Blogs

The National Science and Media Museum (NSMM) will celebrate its fortieth birthday on 16 June, It has put out a call to visitors to describe their favourite objects and memories of the museum, on Twitter. 

See: https://twitter.com/MediaMuseum/status/1629866378919542784

National Science and Media Museum Research Associate Alex Fitzpatrick has published a blog revealing more about a project using citizen science to work collaboratively with volunteers on the Daily Herald Archive. In 2021, the museum launched Communities & Crowds, a research project that explores the use of ‘citizen science’ methods to develop more collaborative approaches to working with volunteers from local communities. As part of this project, a small team of local volunteers have been selecting and digitising images related to African Caribbean history from the Daily Herald Photographic Archive.

Read the full blog here: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/communities-crowds-project-update/

An earlier blog launching the project is here: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/opening-up-the-daily-herald-archive-to-citizen-led-research/

In conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Film Festival held biennially at Watershed in Bristol, the RAI runs an academic conference focussing on this year’s theme of: ‘Visual anthropology and speculative futures’ 

As part of this conference the convenors are running a roundtable, hosted at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol on Tuesday 7th March at 14.15 - 16.15 followed by an informal in-person networking event hosted by Myriad Film & Research from 16.45 for visual practitioners and academics from all disciplines to meet and build connections. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to alex@myriadfilm.com

This roundtable develops the argument that visual anthropologists, using photography and film, have the skills and methodologies to support academics across disciplines to better communicate their research. We will showcase the toolkit of diverse collaborative approaches that can help facilitate the co-creation of imagined futures, in tangible ways, in the present. 

The roundtable will include short presentations and discussion of the following projects followed by a roundtable discussion:

1. How producing a documentary film with an environmental historian helps communicate past practices in water-level management that might have renewed relevance in tackling the impact of ongoing climate change (Greg Bankoff & Alexander Parkyn-Smith)

2. How processes of mutual making can illuminate the ways that digital photography and smartphone SIM cards connect people and foster belonging for those who have experienced displacement www.thesimproject.com (Liz Hingley)

3. How using photography can help communicate the personal narratives of women entrepreneurs in Central Asia (Shumaila Yousafzai & Alexander Parkyn-Smith)

4. How autoethnographic filmmaking grapples with the "messiness" of being black women in academic spaces (Danyelle Greene & Abimbola Ayun)

Collaborative visualisation: the potential for visual anthropologists to support academics from other disciplines, to communicate and further their research using creative methodologies.
Bristol, 7 March 2023, 1415-1615
Register by email: lex@myriadfilm.com

In their collaborative project Almost Nothing But Blue Ground artist duo Tom Pope and Matthew Benington launch a live investigation into the work and life of Anna Atkins, an English botanical artist, and the first person to publish a book of photographic images.

The work specifically focuses on the book, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, which Atkins created collaboratively with Anne Dixon.

While researching the botanic publication, Pope and Benington came across the discovery that Atkin’s husband and father-in-law jointly owned at least eight plantations and thousands of slaves in Jamaica. Atkins, directly and indirectly, benefited from the slave trade and colonial wealth, refocussing her work and the publication.

In addition to the life and work of Atkins, Almost Nothing But Blue Ground investigates the Victorian fern craze, land ownership, capitalism, and the colonial landscape with its links to early botany and the plundering of foreign lands.

Almost Nothing But Blue Ground, and events
until Saturday 18 March 2023
East Gallery
Norwich University of the Arts
Francis House
3-7 Redwell Street
Norwich, NR2 4SN
See: https://www.nua.ac.uk/events/all/almost-nothing-but-blue-ground/

An engaging introduction to the work and the world of pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, Arresting Beauty presents more than 120 images from the V&A and RPS collections held at the museum, the largest holding of Cameron’s photographs in the world. Exploring her unique artistry, this book reaffirms her position as one of the most innovative and influential photographers of all time

Julia Margaret Cameron – Arresting Beauty (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Lisa Springer, Marta Weiss
Thames and Hudson
£25.00
https://thamesandhudson.com/julia-margaret-cameron-arresting-beauty-9780500480861

John B Turner has published a series of papers under the general heading Notes on the collection of photographers’ collections for posterity, with five published and a further five due in 2023. 

