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A new exhibition of previously unseen works by Magnum photographer Werner Bischof has opened at Lacock’s Fox Talbot Museum, in collaboration with Magnum Photos. An early adopter of colour photography through his use of the Devin Tri-Color camera, Unseen Colour brings the photojournalist’s re-discovered colour work to UK audiences for the first time. Bischof became an associate member of Magnum in 1948 and a full-member from 1949. Lacock, which is cared for by the National Trust, is hosting the exhibition for a full year in the gallery space of the museum.

Largely considered one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, Werner Bischof’s iconic images explored what it is to be human. Famed for his black and white photojournalism of the post-war world, Bischof used the Devin Tri-Color camera  from 1939 onwards for fashion, still life and documentary work. In 2016, decades after Werner’s death (he died in 1954, aged 38), his son Marco discovered the glass negatives taken by the camera, carefully stored in triplicate. ‘They were always treated with special reverence.’ he says, ‘In their steel cabinets, they formed a kind of ‘mysterious room’. Composed of one identical image captured three times through different colour filters: red, green and blue, the resulting photos have an incredible resolution and unmistakable colour intensity.

Working with scanning specialists, Marco Bischof and Tania Kuhn of the Werner Bischof Estate worked over several years to bring the Devin Tri-Color  negatives back to light. The images in Unseen Colour, all taken in the late 1930s and early 1940s, present a treasure trove of previously unknown colour photographs.  

‘Werner Bischof wanted to become a painter, contrary to the ideas of his father, a factory director,’ says Marco, ‘he became a photographer, his love of colour has always accompanied him. In many situations, he would first sketch before he began to take photographs. Today we are amazed by these pictures. But anyone who takes a closer look at Bischof's work knows that he used colour from the very beginning.’

Curator Andy Cochrane says ‘it’s perfect that the UK premiere of Bischof’s Unseen Colour is at the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock. Henry Fox Talbot developed photography at Lacock as he couldn’t paint or draw. Constance Talbot is one of the world’s earliest women photographers, and unlike her husband Henry, preferred painting to photography. Werner Bischof’s exhibition at Lacock combines the ambitions and artistry of both Constance and Henry Fox Talbot.’    

The Fox Talbot Museum explores Henry Fox Talbot’s invention of the negative at Lacock Abbey in 1835, with exhibitions celebrating both historic and contemporary photographic techniques from photographers around the world. Unseen Colour is the first in a three-year programme of exhibitions curated in collaboration with Magnum Photos.

‘We are particularly pleased to show the exhibition at the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, the place where the first negative - also on glass – first had a home.’ Marco adds. 

Unseen Colour
 until 31 May 2026.
The Gallery, Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock
See: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/wiltshire/lacock/discover-photography-at-the-fox-talbot-museum#rt-the-fox-talbot-museum-at-lacock

 Images: top: Model with rose for beauty advertisement, Studio Photography, Zurich, Switzerland, 1939 © Werner Bischof Estate / Magnum Photos; left: Model with rose, colour filtered light, beauty advertisement, Studio Photography, Zurich, Switzerland, 1939 © Werner Bischof Estate / Magnum Photos

Finebooksmagazine has reported on the first display of a previously unseen photograph of the last lot on the final day at the sale of Charles Dickens' effects in 1870. The photograph by Edward Banes of Brompton, London, shows the auctioneer Franklin Homan selling the last last, a table which he had used as a rostrum during the sale. The lot was purchased by a Mr Ball who had requested the photograph. The taking of the photograph was described in the Photographic News on 19 August 1870. 

The photograph was purchased by the Museum in December 2024 from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, for £2,800, thanks to funding from The Dickens Fellowship. It is now on display one hundred years after the Charles Dickens Museum opened. 

BPH has also discovered that the photograph The Last Lot at Charles Dickens's Sale was registered by Edward Banes, Brompton, for copyright (See: British Journal of Photography, 26 August 1870, 406, and the registration should be available at the National Archives under COPY1 although does not appear online)

Read the original article here: https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/previouly-unseen-photograph-sale-charles-dickenss-belongings-display

The Dickens Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 1000 to 1700 at 48 Doughty Street, London. See: https://dickensmuseum.com/

Thanks to Steven Joseph for the Finebooksmagazine link.

