Blogs

The transit of Venus in 1874 has long been of interest to the photographic historians and the periodicals of the period. A newly released collection of digitised papers at Cambridge Digital Library has been added to the successful Board of Longitude Collection that was released in 2013. The Transit of Venus collection includes a selection of papers and photographs from the Royal Greenwich Observatory archive, including journals kept by Captain George Lyon Tupman as he oversaw training at Greenwich from 1872, led the expedition to Honolulu in 1874 and returned to the Observatory to process the mass of observations until 1880. There are also images and lists of the instruments and stores taken, and the Kailua sub-station journal kept by George Forbes.

In addition to this we have had permission to photograph private papers from the Tupman family, including an album and private journal kept by Tupman and two wonderful volumes of caricature drawings by one of the Honolulu observers, Lieutenant E.J.W. Noble. 

You can see and search the collection here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/tov

You can read an introductory post here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/oct/10/astronomy-expedition-history-hawaii

The ACP is looking for a new Director with the vision, skills and capacity to lead the institution successfully through the next phase of its history.

The Director is ACP’s chief executive officer reporting directly to the Board and is responsible for leading the organisation strategically and operationally to achieve its goals and deliver its artistic program.

This position requires a visionary individual with exquisite judgement who can engage with the artistic and photographic community both nationally and internationally, and prominently represent the art of photography and photo media in Australia.

ACP is at a crucial and exciting phase in its development as a national cultural institution, which will generate challenges and opportunities for our new Director. The organisation has the benefits and strength of its powerful reputation, a strong digital and web capability, an energetic and committed Board, significant operational agility and an optimistic and entrepreneurial spirit.

It is crucial that our new Director has the interpersonal and communications skills to engage with multiple and varied stakeholders, and especially with the community of photographers and artists who closely associate with the ACP. It is also vital that the new Director has a strong understanding of the role that digital technologies and platforms can play in this engagement, from social media right through to exhibition and education.

Other key stakeholders include elected officials and public servants in all three tiers of government, business partners and corporate sponsors, private donors and philanthropic foundations as well as representatives of arts and cultural organisations generally.

ACP has a track record of partnering with other arts and cultural organisations so it is critical for the Director to identify and leverage resources in order to sustain our operations and achieve our artistic objectives.

The Director needs to have a close working relationship with the Curator in the development and realisation of ACP’s artistic program of exhibitions. Working closely with and supporting other staff is critical to achieving successful outcomes in Education & Public Programs, and the ACP Workshop.

Having the ability to provide informative and appropriate reporting to the Board and in particular to develop an honest and robust relationship with the Chairman will be important to the successful execution of the Director’s responsibilities as the CEO of ACP.

See more here and apply by 4 November. 

'Photographic Studies' ( working title ) is a collection of scholarly essays in Chinese and partially English published on a flexible basis. Each issue centers around new trends in contemporary photography, approaching it from a historical and theoretical perspective. Through this, the publication seeks to dig deep into issues on the forefront of photography and further the discussion about them. The focus of "Photography and Culture Studies" is to emphasize the relationship between photography, visual culture studies, sociology, anthropology, aesthetics, philosophy, and other disciplines in the humanities as a whole. We are focused on frontline issues within the Western-style study of contemporary photography; we are devoted to photographic historians and theorists; and as a publication we provide a platform for academic discussion and medium for a diverse array of critics and scholars of photography.

Through established, scholarly articles that focus on the fundamentals of Chinese and Western photography –its theory, practice, and history— 'Photography Studies' looks to combine the newest conceptual frameworks in Western theory with the topics that have contextualized both historical and contemporary photography in China. With this, we hope to create a critical, interdisciplinary dialogue: a complement for the current shortcomings in the study of Chinese photographic history and theory. 

'Photographic Studies' will highlight original articles from academics in China and abroad. We will also be open to a certain percentage of pieces previously released in other publications that we consider to be outstanding. We welcome readers to become active contributors and to recommend photographic works, from both China and around the world, that they find to be particularly spectacular. Each publication will have something to suit all those interested in photography: from photographers, artists, and those involved in Visual Studies to college students, graduate students, and those who merely enjoy photography and the study of the image.

The first issue of 'Photographic Studies' is set to be released in the middle of 2017; it will be independently published by Jiazazhi Press, China. 

We invite submissions from scholars and graduate students working across all times and places on photography and culture. Send a 250-word abstract and CV by December 20, 2016 to taylor110800@gmail. Please don't hesitate to contact me.

