Blogs

I would be interested to hear from anyone who knows of any surviving cased images, taken by Blackburn based photographers, in their own or any other collection.

Whilst John Eastham visited the town, as an itinerant daguerreotype photographer, in 1847 and 1848, it was not until July 1853, as the patent restrictions were ending, that Richard Holt opened a daguerreotype studio there.

Whilst I’ve never seen a Blackburn daguerreotype, I know of a couple of surviving ambrotypes taken by David Johnson (1827 – 1901).

One featured in the Arts Council exhibition “Masterpieces of Victorian Photography 1840 – 1900”, from the Gernsheim Collection, at the Festival of Britain 1951; it is now in the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

 The other is in my own collection. Johnson’s morocco leather cased images were embossed with his name in an oval (left). He used similar printed wording on the backs of the mounts of his early cartes de visite (right):

Hopefully some of you may know of other survivals. Thanks!

The International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media (IJSIM) is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal that reflects on immersive media cultures developed by historical media and/ or state-of-the-art technologies. IJSIM is a Scopus-indexed journal edited since 2017 that explores the immersive features of modern media, ranging from Panoramas and Stereoscopic Photography to Extended Reality Media. 

For its 2026 issue, the International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media welcomes papers addressing one or more of the following themes:
1- Stereoscopic Photography and Cinema;
2- Stationary and Moving Panoramas;
3- Optical Shows and Peep Media;
4- Cinema and Sound Media Archaeologies;
5- Media Art Installations;
6- Extended Reality (XR) Media;
7- Sonic Art and New Technologies;

Full paper submissions for Issue No.10 are due by 1 July. 

Find registration and submission information at http://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/stereo/information/authors 

Back numbers can be read here: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/stereo/issue/archive

Bonhams are to offer a large lot of spirit and medium photography with provenance, of photographic and other materials relating to the spirit mediumship of Jack Webber. The lot description reads: a collection of approximately 90 vintage gelatin silver print Psychic or Infra-red photographs taken of Webber during his séances (roped to a chair, with ectoplasm, trumpets and tambourines, levitating tables, his coat being removed by spirits, apporting objects from his body, voice boxes, etc.), often with other circle members (including the vendor's grandparents, see footnote), several with some white gouache amendments, one with the trumpet inked in as it was moving "so rapidly that in a 75th second exposure a precise image was not secured", 74 pasted into an album by Edwards (a few loose), with printed captions and ink annotations on mount; others mounted and framed (by "C.E. Ponsford, Fine Art Dealer, 240 Balham High Road"), typically approx. 150 x 200mm., some smaller; and approximately 60 later printings, and copper metal plates for use on Edwards' book.

It is estimated at £4000-6000. 

The auction also contains other photographs including Julia Margaret Cameron's Stella and PH Emerson's Reflections, 1899. 

Trans Asia Photography is the first and only open-access international peer-reviewed journal devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of historic and contemporary photography from Asia and across the Asian diaspora. The journal examines all aspects of photographic history, theory, and practice by centering images in or of Asia, conceived here as a territory, network, and cultural imaginary. Bridging photography and area studies, the journal rethinks transnational and transcultural approaches and methodologies. By centering photographic practices of Asia and its diasporas, the journal foregrounds multiple ways of seeing, knowing, and being, which are distinct yet inseparable from other regional formations. The journal brings together the perspectives of scholars, critics, and artists across the humanities and social sciences to advance original and innovative research on photography and Asia, and to reflect and encourage quality, depth, and breadth in the field’s development.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-ND) and are open immediately upon publication. Authors are not charged any fees for publication and retain copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions in their articles. Readers may use the full text of articles as described in the license.

Trans Asia Photography publishes two issues annually. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year, and authors are encouraged to submit at any time. Accepted contributions will appear in forthcoming issues following peer review and editorial processes. For consideration in the Fall 2027 issue, we recommend submitting by November 2026; submissions received by this date will receive priority review. Articles (5,000–7,000 words) that broaden understanding of Asian photography in transnational contexts; and shorter pieces (1,000–2,000 words) in formats that include interviews, curatorial or visual essays, and portfolios. 

