Blogs

BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme will look at the invention of photography on 7 July 2016. Melvyn Bragg and guests, Elizabeth Edwards, Alison Morrison-Low and Simon Schaffer, will discuss the development of photography in the 1830s, when techniques for 'drawing with light' evolved to the stage where, in 1839, both Daguerre and Fox Talbot made claims for its invention. These followed the development of the camera obscura, and experiments by such as Thomas Wedgwood and Nicéphore Niépce, and led to rapid changes in the 1840s as more people captured images with the Daguerreotype and calotype. These new techniques changed the aesthetics of the age and, before long, inspired claims that painting was now dead.

The programme will be available on the iPlayer shortly after broadcast. 

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07j699g

Special Auction Services of Newbury is to auction a group of material relating to Arthur E Morton FRPS, a pioneer of early colour photography, both still and moving. He was an exponent of Autochrome and Paget colour process and Kinemacolour.  

The full catalogue which also includes the exceptional Mike Simkin magic lantern and pre-cinema collection is available here: http://www.specialauctionservices.com/large/cm070716/index.html. The Morton material is lots 314-371. 

I have just found out that the Bourne and Shepard Photo studio in Kolkata has closed. For more information:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/8668353651/after-176-years-bourne-shepard-kolkata-photography-studio-closes-its-doors

Several months ago, I acquired a number of very old British photo books at auction.  Plan to donate them to the library at Southern Methodist University.  Problem is that I have no way of ascertaining their value as can find no listings anywhere.  Any help or suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated.  They include:

Yearbook of Photography 1867; G. Warton Simpson, editor; Office of Photographic News, publisher.

Yearbook of Photography 1881; H. Barden Pritchard, editor; Piper & Carter, publisher.

Yearbook of Photography 1887; Thomas Bolos, editor; Piper & Carter, publisher.  Includes a silver print.

Photography Annual 1892; Henry Strumey, editor; Iliffe & Son, publisher.

Photography Annual 1897; Henry Strumey, editor; Iliffe & Son, publisher.

Lighting in Photographic Studios; P.C. Duchochois; 1890.

Photography with Emulsions; Capt. W de Abney; Piper & Carter, publisher; 1885.

Due to a health related withdrawal I have again one space available for this fantastic 5-day Lacock Intensive Collodion Workshop (6-10 July 2016, Manger Barn, Lacock).

It goes down to the basics of collodion photography. You'll learn how to make strong collodion negatives and how to print them on albumen paper. This includes of course how to make albumen as well as the coating and sensitizing of your own photographic paper.

You can find detailed information on my website www.collodion.org.uk

If you can't make it this year, I'm already planning next years workshop, which will be either Going Big with the 20x16in camera or the dry collodion process.

Send PM for details.

The picture shows Lacock Abbey albumen print from whole-plate collodion negative, 2015.

'Pictorialism' as a loosely constituted, international movement advocating photography’s assimilation into the traditional fine arts, succeeded to the extent that it fostered widespread acceptance of the medium as 'art' prior to World War I, but failed in the post-War period as its aesthetic agenda was condemned as 'anti-modernist', agrarian, bourgeois, and imitative of an outmoded, idealizing painting.

The purpose of this symposium, and the retrospective exhibition of the works of Clarence H. White that it accompanies, is to reconsider and complicate the stylistic goals, methods, influences, politics, and social networks of photographers who identified as 'pictorialists' and yet produced works that ranged from book and magazine illustrations, commercial portraits, fashion photos, to Salon prints, and from sharp-focus, silver bromides to multiple-gums. White’s own career serves as a model for the ways that aspiring art photographers responded to changing economic, political, and aesthetic conditions from the fin-de-siècle to the Roaring Twenties, thus straining the very definition of what “pictorialism” might mean.

Our friends at the William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné project have announced the news that Brian Liddy, formerly curator of collections access at the National Media Museum, Bradford, has been appointed the project's first research assistant.

BPH will bring news of former NMeM staff in due course. 

