Blogs

Experts discuss the massive contribution to British photography by two Hungarians in the 1930s and after: Stefan Lorant and Andor Kraszna-Krausz. British photography in print owes a huge debt to two Hungarian immigrants. The founding editor of the influential photojournalist magazine Picture Post (1938-57) was Stefan (István) Lorant. The founding owner of Focal Press, the world's largest publisher of film and photography books (1938-today), was Andor Kraszna-Krausz.

The panel discussing these influential pioneers will include Jane Dorner, author of the definitive chapter about Kraszna-Krausz in Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expatriate Publishers in Britain and America in the 20th Century (Routledge, 2009); Amanda Hopkinson, daughter of Sir Tom Hopkinson – Lorant's deputy and later editor of Picture Post; Sir Brian Pomeroy, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation; Colin Ford, ex-chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and curator of the Royal Academy's 2011 exhibition of Hungarian photography in the 20th century, ‘Eyewitness' (in the chair).

Other experts in the audience will include Monica Bohm-Duchen, director of the year-long Insiders/Outsiders Festival celebrating the contribution to British culture of refugees from Nazi Europe, and Andrea Livingstone, one-time administrator of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and current board member.

Lens & Press: Photographs in Print 
18 November at 7pm, 
Hungarian Cultural Centre. 10 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7NA
The event is free, but registration on Eventbrite is essential.

The second year of membership of the Martin Parr Foundation begins on 12 November and includes a signed print of a Martin Parr photograph - the new print will be unveiled on the 12th.⁣ These change each year and are only available to members.

Membership benefits also include guided tours of the Martin Parr Foundation, access to the MPF library and archive, priority booking, discount in the MPF shop and more.⁣ ⁣

Membership helps keep MPF exhibitions free to all, supports overlooked and emerging photographers, and preserves the Foundation's extraordinary collection.⁣

See more here: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/membership/

Founded in 2017 British Culture Archive is a registered non-profit resource set up to document, highlight and preserve the changes in British society and culture through social and documentary photography.

Our mission is to educate, inspire and engage people by curating online galleries, events and exhibitions – highlighting the changes of everyday life and society prior to the rapid rise of technology, smart phones and social media.

BCA work with established and upcoming photographers, showcasing their work on our blog and online galleries as well as in exhibitions across the UK. Our ongoing project The People’s Archive documents and preserves the hundreds of images submitted to us by the public.

Our online galleries and archive include images ranging from from the 1960’s Mod Scene, Northern Soul and Punk. Through to Thatcher’s Britain, Social Housing, Industrial decline, Regeneration, Acid House, Protests and more.

It was featured on the BBC online here

Abstract: The article looks at the relationship between two very popular middle-class activities in Late Victorian Britain, photographing and cycling, and explores the influence that the new technology of physical mobility had on visual experiences and related photographic practices. It focuses, in particular, on the significance that new practices of mobility and visuality had for a growing body of amateur photographers as they negotiated these experiences as a temporality of late nineteenth century modernity. Drawing on the everyday historical experiences of cycle and photography users as these were articulated at the time, the article offers new insight into the role that such body-machine interactions had on the development of what was, effectively, a modern, moving, gaze. My argument is that the sense of control over the new ways of moving and seeing enabled by cycling contributed to shape a new visual self and that, in turn, this fuelled the desire for a new visual language and means of representation that could challenge dominant photographic practices, in a manner that foresees the emergence of snapshot photography.

Dominici, S. (2019). ‘New Mobile Experiences of Vision and Modern Subjectivities in Late Victorian Britain’, Science Museum Group Journal. 12, Autumn (online open-access)

To read the article: http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-12/new-mobile-experiences-of-vision/

Engraving by John Gilbert (1817–1897) of Coventry Rotary Tricycle with bellows camera fixed to the lateral bar 

Images: © National Science and Media Museum / Science and Society Picture Library