For the past year, CADHAS (Campden and District Historical & Archaeological Society) has been running an Awards for All project about Jesse Taylor, our local photographer 100 years ago, culminating in an Exhibition of his work next weekend 23/24 January.
We had a ‘eureka moment’ in our research when we found a picture of the town’s Floral Parade in 1896 by Henry Taunt, well-known Oxford photographer, with another photographer in the corner of the frame, and matched it with one from our Jesse Taylor collection, proving a link between the two men.
Chipping Campden, a small market town in the Cotswolds, has a long and well-documented history but now the recent past is coming to life through these photographs, from glass plates deposited with Gloucestershire Archives. The project has involved volunteers working with the Archives staff to conserve the plates and digitise the images. Local schools and groups of older people have been looking at the images and comparing life then and now. Instead of the pigs and sheep wandering down the High Street we have cars searching for parking spaces!
The Exhibition ‘Campden Then and Now’ is in the Town Hall on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 January, 10 am – 4pm. On the Saturday at 3.15 pm there will be a talk by Graham Diprose, about the work of these early photographers. Graham Diprose is joint curator of the current Henry Taunt exhibition at Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock ‘…in the footsteps of Henry Taunt’, showing pictures of the River Thames in Victorian and modern times.
Judith Ellis
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The National Media Museum presents up to six temporary exhibitions every year. We attract over 700,000 visitors and have ambitious plans to raise our profile further. We have developed a national touring and partnerships strategy that will take our exhibitions to galleries, museums and arts centres across the UK.
Your experience of managing touring exhibitions, brokering relationships and working collaboratively with external partners will be essential to the successful delivery of this strategy. You will take a lead role in managing the touring budget and working with touring venues to oversee the delivery of exhibitions. This is a fantastic opportunity to promote our temporary exhibitions to new audiences and establish an extensive range of partners across the UK.
You will also help us continue to deliver a vibrant temporary exhibition programme by leading cross-function teams to develop exhibition and display ideas, present proposals to colleagues and create the necessary feasibility and scoping documents. Experience of managing the production of exhibition projects in a museum or gallery is essential here.
Award winning, visionary and truly unique, the National Media Museum embraces photography, film, television, radio and the web. Part of the NMSI family of museums, we aim to engage, inspire and educate through comprehensive collections, innovative education programmes and a powerful yet sensitive approach to contemporary issues.
Qualification Level: Suitably qualified and/or equivalent experience
Salary: £24,500 to £28,750 depending on experience
Contract Type: Fixed term until April 2011
Closing date: 1st February 2010 Interview date: 15th February 2010
Click here for details and to apply.Read more…
The National Gallery of Canada has put out a call for application for a twelve month fellowship in photographic history. It is open to art historians, curators, critics, independent researchers, conservators, conservation scientists and other professionals in the visual arts, museology and related disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, who have a graduate degree or equivalent publication history. It is open to international competition and applications should be postmarked no later than 30 April 2010.
Fellowships are tenable only at the National Gallery of Canada. The term of full-time residency must fall within the period 1 September 2010 to 31 August 2011. Awards can be up to $5,000 a month, including expenses and stipend, to a maximum of $30,000. Fellowships are not renewable.
The Library and Archives provides office space and supplies for the program, with desktop computer workstation running the Windows XP operating system and equipped with Microsoft Word, as well as internal and external telecommunications facilities, and full library support services, including extended hours of access.
For general details and how to apply click here: http://www.gallery.ca/english/328.htm
For details of past recipients and their research topics click here: http://www.gallery.ca/english/1667.htmRead more…
This landmark exhibition gives an inside view of how modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been shaped through the lens of their photographers.
From the days when the first Indian-run photographic studios were established in the 19th century, this exhibition tells the story of photography’s development in the subcontinent with over 400 works that have been brought together for the first time. It encompasses social realism and reportage of key political moments in the 1940s, amateur snaps from the 1960s and street photography from the 1970s. Contemporary photographs reveal the reality of everyday life, while the recent digitalisation of image making accelerates its cross-over with fashion and film.
