July 2020 Blog Posts (30)

The rare photographic images of Florence Nightingale are so famous and familiar – iconic even – that we tend to take them for granted. But what do we actually know about them, about the circumstances in which they were made, distributed and, more importantly maybe, about the photographers who took them? Come and discover the truth behind the iconic pictures…

My article on Grubb and Parsons and their optical and engineering achievements is here; A variation of this article has appeared in the Photographica magazine of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain…

My presentation on Choosing and Using Old Leicas for the LHSA - The International Leica Society - will go out at 7.30 pm BST on Wednesday 19th August 2020.

Link here - …

The Illustrated Collodion News started off as a bit of fun for a small group of wet plate collodion photographers to raise money at charitable events they attended.

This year we went a little further and produced 100 x twenty page Broadsheet newspapers for the European Collodion Weekend. Sadly cancelled, so we decided to go ahead with the printing and…

At an estimate of £60-100 a stereoscopic daguerreotype of Fox Talbot by Antoine Claudet could be yours. The lot is being offered by Kings Russell Auctioneers in London's Knightsbridge in an auction as lot 172 on 18 August 2020. 

The description is here: 

Antoine Claudet (French, 1797-1867), Portrait of William Fox…

The Black House was a hostel founded in the early 1970s by Herman Edwards, a charismatic Caribbean immigrant, better known to his community as Brother Herman. It aimed to provide accommodation and support for disillusioned black adolescents in Islington, London, many of whom had experienced prejudice, unemployment, and problems with the police.

Almost…

The 35th Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have announced the long and shortlisted titles. The books in the running for the 2020 Photography Book Award and Moving Image Book Award address diverse global issues related to race, justice, identity, and the construction of truth, history and memory.

Ranging from illuminating artist monographs and anthologies to…

This two-part online research seminar event raises questions about how archives of ‘vernacular’ photographs inform and shape our understanding of both the present and the past. During the presentations, each speaker will examine how archives are re-activated within contemporary photographic practice as potential sites of critical political significance.…

2020 coincides with the centenary of the first woman matriculating and graduating from the University of Oxford. What better time and place could there be for celebrating women and their diverse roles in international photography?

What themes are women photographers addressing from behind the camera? To what extent have muses become collaborators in…

Displaced Visions: Émigré Photographers of the 20th Century was a major 2013 Jerusalem exhibition and book that reconsidered the work of nearly 100 key immigrants, focussing in particular on the earliest photographs taken by them as artists in their various new countries, exploring how this work expanded photographic practices of the time and…

It's interesting to see that a photograph is celebrated on a new UK coin.

This week marks the centenary of the birth of Rosalind Franklin, whose Photograph 51 could be seen as one of the most significant of the 20th century, as it was key to working out the structure of DNA.

To celebrate Rosalind's centenary, it is her photograph - Photograph 51…

The Norfolk Chronicle of Saturday 14 November 1857 carried the headline:- A New Discovery in Photography . “The world is indebted to Mr. W. Olley, of London, for the greatest discovery which has yet been made in photography. Mr. Olley calls it the “Patent Micro-Photographic Reflecting Process.” It consists in fixing an impression of any object placed under the microscope glass, which is afterwards transferred to paper.” This article draws the…

When you look on the internet at the many hundreds of daguerreotype images taken by W E Kilburn what you see, apart from the famous image of the 1848 Chartist rally, is almost entirely portraits of famous and well to do clients taken at his Regent Street studios. Although the Royal Collection does have images of servants, grooms, gamekeepers. beaters etc…

Four Corners has announced the launch of a Heritage Lottery funded project. The 3-year project will see it delve deeper into Four Corners Archive, evolving the collection into an active site for public events, study, socially-engaged practice and collaboration. Here's what is planned:…

The following links are to 3 lots of photographs which turned up as part of a 'downsizing' by one of my clients. My client is descended from Thomas Carlyle who is supposed to have annotated the Julia Margaret Cameron photograph with reference to Goethe's Mignon. There are also cartes-de-visite relating to Carlyle, by various Scottish photographers and an…

When the National Library of Scotland and National Galleries of Scotland acquired the MacKinnon Collection, it made a joint commitment to preserve it in alignment with its growing world class photographic collections and provide access for ever-changing audiences. This talk describes our current cataloguing, digitisation and engagement activities, and…

Back in March BPH published a regularly updated blog of how museums, galleries, research venues and events were approaching lockdown with cancellations, postponements and closures. Finally, after more than twelves weeks,…

A look at London stations. During the Victorian era, competing railways built several stations in London. Since then, all stations have undergone a major renovation, but many still retain some of their original architectural features, including impressive roof extensions.…

Facing Britain brings together for the first time outside of the UK a particular view of British documentary photography. Long forgotten and only recently rediscovered photographers such as John Myers, Tish Murtha or Peter Mitchell who are shown alongside works by internationally photographers such as Martin Parr. The show offers an insight into the…

The National Stereoscopic Association's 46th convention 3D-Con is going virtual in 2020. There is a two-part session on the history of stereoscopic photography taking place between 0730-1130 (Pacific Time) which is 1530-1930 (BST) on Friday, 14 August 2020.

The public is welcome to join for a morning of scholarship from an international group of…