Blogs

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam presents a one-day international symposium exploring the vital role of photojournalism and documentary photography in how we perceive our present, understand our past, and view the future. Future Memories brings together photographers, academics, and representatives from art and media institutions. Together, we will discuss the influence of conventions and tropes in visual culture, explore contemporary practices of photographers, curators and institutions, and examine how they perceive the evolving role of photography. The symposium is open to both professionals and the public.

The symposium can be followed physically in the Rijksmuseum and online. 

The price of the ticket includes full access to the Rijksmuseum, where you will have the opportunity to visit the exhibitions on display, including Carrie Mae Weems: Painting the Town, and American Photography. Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

Symposium: Future Memories | How Photography Shapes Our Understanding of the World
14 May 2025
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Details, programe, and booking here

Studies in Photography is holding a major conference on Tuesday, 20 May 2025 in The Engine Shed, Stirling. The conference will explore how photography has shaped and recorded the urban architectural heritage of Scotland. By examining Scottish photography from the 1840s to the present day, architectural styles, photographic records, and the influence of new technologies, the conference will provide a comprehensive look at how cities and towns have been represented and perceived through the lens. Academics, students, architects, photographers, and cultural historians will gather to discuss how photography influences not only the perception of Scotland’s built environment but also the way our modern towns and cities are planned and designed.

Conference themes include: 

● How early photographers recorded urban buildings and spaces
● Documenting and preserving architectural heritage through photography
● Architectural styles and photographic representation – from medieval to modernism and beyond
● The cultural and social Impact of architectural photography
● Technological innovation in architectural photography

Speakers will be expected to deliver a 20-minute presentation and contribute to short Q&A sessions. We expect most presentations will be in-person but a small number of online speaking slots for speakers who are unable to attend will be available. If you would like to submit a paper or a topic to present on, please email a proposal to John Pelan. Proposals should include the topic of your presentation, a short biography of the presenter(s) and the name of your organisation (if applicable). Expressions should also indicate if you would like to present in person or online. Submissions should not exceed 500 words.

Shifting Perspectives: Scotland's Urban Architecture: Sciotland's Urban Architecture through the Lens 
20 May 2025
The Engine Shed, Stirling
cfp deadline: 24 March 2025
Conference: 20 March 2025
Contact: John Pelan, chair@studiesinphotography.com
Details: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wytb06U0xYsOozsTmnPw7Q6dTgBcwFWO/view

Supporters:
Historic Environment Scotland
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
Scottish Council on Archives

The National Trust have an exciting opportunity for an Assistant National Curator to join the National Trust on a 12-month fixed-term basis. In this role, you’ll work closely with our photography collections, helping to develop them while expanding knowledge, access, and engagement. You’ll support colleagues at several significant places and contribute to our partnership work, ensuring these remarkable collections are shared and appreciated by all.

What it's like to work here

Photographs are mobile and malleable. They travel between people and places, change appearance and form, and traverse through different settings and environments. In image-led societies, photographs are often disrupted or removed from their original contexts to be repurposed by governments, institutions, and researchers, as well as by artists, communities, campaigners, and many others.

How, and to what ends, are these photographs being repurposed, and by whom? How does repurposing photographic materials impact social, cultural, and political phenomena? This conference aims to facilitate discussions on the reuse, recirculation, and transformation of photographs and explore the ways in which they have been re- employed in both contemporary and historical contexts.

The perceived truthfulness of photography, shaped by specific historical conditions, operates within particular institutional practices and historical frameworks (Tagg, 1988). Photography functions as a cultural tool employed for diverse representational tasks (Sekula, 1984). While museums serve as one example of institutional uses of photography, others include the press, the state, civil society, medical institutions, and technological apparatuses. For example, photographs are used to assert perceived objectivity and authority over social and cultural interpretations (Stylianou-Lambert and Stylianou, 2014); explore representations and memories of working people (Adams Stein, 2016); and support political activism (Thomas, 2021).

PhD-Focused Conference

As a PhD-led conference, the event offers an opportunity to refine and reflect upon ongoing and emerging research.

All speaker applicants must be postgraduate students (Masters and PhD) and can be at any stage of their postgraduate journey.

Papers will be 15 minutes long and can be delivered either online or in person. Practice-based presentations, such as, practical demonstrations, experiments or semi-interactive workshops, are also welcome.