The exhibition is arranged over five themes with works selected from the last 150 years. The Portrait shows the evolution of self-representation; The Family explores close bonds and relationships through early hand-painted and contemporary portraits; The Body Politic charts political moments, movements and campaigns; The Performance focuses on the golden age of Bollywood, circus performers and artistic practices that engage with masquerade; while The Street looks at the built environment, social documentary and street photography.
Over 70 photographers including Pushpamala N., Rashid Rana, Dayanita Singh, Raghubir Singh, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, Rashid Talukder, Ayesha Vellani and Munem Wasif are presented in the show, with works drawn from important collections of historic photography, including the influential Alkazi Collection, Delhi and the Drik Archive, Dhaka. They join many previously unseen images from private family archives, galleries, individuals and works by leading contemporary artists.
Tickets £8.50/£6.50 concessions /
free for under 18s & Sundays 11am–1pm
Book Now*: +44 (0)844 412 4309
whitechapelgallery.org/tickets
* Fee £1 per ticket.
Free admission for you and a friend with
Whitechapel Gallery Membership.
Join now: whitechapelgallery.org/join
+44 (0)20 7522 7888
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Drawing on the V&A's rich holdings of 19th-century photographs, this new display examines the relationship that developed between photography and architectural practice in the 19th century and explores how photography facilitated the re-discovery of an idealised past. The display also addresses the role played by photography in the recording of buildings before demolition and its use as a tool for preserving the national architectural heritage.
The display features a range of photographs by leading British, French and Italian photographers, alongside of which is a selection of drawings, sketch books, watercolours and prints. It has been curated by Ashley Givens, Assistant Curator of Photographs and Barbara Lasic, Assistant Curator of Designs.
The exhibtion is open from 7 January–16 May 2010 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 in Room128a Architecture. Admission is free.
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The Bradford Telegraph and Argus reports that improvements costing nearly £400,000 to Bradford’s National Media Museum’s foyer should be completed next month. The upgrade includes a new electronic information board, a new box office, a shop and a computer games lounge.
Colin Philpott, director of the museum, said: “We are creating a more effective flow of people. The first thing the majority of new visitors ask is where the toilets are. The new welcome board, as we’re calling it, will give people more direction where things are. The new games lounge will enable people to play mainly-1980s arcade computer games. We regard electronic games as an area we want to develop.”
In addition the museum has revised its Friends of Film programme. The changes will be the first revamp of the foyer area since the expanded museum re-opened in 1999.
This blog reported last year that a London design consultancy had been employed to revamp the museum's signage and this is part of that process.
A fuller repoprt can be found here: http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/4840898.Museum_changes_are_the_reel_deal_/Read more…
After showing at the Getty in Los Angeles from 2 February-6 June 6 2010A Record of Emotion: The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans will be on view at the National Media Museum in Bradford, from 24 September 2010–20 February 2011. The exhibition explores the artist’s images of medieval cathedrals in England and France, rarely seen landscapes of the English countryside, and intimate portraits of Evans’s family and friends.
Through a deep understanding of his subject and a delicate handling of light, mass, and volume, Frederick H. Evans (British, 1853–1943) created photographs of medieval cathedrals that capture the innate spirituality of each stone building. Evans began photographing cathedrals in the mid-1880s. He was able to create magnificent examples of light and shadow through the interior views of historic sites such as Ely Cathedral, York Minster, and Westminster Abbey. More than simply recording their physical features, Evans sought an emotional connection with the spaces he photographed, aiming for a “record of an emotion” rather than a piece of topography. His interiors are often dramatic renderings, paying homage to the inner sanctity of the site while also exploiting the architectonic elements.