The recently published book  Genève en photographies anciennes (Geneva in old photographs) is both a tribute to Geneva's pioneering photographers and a history of the city's urban development. Through some 200 photographs, most of them previously unpublished, drawn from their rich collection, Viviane and Christophe Blatt document the changing face of the city, from the walled city to the city of wide thoroughfares. The 210 photographs presented here show a face of Geneva that has now almost entirely disappeared. Most have never been published before, and the oldest photo in the book dates from 1850.  At that time, the city had changed very little since the eighteenth century. We can see the Place du Molard, still closed off from the lake, or the Île and its lower streets surrounded by a network of small houses and alleyways. As soon as the fortifications were demolished in 1849, the face of the city began to change: Latin-sailed barges unloaded the stones brought from Meillerie at the port of Eaux-Vives, to be used in the construction of ‘modern’ buildings. On the plateau des Tranchées, the Russian church stands out in the middle of a vast wasteland.

The beautiful preface by prof. Olivier Fatio underlines the contrast between Geneva's long medieval appearance and the dynamism of the Fazist revolution.

Geneva was home to a large number of photographers, pioneers of a nascent art form whose names are rarely known to the general public. These craftsmen were often painters or draughtsmen; there were also chemists, opticians and watchmakers. To succeed in their new profession, they had to have a sound knowledge of mechanics, optics and chemistry. This book is a tribute to our predecessors,’ explain Viviane and Christophe Blatt. Their work was long and complicated at the time, and 150 years on, their photographs still inspire us.

The book includes an introduction by Nicolas Crispini, photographer, photography historian and exhibition curator, who paints a vivid portrait of the history of photography and its great Genevan names. A detailed index also provides at-a-glance details of all the photographs on display: author, location, date, process and dimensions.

About the authors, Viviane and Christophe Blatt : Brought together by a shared passion for photography - they met at the Société Genevoise de Photographie over fifty years ago - Viviane and Christophe Blatt founded their company, Lightmotif, in 1977. Over the years, the photography workshop has been joined by an image bank representing 17 Swiss photographers, an iconography service, and a postcard and book publishing business. Passionate image seekers, their collection totals some 20,000 images, including around 3,000 from Geneva. The collection is marketed through the lightmotif-vintage.com website.

This new exhibition An English Eye, James Ravilious, is currently showing at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton, Devon. I've taken two farmer friends to see it in the last month, and they have loved it.

Details here: https://www.thelmahulbert.com/whats-on

It's on until the 28th June.

And if you haven't read James Ravilious - A Life by Robin Ravilious, I can highly recommend it. ISBN 9781908524942 (Hardback).

The book is for sale in the gallery shop.

James Ravilious: An English Eye
10 May 2025 - 28 June 2025
Thelma Hulbert Gallery
Tuesday– Saturday 10am – 5pm
Free Admission

Image: Archie Parkhouse reminising in a wood, Addisford, Dolton, Devon, 1974. Photography by James Ravilious © Beaford Arts-1360x691

I came across some negatives on early Eastman Transparent Film (I can't say anything more about that) which show some kind of sports day at a school or similar institution/organisation. Most of them are fun things like this tug of war (there is also a sack race etc.), rather than serious competition. The images were shot somewhere in the UK, around 1890, probably in the south of England (London, Bath or Bristol being likely options). The children have a distinctive uniform and cap, supervised by a top-hatted gent. There are buildings visible in the background, which may be connected, and one looks like a church/chapel tower. Possibly this is a private or charity school - or maybe an organisation of another kind. This is just a rough snap from curling film, reversed to be positive, but there's a reasonable amount of detail. If anything about this rings any bells or you have a thought about who might know, please do share your thoughts. Thanks!

The Paul Mellon Centre has announced its spring 2025 grants. The Centre received a total of 377 applications across ten awards, with a total of forty-four successful applications. You can view the full list of awards here. A number were given for phootgraphy research and to photography institutions: 

• Caroline Bressey (University College London) for the project Ordinary Lives: Photographic Encounters with Black Victorians (Mid-Career Fellowship)

and the following Event Support Grants: 

• AmberSide Trust to support the symposium Co-Authored Narratives: Socially Engaged Artistic Practices from the North East of England
• Ffotogallery to support the Feminist Library Series
• The Photographers’ Gallery to support the conference Visualising the Histories of Black Britain

The next round of funding opportunities will open for applications on Monday 4 August, closing 30 September 2025. The Autumn 2025 round will include all of the Centre's grants for organisations, as well as Author Grants, Research Support Grants and Andrew Wyld Research Support Grants for individuals.

Canaletto’s Camera explores the ways in which the great Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) made use of the camera obscura – the forerunner of the photographic camera – as an aid to drawing and painting. It surveys Canaletto’s contacts with contemporary Venetian and Paduan scientists, in particular Francesco Algarotti who wrote on Newton’s philosophy and the camera obscura. Canaletto also relied on many measured drawings of Venetian buildings by his colleague Antonio Visentini, a debt that has not previously been recognised.

