Blogs

Following on from the sale of the Dr Swaine Taylor daguerreotypes last month another interesting collection has surfaced in East Anglia. From a deceased estate and held in storage for the last 40 years or so a group of 20 portraits of the Stacey family by Claudet/Le Beau/Beard/Kilburn/Mayall etc. is to be sold by Cheffins Auctioneers in Cambridge on February 21.

George Stacey (1787-1857) English Quaker and Anti-Slavery Campaigner appears in several of the 12 daguerreotypes, either singularly or with his second wife Mary Barclay. Other family members /associates form the remainder of the group which will be offered in several Lots. Further details in due course from the auctioneers: http:/www.cheffins.co.uk/auctions/fine-art

UPDATE: Catalogue now on-line for Cheffins Library Sale next week which includes 20 daguerreotype/ambrotype portraits of the British Abolitionist George Stacey and members of his family. The relevant lots start at 135 (click here)

A few days ago a batch of Barnardo's magic lantern slides were listed for sale on Ebay. I shared this sad fact on another conversational site. So much archive potential turns up on Ebay as to make one weep. Sellers with a bit of archival sensitivity could well inquire to borough and other archives and offer their sellable treasures in the first instance 'to the nation' either for a negotiated price or, preferably, as a donation.

It was suggested to me that Ebay's Barnardo lantern slides were probably not of great archival value since they were likely manufactured as a series of copy-slides churned out from a master-slide retained by Barnardo's. Even so, I would contend non-master copies can contain an overlooked archival worth considering master copies can go astray or not be so ‘masterful’ for sustained damage. Slide-to-slide will have varied imperfections as to necessitate the archiving of multiple copies that with their clear parts can be observed and/or digitised together to see/make, once more, a clear masterful, albeit copied, whole. With ref to Ebay - that master copies, in any case, would be identifiable from slide labelling - I later, in returning to Ebay, noted some slides were labelled as “This Slide is the property of Dr. Barnardo’s” or “This Slide is the Property of the National Waifs Association (Dr. Barnardo’s Homes)”.

Wasn’t the Barnardo’s archive a year or so ago given over to some other body to digitise and ‘conserve’? Once digitised and with the collection held in an ethereal library do original corporeal slides and photos and what–have-you retain any archival status seeing as originals require particular, and often extensive, space and special storage conditions expensively organised?

There will a series of screenings and events connected with Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay across the UK throughout 2018. These will be ticketed events and tickets will be available through partners associated with each screening. Details will be posted over the coming weeks and they will be announced via the film’s Facebook page and via the @UNofPhoto Twitter feed. 

William ‘Bill’ Jay (12 August 1940–10 May 2009) was a photographer, a writer on and advocate of photography, a curator,  a magazine and picture editor, lecturer, public speaker and mentor. He was the first editor of Creative Camera Owner magazine, which became Creative Camera magazine (1967–1969) and founder and editor of Album magazine (1970–1971).

He established the first gallery dedicated to photography in the UK with the Do Not Bend Gallery, London and the first Director of Photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Whilst there he founded and directed the first photo-study centre.

See more at: http://www.donotbendfilm.com/

The National Science+Media Museum curator of photography and photographic technology Geoff Belknap has reported that 16 original glass negatives used to make the calotype prints for the 1851 publication Reports of the Juries have been re-discovered in a museum store.

Serendipity played a part as the store was being cleared, with museum curator Toni Booth, and external researchers Larry Schaaf, Roger Taylor and Anthony Hamber all involved in the initial discovery and subsequent identification process.The negative box carried a Sotheby's lot tag from May 1996 suggesting that they had been purchased. 

There is more work to do on these important negatives but it is good to know that they are extant almost 170 years after their original printing and publication and they they are now, once again, properly attributed. 

Separately, BPH readers may be interested to learn that Anthony Hamber's new book Photography and the 1851 Great Exhibition which will examine, in part the production and impact of Reports of the Juries, will be published by V&A Publications/Oak Knoll Press in October 2018. 