Submission Topics

We encourage submissions on, but are not limited to, the repurposing of photographs in connection with:

• Exhibitions and collections in museums, archives, or galleries
• News stories on television, online, or in print media
• Interviews, focus groups, or research with vulnerable people
• Tracking changes to landscapes or human environments
• Analysis of historical events, objects, or societies
• Community initiatives or institutional practices
• The study of health issues, diseases, or medical treatments
• Examination of scientific technologies or instruments
• Promotions of ideologies or policies
• Investigations of industrial processes or techniques
• Social media content or AI systems

Speaker Application

Submit your application HERE

Submission Deadline: 30th April 2025 (GMT)

Financial Support

There are 6 travel bursaries (up to £50) and 6 accommodation bursaries (up to £70) available for non-funded student speakers living outside Leicestershire. Details on how to apply for these will be given to students confirmed as speakers.

Conference Application Webinar (FREE) – Wednesday 16th April 2025, 2- 4pm (GMT)

The organising committee will host a webinar session for students on attending and applying for conferences.

This optional session will provide guidance for students applying to and/or attending a conference for the first time.

• The purpose of conference, expected activities, and best practices for attendees;
• Creating abstracts for presentations and practice-based showcases.

Register your interest HERE by 9th April 2025.

Conference Registration Information

Please log on to: RepurposePhotos2025

Conference Hosts & Organising Committee

This conference is hosted by the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC), De Montfort University, in collaboration with Midlands4Cities, Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK.

Organising Committee:

• Javed Sultan, Victoria Shaw, and Emma Hyde – PhD Candidates, PHRC, De Montfort University
• Jo Gane – PhD Candidate, Birmingham City University
• Daniel Rathbone – PhD Candidate, PHRC, University of Warwick

For all enquiries, email: studentphotocon2025@gmail.com

An international student-led-conference on photographic history and visual culture

When: Monday 7th – Tuesday 8th July 2025 (Two days, hybrid)

Where: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK and on Microsoft Teams.

Hansons Auctioneers have two lots of photographic interest in its next library auction, one from the 1870s and the other from the 1930s. Lot two is a group of sixty-five prints from Thomas Child. The prints show China during the late-Qing dynasty (1870-1880). The lot is estimated at £2000-4000. The description reads: 

Lot 2. CHILD, Thomas. Views of North China. EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY. A collection of 65 albumen prints ranging in size from 122mm x 187mm to 230mm x 343mm, 39 pasted on card album leaves, 26 loose or held in corner-mounts (i.e. not stuck down), 20 of the photographs bearing Thomas Child's signature in the negative and dated 1875-78, many accompanied by pasted captions & numbers, most images well-preserved, especially the loose examples, a few with creasing & wear, housed in a folio album bound in half crushed morocco, views include "Garden of Summer Palace, near Pekin", "White Cloud Temple, near Pekin", "Yuen-Ming-Yuen Palace, Pekin", "Ruins of Summer Palace, Pekin", "Camel-back Bridge, Pekin", "View of River from English Club, Shanghai", "The Bund, Shanghai", "Silver Island, Yang-tze-kiang River", "Tien-tsin, from River Pei-ho", "Steamer frozen in Peiho River", "Sedan-Chair and Bearers", several depicting mining operations, workers, incense & tea shops, street scenes, exteriors & interiors of temples, and others, plus one incongruous image of Llandudno. An important archive of early photography showing buildings and people in the Chinese city of Peking [now Beijing] during the late-Qing dynasty. [1870-80]

The preceeding lot includes an original glass plate negative by Hugh Cecil (1889-1974) of Edwards VIII in profile for the Royal Mint. With Edward's abidication in 1936 the coinage was scrapped.  The lot comes with provenance.

The Library Auction
Hanson Auctioneers
2-26 February 2025
Online
See lot 2 here and lot 1 here

A recent eBay search revealed a large collection of stereoscopic cards produced by Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke (1877-1953) of Northampton, a keen photographer from his teens and later a respected film-maker.

The name Bassett-Lowke will be familiar to miniature and model train enthusiasts in Britain whilst 'WJ' commissioned the renowned Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) to remodel the interior of his first marital home at 78 Derngate, Northampton.

Thanks to an understanding American eBay seller (allowing for my budget restrictions), I was recently able to add a dozen examples of his 3D work to my collection including a sequence shot at the 1900 Paris Exposition and tours to Germany and France. 

These stereos illustrate a new 3-part series on my Pressphotoman blog.

View here

If anyone knows any more about WJ Bassett-Lowke's photography, in particular his stereoscopic work, or has examples in their collections, I would be delighted to hear from you.

The Photographic Society of Ireland (PSI) was founded, initially, as the Dublin Photographic Society in 1854. It later changed its name to the Photographic Society of Ireland and it continued in existence up to the last quarter of the 20th Century when it became defunct. By that stage, many other camera societies and clubs had been established around Ireland. The photograph above shows the Council of the PSI meeting in Leinster House (now the home of the Irish Parliament) in 1856. The President, sitting front centre, is Sir John Jocelyn Coghill and sitting to his right (left as viewed) and with both hands on the table is Thomas Grubb, the famous Irish lens and telescope maker.

