The National Archives, Kew, has announced a series of summer seminars. Of particular interest to photographic historians are:
- Family photography archives: Practices, Silences, and Ideologies with Uschi Klein on 10 June from 1300-1330
Drawing on the photographic family archive of three generations of amateur photographers from Romania covering the inter-war, communist and post-communist transition period of the 1990s, Uschi Klein (Senior Lecturer, School of Art and Media, University of Brighton) explores family photographs as visual narratives that document societal, cultural and political issues in a global context from a personal perspective. She will further investigate the practices, silences and ideologies of this particular family archive and how it constructs a narrative about Romania’s historical past, thereby functioning as the foundation of historical imagination and understanding.
Uschi joins chair Giorgia Tolfo, Collections Researcher at The National Archives, to talk about image-making as a vernacular practice of resistance and survival in the context of political eras. Free. Details here
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Crowdsourcing the Past: Memory Projects in South Asia with Mallika Leuzinger on 24 July 2025 from 1300-1330
Exploring her encounters with crowdsourced platforms whilst researching the development of amateur and domestic photography in the subcontinent, Mallika Leuzinger (German Historical Institute London) discusses how the platforms mobilise visual and material artefacts and a language of civic participation and range from purpose-built websites, Instagram accounts, and Facebook groups. Mallika traces the lives of these picture libraries to think through the will to ‘crowdsource’ the past in order to understand history as an everyday matter.
Mallika joins chair Philip Carter, Academic Director at the Royal Historical Society, to discuss curatorial strategies, demographic entities, funding structures, political ideologies, and concerns about data collection attached to emergent archives. Free. Details here
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