Blogs

London's Autograph ABP has received £499,995 from the government's Creative Foundations Fund (CFF). The Fund has allocated £96 million to 74 arts and cultural venues to help theatres, performing arts venues, galleries and grassroots music venues address urgent infrastructure needs.

The government announced today that 130 cultural venues, museums and libraries are set to benefit from a £127.8 million funding boost, helping to ensure that everyone can access arts and culture in the places they call home. Those organisations receiving funding today mark the first projects receiving cash from the government’s Arts Everywhere Fund. As the cost of living continues to affect families across Britain, funding for these venues will help provide welcoming, affordable spaces for communities to visit, come together and celebrate what makes their local area special.

Autograph's director Professor Mark Sealy told BPH: 'Autograph’s project will replace two failing, business-critical elements at its Rivington Place building – the leaking roof membrane and deteriorating sanitaryware – to safeguard its galleries, collection, studios and tenant spaces. A new insulated Sarnafil roof and fully upgraded accessible bathroom facilities will improve our environmental performance, reduce maintenance needs, and protect both the building and Autograph’s photography collection from risk of damage.

These essential works respond directly to the needs of all our building users, ensuring the organisation can continue delivering high-quality cultural programmes for its diverse audiences and communities.'

Earlier this year, the Culture Secretary committed up to £1.5 billion to the cultural sector over this parliament, with the Arts Everywhere Fund aiming to save more than 1,000 cherished arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across England. Today’s £127.8 million which is administered and delivered by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is made up of three funds:

• the Creative Foundations Fund (CFF) has allocated £96 million to 74 arts and cultural venues; 
• the Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) has allocated a share of £25.5 million to support 28 museums to undertake vital infrastructure works; and
• the Libraries Improvement Fund (LIF) has allocated a share of £6.3 million to 28 library services to help upgrade buildings and technology to better meet the needs of the community. 

Autograph ABP is the only UK organisation directly involved in photography awarded a grant out of the three funds. 

See: https://autograph.org.uk/

Image: Autograph ABP's building in Rivington Place, London. © Michael Pritchard.

Widely considered one of the doyennes of late twentieth-century British photography, Dorothy Bohm was born Dorothea Israelit in Germany in 1924. Sent to the safety of England in 1939, she attended school in Sussex and studied photography in Manchester before setting up her own portrait studio there. In the late 1940s, inspired by a visit to the artists’ colony of Ascona in the Ticino, Switzerland, she started working outside the studio, capturing moments in ordinary lives with profound humanity and an instinctive eye for composition. Her first exhibition was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, in 1969, where she met Roland Penrose, who memorably commented that ‘her camera does not only see, it also feels.’ In the early 1970s Dorothy was involved with the founding of The Photographers’ Gallery in London, where alongside founder Sue Davies, she helped introduce a British public to the great names of contemporary photography, as well as to nurture the careers of younger photographers.

In the mid-1980s Dorothy abandoned black and white photography for colour, infusing her images with texture and spatial ambiguity to convey humanity in increasingly abstract and allusive forms. Dorothy Bohm died in March 2023 at the age of nearly 99. She had continued to take photographs until her early nineties.

Farley House and Gallery commented: 'We are delighted to exhibit About Women at the Lee Miller Gallery, a show that features a significant number of delightful images taken in Sussex in the 1960s and 1970s. This important exhibition includes both black and white, and colour photographs. Taken across the world over many decades with women as their subject, they capture moments in ordinary lives with profound humanity and an instinctive eye for composition. When asked, Dorothy stated: “I think of women as the most natural subjects for me.” The exhibition title is taken from her book About Women, which was first published 2015 and is still in print. Dorothy’s images of women are always intensely empathetic and, at times, reveal an astute, implicitly critical, awareness of the male gaze.'

Dorothy Bohm - About Women
Farleys House & Gallery, Chiddingly, East Sussex, BN8 6HW.
Open: Thursday, Friday, Sunday & selected Saturdays, April-October 1000- 1630
See: https://www.farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk/

Image: Dorothy Bohm, Goodwood. © Estate of Dorothy Bohm. 

