Blogs

This exhibition has been a victim of two COVID lockdowns and was originally due to open in June, and then in November. With London in COVID Tier 2 it will now open on 8 December 2020 and run until 9 May 2021...  Unearthed traces the rich history of the medium through depictions of nature, with over 100 works by 41 leading international artists. Unearthed: Photography's Roots will reveal the fascinating technical processes and narratives behind these images, showcasing innovations in photography by key figures including William Henry Fox Talbot and Imogen Cunningham as well as several overlooked photographers including rare works by Japanese artist, Kazumasa Ogawa and the English gardener, Charles Jones. Jones’ striking modernist photographs of plants remained unknown for 20 years after his death, until they were discovered in a trunk at Bermondsey Market in 1981.

Curator Alexander Moore, Creative Producer at Dulwich Picture Gallery said: "Nature is a constant, and there’s a reason that artists through the centuries have always returned to it…the social landscape changes, media influences change, even geography changes. But nature is this enduring force. We can’t help but be inspired because it’s unwavering." 

The exhibition opens with some of the first known Victorian images by Talbot, with his experiments with paper negatives, and will also feature many works by one of the first female photographers Anna Atkins. Focusing on botany and science throughout, themes range from typology and form to experiments with colour and modernism. The show culminates with more recent advancements in photography, from the glamour and eroticism of artists Robert Mapplethorpe and Nobuyoshi Araki, to experimentations with still life compositions by Richard Learoyd.

The Gallery's mausoleum will host a contemporary installation from renowned video artist Ori Gersht, On Reflection reimagines a still life painting by Jan Brueghel the elder, and has never before been on show in the UK.

Unearthed: Photography's Roots
8 December 2020 - 9 May 2021
See more about the exhibition, opening times and booking here: https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2020/june/unearthed/

Looking for images / illustrations of 17 historical people 1789 – 1984 - Tried most commercial photo libraries worldwide  - any suggestions appreciated Thanks - full list and details on my news site here:  https://photoarchivenews.com/news/image-search-for-licensing-17-historical-people-1789-1984/

Sophie Gordon, head of photographs at the Royal Collection Trust (RCT), Windsor, has now confirmed publicly that she is accepting voluntary redundancy. She has been at the Collection for 15 years. The RCT is undertaking a significant restructure following a fall in visitor numbers and revenues as a result of COVID-19. The Trust is also making compulsory redundancies. Gordon's former curatorial colleague Helen Trompeteler who left in the summer and has not been replaced. 

She wrote: "I decided to take the voluntary redundancy offer, as it is time for me to move on. Lots of reasons, some personal, some professional. My post - Head of Photographs - is still on the org chart in the newly restructured Royal Collection, but it is apparently going to be frozen for a couple of years. Although at this point, frankly, anything could happen". She encourages everyone to support the sector by visiting museums and galleries."

Sophie can be followed on Twitter and Instagram at: @shiveringfluff  

Image: Sophie Gordon / social media

Taken by Evans+Hulf between 2016 and 2020 using a giant 15 x 12 inch camera made by J T Chapman of Manchester in the 1880s, the photographs explore the engineering that underpins a heritage steam railway and show the people who keep everything working. The images have an unusual intensity and timeless quality, which is faithfully preserved in the 67 full-page reproductions, printed in four colour B&W to match the tonal characteristics of the originals.

Published by Samson Press, 84pp 215x215mm, price £24.00 + p&p, Steel–Oil–Steam is available through the Evans+Hulf website at evans-hulf.com, where extracts from the book can also be seen, or to order from info@evans-hulf.com.

Considered one of the most important photo historians of the 20th century, Peter E. Palmquist (1936-2003) had a keen interest in the photography of the American West, California, and Humboldt County before 1950, and the history of women in photography worldwide. He published over 60 books and 340 articles and was a strong proponent of the concept of the independent researcher-writer in the field of photohistory. With co-author Thomas Kailbourn, he won the Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize for their book, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. Professor Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University, wrote, “He (Peter) established new ways of pursuing the history of photography, and with his collections and research notes soon to be accessible at Yale, he will be speaking to and inspiring new generations of students and researchers forever.” Established by Peter’s lifetime companion, Pam Mendelsohn, this fund supports the study of under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present, and under-researched Western American photographers before 1900.

