A reminder that there this still time to register for next week's PHRC conference.

The Photographer's Assistants

17-18 June Hybrid conference

Keynotes:

Michael Pritchard - Educating the Photographer's Assistant

Omar Nasim -  At the Beck and Call of the Astronomers: Emulsion Makers as Photographic Assistants

Registration Here

The programmes are printed and we're looking forward to another exciting conference, Photography in its Environment!. Recent challenges such as the climate crisis have pushed the field to consider how photography shapes and is shaped by the environment. From the mining of natural resources to the effects of mass digital storage, the environmental impact of photography is at the forefront of discussions in photography research, education and practice.

In this annual conference of the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University Leicester (UK), speakers will reconsider the history of photography using the environment, broadly understood, as a departing point. What kind of histories can be written about photography in its environment? Would it be useful to understand photography as an environment? Papers will not only examine photography from the point of view of current environmental concerns, but also, how photographic practices, images and archives have developed in relation to natural, industrial and other environments. By centering the environment as an analytical category, we hope to discuss the ways in which natural, colonial, personal, digital and other types of environments have shaped photography as well as how photographic histories can help to understand environmental histories.

Talks will consider topics that address themes and questions like:

• How exactly has photography participated in the construction and disruption of environments? — What has been the environmental impact of the production, consumption, circulation and storage of photography, in the past as well as the present?
• Histories of environmentally friendly photography before the 21st century.
• How have distinct environmental conditions around the globe influenced photographic practices, the development of photographic processes, and the course of the history of photography more specifically?
• What contributions can the field of photographic history make to deepen understanding about the climate crisis
• How can photographic historians draw on their knowledge and expertise to assist in nurturing care for the environment and its sustainability for future generations?

Keynote speakers:  Estelle Blaschke (University of Basel) Conohar Scott (University of Lincoln)

I am organizing a conference entitled "Camera-Centered Histories of Photography," which will feature our own Dr Michael Pritchard as the keynote speaker.  The call for papers is attached. I would be delighted to see abstracts covering British photo history topics. Abstracts are due by 31 July.

Here's the call as a PDF: Camera conference CFP -- full text pasted below

Call for Papers

Camera-Centered Histories of Photography

Held online and at the California Museum of Photography (UCR), Riverside, CA

Friday December 2, 2022

Abstracts due July 31, 2022

What does our understanding of photographic technology tell us about photography? Scholars often frame the study of cameras through a media archaeology lens, such as Peter Buse’s examination of the Polaroid archives to contemplate what it contributes to our understanding of the ubiquitous instant photograph, or Jonathan Crary, whose examination of the “observer” in Victorian viewing evinces questions about modernity. Yet others neglect the role of the camera outright. This is not a disingenuous move; many photographers resent people asking about the device they use, because the question implies that the equipment, not the eye and mind, provided the skill. Photography’s relationship to its technology is equal parts intrinsic and fraught.

This one-day conference interrogates what photo history looks like when we foreground the technology that made the images. We invite scholars and artists to address the place of the camera in photographic histories. Themes may include (but are not limited to):

-The relationship between the camera and image

-The place of digital image-making in relation to technology-centric concerns

-Case studies that foreground the camera with regard to a specific photographer/image-maker

-Social histories that foreground photographic technologies

-Media archaeology approaches to cameras and photographic technology

-Business, legal, or advertising histories about camera manufacturers

-The role of patents in the advancement of photographic technologies

-Design histories relating to cameras

 The conference will be held as a hybrid live event, on-site at the California Museum of Photography (Riverside, California) and livecast via Zoom. Papers can be presented in-person or online.

 The conference will include a keynote address by Dr Michael Pritchard, author of A History of Photography in Fifty Cameras (2014) and a tour of the Larry S. Pierce American field camera collection by collector Larry Pierce.

 Please submit abstracts of approximately 350 words for 20-minute presentations to Leigh Gleason, Director of Collections (California Museum of Photography/UCR ARTS) at leigh.gleason@ucr.edu

Icon Photographic Materials Group is pleased to announce that we will be co-hosting a one day event with Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales on the theme of digitisation and display to coincide with their exhibition, Historic Photography Uncovered and the recent launch of their online database of images from their historic photography collections.

Speakers at the event will be talking on a range of subjects such as support for digitisation projects, considerations relating to the display and loan of photographs, and mounting methods for water sensitive materials. There will also be behind-the-scenes tours and a guided tour of the exhibition. Please see the ICON PhMG webpage for more details ( http://tinyurl.com/IconPhMGCardiff).

