Where can I find more information about 'Watkins & Hill', Opticians from London. I bought a stereo daguerreotype from them, depicting the 1st duke of Wellington. Were they photographers? Or only resellers?
In my current library I can't find much... So I would like to learn more!
Feel free to post here or private: wouter.lambrechts@kdg.be
I noticed this write-up for the Royal Collection Trust's exhibition of Roger Fenton's work on the following website: https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/roger-fentons-photographs-of-the-crimea/the-queens-gallery-buckingham
Published in contemporary newspaper reports, Fenton's photographs showed the impact of war to the general public for the first time. Through his often subtle and poetic interpretations Fenton created the genre of war photography, showing his extraordinary genius in capturing the futility of war.
I may be wrong, but, as far as I am aware, Fenton's photographs were not published in contemporary newspapers because the technology was not available in the 1850s. Perhaps the RCT meant engravings of his photographs. I am not sure how many of Fenton’s photographs were reproduced in newspapers as engravings, but perhaps some reader will be able to answer that question.
I also believe that Fenton did not intend to or indeed capture the futility of war in his images taken in the Crimea. To my mind, the closest he came to showing the downside of war was photographing the graves in the Cathcart's Hill Cemetery (left).
Fenton's iconic The Valley of the Shadow of War is indeed an emotive image of war, but is it anti-war? Fenton himself dressed in a Zouave's uniform (see above) and carried a rifle for a portrait in his hut at Balaklava, which was probably taken by his assistant Marcus Sparling. Was that the action of a man who was subtly and poetically trying to capture the futility of war?
I trust that this will stimulate some discussion..
David R Jones
To mark the launch of major project to digitise the Architectural Association Archives' historic lantern slide collection, a distinguished panel of speakers will discuss the resurgence of the analog, the spectre of a digital dark age and the meaning and challenges of photographic seeing within the analog and the digital.
Seeing Slowly: The Analog in Photography
The event will be held as part of the AA Collections talks and will take place on 18th February, 2019, at 18:30 (AA Lecture Hall), 34-36 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3ES
Speakers:
Sue Barr holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art and is head of Photography at the AA. She works and exhibits internationally, most recently as part of the AutoPhoto exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
Daniel Blochwitz is an independent curator as well as artistic director of photo basel, the Swiss art fair dedicated to photography and photo-based art. He has taught photography in courses, workshops and lectures at various universities and schools in the United States and Europe and his own photo-based work has been exhibited and published internationally.
Juliet Hacking is Programme Director for Sotheby’s Institute of Art MA course in Contemporary Art. Prior to this, she held the position of Head of the Photographs Department at Sotheby’s auction house in London. She is the author of 'Lives of the Great Photographers' (2015), general editor of 'Photography: The Whole Story' (2012), and has recently published ‘Photography and the Art Market’ (2018).
Gil Pasternak is Reader in Social and Political Photographic Cultures in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University, where he also leads the Photographic History MA Programme. Earlier in his career he worked as a photojournalist and a war photographer in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in South Lebanon. He also practiced fine art photography and presented his work in a number of art galleries, including Tate Modern, the ICA, Machida Municipal Print Museum (Tokyo) and Kodeljevo Grad (Slovenia).
John Spinks is a renowned photographer who started his early career in fashion portraiture and commercial work for publications including Vogue, The Face, i-D, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the New York Times. He has also contributed to campaigns for Levi’s, Selfridges, Shinola and the menswear label Albam. His more recent work includes the evocative and highly acclaimed book, ‘The New Village’ (Bemojake, 2017) - a portrait of a Warwickshire mining village taken over a 17 year period using large format, 10 x 8 plates.
