In celebration of International Women’s Day 2027,  we invite scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts to submit abstracts for participation as speakers, or panelists in a free, online, global, 24-hour online, free symposium dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to the medium of photography from photography’s announcement in 1839 to contemporary practitioners in 2024. This unique event aims to highlight the diverse and impactful work of women and female-identifying photographers, and those working with photography, across all cultures and time zones.

We seek 18-minute papers and/or proposed 45-60-minute panel discussions that explore a broad range of topics related to women’s contributions to photography. These may include but are not limited to:

• Historical and contemporary profiles of influential and under-appreciated women photographers.
• The impact of gender on photographic practice and representation.
• The role of women in shaping the photographic medium or its exhibition.
• Cross-cultural perspectives on women’s contributions to photography.
• Challenges and achievements of women photographers in various global contexts.
• Where does the project of increasing visibility stand now, and where should it go next?

Our goal is to foster a rich, international dialogue that underscores the significant yet often overlooked achievements of women in the field and discusses/plans the next steps to achieving a greater presence for them. Presentations will be pre-recorded to ensure uniform sound quality and to free speakers to respond to questions during their talks/panels. The conference follows on previous editions in 2025 and 2026, which offered a truly global exchange of ideas.

To participate:
Please submit a 300-word abstract outlining your proposed paper by 15 October 2026.
Abstracts should be submitted to Google Forms here: https://forms.gle/EfLxvb7kTaP9XmYa8. The submission form will ask for the name for all speakers, affiliation/s (if applicable), time zone of anticipated residence on International Women’s Day, and a brief (150-word) biography. Selected papers will be notified by 1 November 2026, and detailed guidelines for presentations/recordings will be provided.

We encourage contributions from diverse perspectives and regions to create a comprehensive and inclusive representation of women in photography.

Join us in celebrating the vibrant and transformative work of women photographers worldwide!

Convenors: Kris Belden-Adams, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, Texas A&M University; Dr. Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson, Professor, Minneapolis College of Art & Design; Damon Stanek, Lecturer, Minneapolis College of Art & Design

Call For Papers: Women in Photography: A free 24-Hour Online Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day, March 6, 2027
Call for papers - closes 15 October 2026
Notification of acceptance - 1 November 2026
Conference-a-thon - 6 March 2027, starting at 12:01 UTC (International Date Line)

AntiquarianAuctions is offering a copy of Samuel Palmer Chapman's Stolen Minutes with the Muses, printed for private circulation, in 1877. The book is illustrated with a tipped-in albumen portrait of the author by his son. What makes this book of particular interest, other than the fact only three other copies have been traced, is that Samual Chapman was a professional phootgrapher in Swansea from 1860 and his son, Henry Alfred Chapman, also joined the business.

The book includes a poem titled Photography, an epigram ‘Sent to a Young Lady with my Carte [i.e. cdv], which she had requested to have' and an advertisement in which the author runs down the portrait work of an unnamed photographic rival whilst praising the work of ‘Chapman and Co.’  who ‘felt they well could depend / That merit would meet his reward in the end'. 

Samuel Palmer CHAPMAN (1809-1895, poet & photographer). Stolen Minutes with the Muses. Poems. [No place, but Swansea, or Bristol?]: ‘Printed for Private Circulation’, 1877. Octavo. Pp. [iii-]iv-xviii; [1-]4-266 + a small format errata slip facing p. [3]. Mounted photographic portrait frontispiece of the author by his son, Henry Alfred Chapman.

Provenance: author’s presentation copy given to a relative (the ‘ghost’ of the inscription on the removed free endpaper can be read [in part] on the back of the frontispiece ‘Presented by the Author to his / ….. Chapman…/ … / … 1877’).

It is estimated at $250-350, with a reserve at $100. 