See complete submission guidelines here. 

All inquiries can be directed to: transasiaphotography@gmail.com

See: https://read.dukeupress.edu/trans-asia-photography 

Published today, the King's Birthday Honours list recognised two photographers. Professor Sunil Gupta, photographer, activist and writer, received an MBE for services to art and to the LGBTQ+ Communities. Sir Don McCullin CBE was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to Photojournalism. 

Read more about Sunil here: https://www.a-n.co.uk/fortieth-feature/40-years-40-artists-sunil-gupta/

Image: Sunil Gupta, self-portrait in his studio at Collier Street, Kings Cross, London, 1986

Kettle’s Yard is delighted to present Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now, a new exhibition chronicling five decades of Sunil Gupta’s (b. 1953, India) pioneering contribution to photography and activism. Intimate and subversive, Gupta’s photography has been instrumental in raising awareness around the fight for queer rights internationally, particularly in India and the UK, laying bare the tensions between tradition and modernity, and public and private spheres. Featuring more than 140 works, this exhibition will reflect Gupta’s migrations between Delhi, New York, Montreal and his longstanding home in London, celebrating his love for his family, friends and partners, and his belief that everyone has the right to lead full and joyful lives, in which identity and sexuality can be celebrated.

Arranged chronologically and grouped in series bound by theme, time and location, ‘Life with a Camera’ will span street photography, portraits and both commissioned and personal projects. The exhibition will open with highlights from Gupta’s early career, including Friends and Lovers (early 1970s), Christopher Street (1976) – created while the artist was studying at the New School, New York, in the period after the Stonewall uprising – and Exiles (1986-1987), a series of constructed images of anonymous men in iconic gay cruising locations across Delhi. Created in response to the criminalisation of gay sex in India and, effectively, the public expression of gay identity, the series represents an act of defiance against the suppression of queer love.

The power of photography to make visible and confront discrimination continues in the series ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships (1985-1988), which expresses the principle underlying much of Gupta’s work – that his activism is fundamental to the creation of compelling and unique images. The series is titled after Section 28, a controversial amendment to the UK’s Local Government Act, passed in 1988 by Margaret Thatcher, which prohibited councils and schools from teaching about homosexuality as a ‘pretended family relationship’. At this time, the mere act of depicting queer love became a defiant act of protest. Here, by juxtaposing portraits of couples with photographs of demonstrations against the legislation, Gupta gestures both to the power of representation and the problematic nature of representation without equivalent political action. This idea is further explored in From Here to Eternity (1999), where Gupta pairs images of his body following his HIV diagnosis with photographs of gay nightclubs that have been shut down across south London. The series acts as an urgent call to action to protect spaces for the gay community in the fallout from the HIV pandemic.

As much as Gupta’s work is intrinsically related to his activism, it is equally concerned with experiments in digital image making. In his series Homelands (2001-2003), Gupta draws connections between photographs of life in Delhi, London and the US through a series of diptychs created with meticulously constructed compositions and shifting perspectives. Sun City (2010), meanwhile, draws on Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée to create a series of stills from a fictionalised missing film, forming a cyclical storyline of romantic love.

Life with a Camera will conclude with Gupta’s more recent works, including Mr Malhotra’s Party (2007-2012), which covers a period of intense lobbying to change anti-gay laws in India. These works depart from the furtive cruising pictured in Exiles, with the artist’s subjects looking straight into the camera as they are photographed across the city. Dissent and Desire (2015), a collaboration between Gupta and Charan Singh, will also be on view, capturing the interior lives of queer people in Delhi. In charting Gupta’s own experiences, the exhibition will more broadly track shifts across queer rights and activism from the 1970s, culminating in images from the Trans+ Pride marches in 2025.

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now is curated by Andrew Nairne and Guy Haywood with Susie Biller. It will be accompanied by a new publication chronicling Gupta’s journey as both an artist and an activist, with new essays by Tausif Noor, Gregory Salter, Theo Gordon, Natasha Bissonauth, Gayatri Sinha and texts by Sunil Gupta.