Images: Geoff Belknap / Twitter / https://twitter.com/GeoffreyBelknap

Today's (Saturday) Financial Times newspaper FT Weekend magazine takes a five-page look at the RPS Collection at the V&A Museum in an extensive survey by Liz Jobey titled A rummage through the V&A’s new photography collection. In the piece curator Martin Barnes describes the RPS Collection coming to the V&A; 'with only about two per cent of it digitised and catalogued'. 

Sadly, the FT is behind a firewall but the link below will take you there to subscribe or, alternatively, buy the print edition of the newspaper today:

https://www.ft.com/content/f98c4860-0096-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5

This is a visual resource made on the basis of a selection of 101 photographs from the collection of the Center for Image Research and Diffusion (CRDI) that are considered relevant. All of them are photographs that stand out for a particular aspect: for its visual content, its aesthetics, its historical relevance, its uniqueness or its exceptional nature as a photographic object. Its visualization, in an individualized way and outside of the production context, largely allows the release of meanings because the initial functionality is overcome by the interpretation and reinterpretation of each viewer.

Visit the website here: http://www.girona.cat/sgdap/101fotos/eng/index.php

This presentation outlines my new research project, which will investigate practices of technical innovation in the work of the Ilford Ltd. Photographic company and early colour photography enterprises during WWI and in the interwar period. Innovations include the introduction of daylight loading roll film and Ilford Special Rapid Panchromatic Plates (1915), the introduction of HP and infra-red films in the early 1930s, the introduction of colour film processes such as Dufaycolor and the early development of multigrade paper in 1939. Also circa 1928 a number of colour photography companies were floated on the stock market, as part of the boom in financial speculation. The Colour Snaps company collaborated with Ilford in 1928-30, although Boots the Chemists  expressed concern about the quality and viability of its process, and the company soon folded.

My research asks how industry archives might provide a source for a materialist history which is concerned not only with empirical description and analysis but with more elusive questions of a changing aesthetic and sensory “economy” in Britain during this period. My first step is to track technical, especially chemical, innovations and gain a sense of their impact on photographic practice across diverse fields. How did these address specific problems or needs such as those arising from war, economic changes, or new business and retail practices? The next step is more difficult: I want to ask how did these feed into the ongoing process by which technical images were being integrated into larger everyday experiences? This involves understanding photography not simply as a prosthetic means for extending human vision, but as something which transforms experience, understanding, sensory engagement with the world, habit and behaviour.  For this paper, I will discuss some aspects of the archive, aspects of existing studies of photographic companies (Kodak, Corbis, Polaroid and others) and outline some of the key theoretical approaches that might help us unpick the question of transformation of sensory experience.

Michelle Henning is a writer and artist, and is Professor of Photography and Cultural History at the University of West London. She writes on photography, modernism, new media, and museums. Her latest book is Photography: The Unfettered Image (forthcoming Routledge, 2018).

Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester
Clephan Building, room CL2.02b, Mondays 5.00-6.30pm
Open to all

See: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/february-5-2018-research-seminar-in-cultures-of-photography/

Image: Plate labelling at Ilford limited c.1960.  Redbridge Borough Council Archive

Senior Curator International Art (Photography) at Tate Modern, London, Simon Baker, has been appointed director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, in Paris, effective from 24 January 2018. He succeeds Jean-Luc Monterosso, director and founder of the institution, whose term ends on 31 March, 2018. Monterosso has run the Maison Européenne de la Photographie since it opened in 1996 and was also the founder in 1978, with Henry Chapier, Francis Balagna and Marcel Landowski, from the Paris Audiovisual Association that foreshadowed the creation of the MEP.

Preselected by a jury chaired by Jean-François Dubos (president of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie) and made up of Xavier Canonne (director of the Charleroi Photography Museum), Alain Fleischer (director of the Fresnoy - National Studio of Contemporary Arts), Françoise Gaillard (vice-president of the Board of the MEP), Jean-Louis Milin (treasurer of the board of the MEP), Agnès Sire (general secretary of the Board of the MEP) and three representatives of the City of Paris, Baker's appointment  has been approved by the Board of Directors of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.