He described the cathedral photographs as studies since he approached each building in a methodical, measured way. In documenting these sites, Evans stayed for several weeks studying them from early morning to dusk, pacing around naves and cloisters and recording—first as notations in a notebook and later as photographic images on paper—the changing effects of light as it illuminated dimly lit interiors at various times of day. Choosing to work in platinum for its tonal range, Evans was a purist who did not believe in manipulating the negatives. He advocated, “Photography is photography; and in its purity and innocence is far too uniquely valuable and beautiful to be spoilt by making it imitate something else.” His expert craftsmanship extended to the presentation of the actual prints, which were carefully mounted onto different colored paper supports or featured a series of applied borders.
One of the many highlights of Evans’s architectural photographs is a small selection of prints documenting Kelmscott Manor, home of William Morris, the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. These photographs, central to the Getty holdings, are arguably among Evans’s finest pieces. Although similar to the grand cathedrals in evoking a kind of reverence, the images are much more intimate and reflective. Starting with distant views of the house from the river, Evans leads the viewer across the site, into the house itself, and through the various chambers. He studied the location and considered the architectural space in a series of views that sought to capture the soul of the place, culminating in photographs of the light-filled attic.
Other highlights include A Sea of Steps, one of his most recognizable and appreciated photographs of Wells Cathedral. Evans made several attempts over a number of years to successfully capture the wave-like motion of the worn, stone steps. Today this particular image is among the most renowned architectural renderings in the history of photography. Although lauded for his architectural photographs, Evans was also accomplished in the areas of portraiture, landscape, and photomicrography (photography using a microscope), and he brought to each subject the same intensity that characterizes his cathedral images. A small selection of his photomicrographs will be included in a rare display of the glass lantern slides (photographic images on glass) that Evans used for his public lectures.
From 1890 to 1898, Evans ran a bookshop in London. During this time he came into contact with various literary figures, and over the years many of them sat in front of his camera. Included in the exhibition are portraits of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who shared with Evans an enthusiasm for the pianola (automatic player piano), and the young Aubrey Beardsley, whose graphic talents Evans is credited with having discovered. In his portraits Evans attempted to evoke the sitter’s personality. Using a Dallmeyer-Bergheim lens, because it afforded a greater degree of softness in rendering facial features, he tended to isolate the sitter with little background detail or props to convey their psychological presence.
Also on display in the exhibition are photographs by Evans that capture the beautiful landscapes of the English countryside. Evans began making landscapes in the early 1880s when he was seeking respite from health problems and found himself traveling often to the Lake District in the north of England. His numerous trips to local woodland areas in Surrey resulted in photographs of majestic trees that recalled the soaring columns of cathedrals.
“For Evans the work was clearly an emotional enjoyment that is revealed in this exhibition of his life and work,” says Anne Lyden, associate curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. “He attempted to capture what he called ‘a record of an emotion,’ by invoking the potent symbolism of these awe-inspiring spaces.” In Bradford Curator of Photographs Philippa Wright has been responsible for the show.
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The finest Stereoscope to appear in the last 120 years is the claim made for the British-made and designed Owl stereoscope. It was originally produced to accompany Brian May and Elena Vidal's book on the 1850s photographer T. R. Williams A Village Lost and Found. The Owl is now available to purchase separately and in a range of colours. It works well with traditional stereoscards.
Click here to see and read more and purchase: http://www.londonstereo.com/shop_home3.htmlRead more…
For those fortunate enough to be in Glasgow before 15th January there is a chance for a rare treat - an opportunity to see the photographs of Margaret Watkins. Born in Canada in the late 19th century Watkins was successful both commercially and artistically as well as being highly regarded by her fellow photographers in New York during the Stieglitz/Steichen era. As the images on view show she was not only a fine portraitist but had a fine eye for still life compositions, many of which pre-date the more acclaimed work of Paul Strand and Edward Weston. Though she did not appear to have printed much of her later work Robert Burns has made an excellent job of printing up a number of her 1930s/40s Glasgow photos.
Her personal story, too long to retell here, much of which comes to us via Joe Mulholland, her neighbour and confidante in Glasgow is the stuff of legend.