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now
19 September 2026 – 31 January 2027
Kettle's Yard
See: https://www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/

Image: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #22 from Christopher Street (1976). Images courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Materià Gallery, SepiaEye, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025.

Following the seminars held in 2019, 2023, and 2025, I am delighted to announce, for the fourth time, a week-long photo-historical seminar at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome in March 2027. The seminars bring together an international group of PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers working across the broad field of photo-historical studies.

With our everyday practices of viewing, making, using, and circulating photographs, we continually renew an experience that has shaped the history of photography since its inception: photography is fundamentally a collective endeavor. Even a cursory glance at nearly two centuries of photographic practice reveals countless instances in which the interplay of multiple actors has proven constitutive for the production, circulation, reception, and social efficacy of the medium. Such constellations range from the complex divisions of labor characteristic of commercial studio photography to the dense social networks formed by learned societies, amateur clubs, and photographic associations.

Contemporary photographic culture—shaped by digital platforms, participatory media, and globally networked image circulation—has only intensified the collaborative dimensions of photography. The collaborative production, distribution, interpretation, and archiving of photographs generate a distinctive social, aesthetic, and epistemic surplus that continues to define the medium in remarkable ways.

On the occasion of the photo-historical seminar Photographic Communities: How People Collaborate with Images, to be hosted at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in March 2027, we invite participants to examine these questions and dynamics.

Several perspectives may be distinguished within such debates; we particularly foreground three of them:

– First, photographic communities play a decisive role as subjects of representation, that is as photographed communities. In group portraits of families, circles of friends, school classes, professional associations, political movements, or other social formations, photography has developed a broad spectrum of iconographic conventions, oscillating between standardized formulas and highly singular visual articulations.

– Second, the history of photographic production can itself be understood as a history of manifold collaborations, whether in the commercial studio, the scientific laboratory, ethnographic and social-scientific fieldwork, journalistic production, or the making of photo books and exhibitions. Such collaborative constellations invite us to reconsider traditional notions of artistic autonomy and individual authorship that have long structured media historiography.

– Third, we seek to address the significance of photographic practices for the formation, negotiation, and representation of communities. Within manifold forms of collective life—and especially within marginalized and minority groups—photography frequently functions as a crucial medium of collective self-fashioning, historical memory, political visibility, and social cohesion, thus actively contributing to an understanding of such communities.

Call for Proposals: Photographic Communities: How People Collaborate with Images
Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History
March 15–19, 2027
The deadline for submissions is August 31, 2026.
Questions and queries may be sent to: fototeca@biblhertz.it

Read more: https://biblhertz.iwww.mpg.de/3792978/260610_CfP_Photographic-Communities_-How-People-Collaborate-with-Images

An old friend and former colleague JOHN HODGETT, formerly head of photography at Bourneville School of Art and Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University), died on 4th June.

As well as being an inspirational teacher and exhibiting photographer John fought hard to establish a strong photography presence in Birmingham for many years and it was only when the late Pete James at the Library of Birmingham and separately, the late Rhonda Wilson with Rhubarb Rhubarb emerged around the1990s did that change. But John thought the second city should have a gallery solely devoted to the medium.  

Born in Glasgow, he completed a foundation course at Stafford College of Art in 1968 followed by teacher training in Portsmouth. He became head of art at King Edward VI School, Stafford in 1973 and remained there for 10 years before going to run photography at the renowned Bourneville School of Art. He did an MA at Birmingham Polytechnic before starting a PhD with me at De Montfort University, Leicester in 2001. From 1987 he ran the photography degree course at Birmingham Poly until he retired. He continued with many photographic projects that followed earlier ones on the construction of the M6 Toll motorway, and another using an early scanner to produce Ground Scans.  On his many visits to the Peak District, where his late father lived, he made scores of wonderfully revealing portraits of couples who visited the tourist honeypot of Dovedale.

He is survived by his wife, Wendy and children Beth and Tom.

