Blogs

The AmberSide Trust, one of the UK’s most significant documentary and film collections has received £242,508 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for Relocating Amber, a major new project that will protect the world-renowned AmberSide Collection while expanding public access to it across the North East.  The project will bring one of the UK’s most significant documentary photography and film collections on loan to Newcastle University’s Special Collections, enabling people to encounter the Collection through exhibitions, screenings, education and community programmes across the region. 

Built over more than five decades, the AmberSide Collection contains more than 20,000 photographs, around 100 films and extensive paper and digital archives documenting working class communities, mining, shipyards, housing, protest, youth culture, family, migration and everyday life across the North East and beyond. Key elements of the Collection were inscribed onto UNESCO’s UK Memory of the World Register in 2011. 

Under the custodianship of Newcastle University Special Collections, the preservation of the Collection will be supported within specialist archival facilities, whilst opening the works up to new opportunities for public access, research, teaching and engagement through Newcastle University Library.

At the same time, Side, the delivery team for the AmberSide Trust’s exhibitions, will expand the screening and public programmes through collaborations throughout the North East.  Rather than being centred in a single venue, Side and its partners will bring photographs, films and local histories directly into the communities they were made with and about, through exhibitions, screenings, talks and events across the region.

The project will also create new pathways for photographers, artists, filmmakers and heritage practitioners. From Side’s new curatorial office at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, practitioners will be able to access the Trust’s reference library, and receive portfolio reviews and project advice, supporting the development of new documentary work rooted in place, research and social engagement. 

Amber Education will continue to use the Collection in classrooms, connecting children and young people with local history, place and lived experience through inter-generational community projects centred around photography and film. 

Laura Laffler, Managing Director of the AmberSide Trust said:“The AmberSide Collection was built through long-term relationships with communities across the North East. This project protects that work for the future while opening up new ways for people to encounter and use the stories it contains. Through collaboration with Newcastle University, Side’s regional programme, Amber Education and our new curatorial office, we can care for the Collection properly while sharing it more widely and supporting the next generation of documentary practitioners.”

Jill Taylor-Roe, Director of Academic Services and the Newcastle University Library said:  “Newcastle University is proud to partner with Amber to safeguard their incredible archive, which has documented and celebrated working-class culture for more than fifty years. Our nationally accredited archive service will curate the collection to ensure that future generations may benefit from access to these resources. We look forward to enabling wider community engagement with the archive and are excited by the opportunities that will be afforded to students and researchers through having enhanced access to this  iconic collection.”

Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:  “Preserving heritage is very important to us at The National Lottery Heritage Fund and we’re proud to be able to support the safeguarding of this incredibly significant collection thanks to National Lottery players. Working with Newcastle University, it is fantastic news that AmberSide Trust will unlock many new opportunities for the public to engage with this important archive that showcases and celebrates the wonderful heritage of the North East.”

Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Relocating Amber is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, Relocating Amber will support collections care, conservation rehousing, archive integration, digital access, education activity, practitioner development and a new programme of exhibitions, screenings and public events across the North East. 

This project marks a major new public chapter for the AmberSide Collection, protecting a nationally significant archive while ensuring stories of working-class life, community memory and social change remain public, local and active.  

See: https://sidegallery.co.uk/blog/relocating-amber?mc_cid=ebcb71304e&mc_eid=b48467438a

Newcastle University
Special Collections & Archives
email: libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk
t: +44 (0) 191 208 7712
Special Collections & Archives, Philip Robinson Library, Jesmond Road West, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4HQ

In the V&A's continuing series of monthly blogs this latest post presents the archivist's view from Federica Beretta, the Royal Photographic Society Project Archivist. She reports on her progress unpacking and making sense of the documents, journals, correspondence and ephemera that make up the RPS Collection.

See:

2. Royal Photographic Society work in progress: the archivist’s perspective
1. Introducing the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Project

Image: RPS ephemera: a collection of leaflets, private view cards and other documents from the early years to the 2000s. Image: Federica Beretta

I’m delighted to share that a collection of amateur stereographs, deposited at Huntingdonshire Archives in 2025, has now been fully catalogued and listed on our online catalogue: https://calm.cambridgeshire.gov.uk

The material forms part of the personal papers of Dr William Reginald Grove of St Ives. Professionally, Dr Grove was a dedicated country doctor; but on a personal level he was an inquisitive and enthusiastic photographer who found enjoyment in stereoscopic imagery. The stereographs preserved within the archive represent only a portion of his photographic output, generously deposited by Peter Flower [Dr.Grove's grandson].

Alongside personal letters and diaries, the stereographs chiefly document family life in Huntingdonshire. However, the collection also includes photographs taken in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, London, Austria, Switzerland and France. There is even material relating to The United Stereoscopic Society. Particularly intriguing are several double-sided stereographs and examples that retain printed templates on the reverse for recording details of their creation.