As Michelin would say in their famous Green Guides "Worth The Journey"!!
Donald Stewart.
WatkinsPosterMk2161.psdRead more…
This is an international two day conference on early photographers and their studio practices in Asia, and cross-cultural exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to explore the photographic portrait in the first hundred years of the medium in Asia. It intends to promote inter-regional comparative analyses between scholars working in diverse cultural and national contexts. The symposium will not only analyse photographic representations of Asian peoples for the global market, but also consider the domestic adoptions and adaptations of the visual technology for local forms of self-representation and cultural practice. It will also consider the studio photograph as collaboration between photographer and sitter, and the diverse performed identities invoked in photographic sittings.
Possible topics include:
* Early Asian photographers and their studio practices
* The exhibition and reception of photographic portfolios
* Collected portfolios of Asian peoples
* Photographers of the Asian diaspora active in California, Australia and elsewhere.
* Photographic portraiture and identity
* Cross-cultural photographic exchanges within the Asia-Pacific region
* Asian photographic archives and their histories
Presented by the Research School of Humanities, Australian National University and the National Gallery of Australia.
http://www.asia-pacific-photography.com/http://www.asia-pacific-photography.com/gael09/FacingAsia-Call-for-Papers.pdfRead more…
The National Media Museum in Bradford is committed to raising the national profile and enhancing public perceptions of West Yorkshire as a cultural destination and is seeking a Development Manager to support this,
The National Media Museum, part of the NMSI Museums Group, exists to promote an understanding and appreciation of photography, film, television, radio and the web. The Museum is looking for a skilled Development Manager to lead its fundraising function. The successful candidate will be joining a well established development operation and will have the opportunity to take it to the next level of success; securing income for the Museum’s ongoing cultural programme and planned capital developments.
Closing Date: Friday, 27 November 2009.
For further information on this role, please visit www.richmond-associates.com or contact Nina Chu at Richmond Associates: nchu@richmond-associates.com or +44 (0)20 8392 6654.
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Campden & District Historical and Archæological Society has been award an Awards for All grant to bring to life the photographs of Jesse Taylor, the photographer in Chipping Campden from 1896 to 1938. Working in partnership with Gloucestershire Archives, CADHAS is conserving and scanning 1500, mainly half-plate, glass plates depicting of all aspects of life in the town and surrounding villages.
Jesse Taylor was a typical high street photographer taking photographs of everything, from formal family groups, to informal shots of children at play, interiors of houses, exterior shots of well-known Cotswold buildings – and events of all kinds, from football matches to the visit of King Edward Vll in 1905 and Campden’s celebrations for the 1935 Jubilee. Taylor had a shop but seemingly no studio - all the photographs were taken elsewhere. Many of the photos can be matched with accounts in the local paper and with oral history recordings which were started in the 1980s.
An exhibition is planned for 23-24 January 2010 in Chipping Campden Town Hall, where a selection of Taylor's photographs will be displayed alongside the results of the competition to bridge 'life today and life 100 yrs ago'. There will be biographical information about Jesse Taylor's life and family.
See: www.chippingcampdenhistory.org.ukRead more…
A resurgent RPS Historical Group has launched a new brochure outlining the remit of the Group and highlighting its activities and aims, as well as emphasising its close links with the RPS Collection now located at the National Media Museum in Bradford. A pdf version of the brochure can be downloaded by clicking here, and there is more on the Group at: http://www.rps.org/group/historical. The Group publishes The PhotoHistorian and arranges meetings and visits to collections of interest in the UK and Europe.
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William Henry Fox Talbot is usually remembered as a photographic inventor and influential early voice on photographic aesthetics, but like many of his contemporaries Talbot’s interests covered a wide range of intellectual endeavours. This two-day interdisciplinary workshop will bring together historians of science, art historians, and practitioners of the many scholarly fields to which Talbot contributed. Featuring new research based on Talbot's manuscript collection, recently made available at the British Library, the workshop will present the opportunity to explore Talbot's participation in the wider networks and institutions of Victorian science and scholarship, and to rethink the relation between photography and these other fields.
