Blogs

A colleague of mine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been conducting research on early American photographers for more than twenty-five years, and is now making it available on wordpress blog. As many of these photographers either trained in Europe or in Britain, or in some cases emigrated from Britain, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide the link to this important resource at https://pioneeramericanphotographers.com/ . 

I am conducting research into the relationship between art and photography with reference to those who worked with Pre-Raphaelite artists specifically Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  There are several such as John Parsons, Emery Walker, William Downey and of course C L Dodgson.  Whilst there is some literature on Dodgson relating to this it is mainly restricted to his diary entries cross referencing with biographical details from other sources.  John Parson is more problematic; any information on him would be much appreciated and also on Downey and Walker.

THE LONDON PHOTOGRAPH FAIR - the UK's only established vintage photograph fair - is delighted to announce the return of its Special Edition, to be held on Saturday and Sunday the 20th and 21st of May 2017 at The Great Hall, King’s College London, adjacent to Somerset House.

The boutique event will allow established international dealers specialising in vintage photographs and photo-books to present their own curated displays of their best vintage material.

The London Photograph Fair Special Edition coincides with the closing weekend of Photo London next door at Somerset House.


On display and for sale will be unique and original vintage works from the entire history of photography from the 1840s through the 20th Century. Vintage modern masters from the 1920s will rub shoulders with rare daguerreotypes and original 1960s film and fashion press prints.

Exhibitors bringing a their finest material are: Adnan Sezer - Bruno Tartarin, photovintagefrance - Christophe Lunn, Lunn Galerie - Clement Kauter, Le Plac'Art Photo - Daniella Dangoor - The Front, London - Ian Sumner - Linus Carr - Lisa Tao - Maggs Brothers - Pablo Butcher - Pierre Spake - Richard Meara

Photographs for sale - include works by: Richard Avendon - Norman Parkinson - Paul Strand - Brassai - Man Ray - Cecil Beaton - Roger Fenton - Lewis Carroll - Walker Evans - Bill Brandt - Edward Steichen - among many others.

Tickets are just £5, available from www.photofair.co.uk

I am looking for information on the German born industrial photographer Adolf (sometimes Adolph) Morath who worked extensively for British Petroleum and the Kuwaiti Oil Company in the mid-20th century, photographing oil workers, their daily life and the company facilities in Kuwait and other places. Despite his huge portfolio, there seems to be hardly any information on Morath. I would be very thankful for any information, material or recommendation where to look.

Artist Lala Meredith Vula will speak about her exhibition Flowers of Earth and Blood and about her journey in photography documenting important political and social events. The audience are invited to view the exhibition in the Alison Richard Building before the symposium begins.

POLITICS THROUGH THE ARCHIVES OF PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM AND ART

SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER 2016, 2.00 – 3.00 PM

You don't want to miss this spectacular event. The 19th-century Photography Show on Saturday, Oct. 22nd in NYC will have 100 top photo dealers from ten countries participating. It will be the world's largest show ever for 19th-century Photography with booths and table tops. It will be held on the entire 2nd floor of the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel near Penn Station on 8th Avenue at 34th Street from 9:15 am-4:15 am for the table top areas, and until 6 pm for the booth areas.

And the Conference itself has the top experts speaking on their areas of 19th-century Photography expertise. For a complete conference program go here: http://www.daguerre.org/page/Conference2016

I finally got around to scanning some more of my black and white archive, this time further photographs from a trip to England in 1993 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
1993

Marcus Bunyan
Medieval tiles
1993

Marcus Bunyan
Covered figure with flowers
1993

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The opportunity to digitize a collection such as ours is an amazing thing. It allows for material of local and national interest to be preserved for posterity and to be shared on the internet with a whole world of people who would otherwise have no access to such a unique collection. For us, as researchers of the sitters and places depicted, it enables the access and identification of sources in faraway places that could potentially uncover information otherwise out of our grasp. In our case, these fragile glass plates could so easily have been lost, but even after their rescue and relocation to the Sutton Archives in 1978 they remained stored away, uncatalogued and largely unknown for close to 40 years. The nature of this collection and its fragile state means it is unlikely that they would ever have been ‘available’ to the public without the opportunity that digitisation offers. Digitisation will not only preserve them for posterity, it will bring them back to life. But of course, as with many opportunities of this sort, you only get one chance to get things right. The kind of investment that is required for a project of this type, both financial, and of time and commitment means that there are a number of things of which we must remain aware and must be careful to avoid or take into account.