For the past two years I have been cataloguing the camera and general photographica collection of the PSI on a part time basis for the National Photographic Archive which is part of the National Library of Ireland, NLI/NPA. There were some 260 items in the collection which had been started by PSI just after WWII. I have recently done a short article for NLI/NPA describing some of the most interesting items in the collection. 

Among the items in the collection is this Sliding Box Camera from the 1860s with a Grubb Aplanatic Ax lens from the 1870s.

Some of the items came with accompanying photographic material such as this CP Stirns Vest Camera from the 1880s which had been imported by James Robinson of Grafton Street, Dublin.

This plate, which is of the same type as used in the camera shown above, was found in another example of the camera in the  collection. It shows six images on the circular plate, which have been converted to positive here.

Some of the items in the collection are extremely rare, such as this Ives Kromskop stereo colour viewer from the1890s which came in a box with a number of plates and the rare original manual, which gives details of the current state of knowledge on colour photography at that time.

I have a lot more information on these and other items in the collection which I will reveal in talks for the National Library of Ireland, the RPS Historical Group and the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain. Dates to be announced. 

My article is to be found here https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/stories/eyes-past-unveiling-irelands-photographic-legacy .

William Fagan

The School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, and the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, are offering a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Award "Coaxing Nature to the Screen": Frank Percy Smith and the Transformations of British Natural History in the Pre-WWII Era of Technological Innovation and Mass Entertainment. 

In the 2020s, the world looks to David Attenborough to reveal the wonders of nature on the screen. But in the 1920s that position was held by the London-born amateur naturalist turned "kinematographic wizard" Frank Percy Smith (1880-1945). Drawing on little-explored archival holdings on Smith at the National Science and Media Museum, the project will use Smith's extraordinary career to open up new perspectives on how technological innovation - especially in the sound and vision technologies showcased in the Museum's new galleries - has transformed the knowledge, practice and personnel of British natural history in the long twentieth century.

The project is a historical inquiry into the remaking of British natural history in the wake of the new sound and vision technologies associated with cinema. It will be anchored in a study of the career of Frank Percy Smith, a pioneer of nature documentaries who invented several techniques (including time-lapse photography) that brought never-before-seen perspectives on the natural world to mass audiences. Without university training or credentials, Smith fought hard to be taken seriously for his contributions to natural knowledge while at the same time producing work with suffcient mass appeal to be commercially viable. Both sides of his achievement - and the tensions between them - are visible in the title of a full-page newspaper profile of him in 1936: "Coaxing Nature to the Screen: How Science is Wresting Secrets from Her."

• Open to all applicants (UK and international) for study on a full-time or part-time basis.
• Link to full project details here and details of the White Rose College of Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH) application process here.
• Deadline for applications: 12 noon (UK time) Wednesday 5th March 2025.

Lead supervisors:

• Prof. Gregory Radick, Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds
• Dr Annie Jamieson, National Science and Media Museum, Bradford — one of five museums comprising the national Science Museum Group

For more information see here

Photographs are mobile and malleable. They travel between people and places, change appearance and form, and traverse through different settings and environments. In image-led societies, photographs are often disrupted or removed from their original contexts to be repurposed by governments, institutions and researchers, as well as by artists, communities, campaigners, and many others. 

How, and to what ends, are these photographs being repurposed, and by whom? How does repurposing photographic materials impact social, cultural, and political phenomena? This conference aims to facilitate discussions on the reuse, recirculation, and transformation of photographs, and explore the ways in which they have been re-employed in both the contemporary and historical contexts. 

The perceived truthfulness of photography, shaped by specific historical conditions, operates within particular institutional practices and historical frameworks (Tagg, 1988). Photography functions as a cultural tool employed for diverse representational tasks (Sekula, 1984). While museums serve as one example of institutional uses of photography, others include the press, the state, civil society, medical institutions, and technological apparatuses. For example, photographs are used to assert perceived objectivity and authority over social and cultural interpretations (Stylianou-Lambert and Stylianou, 2014); explore representations and memories of working people (Adams Stein, 2016); and support political activism (Thomas, 2021).

Submission Topics

Papers may, but are not limited to, focus on the repurposing of photographs in connection with:

• exhibitions and collections in museums, archives, or galleries 
• news stories on television, online, or in print media
• interviews, focus groups, or research with vulnerable people 
• track changes to landscapes or human environments
• analysis of historical events, objects, or societies 
• community initiatives or institutional practices 
• the study of health issues, diseases, or medical treatments 
• examination of scientific technologies or instruments
• promotions of ideologies or policies 
• investigations of industrial processes or techniques
• social media content or AI systems

As a PhD-led conference, the event offers an opportunity to refine and reflect upon ongoing and emerging research. 