A couple of lots in the forthcoming Flints Auction on 29 April caught BPH's eye. First up is a Thornton-Pickard Type C aerial camera c.1915. The camera is part of a whole outfit used by the Royal Flying Corps. It is estimated at £4000-6000. Alongside this is a TP Hythe Type III camera gun, and a collection of documents relating to 2/Lt. Frederick Charles Victor Laws a significant figure in the early development of aerial photography and aircraft-mounted cameras.

Elsewhere is a glass rummer engraved to H H Leithead form H H Bright, R Miller and F B Burdon, Hartlepool 1857. Opposite is an engraving of a collapible wet-plate camera. It is estimated at £100-200. The lot was previously offered in a ceramic auction in 2024. Leithead was a member of the Liverpool Photographic Society in 1858.  

A Kodak Wide Angle Camera, c1940, with Carl Zeiss Jena Protar f/18 85mm lens, black, serial no. 307509, body, G, lens, VG, some light internal haze, complete with three DDS, is of the type used by Bill Brandt for his distorted nudes. A copy of his Bill Brandt: Nudes 1945-1980, is also included. Estimate £700-1000. 

Fine Photographica
Wednesday 29th of April 2026 at 10:00 BST Lots: 1 to 543
See: https://www.flintsauctions.com/auction/details/fcam18-fine-photographica/?au=107

What is a photographic society or club? What defines an amateur? How do photographic clubs and societies foster community, educate, and serve as social networking bodies?  Assessing amateur photographic communities as a phenomenon is more urgent than ever because many of these minor groups were poorly documented at the time, and the majority of their collections have been broken up, dispersed, or lost. These amateur groups show the unrestricted flow of photographic knowledge, often through exhibition, unimpeded by geography or language, and made possible by the efficacy of print communities. Some amateur societies and clubs were founded for specific specialisms, concerns, and aesthetic preferences in a variety of locations, while others evolved from learned societies and earlier forms of education.

The earlier trend of forming clubs and societies for scientific and associational activity reflected broader developments in national and global trade economies. The variety of local photographic clubs and societies, as well as the benefits they provided, served as a vector for new ideas, new values, and new kinds of social alignment, as part of a larger surge in new forms of national, regional, and local identity inspired variously by, for instance, learned societies, Victorian arts and crafts organisations, or medieval guild influences.

Yet, much of this associational world can be traced back to British culture in ways that have not previously been considered. However, these networks and influences cannot be contained within ideas of ‘national traditions’. To recover these voluntary associations and practices requires more to be done to map and research the impact of transnational networks on British amateur communities, and a shared history, not only with Euro-North American networks, but also with global south countries like South America, Asia, and Africa, especially in the postwar years following rapid decolonialisation. It would seem timely to examine the culture of sharing ideas through the rich written world of photographic publishing; the work of foreign correspondents; the circulation of lantern sets and prints; and the mobility of photographers and artisans through transnational exchanges and rigorous theoretical and historical reflection. This will allow us to rethink the role of British culture in the development of amateur clubs and societies, and their wider historical relationships across national boundaries.

This hybrid one-day event builds on a one-day workshop at Birkbeck in May 2023 and opens a critical conversation about the under-researched origins and evolution of photographic clubs and societies around the world, and outlines new agendas to research, theorise, and interpret the variety of historical amateur circles that brought together technology, science, and art to enable a constituency of dedicated non-professional individuals to learn from one another.

We invite papers for 15 minute presentations that investigate this global network in relation to class, gender, race, and imperial legacies in the global south, including Latin America, Asia, and Africa, as well as the origins of this associational life in Britain’s medieval guilds, freemasonry, arts clubs, and learned societies.

What can mapping clubs and societies tell us about how people experience nationalistic and patriotic sentiment? How did the intensely local desire and sense of local distinctiveness translate to the national or transnational level? What approaches might we use now to analyse the sociability of these networks which emphasise local forms of belonging while connecting practitioners across geographical borders? How long did it take a photographic innovation to circle around the world? What were the well-established and less-travelled routes for exchanging photographic knowledge?