A small panel of outside consultants with professional expertise in the field of photohistory and/or grant reviewing will review the applications in order to determine the awards. Applications will be judged on the quality of the proposal, the ability of the applicant to carry out the project within the proposed budget and timeline, and the significance of the project to the field of photographic history. Each recipient of the award will agree to donate upon completion of the project a copy of the resulting work (i.e., published book, unpublished report, thesis, etc.) to the Humboldt Area Foundation to submit to the Peter Palmquist Archive at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and a report to Humboldt Area Foundation at the end of the grant period. We ask that award recipients acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Palmquist Memorial Fund in publications or other work products supported by that fund.

Past recipients and their projects are featured at www.palmquistgrants.com.

RANGE OF AWARDS: $500 - $2,000 

ELIGIBILITY

Individuals researching Western American photography before 1900 or women in photography as well as nonprofit institutions conducting research in these fields are eligible to apply.

TO APPLY

Download the application at www.palmquistgrants.com by clicking the “Application” link at the top right of the page or following this link.

Completed applications must be postmarked by: November 23, 2020 by 5:00 pm, and submitted to:

Humboldt Area Foundation • 363 Indianola Road, Bayside, CA 95524

Or via email: grants@hafoundation.org

Award Recipients will be notified by January 15, 2021

For more information contact:

Humboldt Area Foundation at (707) 442-2993

Sara Dronkers

Director of Grantmaking and Nonprofit Resources

Pronouns: she,her,hers

Humboldt Area Foundation

363 Indianola Rd. Bayside, CA 95524

707.442-2993 ext. 307

www.hafoundation.org

“Humboldt Area Foundation promotes and encourages generosity,

leadership, and inclusion to strengthen our communities.”

Rebekah Burgess, PhD

NYC Parks

Photo Archivist

Capital Archives Manager

Olmsted Center

T: 718-760-6798

Thrilled to announce my book is out now!  During the 1970s, London-based photographers joined together to form collectives which engaged with local and international political protest in cities across the UK. This book is a survey of the radical community photography that these collectives produced.

Photography of Protest and Community
The radical collectives of the 1970s
Noni Stacey
Lund Humphries, 2020
£40.00
Available here: https://www.lundhumphries.com/products/130903

There are always crumbs of information about photographs to be had in strange places, most recently in an article in the Guardian about this book The Biscuit: the History of a Very British Indulgence by Lizzie Collingham (Bodley Head £18.99) is published on 29 October. Moving on from the many chosen facts relating to the British penchant for biscuits is this choice entry.

An Australian biscuit company holds the world’s largest collection of baby photos
In the 1880s, the Australian biscuit manufacturer Arnott’s invented the milk arrowroot biscuit as a product particularly suitable for children’s delicate digestions. They then launched the first advertising campaign to solicit feedback from customers. Proud parents were encouraged to send in photographs of the healthy offspring they had raised on Arnott’s biscuits. Over the next 60 years, the company received tens of thousands of baby photographs. The winning entrants regularly featured in Arnott’s newspaper advertisements. Arnott’s now have one of the world’s largest photographic archives of sugar-fed young Australians.

Here is a blogpost to introduce you to the topic of Arnott's advertising, and to introduce you to one way to spend many hours during winter on the National Library of Australia's wonderful Trove exploring how to find these advertisements amongst the thousands of free available digitised newspapers.

Since these advertisements, Arnott's has swallowed up a range of regional and local biscuit manufacturers before itself being consumed by the US company Campbell's. I'm not sure of the current ownership but for those who like such snippets, the ginger nut biscuit still retains its dunking qualities, and also regional variations in flavour depending on which factory is making it, because the ginger nut is made from the crumbs of broken biscuits. 