Read more about Brian's appointment here: http://foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/blog/ and why not sign up for the weekly blog alert at the same time?

Two jobs are being advertised by the National Media Museum, Bradford. Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology, to manage, develop, research, interpret and present the collections of the National Media Museum, To work with a wide range of different partners – academics, enthusiasts, communities – to foster knowledge of the collections and their scientific, technological and cultural significance, and to inspire audience understanding of and engagement with these collections;

and Collections Project Manager,The National Media Museum is planning to transfer the Royal Photographic Society Collection to the V&A.  This project will enable the V&A to invest in cataloguing and digitising the collection in order to provide greater public access. This role offers an opportunity to play a central role in ensuring the future one of the best photography collections in the country.  You will be responsible for planning and co-ordinating efficient and effective delivery of the work packages to time and budget, in close collaboration with colleagues at NMeM and the V&A. You will bring together specialist teams and contractors, and liaise closely to consider and advise on opportunities, impacts, logistics and dependencies.

For full details see: https://vacancies.nmsi.ac.uk/VacancyDetails.aspx?FromSearch=True&MenuID=6Dqy3cKIDOg=&VacancyID=1351 and https://vacancies.nmsi.ac.uk/VacancyDetails.aspx?FromSearch=True&MenuID=6Dqy3cKIDOg=&VacancyID=1350

Autograph APB is to present the first major exhibition of photographs by Raphael Albert (1935-2009), cultural promoter and photographer of black beauty pageants in west London from the late 1960s to the 1980s. The exhibition runs from 8 July-24 September 2016 and admission is free.

For more than three decades, Albert documented hundreds of popular dance, music and community events while building up a special portfolio of portraits of aspiring models. His long and successful career as a promoter and chronicler of beauty pageants included the establishment of Miss Black and Beautiful, Miss West Indies in Great Britain, and Miss Grenada. Albert, who came to England from Grenada in 1953, also founded his own magazine Charisma in 1984, and associated modelling school. In response to contemporaneous mainstream fashion and lifestyle platforms where black women were largely absent or at best marginal, these competitions celebrated the global ‘Black is Beautiful’ aesthetic of the 1970s in a local context.

Together with the obligatory bathing costumes and high heels, contestants often sported large Afro hairstyles, inventing and reinventing themselves on stage while articulating a particular black femininity as part of a widely contested cultural performance. These pageants offered the opportunity to create a distinct space for Afro-Caribbean self-articulation, a wager against invisibility, and importantly, a site to challenge conventional notions of beauty implicated in the social, cultural, and political contexts of the time.

The exhibition's curator, Renée Mussai says: "This historical archive offers a unique and fascinating collection of rarely seen photographs that document the ambivalent cultural performance of gendered and raced identities at a particular historical conjuncture. Imbued with an exquisite, revolutionary sensuality and a certain joie de vivre, Raphael Albert’s photographs embody an aura of hedonistic confidence in a new generation of black women coming of age in Britain during the 1970s, fuelled by complex (body) politics of national identity, difference and desire."

After Albert’s death in 2009, Autograph ABP began working with two of the photographer’s daughters, Vikkie Albert and Susan Ibuanokpe, to preserve his extensive collection of negatives and prints - a dedicated portfolio is now represented as part of the Autograph ABP Archive & Research Centre.

The exhibition will showcase over 50 modern exclusive black and white fibre prints, colour and vintage photographs, as well as a selection of archive materials and ephemera. Many of these photographs are now shown for the first time as a curated selection, carefully selected and produced from original negatives.