The collection is under reference number: D1757 - Personal papers of Dr William Reginald Grove (1869 - 1948) of St Ives, and family members

I won’t go into further detail here, as Dr Grove’s enduring photographic legacy has already been explored by Michael Pritchard's blog post, which you can read here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/publication-the-enduring-photographic-legacy-of-reginald-grove

Housed in the extraordinary spaces of Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, which for years hosted the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, the exhibition offers a critical and engaging reading of Florence through photographs by Italian-German artist and filmmaker Armin Linke, in dialogue with historical documentary photographs from the Photothek. The exhibition explores archives, museums and collections where works of art, documents, materials and knowledge have sedimented, forming and transforming the image of the city of Florence. The exhibition will be accompanied by a concept book that should appear in January 2026.

Armin Linke: The City as Archive. Florence
Curated by Hannah Baader and Costanza Caraffa

An exhibition by the
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut

12 November 2025–31 January 2026

Holiday closure
22 December 2025–1 January 2026

Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
50122 Florence

Opening hours
Thursday 14–20, Friday 14–19, Saturday 14–19

Free admission

Contact:
cityasarchive@khi.fi.it

More on the KHI website

The Haas collection, homed at the Library of Birmingham archives, consists of 258 boxes. This is made up of around 90 boxes of developed photographic prints, 93 folders of celluloid negatives, 45 boxes of glass negatives, and around 30 boxes of miscellaneous documents including invoices, letters, lecture notes and more. The collection is yet to be fully catalogued - at the moment, items are boxed, but more work is needed to re-organise them, highlight preservation needs, and digitise highlights. Supported by a National Archives https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-revealed/cataloguing-grant/current-and-past-projects/2024-2025/ - 'Archives Revealed' cataloguing grant, Bertz Associates, in collaboration with the Library of Birmingham, aim for the collection to be fully catalogued and promote public awareness of Haas and her work.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about making archives more accessible to local communities and exploring what they can mean for people today. You must be willing to be an active member of the team, an enthusiastic collaborator, and excited to learn and share expertise with others.

We encourage applications from current students and recent graduates. If you do not meet all points listed below, we would still encourage you to apply and demonstrate your interest in developing those skills and learning.

The job is fixed-term, from November 2025 to September 2026, and part-time, you will work on average two days a week.
Role: Cataloguer for the Lisel Haas collection
Terms: Fixed Term contract, November 2025 - September 2026 
Salary: £27,000 - £35,000 (depending on experience) pro rata, two days a week (approx 82 days)
Other information: We are open to freelance proposals
Location: In-person role, Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2ND
Details and apply: https://sites.google.com/bertzassociates.net/bertzassociatesltd/work-with-us

Dramatic photos taken at the height of the Handsworth Riots are to appear on billboards across the city this month in a project by two of the city's most influential black artists.

Poems by Benjamin Zephaniah will accompany the images taken by Pogus Caesar for Handsworth 1985 Revisited.

The two men - both 'sons of Handsworth' - hope the work will be a stark reminder that anger caused by neglect, poverty and racism can sometimes erupt into violence. 

As Caesar describes it: "A tiny spark can become a gigantic flame". “The conditions I see when I walk around Handsworth and Lozells are very much the same as they were back in 1985.

"Those riots were the result of frustration built up over years of people suffering from poor job prospects, poor housing, poverty, harassment, racism, and a ‘them-and-us’ situation."

The artist was living in Handsworth when the riots erupted in September 1985.

The stunning images he captured at the time on his 35mm Canon camera will feature alongside reflective poems by writer and Handsworth ‘elder statesman’ Zephaniah.

They will be appearing in up to 20 locations around the city centre and on roadsides later this month.

The project, which has been three years in the making, is designed to “stimulate conversation” about the underlying issues of disengagement, deprivation and racism that still stalk the inner city.

 “We hope they will afford a provocative walk through the events of 1985 and a sobering, timely reminder of how easily ignorance, inequality and justice begets social unrest,” Caesar said.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/handsworth-riots-being-revisited-giant-15928028

A little modern than most posts but quite unusual images worth seeing and a good story of what can be done with an archive of almost 60 year old fascinating images. A Kickstarter project for a book based on the archive photographs of the Rough Stuff Fellowship - the worlds oldest off road cycling club. I usually see their stall at the cycling rally in York, and their back issues of their magazine have proved interesting reading.

Nice to see them having instant Kickstarter success to publish the images in a book.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/688905218/the-rough-stuff-fellowship-archive-book?ref=project_email

I finally got around to scanning some more of my black and white archive, this time further photographs from a trip to England in 1994 forming a new sequence.

The photographs picture my now ageing mother (these were taken over 20 years ago), an English fair, medieval tiles and Highgate Cemetery, among other subjects. They become especially poignant after the recent passing of my father.

The image of  my mother plays off against a land that is noting an absence - maybe an absence of a certain type of yang force... even the "strong draught horse" seems to come from another time. My mentor said of the sequence: "Wow - that is really good Marcus". Praise I value highly indeed.

The photographs form a sequence and should be viewed horizontally. Please click on the long small image to see them in this format when viewing on Art Blart. See the full sequence at http://wp.me/pn2J2-842

Dr Marcus Bunyan

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991 - 1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan but can be used freely anywhere with the proper acknowledgement. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus Bunyan
An English fair
1994

Marcus Bunyan
Medieval tiles
1994

Marcus Bunyan
Covered figure with flowers
1994

Visit Art Blart

Like Art Blart on Facebook