Details: https://antiquarianauctions.com/bids/stolen-minutes-with-the-muses-poems

London's V&A Museum has acquired a self-portrait of Maria ‘Mia’ Jackson (1818-1892), née Pattle; 1818–92), one of six sisters of Julia Margaret Cameron. It was purchased from descendants of Julia along with a second ambrotype of a South Asian women. The collodion positive on glass, or ambrotype, is dated to c.1858 and offers the tantalising suggestion that photography amongst the Pattle sisters was not confined only to Julia. As V&A curator Marta Weiss notes the self-portrait 'also invites broader reconsideration of artistic exchange within an exceptionally creative family.' The portrait places the camera centre stage with Mia off to one side, with a male figure next to the camera. All are reflected in an arch-topped dressing table mirror.  

The purchase of Mia's portrait, along with that of the South Asian woman, was funded by the V&A Americas Foundation through the generosity of Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson. 

The portrait and its wider significance is discussed in an article by V&A curator Marta Weiss in the current issue of the Burlington Magazine.

Read more here: Marta Weiss, 'Through the looking glass: a self-portrait by Mia Jackson, Julia Margaret Cameron’s sister', The Burlington Magazine, October 2026, Vol. 168 / No. 1483. Available to read open access.

The photograph is recorded on the V&A's online collection here: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1810666/self-portrait-by-maria-mia-photograph-maria-jackson/ and the South Asian woman here

Image: Self-portrait, by Mia Jackson. c.1858. Collodion positive on glass, 9.4 by 7.9 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The latest Source magazine has arrived. Of particular note for BPH, John Duncan writes that aerial images of Ireland are to be digitised. The Royal Irish Academy has secured funding to digitise 1567 prints and negatives from Cambridge University's Collection of Aerial Photographs made in Ireland between 1951 and 1973. The full collection will be released and made available by May 2027. 

Elsewhere Richard West interviews the historian Edward Madigan regarding the IWM project to collect material relating to the British experience of the Irish War of Independence. Julia Sauter reports that Photo Museum Ireland has secured full museum accreditation. It is the first institution in Ireland dedicated to comtemporary photography to do so. 

See Source here: https://www.source.ie/index.php

Liverpool's Open Eye Gallery is seeking a permanent curator. Open Eye Gallery’s curator will embrace co-authorship as an approach to their practice. We are looking for someone who can work effectively with our arts, academic, community and other partners to create, share and champion photography. 

They will lead our programme of cultural exchange, forming relationships with emerging and established artists and photography sector partners to shape the landscape of photography, and be at the cutting edge of research and discussion. They will also contribute to our partnerships with universities.

This varied, hands-on role provides opportunities to explore and experiment with curation and co-curation models. It also provides the chance to shape the next generation of practitioners, and the role of photography within people’s lives for the years to come. 

2027 is our 50th anniversary, providing our new curator with the opportunity to work with multiple photography sector leaders and key partners in an exciting year for the organisation.

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Curator will hold responsibility for the overall management of the exhibitions programme, including administration and delivery, and the line management of the Programme Assistants. The Curator will also work with technicians to oversee the safe installation of exhibitions, and the correct handling and condition-checking of artworks. Contributing to fundraising, partnership development and budget management, the curator will work closely with other members of the team to ensure the smooth running of the gallery and its programme.

We are looking for an ambitious, creative, energetic team player with the ability to work flexibly and concurrently on various projects. The successful candidate will have a minimum of 3 years’ experience in organising and delivering exhibitions with a proven record of excellence, and an understanding of the needs and perspectives of a diverse range of audiences.

Details and information back here: https://openeye.org.uk/work-with-us-curator/

The Photographic History Research Centre, Leicester, is pleased to announce the second year of its Research Seminars in Photographic Cultures and Heritage, a free, online series of talks and discussions exploring photography’s intersections with politics, technology, culture, and heritage. Building on the first year of the series, the seminars continue to explore the rich and evolving field of photographic cultures and heritage, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and third-sector professionals to examine photography as a cultural artefact, historical record, and dynamic form of communication.

With a focus on critical methodologies, material practices, and diverse global perspectives, the series engages with themes including archival ethics, Indigenous and everyday photography, technological change, memory and identity, and the politics of visual representation, dissemination, and perception.

We are pleased to present four talks as part of the Semester One 2026/27 programme:

8 October 2026, 5.30pm – Dr Carolin Görgen (Sorbonne Université / HDEA / Institut Universitaire de France), “The California Camera Club: Collective Visions in the Making of the American West”.

