The School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC) at Cardiff University has announced two funded PhD studentship opportunities in the field of photographic history.

The Valleys Archive at Ffotogallery: Community, Photography & Democracy in South Wales, 1978-2028 (with Ffotogallery)
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-valleys-archive-at-ffotogallery-community-photography-and-democracy-in-south-wales-1978-2028/?p184218
Application Deadline: 16 May 2025
Cardiff University and Ffotogallery are delighted to offer a fully funded Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences (WGSSS) (ESRC DTP) studentship under the Journalism, Digital Media and Democracy Pathway. This co-creative interdisciplinary doctoral project is focused on a collection of historic documentary photographs commissioned by Ffotogallery in the 1980s known as ‘The Valleys Project’. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Ffotogallery in 2028, the studentship will examine how historical photographic archives can be harnessed to address pressing issues of community disenfranchisement and cohesion, of visibility and representation, and of visual literacy and skills development in the digital age. The project will be jointly supervised by Siân Addicott (Ffotogallery), Alix Beeston (Cardiff University) and Tom Allbeson (Cardiff University).

Social Inequality and British Documentary Style: Bert Hardy’s photographs for Picture Post magazine, 1940-57 (with V&A)
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/social-inequality-and-british-documentary-style-bert-hardy-s-photographs-for-picture-post-magazine-1940-57/?p183989
Application Deadline: 23 May 2025
The V&A and Cardiff University are pleased to announce a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from October 2025 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme. The project will explore the work of photojournalist Bert Hardy for the photo-magazine Picture Post. Research will engage with material only recently made available by the Bert Hardy estate: over 2,000 prints donated to the Department of Photography, V&A; and his personal archive, now lodged at Special Collections & Archives, Cardiff University. The project will be jointly supervised by Martin Barnes (V&A) and Tom Allbeson (Cardiff University).

Image: © William Tsui from ffotogallery's The Valleys project

Melissa McCarthy ’s work considers photography as something that spreads: through time, over borders, beyond established categories. It leaks and expands, diffuses and clots. In her 2023 book Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro, she traces a route from Agamemnon at Troy, via the memory book and the botanical archive, detouring past excavations at Ur up to shark biology in Jaws and repetition in Twin Peaks. There is photographic practice and thinking in all of these artworks and texts, if we’re willing to tilt the page, consider the surface a little differently.

Melissa will read from her book and talk, and then Michelle will respond with thoughts relating to her own upcoming book A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire.  The discussion will be opened up to the audience will include how we think of photography, and how photography might extend beyond the bounds of particular techniques and equipment, or even light sensitivity.

Melissa McCarthy is a writer based in Edinburgh. Her books include Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro (2023) and Sharks, Death, Surfers: An Illustrated Companion (2019). She has worked as a film curator and arts journalist in London and Durban, South Africa. For more details see: https://sharksillustrated.org/ and on Instagram @mccarthysharks

Michelle Henning is Professor in Photography and Media at the University of Literature. Her books include Photography: The Unfettered Image (2018) and A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire (2025- forthcoming).

Absolutely Nebulous: Fog, Fuzzy Edges and Vagueness in Photographic Fields
Melissa McCarthy, with Michelle Henning
Wednesday, 30 April 2025, 1500-1700
University of Liverpool, School of the Arts Library, 19-23 Abercromby Square, Liverpool and online
Register here

To accompany Open Eye Gallery’s No Iconic Images exhibition, this one-day symposium will bring together experts in photography and media from the UK and Europe. Through keynote presentations and panel discussions, the participants will explore the historical perspective and most recent practices of working with photography to talk about conflicts.

Building on the success of “Symposium: Researching and Curating Photography from Ukraine”, organised by Open Eye Gallery and held at the University of Salford in March 2024, this second​ edition will take place at Open Eye Gallery, with contributions from prominent researchers,​ academics, and curators, as well as documentary photographers, including those working on​ the front lines.