Steadman proposes that Canaletto used the camera for two purposes: tracing from real scenes, and copying and collaging drawings and engravings by other artists. By analysing camera sketches made by Canaletto in a notebook, he shows how the artist traced views in Venice and then altered the real scenes in his finished drawings and paintings. By using a reconstructed eighteenth-century design of camera obscura, the author and his colleagues have made drawings of views that Canaletto painted in London. Steadman has recreated both a veduta (a real view) and a capriccio (a fantasy) using Canaletto’s processes of ‘photomontage’. The experiments are detailed in the book, shedding new light on the artist’s procedures, and emphasising how weak and permeable the boundary is between the two types of picture.

Canaletto’s Camera
Philip Steadman
UCL Press, 5 June 2025
https://uclpress.co.uk/book/canalettos-camera/

The renowned American photographer Shane Balkowitsch will be talking about his career as an ambrotypist in Bismarck, North Dakota, and his extraordinary project to create 1000 portraits of Native American people using this 170-year old photographic technique. There will also be an opportunity to view many of Shane's original collodion photographs on glass which have been donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as his publications about the project.

In 2023-4, Shane's work was highlighted in the exhibition Collaborating With The Past at Pitt Rivers Museum.

Talk by Shane Balkowitsch
Tuesday 5 August, 14.00 - 15.30 
Westwood Room, Oxford University Museum of Natural History 
In person, free event. All welcome. No booking required.
See: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/talk-by-shane-balkowitsch

Shane will also be attending the Wet Plate Collodion Weekend at Guy’s Cliffe House in Warwick, on 8-9 August 2025

In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce successfully captured a view from his window in the French hamlet Le Gras, using physical and chemical means to produce a permanent image. Even though Niépce’s earliest results predate this “Vue de la fenêtre” by several years, and despite the well-known fact that the Frenchman was not the only one who felt a “desire” at that time to embark on such novel forms of image making, the forthcoming year will initiate an extended period of commemorations. Beginning in 2026 and proceeding for almost a decade and a half, we will meet manifold occasions to celebrate the bicentenary of the “invention of photography.”

Such dates, dictated by a somewhat questionable calendar of media history, can easily obscure the true complexity of photography. A remarkably broad spectrum of technologies, materialities, applications, and practices has emerged. The anniversary invites us to consider photography as an ever-evolving concept. Since the beginning of public interest in the medium, there have been widespread discussions on how to “develop” and “improve” such technologies. Thus, the idea of photography has been wedded to discourses that establish and guide our thinking about the future.

Raising the question “What Will Photography Be?”, the third Essen Symposium for Photography in February 2026 aims at newly addressing interest in the medium’s prospective forms and uses. We invite speculations that critically engage with recent developments in the open and much-diversified field of visual media and try to position photography’s future role within such a realm. How will photographic media participate in the dynamics of current technological advancements? Furthermore, how can photography impact and promote such developments with respect to social, artistic, scientific, and everyday practices?

Some decades ago, the advent of digitally processed media stimulated widespread predictions of an “end” or even “death” of photography. In the meantime, such eschatology has proven to be misleading in understanding what photography is and will be. However, current debates on the impact of artificial intelligence, machine vision, and generative technologies revitalize such dire phantasies. In today’s context of ubiquitous imaging technologies—from smartphone cameras to radiology, micro- and telescopes, via satellites, drones, CCTV, and missiles to the perceptual infrastructures of autonomous systems—photography continuously emerges as an operative function of planetary media ecologies. It spans techno-political systems and participates in the reconfiguration of perceptual and epistemic conditions.

Competing perspectives on the future are inevitable, but every prediction ultimately implies a statement about the present. From where we stand now, we can only look ahead—or “speculate” in the word’s literal sense. We invite speculations that overcome ideas of an ending. Instead, we privilege dynamic models for reckoning with visual media’s evolution as complex remediation processes. They can help emphasize how the ecosystem of media has evolved as an ongoing process of recombining, merging, and integrating technologies and practices. How can we apply such an understanding to future forms of photographic media?

We are interested in ideas about photography’s future roles in social, artistic, scientific, and everyday realms. At the same time, we must return to the basic assumption driving such interests: What will we mean when we say “photography”? Will we discuss specific techniques, aesthetics, or practices bound to visual images? Keeping the lessons taught by “operational images” in mind, will we leave the idea of the visual behind us? In short, what will be our point of reference when we address something as “photography”?