In 1909, the New York art critic Charles Caffin approached Charles Lang Freer with a proposal to have the celebrated photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn come to Detroit to make color slides for a planned lecture on Whistler. What began as an experiment in the use of the new autochrome process expanded into a twelve-day marathon during which Coburn and Freer—working together despite vast differences in age and background—recorded over forty-seven Whistlers and fifty-two Asian and Middle Eastern objects. Join Professor Emerita Anne McCauley for a talk centered on the surviving autochromes and why their creation inspired such outpourings of mutual excitement and friendship. 

This program is part of the monthly lunchtime series Sneak Peek, where staff members and outside scholars share personal perspectives and new research related to the collections of the National Museum of Asian Art. 

Anne McCauley, David H. McAlpin Professor Emerita at Princeton University, has published extensively on 19th- and early 20th-century photography, including A.A.E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph; Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–71; The Steerage and Alfred Stieglitz (co-authored); and Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle (co-curated and co-authored). In 2017 she was the curator and primary author of Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895–1925. She is currently writing a book on Coburn and the evolution during World War I of the vortographs, the “world’s first abstract photographs.”

Sneak Peek | A Colorful Meeting of the Minds: Coburn, Freer, and the Autochrome
Anne McClauley / Asian Art Museum-Smithsonian
Online, uesday, June 9, 2026, 12 – 12:45 PM EDT | 1700-1745 (BST) | 1800-1845 CEST
Free: register here: https://www.si.edu/events/detail?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D203956149

Image credit: Alvin Langdon Coburn; Photograph of a View of Works from the Freer Collection; United States, 1909; autochrome and glass; The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund. Featuring F1903.7, possibly F1908.113 or F1908.155 or F1908.184, F1908.115, F1908.161, F1908.159 from the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection

The Archives Centre at National Museums Liverpool is currently undertaking a project to catalogue and digitise prints by Stewart Bale Ltd. The project invites BPH readers to stay up to date with the project and discover newly digitised photographs by signing up to our mailing list.

Stewart Bale Ltd was a family run practice specialising in commercial and industrial photography, based in Liverpool from c.1911 to c.1980, with an additional London studio from 1949 to 1970. The quality of Bale’s photography is high and the firm was regarded as one of the best amongst its contemporaries. These photographs are a stunning record of 20th century British architecture, industry, leisure and commerce, including images of factories, shops, cinemas, exhibitions, churches, libraries not only in Liverpool but across the North West and the entire country.

With its eight volunteers hard at work cataloguing and digitising around 4,000 Stewart Bale prints, you can follow progress by subscribing to the newsletter.

Subscribe via the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/PibS2fsZet

 Image credit: Photograph of Swansea Civic Centre, 1934, Stewart Bale Collection, the Archives Centre, National Museums Liverpool, SB/P/11401-1.

The V&A has created a range of PhD placements based in collections departments, archives, the National Art Library, research, and collections care and access to support the professional development of PhD researchers across the UK and internationally. In addition to on-the-job experience and mentoring from supervisors, PhD placement students will have access to the Museum’s wider range of workshops, talks and postgraduate training opportunities, alongside a training package designed for the PhD placement cohort. Depending on the project, placements may combine onsite and remote work, with the exact working pattern agreed between the student and placement supervisors.

This placement will explore the V&A’s collection of photographs documenting the construction of the 1862 Exhibition building, designed by Captain Francis Fowke and formerly located on the site now occupied by the Natural History Museum and Science Museum. The collection includes approximately 260 photographs, comprising images commissioned by the Department of Science and Art during construction and photographs of the completed building contained within Spackmann’s scrapbook. These materials provide a valuable resource for understanding the technical and social history of the building but remain relatively understudied.

The placement researcher will investigate the potential of the photographic collection through close analysis and primary and secondary source research. Working with V&A researchers and curators, the student will explore the construction process, architectural techniques, and social history documented by the photographs, including evidence of labour practices, prefabrication, and the role of the Royal Engineers. The project may also consider the potential for visual or 3D reconstruction of the building and will contribute to the V&A’s understanding and future public presentation of this important collection.