Proposals might explore, but are not limited to:

• The history of learned societies or arts clubs in Britain
• Early photographic clubs and societies in Britain between the 1840s and 1860s
• Links with other types of bodies and emerging disciplines that sponsored photographic sections such as literary and antiquarian, geological, natural history, medical, and archaeological societies, companies
• the rise and fall of national and provincial clubs and societies in Britain, Europe, and North America between the 1870s and 1930s
• The role of periodicals and books in drawing together societies and clubs and consolidating imagined communities
• Amateur circles in schools, universities, workplaces, and colonies, among others
• Localism demonstrated through flourishing local clubs and societies, and local learned journals
• The rise of early clubs in East Asian countries like China and Japan, and in Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Taiwan, and Vietnam after World War II
• The evolution of clubs in South America, India, and Africa between the 1950s and 1980s
• The relationship between class, gender, race, or imperial legacies and clubs, societies, and associations

 Paper proposals should be submitted as one Word or PDF document to Dr Jason Bate j.bate@bbk.ac.uk by Monday 29 June 2026. The document should include:

• Your full name
• Email address
• Institutional affiliation (when applicable)
• Paper title
• Proposal of no longer than 250 words for presentations of 15 minutes
• Indication of whether you would be presenting in person or online
• Short biographical note (100-150 words)

Event format: The event will take place at Birkbeck, the University of London (UK) in hybrid form, and we will be able to accommodate fifteen presentations. Eight speakers have already confirmed their attendance, including keynote speaker Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Professor Peter Buse, PhD student Sandrine Chene, Dr Sara Dominici, Dr Carolin Görgen, Dr Oh Soon-Hwa, Dr Michael Pritchard, and Dr Alise Tifentale.   

Importantly: Selected speakers will be invited to contribute extended versions of their papers to an edited volume on the same theme.

cfp: Globe-spanning Networks: Mapping Amateur Photographic Clubs and Societies in Local, National, and Transnational Contexts
Thursday 26 November 2026
Birkbeck, University of London, UK & hybrid
Deadline for paper proposals: by Monday 29 June 2026 to Dr Jason Bate j.bate@bbk.ac.uk

Image: Maidstone and Institute Camera Club outing, c.1908, Michael Pritchard collection. 

From the last decades of the nineteenth century onwards, photomechanical images assumed a central role in print production processes. With the development of new typographic techniques, technologies, and ad hoc materials, photography transformed into an ink image, circulating across a wide range of printed media, including newspapers, books, magazines, and postcards. Photomechanical images enabled the mass dissemination of cultural, political, and news events, the public reception of works of art, the transmission of scientific research, as well as the circulation of photography itself as an artistic language. In this way, the ink image became a modern instrument for understanding the world.

Over the past two decades, with seminal publications such as Forme e modelli del rotocalco italiano tra fascismo e guerra (De Berti, Piazzoni 2009) and Arte moltiplicata. L'immagine del ’900 italiano nello specchio dei rotocalchi (Cinelli et al. 2013), the circulation of photographic images—particularly in periodicals and illustrated magazines—has received increasing scholarly attention in Italy. The strongly transdisciplinary approach that has characterised recent conferences such as Periodicals: S.T.E.A.M. AHEAD! (Urbino, 2024), Testi, Immagini, Formati, Strutture. I linguaggi del giornalismo tra Otto e Novecento (Milan, 2025), and Testo e immagine nei periodici illustrati dell’Italia del boom (Milan, 2025) has encouraged new analytical perspectives on illustrated printed sources, although the focus has largely remained on their textual and visual content. Consequently, the material culture of photomechanical images and processes has so far been addressed only in a fragmentary and marginal manner. This differs from the international context, where the topic has been placed more centrally within ongoing research. Among the most significant initiatives in this field are the conferences De/Reconstructing Photomechanical Reproduction. Don’t Press Print (Bristol, 2021) and Photomechanical Prints: History, Technology, Aesthetics and Use (Washington, DC, 2023), as well as the Prague-based research group The Matrix of Photomechanical Reproductions: Histories of Remote Access to Art (2022–2027).

