Blogs

2016 marks 175 years since the first recorded photograph, a daguerreotype, was taken in Barber's studio in Bromley House Library,Nottingham.

We would like to mount an exhibition celebrating Victorian photography in our picture gallery, in September and October this year. Unfortunately the Science museum want to charge a huge amount for each jpeg and the V and A even more.

Is anyone aware of a more generous institution that would allow us to print and exhibit some good quality images by Victorian photographers for a reasonable sum? The exhibition will be open to members and the public at no charge.

Last year we opened the Pauline Heathcote Archive, her notes used in her publications on the history of photography. In the studio we have an antique large plate studio camera on a stand with a reproduction backdrop and in the dark room a collection of antique and vintage cameras and dark room equipment as well as Pauline Heathcote's Archive.

For more information on the Bromley House Studio go to www.bromleyhouse.org  > about us > our history > photographic studio.

For the contents of the archive go to www.bromleyhouse.org > about us > our history > Pauline Heathcote Archive.

This conference is designed to celebrate the potential, and the actuality, of the new Science Museum Group's (SMG) research culture. In particular, it marks the opening of the Dana Research Centre and Library, a new home for research in South Kensington. The conference will address how research in science museums, and with their support, can transform not just museums but how research is done in universities.

We will explore this question through the Museum’s interconnected research meta-themes:

• The public culture of STEMM (including public history of science, and the study of audiences and science media in the present and the past).
• STEMM and the Arts (how science and technology interact with the arts – including photography, music and literature)
• The material culture of STEMM (how we can most effectively study objects in museum collections, paying proper attention to their materiality; how may we best conserve the material – and immaterial – culture of STEMM).

Amongst the speakers and topics of interest to BPH readers are: 

• Phillip Roberts, University of York and National Media Museum, ‘The Projection Microscope, magic lantern entertainments and the scientific instrument trade’

and a session on Friday, 1 April, on researching photography which consists of: 

• Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University and Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, ‘Location, Location: Placing Collections and Shaping Histories’
• Ben Burbridge, Sussex University, ‘Which Photography? Revelations: Experiments in Photography as Cautionary Tale’
• Colin Harding, National Media Museum, ‘The Face of Battle: The Colour Photography of Percy Hennell’
• Noeme Santana, Royal Holloway, University of London, ‘Photography as a business practice in the civil engineering industry’

Details and the cost are here: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us/collections-and-research/news-and-events/dana-conference

To mark the 97th anniversary of pioneer photographer Olive Edis' tour of Europe documenting the work of the British women's services in the First World War, and in celebration of Women's History Month, Cromer Museum will be sharing extracts from her journal over the next few weeks on their project blog. Looking forward to following Liz Elmore's work as she continues to research the Edis archive.

It's been a busy two months since leaving the NPG. I'm delighted to have been awarded the 2016 Josef Breitenbach Research Fellowship at the Center for Creative Photography, Arizona. My research will examine Breitenbach's work as part of a wider study of the history of photography education in the US in the post-war period. I'm really looking forward to the months ahead focusing on this new research.