19 November 2026, 5.30pm – Dr Véra Léon (CY Paris University, France), “Feminisms of Paper: Photography and Feminist Movements of the 1970s–80s”.

19 November 2026, 6.30pm – PHRC’s Visiting Scholar Showcase: PhD Candidate Valéria Bláha (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic), “Photographic Archive as Anticipatory System: Making Heritage for Alternative Futures”.

3 December 2026, 5.30pm – Dr Hanin Hannouch (Weltmuseum Wien, Austria), “Housing Privileges: Tassilo Adam’s Autochrome of the Bosscha Residence in Indonesia circa 1920”.

The seminars will be held online via Microsoft Teams and are free of charge.
Details and link for each event to book: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/research-seminars-in-photographic-cultures-and-heritage-semester-one-2026-27/

Image credit: Tassilo Adam, Study of a European Residence, ca. 1921, Autochrome, 13 × 18 cm. Weltmuseum Wien © KHM-Museumsverband.

Display practices have increasingly embraced public engagement and archival afterlives, foregrounding the politics of lived spaces: who gains access, which voices are heard, and why. Participation, spectatorship, screen cultures and mass media have played fluctuating, and at times contradictory, roles in shaping these dynamics. Our digital traces, both intentional and beyond our control, have compelled artists to confront a fractured yet expanding common ground of contemporary discourse.

This talk examines the Alkazi Foundation's image-oriented projects, as well as allied curatorial ventures that interrogate the stakes of autonomy and freedom at this moment of catalysing public movements, particularly in relation to the Indian subcontinent. If the constriction of (artistic or any other) voice inevitably precedes future silencing, what cultural mandates do the images we share and circulate carry? What symbolic or social weight must they bear?

Rahaab Allana is Curator and Publisher at the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK), and was honorary Research Associate in the Department of Visual Anthropology at University College London. A leading voice in South Asian photography and visual culture, he has curated exhibitions, commissioned publications and delivered talks internationally. Founder of ASAP | art, a pioneering platform for South Asian visual practitioners, Allana has edited critical volumes Unframed (HarperCollins India/Alkazi Foundation, 2023) and Another Lens (Tulika Books/West Heavens, 2024) on lens-based practices and image histories. He was recently awarded Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Government of France.

CREAM Presents Rahaab Allana
The Unpredictable Commons
Autonomy and Exhibitionary Practice | The Alkazi Foundation
Thursday, 8 October, 6–7:30pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street W1B 2HW
Click here to book a place

Image: Rada Akbar, ‘Between Expired Places’, 2025, Installation view from Displacement, Serendipity Arts Festival 2025, Goa. Photograph: Philippe Calia and Sunil Thakkar

Impressions Gallery, Bradford is recruiting a new new Director to replace Anne McNeill who stepped back from the role after twenty-six years earlier this year. Reporting to the Board of Trustees, the Director will provide strategic and creative leadership for the organisation, working closely with our experienced team and partners to deliver an ambitious programme, strengthen our long-term sustainability and ensure excellence across our work. 

Established in York in 1972 Impressions has championed photography for more than fifty years, commissioning and presenting significant new work, supporting emerging practitioners, highlighting underrepresented voices, and helping bring photography to wider audiences.

We are seeking a leader who values this history while looking to the future, and with a genuine belief in the role photography can play in creating opportunities and positive social change.

The salary for this role is £43,000 to £46,000 p.a., dependent on experience.
Closing date: Thursday 22 October 2026 at 12pm, midday.
First stage interviews will take place online during w/c 2 November 2026.
For candidates taken through to the second stage, in-person interviews will be held in Bradford on Tuesday 17 November 2026.

Image: Faye Hatton / Impressions Gallery

The launch of the Ethics of Medical Photography Toolkit will take place online on 16 October. The tool designed to support the ethical decision-making of people using historical medical photographs, as broadly understood. At the heart of this toolkit is the idea that engaging with ethical considerations will enrich our scholarship and practice.  