The Urbino study day aims to present a series of contributions situated within a transdisciplinary framework, addressing the use of photography in printed materials—including books, specialised journals, newspapers, illustrated magazines, postcards, etc.—as well as the objects connected to their production, such as clichés, proof prints, working materials and tools, and ephemera. Particular attention will be devoted to the Italian context, while remaining open to international comparison, within a chronological framework encompassing both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The study day aims to examine and give visibility to objects, processes, and dynamics that have thus far been overlooked by historiography, thereby opening new perspectives for the analysis and study of these materials.

Possible research topics include, but are not limited to:

• The study of technical aspects related to the production of photomechanical images;
• An investigation of the complex network of professionals involved in the processes mediating between the chemical image and the ink image;
• The analysis of the circulation and migration of photographic images in printed materials;
• A comparison between printed materials produced in Italy and in international contexts;
• The use of photomechanical material in artistic practices such as photocollage and photomontage;
• The relationship between the photographic image and textual, graphic, and typographic elements in editorial mise en page projects.

Among the objectives of the study day are:

• Highlight how photomechanical processes emerged in response to specific demands of the publishing industry and to the growing cultural need to illustrate printed products;
• Redefine existing hierarchies within the history of photography and the publishing industry;
• Investigate printed sources as material sites of re-semantisation that shape different contexts of sedimentation, reception, and use of photographic images;
• Shed light on how international models were reworked through Italian case studies;
• Analyse the processes through which the photographic image is transformed across different editorial, graphic, and typographic contexts.

Scholars, curators, museum professionals, and practitioners interested in participating are invited to submit a proposal for a 20-minute presentation by 22 May 2026 to both the following addresses: cristiana.sorrentino@unifi.it and francesca.strobino@labafirenze.com.

Proposals must be submitted in English and should include: an abstract specifying the methodological approach (approximately 3,000 characters / 400 words including spaces), a short biographical note (approximately 1,000 characters / 150 words including spaces), and an exemplifying image. The proposal should be sent as a single PDF file named Surname_Urbino_2026. Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by 30 June 2026.

A peer-reviewed volume collecting the contributions presented during the study day is planned for publication in early 2027 within the series Novecento e oltre, published by Urbino University Press. Participants will therefore be invited to submit a draft version of their paper at the time of the conference itself (1 October 2026).

The study day will take place in person in Urbino and will be conducted entirely in English.

Beyond the Image: Towards a Redefinition of the Photographic Object in Printed Materials in Italy
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
1 October 2026
cfp deadline: 22 May 2026
Details by emailing:  cristiana.sorrentino@unifi.it and francesca.strobino@labafirenze.com.

Organised by:

Marta Binazzi (University of Florence; Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Carlotta Castellani (Università of Urbino Carlo Bo)
Cristiana Sorrentino (University of Florence)
Francesca Strobino (LABA. Libera Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence)

Scientific Committee:

Geoffrey Belknap (National Museums Scotland)
Vincent Fröhlich (University of Marburg)
Mary Ikoniadou (Leeds School of Arts)
Nicoletta Leonardi (Brera Academy)
Irene Piazzoni (University of Milan)
Paolo Rusconi (University of Milan)
Tiziana Serena (University of Florence)
Petra Trnková (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Kelley Wilder (Professor Emerita De Montfort University, Leicester)

This fifth Museum Dialogues workshop explores how contemporary and historical photographers’ archives are accommodated both within museums and beyond public institutions. Contributors will share collection building and accessioning practices, examining remit and objectives, public access and the practical concerns involved in the custodianship of photographic archives. The discussion will offer strategies to enhance capacity and bring resources and visibility to photographer archive projects, including through research and public engagement initiatives. We will consider approaches to addressing issues of representation and concerns around equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as barriers to artists from diverse backgrounds and identities when entering the archive.

The workshop will also reflect on what is archived and the challenges of presenting ‘authentic’ photographer histories based on partial or incomplete records, and on opportunities of offering audiences alternative narratives.

Speakers confirmed so far: Weronika Kobylińska, President, Archeology of Photography Foundation, Poland; Hyunjung Son, Curator, Photography Seoul Museum of Art (Photo SeMA), South Korea.