A Ph.D. in art history, a graduate of the University College of London (UCL), he was a professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham (2004-2009). He joined Tate Modern in 2009 as a curator at the International Photography and Art Department, before being senior curator of the same department in 2015, rethinking Tate's strategy of acquisition, conservation and orientation of exhibitions.

At Tate, Simon Baker has directed major exhibitions including those devoted to Boris Mikhailov, Sirkka-Liisa Kontin, Guy Bourdin, Yutaka Takanashi, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Recently, Salt and Silver (2015), Nick Waplington / Alexander McQueen: Working Progress, Performing for the camera and The radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir John Elton Collection (2016) were among the most recognized.

Baker was Tate’s first Curator of Photography. Since his appointment in 2009 he has worked on acquisitions, displays of the permanent collection and exhibitions at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain, and in advisory roles for Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool. Major exhibitions on which he has worked include William Klein + Daido Moriyama (2012) and Conflict, Time, Photography (2014). He has also been responsible, with colleagues, for establishing and running the Photography Acquisitions Committee and thereby overseeing the strategic expansion of Tate’s collection of photographs.

This month it was announced that Tate Modern's Assistant Curator of photography since 2011, Shoair Mavlian, had been appointed Director of Photoworks. Last October Kate Bush was appointed Adjunct Curator of Photography at Tate Britain. 

See more here:  www.mep-fr.org

After a successful full house premiere screening of Don’t Fence Me In at the British Library Knowledge Centre on 11 January 2018, our limited edition DVD containing Don’t Fence Me In (70 mins) and two additional films is now available, only from Malachite Ltd.

Talking About Fay Godwin (60 mins). Fifteen of Fay Godwin’s friends, colleagues, associates and family talk about her life and work Cameras & Chemistry (30 mins). Fay Godwin’s technical explorations and methods and their impact on her work, from Agfa Rapid papers to the Zone System, are discussed and analysed. The DVD also contains B&W and Colour Slide Shows of images from Fay Godwin’s Landmarks book (10 mins)

Total DVD Running time 170 mins

The DVD costs £15.00 + £1.00 UK post & packing

Visit the Malachite website www.malachite.co.uk for further details and email us with name and address to request a PayPal invoice.

Photographic historian Pete James discusses the early history of photography in Birmingham, with reference to its use as a means of surveillance by the Birmingham Police Force in the nineteenth century, and in relation to Edmund Clark’s exhibition at Ikon. The talk takes place at Steelhouse Lane Lock-up in collaboration with West Midlands Police Museum.

Please note access is via a spiral staircase.

Book online or call Ikon on 0121 248 0708. Please note that online booking closes at 5pm on Wednesday 7 March.

See more here: https://ikon-gallery.org/event/in-the-frame/?platform=hootsuite

In the Frame
Wednesday 7 March 2018 / 6.00pm — 8.00pm
Steelhouse Lane Lock-up
Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham B4 6NW

The Science Museum's Spring Research Seminar Series is open to students, museum professionals and academics with an interest in research relating to material culture and museums. The series starts on 16 January and runs through until 24 April. All seminars take place between 13:00–14:00 in the Dana Study or Studio, Dana Research Centre and Library, 165 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 5HD.

Of particular interest to BPH readers on 10 April Geoffrey Belknapp, curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, will talk about  ‘The Print after Photography – Talbot and the Invention of the Photographic Print’

Booking is not required and feel free to bring a packed lunch to eat during the seminar.

Tuesday, 23 January 2018 at 1800
Royal Philatelic Society, 41 Devonshire Place, London, W1G 6JY
Click here to book or to see more: http://rps.org/events/2018/january/23/colin-ford-lecture-series

Celebrating beach photography by some of Britain’s most popular photographers, featuring Tony Ray Jones, David Hurn and Simon Roberts and new work by Martin Parr at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. 