In this talk I will discuss my work to draw to together the disparate photographic archive of the West India Regiments. Scattered across the Atlantic in public and private collections, photographs of the men who formed the first 'official' British Army regiment made up of men of African descent represent the men in contradictory ways. The men were both racialised as “others” and accepted as a formal part of the apparatus of the British Empire. At a time when “scientific” proof was being gathered to cement ideas about race, the men were certainly identified as black, and were differentiated from the white personnel of the British Army in a number of ways. However, they were not subjected to the same racialisation as the black civilians that they shared their homelands with. In fact, they were often depicted in ways that undermined the very stereotypes so commonly assigned to their peers. I'll discuss how the Regiments' archives can be used to learn about the characteristics of the British Empire between the mid-19th and early 20th century and some of the difficult histories that their archive intersects with.

Monday, 19 October at 1930
Dr Melissa Bennett - National Trust/Greater London Authority (PhD University of Warwick)
Arranged by IWM War and Conflict Network
Registration is free here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_mjgOOm2MTyGChA_dyGx0tw?t=1602515684073

A short post on BPH has drawn attention to the current owners of the Hills and Saunders negative archive selling off negatives individually on eBay. The collection is - or was - owned by Pete Boswell who posted on BPH about his acquisition here in 2103. 

A previous website Harrowphotos.com which offered the opportunity to buy prints was registered in 2014 and is now no longer available. Pete Boswell was a director of Save Photo Ltd which was dissolved in 2016 and in that capacity he reported on saving Churchill negatives from the H&S archive. A number of other associated companies are also now dissolved, suggesting that the original commercialisation of the archive did not live up to expectations.

In an interview with BPH today, Pete Boswell explained that the Hills and Saunders Archive which consists of some 94,000 plates has now been fully digitised and indexed. The current owners have invested a considerable amount money into the archive's rescue and recovery, conservation, indexing, cataloguing and digitisation. It is considered one of the largest collections of of its kind in private ownership.

The majority - some 96 per cent - of the pictures contained within the archive are related to Harrow School pupils and staff from 1860-1965 and these are being retained by the owners and a selection of them are to be published shortly.

A small selection of around 200 plates that are not core to the main Harrow collection are being disposed of and are being offered to collectors and private owners. It is some of these that are currently on eBay. 

An index of all the Hills and Saunders negatives, by number and name, is available here: http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~victorianphotographs/family/hills/hills.htm 

Images from current eBay listings (reversed from negative to positive)

Photographica is a new French-published magazine which aims to support and show research around the history of photography for university and museum level. It is supported by the Société française de photographie (SFP) and the Ministry of Culture and is published by Éditions de la Sorbonne. It will be published twice a year and include reviews of books, catalogues, journals, conferences and study days. The editors are Éléonore Challine and Paul-Louis Roubert.

Photographica
A publication of the Société française de photographie
71, rue de Richelieu, 75002 Paris
Contact: secretariat-redaction@photographica-revue.fr

Published and distributed by Éditions de la Sorbonne
212 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris

Website: https://sfp.asso.fr/photographica/numeros-issues
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photographica.revue
Instagram: @photographica_revue

Photoria is a new resource documenting female photographers and associated trades, working in Australia between 1850 and 1950. It currently has some 400 names with, most likely, more to be discovered and documented. 

See and explore here: https://photoria.com.au/

Flints Auctions is offering an early experimental camera, believed to be c.1840, with an estimate of £50,000-70,000. The camera is made from mahogany, with a simple back retained by a wedge and with a simple lens in a brass mount. The back carries a series of small pinholes, which were presumably from pins used to fix sensitised paper to it (see below)

Although the camera comes with no provenance it has been inspected by Roger Watson, formerly curator at the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock. Although the camera is described by the auctioneers as a 'mousestrap' camera Watson notes 'there is nothing to indicate that this example was made by or used by Talbot'. 