The workshop is being organised by Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) in Cambridge from Thursday, 24 June to Saturday, 26 June 2010.
Convenors: Mirjam Brusius (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge and the British Library), Chitra Ramalingam (Mellon/ACLS Fellow, CRASSH, University of Cambridge), Katrina Dean (Curator for the History of Science, British Library).
Further details of the programme will be available in due course, in the meantime for administrative enquiries please contact: mm405@cam.ac.uk.
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London design consultancy Carter Wong has been appointed to design an integrated signage system for the National Media Museum in Bradford, having come through a two-month tender process, put out by museum group NMSI. The NMSI invited the group to tender in August following work it carried out for an orientation map at the Science Museum.
Ten groups applied to the tender and five were shortlisted, according to Carter Wong creative director Phil Carter, who said, ‘A new signage system is needed through the foyer and across seven floors. Clarity and simplicity’ are needed within the space, which also houses three cinemas, an Imax and the museum. The Museum holds unique collections and offers fantastic visitor interaction but currently doesn’t help its audience make the most of their trip. We look forward to the challenge of elevating this space to become one of the UK’s most enjoyable and inspiring museum experiences.”', he added.
The consultancy’s proposal has included a review of the way visitors navigate their way to the museum, both from Bradford railway station and through the institution’s website. Three-dimensional design and lighting are also being reconsidered within the space and Carter expects to work with ‘other specialists’.
Private functions are hosted within the building at night, often making use of the cinema spaces, according to Carter, who says, ‘There’s a dual ambition for the museum to create a day and evening environment, so we’ll need to think about things like softer lighting and how to engage both types of customer.’
The signage is expected to be completed ‘early next year’, said Carter.
See: http://www.designweek.co.uk/carter-wong-works-on-national-media-museum-signage/3006077.articleRead more…
The British Library formally opened it's landmark photography exhibition Points of View last night at a well-attended private view. The exhibiton marks the librarys first ever photographic exhibition. It opens to the public from 9.30am this morning.
At a risk of running out of superlatives Points of View is quite simply the best exhibition that the library has ever put on. It is a large show, but never feels unapproachable. It is well designed and laid out and presents a wealth of the library's treasures. It covers many themes from the photographic history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and will please the specialist historian as well as be accessible for the non-specialist.Although it includes a great deal of material the exhibition does not feel crowded. In fact, I left wanting to see more. The show includes wonderful material that hasn't been seen in other exhibitions from the library's collections supplemented with early cameras and equipment from the National Media Museum. I suspect from what I know of the library'c collections there are many more future shows like this of equal standard, or perhaps more usefully more shows which take some of the themes and approach them in more depth. There are a few minor niggles: there are a couple of areas that look empty and the Kodak section at the end feels like a last-minute addition but these are very minor points and do not detract from the overall exhibition.
Make the effort to see it. This is simply the best photography exhibition in London at the moment and the best for many years. You will not be disappointed. Accompanying the exhibition itself is a wonderful series of public lectures and events, a book by curators John Falconer and Louise Hyde and plenty of souvenirs in the bookshop.
I cannot praise the exhibition enough. I, for one, will be going back several times to re-view it.
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Further to an earlier posting reporting a series of lectures on early projection and the magic lantern (click here) full details of the programme have been published. The programme can be downloaded by clicking here: Pepper'sGhost_II_.pdfRead more…
At the international launch yesterday, Brian May and Elena Vidal presented their book A Village Lost and Found, which brings together the complete annotated collection of the original 1850s stereoscopic photograph series Scenes in Our Village by T. R. Williams. A full report and review of the book will appear here shortly. The launch was held at Hinton Waldrist, the village where T. R. Williams originally made the series of photographs.