Acquiring and Making Accessible Photographer Archives
Online via Zom, 6 May 2026 at 1300-1600 (BST)
Attendance is free but booking is essential.
Please find Speaker Biographies and Registration HERE

The BT Group Archives (BTGA) and University College London (UCL) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded doctoral studentship from 1st October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme. The student will critically investigate, develop and make use of new research methods, based on advances in machine learning and knowledge organisation, for exploring the significant moving image collection at BT Group Archives. This project will be jointly supervised by James Elder and Elspeth Millar (BTGA), and Professor Andrew Flinn and Dr Daniel Wilson, in the Department of Information Studies (DIS) at UCL. The student will be expected to spend time at both BT Group and UCL, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP-funded students across the UK.

Project Overview

BT Group Archives is engaged in a decade-long effort to digitise eighty years of moving image material held on vulnerable film and videotape formats. ‘Lossless’ digital copies are being created, linked to metadata, and made available. This throws up timely questions in relation to knowledge organisation and access that this PhD project will address in theory and practice.

The collection begins in the 1930s with the work of the GPO Film Unit (part of the UNESCO Memory of the World register) and continues without interruption to the present. The overriding theme of the collection is the transformation of communications and the creation of an ‘Information Society’, as recorded in the archive of this unique organisation, whose development charts key changes in twentieth-century British history. As the Post Office and then British Telecom, this changed from being a Government Department to a nationalised industry and then a private company. The archive therefore records the activities of a very significant organisation: employer of thousands, providing communications services to millions of customers.

Despite the collection being an important historical source, it would be prohibitively labour-intensive to make it available to potential users by cataloguing and organising it manually. Recent developments in audio recognition and computer vision, could potentially help create new catalogue metadata automatically, which could be structured and linked in flexible ways. The student will explore and develop the potential of these new methods, and themselves conduct a substantive piece of research showcasing new insights into the collection and new forms of enquiry more generally.

Outcomes of the doctoral project could include: comprehensive new metadata for the moving image collection; publishable code and documentation and a substantive research paper. The student may also develop workshops and teaching material to widen engagement with this new material, as well as a proof-of-concept – practical and theoretical – for the creation of re-usable methods for BTGA as well as other archives facing similar challenges. Such methods should aim to aid discoverability while addressing the complex challenges facing the uses of ‘AI’ in the sector as a whole. The written component of the thesis will be adjusted to reflect these other forms of output.

Moving the Frame: New Computational Practices for the Description and Organisation of the BT Film Collection
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) Studentship
Closes: 24 April 2026
Details: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanities/news/ahrc-collaborative-doctoral-partnership-cdp-studentship-0

Frank Watson examines the relationship between photography and sound. This week: Frank's guests are Ian Walker and Hazel Donkin. They speak about their latest book about the American photographic artist Frederick Sommer, his life and work, entitled Frederick Sommer - A World Of Bonds (Routledge 2026). For more information visit thesoundofphotography.com. 

The Sound of Photography is a radio programme hosted by Frank Watson on Resonance 104.4fm and is also available online at www.resonancefm.com You will find an archive of the weekly programmes that revolve around a guest photographer, curator, writer and others associated with photography. There is also a mix of music associated with themes of each show.  Frank Watson is also a practising photographer. For further information visit www.frankwatsonphotography.com

The Sound of Photography
10 April 2026 at 1430 [Repeats Saturday 0700.]
See: https://www.resonancefm.com/schedule/2026-04-10

A handful of prints of Egyptian subjects, both ancient and 'modern', surfaced in Bolton Museum's Chadwick archive recently. Three were easily attibuted to a photographer or a studio but the photographers of the other prints are unknown. The prints have been pasted onto board with annotation by hand or including press cuttings, possibly prepared for exhibition display.  [BPH: please be aware some of the images below show human remains]

We would like to know of anyone can identify the photographers who are not already attributed.

First, the photographs from known sources:

And the images by other photographers:

This convening at Dimbola, Cameron's former home on the Isle of Wight, offers visits and talks reflecting on the poetry, theatricals, bohemian lifestyle, Christianity and myriad connections through Anglo-Indian society that inspired her photographs. Images have been selected from the several collections of Cameron’s work and in particular from the extensive RPS Collection at the V&A, together with others given to the V&A by Cameron herself or purchased from her.