This toolkit is for everyone who encounters historical medical photographs in any capacity, including any researcher or visitor to archives and museums, as well as the wide range of GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Museums and Archives) professionals who care for and provide access to medical photography collections. 

Join us for an afternoon discussing the toolkit, how to use it, and what's next for The Ethics of Medical Photography Network. The multidisciplinary network brings together historians, ethicists, archivists, heritage scholars, artists, photographers, social scientists, and the public, with the Wellcome Collection as project partner, to generate theoretical and practical resources to research, curate, and disseminate historical medical photographs in an ethical way. To balance the ethical needs of heritage institutions, researchers and the public, this network will move beyond the looking/ not looking dilemma [Moeller, 2009] to ask:

• how does our understanding of the ethics of medical photography, and of medical photography itself, change when we focus on race, disability, gender, class and age rather than consent, privacy and anonymity?
• how can we widen access to early medical photographs while respecting the dignity of both historical subjects and present viewers?

This network and the activities it organises have been funded by an AHRC Research Networking Award.

You can join the Network mailing list here and Check out our website 

Please complete this form to register your attendance at this seminar. We will use your email address to send you the seminar's link the day before the seminar.
https://lnkd.in/epFYkkh8

The next Bloomsbury Photograph Fair will take place on 11 October running alongside the Bloomsbury Book Fair. This fair is always very popular and attracts lots of exhibitors and interest.

Bloomsbury Photograph Fair
Holiday Inn, Coram Street, London, WC1N 1HT
Website here
If you would like to exhibit at the fair get in touch with the organisers to secure your stand as places are limited.
Email: info@etcfairs.com

Early British cameras rarely come to auction these days but Churchill Auctioneers of Thame are to offer a very rare Powell's Binocular stereoscopic camera in its auction on 5 and 6 October 2026.

I was invited to have a look at the cameras (shown in my pictures here). The Powell sterescopic camera was the subject of a registered design of 27 December 1858 which describes the single lens model. The Binocular model probably came along soon afterwards. It was made by Horne & Thornwaite of London. Both models were available for dry collodion (as in this case) or for wet-collodion. The example at auction is lacking lenses, but is otherwise complete with focusing back, four double dark slides, tripod screw, and one supplmentary close (portrait lens). A single lens model from the Cyril Permutt collection was sold in 1988 and a Binouclar model in the late 1970s.

The Churchill auction catalogue is due to go live shortly. 

Both models were illustrated and described in several photographic manuals from c.1860 (below) and in H&T's catalogue (right) from the same year. 

See:  https://churchillauctions.co.uk/auction/october-5th-6th-two-day-sale/

Images: (top and left): Powell cameras to be offered at auction; (right): Horne & Thornthwaite’s catalogue in Robert W Hall’s The Fothergill Dry Process in Photography, London, Piper Stephenson and Spence, 1861; (below): the two models of Powell camera illustrated in W H Thornthwaite's A Guide to Photography, London, Horne & Thornthwaite, 1860. 

This talk explores how Black presence has been represented in Korean and Japanese photographic cultures from the mid-twentieth century onward. The Korean War and the Second World War brought large numbers of U.S. military personnel - including Black American soldiers - into both countries. Their arrival shaped not only social interactions on the ground but also the ways Blackness was visually framed and understood in East Asia, particularly in relation to mixed-race children born to Asian mothers and Black GIs.

Photographers in Korea and Japan turned their cameras toward the daily lives of these Black military communities, producing images that intersected with broader shifts in geopolitics and cultural perception. At the same time, international photography competitions that flourished in the 1960s introduced African subjects to East Asian audiences. One striking example is a widely circulated Japanese photography magazine that featured on its cover an arresting portrait of a Mucubal woman from Angola - submitted by a Portuguese amateur photographer. This visual influx unfolded alongside the significant deployment of Black American soldiers to the Vietnam War.

Taken together, these postwar photographic encounters reveal how portrayals of Black culture in Asia were entangled with the legacies of colonialism and the pressures of the Cold War. These forces both enabled and constrained possibilities for Afro-Asian solidarity, leaving a complex visual record that continues to shape contemporary understandings of race, identity, and transnational encounter in the region.

