Blogs

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) today announced the successful recipients of their two 2011 Curatorial Opportunities: the Young Curators Program and the Power Coroporation of Canada Curatorial Internships Program. 

For the latter, internships were awarded to Marta Masferrer Juliol and Cerys Wilson. Both will be in residence in Montreal for nine months. Ms Wilson is a photographer and a recent Masters graduate of the History of Photography from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. While at the CCA, Cerys will instigate further learning and conduct an examination of photography’s relationship to cultural, political and historical thought. She will take advantage of the CCA collections of drawings and prints, photographs and models, helping her to trace a path of creation from initial concept to ultimate construct.

The full announcement can be found here.

A special programme celebrating the unveiling of a permanent display of Cincinnati Library’s treasured Cincinnati Riverfront Panorama of 1848  in The Joseph S. Stern, Jr. Cincinnati Room will be held this coming Saturday, 21st May 2011.

As mentioned in an earlier BPH blog, Charles Fontayne and William S. Porter, who worked as partners in a Cincinnati photo gallery from 1847 to 1854, set up their camera on a rooftop in Newport, Kentucky back in September 24, 1848, and panned it across the Ohio River capturing on eight separate plates a two-mile span of the nation’s sixth largest city, Cincinnati.  While Fontayne and Porter knew their project was an ambitious one, they could not have imagined that the Panorama would survive more than 160 years as the oldest comprehensive photograph of an American city, be revered worldwide as one of the finest examples of daguerrean photography, and form the basis for 21st century discoveries about 19th century American life. While expensive and difficult to create, daguerreotypes were noted for their superior level of clarity, exceeding later photographic methods. 

The library acquired the photos — the size of large postcards — in the early 20th century and they have been in storage since 1955 for protection. In 2006, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County contracted the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film to examine, clean, stabilise and perform conservation work on the Panorama.  As part of the preservation project, state-of-the-art digital microscopy equipment produced digital images from the 1848 Panorama.

This programme for the day, which takes place in the Main Library’s Atrium, will include discussions on the provenance and care of the daguerreotype, as well as explaining how 21st century technology assisted with the conservation process.

Do you fancy owning a piece of photographic nostalgia? If so, does an 1865 wooden wet-plate negative box once used by Julia Margaret Cameron of interest to you? It is estimated between Euro 6,000-8,000, with provenance from the Spira Collection.

Or what about a near perfect Hegelein watch camera whereby only three are known to exist in the world, and this camera, no.1011, is for sure the best example. Loose change at an estimated Euro 80,000-100,000.

Or more down to earth, an original Peepshow commemorating the opening of the Thames Tunnel which was planned by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built between 1825 and 1843, with bidding starting at Euro 300.

All this and more can be found in a forthcoming Vienna auction on 28th May, with lot descriptions here. For me, I think I'll go upmarket, and head for the 1910 Louis Vuitton photographic trunk!

But on a more serious note, many of the Nikon items on auction are donated by Nikon Europe, profits of this sale will go to the Japan Red Cross fund. The recent terrible events in Japan have touched everyone, and collectors worldwide will be excited about Nikon Europe's collection of some unique and historic items.

Hope you find something of interest, and good luck with the bidding!

Photos: Wooden Wet Plate Box,  used by Julia Margaret Cameron, twin brass carrying handles, the interior fitted with slots for twenty-four 10 x 12' wet-plate negatives, hinged cover inscribed in ink in Mrs. Cameron's hand with list of contents;  This Peepshow is made by 4 panels, when opened 2 peep holes allow one to peep through the length of the tunnel (1840).

The National Media Museum (NMeM) is one of the leading museums in the north of England, receiving over 500,000 visitors a year and they want you to contribute to their ongoing success.