Two recent developments have influenced the content of this event, Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters currently showing at Watts Galley (closing 4 May 2026) with an accompanying publication and also new research by Aneela de Soysa into Julia Margaret Cameron’s final years of photography in Sri Lanka.

The programme includes a series of themed talks over two days - 5 and 6 June, plus optional visits and workshops. 

Friday, 5th June – This day focuses on CAMERON + FRESHWATER, with a guided tour by Chairman Brian Hinton, a walk on Tennyson’s Trail, and talks on her life before she began her career in photography.

Saturday, 6th June – The morning focuses on CAMERON + THEATRICS, with talks on G.F. Watts, the Pattle Sisters, and Cameron’s second studio and theatre. In the afternoon, we turn to another significant chapter of her life—CAMERON + CEYLON (current day Sri Lanka) —through a series of talks and a panel discussion.

Sunday, 7th June – The convening concludes with a hands-on cyanotype workshop and a final curated walk through Freshwater.

Pre-Convening Day – Thursday, 4th June - A guided tour of Farringford, home of the Tennysons from 1853 to 1892; Queen Victoria’s Osborne House; and All Saints Church in Freshwater, the final resting place of several members of Cameron’s Freshwater circle. Contact the co-organiser directly to take part.

See the full programme and book here.

Image (detail): Julia Margaret Cameron, 'A Group of Kalutara Peasants', albumen print, 1878. RPS Collection at the V&A Museum, London.

On BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life award-winning photographer Sir Don McCullin talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences and formative experiences. He started out in the late 1950s documenting the working-class lives in the north London neighbourhood in which he had grown up. Employed by the Observer newspaper, and later the Sunday Times, McCullin photographs captured scenes of struggle, despair and violence. Travelling to the front lines of conflict zones in Cyprus, Beirut, Vietnam, Cambodia, Biafra, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, McCullin earned a hard-won reputation as one of the greatest war photographers of all time. In recent years he has focused his lens on the beauty of the natural world, particularly the landscape around his home in Somerset. His work is held in permanent collections around the world including the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A. He was knighted in 2017 for services to photography.

Listen here on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002tbzn Those outside of the UK may need to use a VPN to access. 

Past episodes include Annie Leibovitz, Sebastião Salgado, and Martin Parr.

In this talk from her forthcoming book, Leigh Raiford examines how Black people use photography to make home in the world. She focuses on a selection of Black American activists and artists, (Marcus Garvey, James Van Der Zee, Eslanda Goode Robeson, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Dawoud Bey, Sadie Barnette) to explore the complex relationship between racialized subjects and the medium of photography. As they traveled the world for study, for work, for pleasure, or for survival, these artists and activists took and collected photographs to express their political platforms and personal sense of self.

Raiford considers the everyday image-making practices that these Black Americans employed to improve the condition of Black lives globally by imagining, identifying, inhabiting, leaving, defending, and destroying “home.” Raiford shows how these figures did not merely utilize photography to emplace themselves in the world—they demonstrated how the use of photography is itself a way to mediate one’s relationship to the world.

Leigh Raiford is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, curates and writes about Black visuality and world-making.  Raiford is the author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (2011), When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World (forthcoming, 2026) and, co-author with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas and Laura Wexler of Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography (2024). Most recently, Raiford is Series Editor with Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Deborah Willis of Vision and Justice, an imprint of Aperture Books.

Organised by By/For: Photography & Democracy, a new collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler. 

When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World
Leigh Raiford
Online, Friday, April 10, 2026 1300-1400 (EST) | 1800-1900 (BST)
Register here: https://www.byforcollective.com/programs/z57zhmwpucxi72twa12sxkqvzd52g5

The Arts Organisations at Trongate103 in Glasgow's city centre are facing closure due to their leases being terminated by City Property, following a massive and unsustainable rent increase. Seven organisations occupy the Trongate 103 building - including Transmission Gallery, Street Level Photography and Glasgow Print Studio which are facing demands for approximately £700,000 in extra yearly expenditure, representing increases of quadruple previous rent levels.

Street Level Photoworks has been supporting photography since 1989 and is led by Malcolm Dickson. 