Raphael Albert Raphael Albert (1935-2009) was born on the Caribbean island of Grenada. After moving to London in the 1950s, he studied photography at Ealing Technical College whilst working part-time at Lyons cake factory. Albert then became a freelance photographer working for black British newspapers such as West Indian World – for whom one of his first assignments was documenting Miss Jamaica. He also took pictures for The Gleaner, Caribbean Times and New World. In 1970 he established the local contest Miss Black and Beautiful, followed in 1974 by Miss Teenager of the West Indies in Great Britain and Miss West Indies in Great Britain. He organised and photographed numerous pageants celebrating black British beauty throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s and eventually founded his own modelling school. He remained committed to capturing the Caribbean communities in his London area throughout his life, often taking home-studio portrait photographs for local families, and avidly documenting weddings, christenings, and other social events. In 2007 Albert presented a Black History Month display of his work entitled Miss West Indies in Great Britain: Celebrating 30 Years of Beauty Pageants (1963-1993) at the Hammersmith and Fulham Information Centre.

See more here: http://autograph-abp.co.uk/exhibitions/miss-black-and-beautiful

Image: Raphael Albert, Miss Black & Beautiful Sybil McLean with fellow contestants, Hammersmith Palais, London, 1972. From the portfolio 'Black Beauty Pageants'. Courtesy of © Raphael Albert/Autograph ABP

A petition, which will be presented to the mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône has been launched to support musée Nicéphore Niépce. Nearly 5000 people have already signed. The highly regarded museum has suffered 60 per cent budget cuts over the past two years and the petition asks the mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône to guarantee the financial resources necessary for the operation of the museum.

The public service mission and activities of the museum are being challenged by budgetary restrictions imposed by the municipality: including a nearly 60 per cent budget cut and an acquisition budget cut from €43,000 in 2015 to €14 000 in 2016. The cuts will have serious consequences on the collection, exhibitions and cultural mediation.

The collection was conceived and developed since 1974, and has nearly 3 million images, objects and books. It is one of the richest devoted to photography in France and Europe. The active acquisition policy, focusing on contemporary photography, provides institutional and international recognition to photographers.Temporary exhibitions support a highly regarded cultural public service mission and foster public discussion. 

See and sign the petition here.

See the museum's English website here to read more: http://en.museeniepce.com/

The advent of photography in 1839 catapulted Victorian society into a new age of science, art and leisure. Previously only the wealthy could possess a painted portrait, but photography was cheaper and democratised the privilege of owning a likeness. A variety of forms soon emerged including the carte-de-visite, the daguerreotype, albumen prints, family photograph albums and stereoscopes.

This exhibition explores some of the ways that early photography was enjoyed by a society that quickly become obsessed with the new technology. See how the industry boomed and the culture of celebrity was born.

Close Up & Personal: Victorians & Their Photographs is a new interactive exhibition of photography and photographic items from the Watts Gallery Collection, with loans from the London Stereoscopic Company. See images of Victorian celebrities, and discover the rise of photography as art through the images of Julia Margaret Cameron and Henry Holiday. Interact with stereoscopic viewers (the first 3D photographic technique), and take a Victorian-style selfie.

Events

24 June: Watts at Dusk: Camera Obscura

16 July: Watts Academy Workshop: Pinhole Cameras

25 July: Study Day: Victorian Stereoscopes with Denis Pellerin

29 July: Watts at Dusk: Light & Shadow

4, 11, 18, 25 August: Free Family Drop-in: Photography Studio

19 August: One Day Workshop: Photography

25 August: Curator Breakfast Tour

12, 19, 26 Sept, 3, 10 October: Five Week History of Art & Design Course: Photography in the Victorian Age with Colin Ford CBE Hon FRPS, Bronwen Colquhoun, Denis Pellerin, Rhian Addison and Hilary Underwood

12 October: Evening Talk: The Dawn of Photography - From the Camera Obscura to the Kodak Brownie with Rob Dickins

See more at: http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/en-gb/whats-on/close-personal-victorians-their-photographs/

Watts Gallery Artists' Village, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford, Surrey, GU3 1DQ

The Moscow Multimedia Art Museum has announced the launch of a new portal, History of Russia in Photographs, which exhibits around 80,000 photos dating from 1860 to 2000. The museum's director, Olga Sviblovo, said the portal's goal was to unite all museum and private photo collections in order to create a 'visual Wikipedia on Russian history in photos.'