John notes: 'I have written about the state of collecting photographs as art and social history in New Zealand at various times over the past 50 years from the point of view of a photographer, teacher, collector, curator, and photo historian and am particularly concerned about what is not happening to ensure the collection and preservation of the photographs of my fellow post-World War II generation who have so much of their life’s work invested in large collections of analogue negatives and prints.

This investigation, based on my own and other photographers’ experiences of trying to place their collections in suitable archives indicates, as suspected, that there is a widespread crisis unfolding, and that is the consensus of the librarians, archivists, and curators who we asked to share their thoughts on key issues for this perhaps long overdue survey.

Already there have been at least two attempts by leading curators, picture librarians and photographers to discuss issues around the collection and increasing non-collection of analogue photographs linked to the rapid acceptance of the digitisation of public records and new issues about how to save “born digital” photographs.'

The papers can be viewed here: 

Part 1:   https://www.photoforum-nz.org/blog/new-zealands-photo-treasures-heading-for-the-tip

Part 2:   https://www.photoforum-nz.org/blog/new-zealands-photo-treasures-heading-for-the-tip-part2

Part 3:   https://www.photoforum-nz.org/blog/new-zealands-photo-treasures-heading-for-the-tip-part3

Part 4:   https://www.photoforum-nz.org/blog/new-zealands-photo-treasures-heading-for-the-tip-part-4

Part 5:   https://www.photoforum-nz.org/blog/part-5-auckland-art-gallery-alexander-turnbull-library

Upcoming parts early 2023:

Part 6:   Auckland War Memorial Museum & Auckland Libraries

Part 7:   Internal Affairs & Heritage Departments

Part 8:   Canterbury Museum & Christchurch Art Gallery

Part 9:   Collection case studies: Tom Hutchins, Paul Gilbert, Max Oettli & Barry Myers

Part 10:   Curating, Barry Clothier Simple Image show & Clothier/Turner 1965 Artides show

John's introductory paper can be see in the Word file here

Image: G Leslie Adkin: Untitled, Horowhenua, c 1924. John B Turner Collection

This international conference showcases the latest research on Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), whose multi-faceted work continues to have significance across moving-image cultures, photography, digital animation and the visual arts globally. Centring on the transatlantic movements of Muybridge, his work and ideas, and the diverse Muybridge collections in the US and the UK, the conference brings together leading scholars, curators, filmmakers and artists to share knowledge about the overall significance of Muybridge holdings in both countries and to reflect on the future of Muybridge studies.

Held in Kingston-upon-Thames – the birthplace of Muybridge in 1830 and where he returned for the last decade of his life until his death in 1904 – the conference marks the recent relocation of Kingston Museum’s Muybridge Collection to a purpose-built archive at the university’s award-winning building Town House.

The conference is organised by Kingston University’s Visual and Material Culture Research Centre in partnership with Kingston Museum and Stanley Picker Gallery, and is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Registration for the conference is free to book via Eventbrite.

See the full programme here: https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/events/main-events/moving-muybridge-transatlantic-dialogues/

For those unable to attend in person, the conference will be available to watch online and a link provided closer to the date.

A writer is seeking images of a photographic studio called Sounds Stills, 37 Moreton Street, London SW1. It was the studio where the late music photographer Michael Putland worked before he moved in 1969 to a new studio space. Can anyone help with an image of the exterior?

Please make contact via Michael Pritchard on behalf of the writer. 

An urban explorer has documented a rare survival, a former photographic studio in Preston. The studio opened in 1879 and was named the Grand Imperial Studio, occupied by J. Monk, photographic artist. The building was still in use as a studio into the early 1960s and appears to have been unused since then. 

David - known as Scrappy NW - first visited in 2019 and recently made a return visit. The premises are part of a series of rundown buildings on Church Street in Preston. In his words 'The main points of interest are on the top floor of the building which housed the dark rooms, portrait studio and changing areas. There is not too much left inside but just enough to show that the building was used as photographic studios long ago. Reels of film were lay on the floors covered in dust, the dark room had photographic materials left inside and the studio lights were still in situ in the portrait room. Additionally, several bottles were left behind; vitreous stone bottles made by J. BOURNE & SON. Denby & Codnor Park Potteries, In the portrait studio.'

See: https://www.aworldinruins.co.uk/grand-imperial-photography-studios- and follow up visit https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/grand-imperial-studio-of-j-monk-preston-june-19.122239/#post-1267939

Image left: The premises today / Google street view. 