Read the rest at https://pastonglass.wordpress.com/

It was a flying visit to Sydney to see the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The trip was so very worthwhile, for I had never seen JMC's large contact photographs "in the flesh" before, let alone over 100 vintage prints from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. They did not disappoint. This exhibition is one of the photographic highlights of the year.

When you think about it, here is one the world's top ten photographers of all time - a woman, taking photographs within the first twenty five years of the birth of commercial photography, using rudimentary technology and chemicals - whose photographs are still up there with the greatest ever taken. Still recognisable as her own and no one else's after all these years. That is a staggering achievement - and tells you something about the talent, tenacity and perspicacity of the women... that she possessed and illuminated such a penetrating discernment - a clarity of vision and intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight into the human condition...

The road to spirituality is the road less travelled. It is full of uncertainty and confusion, but only through exploring this enigma can we begin to approach some type of inner reality. Julia Margaret Cameron, in her experiments, in her dogged perseverance, was on a spiritual journey of self discovery. In Philip Roth's Exit Ghost, he suggests Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs as the ideal music for a scene his character has written:

"Four Last Songs. For the profundity that is achieved not by complexity but by clarity and simplicity. For the purity of the sentiment about death and parting and loss. For the long melodic line spinning out and the female voice soaring and soaring. For the repose and composure and gracefulness and the intense beauty of the soaring. For the ways one is drawn into the tremendous arc of heartbreak. The composer drops all masks and, at the age of eighty-two, stands before you naked. And you dissolve."

These words are an appropriate epithet for the effect of the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron in this year 2015, the 200th anniversary of her birth.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart

Word count: 1,336

Read the full text here: http://wp.me/pn2J2-7lg

Julia Margaret Cameron
Sappho
1865
Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Given by Alan S. Cole, 19 April 1913
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In late 1865 Julia Margaret Cameron began using a larger camera, which held a 15 x 12-inch glass negative. Early the next year she wrote to Henry Cole with great enthusiasm – but little modesty – about the new turn she had taken in her work. Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, close-up heads. These fulfilled her photographic vision, a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture.

This striking version of Sappho is in keeping with Cameron’s growing confidence as an artist. Mary Hillier’s classical features stand out clearly in profile while her dark hair merges with the background. The decorative blouse balances the simplicity of the upper half of the picture. Cameron was clearly pleased with the image since she printed multiple copies, despite having cracked the negative.

Published by Spanish National Library as a catalogue for the exhibition Mirar la Arquitectura – Fotografia Monumental en el Siglo XIX  included in the 2015 Photo España (3 July-4 October 2015) , this book edited by researchers, Delfin Rodriguez Ruiz, Helena Perez Gallardo, and with texts by the two former and Helene Bocard,  Inmaculada Aguilar Civera, Carlos Sambricio, Juan Bordes and Michelline Nielsen. The title points towards a focus on architecture photography in 19th Century Spain, however this is not seen in a limited way as related topics, travel photography and engineering are also approached in this book, as well as photography outside Spain, in a comparative mode and as a subject by itself.

Architecture and engineering are obviously difficult to tell apart, particularly in 19th Century context, but text and images go to before photography’s invention. The do also go beyond Spain, as there is a marked intention to contextualize photography made in Spain in the wider panorama of 19th Century photography.

Photography was of major importance in the knowledge of Spanish architecture landmarks, as Spain became a part of the Grand Tour, as it was an approachable orientalism. Southern Spain Muslim monuments became part of Europe s best known buildings. Architecture photography was not only about historical buildings but also on modern cities; we can see not only the Muslim or Mudejar architecture, but also more modern buildings of the expanding Madrid, or of the building railways.

Photography hesitated between 19th Century’s vision of progress and the need to show the past in a systematic way. It is also possible to see three kinds of architecture photography: the record, meant to be objective and accurate; the illustration, pretending to depict a satisfactory record with some aesthetical pleasure and the photograph, which does pretend to be a record, but attempts to create an artwork.

The exhibition is centred on Biblioteca Nacional de España collections, with contributions from other collections, and it is of greater interest for those studying Spanish photography, architecture or art, however it is not confined to Spain, with good examples and with a comparative view for other countries. There are also texts on Italian and French architecture photography, and on Norwegian Sammy people. It is important not only to those interested in History of Photography, but also to those who care about history of photography or architecture.

Mirar la Arquitectura, Fotografía Monumental en el Siglo XIX,

Delfin Rodriguez Ruiz, Helena Perez Gallardo, eds.

Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid 2015,

232 pp, 169 ilustrations, paperback,

ISBN 978-84-92462-42-I

Link in Spanish National Library

A century of military photographic images goes on show at Shrewsbuy Museum & Art Gallery from Monday 19 October 2015 until 10 January 2016 in a new exhibition by the Defence School of Photography.As well as marking the centenary of photography by members of the Armed Forces, the exhibition also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the School’s move to RAF Cosford in Shropshire in 1965.

The exhibition will showcase the very best work of photographers from the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force with striking images from conflicts beginning with World War I to Iraq and Afghanistan, to peacetime training at the School and nearby locations. A timeline display highlights the many achievements of the School and its students over the last century, including winning two Academy Awards for films in World War II.

As well as an impressive selection of images, the exhibition will include a photographic pod which would have been carried underneath an aircraft during a reconnaissance mission and an original RAF helmet and Mae West vest discovered hidden in a house in Denmark after a bomber crew escaped from a crash.

A special Shropshire connection is a selection of light-meters from the company formed by prolific Oswestry-born inventor Edward Weston, who emigrated to the USA and eventually held 334 patents for his many creations.

Jon Jarvis, Head of the Defence School of Photography, said: “We have created a centenary exhibition at the School, which has been much enjoyed by those who have seen it. Now we can take a selection of photos and artefacts on tour for a wider audience to enjoy at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery. The balcony there gives us an ideal opportunity to display some of our students’ work and to celebrate a hundred years of photography by the Armed Forces.”

Tina Woodward, Shropshire Council’s Deputy Cabinet member for museums said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery to host a top quality exhibition of images by the three services looking back over 100 years. I am very grateful to the staff at the Defence School of Photography for their generosity and hard work. I am sure the exhibition will be very popular.”

The exhibition opens at 10am on Monday 19 October 2015 and closes at 4.30pm on 10 January. It is open daily at first, and will be on closed Mondays from 2 November 2015.

Admission to all the galleries and exhibitions at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery costs:- Adult £4, senior £3.50, student £3.60, child (5-17) £2, family of 2 adults and 3 children £10.

Website – www.shrewsburymuseum.org.uk

Tel: 01743 258885 Email: shrewsburymuseum@shropshire.gov.uk

This is a fascinating exhibition about the history of London portrayed through Victorian era photographs. The best photographs in the posting are by John Thomson. The composition of these images is exemplary with their eloquent use of light and low depth of field. The seemingly nonchalant but obviously staged positioning of the figures is coupled with superb rendition of light in photographs such as 'Old Furniture', 'London Nomades' and 'Recruiting Sergeants At Westminster'.

The details are intriguing, such as shooting contre-jour or into the light in 'Recruiting Sergeants At Westminster' with one of the soldiers and the two street lads in the distance staring directly at the camera. This seems to be a technique of Thomson’s, for there is always one person in his intimate group photographs staring straight at the camera, which in this era is unusual in itself. The women on the steps of the Romany caravan stares straight at the camera, one of the two children framed in the doorway behind slightly blurred, telling us the length of the exposure.

Then we have the actual characters themselves. With his tall hat and what seems to be scars around his mouth, the man centre stage in The Cheap Fish Of St. Giles’s (1877, below) reminds me of that nasty character Bill Sikes out of Charles Dicken’s immortal Oliver Twist (1837-39). And the poverty stricken from the bottom of the barrel… the destitute women and baby in The “Crawlers” – Portrait of a destitute woman with an infant (1877, below). “The abject misery into which they are plunged is not always self sought and merited; but is, as often, the result of unfortunate circumstances and accident.” It must have been so tough in that era to survive every day in London. See Matthew Beaumont. Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, Chaucer to Dickens. London and New York: Verso, 2015.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart

http://wp.me/pn2J2-7gh

John Thomson
The “Crawlers” – Portrait of a destitute woman with an infant
1877
© City of London: London Metropolitan Archives

“The industrial and social developments of the 19th century and their effect on the city and by extension the poor in Britain were subjects of interest and detailed study in the Victorian period. Street Life in London by Adolphe Smith and John Thomson is a good example of this and in particular, its use of early photographic processes.

Adolphe Smith was an experienced journalist connected to social reform movements. While John Thomson was a photographer who had spent considerable time in the Far East, especially China, and central to his work was the photography of streets and individuals at work. Produced in 12 monthly issues, starting in February 1877, each issue had three stories accompanied by a photograph. Most of the text was written by Smith, although two are attributed to Thomson – London Nomades and Street Floods in Lambeth. The images were staged as tableau rather than being spontaneous street scenes and the relatively new process – Woodburytype – was used to reproduce the images consistently in large numbers for the publication.”