A pettition has been launched to save the venue. The organisers state:

'Trongate103 is one of the last visual arts venues remaining in the city, especially after the recent closure of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). Losing it would be a devastating blow to Glasgow's vibrant cultural scene'

Glasgow has long been celebrated for its rich cultural and artistic heritage. The city is home to dozens of creatives, artists, and communities. Trongate103 has been at the heart of this, offering a space for art, creativity, and expression that has enlivened the city centre and contributed enormously to the local economy. With its closure, we risk obliterating Glasgow's creative cultural legacy.

The decision by City Property to terminate the leases, citing a rent increase that places the arts organisations in an impossible financial situation, undermines Glasgow's identity as a city that supports and cherishes culture. These organisations, which have tirelessly worked to sustain the arts despite financial hardships, deserve our support and our actions to stand with them.

We call upon the Glasgow City Council and City Property to reconsider their decision, revoking the unsustainable rent increase and ensuring that Trongate103 and its associated arts organisations can continue to thrive.

By preserving spaces like Trongate103, we uphold the city's reputation as a leader in the arts and cultural innovation. With your support, we can urge the council to find a sustainable solution that allows these vital arts venues to remain open.

Sign this petition to protect Glasgow's cultural legacy, safeguard the arts community, and ensure that creativity continues to flourish in our city.'

At the time of writing some 22,496 people had signed the petition. 

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/save-trongate103-from-closure  and read about Street Level Photoworks: https://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/

This 43-minute documentary film combines ethnography with history and heritage to narrate the story of African movement eastwards through the Indian Ocean World and beyond to the Pacific Ocean. The film highlights African music as a vibrant legacy through the genres of manja, kaffrinha and baila in Sri Lanka. Ancient migrations less known than the transAtlantic African movement to the Americas are brought to the fore.  Moreover, the achievements of some enslaved Africans in the East, albeit freed, within the sociocultural worlds that they entered into, are unparalleled in the Atlantic World.

The film will be of interest to those concerned with lost African diasporas globally.  Film producer, Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, will be present at the event and there will an opportunity for Q&A and discussion after the screening.

Indian Ocean African Migrants Film Screening
with producer Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya
Saturday, 11 April 2026, 1100-1215, free, no booking required
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
See: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/indian-ocean-african-migrants-film-screening

In this ‘Conversation’ piece, Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards discuss the relationship between photography and history as it manifests itself through the photographic legacies of Southern Africa. The specific historical experience of the Southern Africa has given rise to a realisation of the potential of photographs as drivers for historical thinking and analysis, the way photographs ‘move history forward’. The Conversation addresses major questions that resonate through the discourse and politics of global photographies—about the conditions of visibility, the problematics of Western photo-theory and of the language of photographic and historiographical analysis as viewed from the Global South.

Photography and history: a view from Southern Africa
Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards in conversation
Journal of the British Academy, 14(1) - open access
See: https://journal.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/articles/14/1/a02

Museums etc has just published Behind the Screens. Mussel fishing in Norfolk featuring the photography of Ken Smith. Within a remote coastal landscape, generations-old skills and traditional beliefs flourish. All work is manual. The pace steady. Tools hand-made from the hedgerows. Boats rowed, not powered. The language poetic. And mussel beds are washed fresh by the tides. But this environment, which looks marginal, is in fact central. Pairing haunting documentary images with oral history and contemporary commentary, Behind The Screens shines a light on the economic processes that underlie every aspect of our lives. Even in the most unexpected places.

Behind the Screens. Mussel fishing in Norfolk
Ken Smith
Museums etc, 2026
£28, 96 pages
Read more and details: https://museumsetc.com/products/behind-the-screens

The latest issue of the free print and online publication The Classic is now available to view. The issue includes articles on photographers Fan Ho, Carlo Mollino, and Germany's first art director Willy Fleckhaus, and a feature on collecting beyond the print: copper photogravure plates, negatives, contact sheets and more. 

Download here: https://theclassicphotomag.com/the-classic-15/

In celebration of Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday and in association with the Marilyn Monroe estate, the National Portrait Gallery will present Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait (4 June – 6 September 2026). This major exhibition will celebrate the life and work of one of the most famous women of the 20^th century through portraits. It will explore the role she played in her own image making, and her inspiration on photographers and artists in her lifetime and long after.