All speaker applicants must be postgraduate students (Masters and PhD), but can be at any stage of their postgraduate journey. 

Papers will be 15 minutes long and could be delivered either online or in person. Practice-based presentations, such as short films, practical demonstrations, or semi-interactive workshops, are also welcome.

Repurposing Photographic Materials: Transforming Social, Political, and Cultural Heritage
Hybrid conference: 7-8 July 2025
cfp deadline 30 April 2025
Details: https://studentphotocon2025.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Originally seen in London at the King's Gallery, Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography moves to Edinburgh and opens at the Palace of Holyroodhouse on 28 February. The exhibition charts the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day, revealing the stories behind the creation of some of the most iconic images of the Royal Family.

Bringing together more than 90 photographic prints, proofs and documents from the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives, the exhibition – which follows a successful run in London – will also consider the artistic and technological advances in photography as it evolved into a recognised art form.

Alessandro Nasini, curator of Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, said: ‘The Royal Collection holds some of the most enduring photographs ever taken of the Royal Family, each one captured by the most celebrated portrait photographers of the past hundred years – from Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson to Annie Leibovitz and Rankin.

‘Alongside these beautiful vintage prints, many of which are which are being shown in Scotland for the first time, we are excited to share archival correspondence, photographers’ handwritten annotations and unreleased proofs that lift the curtain on the process of commissioning, sitting for, and selecting royal portraits. We hope visitors will enjoy going behind the scenes to discover how these unforgettable royal images were made.’ 

Photographs taken to mark milestone birthdays of members of the Royal Family are among the star works in the exhibition, including images from the famed 1971 series taken by Norman Parkinson to mark Princess Anne's 21st birthday. The ‘coming of age’ portraits reveal a sophisticated and stylish woman as she interacts with her surroundings of the gardens of Frogmore House, or stands in front of a fantastical painted scene reminiscent of a Scottish landscape, featuring a galloping white unicorn bearing her royal standard. 

Another highlight will be a portrait of The King when Prince of Wales by Godfrey Argent, released to mark his 18th birthday in 1966. Taken in the library of Balmoral Castle, the photograph shows the young prince smiling while standing in a tweed jacket and a Balmoral tartan kilt.

Visitors will see glamourous images from the first half of the 20th century, taken by some of the most respected photographers of the era. All of the photographs in the exhibition are vintage prints – the original works produced by the photographer – and the earliest works date from the 1920s and 30s, the golden age of the society photographer. A highlight will be the earliest surviving photographic print of a member of the Royal Family to be produced in colour. Taken by Madame Yevonde, a pioneer of colour photography, the photograph shows Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (sister-in-law to King George VI and Edward VIII) on her wedding day in 1935.

Another example is an ethereal photograph of Queen Elizabeth II as a princess, taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1951. Arriving in Ottawa, Canada, in 1924 as a refugee from Armenia, Karsh went on to earn a worldwide reputation for his use of dramatic lighting and ability to capture his sitters' character and dignity.

In the mid-20th century, no royal photographer had a greater impact on shaping the monarchy’s public image than Cecil Beaton. The exhibition will present some of Beaton’s most memorable photographs, taken over six decades. These include Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s famed 1939 shoot in the Buckingham Palace Gardens, dressed in gowns designed by Norman Hartnell, and Beaton’s original Coronation portraits of Queen Elizabeth II – arguably the most prestigious photography commission of the century. 

Close relationships between royal sitters and photographers will unfold throughout the exhibition, seen most clearly through the lens of Lord Snowdon, born Antony Armstrong-Jones. One of the most sought-after photographers of the 1950s, Snowdon’s unpretentious style soon attracted the attention of the Royal Family, and he became a member of the family himself when he married Princess Margaret in 1960. His remarkably intimate portraits of the Princess, taken both before and during their marriage, hint at the depths of trust and collaboration between them. 

The bold and colourful later photographs in the exhibition will demonstrate the extraordinary variety, power, and at times playfulness of royal portrait photography over the past four decades. These works range from Andy Warhol’s diamond-dust-sprinkled screenprint of Queen Elizabeth II to well-known photographs by David Bailey, Nick Knight, Annie Leibovitz and more. The exhibition concludes with the official Coronation portraits taken by Hugo Burnand in May 2023.

Following a successful trial in 2024, The King’s Gallery will continue to offer £1 tickets to this exhibition for visitors receiving Universal Credit and other named benefits. Other concessionary rates are available, including discounted tickets for Young People, half-price entry for children (with under-fives free), and the option to convert standard tickets bought directly from Royal Collection Trust into a 1-Year Pass for unlimited re-entry for 12 months.

Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography
Edinburgh, The King’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse
28 February – 7 September 2025
See: https://www.rct.uk/collection/exhibitions/royal-portraits-a-century-of-photography/the-kings-gallery-palace-of-holyroodhouse

Image: (top) Cecil Beaton,Proofs from sitting with Queen Elizabeth,1939; (below, left) Madame Yevonde, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester on her wedding day, 1935,  © National Portrait Gallery.

In this talk Professor Michelle Henning will reread and contextualise Walter Benjamin’s “Work of Art” essay (1935-36) and his claims about how film and photography allowed humanity to  “experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.”  Benjamin was reflecting on a specific imperial war — when the Italian fascists pioneered new, brutal tactics of chemical warfare (ecocide / domicide) in the 1935-36 invasion of Ethiopia. Through the connections between photography and poison gas, the destruction of aura appears as racialized atmospheric violence.

The event is hosted by Photoecologies Study Group a new space for exploring the critical intersections of photographic practice, theory and philosophy. Scholars and artists from a range of backgrounds are invited to share their current research, approaching photomedia as an environmental, elemental and energetic assemblage.

Initiated by the journal Philosophy of Photography, the study group aims to:

• Create a space for researchers to share and discuss new and exploratory work related to photographic ecologies
• Develop alternative philosophical and critical perspectives on photography and ecology, past, present and future
• Foster interdisciplinarity, cross-pollination and hybrid frameworks of analysis
• Disentangle the complicity of photography with violent and extractive systems of capitalism and colonialism

The sessions will take place online. Each session will include a speaker (30-40 mins), a response (10 mins) and a group discussion (40 mins).

Photoecologies Study Group is organised by Alex Fletcher, Noa Levin and Rowan Lear.

Photography, Poison Gas and Aura
Michelle Henning, hosted by Photoecologies Study Group
Online, 25 February 2025, 1700-1830 (GMT)
Detail and registration here  

Michelle Henning is Chair in Photography and Media at the University of Liverpool and a writer and artist. Her next book  A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire,  will be published by the University of Chicago Press in Fall 2025.

Autograph and Parse Journal present a new symposium examining ideas to rethink, reimagine and reshape the histories embedded in archival collections. We will consider how archival materials can be reactivated through diverse perspectives and disciplines, challenging dominant narratives. With a focus on decolonial and queer methodologies, this symposium will invite discussion on approaches that encourage a continual re-engagement with archives.

Encounters: Art, Power and Archives will highlight a broad range of voices, including artistic and scholarly research, creative and social projects, and provocations. Hosted in Autograph's galleries, the symposium will take place surrounded by exhibitions underscoring the critical role of archives.

Abi Morocco Photos: Spirit of Lagos is the first display of remarkable portraits from 1970s Lagos, possible through the ongoing efforts of the Lagos Studio Archives project, which aims to preserve and present the legacy of Nigerian studio photography. You will also see Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Staging Desire, the culmination of meticulous research into the artist’s archives, presenting never-before-seen works.

As this event takes place in the galleries, limited tickets are available to ensure the best experience for everyone. Autograph's events are popular and we recommend early booking. The ticket price includes lunch.

Encounters: Art, Power and Archive
18 March 2025 | 9:30am - 5:30pm
Autograph, Rivington Place, London. EC2A 3BA
Early bird tickets £25 / full price £40
Full details: https://autograph.org.uk/events/symposium-encounters-art-power-and-archives/?mc_cid=36cc6d0d73&mc_eid=b331f6dd6d

Image: Sasha Huber, Tailoring Freedom - Jack and Drana, daguerreotype, from the series Tailoring Freedom (2021-22), commemorating seven enslaved individuals, adopting art as a means to heal colonial traumas. Co-commissioned by Autograph. See: https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/sasha-huber-tailoring-freedom

This is an exciting opportunity to manage and enable the delivery of the Isca Photographic Project. Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, this innovative project will rescue, preserve, publicise and promote a unique and irreplaceable visual record of twentieth-century Exeter and its inhabitants. The Project Officer will co-ordinate and organise the activity detailed in the Project Plan, to ensure the different elements of the project are completed to a high standard, on time and within budget.  We are looking for a highly organised and flexible individual with proven project management experience, a passion for heritage and culture, and strong written, verbal and communication skills. 

The South West Heritage Trust is an independent charity which provides heritage services across Somerset and Devon. We run two Archive and Local Studies services and three museums, including the Museum of Somerset, and look after Somerset’s historic environment, including over 400 acres of historic landscapes.

For further information please contact Scott Pettitt (Head of Devon Archives & Local Studies) on 01392 888700 or at Scott.Pettitt@swheritage.org.uk.