Date: 16th April 2015

Time: 11.00 to 15.30 (registration/coffee at 10.30)

Location: Cardiff, National Museum Cardiff

Cost: £20 Icon members; £30 non-members; £7.50 Icon member concessions (includes lunch)

Booking: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sharing-photographs-digitisation-and-...

On April 24-25, 2015, scholars, artists, students, and members of the Waterville community will come together at Colby College to interrogate the relationship between photography and migration. This conference is one of many events taking place at Colby that address the college-wide humanities theme in 2014-2015, “Migrations,” hosted by the Center for the Arts and Humanities. It will include formal presentations and roundtable discussions, film screenings, as well as displays of historical photographs and artworks.

Throughout its history, the photographic medium has played an important role in the movement of people, objects, identities, and ideas across time and space, especially in the human crossing of geographical and cultural borders. Scholars have shown how cameras documented, enabled, or controlled such forced and voluntary movement, while photographers attempted to put a face on immigration around the world, making visible its associations with transition, displacement, hardship, and opportunity. The goal of the conference is to consolidate and expand upon the critical questions asked about photography and migration. What does it mean, for instance, to represent photographically the experiences of immigration, exile, diaspora, and passing? How might we reimagine concepts essential to migration, such as (im)mobility and dissemination, in specifically photographic terms? How do photographs themselves, moreover, migrate across local, regional, national, and global contexts?

Confirmed keynote speakers include: Anthony Lee (Mount Holyoke College), who will discuss the art photography of F. Holland Day in relation to period discourse on immigration; anthropologist Jason De León (University of Michigan) and photographer Michael Wells, who have collaborated on the Undocumented Migration Project on the US-Mexico border; and Thomas Allen Harris, a New York-based writer and documentarian who co-founded the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion project and directed the critically acclaimed film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2013).

To stimulate lively and productive exchanges during the conference, we are soliciting proposals for 10-minute presentations from scholars, curators, image-makers, and others that highlight major questions about photography and migration. Following each presentation will be a short response by a discussant from Colby College and 20 minutes of conversation with the audience. We are looking for proposals that address directly the theme of the conference; foreground their own critical and creative interventions; and engage deeply with a set of images, or even a single image.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Photography and Migration

April 24-25, 2015

Colby College, Waterville, ME

Please submit the following materials to Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor, Department of Art, Colby College, tsheehan@colby.edu by December 15, 2014:

• Cover letter; please include your contact information and explain your interest in the conference theme
• Abstract; no more than 200 words, including a working title for your presentation
• Professional bio; no more than 100 words
• Curriculum vitae

Decisions on proposals will be made by January 15, 2015. Details about the conference will be posted to http://web.colby.edu/photomigration.

This conference is sponsored by the Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities, Colby College Museum of Art, and Colby Libraries Special Collections. For more information about the college’s annual humanities theme, please go to http://www.colby.edu/centerartshumanities. 

This two day international conference examines war photography as the result of pragmatic and strategic transactions and interactions concerning business, militarism and consumption. International speakers, including scholars, curators, picture editors and artists, will address the ways in which issues of supply and demand have shaped the field of war photography, and how this field has articulated with other forms of industrialised and commercial activity.

Speakers include Colin Harding (National Media Museum); Kevin Hamilton and Ned O'Gorman (University of Illinois); Anthony Penrose (Lee Miller Archives); Patricia Nelson (Stockholm School of Economics); Lívia Bonadio (Telegraph Magazine); and chairs include David Campbell (independent), Hilary Roberts (Research Curator of Photography, Imperial War Museum), and Janet Stewart (Director of Centre for Visual Arts and Cultures, Durham University).

The diverse papers encompass a range of geographic regions and modes of conflict from the early twentieth century to the present day, and reflect upon the relevance to war photography of commerce, industry, the military and marketing, as well as the role of workers, publishers, politicians, strategists, purchasers and consumers.

Subjects addressed include the British Army's use of Facebook; pictorial magazines of the Chinese Communist Party; photographic postcards from the First World War in Luxembourg; photo-albums of Finnish soldiers in the Continuation War 1941–1944; and contemporary sniper photographs in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

For full details of programme, abstracts, speakers, and how to register, visit Durham University School of Modern Languages and Cultures. 