​Speakers: Fiona Shields (The Guardian), Peter van Agtmael (Magnum Photos), Evgeniy Maloletka (Associated Press), Diane Smyth (editor of the British Journal of Photography), Tamsin Silvey (Historic England), Max Houghton (London College​ of Communication, University of the Arts London), Max Gorbatskyi and Viktoria Bavykina (curators), with more speakers to be announced soon.

On War Photography
1 May 2025, 1000-1700
Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
Free, but registration needed
https://openeye.org.uk/whatson/symposium-on-war-photography/

Almost Nothing But Blue Ground is a research project by artists Matthew Benington and Tom Pope. “It started in 2017 with the intention to explore and celebrate the life and work of Anna Atkins, the first ever person to publish a book of photographic images. After 2 years of research, we began to focus attention on her second publication, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, made in collaboration with Anne Dixon. Out of 100 images, 25% represented Jamaican ferns, this led us to question why so many originated in Jamaica. Our research into the UCL Legacies of British Slavery database we discovered that Atkins husband, John Pelly-Atkins, and father in-law, Alderman Atkins, owned 9 plantations in Jamaica, thousands of slaves, boats, and docks. This shifted the focus of the project from celebrating the achievement of Atkins (particularly being a woman at that time) to acknowledging the origins of the privilege that allowed her to achieve it. The research informed a performative week long walk (2021) towing a trolley which exposed prints from Atkins home in Tonbridge to Ferring, where Dixon, her collaborator lived. Our walk went via Sir John Herschel's House in Hawkhurst, Herschel invented the process and would have shared it with Atkins. This research is presented in our work in a considered manner.”

The completion of the walk created an archive of cyanotype prints, negatives, artefacts, research, and diary entries.

In the performance assets are shared via a speaker, spoken word, visualiser, data projector and OHP.

Almost Nothing But Blue Ground - A Performance Lecture
Matthew Benington and Tom Pope
ffotogallery, Cardiff
Thursday, 1 May 2025, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Free - All welcome (Booking recommended)
Booking : https://tinyurl.com/y88nyytj

Mark Dougan who blogs as MerchantCityGlasgow has just posted an illustrated blog about early photography in Glashow from 1839-1844. Mark envisages te blog as part of a series. To read it click here.

Image: Anderson University, credit: unknown (style of Duncan Brown) Source: theglasgowstory.com

The National Trust has appointed Dr Jayne Knight as Assistant National Curator of Photographs. The newly created post was advertised recently and is a fixed-term contract for one year. Jayne will work alongside the Trust's National Curator of Photographs, Anna Sparham. 

Jayne is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Design History, at the University of Brighton and since January 2025 has been a Science Museum Group Research Associate. 

Jayne completed her PhD titled From company museum to national collection, 1927-2023: telling the story of popular photography through the Kodak Museum Collection, with the University of Brighton and National Science and Media Museum in 2024. She holds a MA in the History of Photography from De Montfort Univesrity. Her MA dissertation was titled  Connecting Culture and Industry: London Zoo and its Photographic Advertsing in the 1920s. 

She has undertaken a number of projects with NSMM and the National Railway Museum collection. Her research interests include popular photography, photographic history, design history, institutional histories, material and visual culture. 

See: https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/jayne-knight

The National Archives has updated its Records at Risk Grants programme and information and added details of past recent recipients. The scheme is delivered in collaboration with the British Records Association and the Business Archives Council, to provide support for urgent interventions to save significant physical and digital records facing immediate peril, across the UK. It provides grants of up to £5,000, to protect records of cultural and research value from premature destruction or prolonged neglect. 

A case study of the Highland Archive Service which received a grant of £1100. It enabled HAS to conserve and digitise items identified at risk. The archive items identified as at risk were fifty-one glass plate negatives which were suffering from water damage, including mould and dampness, six hundred negatives (several of which were stuck together) and some tangled film reels including five 9.5 mm Baby Pathe scope reel c1920s. Having been left in a shed for an estimated ten-plus years, the mixed formats had been subject to extreme fluctuations of temperature and humidity and latterly water damage from a flood. The immediate threat was the risk of more deterioration in its current format and condition.