NMeM are looking for an extrovert, engaging and entertaining communicator to fill this stimulating role.  With your excellent presentation and performance skills and your keen interest in media, you will help bring the galleries to life for their diverse range of visitors.
As part of the Explainer team in the Learning Department you will present live shows and use your creative skills to develop and deliver art, craft and media based activities for families and groups.  It will be up to you to ensure visitors including families, school groups and teachers have an enjoyable, safe and educational visit.
If you have a passion for media, for communication, and for engaging children and adults of all ages, NMeM would love to hear from you. This post is 4 days per week including Sunday.  For a full job description please email recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Interested? Please send your CV and covering letter to recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
NMeM regret that they can only respond to successful applicants.
NMeM are an equal opportunities employer. They welcome applications from all sections of the community in which they work. NMeM particularly welcome applications from disabled people and guarantee interviews to suitably qualified disabled applicants.

Part time - 28.8 hours per week
£10,674.40 per annum (£13,343 FTE) plus weekend allowance

Deadline for applications: 31st May 2011

Good luck!

As part of a special commemoration to celebrate Saltburn's 150 years as a Victorian town, a Festival of Victorian Photography will be held. Visited by Francis Frith back in the 19th century (as part of his colossal project to photograph every town and village in the United Kingdom), sixteen photographers have since converged in Saltburn last month to photograph scenes with a Victorian slant.

The photographers, who are participating in the Festival of Victorian Photography, came to Saltburn to shoot images using traditional Victorian techniques. Their works will be exhibited in The Festival of Victorian Photography, details of which can be found here. The experts included members of the UK Large Format Photography Group, who use glass slides.Photographers participating in the event include: Charles Twist, organiser, John Brewer, Graham Vasey, Tony Richards and Marizu Okereke.

On 2nd July John Brewer will also be giving a public demonstration at the Toc H building, off Albion Terrace, of the wet collodion process, which was used during the two-day April visit.

You can find a blog dedicated to this event here, and the official Saltburn website here.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all!

A perfect introduction to historic photographic processes. This one day workshop covers the beginnings of camera-less photography and will allow you to develop your skills and knowledge into the printing process that started it all. This is William Henry Fox Talbot’s first photographic process, the photogenic drawing, the basis for all photographic printing that came later. This workshop teaches you the basic chemistry and techniques of the process, discusses some of Talbot’s variations and allows you to explore the artistic possibilities under expert guidance.

The workshop takes place onhttp://talbotworkshops.webs.com/photogenicdrawing.htm 13 August and is limited to ten participants. It is led by Richard Cynan Jones. Click here for more information:

New York University held a commemoration to celebrate the centenary of Dr. John William Draper (an Englishman by birth), who, when Professor of Chemistry in the university's early days, took the first photographic likeness ever made of the human face, when Daguerre failed to do it.

Some of Draper's advice for portrait sittings include: “The hands should never rest upon the chest, for the motion of respiration disturbs them so much as to make them have a thick, clumsy appearance, destroying also the representation of the veins on the back, which, if they are held motionless, are copied with surprising beauty.”

“It has already been stated that pictorial advantages attend an arrangement in which the light is thrown upon the face at a small angle. This also allows us to get rid entirely of the shadow on the background or to compose it more gracefully in the picture. For this it is well that the chair should be brought forward from the background from three to six feet.

“Those who undertake daguerreotype portraiture will, of course, arrange the background of their pictures according to their own tastes. When one that is quite uniform is desired, a blanket or a cloth of drab color, properly suspended, will be found to answer very well.”

You can read a copy of the news article as it first appeared on 30th April 1911 below:

104824419.pdf

Entanglements with Colour. An evening of talks celebrating the world-changing scientific discoveries of James Clerk Maxwell during his time at King's College London, on the 150th anniversary of his demonstration of the first colour photograph at Kings College, London.

Speakers:  Basil Mahon, Maxwell Biographer; Professor Frank James, Royal Institution; Mr William Ayliffe, Gresham Professor of Physic Professor John Ellis, Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics, King's College London

All are welcome to attend, registration not neccessary (for planning purposes if would like to attend it would be extremely helpful if you could email anna.ashton@kcl.ac.uk).

For more events around this centenary see: http://maxwell.kcl.ac.uk/events/2011/entanglements-with-colour 

Yes. You did see it correctly! It is a photo of a man defecating on a beach.

