Blogs

We call for papers that explore new ways to study magazines and magazine photography as practiced in the United States, 1930-1970. We invite participation from all scholars, writers, curators, archivists, librarians, artists, and independent researchers who use illustrated print culture in the study of American social history.

We seek to loosen categories such as “photojournalism,” “art photography,” “documentary,” “illustration,” or “snapshot,” in favor of broader consideration about the multiple ways photographs function. We are interested in all forms of photography destined for the printed page: editorial, advertising, illustration, educational, scientific, political, and more. We invite consideration of all kinds of magazines, including general interest and fashion as well as science, medicine, shelter, design, travel, house organs for corporate clients (such as The Lamp/Standard Oil of New Jersey), industry publications and propaganda (Amerika, published by USIA).

We invite proposals (from any discipline) for 20-minute talks about US magazine history, 1930 to 1970. We hope to reconsider the historiography of magazine photographers, editors, and designers, to highlight the collaborative nature of magazine production, explore technological considerations, and reveal behind-scenes decision making. How did the public’s interest in photography influence the growing marketplace?

We are inspired by exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, (re)Framing Conversations: Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1946-1965, Princeton and MFA Boston’s, Life Magazine and the Power of Photography (2022), The Jewish Museum’s Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine (2021), and Art Gallery of Ontarios’ Building Icons: Arnold Newman’s Magazine World, 1938-2000 (2023), and by scholarship such as Nadya Bair’s The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (2020), Thierry Gervais, The ‘Public' Life of Photographs (2016), and Vanessa Schwartz and Jason Hill, Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News (2015), and the National Museum of African American History’s co-stewardship, with J. Paul Getty Trust, of the Johnson Publishing Company Archives.

This day-long set of presentations and discussion will be held at the National Museum of American History. Speakers will receive an honorarium. The goal of the conversation is to expand histories, explore new methodologies, identify repositories, and build scholarly community.

Please send a 300-word proposal, and short bio to: photographyandmagazines@gmail.com by July 1, 2024.

A fascinating look at the history of London's iconic Vogue House, from the swinging sixties to the present day, Inside Vogue House is a behind-the-scenes guide by ex-Tatler art director Grant Scott to the world-famous magazines produced there and the stories of the people who made them great. The book also documents the famous Vogue Photographic Studios and the photographers and models who worked there.

 For sixty years, Vogue House has been a building where the great and the good started (or ended) their careers. A place where contemporary artists rubbed shoulders with royalty, and culture was shaped. From the mailroom to the boardroom, work experience to well-known names and everyone in between, this captivating book lays bare the creativity and chaos of popular magazine publishing through the decades.

After fifteen years as an art director for books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Dr Grant Scott began to work solely as a photographer for a number of commercial and editorial clients in 2000. Today he is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes, and a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC radio contributor and the author of several books.

His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 and he is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.

Published by Orphans Publishing in April 2024 it is now on pre-sale.