The exhibition will explore our changing relationship with the seaside over the last six decades and will hold up a critical and affectionate mirror to a quintessentially British experience, captured by photographers who share a mutual love of the seaside. The Great British Seaside will include images from the archival collections of each of the photographers, new films, and new work by Martin Parr. 

Read more at https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/great-british-seaside

Image: Herne Bay, Kent, 1963 / David Hurn/Magnum

From April 2018, two photography exhibitions at The Lightbox gallery and museum in Woking will display a rarely-seen, carefree side to the iconic artist, Pablo Picasso. In the Upper Gallery, Lee Miller: Picasso Portraits will depict Picasso enjoying the company of a lifelong friend, while a fascinating selection of never-before-seen photographs will show the artist on holiday in Four Days with Picasso, in the Art Fund Prize Gallery.

Lee Miller: Picasso Portraits (14 April – 17 June 2018) will consist of thirty portrait images of Picasso taken over a period of over three decades by Lee Miller, American model, turned Surrealist photographer. Miller first met Picasso around 1929 but their friendship really began from 1937 onwards when they became romantically linked and Miller became a temporary muse for Picasso. Their friendship was to endure until the artist’s death in 1973 and Miller’s husband, Roland Penrose, became a champion of Picasso’s work.

Picasso is often presented in photographs as a somewhat fearsome figure, his fierce stare was famous. However, many of the images selected for the exhibition have been chosen for their easy intimacy; portraits of off-duty Picasso, less work – more play. Miller got the sort of access only close friends and confidants ever get, the photographs show that Picasso was entirely comfortable and fully trusted her.

Also included in the exhibition are shots of Picasso’s famously chaotically messy studios, portraits alongside other artist friends and holiday snaps.

Alongside this, Four Days with Picasso (10 – 29 April 2018) tells the remarkable story of a chance encounter on the beach of Antibes, France in the summer of 1954, between the amateur British photographer Stanley Stanley and Picasso. The two men hit it off and Picasso invited Stanley to spend time at his nearby villa.

Stanley spent several days with Picasso, his family and circle of friends, and during this period the artist allowed Stanley to record the visit in a series of photographs. What resulted was a sequence of images which are magical in their informality and which are being publicly displayed for the first time in this exhibition.

These exhibitions will be running to complement the Main Gallery exhibition Picasso: Paper and Clay (17 March – 24 June 2018), celebrating 70 years of Picasso’s work, showcasing his boundary-pushing creativity in drawing, printmaking and ceramics.

Visitor Information: The Lightbox is situated in Woking (25 minutes from London Waterloo by train) open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10.30am – 5.00pm, Thursday 10.30am – 9.30pm and Sunday 11.00am – 4.00pm. For more information please visit www.thelightbox.org.uk or call 01483 737800.

Image: © Lee Miller Archives

A display of Walter Benington's photographic portraits, which include leading members of Oxford and Cambridge Universities as well as renowned figures such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Albert Einstein.

Oxford, Bodleian Library

Opening times:
Monday to Friday 9am-5pm
Saturday 9am-4.30pm
Sunday 11am-5pm

Weston Library Information desk - 01865 277094

See: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whatson/whats-on/upcoming-events/2018/jan/walter-benington

The Yale Center for British Art Significantly Expands Its Collection of Modern and Contemporary British Photographs with a Major Gift from the London-based collectors Claire and James Hyman.

NEW HAVEN, CT (January 16, 2018)-The Yale Center for British Art has expanded its collection of photographs through a generous gift of 125 works from the London-based collectors Claire and James Hyman. The gift includes prints by famed British photographers Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972), and Martin Parr (b. 1952), and it introduces works by Bert Hardy (1913-1995), Roger Mayne (1929-2014), Fay Godwin (1931-2005), John Blakemore (b. 1936), Colin Jones (b. 1936), Anna Fox (b. 1961), and many others who are not yet represented in the Center's steadily growing collection. A selection reflecting the range of British photographers and approaches to the medium represented in this gift will be on display at the Center beginning on Tuesday, January 16, mounted by Assistant Curator of Photography Chitra Ramalingam. This arrangement will be on view in the second-floor galleries through March 29, 2018.

