BPH publicised the International Conference Stereo & Immersive Media 2016 last year. The conference organisers have made the presentations available on Youtube and you can delight in, enjoy, and learn from Larry Schaaf and Denis Pellerin (use the links and then check the Youtube sidebar for the others) amongst others.

Barry Lane, who has died aged 72, was the first, and only, photography officer at the Arts Council and was later Secretary-General of the Royal Photographic Society between 1995 and 2001. As a champion for photography at the Arts Council Lane played a pivotal role in supporting a new wave of emerging British photographers. After he left the Arts Council as Head of Photography he was not replaced and British photography had to look to other supporters to ensure it remained funded and exhibited.

Barry Lane was born in Watford on 22 March 1944. He attended Watford Boys Grammar School between 1955 and 1962.  The following year he went up to Oxford University where he gained a BA(Hons) in Philosophy and Psychology, graduating in 1967,  having been President of the university’s art club.  He remained in Oxford as the first director of the Museum of Modern Art where he established the museum an important venue for the contemporary visual arts with early exhibitions of photography, experimental architecture and installations as well as the more traditional mediums of paintings and sculpture.

In 1970 he joined the Arts Council as Regional Art Officer organising fourteen touring exhibitions over three years including early shows of the 1840s photographers D O Hill and Robert Adamson and the pioneering Serpentine Gallery Photographers I and II. In a foretaste of the later role he commissioned eight pairs of photographers to work in eight cities to produce Two Views exhibitions. The photographers included Ian Berry, Chris Killip and Josef Koudelka.

Away from the Arts Council Lane acted between 1972 and 1977 as curator of the Francis Frith Collection which mainly consisted of British topographical photography from the 1850s. He was director of Photographic Collections Ltd between 1973 and 1977 where he supervised the production of limited edition portfolios of the work of H P Robinson from originals in the RPS Collection and, in 1975, Tony Ray-Jones who had died in 1972. The latter has become collectible in its own right. 

It was Lane’s role as the Arts Council’s first, and only, photography officer between 1973 and 1991 where he made his greatest and most long lasting impact on British photography. One of his first acts was to establish a Photography Committee for the Arts Council’s Visual Arts Department in 1973. This was the first time that photography had been formally recognised as an independent medium and it came as British photography was developing rapidly with a new wave of photographers creating innovative work across a range of genres and new independent galleries such as London’s The Photographers’ Gallery (1971) and York’s Impressions Gallery (1972) showing photography. A new grant giving scheme was introduced and these galleries benefitted from newly available funding.

Lane was responsible for organising or commissioning a large number of exhibitions: Diane Arbus was shown in 1973 at the Hayward Gallery which also showed Pictorial Photography in Britain 1900-1920 (1978) and Neue Sachlichkeit: New Realism in German Photography of the 20s (1978) were notable. Historians such as Aaron Schaaf, Margaret Harker, David Mellor, Valerie Lloyd, and Ian Jeffrey were commissioned to produce exhibitions. In addition, a large number of Arts Council touring exhibitions were produced from Masterpiece Treasures from The Royal Photographic Society (1971), Modern British Photography 1919-1939 (1980) and retrospectives of photographers including Andre Kertesz, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Sir Benjamin Stone, Walter Evans, Paul Strand, Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy, George Rodger and many others which opened up photography to a public audience across the United Kingdom. 

Lane also supported photographers directly and purchased over 2000 photographs for the Arts Council’s collection. He established and edited British Image a new series of Arts Council publications of contemporary photography with eight volumes appearing between 1975 and 1980. The biennial National Photography Conference was set up and continues to this day. The first national policy for Photography and Photography and Education (1987) was developed for the Arts Council.  Photographic education was something Lane was strongly committed to and he was an external examiner for a number of UK photography degree and postgraduate degree courses.

In 1991 Lane’s title was changed to Head of Photography recognising his role in developing strategy for the photography sector with a discussion document Photography, the Arts and Culture Industries for the National Arts and Media Strategy (1991), commissioning the Marchant Report on the National Network of Photography/New Media Centres (1994) and Creating Vision – Photography and the National Curriculum (1994). He remained  deeply involved in supporting independent photography through publishing and making funding decisions with reviews of the business plans and programmes of The Photographers’ Gallery, Creative Camera and Ten.8 magazines. The 1998 Year of Photography and Electronic Image which was awarded to Yorkshire and Humberside was conceived and organised by Lane.