Born on 1 June 1926, Monroe remains a defining presence in popular culture. From the earliest pin-up photographs made when she was a young model named Norma Jeane, to her last interview for Life Magazine and the poignant final images taken on Santa Monica beach in 1962, she was one of the most photographed people in the world, and fascinated and inspired some of its greatest artists. The exhibition will bring together works by Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler and Audrey Flack, alongside photographs by over 20 era-defining photographers including Cecil Beaton, Philippe Halsman, Bernard of Hollywood, André de Dienes, Eve Arnold, Inge Morath, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Milton Greene, Sam Shaw, Richard Avedon and George Barris.

The exhibition will also feature previously unseen photographs from Life magazine; intimate portraits taken by Allan Grant at Monroe's Brentwood residence just one day before her death in August 1962. Grant's exclusive session, which accompanied her final interview with Life associate editor Richard Meryman, captured 432 images of which only eight were originally published. These dynamic photographs show Monroe reading the transcript of her interview, performing a range of emotions from joy and contentment to quiet reflection.

Photographers who worked with Monroe described her as the best subject they had ever had. The exhibition will foreground Monroe's collaborative approach to image making and her creative agency; she not only performed, but also directed sessions and claimed the right to veto any images she did not like.

The shock of Monroe's death in 1962 was a catalyst for the production of numerous portraits by artists on both sides of the Atlantic. British Pop artist Pauline Boty, a devoted fan, worked through her grief in paintings including The Only Blonde in the World (1963) and Colour Her Gone (1962). In New York, Andy Warhol created his iconic screen prints. Based on a publicity still taken to promote the film Niagara (1953), Warhol isolated Monroe's face against a field of gold, enshrining her like a Byzantine saint. In Warhol's work, Monroe was no longer just a movie star, but the great American icon. James Francis Gill made his triptych Marilyn (1962), while Joseph Cornell assembled delicate memorial boxes dedicated to Monroe. Monroe continues to fascinate artists, drawn to her iconic presence and fascinating life.

The exhibition is curated by Rosie Broadley, Joint Head of Curatorial and Senior Curator of 20th Century Collections, and Georgia Atienza, Assistant Curator of Photography. 

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
4 June-6 September 2026
London, National Portrait Gallery
See: www.npg.org.uk 

Images: L-R: Marilyn Monroe, 1962, by Allan Grant, © 1962 MM LLC (Photographs by Allan Grant), www.marilynslostphotos.com; Marilyn Monroe, Mount Sinai, Long Island, 1952, by Eve Arnold, © Eve Arnold Estate; Marilyn Monroe, 1955, by Milton H. Greene, © 1962 MM LLC (Photograph by Allan Grant); Colour Her Gone, 1962, by Pauline Boty. © Pauline Boty Estate, Reproduction by permission of Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund and the Friends of Wolverhampton Arts and Heritage.

The University of Salford and The Sustainable Darkroom are excited to announce a 2-day conference to coincide with the launch of The Sustainable Darkroom’s new book, Bury After Reading: The Afterlife of Images. For six years, The Sustainable Darkroom has fostered an international community dedicated to rethinking photography in an age of climate and ecological crisis. While many seek quick technical fixes for sustainability, our approach has aimed to look deeper—beyond material substitutions—towards more nuanced, critical, and imaginative understandings of what photography is and what it can become.

On the publication of the new book Bury After Reading: The Afterlife of Images this conference and exhibition celebrate the community of practice developed through the Sustainable Darkroom and asks how we create radical new visions for the future of photography.

Seeds of Change: exploring regenerative practices in analogue and digital photography
New Adelphi Building, University of Salford M5 4WT
Thursday 29 - Friday 30 October 2026

Deadline for submissions: Monday 27 April
Notification of Acceptance: Early June
Call for papers, art works and workshops here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kz1G79ueP1ilAfL15Df5swE2UrmFilgI/view
Submit proposals here: Open Call: Seeds of Change – Fill in form

Queries relating to the call or conference email:  artdes-sap@salford.ac.uk