Recent recipients of grants with significant photographic content include: 

• 2023: National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh’s iconic Filmhouse cinema collection; 
• 2024: National Science and Media Museum – Billie Love Historical Picture Library 
• 2025:  BMT Media - to begin to digitise and store 1000s of artworks, photographic negatives, 16mm/8mm film, professional video tapes and amateur photographs in West Yorkshire to build its ‘archive of the ordinary’ – everyday life in Leeds & West Yorkshire. 

See: Details of grants here and details of current and Past Projects here

Image: Highland Archive Service (HAS)
 

The National Stereoscopic Association is pleased to announce its sixth annual "Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography" at the 51st annual 3D-Con held at the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul on 7 August, 2025. Presentations are welcome on any art historical, visual studies, humanities or social science scholarship in stereography from its inception to contemporary stereo-media. We project stereoscopically on the 3D-Con's big screen, and our growing community of international scholars represent diverse research from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Please fill out the contact information form on the web page below. Then upload on a separate file your abstract of 600 words maximum, followed by a biography of no more than 300 words, and up to five images (optional).

National Stereoscopic Association’s 51st Annual 3D-Con
cfp: Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography VI
Thursday, 7 August 7, 2025
cfpdeadline: 21 May, 2025
https://3d-con.com/history.php (Press the tab for “Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography.”)
Notification of acceptance by 6 June, 2025

Image: John Heywood, 1864

BPH has just learnt of the passing of John Chillingworth yesterday, aged 97 years.  As his website notes: 

As a teenager, he made a traditional entry into Fleet Street at the height of the Second World War. His initial ambition had been to make the tea for the darkroom staff of the country's leading picture magazine, but he rapidly proved his worth and was embraced as one of the close-knit Picture Post 'family'. Returning to the magazine after three years as an army conscript, his natural ability as a photographer was recognised by Tom Hopkinson, the magazine's legendary editor. Influenced by the consummate skills of his mentor, Kurt Hutton, he developed a naturalistic style, which enabled him to work virtually unnoticed on many of his assignments.

During the following six years, working alongside the country's pioneer photographic journalists, Chillingworth gained invaluable experience as a much travelled staff photographer. Later, when a freelance, he was commissioned by newspapers and magazines, as well as serving major international advertising and industrial clients. Then, as the visual communication partner in an advertising consultancy, he added the written word to his bank of creative skills.

Getty Images' Hulton Archive holds four hundred picture essays from his days with Picture Post, which used narrative photography to inform, entertain and influence the conscience of its million-plus readers. The National Media Museum also holds his images in its extensive archive.

John worked for Picture Post from 1949-1956, joining aged 22 years, as one of its youngest photographers. He produced over 400 photo-essays for the magazine. After 1956, John continued to take photographs and to create picture stories on a freelance basis. He ran his own management consultancy from 1970s.  I first met him in the 1990s when he came to Christie's and he used one of the original Leica or Contax cameras being auctioned of the type he'd used in the 1950s to do a new feature. We kept in touch.

He was and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and was described in 1989 as 'one of the maker's of photographic history'. 

As retrospective book was published by Dewi Lewis: 

John Chillingworth. Picture Post Photographer
Introduction by Matthew Butson
Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2013
ISBN 978-1907893438
Book details here

John H Chillingworth, born 18 January 1928; died 6 April 2025, aged 97 years. 

More to follow. 

Last week's presentation of the Bodley Medal to Sir Don McCullin (see below) the first photographer to be honoured provided an opportuntity for the Library to invite guests to meet Lydia Heeley, the Bern and Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography who was appointed last October, and hear about some forthcoming exhibitions, and see some recent acquisitions. 