Sliders allow a user to select and see photographs from a particular period or images can be search by name or keyword. 'We're now developing the site's English version and perfecting the auto translator because searching on the site is done through tags'. explained Sviblova.  Google's auto translate facility provides a workable site, although tags are in Cyrillic at the moment. 

The project brings together photographic material from all of Moscow's museums and the state archive, as well as with regional museums and the heirs of well-known Russian photographers. Users can also post their own photos, enhance the images and act as curators by creating their own exhibitions with accompanying texts and comments. 

See: https://russiainphoto.ru/

Image: Stallion Lyudmil, c.1860-1870s. From the collection of the Grand Duke Nicholas. Source: MAMM / MDF.

While St Andrews is world-renowned as the home of golf, BPH readers will know the important role the town has played nationally and internationally in photography from the 1840s to today. A new photography festival, which launches in August, will celebrate the role and importance of St Andrews in the world of photography and engage with those who live, work in and visit the town.

BID Chairman, Alistair Lang, explains: “We are one of the most photographed and filmed towns in the world, yet few realise much of the technology we enjoy the benefits of today began with the work of a collection of photographic pioneers who lived and worked in St Andrews in the 1800s.”

Dr John Adamson is perhaps the most celebrated – a blue plaque adorns the wall of his former home in the town on South St, now The Adamson Restaurant. But many other names are to be celebrated for the role they played, including Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair, David Octavius Hill, Robert Adamson, Thomas Rodger and Sir David Brewster.

The first six-week-long festival – from August 1 to 11 September - will see events and exhibitions focus on the earliest days of photography in St Andrews as well as Scottish documentary photography over the last 175 years and contemporary photography.

The festival will put some of the photographic highlights of the University of St Andrews Library Special Collections on show as well as creating a showcase for contemporary Scottish photography. 

Up to 15 local businesses will be involved, including cafés and restaurants, hosting small-scale exhibitions. There will also be tours, seminars, workshops and talks including guest photographers as well as workshops to demonstrate a variety of photographic processes including calotype and collodion - two of the earliest and those used by the town’s renowned pioneers of the art.

The exhibitions will include:

• 175 Years of Scottish Photography
• A 40th Anniversary retrospective of Edinburgh’s Stills Gallery
• Pioneers Thomas Rodger - who set up the first purpose-built photographic studio in St Andrews in 1849 - and Robert Moyes Adam
• Renowned Press photographers George M. Cowie and Harry Papadopoulos
• Documentary photographers Franki Raffles, David Peat, Dr Hamish Brown MBE, Sean Dooley and Document Scotland (Colin McPherson, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard and Stephen McLaren)
• Photographic artists Calum Colvin RSA OBE, Kit Martin and Keny Drew

There will also be a number of events, including a ‘Become a Street Photographer’ youth workshop, a Victorian Tintype Studio, a photographic tour of St Andrews and talks by photographers including Hamish Brown on his travels in Morocco. 

Alistair adds: “Today’s technology ensures we can all be photographers and we’re inviting everyone to be a part of this unique festival which we hope will become a regular fixture in the town’s calendar.”

“This event is about participation – engaging with people who live and work in the town as well as those visiting during the festival. We’ll also be using the event to reach out to those who like, follow and otherwise engage with us on digital and social media channels worldwide…using photographs.”

“The festival includes indoor and outdoor venues – making use of the town’s stunning setting and landscape to showcase work and engage with photographers of all ages. It will also provide an opportunity for businesses across the town to get involved and interact with customers in new ways.”

The St Andrews Photography Festival will run from 1 August to 11 September 2016.

For details as they’re revealed, go to the Festival Facebook page at www.facebook.com/StAndPhotoFest/

I am asking members here for help in identifying this nude albumen photo. 20 x 16.5 cm oval print laid onto stiff card, with an ink inscription lower right: Octavie.