Lane joined the Royal Photographic Society as secretary-general in April 1995 where he was responsible for the day-to-day management of the Society. His appointment came at a particularly challenging time with the Society’s National Centre of Photography struggling financially and its collection of historic photographs and equipment being seen by some as an unnecessary burden on the organisation. An interview with Lane soon after his arrival indicated that he saw the continued operation in Bath as unsustainable. 

An Arts Council funded feasibility study was produced which recommended moving from Society’s premises and finding a partner to enable greater access to and use of the Collection. Lane was involved in exploring a number of options. The Society’s officers  decided to enter into negotiations with the then National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, now National Media Museum, The way this was managed was something that Lane strongly disagreed with and he left the Society in January 2002. The Collection, with the aid of a small grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund was ultimately sold to the Museum and the Society moved to smaller premises.

After the RPS he turned his energies to his boyhood love of archaeology and local history. Between 2002 and his death he was actively involved in developing and supporting a wide range of  regional and local activity. He was an early member of CHERT (Charterhouse Historic Environs Research Team) and founded the Westbury Society where he mixed practical exploration with academic research. 

He also played an important part at the county and regional level, becoming Hon Secretary of  (SANHS) Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society from 2006 to 2009 when the Society was creating a new constitution and organising its move from Taunton Castle. He served on the Society’s archaeology committee and administered its historic grant fund from 2002 to 2017 and was a trustee from 2003 to 2009. He chaired the Council of British Archaeology from 2008 to 2011 and was responsible for organising the national CBA conference in Cornwall during that time.

He was a committee member and newsletter editor of the Somerset Vernacular Buildings Research Group, undertaking detailed building and village surveys for them and private property history commissions as well. But his main interest from 2010 to 2016 was the Wells and Mendip Museum where he was Honorary Curator. In this role he took responsibility for reinvigorating the displays, creating new galleries, building a partnership with the City Archives and ensuring the Museum retained its registered status.

As well as these public roles he found time to research and write. As well as the commissioned house and property histories, he wrote both scholarly and engaging articles about such subjects as the mediaeval drainage of the Somerset levels, the meaning of the Somerset term ‘Old Auster’ and changes in the landscape resulting from the move from Celtic to Anglo Saxon Christianity. His final article, unfinished at his death, was on early church dedications to St Lawrence in Somerset. He was published in peer reviewed journals such as SANHS Proceedings and  Archaeology in the Severn Estuary.

In his local community he bought a Victorian cider press at a farm auction which has since become the centre of a community cider making and wassailing tradition. He also bought a field, planted a traditional Somerset cider orchard, and became part owner and trustee of a 7-acre area of woodland, managed for conservation purposes. He kept bees, taught local people how to do serious archaeology, led walks explaining the history of the landscape and collaborated with English Heritage  on their  2016 book on the landscape history of Mendip.

 An extraordinarily generous man he completely lacked vanity, was unimpressed by status and gave freely of his time to whoever came to him with enthusiasm and a desire to do and learn.  He will be much missed by all the people he has supported and whose knowledge he has enriched.

He will be particularly missed by his wife, Sue Isherwood, his daughters from his first marriage to Judith, Thalia and Helena, his step daughter, Imogen, and four grandchildren.

Barry John Lane, born 22 March 1944, died 4 March 2017.

© Image: Angela Williams. Text: Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS and Sue Isherwood

• Details of Barry Lane's funeral can be found here.

and as a reminder...

National Science and Media Museum is the new name of the former National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (June 1983) and National Media Museum (December 2006), according to the Guardian newspaper.

The re-named museum is due to reveals it's new website and branding later this month. 

In addition, the museum is opening a state-of-the-art £1.8m interactive gallery and the arrival of astronaut Tim Peake’s spacecraft are among a series of major launches at the National Media Museum this year.