But not just any ordinary man. It is the iconic photograph showing the French painter/illustrator, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, defecating on the beach at Le Crotoy in 1898. You can view this and more in an exhibition celebrating the first century of photography in France with vintage photographs using a variety of techniques and on all sorts of subjects, details of which can be found here.

Photo: Maurice Joyant, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec defecating on the beach at Le Crotoy, Picardie, 1898 - Diemar Noble.

John Burke was one of the first people to take photographs of Afghanistan, having travelled there during the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878 to 1880. His images of landscapes, cities and inhabitants provided a cue for Simon Norfolk to begin a new series of photographs in October 2010.

Burke photographed the Second Anglo-Afghan War in the late 1870s. Born in Ireland and employed as a tradesman, he applied to the British Army to work as an official photographer. But he paid his own way to Afghanistan, traveling through mountainous regions with a wooden 4-by-5-inch field camera. Not much is known about Burke’s personal life, other than his having been married at a church in Pakistan in 1886. “It’s like working with a shadow,” Mr. Norfolk said.

Norfolk’s work responds to Burke’s Afghan war scenes in the context of the contemporary conflict. Seeking out the original locations of these images or finding modern parallels with their subject matter, Norfolk’s new body of work depicts bomb-damaged buildings, local communities, soldiers and embassy workers, as well as uniquely contemporary sites such as internet cafés and wedding halls. Within the exhibition, these images will be presented alongside prints of Burke’s corresponding photographs, bringing history into close proximity with the present and drawing comparisons across a century of British involvement in the region. Also on display will be two original hand-illuminated Burke portfolios.

Details of the exhibition can found here. The New York Times Magazine of April 24, 2011 covers the images, and a longer piece in the newspaper's online Lens by Kerri MacDonald explores the relationship between the works of two photographers in greater detail which you can also read here. An accompany book has also been published which you can search for it from the Amazon link on the right.

Photo: Camp Scene Jellalabad, John Burke #86, 1879

Born to a family of lapidaries (precious stone merchants) in 1840 in Edinburgh, Thomas Begbie only took up photography in the late 1850s before becoming a member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1867. He set up a professional photography studio at 7 Leith Street (now the site of the St James Centre), and appeared in trade directories from 1874, advertising himself as a professional photographer from 1879-1881.

Begbie travelled all over the city to chronicle what he saw – from the Port of Leith and Newhaven with its fishwives and schooners docked onto the cobblestone quayside, to John Knox's house with a group of scruffy urchins outside, to Princes Street when Waverley Station was still under construction.

The Cavaye Collection of glass negatives by Begbie was discovered in a house in St James' Square in 1950, and is currently held at the City Art Centre. They cover a wide range of subjects, most notably Edinburgh's Old Town, but also the coastal communities of Leith, Granton and Newhaven and further afield such as Roslin and Stirling. Some of the photos in the collection pre-date the first record of his studio (in the 1880s) and it seems that Begbie was a teenager when he took them, which is quite extraordinary.

Now you can view some of Begbie's intimate images of Edinburgh in an exhibition here, and a news article here.

Registration has now opened for Polar Visual Culture: An International Conference, which will take place at the University of St Andrews on 17-18 June 2011. For speakers and registration details, see the conference website:

http://www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk/newsandevents/pvculture/

Convened by Natalie Adamson and Luke Gartlan, this conference brings together a diverse, internationally recognised group of scholars to present new research on the visual culture of polar exploration. We aim to focus attention upon the unique, prolific and hitherto under-examined visual culture - with a strong focus on photography, but also including film, painting and graphic illustration, expedition and frontier narratives, installations and poetic geographies - that the expeditions to the two polar regions have inspired since the early nineteenth century, and which forms a fundamental part of our perception of these environments.

We invite all those interested in these themes to register for this important conference and join us in St Andrews. 

De Montfort University is pleased to announce the availability of one Wilson Fellowship for its innovative MA course in Photographic History and Practice. The Fellowship offers £5,000 toward the defrayal of tuition and other costs related to the MA and is open to all students from the UK, EU and international. To apply for the Wilson Fellowship, please submit a piece of recent writing on photographic history no longer than 10,000 words, in English, to the Admissions Committee.

