Blogs

Alan Denney and Tamara Stoll discuss their new book The Rio Tape/Slide Archive, published by Isola Press, in conversation with Anne McNeill, Director of Impressions Gallery. Programmed as part of Impressions Gallery’s Online Photobook Fair 2020. 

The Tape/Slide Newsreel Group was an adult education project that met in the basement of the Rio Cinema in Dalston, East London. It taught young, mostly unemployed, locals photography and sound-recording skills and sent them out to report on Hackney life. The resulting ’newsreels’ were then shown on the big screen before the main feature.

The recently rediscovered slides – more than 12,000 – are a snapshot of Hackney in the 1980s: protests, social issues, work and play, and vibrant street life, parties and festivals. They show the borough’s diverse, working-class communities as they endured the day-to-day hardships of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

Alan Denney is a Hackney resident since 1974. He is a photographer and local historian, and he scanned the entire Rio slide collection.

Tamara Stoll is an artist and community activist. Her self-published book Ridley Road Market (2019) highlighted the history and people of this Hackney institution that is under threat from developers.

Anne McNeill, now Director at Impressions Gallery, started her career in the early 1980s running similar projects at the radical gallery Camerawork in Tower Hamlets and Nightingale Estate, Hackney.

Rio Tape/Slide Archive
17 October 2020
11.30am - 12.10pm
Free, booking essential here: https://www.impressions-gallery.com/event/rio-tape-slide-archive/

More information can be found on the Rio Cinema Archive Instagram page http://instagram.com/riocinemaarchive.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were passionate collectors of photography from the announcement of the medium. Following their purchase of the Osborne estate in 1845, this locality became an important setting for the early photographic experiences of the royal family. The presence of the royal family at Osborne House contributed to the Isle of Wight becoming a popular destination in the mid-nineteenth century.

Read more about its role, importance and wider impact in this  online resource by Helen Trompeteler, a former curator at the Royal Collection Trust. https://albert.rct.uk/placing-osborne-in-the-history-of-early-photography

Roger Taylor, photo-historian, has been recognised in the 2020 Queen's birthday honours list with a MVO  - Member of the Royal Victorian Order - for 'services to the Royal Collection'. Taylor's association with the collection started in the late 1970s with a project for World Microfilms, it developed in to a landmark exhibition with Frances Dimond, Crown and Camera which was shown at the Queens's Gallery in 1987.

Taylor was a curator at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television from 1985-1996. His projects since then - in print, in public and online - have all been significant and continue to inform photographic scholarship.

See: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/3645593

and for a full biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Taylor_(photographic_historian)    

Annie Brassey (1839-1887) was a Victorian travel writer and collector, famed for her family's adventures around the world in their yacht, the Sunbeam R.Y.S. Like many middle and upper-class women of her era, she was also a keen collector and practitioner of photography. Normally tucked away in albums that are now carefully stored in archives, this online exhibition presents some of the amateur photographs taken during Annie Brassey's voyages in the 1870's and 1880's.

A Crossing the Line Ceremony on board the Sunbeam, 1887. 

This exhibition has been produced by Sarah French, a CHASE-funded PhD Researcher at the University of Sussex and Hastings Museum & Art Gallery. Her thesis reintroduces Annie Brassey's photograph collections with her museum artefacts, contextualising the collections that are ingrained within the histories of the British Empire.  

'Doings of the Sunbeam: Photographs of a Victorian Voyage'
Now online as part of Brighton Photo Fringe 2020: 
https://2020.photofringe.org/exhibitions/doings-of-the-sunbeam-photographs-of-a-victorian-voyage

The long history of the renowned Alinari photographic firm, founded in 1852 in Florence, reached a turning point in December 2019 as the regional government Regione Toscana acquired the company's millions of photographic objects, documents, specialized publications and historical technical equipment; the acquisition of the digital assets will soon complete the process. The Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia (Alinari Foundation for Photography) was established on July 16, 2020.

The shift from private to public ownership represents not only a management challenge, but also a unique opportunity to root the activities of the newly created Fondazione into the fabric of the vibrant international scientific community at the highest intellectual level. So as to facilitate this transition, the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in partnership with Regione Toscana and Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia will host a study day with prominent international scholars in dialogue with artist Armin Linke. The goal of the event is to identify new directions and outline new research scenarios that will connect the past, present and future of the Alinari project.