Featuring UK-firsts and breath-taking live shows, Wonderlab explores the science of light, sound and images through state-of-the-art exhibits – including some that can’t be seen permanently anywhere else in the world. Visitors will be able to see their body split from their head as they walk, hear their voice echo through a 15m-long tube, experience an anti-gravity mirror and a musical laser tunnel, as well as watch one of the world’s first 3D-printed Zoetrope installations.

The Bradford-based museum has also confirmed it will host the world-famous Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft that carried Major Tim Peake to the International Space Station (ISS) and back to earth. Visitors will be able to see the space-faring vessel this September when it travels outside London for the first time since it was acquired by the Science Museum Group in 2016.

Jo Quinton-Tulloch, Museum Director, said: “These announcements are not only incredibly exciting, but a significant statement of intent – that we are aiming to be one of the leading museums in the UK and worldwide. The museum has a bright future and we are confident people are going to be wowed by Wonderlab and the state-of-the-art exhibits within, along with many other events we have planned like the arrival of Tim Peake’s spacecraft. 

“We want to draw in new visitors, encourage existing ones to come more often and open a whole new chapter for the museum. Our collections across the technology and culture of photography, film and TV are unrivalled, and Wonderlab explores the science behind what makes these things magical in a very hands-on way.”

Main image: The Soyuz TMA-19M  spacecraft with museum director Jo Quinton-Tulloch and Bradford MPs Naz Shah and Philip Davies

Barry Lane, who has died aged 72, was the first, and only, photography officer at the Arts Council and was later Secretary-General of the Royal Photographic Society between 1995 and 2001. As a champion for photography at the Arts Council Lane played a pivotal role in supporting and exhibiting a new wave of emerging British photographers through funding and exhibitions. After he left the Arts Council as Head of Photography he was not replaced and photography had to look to other supporters to ensure it remained funded and exhibited.

He joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1995 and left after disagreements over the future of the RPS Collection.

BPH's thoughts are with Sue, his partner, and family. A full obituary is in preparation and will be published shortly. 

UPDATE: A memorial service for Barry Lane will take place on Tuesday, 14 March 2017 at 2pm at Westbury-sub-Mendip parish church.  Everyone is welcome to attend and and afterwards in Westbury Village Hall. 

Westbury is on the A371 4 miles equidistant between Wells and Cheddar. The nearest railway stations are Castle Cary (16 miles) and Bath (20 miles).

Family flowers only and donations to Greenpeace and Dignity in Dying via the undertakers, Unwins, Wells, t: 01749 679927

BBC4 has a season of photography programmes starting this coming week with a three-part series looking at the history of British photography. Other programmes will look at Harry Burton, the official photographer for Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun excavation during the 1920s; the working practices, lives and opinions of some of the 20th century’s most distinguished photographers; follow street photographer Dougie Wallace around London; and examine the classic family photo album. The season also has a companion exhibition at the National Media Museum Britain in Focus: A Photographic History which will show original photographs from many of the photographers featured in the season. 

Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (three parts, Monday, 6, 13, 20 March, 2017, BBC Four at 2100 

Photographer and picture editor Eamonn McCabe explores the fascinating and remarkable story of British photography, from the rapid innovation of Roger Fenton in the Golden Age of the 19th century, to the satirical eye of Martin Parr in the 21st. He examines the profound technical and scientific changes that have allowed iconic images to be produced, chronicles the rise of a mass democracy of picture taking, and reflects on the changing way we have consumed photographs.

Throughout this three-part documentary series Eamonn sees how the art form has developed, examining some of the unforgettable images from pioneers of British photography, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Fay Godwin, Cecil Beaton, Christina Broom, John Bulmer and Vanley Burke. From the first 'big bangs' of photographic development and early technology, through to the impact that captured images had on the development of journalism, photography emerged as both an art-form and a tool for reflecting and recording the world around us.

The programme will also look forward to the future of the medium - and how in the hands of a new generation of photographers, a thoroughly 21st century British photography is being created.

Clips from the programme can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h95c3/clips

Photographers at the BBC (transmission time to be confirmed)

Using the BBC archive, this programme reveals the working practices, lives and opinions of some of the 20th century’s most distinguished photographers. From Norman Parkinson to David Bailey, Eve Arnold to Jane Bown, for decades the BBC has drawn the nation’s attention to the creators of what has become the most ubiquitous contemporary art form. Pioneering BBC programmes like Monitor, Face to Face and Omnibus provide unique and rarely-seen insights into the careers of many leading practitioners.