The Art Newspaper has reviewed the Don McCullin retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain and has taken the opportunity to look at the position of photography in Britain's principal museum. It says: The Tate show symbolises a shift in photography’s significance in British museums, and not just because the Tate is correcting its historic disregard. Last year, the V&A opened phase one of its Photography Centre, an expanded permanent space for photography. Despite collecting photography since its earliest years in the mid-19th century, the museum had waited until 1998 before assigning it a dedicated space. There are vast photographic collections at the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester, and at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). At the NPG, in particular, there has been an increasing volume of (often extremely popular) photography exhibitions over the past decade.
Read the full piece here
With the introduction of photography in the 19th century, printers no longer had to transfer the image manually onto the printing surface, but were offered the possibility to transfer the image by sensitizing the printing surface and exposing it to light, through a negative or positive depending on the printing technique.
With computer technology, negative or positive film is often no longer necessary. The image is transformed into dots by the computer and the image is transferred to the printing surface by light exposure in the machine.
Since their invention photomechanical printing techniques have continued to develop further. There are many similar variations of the same technique, each named differently by its inventor. This can be very confusing in the process of identification.
In this seminar the most important photomechanical techniques of relief, intaglio, planographic, screen and digital prints will be presented.
The different techniques (artistic and reproduction) will be examined by studying original prints under magnification. Two participants will share a stereomicroscope. The distinctive characteristics of each technique will be worked out through closely looking at the original prints, and exercises in identification.
The two day course provides an opportunity to look at a great number and variety of original prints and to develop skills in the identification of their techniques. There will also be the opportunity to compare photomechanical with manual prints.
Registration requests should be sent to: hombu@freenet.de
Hildegard Homburger, Papierrestaurierung, 10555 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 30 3912503
Seminar: Identification of photomechanical prints
June 13-14, 2019 at Papierrestaurierung Hildegard Homburger, 10555 Berlin, Germany
Hosted by Hildegard Homburger in cooperation with the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Archiv- Buch- und Grafikrestauratoren
The language of the seminar will be English.
Maximum participants: 8
Costs: 335 Euro or 290 Euro for IADA-members
See: http://www.hildegard-homburger.de/photomechanisch1.html
Why print a photograph in 2019? We are witnessing the historic transformation of photography from tangible objects—prints, plates, and negatives—to code: intangible bits, bytes, and pixels. As the tether between visual culture and the material world is recalibrated every day, a new form of literacy is required to draw meaning from physical media and its obsolescence. At the very moment when characterization and interpretation of the printed photograph is rapidly gaining ground, the momentum toward dematerialization raises the issue of the long-term relevance and sustainability of photography as a material fact. Does the physical photograph still matter today—as a source for teaching, learning, and scholarship—and will it matter into the future?
This three-day program is organized by Paul Messier, Director of the Lens Media Lab at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage; Monica Bravo, Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Photographic Media at California College of the Arts; and colleagues at Yale University with the support and guidance of the FAIC Collaborative Workshops in Photograph Conservation advisory committee. The program and elective seminars will be geared for educators, students, curators, photographers and, particularly, for conservators whose core value proposition is most directly tied to the physical photograph. Insights from conservators, scholars, makers, and the art market will address the premise that physical photography is a closed set. The optional final day of the workshop will model interdisciplinary inquiry and seek to incubate collaborations focused on photography as a medium both material and immaterial. New tools will be examined for characterizing and contextualizing the photograph both as object and disembodied image.
September 23 -25, 2019
Yale University, New Haven, CT
A Collaborative Workshop in Photograph Conservation
See more here: https://learning.conservation-us.org/p/material-immaterial#tab-product_tab_overview
Roddy Simpson, photographer and University of Glasgow honorary research fellow in the school of culture and creative arts has published a blog on Elizabeth Johnston Hall (1822-1901). Hall was one of the most famous photographed Scottish women because of the image of her produced in the mid-1840s by the pioneering Scottish partnership of David Octavius Hill (1802-70) and Robert Adamson.
