Blogs

This one-day symposium at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter invites conversations on photography and photographic collections in the South West and wider UK in relation to aspects of place. Photographs relate to place in various ways including their documenting capacity and the direct inscription of the world on their surface. Therefore, photographs directly inform our imagination of a place. How do collections like this develop? In turn, a specific place can also inspire the work of photographers and photographic artists: the symposium includes a focus on Dartmoor, in particular.

Speakers include Liz Wells (curator, writer and Professor in Photographic Culture at Plymouth University), Garry Fabian Miller (Dartmoor-based photographic artist), Bronwen Colquhoun (Senior Curator of Photography, National Museum Wales), Jo Bradford (Dartmoor-based photographic artist and founder of Green Island Studios), Emma Down (Hidden Histories Project Archivist, Beaford Archive), Catherine Troiano (Curator, National Photography Collections, National Trust), Brendan Barry (Exeter-based photographer, lecturer and educator, founder & director of Positive Light Projects) and Mark Haworth-Booth (former Senior Curator of Photography at the V&A).

The symposium will coincide with a small photography display at RAMM on ‘Rivers, Trees and Landmarks’.

Collecting regions - Photography and a sense of place
Wednesday, 18 September 2019
1000 - 1700 
Further information here: https://exeterramm.admit-one.eu/?p=tickets&perfCode=3498&ev=4189

I would welcome any information about this company, set up around 1890 in Athens by Mr Shirley Clifford Atchley. Its photographs of architectural and archaeological sites were  commercially available via the firm of Beck and Barth, who had a shop in Syntagma Square and a link to the booksellers Eleftheroudakis (founded 1898). 

Email: Chris Stray  c.a.stray@swan.ac.uk

In a new blog post 'from the vaults' Rachel Nordstrom, Photographic Collections Manager, at St Andrews University's special collections discusses the restoration of two daguerreotypes in the collections using the new technique of electro-cleaning which was first described in 2016. Two daguerreotypes subjected to the technique: one showing a man with a scientific instrument, now identified as a ‘spark generator’; the second, was a group of four men (J D Forbes, Rev. William Brown, Hugh Lyon Playfair and Dr George Buist), by Antoine Claudet.

The before and after photographs show the effectiveness of  the technique. The work was undertaken by Dr Mike Robinson.  

You will be able to see the results  during the St Andrews Photography Festival as the theme for this year is Science & Photography. Check the festival website events line up for further details, specifically on the ‘Science Treasure from Special Collections’ visit on 22 October at Martyrs Kirk.

Read the full blog here: https://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/electrifying-daguerreotypes/

Dr Mike Robinson is taking his highly acclaimed daguerreotype workshop to St Andrews, the birthplace of Scottish photography. Co-hosted by the University of St Andrews, the three-day daguerreotype workshop is the first time a mercury-based daguerreotype workshop has been held in the country.

The course is limited to six participants and each participant will have two finished and housed daguerreotypes to take with them at the end of the workshop. 

The course fee is $1250 and all equipment and materials are provided. Early booking is advised. 

Delivered in partnership with the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock. 

To book: https://centurydarkroom.com/education

The V&A’s acquisition of the Royal Photographic Society collection from the Science Museum in 2017 has raised major questions about the place, role and nature of photography in museums, the shape of ‘collections’, the role and status of ‘non-collections’ of photographs, the practices and styles of history of photography, and the assumptions of museology.

The conference explores the dynamics of such themes across analogue and digital media, and considers the sprawling practices and deposits of photography in museums and galleries.  It will focus on the mass of photographs in museum holdings that fall outside formal ‘collections of photographs’, and explore the epistemic force and hierarchies of value to which photographs contribute as they remake, reproduce and solidify institutional values. What is ‘collected’ and what is not?  What are the shifting boundaries between ‘collections’ and ‘non-collections’?  How do ‘collections’ emerge and how are category shifts realised? How are photographs put to work within museums?  How do photographs form and cohere institutions and their practices? How are museum meanings made through photography? Finally, what are the interdisciplinary implications of these debates across, for instance, museum studies, history, art history, history of science and anthropology? 

With distinguished international speakers, including Dr Geoff Belknap (NSMM), Dr Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institute, Florence) and  Dr David Odo (Harvard University Collections) the conference gathers curators, conservators, academics and other specialists to consider the saturating role of photographs in museums, changing practices, and broader implications.

The conference is organised by the V&A Research Institute (VARI) and generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Institutional Life of Photographs

Victoria and Albert Museum, Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre

December 6-7, 2019

To book see: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/Vvq9oLvj/the-institutional-lives-of-photographs-dec-2019