The auction takes place on 19 November 2020 The camera (lot 452) can be seen here and the complete catalogue of Fine Photographica and Instruments of Science can be seen here. 

Great to see my first review in the Morning Star: “Introducing readers to the key movements, exhibitions, institutions & political pressure groups which nourished & funded the photography collectives, this book is a vital & fascinating work of history.” - Read Here

Greetings from Lakeville, Connecticut - I will be be brief as the Fall is living up to its name and I have to go an rescue our lawn from the smothering embrace of several million(?) Sugar Maple leaves.

I am running an auction centered on Photographs and Photography which ends tomorrow. The sale of just over 250 lots is rich in semi-precious stones rather than gems, but, there is something for everyone. So, please go to https://antiquarianauctions.com/; and enjoy. NB if you find something that you would like to bid on you will need to register with us (a very simple process).

Thank you and good luck!

Adam Langlands

Photoworks Festival 2020 – Propositions for Alternative Narratives – can be experienced as a photography festival in a box. It is a unique and limited edition object; a portable festival where you become the curator and decide where and how to install it.

You can only get your Festival in a box by becoming a Photoworks Friend. Sign up here.

The box includes artworks by Farah Al Qasimi, Lotte Andersen, Poulomi Basu, Roger Eberhard, Ivars Gravlejs, Pixy Liao, Alix Marie, Ronan Mckenzie, Sethembile Msezane, Alberta Whittle and Guanyu Xu, and a manifesto by Queer History Now.

Each of the artworks can be installed on your own walls: at home, in your office, in a gallery, in your classroom or with your community. There are an infinite amount of ways in which you can install the festival. Use nails, tape or clips to hang in your preferred space. There is a wall label for each, giving you more information about the artist and their work.

Photoworks Friends also have free access to talks and workshops taking place as part of Photoworks Festival. Sign up now and come to all the festival events for no further cost! 

In return, as a Photoworks Friend, you will also receive: 

• the current issue of Photoworks Annual sent directly to your door (please note, Annual 26 is now sold out but we will send an annual of your choice from our back catalogue)
• 20% off the full range of books, prints and editions in the Photoworks shop
• a first look at a wide range of Photoworks digital content before anyone else 
• the opportunity to buy a yearly Photoworks fundraising edition before anyone else 
• behind-the-scenes news and insights 
• Invitations to special events hosted by Photoworks and our partners

Become a Photoworks Friend here.

As part of the PhotoOxford Festival 2020 staff and affiliated researchers of the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum have taken a fresh look at their collection of around 300,000 historic and contemporary photographs, and picked out one that for them resonates strongly with the Festival's theme, 'Women and Photography: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen'. Although working mostly from home, staff have made use of the Museum's online database, where 65% of the collection is available in digital form online.

https://prm.web.ox.ac.uk/event/photography-and-women

BPH heard late yesterday afternoon that the British documentary photographer Chris Killip had died at his home in the United States. Killip was born in the Isle of Man, and started his career by assisting Adrian Flowers in London. From 1969 he began concentrating on his own photography. In 1977 he became a founder, exhibition curator, and advisor at the Side Gallery Newcastle, and worked as its first director. His work was championed and purchased by the V&A Museum, London. 

He documented many aspects of 1980s Britain and is best known for In Flagrante (1988). His work has been widely exhibited and collected and his body of work The Station is currently on view at the Martin Parr Foundation. 

From 1991-2017 he was Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, in Massachusetts.

Killip received the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award for In Flagrante.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/14/chris-killip-hard-hitting-photographer-of-britains-working-class-dies-aged-74

and: 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/16/chris-killip-recognition-for-a-great-photographer

Images  © Michael Pritchard. Above: Killip at the launch symposium for the Martin Parr Foundation in 2017. Read more here.  Left: The Station at Martin Parr Foundation, on view until 20 December 2020. 