For applications to the MA, please contact Student Recruitment at the Faculty of Art and Design at artanddesign@dmu.ac.uk or apply online at www.ukpass.ac.uk.

For questions about the MA programme or the Wilson Fellowship please contact Programme Leader, Dr Kelley Wilder at kwilder@dmu.ac.uk.

The MA in Photographic History and Practice is the first course of its kind in the world. It lays the foundations for understanding the scope of photographic history and provides the tools to carry out the independent research in this larger context, working in particular from primary source material. In addition to our collaboration with the Wilson Centre for Photography Studies in London, we work closely with the collections of the National Media Museum, Bradford, the Central Library, Birmingham, the British Library and private collections throughout Britain. Students handle photographic material, learn analogue photographic processes, write history from objects in collections, compare historical photographic movements, and debate the canon of photographic history. They also learn about digital preservation and access issues through practical design projects involving website and database design.

Research Methods are a core component, providing students with essential handling, writing, digitizing and presentation skills needed for MA and research level work.

Further modules will encourage independent thinking in theory and in history writing, introduce students to methodologies commonly encountered in photographic history, and set the students on a course for finding their own MA dissertation topic. Students receive expert advice on the thesis topic of their choosing, which is written in the summer months and submitted in September, one year after the course begins, in the case of full time study, or two years in the case of part-time. For further details on the course and application process, please download a course brochure from the web site: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/art_and_design/pg_courses/photographic-history-practice.jsp

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is holding a special exhibition of 247 precious pictures taken by 114 famed photographers dating from from 1871 to 2011. The exhibition, titled “Eye of the Times: Centennial Images of Taiwan,” spans 140 years and is divided into three periods: the Qing Dynasty (1871-1895), the Japanese rule (1895-1949), and the R.O.C. in Taiwan (1949-2011).

It opens with a photo of Fort Zeelandia, Formosa in 1871 – now known as Anping Fortress, Tainan, Taiwan taken by Scottish travel photographer John Thomson on his first visit to Taiwan in 1871. It is believed to be the earliest well-kept image in the history of Taiwanese photography. After visiting southern Fujian in China, Thomson went to Taiwan by ship with James Laidlaw Maxwell, the first Presbyterian missionary to the island in 1865. They arrived in Dagou (now Kaohsiung) in early April 1871 and from Liouguei in Kaohsiung, headed north to Muzha in Taipei. Thomson took many photos of landscapes, rivers, valleys, harbors and indigenous tribes, especially the Pingpu, on the west of the island.

But before Thomson’s trip to the island, St. Julien Edwards active in Xiamen in the late 19th century was likely to be the first photographer to visit Maxwell’s mission in southern Taiwan, but unfortunately his pictures were not handed down.

Another Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay came to southern Taiwan from Canada in 1871. The following year he arrived in Danshui, northern Taiwan, with Rev. Hugh Richie and Dr. Matthew Dickson to start their missionary work because of Maxwell’s suggestion. Well-known and remembered in Taiwan for his outstanding contributions to the religious, educational and medical fields, Mackay married a local woman in 1878 and settled in Taiwan – his home for the rest of his life.

He established a number of important institutions that exist today. They include the Mackay Hospital; the Danshui Girl’s School, the first school for girls in Taiwan; and the Oxford College, now part of Aletheia University, Danshui. Practicing medicine in northern Taiwan, Mackay used a pair of pliers to help local people pull out their decayed teeth. In the exhibition, one picture collected by Aletheia University shows the missionary pulling a patient’s tooth in Danshui on an unknown day.

Chuang Ling, a veteran photographer and one of the exhibition’s curators, believes that through those photographers’ lenses, viewers can get a better understanding of early and modern Taiwan at the museum.

You can read the rest of the article here, and details of the exhibition here.

If you happen to be hiking in the Swiss Alps this summer, do drop in to the town of Vevey by the north shore of Lake Geneva to view this exhibition.