Text from the London Metropolitan Archives Facebook page

Unknown photographer
Trafalgar Square
c. 1867
© City of London : London Metropolitan Archives

The first proposal for a square on the site of the former King’s Mews was drawn up by John Nash. It was part of King George IV’s extravagant vision for the west end curtailed by his death in 1830. Trafalgar Square was completed between 1840 and 1845 by Sir Charles Barry. There had been proposals to erect a monument to Horatio Nelson since his death at Trafalgar in 1805 but it was 1838 before a committee was formed to raise funds and consider proposals. William Railton’s design was chosen from dozens of entrants and his impressive Devonshire granite column with its statue of Nelson by E. H. Baily was erected in 1839-43. It was already attracting photographers before the scaffolding was dismantled. The four lions at the base of the column were originally to be in stone rather than bronze but it was 1857 before a commission was given to the artist Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873). This photograph shows two of the lions when newly positioned some ten years later.

Dominic Winter's autumn Photography auction comprises 147 lots from 1850s onwards. Highlight of the sale is anticipated to be a series of 76 ballooning magic lantern slides that include 27 aerial photographic views of London (and one of the Eiffel Tower) by balloonist-aerial photographer pioneer Cecil Victor Shadbolt (1859-1892).

Among the aerial photographs is the earliest known surviving aerial photograph of Great Britain, a photograph of Stamford Hill taken by Shadbolt on 29 May 1882 (shown here). All the other photographs date from between then and Shadbolt's untimely death in a ballooning accident in 1892. A handful are captioned and signed by Shadbolt and the whole collection was clearly used as part of a magic lantern lecture series that Shadbolt used to give called Balloons and Ballooning. That colour slide with the unfortunate motto 'Upward and Onwards' is numbered 1 and clearly the start of the lecture. One of the other uncaptioned photographs shows the building of Crystal Palace and is surprisingly the oldest known surviving photograph of the building. Most of the photographs show amazing clarity but this photograph is a little more blurry due no doubt to the greater camera shake from flying in a tethered rather than free floating balloon. Other views include Blackheath, Catford Bridge, Sutton, Beckenham Junction, Thornton Heath and Dartford.

There is also an 1884 photograph of Shadbolt and 'Captain' Dale in the grounded balloon car with Shadbolt's camera clearly visible and attached to the basket (see my profile icon). The collection is estimated at £7,000-10,000 but for those interested I have created a Flickr slideshow with copyright watermarks to stop these escaping into the public domain too easily. Any comments or suggestions about some of the uncaptioned locations in the slideshow will be gratefully received: 

SLIDESHOW

Other highlights include a private collection of large and early platinum prints of India by little-known Victor Pont, portraits of Tennyson by Julia Margaret Cameron, O.G. Rejlander and James Mudd, an interesting album of rural China by an unidentified Western photographer/geologist 1875, three unidentified salt prints, good prints of Rome by Macpherson, a good series of vintage British Airways photographs by Norman Parkinson and an archive of studio photographs of British royalty and Society by Marcus Adams and his son Gilbert, from the family.

Photographers represented in the auction include Marcus Adams, Lai Afong, Albert Arthur Allen, Thomas Anna, Edouard-Denis Baldus, Cecil Beaton, Bisson Freres, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Clifford, two portraits of Charles Darwin, Philip Henry Delamotte, Olive Edis, Peter Henry Emerson, George Fiske, Francis Frith, Hill & Adamson, Lee Lockwood, Robert Macpherson, James Mudd, Eadweard Muybridge, Victor Pont, NASA, Kazumasa Ogawa, Norman Parkinson, William Lake Price, Victor Prout, Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Cecil V. Shadbolt, Kozabura Tamamura, John Whistler.

In our contemporary image-saturated, comprehensively mediated way of life it is difficult for us to understand how "sensational" photography would have been in the Victorian era. Imagine never having seen a photograph of a landscape, city or person before. To then be suddenly presented with a image written in light, fixed before the eye of the beholder, would have been a profoundly magical experience for the viewer. Here was a new, progressive reality imaged for all to see. The society of the spectacle as photograph had arrived.

Here was the expansion of scopophilic society, our desire to derive pleasure from looking. That fetishistic desire can never be completely fulfilled, so we have to keep looking again and again, constantly reinforcing the ocular gratification of images. Photographs became shrines to memory. They also became shrines to the memory of desire itself.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart

See the full posting here: http://wp.me/pn2J2-7oK

Photography - A Victorian Sensation shows at the National Museum of Scotland until 22 November. 