Through a selection of top photographers, the programme brings into focus the key genres (fashion, portraiture, documentary and landscape) and shows how these talented figures helped develop photography into a revered – and accessible – art form.

What Do Artists Do All Day: Dougie Wallace (transmission time to be confirmed)

Street photographer Dougie Wallace’s startling and eye-catching images capture the life of the inhabitants and visitors to the super-rich residential and retail district of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, with its solid gold-plated Bugatti’s and high end retail consumerism.

BBC Four follows Wallace as he finishes his exhilarating, headline-grabbing photography photo-documentary series ‘Harrodsburg’: an up-close wealth safari capturing the ultra-rich consumers who populate one of the UKs most wealthy and exclusive postcodes.

The recent winner of a Magnum Award for his work, Dougie's images are aggressive, confrontational and opinionated. But he is unrepentant about his methods, and his message: “They come here because the rule is they can do whatever they want. Well, the rule of law in the UK says that I can photograph them. I’m just showing the wealthy, I’m taking pictures of them to highlight things like food banks in Glasgow.”

The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun (transmission time to be confirmed)

This is the story of Harry Burton, one of the great heroes of British photography. As the official photographer for Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun excavation during the 1920s, Burton created some of the 20th Century’s most famous images and helped make Tutankhamun an international sensation.

The film explores key locations in Burton’s life, in the UK and Egypt, and sets Burton’s famous black-and-white images of Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun excavation alongside forgotten colour photographs and cine film shot by Burton himself. The team led by Margaret Mountford and contemporary photographer Harry Cory Wright will also stage creative photographic experiments to discover the secrets of Burton’s art, re-creating the make-shift studio and dark-room that Burton set up by the Pharaoh’s tomb to reveal how he produced his iconic images.

Burton immortalised some of the most iconic moments of the 20th century, and besides recording the progress of the archaeology, his images capture the mystery, drama and excitement of one of the great archaeological discoveries of the century.

Smile! The Nation's Family Album (transmission time to be confirmed)

In today's digital age, the classic family photo album has become an object of nostalgic affection. But its more than just a collection of sentimental snapshots. Celebrating everyday moments and shared experiences - from birthdays to weddings, first days at school to teenage parties - amateur photography offers an intimate portrait of Britain’s post-war social history. And each generation had a different camera to tell their story.

From Teddy Boys in photo booths to family holidays captured on Kodachrome, this film reveals the images and the cameras which preserved our most precious memories. Discovering how new technologies and evolving social attitudes inspired the nation to pick up a camera, the film charts a journey from the Box Brownie to Instagram, offering a touching portrait of our changing lives, taken not by the professional photographer but on our own cameras.

The BBC is also seeking family photographs to accompany the series. See: Full entry guidelines for Smile! The Nation’s Family Album.

Details of the National Media Museum's exhibition Britain in Focus which runs from 25 March until 17 June can be found here

Main image: © John Bulmer, Washing Line, Halifax, 1965, from the National Media Museum exhibition Britain in Focus.

This exhibition, at Derby Museum and Art Gallery from 24 March, explores early studio photography from 1854 onwards with a focus on the collection of W. W. Winter Studio in Derby, one of the oldest running studios in the world. Over the last 170 years the Winter photographers have recorded Derby and the people and things that were both important and commonplace in the town as it grew into the city that we know today.

Curated by Greg Hobson.

See more here: https://www.derbymuseums.org/whats-on/people-place-and-things

The National Library of Scotland has an extensive collection of photographic material, including loose and mounted photographs, photograph albums, slides, negatives, volumes illustrated with photographs and photographic postcards. There are several discrete photographic collections but most of the material is dispersed through the print and archival collections. The post of Photographic Collections Curator is one of several roles created as part of a project to improve the Library’s knowledge of these collections, to develop its policies and practices in this area, and to make the collections more accessible through description and digitisation.   