When the film on a flexible support appeared on the market in the 1880s, the whole world of photography was radically transformed. Cameras underwent a complete metamorphosis, rapidly becoming smaller and smaller and more and more sophisticated mechanically. The arrival of the film meant that a sequence of shots could be linked up and with the added advantage of glass-plate negatives, the use of cameras as a whole was greatly simplified, leading to a total revolution in the way people saw everything and communicated their observations. This was the beginning of the intensive activity of 20th Century photographers.

Long before George Eastman’s invention, Prudent René-Patrice Dagron, a chemist and photographer, produced the first type of film during the French-German war in 1870. On this occasion, important documents were reduced photographically onto a sheet of collodion, then transmitted by pigeon carriers to the besieged Parisians. When Eastman came up with the Kodak, a compact, user-friendly camera with a flexible film, promoted by the famous slogan "You press the button, we do the rest", photography rapidly became the witness of happy days for so many amateurs and their families. Photographic images, now accessible to one and all, suddenly became more spontaneous... This was the beginning of the intensive activity of 20th Century photographers.

This new exhibition portrays the ways in which photography has spread to all age groups, all social categories, amateurs and professionals alike. Visitors will be able to admire all kinds of photographic devices, many unusual, rare items and amazing applications, not forgetting the users themselves, whether behind or in front of the camera.

Details of the exhibition can be found here, and the official press release here: Le%20sie%CC%80cle%20du%20film%20communique%CC%81%20presse_GB.pdf:

Photo: 35 mm film, cellulose nitrate for the Cinématographe with Lumière perforations, and its metal box.

The Gernsheim Collection, published by the University of Texas Press, written by Roy Flukinger and designed by Pentagram, won the Fred Whitehead Award for Best Book Design at the Texas Institute of Letters 75th anniversary awards ceremony last Saturday.

The Gernsheim Collection housed at the Harry Ransom Center on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, is one of the most important photography collections in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, including the world’s earliest-known photograph, made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. Its encyclopedic scope—as well as the expertise and taste with which the Gernsheims built the collection—makes the Gernsheim Collection one of the world’s premier resources for the study and appreciation of the development of photography.

The Gernsheim Collection is an oversized 360-page volume, designed by Stout and Savasky, that presents masterpieces of the Gernsheim Collection, along with lesser-known images of great historical significance. Arranged in chronological order, this selection effectively constitutes a visual history of photography from its beginnings to the mid-twentieth century including iconic works by groundbreaking photographers like Sir William Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy Henry O’Sullivan, Eadweard J. Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Jean-Eugéne-Auguste Atget, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész, Brassai, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Arthur Rothstein, Robert Capa, Edward Weston, Arnold Newman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Aaron Siskind and Lucien Clergue.

Each photograph in the book is accompanied by an extensive annotation in which Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator at the Harry Ransom Center, describes the photograph’s place in the evolution of photography and also within the Gernsheim Collection itself. In a scholarly introduction Flukinger traces the Gernsheim’s passionate and colorful careers as collectors and pioneering historians of photography, showing how their untiring efforts significantly contributed to the acceptance of photography as a fine art form and as a field worthy of intellectual inquiry.

If you like to own a copy of this Award-winning book yourself as reference, just search for it on the Amazon link on the right.

The Photographers’ Gallery is due to reopen in a transformed space at Ramillies St in late 2011/early 2012, providing, for the first time in our history, artists, audiences and our funders with the high calibre facilities expected of a photography space in the 21st century. Opportunities for effective fundraising from the corporate, private, and public sector will be dramatically improved through the new facilities on offer.

Reporting to the Director and working closely with the 3 members of the development team, you will be responsible for developing and implementing the fundraising strategy to raise the revenue needs for the new gallery programme.

With at least 5 years minimum experience in revenue fundraising, with 2 years at senior level, you will have a proven track record of successful fundraising within the corporate sector and have some experience in securing grants from foundations, trusts and the public sector.

Closing date for application June 1st 2011

See: http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pid=243