Registration now open:

The Business of War Photography: Producing and Consuming Images of Conflict 

Durham University and Durham Light Infantry Museum & Durham Art Gallery, UK
31 July & 1 August 2014

Register by 14 July / £55 

Organisers and partners

The Business of War Photography is co-convened by Dr. Tom Allbeson and Pippa Oldfield, Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery and Doctoral Fellow at Durham University. The conference is presented in association with the Centre for Visual Arts and Cultures at Durham University, in partnership with Durham Light Infantry Museum & Durham Art Gallery and Impressions Gallery, Bradford. A limited number of concessionary places are supported by Royal Historical Society.

Location
The conference is held at Collingwood College, Durham University, UK. The opening session and an evening reception are held at Durham Light Infantry Museum & Durham Art Gallery, with the opportunity to view the photographic exhibition The Home Front by Melanie Friend, an Impressions Gallery touring exhibition curated by Pippa Oldfield.
 
Contact
Please address enquiries to bwp.2014@durham.ac.uk 

Attitudes to photography have undergone a radical shift in recent times. Partly in response to these contemporary changes, historians, curators and photographic practitioners have begun to re-examine older forms of photography: exploring the wide variety of historical technologies and techniques, finding surprising ways in which images were manipulated and determining how an ideology of photographic realism was maintained. Yet there remains a need for scholars to explore questions of early photographic ‘authorship’, singularity and objectivity in much greater detail.

Scholarly studies of nineteenth-century photography have been heavily influenced by later theoretical constructions. As an alternative, Daniel Novak has posited a ‘Victorian theory of photography’. Yet this theory remains unelaborated. Similarly, Elizabeth Edwards and others have called for a move away from the traditional Art History model of analysing photography. This interdisciplinary conference will explore the question of what such an analysis, and such a theory, might look like. 

Possible questions and areas of interest for the conference include:

•           How do technological narratives influence our understanding of photography?

•           Photography as a business; photographers as workers.

•           The hegemony of nineteenth-century photographic realism, and resistances to it.

•           Can/should we do away with the Art History model of photography?

•           Alternatives to the photographer-as-author model of photographic exhibition and analysis.

•           To what extent can we think of photography as being separate to other print and visual media?

•           The role of photography in the creation of nineteenth-century celebrity.

•           Early photography as represented in literature, art and film.

•           Photographs as networks; photographs as objects.

•           When does ‘early’ photography end?

•           Does digital photography allow us to ‘read back’ the performativity of images from earlier periods? How might the revival of Victorian photographic techniques by current practitioners influence historians?

Keynotes: Kate Flint, Lindsay Smith, Kelley Wilder

Organisers: Owen Clayton, Jim Cheshire, and Hannah Field.

To submit proposals for 20 minute papers, please send an abstract of 200-250 words to rethinkingphotography@gmail.com. The deadline is 12^th Jan 2015, 5pm (GMT).

Call for Papers: The Versatile Image 24-26 June 2011, University of Sunderland. The 21st century digital universe is undoubtedly a “hypervisual” environment with photographic images dominating every aspect of our life. The “digital revolution”, as professed with awe and skepticism some twenty years ago, has come to stay, and, together with the developments in mobile-phone technology and the overwhelming possibilities of Web 2.0, has ushered in a rapid transformation of photographic practice across the board.

What are the ontological, conceptual or other commonalities and/or differences with photography as we knew it?

What novel currency does the photographic vernacular acquire against the new contexts of viewing and (re)distribution that social networking media and photo-sharing platforms offer? Where is the line between the private and the public drawn and what is the social currency of such private imagery?

What is the new urgency that the eye-witness record taken by “citizen journalists” has acquired in reporting news events among peers and targeting a wider public?

How are issues of objectivity, subjectivity, authenticity and originality relating to the document being challenged anew?

How can this predominantly non-art imagery be appropriated in material and conceptual terms in contemporary art practices?

Can these amateur practices be conventionalized and/or institutionalized in the mass media and the art scene?

The National Media Museum/Getty Conservation Institute conference being held in October has published a short video explaining the purpose of the conference (click below to play). The video features Dusan Stulik talking about Niepce and the importance of his work within the conference context.

For more information about the conference click here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/niepce-in-england-conference

Call For Papers.

(De)constructing the Archive in a Digital Age.

September 10^th 2010, School of the Arts Loughborough University, UK.

Organised by Iris www.irisphoto.org.

Paper Submission Deadline; Friday 30^th July 2010

One-day debate on the possibilities of the archive.

This event aims to provide an environment for sharing information whilst stimulating debates about the role of the
archive within art, culture and design.

Possible topics of enquiry may include but are not limited to;

· The discussion about how the archive should respond to the digital age continues. How does the physical archive change and adapt in the face of new
technologies?

· When is the archive not an archive? What is the difference between the archive and the collection?