Details of the role are here: https://swheritage.org.uk/isca-photographic-collection-project-officer/
Learn more about the Isca collection here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/isca-photographic-collection-of-exeter-saved-by-178-579-grant

A unique and irreplaceable visual record of twentieth-century Exeter has been secured for the South West Heritage Trust thanks to a £178,579 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. A project is underway to conserve, catalogue and digitise the collection - and to make it available online and directly across the region.  

The Isca Photographic Collection Project will rescue and preserve 24,000 images depicting the city and its inhabitants during the first half of the twentieth century. The acetate negatives are suffering from vinegar syndrome; an irreversible chemical deterioration process that destroys the negative. The project to save the collection will digitise the images before they are lost forever, and make them available to researchers.

In the 1970s the Wykes archive was purchased by local photographer and historian Peter Thomas, who created the Isca Photographic Collection, supplementing Wykes’ work with other collections of local interest (including a photographic archive from the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital). Thomas added his own photographic work capturing Exeter’s story in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, notably 4,500 images recording the demolition and rebuilding of Exeter’s Princesshay Shopping Centre. 

The full collection of almost 50,000 images is mainly comprised of the life’s work of the Australian-born photographer Henry Wykes (1874-1964). Wykes opened his first studio in Exeter in 1914, quickly establishing himself as the city’s foremost photographer, a status he held until his retirement in 1962, by which time he was Britain’s oldest working photographer. Wykes’ images chart the growth of the city in the 1920s and ‘30s and the wartime carnage wrought by the devasting ‘Baedeker’ raids. The collection is also a uniquely personal record of the residents of Exeter with thousands of images of individual and family portraits. Many hundreds of other images document local residents at work and play in shops, factories, at weddings, sporting and other social events. It captures the lives of inhabitants of the city whose stories have too often remain unexplored, including those of the residents of St Loye’s College and School of Occupational Therapy, who navigated physical disabilities and learning difficulties.

The project to catalogue the images and make them available online will be supported by a team of volunteers. There will be an exhibition at Custom House in Exeter and community events will take place. The images will be used for reminiscence sessions in residential homes and for work in schools to raise environmental awareness.

See more here: https://swheritage.org.uk/news/isca-collection-of-photographs-saved/

The role of Isca Project Officer is also be advertised (closes 3 March 2025). See her: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/job-isca-photographic-collection-project-officer-closes-3-march-2

Image: Workers at the Bodleys Foundry on Commercial Road, Exeter. 

David Bailey's studio is looking for an intern to help with ongoing extensive archive projects. You need to be organised and have a real attention to detail. A good understanding of digital cameras for archiving is essential. Ideally you will have archive experience and/or training and be happy working within a small team.

No indication of whether it's paid or not, but one wouild expect it to be. Send your CV and a covering email to: gallery@camera-eye.co.uk

Colleagues might be interested to know that the magnificent Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection has been donated to Christ Church Oxford.  The gift transforms the existing collections held by Christ Church, where the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson - better known as Lewis Carroll - taught mathematics from 1855 to 1881. In 1856 Carroll became friends with Henry Liddell, the new Dean of the college, and his family. His friendship with the Liddell children led him to create one of the most famous and enduring children’s stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was first published in 1865.  

One of the world’s largest privately held collection of Carroll letters, photographs, books, illustrations and other materials, the Lindseth collection includes c 300 original photographic prints and three glass plate negatives. Just under 100 of the photographs are by Carroll, who had a glass photographic studio built on the roof of his rooms at Christ Church.  The photographs are of children, friends, fellow scholars, and noted figures of his day,  The collection includes the iconic image of Alice Liddell as ‘The Beggar Maid’, photographs of Alexandra ‘Xie’ Kitchin and of Carroll’s friends and noted figures of his day such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  The Carroll photographs are recorded in Edward Wakeling, The Photographs of Lewis Carroll: A Catalogue Raisonné  (Texas, 2015). 

To celebrate the donation we have just opened an Upper Library exhibition showcasing some of the highlights of the collection: Pictures and Conversations: the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll Collection | Christ Church, University of Oxford.

Cataloguing of the collection has just started and we will be digitising the photographic collection in the very near future. Please do get in touch (library@chch.ox.ac.uk) if you would like to know more about the collection.

With best wishes,

Gabriel Sewell, College Librarian
Christ Church
Oxford OX1 1DP

Pictures and Conversations: the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll Collection
4 February–17 April

Recent news reports have suggested that the British Council's art collection is under threat as it struggles to manage a £197 million debt and potential insolvency. Half of the 9000-item collection is protected by agreements with donors that restrict work being sold, but the remainder are potentially under threat of disposal, unless the government steps in to support the Council. As Jenny Waldman from the Art Fund notes if the British Council were to sell off art work it would set a precedent that could see cash-strapped local authorities and even national museums consider raising funds from sales. 