V&A PhD Placement – A Visual Narrative: Photography and the Construction of the 1862 Building
Apply immediately - no set expiry date
No salary
Supported by Simona Valeriani, Ella Ravilious, and Patrizia Di Bello
See details here

A short article on an unusual photo-micrograph found buried in the State Library of NSW picture files. It was taken by an amateur photographer, Edward Wolstenholme Ward, who joined the Royal Engineers before coming to Sydney in 1854 to take up the position of deputy-master to the Sydney Mint. Here he worked with other keen amateur photographers Robert Fellows Hunt and William Stanley Jevons who were part of an active photography scene in Sydney in the late 1850s. full article

Dimbola Museum and Gallery, the former home of Julia Margaret Cameron in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, has renamed its main gallery space the Colin Ford Gallery. In a ceremony at the end of a two-day convening celebrating and exploring Cameron, her life and work, Sue Grayson Ford, Colin's widow, spoke about Colin's legacy and involvement with Cameron and inveiled the name plaque that will be installed in the gallery.

Colin Ford CBE was the first Head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television and a scholar of Cameron. He had supported the setting up of Dimbola as a permanent museum celebrating Cameron and her circle, and co-authored the Julia Maragaret catalogue raisonné. Colin died in December 2025. 

See the Dimbola website here

Images: © Michael Pritchard

Coinciding with the major exhibition The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour in the Courtauld’s Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, this display brings together a remarkable group of photographs of Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) and Ben Nicholson’s (1894–1982) shared London studio at 7 The Mall, Hampstead, taken in the early 1930s by the fine art photographer Paul Laib (1869–1958).

The photographs, which are held in the Courtauld’s collection, are among the most evocative and iconic studio images taken in Britain during the 20th century. As well as portraits and exquisite photographs of individual artworks, the images show their studio populated with sculptures, paintings and prints, carefully arranged side by side with carving tools, plants and other objects. The display has been curated by Gerlind May and Chloe Nahum. 

This display will offer a captivating insight into Hepworth and Nicholson’s London studio environment, which they occupied until moving to Cornwall in 1939, and which was the setting for a period of intense collaboration and experimentation for the two artists. It will also shine new light on Paul Laib, who photographed the work of many eminent British artists in the first half of the twentieth century.

Hepworth and Nicholson: The Hampstead Studio Photographs
6 June – 4 October 2026
Courtauld Gallery, Project Space, Floor 2
See: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/hepworth-and-nicholson-the-hampstead-studio-photographs/

alongside the display read an accompanying blog post: In the studio with Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson which discusses the photographs. 

Image: Paul Laib (1869-1958), The studio at 7 The Mall with various works by Ben Nicholson, June 1933. Modern gelatin silver print from the original glass plate negative. The de Laszlo Collection of Paul Laib Negatives, Courtauld Institute of Art. Ben Nicholson © All rights reserved, DACS; Paul Laib © The de Laszlo Foundation

The Hardmans’ Liverpool - A Legacy in Light: from Street to Studio invites audiences to experience Liverpool in the early to mid‑twentieth century through the photographic eyes of Edward Chambré and Margaret Hardman. See the city represented via evocative scenes before and after the Second World War. Everyday moments and familiar locations are elevated through an artistic play of composition, angle, light and shadow. As Margaret herself poetically wrote of one major Liverpool landmark ‘I know and love you in a thousand lights’.

From busy streets to serene studio sittings – this same creativity was applied to the Hardmans’ commercial portraiture, produced in their studios on Bold Street and later at 59 Rodney Street. Here they welcomed thousands of Liverpudlians and visitors to the city, photographing young children, newly-weds, artists, actors, soldiers, families and even pets to name a few. The studio took on particular significance during the Second World War, when portraiture of men and women in service – and the loved ones they left behind – played an important role in sustaining morale and supporting the war effort. Together with their photography documenting life beyond the studio, these works reflect the Hardmans’ exceptional vision of – and deep connection to – Liverpool.

The selected content on display, ranging from original photographic prints to letters and medals, is drawn from the National Trust’s vast Hardmans’ archive on deposit at Liverpool Central Library. The contribution of volunteers is reflected in the presentation of works recently conserved by them and staff over the course of several conservation projects – all supporting increased access and ongoing research into the Hardmans’ legacy. Additional material from the Hardmans’ House, including two of the photographers’ personal cameras, further enriches the exhibition.