We also invite you to explore the rest of this year’s series which includes exciting research from leading thinkers Anne Strachan Cross & Matthew Fox-Amato, Vindhya Buthpitiya, Leigh Raiford, Zahid R. Chaudhary and Tiffany Fairey. Explore season two, view recordings, and register for all events here.

By/For: Photography & Democracy is a collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler. Our collective investigates photography’s assumed democratic credentials as an art form and a medium of mass communication. We believe a historical perspective on the complex relationship between photography and democracy is critical to understanding how the medium and related visual technologies can address the social and political issues of our time.

By/For: Photography & Democracy: War, Movement, and the Camera: Black Lives in Korean and Japanese Photography
Friday, 2 October 2026 at 13.00 (Eastern Time) / 1800 (BST).
Dr Jeehey Kim (Associate Professor of Art History, University of Arizona)
Learn more and register here.

The French Ministry of Culture has a website details all events registered to commemorate the 200th anniversary of photography being held between 1 September 2026 and 30 September 2027. 

The link is here: https://bicentenairephotographie.culture.gouv.fr/

In August 1976, workers at the Grunwick Film Processing Factories in the London Borough of Brent went on strike due to unfair working conditions. A month later, on the 1st of October 1976, 400 people marched from Cobbold Road to Chapter Road in support of the Grunwick Strike. This mass act of solidarity signalled that the strike was beginning to become a monumental movement in Trade Union and Labour History. The picketing was so significant that by the end of October 1976, the police attempted to limit the picketers to only six at the factory gates.

Join our Special Collections team online as we take a deep dive into the Grunwick Strike archival material held in the Trades Union Congress Library Collections at London Metropolitan University.

The team will each present ONE selected item from the collections and explain their reasons for choosing it. Materials include photographs, posters, press cuttings, and strike bulletins that tell the stories of picketing, police violence, and community solidarity. These primary sources show the united strength of the South Asian and Black workforce, and what it meant to walk out of your job and stand up for your rights in such a visible and dangerous way.

The Grunwick Strike: Solidarity in the Archives
Thursday, 1 October 2026, 1300-1400
Online
See more and register here

Following on from two previous tours the art historian Aneela de Soysa has arranged a further 14-day tour of Sri Lanka with a focus on Julia Margaret Cameron's final years in the country. Julia Margaret Cameron  was one of the most influential photographers of her nineteenth century and spent the last four years of her life in Ceylon. In 1875, aged 60, she and her husband Charles, then 80, left for British Ceylon to join four of their sons. By then she had made more than 1,000 photographs during a twelve-year career in England. Fewer than 30 of her Ceylon photographs survive.

The journey explores the social, cultural and economic context in which these final photographs were made, while introducing nineteenth-century colonial photography in Sri Lanka. Cameron's Ceylon images include plantation workers, villagers in Kalutara and portraits of the botanical artist Marianne North. The visit will also explore ancient sites which connect directly to the Cameron family: Hardinge Cameron was involved in restoration work at Anuradhapura, while Charles Hay Cameron made an early colonial drawing of the Sacred Bodhi Tree in 1830 after travelling through dense jungle to reach it.

Full details of the itinerary and cost can be found in the attached brochure which can be downloaded from the website, below. 

Sri Lanka: Julia Margaret Cameron. Photography, Empire and the Island
31 January-13 February 2027
led by Aneela de Soysa
https://www.aneeladesoysa.com/

The first memorial in Asia to photography pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is nearing completion in Mavelikara, Kerala, India, in time for the bicentennial of the earliest surviving photograph from c.1826-27. The memorial in Mavelikara seeks to honour Niépce’s scientific curiosity, creativity and contribution to visual culture. It is intended not only as a commemorative monument, but a centre for learning, research and public engagement with the history of photography.

The project includes plans to present the story of Niépce, the development of early photographic processes, the historical importance of the first permanent photographic images, and the evolution of photography from its experimental beginnings to its contemporary forms.