Hyman said: "Claire and I hope that by making this donation at such a seminal moment it will help provide a platform for the Center's ambitions to develop its engagement with British photography," said Dr. James Hyman. "This gift marks the continuation of a special relationship with Yale University that began in 2001, when the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies for British Art, London, in association with Yale University Press, published my doctorate The Battle for Realism: Figurative Art in Britain during the Cold War (1945-60)."

Highlights from the Hymans' gift to the Center include British landscapes, from the layered intimacy of a riverbank in Blakemore's Lathkill Dale, Derbyshire (1979) to the bleak, ruptured majesty of Godwin's Meall Mor, Glencoe (1989). Several photographers whose work is included in the gift, such as Hardy, Brandt, Jones, and Jane Bown (1925-2014) worked for illustrated magazines, such as the mid-century Picture Post or the Observer, the long-lived illustrated Sunday magazine, which fostered both social documentary and graphic innovation in British photography. Prints from two Picture Post photo-essays by Hardy trace the everyday realities of wartime and postwar Britain: A Trawler in War-time, March 1942, captures fishermen trawling in the North Sea under brutal conditions, while Life in the Elephant depicts citizens of south London during the winter of 1948. Jones recorded life in postwar industrial landscapes, foregrounding British steel-working and coal-mining towns in the 1970s. Fox's photographs document the unsettling customs and rituals of British life in a small, picturesque village in Hampshire.

"We are delighted to make this gift to the Center as part of our commitment to promoting British photography internationally", said Dr. Claire Hyman. "The donation includes British photographs that span the last century by many of the most important figures from Bill Brandt to Anna Fox. We are especially excited to make the gift at such an important time in the Center's engagement with photography."

The Hymans' largesse builds on a precedent set by the Center's founder, Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929), whose own extraordinary gift to Yale included early and rare examples of books and albums with photographic illustrations. Among the most notable are a copy of William Henry Fox Talbot's photographically illustrated book Sun Pictures in Scotland (1845), depicting sites from the life and work of Sir Walter Scott; Relics of Old London (1875-1886), a portfolio of carbon prints by several late Victorian photographers memorializing historical London buildings in danger of demolition; and the William Field scrapbook (1895), an extraordinary album compiled by a commercial photographer to record the collective memory of his family and its relationship to the distant past. The newly acquired prints complement the Center's rich collection of historic photographs and drawings made with optical devices, such as the camera obscura and camera lucida, which both played a key role in the genesis of photography.

"We are deeply grateful to the Hymans for advancing the Center's collection of modern and contemporary British photographs. Their magnificent gift includes works by many notable practitioners new to the institution's holdings," said the Center's director, Amy Meyers. "Their generosity comes at an opportune moment, since we have begun to develop our collection of photographs both actively and strategically to represent the wide breath of the medium, as well as its historical and social significance to British culture."

In addition, Ramalingam noted, "the Center wishes to build its photography collection in innovative ways that reflect not only the multifaceted nature of photography as a practice but also the complexity of Britishness at this moment in history. The photographs included in the Hymans' gift compel us to examine both these questions, as the Center launches research projects and exhibitions that deepen our understanding of the material, aesthetic, and social history of photography."

Currently, the Center houses more than six thousand photographs, including works inbooks and albums, and cartes de visite. Over the last decade, the institution has made a firm commitment to expand the breadth and depth of its holdings in this area, with works that range from early photographic experiments to contemporary innovations with the medium: from a cameraless salt print by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) to a digital print by Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA) (b. 1962).

The Yale Center for British Art is a public art museum and research institute that houses the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Presented to the university by Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929), the collection reflects the development of British art and culture from the Elizabethan period onward. The Center's collections include more than 2,000 paintings, 250 sculptures, 20,000 drawings and watercolors, 6,000 photographs, 40,000 prints, and 35,000 rare books and manuscripts. More than 40,000 volumes supporting research in British art and related fields are available in the Center's Reference Library. In May 2016, the Center reopened to the public following the completion of a multiyear project to conserve its iconic Louis I. Kahn building.