Ross and Thomson of Edinburgh
Unknown little girl sitting on a striped cushion holding a framed portrait of a man, possibly her dead father
1847-60
Ninth-plate daguerreotype
© Howarth-Loomes Collection at National Museums Scotland

In November 2014 Christopher Penn published The Herklots folder of Photographs, his third book about photography in South India in the nineteenth century.  His first, In pursuit of the past, containing 333 A5 pages and 68 illustrations, starts like a ‘Who do you think you are?’ story as he learns for the first time about his great-grandfather A.T.W. Penn (1849-1924) one of the pioneering photographers of India.  It describes the life and work of Penn and was published in 2008. 

In his second book The Nicholas brothers and A. T. W. Penn he takes the story on to A. T. W. Penn and his contemporaries, the evolution of commercial photographers’ studios in the second half of the nineteenth century and the subsequent collapse of the market owing to simplification of the process and the introduction of the Kodak camera.  The Nicholas brothers and A. T. W. Penn containing 282 pages including 105 duotone plates, was published by Bernard Quaritch Limited in October 2014.  

Out of the research for these two books came the third, containing 154 A4 pages including 77 duotone plates, published in November 2014.  It describes the growth of Coonoor, the business centre of the Nilgiri Hills in south India, light industry established there, the development of its coffee plantations and information about certain historically important families and individuals including the Herklots, the Stanes, and the Groves families, and photographers active in the region: John Nicholas, James Perratt Nicholas, Edmund David Lyon, A. T. W. Penn and Dr. Alexander Hunter who founded the Madras School of Industrial Arts in 1850 and was joint founder with the Hon. Walter Elliot of the Madras Photographic Society in 1857. 

Read more at www.atwpenn.com.

A collaboration between London College of Communication, LCC Green Week 2015, the UAL Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) and the Museum of British Folklore, Figures of Folk explores ongoing traditions through a series of large format photographs by Graham Goldwater, of objects associated with British folklore, alongside letterpress posters created by LCC students, inspired by ancient phrases and words.

In 2009, Simon Costin, the Director of the Museum of British Folklore, put out a call to the nation’s Morris sides to replicate their team kit in miniature, as handmade dolls. . The response has been overwhelming, with nearly three hundred sides participating in the creation of a physical archive.

Together with the Morris dolls, The Museum of British Folklore owns a collection of jig dolls – articulated wooden figures, which were used by street performers to create a rhythmic beat and movement, mimicking traditional folk dance. Both collections have been photographed by Graham Goldwater, exploring the ways in which the photographic image both documents museum objects and extends their meaning and reach. Both object and photograph become an artefact of dancing and celebration which has taken place in Britain for nearly five hundred years.Folk_Figures_web_version.jpg

Hemera, a London based curatorial collective specialising in photography, has just launched the London Photography Diary,  a website dedicated to listing photography exhibitions, events, and conferences in London: www.london-photography-diary.com.  The website also features photography related videos, reviews,  and an image sharing portal. Please check it out and join our mailing list to receive our weekly newsletters. The two curators who are editing the site are Sarah Allens and Rachael Graves.

This work in the area of History of Photography seeks scientific analysis of the impact of photography in science, and the role of science in the development of instrumentation and photographic processes.

In depth scientific analysis of the instrumentation and chemical/physical processes involved in the 19th-early 20th centuries of Scientific Photography has not received much attention. This is even more accurate for the related Portuguese activities in the different scientific areas that used photography and its contribution in the European context.
In Portugal the very few books on the history of Portuguese Photography addressed mainly the studies of early pioneers who practiced portraiture and landscape photography as a form of art. These publications and other ones like research papers and thesis hardly incorporate early scientific applications of photography developed by Portuguese scientists during that period in several fields such as Cartography, Oceanography, Astronomy, Meteorology, Geology and Medicine among others. Moreover, there is not a systematic study of the evolution of the chemical and physical processes used in photography as well as of the instrumentation for the above mentioned period.
The participants of this book intend to focus their study in the interpretation of the chemical/physical processes and the related instrumentation developed for scientific photography by instrument makers during the period of the 19th-early 20th century in different fields of Science. It will also be given an emphasis on the Portuguese case and its relation with the research developed in other European countries at the same period, as well as the contribution of the Portuguese scientists given to international and universal exhibitions and publications and their relations with scientific an professional societies that dealt with photography and Science.

I thought it appropriate to notify you of my exhibition of memorial/postmortem photographs- Memorializing Infant Loss in 19th Century Photography. The exhibit is being shown at a conference at the University of Hertfordshire and opens July 16th.  The conference title is Perceptions of  Pregnancy…