· How should we respond to the growing number of images available to us in the digital archive, as increasingly we are exposed to photographs for which
there are no original viewing contexts available? What is the value of these
decontextualised and dematerialised documents to the researcher as historical
evidence?

·How is the institutional archive to respond to questions about the democratization of the archive, not only through the process of digitisation
and online access but also the growing use of more interactive forms of viewing/sharing
with web 2.0?

Paper presentations, abstracts of 200-300 words may be submitted for a 30-minute paper presentation.

Panel submissions abstracts for a 90-minute colloquium, which is to consist of 5 participants (1 chair and 4 presenters; each presenter taking no more than 15 minutes) may be
submitted. Abstract length should be 250-350 words.

Poster presentations, 200 word abstracts for a themed poster to be shown at the conference will be accepted.

Artworks, submissions for artworks related to the topics will be considered, please send a 200 word abstract. Include details of medium, size and installation requirements on a separate
sheet.

Please send abstracts (clearly marked as to which category you are interested in) and a brief C.V. to;

iris@lboro.ac.uk

OR

Mort Marsh, IRIS.

Loughborough University

School of the Arts

Edward Barnsley Building

Epinal way

LE11 3TU.

Iris is an internationally focused research resource dedicated to promoting the work of women artists using photographic-based media.

The National Coal Mining Museum for England will be hosting a symposium, entitled ‘The Narrator’s Gaze, fifty years of documentary photography’, on Friday 26 March 2010, from 10.30am until 4.30pm. The event is being held in association with the new special exhibition, ‘Northern Soul, John Bulmer’s images of life and Times in the 1960s’.

A pioneer of colour photography during the 1960s, Bulmer’s work was included in the very first colour supplement launched by The Sunday Times. Inspired by The Times Special Issue entitled ‘The North’, the exhibition includes work specially reprinted from this influential story.

The conference celebrates fifty years since Bulmer first began recording England’s industrial heritage and will be chaired by Colin Harding, the Curator of Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum. The keynote speakers, whose work spans each of the last five decades, include John Bulmer, Homer Sykes, Martin Jenkinson, Ian Beesley, and Moira Lovell.

The event is being held in association with the University of Bolton and Gallery Oldham. A second symposium linked to Gallery Oldham’s forthcoming photography exhibition, ‘The North South Divide’, will be taking place at the Gallery Oldham on 15 May 2010.

Tickets for ‘The Narrator’s Gaze, fifty years of documentary photography’ are on sale now at £15.00 each; concessions are available on request. The tickets price includes refreshments as well as a tour of the exhibition. A reduced rate is available for delegates attending both events. For more information or to book tickets, please contact the Museum’s Booking Officer on 01924 848 806 or visit the Museum’s website www.ncm.org.uk

The National Media Museum, Bradford, and Getty Conservation Institute, have announced a major international conference on recent advancements in scientific, art historical, and conservation research relating to the photographs which Joseph Nicéphore Niépce brought to England in 1827. The conference will take place in Bradford from 13-14 October 2010 and additionally will provide a unique opportunity to examine three Niépce plates out of their frames.

This two-day conference will present the results of new, unpublished research and scientific investigations, which have been undertaken during the NMeM and GCI Collaborative Research Project. In the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum are three plates by Niépce and the conference will address the research and conservation of these photographic treasures, and will discuss future conservation measures that would provide for their long-term protection and preservation. The reason why Niépce brought these plates to England, and their subsequent history, will also be outlined more fully than previously published.

A copy of the announcement brochure is available here: Niépce First Announcement.pdf

Aims and objectives

The conference will examine:

• Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and his work

• The first six photographs brought to England by Niépce in context

• Scientific investigation into the three Niépce photographs in the NMeM collection

• Dating and conservation of the original frames

• Conservation and preservation issues related to the Niépce plates

The speakers have yet to be formally announced.

Registration

Attendance to the conference is limited. All registrations will be handled on a first-come, first served basis.

Formal registration for the Niépce in England conference will take place in May 2010. To register initial interest, contact the NmeM at rsvp.nmem@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk. The museum will hold your details on file and email you registration information in May 2010.

The cost is:

• Regular registration (does not include dinner) £90

• Student registration at reduced rate £70

• Wednesday evening dinner £22

Information

For more information, contact the museum via email at rsvp.nmem@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk and it museum will respond to your query accordingly. If you would like to make contact by post, please send correspondence to:

Niépce Conference

c/o Cultural Events Organiser

National Media Museum

Pictureville, Bradford

West Yorkshire BD1 1NQ United Kingdom