Read the full press release here. 

Looking for development opportunities and support in 2018? Membership of the Photographic Collections Network is now OPEN!. Join us to support our work, receive access to specialist events, opportunities and advice around UK photo collections and archives, and support @ukpcn

The Photographic Collections Network (PCN) is a new organisation that aims to bring together anyone connected with photo collections or archives in the UK. The network shares knowledge and expertise across the UK’s diverse photographic collections to help secure, and build enjoyment, of our shared visual heritage.  We want to protect and share the UK’s diverse photographic collections and archives - no matter how big or small, new or old - for everyone. 

As a member (for £25 per year [£20 concs]), you can share your collection, contribute to research, exchange knowledge, ask advice, connect with others, receive offers and access specialist information and events.

We are a Subject Specialist Network funded by Arts Council England & Art Fund. Colleagues from The Royal Photographic Society, The V&A Museum, The National Science and Media Museum, Photography and the Archive Research Centre and Redeye, along with Professor Francis Hodgson, make up our current Steering Group.

See more at www.photocollections.org.uk

Please do contact maura@photocollections.org.uk if you have any queries or questions.

This is the start of a series about restoring and photographing with a nineteenth-century stand camera - and the outcomes of the experience. The story began in 2010 when I was given a 15” x 12” Victorian camera, with the words “who knows, you might be able to get it working again.”  It was a generous gift and I had admired the camera from a distance for years. Beautifully made from polished mahogany, brass and maroon leather the camera reminded me of Lewis Carroll’s Hiawatha’s Photographing:

From his shoulder Hiawatha

Took the camera of rosewood

Made of sliding, folding rosewood;

Neatly put it all together,

In its case it lay compactly,

Folded into nearly nothing;

But he opened out the hinges,

Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,

Till it looked all squares and oblongs

Like a complicated figure

In the second book of Euclid.

Only at this stage my camera did not have a case. It did have a maker’s plate, announcing it was  ‘The British’ made by J. T. Chapman. Searching the web produced more information than I expected. J. T. Chapman (1843-1907) was a Manchester-based photographic chemist who, in the 1870s, developed new formulae for producing reliable gelatino-bromide dry plates. He also designed and sold cameras, starting with the quarter-plate Manchester camera in 1883 followed by the ‘British’ range in 1886: my 15 x 12” was the largest in the range. Seen next to an M3 Leica, it makes the 35mm camera look like a miniature or toy.

Then I found that the Manchester Museum of Scientific Instruments also owns a 15 x 12” Chapman ‘British’ which had belonged to James Mudd who, with his assistant George Grundy, used it to photograph railway engines built by the Beyer Peacock works in Manchester. The Museum’s camera looked identical to mine except that a second tripod bush has been fitted to the base plate (which had split badly around the original bush) and was missing its lens, dark slides and ground glass focussing screen. The focussing screen on my camera had a series of diagonals and square guidelines drawn in pencil, marked ‘engine’ and ‘engine and tender’. I was a safe bet that it too had belonged to Mudd and/or Grundy.  The ‘British’ was well-suited to making large, highly detailed plates of industrial machinery. The front lens panel allows forward and backward tilt and vertical shift, but no lateral shift and no swing; the camera back allows forward and backward tilt, but no swing or shift, and can be fixed in either ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’ orientation. It is a fine example of Victorian design and craftsmanship: the camera body is surprisingly light for such a large object.

My camera came with its lens and lens cap, three double dark slides and a single wet-plate holder. The lens is a Dallmeyer Rapid Rectilinear, serial number 24042, which was logged in the Dallmeyer stock book on 27 May 1875. It has an equivalent focal length about 450 mm and a very fine iris diaphragm marked with f-stops from f8 for f32, alongside Dallmeyer's own system of diaphragm numbers.

