Blogs

A new book looks at the history of polar exploration. Of particular note to BPH readers are a number of chapters of photographic interest which show and discuss the Goodsir daguerreotype and Adamson calotype of him, Challenger expedition icebergs, an early Beechey Island image, the Franklin daguerreotypes, Antarctic stereoviews, a pre-1900 Antarctica photo, and Ponting's kinematograph, although historic photography features throughout. The book has been researched and written by Anne Strathie who will be known to BPH readers through her recent biography of Herbert Ponting. 

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects. From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age
Anne Strathie
£22.00
The History Press, 2024
https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/a-history-of-polar-exploration-in-50-objects/

This year - 2025 - marks the fiftieth anniversary of two significant British photography institutions. 2025 marks Four Corners’ 50th anniversary. A programme of events and exhibitions looking into its radical heritage and looking forward to its future. The year also marks fifty years since the Fox Talbot Musuem opened in Lacock on 28 June 1975.The Museum will be hosting an exhibition from May of the little known colour photography of Werner Bischof and has exciting plans for the museum and gardens. A short history is in preparation. 

Separately to British photography, 2025 sees the centenary of the launch of the Leica camera in spring 1925. Leica will, no doubt, be commemorating this significant anniversary in Wetlzar and across the world.   

If you know if other significant anniversaries please comment below. 

Image: the Fox Talbot Museum from the Museum's Newsletter (Summer 1977, No.1)

The photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen received an Member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to photography in the New Year's Honours announced earlier this week. She was also recognised with a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship in November. 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen has worked in Britain since the 1960s. Born in Finland, Konttinen moved to London to study film in the late 1960s at the Regent Street Polytechnic. In 1968, she co-founded the Amber Film and Photography Collective, which moved to Newcastle in 1969. Konttinen’s series Byker (1969–1983) and Writing in the Sand (1978–1998) document the devastating impact of Newcastle’s East End redevelopment on the local community alongside the moments of joy and escapism that the beaches of Whitley Bay and Tynemouth provided. In 1980 Konttinen became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in China. Her next project Step by Step, was a study of girls and their mothers at a dance school in North Shields, and their later lives after leaving the school. This series became a heavy influence in Lee Hall's development and writing for his play Dancer, which later became the cult coming-of-age film Billy Elliot. Her other long-term projects include Byker Revisited and The Coal Coast plus related films.

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's work is in numerous collections and, she has been seen in a number of recent exhibtiions in Britain, Europe and the United States in recent years. She is included in Tate's The 1980s on show until 5 May.  She continues to work and her earlier projects are rightly recognised as seminal and significant documentary photography. 

Sirkka-Liisa ROBERTS (Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen) Photographer. For services to Photography (North Shields, Tyne and Wear)

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen MBE HonFRPS

See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-year-honours-list-2025 and https://rps.org/about/awards/the-rps-awards-2024/rps-awards-2024-recipients/

Image: Portrait of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen by Liz Hingley