January 2021 Blog Posts (25)

The impact of COVID-19 on DCMS funded museums and galleries in 2020 has been laid bare by new research showing an average 74 per cent decline in visitor numbers for the period January-September 2020 against the previous year.

For those institutions closely involved with photography, the V&A Museum, London, saw a drop from 3,084,702 for the first…

Fairly recently I acquired a large and interesting album that appears to have been compiled by a British family managing a tea plantation in India, possibly around Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The photographs are a mixture of personal photographs, most likely taken by an enthusiastic amateur,and (presumably purchased) professional photographs by people such as…

Photo London 2021 has been rescheduled from May to 9–12 September 2021, with a preview day on 8 September. The fair will be held at Somerset House as programmed.

Since the start of the year, the Founders of Photo London have engaged in detailed discussions with expert advisers from various fields, including science and government, regarding the timing…

This talk will examine the history of Scottish expatriates in nineteenth-century Japan and their contribution to the photography networks.

When Edward Hornel and George Henry travelled to Japan in 1893, they encountered a community of photographers that supported their own artistic pursuits in the country. Their visit was particularly timely, but…

The Fox Talbot Museum will no longer have a specialist curator for the first time since the museum's opening in 1975 as the National Trust recruits for a more general Property Curator for its Lacock portfolio. This includes the Fox Talbot Museum and Abbey and three other Trust properties close to Lacock. The role replaces Roger Watson who retired as Fox…

The Royal Geographical Society with IBG, is partnering with Wiley Digital Archives (WDA) on an extensive digitisation programme of substantial parts of the pre-1945 Collections.

As part of its mission to undertake research on the Collections and to…

Delve into the lives, loves and labour of the world’s most prominent portrait galleries in this international conversation series. From curatorial decisions to art handling, exhibition design to major events, favourite portraits to the creative copy they command – this is your chance to go behind the scenes for insights into global gallery…

Birkbeck's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre has announced its spring term talks which will be online. Established in 2012, the Centre is an interdisciplinary group based in Birkbeck's School of Arts, led by Dr Patrizia Di Bello and Professor Steve Edwards. We aim to facilitate, exchange and showcase new and existing research on photography's…

The project offers an exciting opportunity for a student to study British South Asian heritage in relation to factory work, leisure and domesticity and their photographic representations, using the Black Country Visual Arts’ Apna and Punjabi Workers photographic archives.

The…

Rachel Nordstrom from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, Victor Flores, from Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, Portugal, Denis Pellerin and Rebecca Sharpe, from the London Stereoscopic Archive, England, have once again joined forces to organise this free online Zoom event which is meant to be a celebration of Stereoscopic…

Here's a piece I wrote on the Pam blog back in October. It touches on the Cult of Pan, Wicca and the English Gymnosophical Society.

A Very British Arcadia

Due, in part, to the censorship laws of the 1950s, photographers often sought to cloak their work in respectability, using Classical allusions in an attempt to validate…

A free online history of medicine seminar, organised by the University of Birmingham's IAHR is being held on Thursday, 21 January 2021 from 1730-1900. Dr Beatriz Pichel, senior lecturer in photographic history at De Montfort University, will present her paper Photography and the making of modern medicine in France (1860-1914) which examines how…

The donation of a large quantity of photographs and other records relating to Hutchings Caravans, and its founder Bertram Hutchings, to the Caravan and Motorhome Club Collection at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, in 2015  has prompted a call for help with identification. The Hutchings company was a maker of high-quality, bespoke, caravans…

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities, in collaboration with the Science Museum Group, is offering a 0.2 FTE Postdoctoral Research Fellow position to work the project “The Media of Mediumship (TMM): Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain’s Science, Technology, and Magic Collections.” The Fellow will work in collaboration with Professor…

The British photographer Grace Robertson has died aged 90 years. She worked for Picture Post and was married to Thurston Hopkins and helped preserve his legacy. Her own as a humanist photographer is equally illustrious. 

See:…

Dame Margaret Weston who was instrumental in the setting up of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in 1983 and was a pioneer for women in a male-dominated world as the UK's first female director of a national museum, has died aged 94 years.

See:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jan/18/dame-margaret-weston-obituary…

Mahalski operated a photographic business at various addresses in York for more than 40 years.  I am preparing an article about him and I am seeking examples of his work primarily as sources of information about the style and range of his work.  Like other photographers of the period he produced CDVs in his Portrait Rooms but produced a variety of other formats.  He…

My interview with Dr Rosemary Deller on my book  'Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s'  for the LSE Review of Books is available to read at …

To what extent does the meaning of a photograph depend on social experience, industrial contingencies, the professional environment or the culture of its producers? This special issue of Photographica - from the Société française de photographie - aims to explore this question and thus extend the discussions initiated during a seminar at the EHESS in…

The Stanley B Burns, MD Medical Photography Collection was sold to Yale University Medical Library in anticipation of Dr Burns developing a specialized medical photography museum. The Washington Post among other papers carried the story. The collection of over 15,000 images (1840-1950) includes numerous British medical photographs including a rare…