Made to fit the individual camera, the double-sided ‘book slides’ open with a hinge and are designed to take two glass plates, separated by a sheet metal spacer with springs to keep the plates seated in place. Like the camera body, the slides are made of mahogany with brass fittings and ebony inlays to reinforce the corners. Signs of wear and tear showed that the double dark slides had been heavily used, but the wet-plate holder was virgin.

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs will present a selection of British Photography at Classic Photographs Los Angeles, featuring gallery artists John Davies and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, and work by Paul Hill, Chris Killip, and Marketa Luskacova.

In addition the Gallery will show work by Kikuji Kawada, Malick Sidibe, Jacques Sonck, and Witho Worms.

For additional information or to request images, please contact the Gallery at +1 212 517-8700 or by email at info@lparkerstephenson.nyc 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Kids with Collected Junk, Near Byker Bridge, Byker, 1971

John Davies, Stalybridge, Cheshire, 1983

Marketa Luskova, On the Promenade, 1978

Classic Photographs Los Angeles will be held at

BERGAMOT STATION | 2525 MICHIGAN AVE. | SANTA MONICA, CA 90404

Admission is Free.

Hours are:

Friday February 2 (Opening Preview) 6-8pm

 Saturday February 3 11am-7pm

Sunday February 4, 11am-5pm.

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs celebrates its representation of John Davies (b. 1949) with the first solo exhibition of his work in the United States. Nominated for the Deutsche Börse prize in 2008, Davies is best known for his 1980s photographs documenting the broad, complex and changing topography of industrial and post-industrial Britain. Over a dozen large vintage and modern gelatin silver prints have been selected for presentation from his series The British Landscape (published in book format by Chris Boot, 2006). The Gallery is pleased to host an opening reception on Friday, December 8, 5-7pm.

John Davies’ engagement with documentary photography emerged as a response to the economic and social upheavals taking place in the UK in the late 1970s and 80s. This important transitional era was examined in the Museum of Modern Art New York’s 1991 exhibition and accompanying catalog British Photography from the Thatcher Years, which presented the work of John Davies, Paul Graham, Chris Killip, Martin Parr and Graham Smith. Davies’ exhibited images from A Green and Pleasant Land examined changes to the environment wrought on it by industrialization and urbanization. This 1986 title was the first book published by Dewi Lewis while he was Director of the Cornerhouse art center.

Working through long-standing British traditions of painterly and literary scenes, Davies utilizes the sharp descriptive power of large format photography for his fine gelatin silver prints to include a range of details that exceeds a complacent reading of the terrain, emphasizing instead its flux. He honors and preserves the layers of cultural history while the past is regularly erased and replaced. Tensions between Arcadian nature and engineered economy are also illustrated, informing an understanding of the earth as both symbolic identity and as a resource. Viewed from an elevated perspective, the pastoral lanes, gothic cathedrals, railroad bridges, coal factories, nuclear power plants and apartment towers captured in Davies’ images relate to classical landscape painting as well as the precision of map-making. His style has been credited as influential to contemporary artists, among them, Andreas Gursky.

Davies’ continued focus on the evolution of rural and urban environments throughout Western Europe over the course of almost 40 years has resulted in over twenty monographs and dozens of solo and group exhibitions. His most recent book, Shadow: Slag Heaps of Northern Europe, (Edition Loco) was published in 2016. The V&A Museum, London and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris are both presenting his work from their collections in current group exhibitions. The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne also has his prints on view through 2018.

In addition to institutions throughout the UK such as the Barbican Art Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, the British Council, Arts Council of England, the National Museum and Galleries and the National Library of Wales, Davies’ work is in the collections of or exhibited by international museums including MoMA, NY and SFMoMA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris; and MAXXI in Rome among many others in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Limited editions of The British Landscape book accompanied by a print are available through the Gallery.

For additional information or to request images, please contact the Gallery at +1 212 517-8700 or by email at info@lparkerstephenson.nyc