The project is under the auspieces of the Joseph Nicéphore Niépce Foundation, set up by Saji Ennakkad (above, left), an artist from Mavelikara, and others. The memorial is being built at a cost of R50 lakh (around £40,000) and will recreate part of Niépce's residence at Le Gras. A bronze bust has been installed in front of the buidling. The site will include a gallery, museum, workshop spaces and performance stage. 

The memorial is being developed in connection with the worldwide celebrations of the 200th anniversary of photography. The organisers hope that its inauguration will become a meaningful cultural moment linking France, the French birthplace of photography, with India and the wider Asian photographic community.

The initiative also aims to encourage collaboration with French cultural institutions, museums, photographic historians, educational organisations and international photographic heritage networks. Through exhibitions, lectures, educational programmes and publications, the Foundation hopes to introduce new generations to the history and significance of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s contribution, under the banner From Le Gras to Mavelikara — two places, one photographic heritage.

Women's History Today, the journal of the Women's History Network, has published a paper on Ann Cooke, the photographer working 1844 and 1857, mainly in KIngston-on-Hull. Cooke has been widely recognised as an early female photographer working independently. She was enumerated in the 1851 census as the sole woman 'phootgraphic artst' although as research by the same author has shown many women were working but remained hidden.

The paper by Dr Rose Teanby, undeprinned by extensive research, brings new insights into Cooke's career and family life for the first time. 

‘A Second Self’: Mrs Ann Cooke, Widow, Mother and Pioneering Professional Photographer
Dr Rose Teanby
Women’s History Today, 16, Summer 26, 4-11
The full journal is available as a digital downloand to non-members for £5.
See: https://womenshistorynetwork.org/womens-history-today-summer-2026-edition/

Although not reproduced in the paper the following images from a daguerreotype then in the Taylor collection, and subseuquently sold at auction, were published in Arthur Gill's 1979 paper. They are shown here for the record. Of course, if any reader has any other examples of Cooke's work please make contact...

A series of events is being held across September, October and November to engage with and reframe acess to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) historic medical photograph collection. In 2024, the Archives Service was awarded funding from The National Archive’s Research and Innovation fund to reframe access to the historic medical photograph collection. Continuing efforts to address the colonial legacies of our collections the LSHTM has partnered with Decolonising the Archive (DTA) to run a series of events in the Autumn.

For too long archives have been shaped by a colonial gaze- misrepresenting lives, cultures, and histories. You are invited - especially from communities featured in the collections - to help inform the record and co-create better futures for the shared heritage.

LSHTM was established in 1899 with funding from the Colonial Office with the object to facilitate British colonialism and white settlement through research and the treatment of tropical disease. The LSTHM Archives reflects this problematic past, with holdings including photographs of people from colonised nations taken by School staff and other donors. For many of these images there is little provenance, but it is assumed that these photos were taken without consent or an understanding of why they were being taken and how they might be used.

Owing to their sensitive nature, these photos have remained hidden as we are uncomfortable with researchers accessing them but through our decolonising work, we understand the importance of making these accessible in an appropriate way. This project has been designed to reframe access to LSTHM’s colonial medical photo collections, ensuring that we preserve and promote the collections in a respectful and equitable manner.

Working with our expert Consultants at Decolonising the Archive (DTA) we hope these conversations will help us to reconcile institutional archival practices with Community Archiving initiatives.

Decolonising the Archive (DTA) was founded in 2011 and focusses on the definition, safeguarding and activation of our collective archives, they have worked with, supported and trained hundreds of people across the UK and internationally. 

Reframing Access to Colonial Medical Photograph Collection, with Decolonising the Archive (DTA)
September-November, online and in person
See more and sign up here: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/library-archive-open-research-services/archives/decolonising-archives/reframing-access-historic-medical-photograph-collection

This hybrid symposium looks at photographic clubs and societies from a global perspective and follows on from a workshop held at Birkbeck in 2023. Assessing amateur photographic communities as a phenomenon is more urgent than ever because many of these minor groups were poorly documented at the time, and the majority of their collections have been broken up, dispersed, or lost. These amateur groups show the unrestricted flow of photographic knowledge, often through exhibition, unimpeded by geography or language, and made possible by the efficacy of print communities. Some amateur societies and clubs were founded for specific specialisms, concerns, and aesthetic preferences in a variety of locations, while others evolved from learned societies and earlier forms of education.