Read the full blog here: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/early-photography-elizabeth-johnston-hall-1822-1901/
Image: Elizabeth Johnston Hall by Hill and Adamson. Carbon print by Jessie Bertram 1916. University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections Dougan Add. 40
Those of us with an interest in British cameras will know the Ensign Multex as an interesting and collectable camera from the late 1930s. It is unusual in being a 14 on 127 camera with a coupled rangefinder focussing down to 21 inches.
Launched in 1936 as “The British Precision Miniature Camera” it moved quickly through 3 variants (Model I, Model II and Model 0 in that order) in less than 3 years and then disappeared.
I am in the middle of a project to try to understand the development of this intriguing camera across its variants and I would appreciate any help readers can give me. My aim is to report back via a comprehensive article in Photographica World later this year.
There are two ways in which you may be able to help me. If you own a Multex, I have produced a survey document to help me to gather data on the production run. I can send this to you by email. Secondly, I would appreciate details or copies of any adverts or publicity material you may have access to which refers explicitly to the Multex Model 0. This appears to be the most common model amongst collectors, but I have not found any advertising which mentions it.
You will learn how to create exquisite, unique handmade prints on art paper. Make photograms from leaves & objects and/or images using your own photos. Book now so we can create your negs in time for the class. There will also be the opportunity to try toning, to create a wonderful range of different looks!
Darkroom workshops are led by Catriona Gray and are in small groups to maximise the learning experience.
All materials included. Cost £60
Darkroom London, Unit 10, Burmarsh Workshops, 71 Marsden Street, London, NW5 3JA
See more and book here: https://www.darkroomlondon.org/alternative-processes-cyanotypes/van-dyke-brown/polaroid-lift/lumen-prints/
The Royal Collection Trust has a number of upcoming events related to the exhibition Shadows of War: Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimea, 1855 at the Queen's Gallery, London:
Creative course: Photography in Focus
Saturday, 9 – Sunday, 10 February, 10:00 – 17:00, £175
Enhance your photography skills on this two-day course led by award-winning British Army photographer Rupert Frere. Learn the theory behind taking a good photograph using Fenton's and Frere's own photographs as inspiration, before taking your new-found skills out into the heart of London under the supervision of your tutor. This course will improve your confidence, creativity, composition and help you find your photographic voice.
Book here: https://www.rct.uk/whatson/event/912681/Creative-course:-Photography-in-focus
Lecture: Roger Fenton: The First War Photographer
Wednesday, 20 March, 13:00–14:00, free with an exhibition ticket
Join Sophie Gordon, Head of Photographs, as she discusses Roger Fenton's photographs of the Crimean War, taken in 1855. The lecture will look at the commercial motivations behind Fenton's work and the public display of the photographs across Britain in 1855–6. It will also highlight the emotional content of this pioneering photography by comparing his images with the work of other Crimean War photographers.
Book here: https://www.rct.uk/whatson/event/912693/Roger-Fenton:-First-war-photographer
and at Windsor Castle:
Evening lecture: Crown and Camera: A Victorian Passion for Photography
Wednesday, 13 March, 18:30 – 20:00, £15
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were fascinated by photography from a very early date. Catlin Langford, Assistant Curator at Royal Collection Trust, considers the wide range of photography they commissioned and collected that provides us with a unique glimpse into their passions, beliefs and private family life.
https://www.rct.uk/whatson/event/912396/Crown-and-camera:-A-Victorian-passion-for-photography
Images: top: © Rupert Frere; middle and lower: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.
Philip Banham collection of optical toys, optical prints, and stereoscopy including the Great Exhibition 1851 auction takes place at Bearnes, Hampton and Littlewood in Exeter on 6 March. In addition to the areas covered in the title the 236 lot sale also includes photographs, albums, persistence of vision devices and related equipment and images.
The auction has over 200 lots and includes some rare and unique pieces such as a rare stereoscopic daguerreotype of the visit of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Crystal palace (shown left), Sydenham, 20th April 1855. As well as rare pieces like this there are a number of good examples of stereoscopes, stereo cards and optical toys and prints that have been collected over a fifty year period.