The Photographic Collections Curator will report to the Rare Books, Maps and Music Collections Manager but will work across the entire range of the collections, including General Collections, Manuscripts and Archives Collections and the Moving Image Archive as well as the RBMM collections. They will survey the photographic collections in their entirety, co-ordinate finding aids, inventories and catalogues, and will work on a project to digitise and create metadata for one particular collection.    

Applications are encouraged from individuals who have both subject expertise in the history of photography and its technical processes and experience of working with photographic collections in a library, archive or other cultural heritage institution – in particular, experience of cataloguing and description, collection management, digitisation and/or interpretation.     

Please click here for job description

Working at the Library

See more and apply here

The Legacy of Alfred Hugh Fisher and the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee (COVIC) is a PhD research scholarship including stipend and tuition fee costs offered within the Photographic History Research Centre in the School of Humanities at De Montfort University In collaboration with the Royal Commonwealth Society department at Cambridge University Library.  It is available to UK or EU students who are suitably qualified and have outstanding potential as researchers.

In offering this scholarship the University aims to further develop its proven research strengths in the study of photographic histories, practices and cultures. It is an excellent opportunity for a candidate of exceptional promise to contribute to a stimulating, world-class research environment.

The Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee (COVIC) was a body charged in 1902 with creating a visual record of Britain’s overseas territories for use in British schools. Cambridge University Library (CUL) maintains its photographic archives, and this project will focus on the Fisher Photograph Collection. Mainly comprising of photographs taken by artist and amateur photographer Alfred Hugh Fisher in 1907-1910, the collection documents changes to physical and sociocultural environments across the globe during the first decade of the twentieth century. A collaboration between the Photographic History Research Centre and Cambridge University Library, this project will explore the significance of visual records in cultural exchange, and how subsequent re-use of images from the Fisher Photograph Collection led to innovative understandings of ‘other’ cultures and lands.

PhD supervisor: Dr Gil Pasternak

PhD Commencing October 2017

For a more detailed description of the scholarship, the subject area at DMU and an application pack please visit http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/graduate-school/phd-scholarships.aspx.

For additional details you may also want to check this advertisement: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AXP124/graduate-school-full-bursary-phd-scholarship-the-legacy-of-alfred-hugh-fisher-and-the-colonial-office-visual-instruction-committee/.

Please direct academic queries to Dr Gil Pasternak on +44 (0)116 201 3951 or email gpasternak(at)dmu.ac.uk. For administrative queries contact the Graduate School office email: researchstudents@dmu.ac.uk, tel: 0116 250-6309.
Completed applications should be returned together with two supporting references and an academic transcript.

Applications are invited from UK or EU students with a Master’s degree or good first degree in a relevant subject (First, 2:1 or equivalent). Doctoral scholarships are available for up to three years full-time study commencing in October 2017 consisting of a bursary of £14,296 per annum in addition to waiver of tuition fees.

Please quote ref: ADHFB2

CLOSING DATE: Monday 10th April, 2017.

Interviews for shortlisted candidates will be held by Friday 28th April approximately

Making Jamaica which is open at Autograph/ABP, London, explores how a new image of Jamaica was created through photography in the late nineteenth century. More than 70 historical photographs, lantern slides and stereocards reveal the carefully constructed representation of this transitional period in Jamaica’s history. For first time, its people are depicted as an industrious nation post-emancipation, and their surroundings as a desirable tourist destination and tropical commodity.

Under the Dark Cloth: Working with Photography Studio Archives is an International one-day symposium at QUAD, Derby, on Saturday, 8 April 2017, presented to coincide with the exhibition People, Places, and Things: the W. W. Winter’s Archive, on show at Derby Museum during Format 2017. 

Commercial photography studios were once common sights on almost every high street.  Each has its own distinct history and place within the lives of the communities they documented and served.  Many of these studios are now closed, their rich archives lost or destroyed, and the history of these important social, commercial and cultural institutions lost forever.

This event welcomes a range of speakers who have saved, preserved, researched and presented exhibitions about studio archives.  Their papers explore a diverse range of subjects revealing how the photographic studio can contribute to migrant identity formation; how an Italian art dealer employed photography for commercial purposes;  the issues for studio photography when it moves across from a private space into the public domain of the archive and the gallery; a remarkable project to salvage and restore the extraordinary studio of the Portuguese photographer Carlos Relvas and the work undertaken to preserve the archives of the two oldest working studios in the UK. The papers will be complimented by a short series of films about studio archive projects.  