Cultural Heritage Curator Amy Carney states “The Hardmans’ photographs have helped to shape how Liverpool is seen, remembered and understood today. Visitors are invited to consider their own relationship with the city, as well as with photography and memory itself.”

Enhancing this contemplation is the inclusion of images by Liverpool-based photographer and darkroom educator Rachel Brewster-Wright, founder of Little Vintage Photography. Commissioned to document The Hardmans House at 59 Rodney Street and to create new mini portraits of people posing in the historic Hardmans’ studio setting today, these prints instantly blend nostalgia with the present-day. National Curator of Photography, Anna Sparham, reflects how “They echo a shared desire to preserve meaningful moments – something that Chambré and Margaret’s customers sought, and successfully found, in their enduring and deeply relatable photographs of people and place”.

A further opportunity to experience being photographed in the original studio of The Hardmans’ House is available to book online, with sessions taking place on 26 August in collaboration with Little Vintage Photography. Free, limited sessions available. A guided Photo Walk between The Hardmans’ House and Liverpool Central Library is also programmed for 10 September.

In generous collaboration with Liverpool Central Library and supported by photo printing expert CEWE and Little Vintage Photography

The Hardmans’ Liverpool.  A Legacy in Light: from Street to Studio
5 June-28 September 2026
Hornby Library, Liverpool Central Library

Images: (Top): National Trust/capture Robert Thrift; (Below): © National Trust/Jayne Knight

In the first Photo History since Grace & Thurston published in 2022, I take a long look at the life of the celebrated campaigner and protest photographer David Hoffman, who I had the privledge to work with on Editorial Photographers UK (EPUK) between 2007 and 2015. A university friend of future Magnum president Chris Steele-Perkins, Hoffman has, since the early 1970s, compiled an extraordinary archive of images depicting protest and dissent, mainly on the streets of London.

Among Hoffman's most well known photographs are those he took during the Poll Tax Riot in central London on Saturday 31 March 1990, including Nidge & Laurence kissing. Hoffman's books Endurance & Joy and Protest! were published in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

David remains a tireless campaigner for the rights of photographers and today celebrates his 80th birthday.

Rebel Without Pause is a 75 minute read.

The Curatorial Fellowship in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation is an opportunity to further develop expertise in the history of photography by researching the collections of the V&A, while gaining vital curatorial experience working in a museum. The Curatorial Fellow will divide their time between key curatorial duties and pursuing an independent research project, which may relate to portraiture, colour photography or photographic processes, all areas of interest to the American photographer Bern Schwartz and The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. The topic and scope of the project will be agreed at the start of the fellowship, depending on the Fellow’s expertise and the priorities of the Photography Section.

Details and apply: https://vam.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/4213163?cid=3279&rsid=24732&js=0&LinkType=1&FromSearch=False

For our project Mad About the Boy we are looking for contactdetails of Robin Shaw, Suzanne Greenslade, Harriet Thompson, Jane Ralley, Jane Erskine, and Diana Baylis.

Whose work was part of the book 'What She Wants - Women Artist Look at Men' (1994) by Naomi Salaman. In addition to the photographers, we hope to get in touch with Naomi Salaman.

If there are any other photographers you think shouldn't be missed, we would of course love to hear about that too!

Dirk Kome & Marloes Heineke

Some more info about the project;

We are two Dutch photographers and exhibition curators. In recent years, we have been researching female photographers who have photographed their loved ones nude. This serves as a counterpoint to the endless number of male photographers who have photographed their wives and girlfriends nude.

We have now found over 120 photographers, spread across the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The oldest photos date back to 1915 and the most recent to 2025. 

Our project is about love, lust, intimacy and the relationship between woman (as photographer) and man. In extension, we want to raise questions among the viewer about adopting a vulnerable stance within a relationship based on equality.  

