop of social upheaval and war between 1900 and 1918, The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution will explore the significant influence of medicine on the private lives of the imperial family during this period and the advances in medicine and forensic science over 70 years later that transformed the investigation into their sudden disappearance.

Rare artefacts, including the family’s personal diaries, private possessions and jewellery found at the scene of their murder, and two Imperial Fabergé Easter Eggs presented by the Tsar to his wife just a year before the fall of the imperial house, will help bring the personal lives of autocrat Nicholas II and his family to life.

For the first time, photograph albums created by an English tutor to the Tsar’s nephews, and now part of the Science Museum Group collection, will be on public display, providing a fascinating glimpse into the daily lives of the Romanov family.  The albums were found by chance by curator Natalia Sidlina, when she unearthed them when searching for Russia-related material held at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford for the 2015 Cosmonauts exhibition. Among the items brought up by the museum’s curators was a crate containing 22 albums, the Romanov albums.

From the treatment of their only son and heir Alexei’s life-threatening haemophilia B, a rare blood condition and infamous ‘royal disease’ passed down from Queen Victoria, to the Tsarina’s fertility and the Red Cross medical training of the Tsar’s daughters, this exhibition will explore the imperial family’s contrasting reliance on both the latest medical discoveries of the time as well as traditional and spiritual healers. The family’s determination to keep Alexei’s illness a secret compelled them to take controversial measures that ultimately contributed to the fall of the 300-year-old dynasty. 

Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum, said:

“This exhibition marks 100 years since the end of the Romanov dynasty and explores one of the most dramatic periods in Russian history, all through the unique lens of science. Our curatorial team have brought together an exceptional, rare and poignant collection to tell this remarkable story. I want to thank all our lenders in the UK, Russia and America for making this exhibition possible.” 

The investigation into the disappearance of Tsar Nicholas II, his family and entourage following the revolutions of 1917, started in July 1918 and the case remains open today. One hundred years later, this exhibition will take visitors behind the scenes to uncover the science behind the investigation into one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.  

Visitors will be able to examine evidence from the scene of the execution – from the dentures of the imperial physician, a single diamond earring belonging to the Tsarina, to a chandelier from the house where the family were executed – and delve into the remarkable modern forensic investigation which set out to piece together the events of that night. 

This investigation was one of the first occasions that forensic DNA analysis was used to solve a historic case, involving the best British experts under the direction of Dr Peter Gill from the Forensic Science Service.  Blood samples from relatives and advances in DNA profiling and 3D reconstruction helped to positively identify the remains of the imperial family and enabled the investigation to reach convincing conclusions. 

The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution
21 September 2018 – 24 March 2019
Free, ticketed
sciencemuseum.org.uk/thelasttsar
@ScienceMuseum 
#thelasttsar

For further information and to book free tickets visit the Science Museum website.

Image: top: The tsar and his family at Gatchina Palace, outside St Petersburg, around 1915. Photograph: The Science Museum Group Collection; Bottom: Radiograph of Emperor Nicholas II. Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A Countway Library of Medicine. 

This new book 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 photographic collectors.

The book is available from 28 September and orders will be processed by the publishers, the Somerset & Dorset Family History Society via its online shop  http://shop.sdfhs.org/, It is also available to order from booksellers.

Secure the shadow. Somerset photographers 1839 – 1939
Robin Ansell, Allan Collier and Phil Nichols
Somerset and Dorset Family History Society, 2018. 

The death of Bill Buchanan deprives the history of photography of one of the key figures in the rise of interest in the subject over the last sixty years.

William Menzies Buchanan was born in Trinidad in 1932. He studied at Glasgow School of Art and then taught in Glasgow schools for five years before joining the Scottish Arts Council in 1961. It was while he was there as Exhibitions Officer, and later, Art Director, that, with Katherine Michaelson of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, he organised the 1970 revelatory exhibition of the calotypes of Hill and Adamson. For it, he managed to persuade the Free Church of Scotland to lend Hill’s mammoth ‘Disruption’ painting, something no one had achieved before.

In 1977 he returned to the Glasgow School of Art, first as head of Fine Art and latterly as Deputy Head, retiring in 1992. It was during that period that his interest in photography, in addition to other art forms, manifested itself with considerable effect. As well as contributing to numerous magazines and other publications, including The Golden Age of British Photography, The Photographic Collector, The History of Photography, British Photography in the Nineteenth Century, Photography 1900, Studies in Photography, and many more, he was Chairman of Stills Gallery from 1987 to 1992.

In March 1983, there was a conference in Glasgow called ‘Scottish Contributions to Photography’. Nowadays, that might not attract a huge amount of attention, but this one was a ground-breaking international symposium and in its three days it reached well beyond Scotland, as the list of the participants demonstrate. In addition to the list of locally based speakers – Thomas Joshua Cooper, Sara Stevenson, Murray Johnston, Alison Morrison-Low, Ray McKenzie, Robert Smart and David Bruce – there was what amounted to a roster of the most important photo-historians of the time – Mike Weaver, Larry Schaaf, Stanley Triggs, William Stapp, Margaret Harker, John Hannavy, and Roger Taylor.

There was one other speaker: Bill Buchanan, on his favourite subject, the ‘most versatile and artistic’ James Craig Annan, but Bill’s contribution was much more than that; in fact the whole event was largely his devising and its legacy is still with us. In his room in the now devastated Glasgow School of Art was born the idea that became the Scottish Society for the History of Photography whose publication, ‘Studies in Photography’, remains a leader in its field.

Bill Buchanan’s influence, and his highly significant role in encouraging the development of interest in the history of photography, at both academic and popular levels, deserve to be recognised. That would probably embarrass an essentially modest, private, sort of man, but it would be entirely justified.

Images:

Top: Mike Graham, Bill Buchanan
Lower: Sean Hudson, L to R: David Bruce, Roger Taylor, Sara Stevenson, Will Stapp, Margaret Harker, Mike Weaver, Larry Schaaf, Ialeen Gibson Cowan, John Hannavy, Alison Morrison-Low, Bill Buchanan, Ray Mckenzie.

Photography is under the spotlight as the V&A Museum prepares for the 12 October opening of its new Photography Centre which unites - and shows to the public - the V&A and RPS collections. The Photography Spotlight celebrates the Centre, home to the national collection of the art of photography and shows a dynamic series of talks, workshops and special events, including an international two-day conference.

Find our more here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/season/2018/photography-spotlight