October 2014 Blog Posts (23)

The history of photography, perhaps more so than any other art, is a history of technology that is best revealed in the very vehicle that makes it possible – the camera.

Through a selection of fifty landmark cameras, Michael Pritchard tells the story of this ground-breaking piece of equipment that changed the way we saw the world around us.…

The Royal Asiatic Society, London, hosted a book launch for Christopher Penn's The Nicholas Brothers & A. T. W. Penn: photographers of South India 1855–1885. 

The Nicholas Brothers & A. T. W. Penn: photographers of South India 1855–1885 is published by Quaritch. It is available at a special price of £40 until 1 December 2014. Contact: Alice…

This ground-breaking book by Kathryn Morgan examines the 1877-78 publication Street Life in London,by journalist Adolphe Smith and photographer John Thomson, which aimed to reveal, through the innovative use of photography and essays, the conditions of a life of poverty in London.

Now regarded as a pioneering photo-text and a foundational work of…

Museums Journal reports that the National Media Museum is consulting on a restructure that could see it make up to five posts redundant across its senior management team and film department.

The Bradford museum has been forced to scale back its …

The former Picture Post photographer Thurston Hopkins has died aged 101 years. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2000.  Godfrey Thurston Hopkins trained as a magazine illustrator at Brighton College of Art, but discovering that the camera ‘paid better than the brush’ he began working as a Fleet Street press photographer from 1930.

However the cliché ridden imagery and ruthless tactics required by successful press…

The European Society for the History of Photography celebrates photography's 175th anniversary with a volume dedicated to the conditions that formed the historiography of photography: Looking at 175 Years of Photohistory is edited by Miriam Halwani, Ulla…

I am about to embark on a charity fundraiser - http://www.lejogjogle.com - based in part on the Pattinson daguerreotype reproduced above. Anyone who is interested and would like to know more, or get involved, is…

You might be interested in this 7 minute video of a hand coloured albumen photo album from the photographic studio of Adolph Farsari ( Yokohama ) 1885-1890

http://youtu.be/2Oq8zYnDSLk

The video was sent to me by my friend David Iglésias of the CRDI in Girona where the original is kept.

The…

The fourth Ryerson Image Centre Symposium highlights the most current research in the history of photography, bringing emerging scholars from universities worldwide to speak about their bodies of inquiry, their methods and their findings. This rising group of young photo-historians will engage in dialogue with renowned scholars, revealing how contemporary historical inquiry sits within—and departs from—established traditions. The hope is that participants, and the audience, may better…

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc in 3D is a new exhibition at Maison de la Mémoire et du Patrimoine, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France, from 18 Oct 2014 – 29 March 2015. The exhibition of 3D images spans the past 150 years, documenting the life and times of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc:…

  Ramires, Alexandre (2014) The Voyage of the Daguerreotype. On the Daguerreotypes and Physionotypes of the Oriental Hydrographe, Coimbra: author's edition. This text provides documental support for the first daguerreotype experience in Portugal, in October 1939, and the probable daguerreotype practice in islands of Madeira and Canarias latter in the same month. It…

The Society for Imaging Science and Technology has announced a call for papers for Archiving 2015. The conference is to be held the week of 18 May at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Read more and download a PDF version of this Call for Papers at www.imaging.org/archiving.

About…

Tate Britain's Victorian and Edwardian Art Research Centre is holding a research seminar on 4 November based around the upcoming BP Spotlight Display ‘Poor Man’s Picture Gallery’: Art and Stereoscopic Photography.  Exploring how the reproduction of fine art imagery through the intimate hand-held form of stereoscopy has affected our understanding of both forms of art, the…

In 1846 William Henry Fox Talbot provided probably over 6000 original Talbotype images to the Art Union journal in a promotional effort which today is largely overlooked.  The images were provided to popularise his photographic method and the publication was the first journal in the world to include photographs.   Due largely to the haste of production, today, the images are…

The Photographers' Archives and Legacy Project is planning to add more material to the project website - www.photolegacyproject.co.uk - and it would like to hear from photographers whose work has a social, archival interest. It is particularly interested in: 

a) Photographers who are involved in…

Leicester's De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre has reported that Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Director of the PHRC, has been honoured by The Society for Visual Anthropology. The Society has given Edwards its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014. 

See: …

Oxford, 6 October 2014 – The Bodleian Libraries have secured the final funds needed to acquire the Personal Archive of William Henry Fox Talbot.  The final funds come via a legacy donation to the Libraries.   

The Bodleian’s appeal to acquire the Fox Talbot Archive was launched two years ago in late 2012 with an aim to raise the £2.25 million needed to…

At a public meeting held at Oxford’s Bodleian Library today, Head Librarian Richard Ovenden (right) made the first announcement of three initiatives that will support William Henry Fox Talbot studies in the United Kingdom and internationally. At the same time they will make the Bodleian central to Talbot studies and the lead of the world’s three principal Talbot…

Oxford today saw William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography launched at a reception at the Bodleian Library. William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was a British pioneer in photography, yet he also embraced the wider preoccupations of the Victorian Age—a time that saw many political, social, intellectual, technical, and industrial changes. His manuscripts, now in…