The forthcoming Treasured exhibition in the S T Lee Gallery at the Weston Library will showcase some of the renowned items from Bodleian collection. Photography, of course, will feature. Amongst some of the photography are dog photographs from the collection of John Koh which the Bodleian acquired last year. The exhibition is free and will run from 6 June-26 October 2025.  Koh's collection will also be featured in a pop up exhibition in the main space of the Weston Library and in an exhibition titled Pets and People. The Bodleian is also sharing work from the Paddy Summerfield archive in an exhibition during the Photo Oxford Festival, curated by Alex Schneideman. Photo Oxford runs from 25 October-16 November 2025. 

As the Oxford Student newspaper notes exhibitions are planned and scheduled well in advance and the two main space in the Weston Library are allocated through to 2028. 

More to follow.

Top: Francis Hodgson inspects cased ambrotype and daguerreotype dog images. Left: Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian congratulates Sir Don McCullin on his medal; Right: Lydia Heeley (right) and colleague show off work from Paddy Summerfield. 

All photographs © Michael Pritchard

The National Trust publication Cultural Heritage magazine for spring/summer 2024 carries a conversation between the Trust's National Curator for photography, Anna Sparham and Robin Muir where they discuss the Trust's photography collections. The maagzine is free to download. 

The Trust is shortly to appoint an Assistant National Curator for photography on a one-yeat contract. 

Download here: https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/binaries/content/assets/website/national/pdf/chm-spring-summer-2024.pdf

The latest issue of The Classic is now available to view online or collect from one of the venues stocking the printed magazine. The issue includes interviews with publisher Bruno Tartarin; Claudia Baroncini, director of the Alinari Foundation; and with gallerist Stephen Daiter. Elsewhere Michael Diemar looks at the story behind Charles Jones and his photographs of vegetables, and there is a preview of AIPAD. 

Separately, the publishers have created a boxset, containing the first 12 issues of The Classic, plus a special 48-page supplement, entitled Through a Glass, Darkly. The boxset is limited to 250 numbered copies and unlike the regular issues of The Classic, Through a Glass, Darkly will not be made available as free download, nor will the articles be published anywhere else.

Download The Classic no. 13 here.

Findout more about the box set and special supplement here. 

Silvergrain Classics magazine has reported that the German Photo Council has been actively campaigning to have analogue photography officially recognized by UNESCO as cultural heritage. Analogue photography has been officially registered in the State Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia as the first step in this process.This has made it possible for the state to nominate analogue photography for inclusion at the German Federal level. The next steps are an expert review of the national nomination, and confirmation by the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs and Commissioner for Culture and Media. A decision is expected by spring 2025 at the latest.

UNESCO defines intangible cultural heritage as 'the practices, knowledge, and expressions that communities recognize as part of their cultural identity, along with associated objects and spaces. Transmitted through generations, this heritage adapts over time, reinforcing identity and respect for cultural diversity'.

Read the full piece here

Silvergain Classics focuses on film photography and is available on subscription. It is published quarterly.

London's The Photographers' Gallery has a number of courses of interest.  V&A curator Hana Kaluznick is running an online course on Colour Photography: Histories and Techniques from 16 April. Writer and lecturer Stephen Bull is running an online course on Photography & Celebrity from 19 May, and writer and curator is leading a course on photography, truth and identity from 19 May. 

In addition, the Gallery archivist is offering 45-minute sessions on 7 June giving advice (online or in person) to chat through paper-based materials and:

• Preservation of the material (physical and/or digital)
• Making them accessible to a wider audience
• Digitisation
• Cataloguing

Details of the online courses, timings and their costs are here and the archive session here. 
 

The French Ministry of Culture has issued a call for projects to commemorate the bicentenary of photography in 2026/27 and is issuing an official label for those projects. Photography is almost 200 years old. On this occasion, the Ministry of Culture calls for a great popular and festive celebration of the Bicentenary of Photography, which will honor photography in all its forms and throughout the territory from September 2026 to September 2027. All those involved in photography, arts and culture are invited to take up this celebration and to design events, exhibitions, meetings, participatory projects, conferences, publications and educational workshops to make it a major cultural event.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Nicéphore Niépce managed to obtain, near Chalon-sur-Saône, the first photographic image permanently fixed on a photosensitive surface, thanks to a camera obscura. This event, kept in Austin in the United States, is known today as the Point de vue du Gras. His invention, taken up and always renewed, has revolutionized the representations of our world.