Finding these images, however, turned out not to be that easy. Museum collections and image archives overflow with nude photos taken by male photographers of their wives/girlfriends. But why are so few images visible of female photographers who have immortalized their beloved naked? Are museums and their public not yet ready for these images? Is the male body not attractive? Do men prefer not to be photographed naked? Or are these photos hidden in boxes and hard drives because women think showing these images will hurt their careers?

The research we began in 2022 is still continuing. By examining the subject across such a broad range of time and geography, it reflects a wide variety of perspectives. It ranges from Imogen Cunningham (US), who photographed her husband as a faun in 1915, to Carla Franke (Germany), who captured her boyfriend with bat wings in 2025. From the conceptual work of Pixy Liao (China) and Snieguolé Michelkevičiūtė (Lithuania) to the more daring work of, for example, Lina Schenynius (Sweden) and Nan Goldin (US).

Birkbeck and MuseumsEtc warmly invite BPH readers to join them for the launch of an important new trilogy of publications by Jo Spence and Terry Dennett, featuring previously unpublished and unknown images, interviews and texts. Please join us for the book launch of these new, groundbreaking publications.

The event will also celebrate the 92nd anniversary of Jo Spence’ birth and raise a toast to Jo Spence and Terry Dennett’s legacies as part of the exhibition "‘The Project Remains Incomplete": Jo Spence, Curated by Terry Dennett' a, 2008 show Terry Dennett took to Finland, and restaged by a curatorial team from Birkbeck, led by Patrizia Di Bello at Peltz Gallery, London.  

In short talks, Patrizia di Bello, Birkbeck University, Shirley Read & Graeme Farnell (MuseumsEtc), Julia Winckler, (Series Advisory Editor, University of Brighton) and Andrew Dewdney (Series contributor), will introduce the new trilogy, followed by Q&A and tributes.  

‘I would like my life to be celebrated on my Birthdays (June 15th)’ / Jo Spence, 11 January 1992, in her notes ‘Thoughts on Dying (Being Constructive)’

Monday, 15 June, 18:00 – 20:00
Peltz Gallery, 43 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PD
RSVP to launch@museumsetc.com

See more: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/research/centres/peltz-gallery and https://museumsetc.com/

Brighton's first photographer, William Constable, was commemorated with a blue heritage plaque at the site of his studio, 57 Marine Parade. Constable was a Beard licensee and operated the daguerreotype process from late 1841 making it one of the first studios in Britain. The plaque was unveuiled on Friday by Claire Constable, William's great, great, great niece and biographer, and the historian Philippe Garner. Members of the extended Constable family, Brighton's blue plaque committee, and other guests were also present. 

Separately, work has been undertaken by Professor Annebella Pollen and two of her PhD students Sally Jones and Sylvie Jane Lewis, from the University of Brighton, alongside Shannon Perich of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The museum owns 130 of Constable's daguerreotypes made between 1841 and 1861, donated by the collector Albert Boni (1892-1981) who purchased the Constable Collection from Parke-Bernet auction house in 1970. They were given to the museum in 1972 as part of a large group of photographic materials.

A digitisation project along with new research will go live in the summer. BPH will report further when the project goes live. 

The research was part of a AHRC Techne / Smithsonian Virtual Placements programme to research the photographer’s history, his contributions to the field and to Brighton, to improve museum’s catalogue records. 

See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93xx23l9z3o

Claire's multi-volume series on the Constable family is out of print. The volume dealing with William is The Constables of Brighton and Reigate: William - the Photographer, Clair - the Town Clerk, (Book Guild Publishing Ltd, 2005,  ISBN 13: 9781846240058).

Image: (top): Philippe Garner and Claire Constable unveil the plaque to William. © Michael Pritchard; (right) The University of Brighton team with Philippe and Claire. © Michael Pritchard; (left): Portrait of Leone Glukman, William Constable and Clair James Grece. Daguerreotype by William Constable. c.1841-1850. PG 71 22 125.  Credit: Courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. William Constable (centre) poses for a portrait with his friend and fellow daguerreotypist Leone Glukman (above), and his nephew, Clair James Grece (below). Constable used a rotating platform in his photographic studio at 57 Marine Parade to maximise the available natural light. This portrait shows the rotating platform in use.