The 12 February is Darwin Day and The Complete Photographs of Darwin has been added to the The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. This provides a detailed catalogue of all known photographs of Darwin – a dozen newly discovered – and c.300 printed variants produced up to the early 20th century. It is online and illustrated with 400 images.

The catalogue is an updated version of the photograph section of the iconography of Darwin by John van Wyhe in Darwin: A Companion (2021).

The Complete Photographs of Darwin: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_Complete_Photographs_of_Darwin.html

Image; A F J Claudet, 1842. 

A talk by photographer, author and historian Patrick M Dransfield, featuring his lost hoard of photographs of ‘Old Beijing’, 1986, with reflections on photography and art from Bill Brandt to Song Dynasty landscapes and David Hockney

Patrick M Dransfield majored in English and History of Art at Leeds University and holds a Masters in Chinese History from the School of Oriental & African Studies. Since hearing stories of his father’s travels to Asia as part of the Royal Navy in 1945-6, the worlds of travel and eastern philosophies have continued to fascinate him, alongside a profound wish to escape the mundane through art. Patrick is the author of audio book ‘Duel of the Sorcerers’, a deeply immersive WW1 spy thriller featuring Eastern cosmology; and ‘Track of Time: Moments of Transition’ a book based on the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club Wall Exhibition of his ‘Old Beijing’ photographs in October 2020.

Young Photographer in Old Beijing
Tuesday 28th March, 6 - 7:30pm
Headington Hill Hall, Headington
Road, Headington, OX3 0BP
Free, book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/young-photographer-in-old-beijing-tickets-535831294827

Hosted by Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes University

This studentship is offered in conjunction with UCA’s Fast Forward project, led by Professor Anna Fox. Proposals are invited for an archive-based research project investigating transformations in representation of race, gender, and sexuality in work by generations of British photographers active from the 1980s to the 2000s. The PhD project will examine socio-political dimensions of the relationship of these practices to society and education, giving the successful candidate the opportunity to engage with less well-known archives of work by, e.g., Emily Anderson, Roshini Kempadoo, Tessa Boffin, Joy Gregory and Eileen Perrier.

For full details of the scope and context of the studentship, please visit: https://www.uca.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/

Dr Geoff Belknap, Keeper of the Department of Science and Technology at National Museums Scotland, will offer some ‘behind the scenes’ evidence of the challenges and considerations that have to be borne in mind when caring for a national collection. He has unparalleled experience of working with photography, having formerly been the Curator in charge of the photographic collection at the National Science and Media Museum at Bradford. He has published in journals and edited volumes in the history of science, photography and visual culture and his first monograph, From a Photograph, was published in 2016 with Bloomsbury Press on the history of photography in the later 19th century periodical press. He has appeared in print, TV and radio media, including the recent BBC 4 series The Art of Innovation.

This is a special lecture organised as a joint event between the Derbyshire Archaeological Society and the W W Winter Heritage Trust. This is an online-only talk via Zoom - click here to book via Eventbrite (donation). 

See: https://www.derbyshireas.org.uk/event/challenges-of-a-photographic-curator/

UPDATE: the recording can be seen here: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/YlZ3Kqrqnm580IxMHd-F4sJeE0-QHnYqAcrF62vwd51O2D_ZONzboE69mhNAvSbo.kzbqtMwBNN1001rs

The Photography and the Archive Research Centre, based at London College of Communication part of University of the Arts, is to close after nearly 20 years. PARC was founded in 2003 by Professor Val Williams and Julian Rodriguez, then Dean of Media at LCC. After 15 years as Director – which saw partnerships with the National Media Museum, Tate, Photoworks, Magnum Photos and others Val Williams stepped down. Since 2018 her archive now resides at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol.

In 2018, Directorship of PARC was taken over by Brigitte Lardinois who specialises in photographic archives and has strong links to the world of photojournalism through a decade working as Cultural Director of Magnum Photos. In her tenure as director of PARC she has built strong links with the UAL’s Archives and Special Collections Centre and focused PARC outputs on social engaged research and practice.

The Centre's stated aim was to facilitate practise-based and scholarly research that develops an understanding of lens-based works. PARC endeavours to widen participation with archive collections. PARC seeks to expand upon dialogues surrounding decolonialism, climate change, conflict and trauma within the institution and beyond. Its outputs include a wide range of events – exhibitions, publications, workshops, study days and conferences – with a special interest in archival collections, notably the documentation of war and conflict and the transfer of analogue archives to digital forms.