The long history of the renowned Alinari photographic firm, founded in 1852 in Florence, reached a turning point in December 2019 as the regional government Regione Toscana acquired the company's millions of photographic objects, documents, specialized publications and historical technical equipment; the acquisition of the digital assets will soon complete the process. The Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia (Alinari Foundation for Photography) was established on July 16, 2020. The shift from private to public ownership represents not only a management challenge, but also a unique opportunity to root the activities of the newly created Fondazione into the fabric of the vibrant international scientific community at the highest intellectual level. So as to facilitate this transition, the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in partnership with Regione Toscana and Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia will host a study day with prominent international scholars in dialogue with artist Armin Linke. The goal of the event is to identify new directions and outline new research scenarios that will connect the past, present and future of the Alinari project.

Speakers include:

• Estelle Blaschke (Universität Basel): Rarity vs. Ubiquity. Some Thoughts on the Institutionalisation of Photography
• Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University, Leicester / V&A Research Institute, London): Street Views: An Everyday Dissemination of Photographs
• Paul Frosh (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): When is an Archive Also a Bank? Industry, Value and Economy in a Photographic Institution
• Armin Linke (Berlin / ISIA Urbino): Artistic Practices in Photographic Archives: Some Examples
• Joan M. Schwartz (Queen's University, Kingston): Access Aims and Descriptive Affordances
• Tiziana Serena (Università di Firenze): Making Choices. History is Not a Ready-Made: Institutionalisation as Re-Writing
• Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University, Leicester): Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography

See more and register here: https://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/2020/10/on-alinari.php

I saw this lot (106) going up on 20 October at Newsbury, Berkshire: 

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/special-auction-services/catalogue-id-srspe10398/lot-668e84af-a844-42df-9b1a-ac4700e684fd?utm_source=auction-alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-view-link.

Note the image of Sitting Bull in the center of two nondescript Cabinet cards. I have some serious doubts about the genuineness of this cabinet card, which has an Anderson photo on another photographer's cabinet card. The underlying card may be real, but I think the original photo may have been taken off and then replaced with a computer-printed image of the Sioux Chief.  If you look at the edges, they appear to indicate that this was newly pasted unto the card. Such printed photos have very similar color and look to albumens.  But they won't have the crackled surface of the albumen and will show the scattered pigment dots under high magnification.

If anyone is out to that auction before, it might be great if you could review this Cabinet card and let us know by posting your findings here. You might let the auctioneers know too of this possibility  Bring a fine loop out to view the image to see if you can see how it was made.  I have seen other Indian Cabinet Cards like this that look very good until looked at carefully. This is one of the easiest and most common kind of fakes out there. Anyone thinking of buying this lot, should definitely view it in person.  When buying important card mounted images, keep this in mind. I have seen it with American Western images a lot.

A new Community Interest Company Developed in Birmingham has now formed, co-directed by Jo Gane, Philip Singleton and Anna Sparham. Its aim is to build upon the work produced in 2017, led by the late Pete James.

In line with Pete’s wishes and intentions, Developed in Birmingham CIC will continue to explore and expose the city’s rich photographic history, realising contemporary responses and delivering public engagement activities. A legendary curator and force for good in photography, Pete James had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of photography in the city. He originally co-founded Developed in Birmingham with Jo Gane in 2017 as a platform for engagement with the city’s early photographic history. Jo, Philip and Anna collectively aim to continue to share and develop knowledge with the same spirit of openness Pete offered the photographic community and beyond.

For more information on their current plans see the website www.developedinbham.com and follow on social media.

Hansons auctioneers in Staffordshire is offering a lot from a descendent of the important photographer Arthur Lamont Henderson relating his his royalty photographers. Estimated at £15,000-25,000 the lots consists of royal portraits and other examples of his photographic work. The auction takes place on 13 October 2020. 