The earlier trend of forming clubs and societies for scientific and associational activity reflected broader developments in national and global trade economies. The variety of local photographic clubs and societies, as well as the benefits they provided, served as a vector for new ideas, new values, and new kinds of social alignment, as part of a larger surge in new forms of national, regional, and local identity inspired variously by, for instance, learned societies, Victorian arts and crafts organisations, or medieval guild influences.

The keynote speaker is Professor Emerita Elizabeth Edwards who will talk about Photographic Sociability and the Dynamics of Association. The programme is below or can be downloaded here with speaker abstracts and biographies here.

THURSDAY 26 November 2026
9.00–9.30 Registration and coffee
9.30–9.40 Welcome: Jason Bate, Birkbeck
9.40–10.10 Keynote Lecture (Chair: Jason Bate) Elizabeth Edwards – Photographic Sociability and the Dynamics of Association
10.10–10.25 Discussion
10.25–10.35 Comfort Break

PANEL 1. CONSTITUTING AMATEUR COMMUNITIES
10.35–10.45 Carolyn Bloore – The ‘Calotype Club’
10.45–10.55 Sandrine Chene – ‘When found, make a note of’. Photographic Forums in the Royal Photographic Society Journal
10.55–11.10 Peter Buse – The Liverpool Photographic Society and its Journal
11.10–11.25 Rose Teanby – ‘Ladies shall be eligible’: How the Photographic Society of London Helped to Promote Equality for Women
11.25–11.45 Discussion

PANEL 2. STABLISING AND TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES
11.45–12.00 Alice Duncan – Framing Country: Amateur Photographic Clubs, the Australasian Photo-Review, and Settler-Colonial Ways of Seeing
12.00–12.10 Maria Manuela Gomes Gonçalves – From the Factory to the World: The Photography Section of the CUF Sports Group and Transnational Networks of Amateur Photography Under the Estado Novo
12.10–12.25 Jürg Schneider and Paul Weinberg – Was Afrapix (Also) An Amateur Photographic Club?
12.25–12.40 Discussion
12.40-13.40 Lunch (for speakers and chairs only)

PANEL 3. INDIVIDUAL-COLLECTIVE RELATIONS
13.40–13.55 Sara Dominici – Developing the Self: Amateur Photography Between Home and Club Darkrooms, 1880s-1900s
13.55–14.10 Carolin Görgen – Archiving Sociability: The Los Angeles Camera Club Archives as Ecosystems of Collective Photography
14.10–14.25 Discussion

PANEL 4. CONTAINMENT VERSUS REGIONALITY
14.25–14.40 Feargal Fitzpatrick – The Dublin Photographic Society: Tremors in the British Colonial Landscape
14.40–14.55 Ilya Leonov – Imperial Networking: Amateur Photography Clubs in Austria-Hungary, 1860s-1900s
14.55–15.10 Michael Pritchard – ‘no longer an appendage of the RPS’: The Postwar Decline of the Royal Photographic Society’s Affiliation Scheme for Overseas Societies
15.10–15.25 Discussion
15.25–15.40 Coffee Break

PANEL 5. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF PHOTOGRAPHY 
15.40–15.50 Julieta Pestarino – From Society to Photoclubs: Amateur Photographic Institutions in Argentina
15.50–16.05 Alise Tifentale – One Photographer, One Year, a Hundred Exhibitions: The Statistics of Ambition in Cold War Photo Clubs
16.05–16.20 Samuel Salgado Tello – Mapping an Invisible Tradition: An Ongoing Research Project on Latin American Amateur Clubs and the 1973 First Latin American Photography Meeting
16.20–17.00 Discussion
17.00 CLOSE

The event is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art. 

Globe-spanning Networks: Mapping Photographic Clubs and Societies in Local, National, and Transnational Contexts 
Thursday, 26 November 2026, in person and online
Free 
Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
Full details and registration by 24 November: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/65332/ 

UPDATED 3 October 2026 with new venue noted above.