Presented with support from the new Photography Collections Network, the event aims to provide a platform to share skills, knowledge, and experience among those working in this field, and to tell some of the stories about the studios, the photographers, their subjects and their archives. 

The event is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, UAL Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC), the Royal Photographic Society, The Photography Collections Network, QUAD, FORMAT Festival, Derby Museums, Arts Council England, W. W. Winter and The Art Fund.

See more and book here: http://www.formatfestival.com/events/symposium-under-dark-cloth

The newly formed Photographic Collections Network has appointed staff who will be taking the PCN forward over the next 15 months, supported by the steering committee. They are:

• Paul Herrmann, Manager
• Johanna Mannerfelt Empson, Coordinator
• Helen Trompeteler, Researcher
• Steve Slack, Evaluator

For more on the PCN see: http://www.photocollections.org.uk/

There are a number of events, talks and exhibitions taking place across the United Kingdom that include the photography of Helen Muspratt throughout 2017. 

Glasgow School of Art: 4 March - 27 May: Exhibition: Franki Raffles “Observing Women at Work”

Two of Helen Muspratt’s photographs of women working in the fields, taken in the Soviet Union in 1936 will be shown and compared with those taken by Raffles during a visit to Russia in 1989.

www.gsa.ac.uk

Cambridge Science Festival: 20 March: talk by Jessica Sutcliffe: "Experiments in Photography - Cambridge in the Thirties"

Monday 20 March: 5.30 pm: Cambridge University Library

The talk will concentrate on the experimental work; solarisation, multiple exposure and rayograph techniques, carried out by by Helen with her partner, Lettice Ramsey after they set up Ramsey & Muspratt in Cambridge;

Booking opens on 20 February.

www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk

Durlston Castle, Swanage:  20 June - 12 July: Exhibition: Helen Muspratt Photographer

Exhibition of Helen,s work in her home town of Swanage. I will also de giving a talk during the exhibition. Date to be confirmed

Open daily 10.30 am - 5 pm

www.durlston.co.uk

Exhibition: Oxford Central Library

An exhibition will be held in the  Oxford Central Library later on this year. It already owns, and is digitising a number of Ramsey & Muspratt images and will reopen its newly revamped library with the show. There should be a considerable interest in the city where Helen Muspratt spent most of her working life and took portraits of numerous local people, both Town and Gown. 

See more here: http://www.helenmuspratt-photographer.com/

Shadows of War is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Roger Fenton's pioneering photographs of the Crimean War, taken in 1855. Fenton was already an accomplished and respected photographer when he was sent by the publishers Agnew's to photograph a war that pitched Britain, France and Turkey as allies against Russia.  Arriving several months after the major battles were fought in 1854, Fenton focused on creating moving portraits of the troops, as well as capturing the stark, empty battlefields on which so many lost their lives.  Published in contemporary newspaper reports, Fenton's photographs showed the impact of war to the general public for the first time.  Through his often subtle and poetic interpretations Fenton created the genre of war photography, showing his extraordinary genius in capturing the futility of war.

A book of the same title by Sophie Gordon, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Royal Collection Trust will be published in August 2017, priced at £35. 

Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea, 1855
4 August 2017 – January 2018
Edinburgh: The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse; then London: Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from November 2018.

https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/shadows-of-war/the-queens-gallery-palace-of-holyroodhouse

The Constructing Scientific Communities (https://conscicom.org/) and the Million Pictures projects (http://a-million-pictures.wp.hum.uu.nl/) are pleased to announce a special workshop, hosted at London’s Royal Institution, to consider the multiple relationships that existed between popular science and the magic lantern, with an emphasis on the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider magic lantern slides, instruments, and instrument makers, as well as considering issues of curation and performance. A special attraction will be Jeremy Brooker’s evening entertainment concerning John Tyndall’s celebrated lectures at the RI.

All workshop attendees will be also welcome to join this public lecture without charge. Attendance is free, but space is limited. To attend, email: gb224@le.ac.uk by March 1st, 2017.