See: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/hansons/catalogue-id-hanson10275/lot-579c3433-abc2-43d9-acc0-ac4801015bed

The lot description is below: 

Alexander Lamont Henderson (British, 1838-1907), experimental photographer and member of the Royal Photographic Society. In 1884, Queen Victoria awarded Henderson with a Royal Warrant, which allowed him to depict moments from the everyday life of the royal family. Victoria commissioned a number of enamels to be made from earlier plates, which included Prince Albert and John Brown (some of Henderson's enamels can be found in the Royal Collection Trust). It is believed that a number of miniatures were donated for display in Queen Mary's Dolls' House at Windsor. Henderson's commercial work was donated to the library of the London Guildhall Museum in 1907 but destroyed in the Blitz during WW2. A selection of his royal work was donated to the V&A museum, and a considerable number of his slides were rescued by Mr. F. C. Guilmant of Southampton and provided the basis of an exhibition of his work at Brighton Polytechnic in 1987. His work is naturally scarce, highlighting the importance of this archive

Photographic archive, comprising: 69 oval enamel miniature photographic portraits, 1870s, including Queen Victoria; Prince Albert; John Brown (Scottish personal attendant of Queen Victoria); Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII); Alexandra of Denmark; Prince Leopold; Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia; Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, and various non-royal portraits, in varying sizes from 14mm by 10mm (smallest) to 8cm by 6.5cm (largest), many inscribed with titles in ink on reverse, some of the more important royal portraits in gilt metal frames or mounts, to include an oval enamel photograph of the moon with title, 'The Moon, from an original negative taken by Messrs. Grubb's great Melbourne Telescope', 10cm by 13cm; a gilt framed set of 11 enamel photographic portraits depicting the Henderson family (including three of Alexander Lamont Henderson); several non-enamel photographic miniature portraits, including two in lockets and one in mirror; 23 square lantern slides depicting scenes in Grasse, French Riviera, including an interior view of Queen Victoria's drawing room in the Grand Hotel, housed in card case; 31 square lantern slides depicting topographical views and people in Nice, French Riviera, including one of Tilling's Private Omnibus (with passengers), housed in card case; 22 wide angle glass slides depicting scenes in Grasse, including architecture and people, housed in wooden case; 25 wide angle glass slides depicting landscapes and harbour scenes, housed in wooden case; 43 square lantern slides depicting miscellaneous family portraits, housed in card case; five loose glass slides (four square, one wide angle), including a view of Queen Victoria's sitting room in Grand Hotel, Grasse; a mahogany stereo viewer, and an early-19th century watercolour miniature of a lady (framed with lock of hair verso)

Provenance: By descent. Vendor's great-great grandfather was Alexander Lamont Henderson

The V&A holds a set of stunning 20x16-inch transparencies by Arthur H. Downes of models wearing African fashions.  The  transparencies seem to have been made in Manchester in the 1960s and one them is labelled 'Model from Warri No. 5'. Warri is a city in Nigeria and also the name of a Nigerian modelling agency.

They are part of the Royal Photographic Society Collection and Downes was president of the RPS 1986-1988.  He specialised in colour and began self-processing colour transparencies in the 1950s, including large-scale display transparencies such as these.

My colleagues and I are eager to uncover anything we can about these photographs: Why were they made?  Were they ever displayed or published?  Who were the models?  Where did the fashions come from?  Any information will be gratefully received!

Join TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities Humanities Division for an online in-conversation with Prof Geoffrey Batchen and Dr Lena Fritsch, discussing the work of pioneering British photographer and botanist Anna Atkins (1799-1871). Her innovative use of new photographic technologies linked art and science, and exemplified the potential of photography in books. Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford and Dr Lena Fritsch is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

This talk accompanies the 2020 Photo Oxford festival, Women & Photography: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen.

This online talk, part of the Photo Oxford programme, is delivered by one of the leading researchers on early women photographers, Rose Teanby. It focuses on British women photography pioneers from its earliest days. Many early women photographers have been hidden from history or rarely highlighted despite their unique contribution to our photographic heritage. Examples of women choosing to adopt amateur or professional photography, who have left a legacy of extraordinary photographic images, will be discussed.

The talk will be followed by a Q+A with Rose Teanby. 

Online, free, register here: https://rps.org/womenpioneers