For the young Brian May, a fascination with 3-D picture cards given away in Weetabix packets led to a lifelong passion for ‘stereoscopic’ images. Soon May was taking sequential pictures with his Woolworth’s 2/6d camera and making pairs of sketches that transformed into 3-D scenes when he ‘relaxed [his] eyes and let the images float together’. Later, he scoured antique shops and auctions for stereoscopic photographs and the ‘viewers’ that enabled him to see the images in all their glory. It was in this way that May discovered the work of Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871), who, in the 1850s, had created a series of 59 stereo cards depicting life in a small English village – Scenes in Our Village.
In A Village Lost and Found, the product of more than 30 years’ research, May and his co-author, photographic historian Elena Vidal, present an exhaustive study of Scenes in Our Village. The village, whose identity was lost for 150 years, was only recently rediscovered by May, in 2003, still in existence in Oxfordshire. The complete series of images is collected here for the first time in living memory, along with extensive related material, including many corresponding photographs of the village as it is today.
The OWL Stereoscope Viewer
Their research is amazingly in-depth, but the book is utterly readable, and the pictures leap into glorious 3-D, when viewed in the new focusing stereoscope viewer, named the OWL, which May has designed and produced, to bring the stereos to life, and also folds neatly into the slip-case of the book.
"A Village Lost and Found is a significant contribution to our understanding of photographic history and the Victorian period. These three dimensional studies of rural village life are so evocative that one can almost smell the new-mown hay, and feel the warmth of the very sun that illuminated these scenes 150 years ago. To quote the 1850s London Stereoscopic Company's maxim, "No home should be without one!" - Roger Taylor, Professor of Photographic History, De Montfort University, Leicester.
The book gives an exceptional insight into everyday village life at the time - with a woman at her spinning wheel, the blacksmith outside his smithy, three men at the grindstone sharpening a tool, the villagers in the fields, bringing in the harvest as well as often taking time to enjoy a good gossip.
In every case the original verse which accom-panied the view is reproduced, enriching the picture by revealing the inner thoughts of the subjects, or transforming it into a comment on Life, Nature, or the Spiritual World. In addition, May and Vidal have researched and annotated all the views, revealing another layer of meaning, by exploring the history of these real characters, this idyllic village and its links with the present day. The result is a powerfully atmospheric and touching set of photographs.
A Village Lost and Found provides an extraordinary insight into English society in the mid-Victorian era, explains historic photographic techniques and explores the life of the enigmatic T. R. Williams, who appears, from time to time, Hitchcock-like, in his own photographs.
"This is a picture book: an annotated book of photographs which tells a unique story – a story that has fascinated me for more than half a lifetime." - Brian May
Biographical information:
Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871) began his photographic career in the early 1840s as an apprentice to the renowned photographer and inventor, Antoine Claudet, where it is said he excelled in the art of tinting photographic images. Shortly after the Great Exhibition he opened his first photographic studio in Lambeth, London where he specialised in making stereoscopic daguerreotype portraits. He also started to produce stereo still lifes and artistic compositions, and in 1856 he published, with the London Stereoscopic Company, the First Series which included the launching of HMS Marlborough in 1855 - a forerunner of press photography as we know it today. His second series published by the LSC was the Crystal Palace set which included the inauguration of Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854.
His third series was Scenes in Our Village, perhaps his most defining work, and completely original in concept. T. R. Williams’s stereo portraits where so popular that his fame reached the ears of the Royal Household, and on 21 November 1856 he was commissioned to photograph Princess Victoria on her 16th birthday. Over the coming years, he took more Royal portraits including one for Princess Victoria’s wedding. At the end of the 1850s, the stereoscopic craze reached huge proportions. Views were produced, printed and published at an almost alarming rate, sometimes at the cost of quality. True to his standards and disenchanted by the turn of events, Williams decided to cease producing stereo cards; he felt they had become vulgarised by imitation. He still continued photographing highly covetable stereoscopic portraits for a select clientele, but also produced the ‘cartes de visite’ and whole-plate vignetted heads and busts, which earned him accolades at photographic exhibitions. Through his work, Williams is now widely recognised as pivotal in the history of stereoscopic photography.