The British Council has been collecting works of art, craft and design since 1938. It has no permanent gallery and uses the collection to promote British culture overseas through loans and touring exhibitions. A photograph was first added in 1969 with a Euan Duff print of a Richard Hamilton work The Critic Laughs (1968), but the first photograph collected in its own right was Sir George Pollock's Cibachrome print Spectrum No. 6 in 1970. Thereafter photography was actively collected to support exhibitions and acquired through donation, as examples, in 1972 twenty-five Bill Brandt prints were acquired and in 1975 forty-five David Hurn prints, amongst many other examples. 

The photography collection numbers some 630 photographs.*  From its initial rapid expansion in the 1970s, the arrival of Brett Rogers OBE at the British Council in 1982 until 2005, saw the collection added to in a more managed way. During her tenure she was Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions and curated an acclaimed programme of international touring exhibitions on British photography, using the Council's own collection and loans.  

From a photography perspective the collection includes a significant number of photographs from well-known British photographers and artists using photography including Martin Parr, Chris Killip, Richard Hamilton, Richard Arnatt, Victor Burgin, Homer Sykes, Patrick Ward, Chris Steel Perkins, Sharon Kivland,  Hamish Fulton, Paul Hill, David Nash, Paul Trevor, Fay Godwin, Cecil Beaton, Bob Chaplin, George Rodger, Bert Hardy, Thurston Hopkins, Tony Ray-Jones, Ian Berry, Bryn Campbell, Raymond Moore, Laurence Cutting, Calum Colvin, Richard Long, Helen Sear, Boyd Webb, Matt Collishaw, Michael Landy,  Clare Strand, Angus Bolton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rut Blees Luxenburg, Mark Power, Lala Meredith-Vula, Sarah Lucas, Tacita Dean, Jane Simpson,  Marcus Haydock, Ann Doherty, Adam Chodzko, Peter Liversidge, Dominic Pote, Shirley Baker, Gabriella Sancisi, Martin Creed, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Tracey Emin, Hew Locke and many others.

(*) The graph above is based on the searchable online collection database and shows acquisitons of photographs from 1969 to the last recorded acquisition in 2018. This includes a small number of photographs of artwork, and, of course, the work of artists using photography as part of their wider practice. Not all work, includign recent additions may be online.  

See: https://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/search-9

News reports: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/feb/06/the-british-council-will-trash-a-precious-national-asset-if-it-sells-its-art-collection and https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/02/03/british-council-art-collection-at-risk-debt-to-government and https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-council-considers-selling-half-collection-debt-1234731681/

A new exhibition at Crawley Museum featuring photographs by the renowned photographer Wolf Suschitzky (1912-2016) of the early development of Crawley are returning to the town and being shown to the public for the first time since they were taken six decades ago.

The photographs were commissioned to capture life in the New Town ten years after construction had begun. Along with images made in the other emerging New Towns around the country, a small selection of images was featured in an exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 1959 to highlight the progress of the first wave of home building and new town development following World War Two.

They were discovered in the Fotohof archives, Salzburg Austria, by photographer and researcher Dr Julia Winckler who immediately recognised their significance: “The archival collection comprises of more than 100 images featuring Crawley’s architecture, businesses, factories, shopping arcades, houses, schools, nurseries, residents and green spaces. A key feature and strength of Suschitzky’s photographs is that the architecture primarily acted as a backdrop to human interactions. From my previous research and writing on earlier phases of urban development, I knew this evocative series of images of the original British new towns really needed to be seen.”

Along with exhibition curation partners Dr. Kurt Kaindl, Co-Founder of Fotohof Salzburg, and Ms Georgia Wrighton, a colleague at the University of Brighton specialising in Town Planning, Crawley Museum was approached to host this exhibition, co-curated by Jo Pettipher, Learning & Liaison Officer, Crawley Museum and Trustee Mick Waters.

Incorporating artefacts and documents from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition provides new insights into the early phases of the town’s development and the photographs reveal fascinating details of the lives of the first generation of inhabitants as they commute, work, shop, learn and play. The photographs serve as a valuable cultural and visual archive not only for town planners or photography and architectural historians, but most importantly, they constitute an invaluable resource for contemporary residents and communities, offering a rare glimpse into everyday life in Crawley at a pivotal point in its evolution, and as a reminder of the optimism of this period of urban development and how it might inspire a vision for the future.

Georgia Wrighton commented: “Wolf Suschitzky’s photographs help us to uncover and celebrate the early beginnings of Crawley, and the sense of optimism at that time and illustrate why the history of the New Towns should be valued and cherished as part of the UK’s town planning and architectural heritage.” Jo Pettipher said: "We are delighted to be able to bring these photographs back to the people of Crawley and display them alongside objects from the museum’s collection. As Crawley enters a new period of change, we hope these beautiful photographs and fascinating objects will spark a new optimism and hope for the town’s future. A chance for us all to feel a sense of pride in the town and to work together to build a bright, sustainable future.”

