Blogs

The third networking event of Museum Dialogues considers matters of curatorial interpretation and visitor experience, alongside ways of increasing access and representation of and for diverse communities.

In the first part of this online workshop, speakers and participants will discuss various institutional initiatives for active public engagement and ways to value everyone’s experience by levelling equity with equality. The session will explore non-traditional exhibition spaces, engaging with audiences outside the museum, and collaborations between artists, curators, and communities as effective means of addressing access challenges and expanding the reach of photography. In the second part, presentations focus on the diversity of representation in exhibitions and collections, and strategies of decolonisation.

Overarching questions for presentations and group discussion include:

• How can photography serve as an accessible medium to address broader social and political issues and processes relevant to diverse communities?
• What presentation and storytelling methods can provide more inclusive cross-cultural narratives and audience experiences?
• How can museum practices facilitate two-way interactions with audiences, enabling them to influence the museum’s role as a social site?
• What decolonial methods can museums and galleries use to allow for multiple interpretative frameworks?
• How can museums and galleries advance decolonising processes through photography and commissioning?
• How may commissioning open an institution’s discursive space?

Speakers include:

• Matteo Balduzzi, Senior Curator, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo, Italy
• Dr Sandra Križić Roban, Senior Advisor, Institute of Art History and Associate Professor, Academy of Fine Arts, Croatia
• Dr Emily Pugh, Principal Research Specialist, Getty Research Institute, USA
• Dr Tracy Stuber, Digital Humanities Specialist, Harvard University Art Museum, USA
• Dr Alexander Supartono, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

Rethinking Programming: Interpretation and Experience, Inclusion and Equity
Friday 12 July 2024, 9:45 – 16:00 BST, on zoom.
Free
Register HERE

We look forward to seeing you then!

Source magazine is seeking new writers and offering a £500 prize for the winning entry. All short listed entries will also be considered for publication or for paid future commissions.

Most of the writing in Source takes a specific form: book reviews, exhibition reviews or texts introducing sets of pictures, so these would be good models to follow. But we are also interested in others forms of writing so if you want to submit something in a different form then please do. Our interest in photography is not only about the photographs that appear in books and exhibitions; it touches most aspects of life and we like to read about those encounters too. This could be an article about a particular photograph of historical, aesthetic or biographical interest to you. It could be about some cultural or philosophical aspect of photography. It could be something we've not thought about. We enjoy writing that is thoughtful, funny, well researched and surprising. It could be personal or dispassionate. It could be fun, or deadly serious. It might shed new light on something we thought we knew or introduce us to something we've never heard of before.

Details here: https://www.source.ie/writingprize2024/

The limited number of complete runs of photography periodicals in libraries and special collections, as well as the absence of digitised and easily searchable runs of these journals acts as a constraint on research.  Initiatives such the 1970s microfilming of photography publications, to the RPS journal digitisation in the mid-2010s have shown the value of increasing their availability to students, academics, and the public. 

There is now a proposal to undertake a digitisation programme of some of the more significant photography journals to support a growing level of research in the field.  

This three-minute survey seeks your views as to what would be most useful. The results will be published in an anonymised form and will determine whether the initiative moves forward, or is trialled, pending a full rollout.

To participate click here: https://forms.office.com/r/LVcNZNESMn

Edinburgh's Stills Gallery is seeking a director, to further develop the work of Stills so that it meets strategic objectives agreed with the Board, and that the organisation retains and advances a high national and international reputation achieved through quality programming, excellent stakeholder relationships, optimum income generation and effective management. The Director will be expected to work across the following areas:

A bold new study of Julia Margaret Cameron’s Victorian photographs charts the legacy of colonialism following the 1857 Indian Uprising. Julia Margaret Cameron, the celebrated Victorian photographer, was a child of the colonies. Born in 1815 in Calcutta, she was the daughter of a governing official of the East India Company. After relocating to London in 1848, Cameron was embraced by other British expatriates and a celebrated cultural network. This circle included literary personalities like Thackeray and Tennyson, painters and critics associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and political figures like Thomas Babington Macaulay and Lord Lansdowne.
 
In 1857, Indians rebelled against British rule, and in London, Cameron became absorbed by news of the Uprising. In the aftermath of the revolt, national and imperial politics transfixed England, some seven years before Cameron took up photography. The impact of those forces, and the inspiration of the literary, artistic, and political works produced by her circle, influenced her earliest imagery. Through close readings of these photographs, which she assembled in photographic albums, this book exposes how Cameron embedded in her work a visual rhetoric of imperial power.

Jeff Rosen is a former academic dean at Loyola University Chicago and professor of art history at Columbia College Chicago. He is now a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Julia Margaret Cameron. The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography
Jeff Rosen
Paul Mellon Centre
£45, 292 Pages, 215 x 269 mm, 101 colour + b-w illus.
https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9781913107420/julia-margaret-cameron/

Photographers, particularly those in the North, will be sad to learn that after 26 years of supporting photographers and championing photography throughout the UK, Redeye, the Photography Network will wind down on 31 July 2024 due to a number of factors, including lack of funding.

Very sad - Redeye did some wonderful work over many years and I was so pleased to be involved with Paul Herrmann and the team over that time. With the Centre for British Photography on ice at the moment it is a worrying time for our independent photography community. 

From the Redeye Board:

Redeye was set up to advocate for photographers at every level and build networks across photography, delivering an innovative and vital programme. We are actively continuing to explore potential options for new provision of this service and hope to make a further announcement in the near future.

Over the next few weeks, we will celebrate our proud history of giving a voice to photographers, helping with professional development, and providing a platform to share photography events, photographers’ work and relevant opportunities. We will mark the many achievements the network has made through the hard work and dedication of Redeye staff and its board of directors. We would like to thank all our members, supporters and the photographers who have helped shape us, particularly in the North of England.

Please continue to check this social channel and our website (link in bio) for further announcements in the coming weeks.

Lindsay Taylor, on behalf of the Board of Directors:
Geoff Crossley
Asif Salam
Liz Wewiora
Suzanne St Clare
Verity Adriana
Simon Hyde

Redeye was created in 1998 by a group of photographers who met in Manchester to discuss research into what the region's practitioners needed in regard to North West Arts.With many facilities in demand such as darkrooms, exhibition spaces and help with legal matters, they decided that most photographers needed an environment in which they could network and learn from each other. By the beginning of 1999 these meetings had become regular. Some of the group, chaired by Len Grant, volunteered to help run the organisation. The award-winning British photographer Paul Hill gave the first of six talks that launched Redeye events in October 1999. The first paid member of staff was appointed in 2001, and a co-ordinator was selected the next year.

Image: Redeye, The Photography Network’s logo