The British and Commonwealth collection, based at Bristol Archives, consists of objects, photographs, films, papers and sound archives reflecting the occupations and interests of mainly white British people living and working in many parts of the former empire during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The new online catalogue, launched today, will make more material available for people worldwide so they can examine difficult, forgotten or hidden histories from their own perspectives. It will be adding 15,000 entries initially, and providing access to over 7,000 digitised images and 200 films.

See: British Empire & Commonwealth Collection 

London's Photographers' Gallery and the Photo London fair are amongst the largest beneficiaries of today's Arts Council England investment of £257 million in 1,385 venues, theatres, museums and cultural organisations, through the first tranche of Culture Recovery Fund: Grants programme.

The announcement was only for Round 1 of grants applications under £1 million. Further announcements will highlight round two of Grants under £1 million, grants over £1 million, and the Capital Kickstart and Repayable Finance programmes. 

The funding is for organisations and there continues to be minimal or no direct support for freelancers and artists, although some support may trickle down from those funded organisations.   

For photography the following principal organisations have benefited:

 Details of all organisations can be found here: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/culture-recovery-fund-data#

Chiswick Auctions is delighted to offer a historically important album of early photographs by Captain Thomas Honywood (1819-1888), notable for taking the earliest known photographs of Sussex. He is also responsible for the invention of the photographic technique known as Nature Printing. This important album of his private  photographs will be offered in the Photographica sale at Chiswick Auctions on Wednesday, 28 October, 2020. It is estimated to fetch £50,000-£70,000.

The album includes an array of arresting portraits of the inhabitants of Horsham, as well as buildings and the surrounding Surrey & Sussex landscapes, in the form of 170 calotypes and albumen prints, dating from 1851 onwards. They are the earliest images from this area of England known to exist, taken ten years after William Henry Fox Talbot invented the Calotype process of photography.  

Talking about the contents of this exceptional album, Austin Farahar, Head of Photographica at Chiswick Auctions explains: 'The album has a narrative similar to any great artist’s sketchbook, full of experimentation, development and adjustments. It is fascinating to observe how the Polymath Thomas Honywood was utilising and learning the new photographic artform. Many of the works contained within are simply breath-taking. The album’s contents, containing personal portraiture studies of the people and the places that he knew and loved dearly, communicate with such arresting intimacy a record of the world that Honywood inhabited. Before these photographs were discovered, every record or account of this part of England had been translated via the eyes and hands of an artist, perhaps with the assistance of the camera-lucida, but still from the subjective view of a draftsman.

What we have here is a beautiful and extraordinary intersection of art and science. Very few people were proficient in this process and fewer excelled with such artistic flair in the way that Honywood did.'

Jeremy Knight from the Horsham Museum, notes: 'Thomas Honywood is that typical figure of British heritage, known and promoted locally for his innovative and creative ability, with Horsham Museum holding a unique collection of his nature prints and photographs, since he first exhibited them over 150 years ago. Now through the power of the art and photographic market, awakening global interest he will become appreciated for the genius that he was, a nationally important figure in the story of British photography.'

As well as his photographic skills, Honywood was also a skilled scientist and archaeologist, famously discovering the ‘Horsham Hoard’ of medieval pottery during one of his many excavations in his beloved West Sussex - the photographs of which are included in the album.  He was very involved in his local community, which also no doubt enabled him to capture events and people first-hand. He was Captain of the Horsham Volunteer Fire Brigade for many years and assisted neighbouring towns and villages in starting their own Fire Services, which earned him an oil portrait of himself, which now hangs in Horsham Museum.

Honywood’s passion and skill in photography led to much experimentation with a range of photo-chemical processes, which resulted in him devising a new technique called ‘Nature Printing’, which enabled the transfer of positive images onto a range of surfaces. He was able to patent this technique and exhibited it at the London International Inventions Exhibition of 1885, which was received with both awe and commendation.

See: https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/details/28%20Oct%202020%20B%20-photographica/?au=588