This came from a British album recently purchased in Derbyshire, containing hundreds of erotic albumen prints of paintings and sculptures, all female nudes. This was the only "from life' print, save for some later "Zulu" Nude photos.

I can imagine a Gentleman in his grand country house keeping this in a locked drawer in the library, for his own perusal!

A lovely photo, I think, especially with the crown and cross necklace. The seller thought that 'Octavie' may be a sly, almost anagram of "Victoria".  I'm not so sure, My thought was a classic Greek or Roman allegory, but then the cross makes no sense. I haven't figured out the name Octavie...

I believe it to be 1860's-70's, but have not found a similar image from either England or France. It seems to my eye to be too stiff and formal to be a French nude.

I rely on the wealth of knowledge here to help with conjectures...

Many thanks in advance, 

David

You may not have seen, but last week Manohar Aich , the Indian bodybuilder died at the remarkable age of 104. He was known as the 'Pocket Hercules', as he was under 5 feet tall, but his feats were legendary and he won Mr Universe in 1952.

I mention this because when he came to London in 1952 he stayed with my Grandfather S.D.Jouhar, who took a series of pictures of Manohar, one of which you can see here.

If you want to read a more comprehensive obituary of this man you can find it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-36457508

I finally got around to scanning some more of my black and white archive, this time further photographs from a trip to England in 1993 forming a new sequence. The photographs picture my now ageing mother (these were taken over 20 years ago), an English fair, medieval tiles and Highgate Cemetery, among other subjects. They become especially poignant after the recent passing of my father.

The image of  my mother plays off against a land that is noting an absence - maybe an absence of a certain type of yang force... even the "strong draught horse" seems to come from another time. My mentor said of the sequence: "Wow - that is really good Marcus". Praise I value highly indeed.

The photographs form a sequence and should be viewed horizontally. Please click on the long small image to see them in this format when viewing on Art Blart. See the full sequence at http://wp.me/pn2J2-842

Dr Marcus Bunyan

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991 - 1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan but can be used freely anywhere with the proper acknowledgement. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus Bunyan
An English fair
1993

Marcus Bunyan
Medieval tiles
1993

Marcus Bunyan
Covered figure with flowers
1993

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On 30 June there is a party to celebrate Studies in Photography the journal of the Scottish Society for the History of Photography SSHoP) at the Scottosh National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. From the relaunch of the journal will appear as a twice yearly publication with this Anniversary Edition that takes as its inspiration the 1996 edition which featured the work of several photographers who exhibited in the seminal exhibition Light From the Dark Room at the National Galleries of Scotland in 1995.

International Photography Curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Anne Lyden, will welcome guests followed by distinguished photographic artist Alexander Hamilton, Chair of SSHoP (Scottish Society for the History of Photography), who will introduce us to the work of the society and its journal, which is now for the first time available to the general public.

Edinburgh based photographic artist and co-editor of SSHoP’s biannual publication, Robin Gillanders, will announce forthcoming events and lectures.

Members of SSHoP committee will be present along with a number of renowned photographers featured in the journal to meet attendees, sign books and discuss their work, including Patricia Macdonald, Catriona Grant, David Williams, Calum Colvin, Owen Logan, Ron O’Donnell, Ian Stewart and Thomas Joshua Cooper.

Enjoy an evening of live jazz, drinks and receive a 15% off* purchases made on the night, including Studies in Photography and publications by key photographers from the Society.

The SNPG Gallery will be open for viewing during the event until 7pm.

See more here: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/events-calendar/scottish-society-for-the-history-of-photography-journal-launch-party/date/2016-06-09/interval/0/

Two more titles have appeared in the RAI Anthropology and Photography on-line pamphlet series. Catherine de Lorenzo and Juno Gemes, From Resistance Towards Invisibility and Shireen Walton, Photographic Truth in Motion: The Case of Iranian Photoblogs. 