This Alfred Silvester Stereoview puzzles me. I'm unable to understand its meaning. A goose (a Gallic cock, maybe ?) whose head is that of Napoleon III, is pushed or kept at bay by a group of maidens. Knowing that the relations between the French Emperor and Queen Victoria were reasonably good in the early 1860s, then… what in the diplomatic dealings between the two countries, or the political situation at the time, might explain this rather humiliating satire of a sovereign ally? I would not be able to solve the puzzle without the help of a knowledgeable member familiar with the intricacies of British politics at the time.

Does anyone know anything about this image or its significance ? Any idea would be much welcome.

Thank you.

Photo historians Brian May and Denis Pellerin will give a 3D talk on the birth and rise of the stereoscopic craze between 1832 and 1862, and on the prominent place held by King’s College London lecturer, Charles Wheatstone, in the history of 3D, then known as Stereoscopy. Professor Wheatstone was the first to demonstrate, using drawings and an optical instrument that he designed and named the ‘stereoscope’, how binocular vision works. Work began to demonstrate why most of us can see the world around us in three dimensions, and how, with only two flat pictures, our brain can recreate the illusion of depth.

King’s College London Archives house an important collection of Wheatstone’s personal papers and material, including over 90 large stereoscopic pairs that were made by various photographers from 1851 onwards, to be viewed in Wheatstone’s reflecting instrument. In the talk, some of these will be shown in 3D for the very first time, thanks to the use of two projectors and interferometric passive glasses.

Given on the 141st anniversary of Wheatstone’s death, this talk is the result of a collaboration between Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company and King’s Archives. In part, it acknowledges and celebrates the role that King’s Archives has played in preserving our unique scientific heritage. The talk will also put the name and work of Charles Wheatstone back in the limelight, recognising him as the pioneer of today’s age of 3D movies and Virtual Reality.

Wednesday,  19 October 2016, 1930 – 2100

at the Edmond J Safra Lecture Theatre, King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College London, London, WC2R 2LS

Admiisson is free but must be pre-booked click here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/charles-wheatstone-the-craze-for-the-stereoscope-tickets-27431266657

The Swains involvement in photography spans over 150 years and encompasses the making of cameras and magic lanterns, studio, wedding, commercial, aerial and war photography, photographic retailing, photographic processing, photographic wholesaling, cinematography and much more.

Little has been written about the work of individual photographers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and there are few contemporary accounts by photographers themselves. This book is intended to shed some light on the work of provincial photographers and the development of some of those businesses.

The book explores the history of photography through the lives and work of members of the Swain family in the context of photographic developments generally. It is extensively illustrated with photographs held by the author, members of the Swain family, and a range of archive sources. Historic images from the Royal Photographic Society Collection are used to illustrate key photographic developments.

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: The Cloister House Press
• Price: £17.44
• ISBN-13: 978-1909465527

Available online here. 

Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders features a selection of over 35 original nineteenth-century albumen silver prints, most hand-tinted, by William Saunders from the Stephan Loewentheil Historical Photography of China Collection. This is the first exhibition devoted to Saunders’s work. 

Saunders holds a distinguished place in the history of photography for the exceptional body of work he produced in Shanghai during the late Qing dynasty. For over a quarter of a century, Saunders operated Shanghai's leading photographic studio, adjacent to the Astor House Hotel, a centre of social activity on the Bund in the 19th century. Saunders made his photographs, some of the earliest of the city and its people, at a critical time in Chinese history, just as Shanghai was emerging as an international commercial city.  Saunders’s images are an unrivalled photographic resource for the study of life in late Qing dynasty Shanghai.

Venue: China Exchange, 32A Gerrard Street, London W1D 6JA 

4 November –12 November, 10am – 6pm

Gallery Talks and Panel Discussions:

November 4 at 6pm -7:30pm
Preservation of Culture: Custodianship of 19th Century Photography

By Stephan Loewentheil, Dr. Phillip Prodger, Terry Bennett, and Richard Fattorini

As part of the historical photography exhibition 'Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders' the panel will discuss custodianship of 19th century photographs taken in China and Asia.

November 10 at 6pm -7:30pm
Traditions of Photography in China

By Dr. Michael Pritchard, Betty Yao, Grace Lau, and Stacey Lambrow

As part of the historical photography exhibition 'Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders', the panel will discuss early photographic studio practices and traditions of photography in China.

In 1892, brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton took the first ever photograph of a bird’s nest with eggs. Realising the camera’s potential to reveal secrets of the natural world, they resolved to make the best possible records of their discoveries in the habitats, habits and behaviour of birds and other creatures. The following three years of field work resulted in the first nature book to be illustrated entirely with photographs.

