National Geographic puts scraps of photographic history up for sale

[Michael Wong]

With over 120 years of photographs (which equates to almost 12 million photographs), the National Geographic's (founded in 1888) secret archive chronicles everyday life in almost every culture around the world. The organisation now feels it was time for them to build an awareness of their photography in the art world.

Toronto's Stephen Bulger Gallery is hosting anexhibition through June 5 featuring about 80 black and white prints representing the late 1800s to the 1940s. The photos cost from $3,000 to $7,000. (See 'Events' section for more info.)

Theyinclude pictures taken by Herbert Ponting on an eight by 10-inch negative camera documenting Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole (1910-13) and botanist Joseph Rock's exotic images from China in the '20s and '30s. There is also a series of photographs that shows the early flight experiments that Alexander Graham Bell performed in Cape Breton.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=2985490#ixzz0n8dd0f6w

Photo: Alexander Graham Bell Collection (1847-1922) - Two men hold Bell’s tetrahedral kite during flight experiments, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1908