Photography has been writing our common history for two hundred years. The celebration of the Bicentenary of Photography is an opportunity to pay tribute and make all the professions of photography and culture known more widely. Initiatives driven by a spirit of cooperation, pooling and sharing of know-how will be encouraged. A label and a map will give the selected events high visibility, in particular via a dedicated website. The projects will be deployed throughout France and internationally.

Details: Call for projects for the "Bicentenary of Photography" label | Ministry of Culture

The Manifesto in English is Bicentennial-Photography-Manifesto-2024.pdf

We are looking for an experienced Project Manager to oversee the digitization of an historic photography collection with a dedicated cross-departmental project team. The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection is the largest and most important collection of photography at the V&A. It contains many items of global significance, including some of the earliest photographs, artworks by well-known photographers, invaluable documents of history and evidence of some 200 years of technical and scientific advances. The collection numbers an estimated 310,000 photographs, negatives, pieces of photographic technology, books, journals and archive items. Some 90% of the collection remains to be digitized. The Project Manager will refine and implement a digitization workflow of cataloguing, conservation and imaging with colleagues to unlock the collections' transformative potential.

The main purpose of the role is to plan, budget, monitor, report on and drive forward the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Digitization Project. The Project Manager sits within the Photography Section of the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design Department (AAPD). The project is an important part of the V&A’s wider cataloguing, digitization and collections care and access programme. The role includes managing a cross-departmental Project Team, consisting of photographs cataloguers and volunteers and liaising with managers in other departments to coordinate the work of a conservator, archives cataloguer and digital imaging assistants.

Project Manager
5 year FTC
Details here: https://vam.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/3792893?cid=3279&rsid=24732&js=0&LinkType=1&FromSearch=False

In this exclusive talk Cally Blackman looks at fashion as it was represented through the autochrome. It is based on her new book The Colour of Clothes: Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 1907-1930 (Thames and Hudson, March, 2025) which celebrates the unique beauty of the autochrome in 370 images that reflect the broad sweep of its usage. Couturiers embraced the way the process showcased their exquisite designs to luminous perfection—among them Fortuny, Poiret, Doucet, Vionnet, Lucile, Chanel, and Lanvin. Beyond the sphere of fashion, there are also examples from the Salon du Goût Français, France’s 'virtual' autochrome exhibition of luxury items, and Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète, a bold attempt to record the world’s cultures in autochrome

Cally Blackman studied Fashion Design at Central Saint Martin’s from 1972 to 1975 and returned to teach on BA Fashion History & Theory course in 2001. She is a fashion historian, lecturer, and author. Her research into autochromes is both original and extensive, with a large number of images she has sourced that have either never or very rarely been published since they were first made more than one hundred years ago. She has written several books including 100 Years of Fashion Illustration (2007), 100 Years of Menswear (2009), 100 Years of Fashion (2012) and co-author of A Portrait of Fashion (2015).

Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 
Cally Blackman
1 April 2025 at 1800 (BST)
Free. Register here:  https://tinyurl.com/mvpywvd4 

Image: Robert B Bird, Autochrome, c.1917. RPS, Bristol. 

Tate has announced its 2026 exhibition highlights. Of particular notes is Light and Magic which explores how pictorialism, the first international art photography movement, developed across the world from the 1880s to the 1960s. The exhibition was previously scheduled to open in December 2025.  Bringing together over 50 artists from Seoul to Sydney, New York to Cape Town and Brazil to Singapore, this truly international exhibition takes a fresh and inclusive look at the history of art photography.

Featuring never-before seen works from around the world alongside pieces from Tate’s Collection, Light and Magic highlights the vast and varied artistic possibilities of photography as a medium.

Light and MagicThe Birth of Art Photography
8 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
London, Tate Modern, Bankside
Ticket price to be confirmed
See: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/light-and-magic