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Dr Hanin Hannouch & Janine Freeston, have created a working group on color photography circa 1900, hosted by the Consortium of Science, Technology & Medicine. "The purpose of this working group is to propel a rising field of research; color photography in the 19th and early 20th century in order to reconfigure, expand, and problematize its role in the history of the discipline and in the historical contexts out of which it emerged." 

So far, 100 people have joined the group and so can you by clicking on this link!

Membership is free, easy, and it will give you access to a vivacious Resource section with free articles, videos, & our ever-growing multi-lingual bibliography on turn-of-the-century color photography.

The December 20, 4 PM UK time session will feature a presentation by Janine Freeston about "Women Making Color Photographs"

Abstract: Who are the women who produced color photographs? How did they contribute to the nascent trichromatic color photography processes at the turn of the last century? Are there more of them languishing in archives who have yet to be fully appreciated and how scholars uncover it? As the history of photography continues to evolve in its appreciation of women photographers, the substantial significance that women contributors made to color photography requires consolidation, such as Angelina Acland, Agnes Warburg, Violet Blaiklock, Marjory T. Hardcastle and Olive Edis to name a few. This talk highlights women working on unresolved color processes that demanded more technical, scientific and methodological prowess than that required from their counterparts working in monochrome. For example, some processes lacked chromatic fidelity, and yet a cohort of experimenting highly skilled photographers, a significant number of whom were women, persevered to offer numerous nuanced improvements that had evolved through their practical experiences or supplied work that supported the commercial potential that color photography presented.
I hope to appeal to members of this working group to interrogate their own resources and work together in amassing geographical, technical and biographical findings from the locations they are familiar with to provide a cogent and geographically balanced historical perspective highlighting the means and methods of contributions made by women beyond the exhibition of images. 

Also, on the menu, right after Janine is my short talk "Who is Gabriel Lippmann?"

Known for being a scientist and professor at La Sorbonne, color photographer, winner of the 1908 Nobel prize for physics, Lippmann's position in the history of (color) photography and that of his process "interferential color photography" can be described as awkward, at best. Why is that and who is he? Tune in to find out!

We will also be looking back at the wonderful speakers our working group has featured so far & revealing next year's schedule! 

Hanin

As part of the PhotoOxford Festival 2020 staff and affiliated researchers of the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum have taken a fresh look at their collection of around 300,000 historic and contemporary photographs, and picked out one that for them resonates strongly with the Festival's theme, 'Women and Photography: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen'. Although working mostly from home, staff have made use of the Museum's online database, where 65% of the collection is available in digital form online.

https://prm.web.ox.ac.uk/event/photography-and-women

This symposium adds to the growing body of feminist scholarship that is deconstructing the male-dominated history of commercial and industrial artistic production. The programme will bring together current interdisciplinary perspectives on women’s experiences of work and the gendered dynamics of commerce in the creative industries in Britain between 1750 and 1950.

We invite critical and creative papers as well as those that present case-studies or deliver in more collaborative formats.

Contributions may focus on, but are not limited to, women at work or women’s involvement in the development of technologies i.e printmaking, photography, film and computing, women’s work in textiles (including dressmaking and millinery), design, architecture, advertising, bookmaking and publishing, the performing arts, music, TV and radio.

We are particularly interested in papers that consider the following topics:

• Spaces of women’s work: the workshop, the studio, the office, the factory, and work carried out from home (i.e. sweated trades) 
• Overlaps in women’s professional and domestic roles
• Collaboration, networks and unions of women workers and professionals
• Women’s management of finances and the economic factors of their work
• Women’s experiences of discrimination in the workplace in this period
• Anonymity or invisibility of women’s work and theft of their intellectual property
• Demands of emotional labour in the creative industries
• Distinctions and slippages between professional and amateur ‘work’
• Historiographies of women’s work in the creative industries
• Portrayals of professional women in literature and the visual arts
• How the campaign for suffrage intersected with, or affected, women’s work in the creative industries.

We invite abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute papers. Please submit abstracts and a short biographical note to Erika Lederman, Hannah Lyons and George Mind at womenworkcommerce@gmail.com by 6pm on Friday 30 November 2018.

‘Women, Work and Commerce in the Creative Industries, Britain 1750 – 1950’ is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and organised by Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students Erika Lederman (De Montfort University/V&A) Hannah Lyons (Birkbeck, University of London/ V&A) and George Mind (University of Westminster/National Portrait Gallery).

UPDATE: Conference registration is now available here. 

Women, Work and Commerce in the Creative Industries, Britain 1750 - 1950

Saturday 9 February 2019, 9.30am – 5.30pm

Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London

Keynote Speakers: Dr Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Dr Patricia Zakreski

Call for papers

We at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts have been investigating the early London career of British photographer Florence Vandamm, who worked in NYC from 1924 to her retirement in 1962.  We discovered that she opened her first studio in London in 1908.  This site has been very helpful at providing resources and links. 

The exhibition (Pioneering Poet of Light: Florence Vandamm & the Vandamm Studio) will open in mid-September and runs through the end of February.  Please visit. Click here: http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/poet-light-florence-vandamm-vandamm-studio

We are blogging about Vandamm's work on the Library's www.nypl.org.  You can find them in he Vandamm channel or under my name.

Image: Re-discovered image from a glass negative of the Theatre Guild's 1928 production of Faust, NYPL.