We invite critical speculations that refer to three strands of interests:

1. Technologies and Aesthetics

• How will quantum computers change the status of the photographic through new (visually representable) causality?
• How will further nanofication of optical and computational technology extend, undermine, or change modes of perception?
• Nostalgia resurfaces in AI images that revive past aesthetics to legitimize their extractive modes of production. What role will photographic aesthetics play in relation to future image spheres?
• What metaphors do we use to describe current technological transformations, and what functions do they serve aesthetically, conceptually, and economically?

2. Theories and Methods

• What theoretical tools will we need to approach the expanding cosmos of visual media? How can established theories of photography make a meaningful contribution to discussions of novel forms of image-making?
• How will we learn from the ongoing migration of concepts from lens-based to virtual media?
• What will addressing an image as “photographic” mean and imply?
• How will we incorporate the lessons that “operational images” have taught us? Will concepts of the visual still be central to our understanding of photography?
• How will new forms of image production reshape how we conceive, address, and interpret the manifold histories of photography?

3. Politics and Agencies

• What will the impact of future forms of photography be on tomorrow’s societies and politics? When addressing this question, can we escape an exclusively dystopian frame
• What forms of labor will future forms of photography enable?
• Will photography contribute to creating a public sphere where critical discourse is increasingly shaped and controlled by algorithms and corporate interests?
• Will photography serve as a critical tool of political resistance—and how?
• How do we tackle the ambivalent potential between enhanced surveillance and democratic participation?

We welcome proposals from an interdisciplinary field of research. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send a title, 500-word abstract of the proposed presentation, and a brief CV. Please email your proposal in one PDF by July 31, 2025, at the latest, to:zentrumfuerfotografie@folkwang-uni.de

The Essen Center for Photography will provide lodging and reimburse the incurred expenses for economy-class travel.

Film Atlas has been released. It is a collaborative project from FIAF and the George Eastman Museum and seeks to provide an international visual guide to every motion picture film format, sound track and colour process - more than 600. As an encyclopedic online resource it pairs pair high resolution imagery with scholarly essays to document the history of film as a physical medium from the dawn of cinema to the present.

Facilitated by collaboration between international archives, this dynamic reference, research and teaching tool offers a comprehensive visual guide to every motion picture film format, soundtrack, 3-D and color process ever invented.

See: https://www.filmatlas.com/

This special issue of PhotoResearcher aims to inspire scholars, curators, and artists to reflect on photography festivals in an academic context and to investigate them as a phenomenon; a particular mode of presentation, circulation, and production of images.

Although photography festivals are not yet an established field of research in the history or theory of photography, readers of PhotoResearcher No. 43 will encounter a combination of international voices positioning festivals in a variety of socio-cultural settings: As engines of collaboration with local museums, as contributors to the visibility of the climate crisis, as engines of artistic production, etc. The inspiration behind this publication stems from the desire to honour the legacy of Belfast Photo Festival, which was founded back in 2009, and to take stock of how it changed the ecosystem which gave rise to it. Also, this collaborative publication expands BPF’s experiences through the journal’s authors and their unique perspectives in order to learn from them and to keep this unique form of experiencing photography alive and thriving.

PhotoResearcher No. 43
"Photography & Festivals: 15 Years Belfast Photo Festival"
Guest-editor: Michael Weir, CEO Belfast Photo Festival
Editor-in-chief: Dr. Hanin Hannouch, President of the European Society for the History of Photography 
Graphic Design: Bernhard Schorner
Image Editing: Robert Vanis

The journal’s editorial is open-access and can be downloaded here.

To order this special issue of PhotoResearcher: 
UK Residents order here or you can also visit Belfast Photo Festival's Photobook library in Botanic Gardens, Belfast from 5-30th June to buy a copy.
EU + Rest of the World Residents order here

Hannah Crowdy
New Resonances in Museum Collections: The Ulster Museum and Belfast Photo Festival

Vivienne Gamble
Vital Exchanges and Encounters: Photography Festivals and the City

Michael Weir in Conversation with Pål Otnes
Elective Affinities

Mafalda Ruão & Krzysztof Candrowicz
A Photography Festival Cosmology: On Social and Environmental Responsibility and Visual Activism

Toby Smith
Festivals as Climate Protest: An Opportunity?

Tom Seymour
The Future of Photography Festivals: A British-Irish Perspective

Founder Michael Weir in Conversation with Sebah Chaudhry
Looking Forward and Looking Back: 15 Years of Belfast Photo Festival

Louise Fedotov-Clements
Afterword