March 2022 Blog Posts (19)

As the British Institute of Radiology marks 125 years join BIR Honorary Historian Dr Adrian Thomas to explore the early days of the society, and how it has developed to match the needs of a changing world. Be transported back to 1897 when seeing inside the body was becoming a possibility for the very first time and the potential of the 'new photography' was…

Photography, both in the form of contemporary practice and that of historical material, now occupies a significant place in the citadels of Western art culture. It has an institutional network of its own, embedded within the broader art world, with its own specialists including academics, critics, curators, collectors, dealers and conservators. All of…

Applications are invited for an AHRC funded CDP studentship offered by the University of Liverpool and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), to start in October 2022.

The studentship will be based in the V&A in London (in the Photography Section) and also in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of…

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. The V&A’s Collections Division comprises six curatorial, research, and conservation and collections care & access teams. The curatorial departments are arranged as Decorative Art and Sculpture; Performance, Furniture, Textiles & Fashion; Art, Architecture, Photography &…

Today, Historic England launches its new Aerial Photography Explorer - which for the first time allows users to search and explore an online map showing aerial photographs of England over the past 100 years. Aerial imagery provides a fascinating insight into the development and expansion of the nation’s urban centres and changes to the rural landscape. It…

BPH has been contacted by a representative of Ana Briongos. In 1967 Prince Emmanuel travelled to Spain with his wife where he enrolled in the Escuala Massana art school. Three years later the married couple left Spain and moved to London. They never returned to Spain or reclaimed the precious suitcase, full of photographs and artworks from his time in…

the recent unprecedented floods in the Eastern side of Australia, have had a deviating effect of the Sandy Barrie historical photographic Collection and his research into early Photographers.. there was no warning, and the river just kept rising. until it entered my shed and house, destroying years of restoration work on negative collections and cameras etc. hampering my attempts to rescue what I could, just as the water started to enter my house, I fell in the slippery conditions an…

In researching their Madame Yevonde holdings, the National Portrait Gallery is on the hunt for a Vivex System / Taylor-Hobson three colour camera. A ‘One-shot’ camera used for exposing three plates at once. It is the camera Yevonde is shown with in a celebrated self-portrait, and the camera is reproduced here.

Please contact Clare Freestone…

University College Cork wishes to appoint an experienced Photographic Collections Curator. The Photographic Collections Curator  is vital to the achievement of the library’s strategic objectives, and plays a significant part in setting scholarly and professional standards of work for Photographic Collections and Collections team, and the development of…

The Prints & Photographs Division's National Stereoscopic Photography Research Fellowship is made possible by a gift from the National Stereoscopic Association (NSA) for fellowship and lecture funding. The purpose of the award is to support research within the Prints & Photographs holdings of stereoscopic photography and the unparalleled photographic history…

BPH has learnt that Dr John Lambert Wilson who was active in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s for his researches on the photographically illustrated book died on 1 March 2022, aged 79 years. John, who was then based in Oxford, built up a formidable collection of books on early photography and those illustrated with photographs.

His PhD was titled Publishers and Purchasers of the Photographically-Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century, (University of Reading, 1995). John also…

The Royal Photographic Society’s Historical Group was formed on 22 March 1972 at a time when photography in Britain was undergoing a significant transition. The RPS, itself, was in a process of modernisation as it sought to remain relevant to British photography. The way photography was taught in higher education reflected a move away from the technical to a…

In 1888 in Leeds, Louis Le Prince shot what many now consider to be the world’s first films. Film-maker and researcher Irfan Shah will be talking to writer Paul Fischer about his ground-breaking new biography of Le Prince and trying to discover the truth about the many myths surrounding the man behind the camera.

Complimentary drink on…

The Muslim woman has been a consistent subject of representation across regimes of historical colonialism and Orientalism, in events such as the Arab Spring and post-9/11, and mediated widely via news and social media. These have included variegated representations from the odalisque to the ‘oppressed’ which have converged the identity of the Muslim…

This looks like an interesting exhibition. To mark the centenary of Ernest Shackleton’s death, a new exhibition, Shackleton’s legacy and the power of early Antarctic photography, will be on display in the Royal Geographical Society’s Pavilion from 7…

Dr Mirjam Brusius, best known to BPH readers, as a scholar with a focus on W H F Talbot and his work, has won the David Dan Prize for history, alongside eight other outstanding early- and mid-career scholars of history.  A selection committee of eminent scholars assessed hundreds of nominations from around the world as part of a rigorous process to…

The Bodleian Libraries have announced the appointment of Phillip Roberts as the Bern and Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography. Phillip joins the Libraries from 7 March. He had been Associate Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Science and Media Museum (NSMM) since 2019. 

Phillip holds PhDs from Cardiff…

Dick Weindling has written an online article titled 'We Photographed Magicians, Music Hall Performers and Royalty' which discusses the London photographic studio of Campbell Gray Ltd. The firm photographed Harry Houdini, David Devant amongst many others. Dick is still looking for additional information on the firm, and its proprietors Messrs Gray and…

A short film is to be released to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Percy Richard Salmon (1872-1959). For a period from the 1890s until his death he was active as a amateur photographer, journalist for the photographic periodical press, freelance writer and as a photographer recording his village of Melbourn, Cambridgeshire. He was sub-editor…