March 2011 Blog Posts (36)

The hatchet has finally come down, and the full extend of the government's austerity measures on the Arts Council and photographic galleries/organisations have been laid bare for all to see. A quick glance reveals the following:

Photography galleries and organisations that will receive increased funding from ACE: Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool): +15.4%;…

The Hampstead Photographic Society (HPS) will be celebrating its 75th anniversary next year (est 1937). The HPS has been busy researching the society’s history, especially in the society’s early years, as much of their own documentation was mislaid back in the 1980s.

Writing in last week's Camden Journal, the Chairman, David Reed, would love to trace…

Well, if you call stereoscopic photography magic, that is! You've listened to his music, got the T-shirt, the CDs/DVDs.

You then got his book and the owl stereoscopic viewer.

Now, get ready for Brian May's foray into his other interest - astrophysics…

Probably best known for his writing on photography and photographic history - he co-wrote with Martin Parr two volumes of The Photobook: A History which 

won the 2006 book award for photography from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation - Gerry Badger's photography skills are now on display in a solo exhibition. The images are unframed A4 portrait style taken from three…

The conduct of yesterday's (March 25th) photograph auction at Dorotheum in Vienna left a sour taste in the mouths of many buyers - mine included, where purchasers of most of the 19th century section found their winning bids cancelled.

The auction house had received a large consignment of 19th century prints from a geographical association and had divided it into 55 lots. The majority of lots sold, many at or above estimate.

I bought several lots and left the room. When I went…

Held in a cold dark room, the exact opposite of the warm balmy glow that an Indian Summer conjures up, are a remarkable set of Victorian photographs collected by a Victorian businessman from Horsham. These incredibly delicate photographs, whose survival has occurred only because so few people have seen them, have been digitally copied and are now on display in Horsham…

The Oxford Mail reports of an exhibition of rare original prints of images taken in Oxford by Victorian photographer Henry Taunt. More than 130 pictures from the 1850s to 1900s by Taunt and other early photographers are on show at…

Who says luxury leather goods and vintage photography do not go together? The high-end French leather & fashion goods manufacturer has recently launched their new campaign entitled Double Exposure. As can be viewed in the video  below, photographer Tom Craig  uses the 19th century ‘wet plate’ photographic process to capture a…

On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London.

The author,  Simon Winchester, deftly uses the resulting image--as unsettling as it is…

In recognition of St. Patrick's Day, Ancestry.com,  the world's largest online family history resource, today launched The Irish Collection -- the definitive 19^th century collection of…

The National Media Museum in Bradford has announced a £30,000 commission for the creation of two new-media artworks to be included in a major exhibition as part of Yorkshire’s regional cultural programme for London 2012.

In the Blink of an Eye, which opens in March 2012, will explore themes surrounding the capture…

Following on from the posting discussion the so-called Dodgson daguerreotype, I would like to discuss a present day problem which exists with internet sales of images. How often have we seen Daguerreotypes mislabeled as Ambrotypes (yet never in my experience the other way around)? This is sometimes the innocent mistake by a general seller who would not easily distinguish between the two, but have heard the name Daguerreotype used on similar items. This kind of seller will be most happy to…

BPH can reveal the strategic priorities and medium term plans for the National Media Museum (NMeM), Bradford. These are set within the context of a 15 per cent government grant-in-aid reduction for the period 2011–12 to 2014–15. This is alongside a capital allocation that has reduced by over…

De Montfort University, Leicester, is offering a  PhD research studentship within the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC), an international leading multi-disciplinary research institute, to suitably qualified UK or EU students.

The researcher will investigate an aspect of his or her own choosing that will address ‘The Nature of Kodak Research’. The researcher will have access to our partner institutions with substantial Kodak holdings: the British Library, the University of…

A small group on Flickr has been formed dedicated to the calotype and its variant processes. It is intended both for modern day calotypists as well as for those with an interest in the calotype as an historic process.

Click here to visit and sign up:…

Photographic collections are found in libraries, archives and museums all over the world. Their sensitivity to environmental conditions, and the speed with which images can deteriorate present special challenges. This one day training session is led by Susie Clark, accredited photographic conservator. It is aimed at those with responsibility for the care of photographic collections regardless of institutional context.

The day provides an introduction to understanding and identifying…

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked by the City of Ballarat in Australia to do an exhibition on my great grandfather Henry Sutton 1856-1912 who was an Australian inventor.

Featured in the exhibition will be information about Henry's halftone photographic process called Electro-Phototypy and will include some published photographs of Henry's which were of Hale End in England. Henry also used these photograph's in the promotion of his business he started in London in 1891…