Brian May, CBE, PhD, FRAS, is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer. Brian had to postpone a career in astronomy when Queen's popularity first exploded, but, after an incendiary 30 years as a rock musician, was able to return to astrophysics in 2006, when he completed his PhD, and co-authored his first book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Stereography has been a life-long passion for Brian.
Elena Vidal has worked as a conservator of paintings in Florence, Spain and the UK. She graduated as an MA in Photographic Conservation at the Camberwell School of Arts, and has subsequently specialised in the history of stereoscopic photography. Since meeting Brian May in 1997, Elena has collaborated with him on a long-term study of Thomas Richard Williams, and has published a number of articles.
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Terry King writes...As people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the ability of digital photography to meet their creative needs, there is a corresponding revival of interest in the craftsmanship and the aesthetic of the hands-on or alternative photography included my Wedgwood to Bromoil course of workshops. Examples of processes included in the workshop can be found on www.hands-on-pictures.com.The course gives everyone hands-on practical experience.
The excitement of the workshops is that the ‘students’ are inquisitive people who want to know the science and history of the processes so that they can use them more effectively.. Apart from London’s professional printers and amateur printers of the highest standing, those attending the ‘Wedgwood to Bromoil’ course usually include people from undergraduate to PhD level.
The programme covers:
• Wedgwood’s process presented to The Royal Institution in 1804
• Niepce’s asphaltum prints (1822-26)
• The cyanotype and chrysotype (gold) and the revised versions the Cyanotype rex and the chrysotype Rex
• Salt printing (1841)
• Albumen
• Carbon
• Platinum printing
• Gravure and photo-etching
• Kallitypes
• Gum bichromate
• Bromoil and bromoil transfer
Hands-on-Pictures will still be running workshops on individual processes on request, see www.Hands-on-pictures.com
My work in alternative processes has been described as ‘awe inspiring’ and of ‘great beauty’ and my teaching as both inspiring and practical
The course will be for one day a week for fifteen weeks. There will be a maximum of six students. If there is a demand we will run a second course on a different day ( this has engendered some friendly rivalry between those on the different days).
The workshops are provisionally planned for Fridays over fifteen weeks starting in January. The weeks will not be consecutive but grouped according to the needs of both the course itself and those of the students..
The workshops will take place at the Hands-On Pictures studio in Richmond, Surrey..
The cost will be £1,000 for the fifteen days.
Demonstration materials are included in the cost students will need to get their own materials and tools should they wish to make their own prints during the workshop. I will be able to supply the more expensive chemicals and metallic salts.
Read more…
At the international launch yesterday, Brian May and Elena Vidal presented their book A Village Lost and Found, which brings together the complete annotated collection of the original 1850s stereoscopic photograph series Scenes in Our Village by T. R. Williams. A full report and review of the book will appear here shortly. The launch was held at Hinton Waldrist, the village where T. R. Williams originally made the series of photographs.
For the young Brian May, a fascination with 3-D picture cards given away in Weetabix packets led to a lifelong passion for ‘stereoscopic’ images. Soon May was taking sequential pictures with his Woolworth’s 2/6d camera and making pairs of sketches that transformed into 3-D scenes when he ‘relaxed [his] eyes and let the images float together’. Later, he scoured antique shops and auctions for stereoscopic photographs and the ‘viewers’ that enabled him to see the images in all their glory. It was in this way that May discovered the work of Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871), who, in the 1850s, had created a series of 59 stereo cards depicting life in a small English village – Scenes in Our Village.
In A Village Lost and Found, the product of more than 30 years’ research, May and his co-author, photographic historian Elena Vidal, present an exhaustive study of Scenes in Our Village. The village, whose identity was lost for 150 years, was only recently rediscovered by May, in 2003, still in existence in Oxfordshire. The complete series of images is collected here for the first time in living memory, along with extensive related material, including many corresponding photographs of the village as it is today.