Programme

9:30-10:15 – Coffee on arrival

10:15-10:30 – Introductory Comments. Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford) and Geoff Belknap (Leicester University), Constructing Scientific Communities Project. 

10:30-12:00 – Panel 1: Approaches to Science and the Magic Lantern

• Iwan Morus (University of Aberystwyth), ‘Seeing the Light: Fact and Artefact in Victorian Lantern Culture’
• Sarah Dellmann (Utrecht University),  ‘Images of Science and Scientists: Lantern Slides of Excursions from Utrecht University, NL (c. 1900-1950)’
• Emily Hayes (Exeter University), ‘Fashioned by physics: the ‘scope and methods’ of Halford Mackinder’s geographical imagination’

12:00-1:00 – Lunch

1:00-2:30 – Panel 2: Magic Lanterns and Museums/Curation

• Charlotte New and Meagan Smith (Royal Institution), ‘Shedding light on yesterday: Highlighting the slide collections of the RI and relevant preservation’
• Frank Gray (Screen archive South-east, Brighton), ‘Working with Archive Collections: Development, Access and Historical Context’

2:30-3:00 – Coffee break

3:00-4:30 – Panel 3: Materiality of the lantern

• Phillip Roberts (York University), ‘Science and Media in the Industrial Revolution: Instrument Makers and the Magic Lantern Trade’
• Kelly Wilder (De Montfort University), ‘From Lantern Slides to Powerpoint: Photography and the Materiality of Projection’
• Deac Rossell (Goldsmiths University), ‘Changing Places: Tracking Magic Lantern Culture from Physics to Chemistry to Cinema’

4:30-4:45 – Closing Remarks. Joe Kember and Richard Crangle (Exeter University), Million Pictures Project.

6:15-7:15 – Drinks Reception

7:30-9:00 – Evening lantern show for the general public:

• Jeremy Brooker, A Light on Albemarle Street: John Tyndall and the Magic Lantern

The pre-launch beta version of the William Henry Fox Talbot catalogue raisonné is now available in advance of the formal launch announcement on Friday, 10 February - the day before what would have been Talbot's 217th birthday on 11 February.

At the time of writing there are some 1345 searchable records but this is will expand significantly to more than 25,000 records as the project continues to document the whole of Talbot's photography corpus.

Take a look here: http://foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

BPH reported in September 2016 that Rock House, Edinburgh, was up for sale. After an extended period Rock House has finally sold for more than £1.7 million. The new owner wishes to remain anonymous.

Rock House was built in the 1750s, the house became part of photographic history when in 1843 Robert Adamson moved into the property, followed by his business partner and artist, Hill, in 1844. The partnership created some of the most beautiful and important calotype portraits during the photography's early years. As a consequence, Roddy Simpson, an photographic history based at the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, commented: "Rock House, Calton Hill, Edinburgh, has an unrivalled place in the history of Scottish photography and could be said to be the most famous address in photography.'.

Read more here:  http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/15071987.Historic_home_of_Scottish_photography_sold_for_more_than___1_7m/ and see the property details here: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42425952.html

From the sepia-toned mass graves of the American Civil War to today’s drone shots of the destroyed Syrian city of Aleppo, war photographs have shaped and continue to inform our understanding of human conflict.  Far from neutral, war photographs challenge our sense of humanity in a complex exchange between ‘taking’ and ‘viewing’. Exploring this relationship through an analytical rather than aesthetic perspective, our six-week course will introduce you to the ethical, theoretical and practical issues connected with taking, viewing and reproducing war photographs.

Beginning with a historical overview and rare opportunity to view original war photographs from the Library’s collection, we’ll consider key themes including photography and truth, ethics and aesthetics, and the idea of cultural memory. Throughout the course we’ll refer to the Library’s extensive photography collections, and analyze photographic images using a variety of theoretical approaches.

Centering our course within contemporary practice, we’ll also spend an exclusive evening at the nearby Foundling Museum, where innovative documentary artist Mark Neville will talk frankly about his photographs taken on the frontline in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Kenya, on display in the exhibition Child’s Play (3 February–30 April 2017).