It has gathered a number of significant collections over the years and these will now migrate to the university's library and special collections. Lardinois will remain on the academic staff. 

See: https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/research-centres/parc
and: https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/558-brigitte-lardinois

Violet Banks (1896-1985) was born near Kinghorn, Fife and trained at Edinburgh College of Art, going on to become a schoolteacher at St Oran's, Edinburgh. In the late 1920s / early 1930s, Banks took photographs of her tours of the Hebrides.

Brownrigg will speak about Bank's photograph albums, held at Historic Environment Scotland and, further on the trail of Banks, speak about the postcards Banks made, as well as her wider photographs of Edinburgh and Scotland. Banks is featured in the current exhibition Brownrigg (Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art) has curated at City Art Centre, entitled 'Glean: Early 20th century women filmmakers and photographers in Scotland'. 

Photography of Violet Banks
Thursday 9 February 2023 at 1400
Free, Booking is essential, email archives@hes.scot to book a place
See: https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/whats-on/event/?eventId=9b43cc8a-b573-462d-ac39-af7100db16a6

Wallis and Wallis is offering an interesting album of photographs by A R Dresserr and estimated at £200-300. The description reads: A fascinating and historically interesting photographic record of the visit of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to Earl's Court in 1892, by A.R. Dresser, a well known photographer at the time, with introduction by Dresser stating that the photographs were mostly taken with a Crouch "Dresser" hand camera at F.8, and printed on Bromide paper, mostly from Eastman Film Negatives.

The 81 monochrome photographs are mounted on alternate pages, the opposite pages containing personal details of the members of the cast, and historical background of the various acts. Among those acts and members listed in detail are the Deadwood Stage coach, Annie Oakley, Chief of the Cossacks Prince Iran Makharadze, "Buffalo Bill" Cody, general manager Major Burke, Mexican Vaqueros, Sioux "Indians" and squaws, the Miss Farrells, and many others. Also detailed on most pages are the developing and printing processes and chemicals used. Hardback covers, the front cover gold embossed "Photographs - A.R. Dresser", the spine "Volume II". 

Details here

The National Stereoscopic Association is pleased to announce its fourth annual 'Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography' at the 49th 3D-Con in Buffalo, New York. Presentations are welcome on any aspect of stereo-media from the inception of stereoscopic photography to immersive stereo media. We project stereoscopically on the 3D-Con's big screen, and our growing community of international scholars represent diverse research from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. All stereoscopic photography subjects from the historical to the contemporary are invited.

Please send an abstract of 500-600 words and a biography of 250-300 words and contact information by May 8, 2023. Notification of acceptance by May 29, 2023.  Digital images will be expected by July 5, 2023.

Call for Papers
Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography IV
August 4, 2023
The National Stereoscopic Association’s 3D-Con
The Hyatt Regency Buffalo Hotel, Buffalo, New York
July 31-August 7, 2023
See: https://3d-con.com/history.php

Photographica, published under the auspices of the Société française de photographie, has put out a call for papers for its next issue which cover areas from a long history of prices of production and consumption of photographs. fluctuating values and photography market and heritage value. An extensive call is at the link below. 

On the value(s) of photographs: production, mechanisms, sources
Call for papers, Photographica Issue 8/2024
Deadline to submit articles: May 22, 2023

Details: https://devisu.inha.fr/photographica/1075

This exhibition between the National Portrait Gallery and Redbridge Museum showcases new portraits by photographer Eddie Otchere alongside photography and zines produced by local young people exploring the working life at the Ilford Limited photographic factory.

Delving into the Ilford Limited archive held at Redbridge Heritage Centre, it explores stories of past workers alongside memories from former workers of their time at Ilford Limited during the 1960s and 1970s before the company moved out of Ilford in 1976. These stories reveal the reality of starting a career straight out of school, working in pitch black laboratories, and the experiences of women who took leading roles in brand new professions such as Computer Science and Radiography.

At the heart of Ilford Limited is analogue photography and this display shows the beauty of Ilford film as a tool to experiment, make portraits and capture people’s stories.

Ilford Limited: Analogue Stories
until 12 March 2023
Redbridge Central Library, Clements Road, Ilford, IG1 1EA
Mon-Fri: 10am to 8pm Sat: 10am to 5pm Sun: Closed
Free
https://visionrcl.org.uk/exhibitions/ilford-limited-analogue-stories/