The OWL Stereoscope Viewer
Their research is amazingly in-depth, but the book is utterly readable, and the pictures leap into glorious 3-D, when viewed in the new focusing stereoscope viewer, named the OWL, which May has designed and produced, to bring the stereos to life, and also folds neatly into the slip-case of the book.
"A Village Lost and Found is a significant contribution to our understanding of photographic history and the Victorian period. These three dimensional studies of rural village life are so evocative that one can almost smell the new-mown hay, and feel the warmth of the very sun that illuminated these scenes 150 years ago. To quote the 1850s London Stereoscopic Company's maxim, "No home should be without one!" - Roger Taylor, Professor of Photographic History, De Montfort University, Leicester.
The book gives an exceptional insight into everyday village life at the time - with a woman at her spinning wheel, the blacksmith outside his smithy, three men at the grindstone sharpening a tool, the villagers in the fields, bringing in the harvest as well as often taking time to enjoy a good gossip.
In every case the original verse which accom-panied the view is reproduced, enriching the picture by revealing the inner thoughts of the subjects, or transforming it into a comment on Life, Nature, or the Spiritual World. In addition, May and Vidal have researched and annotated all the views, revealing another layer of meaning, by exploring the history of these real characters, this idyllic village and its links with the present day. The result is a powerfully atmospheric and touching set of photographs.
A Village Lost and Found provides an extraordinary insight into English society in the mid-Victorian era, explains historic photographic techniques and explores the life of the enigmatic T. R. Williams, who appears, from time to time, Hitchcock-like, in his own photographs.
"This is a picture book: an annotated book of photographs which tells a unique story – a story that has fascinated me for more than half a lifetime." - Brian May
Biographical information:
Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871) began his photographic career in the early 1840s as an apprentice to the renowned photographer and inventor, Antoine Claudet, where it is said he excelled in the art of tinting photographic images. Shortly after the Great Exhibition he opened his first photographic studio in Lambeth, London where he specialised in making stereoscopic daguerreotype portraits. He also started to produce stereo still lifes and artistic compositions, and in 1856 he published, with the London Stereoscopic Company, the First Series which included the launching of HMS Marlborough in 1855 - a forerunner of press photography as we know it today. His second series published by the LSC was the Crystal Palace set which included the inauguration of Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854.
His third series was Scenes in Our Village, perhaps his most defining work, and completely original in concept. T. R. Williams’s stereo portraits where so popular that his fame reached the ears of the Royal Household, and on 21 November 1856 he was commissioned to photograph Princess Victoria on her 16th birthday. Over the coming years, he took more Royal portraits including one for Princess Victoria’s wedding. At the end of the 1850s, the stereoscopic craze reached huge proportions. Views were produced, printed and published at an almost alarming rate, sometimes at the cost of quality. True to his standards and disenchanted by the turn of events, Williams decided to cease producing stereo cards; he felt they had become vulgarised by imitation. He still continued photographing highly covetable stereoscopic portraits for a select clientele, but also produced the ‘cartes de visite’ and whole-plate vignetted heads and busts, which earned him accolades at photographic exhibitions. Through his work, Williams is now widely recognised as pivotal in the history of stereoscopic photography.
Brian May, CBE, PhD, FRAS, is a founding member of Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer and performer. Brian had to postpone a career in astronomy when Queen's popularity first exploded, but, after an incendiary 30 years as a rock musician, was able to return to astrophysics in 2006, when he completed his PhD, and co-authored his first book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Stereography has been a life-long passion for Brian.
Elena Vidal has worked as a conservator of paintings in Florence, Spain and the UK. She graduated as an MA in Photographic Conservation at the Camberwell School of Arts, and has subsequently specialised in the history of stereoscopic photography. Since meeting Brian May in 1997, Elena has collaborated with him on a long-term study of Thomas Richard Williams, and has published a number of articles.