This was the springboard to two outstanding careers in wildlife photography. Richard developed the photographic hide through a series of devices which included the extraordinary Stuffed Ox, was author of numerous best-selling nature books, and with an exhaustive programme of public lectures did more than anyone of his generation to popularise nature studies. Cherry excelled at both still and cine photography, made the first recording of birds singing in the wild, and brought back the first film footage of African big game. They were, as numerous natural history photographers have proclaimed, founding fathers of their discipline.

This new and definitive study by John Bevis concerns itself with the lives and partnership of the Keartons, especially their role in the history of nature photography; their attitudes to and interaction with nature; and the status of invention in their work. Reproduced throughout the book are the remarkable photographs that they declared as having been taken ‘direct from nature’. 

The Keartons. Inventing nature photography
John Bevis
ISBN 978 1 910010 09 9
192pp, 234 x 142, paperback with flaps
2016, £14.00

To Order click here: http://www.colinsackett.co.uk/thekeartons.php?x=64&y=7

The latest online publication from the RAI Photography Committee is now available. Volume 5 Carol Payne's Culture, Memory and Community through Photographs: Developing an Inuit-based Research Methodology can be download free of charge, To see - and download - all the publications available click here: https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-and-photography

In the summer 1896 two strangers to Gorleston walked along the South Pier and set up a tripod mounted wooden camera and pointed it inland towards the harbour bend (see: https://youtu.be/ua2MStD2J00). By then the locals must have been used to seeing photographers like Alfred Yallop and James Liffen with their cumbersome mahogany and brass cameras recording scenes and events in the neighbourhood. But on this day in 1896 East Anglian photographic history was about to be made. The cameraman was Birt Acres or his assistant Arthur Melbourne Cooper and their camera was no ordinary camera as it took moving photographs. The camera had been made the previous year by engineer Robert W Paul. It’s possible that the very same camera had been used by Birt Acres to record the finish of the Epsom Derby in the summer of 1895.

Acres or Cooper shot the very first moving pictures to be taken in East Anglia. Their first subject was a paddle tug towing the fishing smack “Thrive” YH120 out of Great Yarmouth harbour. A second shot in the sequence shows the smack “I Will” YH 723 also leaving the harbour. YH120 was owned by William Buckle of 67 South Quay, Great Yarmouth and YH723 was owned by A Bland of 57 St George’s Road, Great Yarmouth. This film was one of twenty one films shown by Birt Acres on 21^st July 1896 to the royal family. This was the day before Princess Maud married Prince Charles of Denmark. The audience enjoyed the performance so much that Acres was invited to film the wedding.

The Gorleston Pier film was shown to Yarmouth audiences at the Royal Aquarium in March 1897 as “introducing the Cinematograph with local pictures of fishing boats leaving Yarmouth Harbour.” This was one week after the very first presentation of “living photographs” in Yarmouth at the Liberal Club Assembly Rooms in the Market Place.

To celebrate this event Gorleston-on-Sea Heritage Group GOSH has invited Great Yarmouth’s Mayor Malcolm Bird to unveil a blue plaque on the lookout building at the end of the Gorleston Pier on Monday 17 October at 12 noon. The plaque will carry information so that tablet and smart phone users with access to the Internet can look at the archive footage while standing where Acres or Cooper stood over 120 years ago. Unlike most blue plaques that celebrate a person or a building this plaque celebrates a little known event that was an East Anglian and Gorleston first.

The archive cinematograph footage can be viewed on the East Anglian Film Archive web site http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1410 or on the British Film Institute’s  YouTube pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2MStD2J00

Peter Brunning has written a short biography of the London studio photographer Robert Hellis. The piece was published in the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery newsletter. The newsletter containing the article can be downloaded here: newsletter87.pdf. The same newsletter also contains an article on J H Pepper, of Pepper's ghost fame. 

BPH would like to thank Peter Brunning, Bob Flanagan and FOWNC for permission to make the newsletter available. 

The National Media Museum is looking for someone with a genuine passion for contemporary museum practice who can help us showcase some of our iconic objects in a way that is engaging and exciting to our visitors.

Using your knowledge of museum practice in collections, experience in research and excellent communications you will support the development of our new galleries. For the first time we will be presenting our collections together in two newdisplays telling the story of photography, film, television and sound technologies. You will support the creation of these displays working on a range of tasks from cataloguing and researching our objects, championing audience engagement and building strong relationships with our stakeholders.

This a great opportunity to become part of a curatorial team at a national museum working with an iconic collection. For the right candidate this is a chance to start your career and should not be missed! 

The salary range is £18,500-£20,000pa and the deadline for applications is 9 October. 

For further information see the vacancy information pack.