Both are available without charge to download at: https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-and-photography

At the turn of the twentieth century, Robert Demachy (1859-1936) was one of the most famous photographers in the world. As the leader of the French school of pictorial photography, he fought tirelessly for the recognition of photography as a means of artistic creation. Demachy remains particularly important for his masterly use of pigment processes which enabled pictorial photographers to deeply modify the print for the sake of 'interpretation', then considered as the ultimate way to give a photograph its artistic value.

Robert Demachy’s work is far from being limited to these very impressive achievements.This exhibition gathers a hundred photographs, most hitherto unseen which show the breadth of his photography. 

Normandy was a haven, as much as a source of inspiration, for Demachy, an aesthete who, although belonging to the Parisian upper class, dreamt of a simple life in the country. He was very fond of the Côte Fleurie where he spent each summer and which became the setting of many of his landscapes, portraits and snapshots.

The exhibition Robert Demachy. Impressions de Normandie was conceived as a journey. A journey through the Calvados region for one, but more importantly a journey into the creation of a photographic work from the creation of the negative to the public exhibition of a personal interpretation of the initial subject. Eighty years after his death in a small country house on the heights of Hennequeville (near Trouville), the Musée Villa Montebello has decided to pay tribute to Robert Demachy, a true artist and lover of Normandy who had elected, as a means of expression, not the brush, the pencil or the chisel, but the camera.

Curated by Julien Faure-Conorton, this exhibition is part of the 'Normandie Impressionniste' Festival. A catalogue (in French) is published in conjunction with the exhibition (Cahiers du Temps Editions, 120 pages).

See more here: http://www.cahiersdutemps.fr/robert-demachy-impressions-de-normandie-f218028.html

Robert Demachy. Impressions de Normandie. Photographies du Calvados 1880-1920
June 18, 2016 – September 25, 2016
Open: Wednesday to Sunday – 10am to noon and 2pm to 5.30pm

Musée Villa Montebello
64, rue Général Leclerc - Trouville-sur-Mer, France
www.museevillamontebello.com

Image: Robert Demachy, Trouville Harbour, 1911-1914, oil transfer print, private collection.

Philippe Garner, who held the first photography auction in the United Kingdom in 1971 at Sotheby's and then moved, via Phillips, to Christie's in 2004, retired from the auction world on 31 May 2016.

Garner joined Sotheby's training scheme in 1970. In March 1971, he took charge of the fledgling department devoted to Art Nouveau and Art Deco and was also asked to coordinate the first specialist auction of photographs in the United Kingdom, scheduled for December 21^st that year. Photographs were one of the new fields in the innovative programme of Sotheby’s Belgravia, a satellite auction project devoted to overlooked areas of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. After thirty-one years with Sotheby’s, Garner joined Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg in September 2002 and moved to Christie's in 2004 as their International Head of Photographs and of 20^th Century Decorative Art & Design.

Garner has built an international reputation for the breadth and depth of his knowledge. Among the highlights of his auction career were the historic dispersals in 1999 and 2002 of photographs from the celebrated collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes.  

Garner has been a trustee of the Photographers' Gallery, London and he currently sits on the Advisory Board of the National Media Museum and on the Board of the Helmut Newton Foundation. Among his particular interests is the story of fashion and its related areas of photography and he has published widely on this field, producing monographs on Cecil Beaton and 60s photographer John Cowan and essays on numerous photographers including Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, and Irving Penn.  Garner has also curated a number of exhibitions including ‘A Seaside Album – photographs and memory’ in 2003, drawn from his own collection of the history of photography in the town of Brighton, and ‘Antonioni’s Blow-Up’ in 2006, exploring photography within this cult film.  Garner was contributed texts to publications for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Albertina, Vienna, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Garner received The Royal Photographic Society's Award for Outstanding Service to Photography in 2011.

He has been a key figure in the development of photography’s place in the art market as well as supporting photography more widely during his career.  A video of Garner talking about the market for photography and his role can be watched here. 

See also: http://www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/2016/06/01/article/15990788

Image: Philippe Garner / © Christie's

This post was updated on 29 August 2016 with additional information supplied by Philippe Garmer.