All Blog Posts (3,651)

William Van Sommer (1859–1941) was a little-known amateur photographer who left behind a unique collection of images of his local Surrey landscape and favourite gardens in colour.

He took his pictures in an era when gardens were known for their waves of colour – for the contrasting shades of their rock gardens and the vibrant hues of…

The University of West of England's Centre for Fine Print Research in Bristol is running a series of photographic process workshops aimed at, amongst others, artists, designers, craftspeople, communicators, photographers, teachers and managers. CPD courses offer the opportunity for professional updating, learning new skills and techniques,…

An auction house has asked for identification of a photograph which will be offered at auction on 13 April 2021. There are two photographs in the lot. The photograph which has an unidentified photographer is a portrait of Julia Prinsep Stephen, née Jackson.

The other print shows Mary Louisa Fisher and Julia Prinsep Stephen (both née Jackson), and is…

This blog, published in 2020 looks at - and identifies - many of the photographers represented in this important art library. Much loved and perused by staff, students, and the general public in the know, the Conway Library is a collection of 9764 red boxes containing brown manila folders. The photographs glued on the brown manila mounts are black and…

The inaugural exhibition in the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s photography gallery examines the first photographic studios in New South Wales, Australia and the characters who ran them. The way we visualise much of the 19th century is framed by the work of commercial photographic studios. The new technology of photography, invented in 1839, led to the rise of these…

Art UK is holding a conference as the culmination of nearly four years' work to digitise thousands of sculptures across the UK, held in collections and seen in public spaces.

There will be talks from Art UK…

Prospect magazine has a feature by Emma Hartley which poses the question why were women photographers overlooked in the recent Netflix film The Dig. The photography of Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff who documented the excavation at Sutton Hoo was removed and their roles replaced by a male photographer.  Separately  the role of Wagstaff has…

Bonhams auction of Fine Books and Manuscripts on 31 March 2021 includes a copy of Reports of the Juries (1851-52) which is illustrated with 154 calotypes. The set of four volumes in an edition of approximately 130.   It is estimated at £15,000-20,000. 

See more here:…

The British Film Institute is seeking a Curatorial Specialist to join the BFI’s Curatorial department on a fixed term basis until March 2022 to work on the Heritage 2022 project; digitising 100,000 video works from the collections of the BFI and partner archives in order to preserve the collections for future generations.…

A call for papers has been made by Museu del Cinema, The Department of History & History of Art at the University of Girona and the Ministry Project “Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences”. The organisers are seeking papers that respond to: 

Topic A: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and…

St Andrews University is offering a MLitt in History of Photography. The course provides a range of innovative modules that cover areas from the origins of photography to contemporary practices and debates, including modernist art photography, documentary approaches, photographic collections, and technological advances up to the digital…

My talk on early Royal Navy photographs compiled by Lieutenant Arthur Onslow is up on YouTube. https://youtu.be/-g28qDQGwrk 

Mostly taken between…

Our team is collecting information on photograph preservation projects throughout the world to assist us as we write a monograph titled, Significance, Use, and Conservation of Photograph and Image Collections, to be published in the Routledge Series in Conservation and Museology. In these survey questions, we are broadly defining photograph preservation…

A 30 min talk about the photographers on Mawson's Australian Antarctic Expedition 1911-1914 is now on YouTube. Frank Hurley is probably the best-known photographer from the expedition but this talk introduces works by the other photographers on the expedition and looks at the large negative collections held by the State Library of NSW.…

The Horner Collection is a group of over 1000 photographs which were taken by the Horner photography studio in Settle for three generations from 1864 to 1960. Their photographs capture the changing faces and places of Settle and the surrounding areas for nearly a hundred years.

The Museum of…

I n December 1920, in the aftermath of the first world war photographs appeared in a London magazine which apparently proved the existence of fairies. Embraced by believers, dissected by sceptics, and sprinkled with celebrity by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Cottingley Fairy Photographs fascinated everyone.

One hundred years later, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh,…

The Scottish Council on Archives Preservation Committee has announced its first webinar in its latest series: Focus on Photography. From identifying photographic type and how to care for them to dating images through fashion, these sessions will explore many different aspects of managing photographs in archive collections. Designed for archivists and anyone…

The Florentine has announced that: the Alinari Archive, with its over five million items from the 1840s to the present day, was purchased by the Region of Tuscany at the end of 2019 and now has a new home. It is now under the management of the new Alinari Foundation (Fondazione Alinari), which has the scope of conserving and promoting…

After the success of last year’s inaugural 'Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography' held virtually at the 3D-Con (annual conference), the National Stereoscopic Association is again seeking papers on the history of stereography for its second annual “Sessions.”

We seek presentations on any aspect of stereo-media from the inception of…

A forthcoming publication will tell the story of the photographer and filmmaker Herbert Ponting.  Ponting (1870-1935) was young bank clerk when he bought an early Kodak camera. By the early 1900s, he was living in California, working as a professional photographer, known for stereoview and enlarged images of America, Japan and the…