This course is led by Dr Eleanor Chiari (University College, London) with contributions from British Library curator John Falconer (Lead Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photography Collections) and documentary artist Mark Neville.

In collaboration with the Foundling Museum.

Course dates: Tuesdays 21 and 28 February and  7, 14, 21 and 28 March

Times: 18.00 – 20.00

Read the course outline and see more here.

Britain in Focus: A Photographic History is a major new exhibition at the National Media Museum, exploring the fascinating and remarkable history of British photography; from everyday snapshots to world-renowned iconic images. It partners a three-part documentary series on BBC4 with the same name presented by award-winning photographer and picture editor Eamonn McCabe, part of a wider season of programmes exploring photography in the UK.

Both the exhibition (17 March – 25 June. Free entry) and the series start their journey with the dawn of photography in Britain in the 19th century, before charting its progress throughout 20th century to the present day, and the impact of the social media explosion.

Britain in Focus not only illustrates how a selection of acclaimed photographers documented, reflected and commented on their home country, and in doing so became known around the world, but how countless others have also contributed to the recording of national and social history over nearly 200 years.

 Alongside pictures taken by anonymous soldiers in the First World War trenches and press shots of historic moments, the exhibition includes examples from the colourful world of post card producer John Hinde; John Bulmer’s ground breaking images from the North of England, which appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine in the 60s; WHF Talbot’s photographs of Lacock Abbey in the 1840s – some of the earliest ever taken; a selection of Jane Bown’s portraits of cultural figureheads from the 60s and 70s; Martin Parr’s inimitable views of the 1980s; Eamonn McCabe’s reports from the Heysel stadium tragedy; and Fay Godwin’s visual hymns to the British landscape.

Among the pioneers featured are Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Cecil Beaton, as well as contemporaries currently living and working in Britain, such as Nadav Kander, Peter Mitchell and Mishka Henner.

Through their images, Britain in Focus also traces the path of an industry: how glass plates gave way to film cartridges, black and white transformed to colour, and photographic paper was replaced by digital pixels. A selection of Cartes de visite – one of the first commercially available methods of sharing photographs - sit with a selection of images from the social media network Instagram, originally posted by a teenager from Huddersfield.

John O’Shea, Senior Exhibitions Manager at the National Media Museum, said: “Throughout Britain in Focus we see the fundamental role photography and photographers have played in recording the last two centuries in Britain – not only major social changes and historic moments, but also everyday life. Equally the exhibition shows the development of photography over this time, pointing to the incredible pace that technology, technique and subject matter have advanced, as its popularity made it the medium of choice for people to view and record their lives.”

Britain in Focus: A Photographic History is a BBC and National Media Museum partnership.

BRITAIN IN FOCUS: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY
17 March – 25 June 2017, National Media Museum

Image: John Bulmer,  Washing line, Halifax, 1965.

This conference investigates photographs and photographic archives in relation to notions of place. In this context, place is used to explore both the physical location of a photograph or archive, as well as the place of photography as a discursive practice with regard to its value or significance as a method of viewing and conceiving the world. Photographs are mobile objects that can change their location over time, transported to diverse commercial, artistic, social, academic and scientific locations. The photograph’s physical location thus has an impact upon its value, function and significance; these topics are explored at the conference through a range of archives and across disciplines. How might the mobility of photographs open up thinking about archives and, in turn, classificatory structures in disciplines such as Art History, Archaeology and Anthropology, or in the Sciences? The conference also addresses questions of digital space, which renders the image more readily accessible, but complicates issues relating to location. What is the place, or value, of the photographic archive in the digital age?

The conference features internationally-renowned speakers, with a keynote lecture by Geoffrey Batchen and a final discussion led by Elizabeth Edwards. Site visits to Oxford’s outstanding photographic collections are also planned, including to the Bodleian Library’s Talbot Archive, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the History of Science Museum, the Griffith Institute’s archives of archaeological expeditions, and the History of Art Department’s Visual Resources Centre. 

Photo Archives VI: The Place of Photography

April 20–21, 2017

Department of History of Art, University of Oxford
Conference Venue: Christ Church, Oxford

See more here: http://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/events/photo/