Kurt Kaindl: “Wolf Suschitzky’s photographs are what every archivist dreams of: the output of a very long and active life as a photographer. In his photographic work, he observed a classical formal language and utilised photography with its ability to cover small details and portraits of individual people as well as expansive overviews of specific themes.”

A public talk takes place on 22 February from 1400-1600, alongside a series of talks, community events, gallery tours, school visits, half-term activities and workshops.

Crawley New Town seen through the lens of Wolf Suschitzky
6 February-29 March 2025
Crawley Museum, 103 High St, Crawley RH10 1DD
https://crawleymuseums.org/crawley-museum/

Image:  Wolf Suschitzky, Tilgate Shopping Arcade, 1959, from the Crawley New Town series. Courtesy Fotohof Salzburg/ © Suschitzky / Donat Family

On Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 4:00 - 5:30 pm GMT at the monthly meeting of the Consortium for History, Science, Technology and Medicine's working group - Color Photography in the 19th Century and Early 20th Century: Sciences, Technologies, Empires, Dr. Hanin Hannouch (Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna) will present “I never understood his hate”: Arthur Traube’s Uvachrome in Europe and Beyond, dedicated to the memory of the late Mark Jacobs.  

In one of his letters to his colleague German photochemist and would-be Nazi historian Erich Stenger (1878-1957), German Jewish photochemist Arthur Traube (1852-1956) describes his relationship to his teacher Adolf Miethe (1862-1927) saying, “I never understood his hate”. Known for having co-patented panchromatic sensitization in 1902 together with Miethe, Traube seems to have all but swiftly disappeared from the history of colour photography. 
Relying on extant primary sources and photography collections scattered across Europe, Dr Hannouch's new research project not only centres on Traube’s oeuvre, positioning him as a photochemist and entrepreneur in his own right but also on his life as a Jewish scientist who only survived thanks to his hurried exile to the USA. Her talk starts by elucidating Traube’s life and studies in Berlin, seeing them through the prism of his Jewishness and the hate he faced. Dr Hannouch will also explicate his use of dye mordanting in two of his photographic processes, Diachromie as of 1906 and Uvachrome as of 1922, focusing on the three Uvachrome companies he was involved in various degrees (in Munich, Vienna, and Biel). Then, Dr Hannouch will reveal what happened to Uvachrome, both the technology and the brand, after Traube was forced to move to the other side of the Atlantic. 

It is easy to join for free; register with the CHSTM and join the group. Press the meeting link, and you will be in!

https://www.chstm.org/group/color-photography-19th-century-and-early-20th-century-sciences-technologies-empires

Lucia Moholy (1894 -1989), a Bauhaus photographer, was a pioneer of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) art movement in the early 1920s in Germany. Her photos bear important testimony to the ideas and visions of the legendary art school, the Bauhaus, that continue to influence architecture and design around the world, from IKEA to Apple. Lucia’s pictures not only capture buildings and objects, but also the Bauhaus spirit and atmosphere.

Lucia and her husband László Moholy-Nagy spent five years living and working at the Bauhaus. László became world famous for his photograms, a photo without film. Lucia’s part has only recently surfaced.

When Lucia, born a Czech Jew, had to precipitously flee Germany in 1933 after the Nazis seized power, she couldn’t take her most valuable belongings with her, her glass negatives. In London she struggled to make ends meet by working for the British secret service, microfilming valuable documents. After the war, she set off in search of her photos. Bauhaus director Walter Gropius, now a professor of architecture at Harvard, with whom she shared a friendly correspondence, long neglected to tell her that he had her negatives and was using them diligently to augment Bauhaus’s reputation – without ever mentioning her name. It wasn’t until after three years of legal negotiations that Gropius sent her a box with 230 negatives. Lucia had to pay for the transportation costs herself. 330 glass plates were missing.

Lucia’s story is as admirable as it is tragic. Even today artists are moved by her fate and in the USA and Europe are inspired by her work.

Dr Sigrid Faltin is the film’s director. She studied English, German, and History in Bonn and Freiburg. After training as a journalist, she worked as a regional correspondent with the German South-West TV station SWF, and as an anchorwoman for radio and TV. Today she is a book author, a writer, director, and producer for television and an independent documentary filmmaker. Her films are shown on film festivals and on TV worldwide.

Lucia Moholy: Bauhaus Photographer
7 March 2025, 1730-1900
Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2
Free, but booking essential
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/lucia-moholy-bauhaus-photographer-london-film-premier-and-qa-with-director/

Image: Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus facade from the Southwest, 1926. Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, VG Bildkunst