For more information please contact Brian Goodison-Blanks 01392 413100 bgb@bhandl.co.uk
The online catalogue is now live here: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/bearneshamptonandlittlewood/catalogue-id-bearne10071
The archive of British photographer Daniel Meadows was acquired by the Bodleian Library in March 2018. It had been at the Library of Birmingham from 2014-2018. Northern Narratives, working in partnership with Daniel Meadows and The Bodleian Library, is developing an exhibition drawn from Meadows' substantial archive which will tour to a number of international galleries throughout 2020-21. Dates and venues will be announced in Autumn 2019. The exhibition will be supported by a new book published by the library.
Meadows' archive was assembled over nearly five decades. It contains his life's work — all the negatives and contact sheets associated with his photo-documentary work also a great many contextualising documents including posters, magazines, books, receipts, newsletters, notebooks, diaries, audio tapes, digital stories, his PhD document and research material, and much correspondence besides. It is housed in the Bodleian's Weston Library and at the time of writing accessioning is currently underway with its catalogue being mapped onto the Bodleian's own so that, from 2019, it can be made available online.
See: https://www.photobus.co.uk/the-archive/#LoB
https://www.northernnarratives.org/
https://www.bjp-online.com/2014/08/daniel-meadows-at-the-library-of-birmingham/
At a special event on 31 January 2019 Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian, marked the conclusion of a six-year project to produce the William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné Project which commenced in earnest in 2016. The project has transferred the records of the world’s leading Talbot scholar Professor Larry J Schaaf on to a searchable, illustrated, database. It has set a model for future online catalogues raisonné. At the time of writing it features some 18,177 records, plus a supporting blog and contextual texts.
The conclusion was marked by two lectures and a panel discussion from Dr Kelley Wilder of De Montfort University and Malcolm Daniel of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Hans P Kraus Jr paid tribute to, and spoke on behalf of, Schaaf who was unable to attend the event.
Ovenden similarly paid fulsome tribute to Schaaf without whom the project would have not been realised and noted that, although the funding for it had ended, Schaaf had agreed to continue to support and enhance the data records. He also highlighted the fact that ‘photography is now at the heart of Bodleian Library’. The library acquired the Talbot archive from Lacock Abbey and has been actively developing its photography holdings.
The archive of British photographer Daniel Meadows was transferred from Library of Birmingham to the Bodleian Library in March 2018. Northern Narratives, working in partnership with Daniel Meadows and The Bodleian Library, is developing an exhibition drawn from Meadows' substantial archive which will tour to a number of international galleries throughout 2020/21. Dates and venues will be announced in Autumn 2019.
For many years I've been trying to identify the group of men in this stereograph. The original carries no information. Three of them are holding stereoscopes which suggests a meeting. I believe the man on the left is Roger Fenton and next to him looks like Frederick Scott Archer. If this is the case this could well be a meeting of members of the Photographic Society of London in the mid 1850s.
While it is easy to provide names of members from that time frame, the problem is attaching faces to names. I'm hoping that perhaps somewhere there is an identified version of this group, or lacking that, that perhaps someone will recognize any of the gentleman.
Any help or insight will be welcome. Thank you -- Paula Richardson Fleming
Phil Nichols and Robin Ansell the authors of the recent book Secure the Shadow: Somerset Photographers 1839-1939 will be speaking at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN on 25 March, on behalf of the Bath & Avon Family History Society. The talk is open to everyone.
See more here: https://www.bafhs.org.uk/events/calendar-view/eventdetail/298/-/bath-group-meeting
Details of Secure the Shadow can be found here.
‘Odd,’ wrote Roland Barthes in his renowned 1980 study of photography, ‘that no one has thought of the disturbance (to civilisation) which this new action causes.'
Recent years have duly witnessed an explosion of scholarship considering the social and psychological impact of taking photographs. This course draws on recent approaches to explore the wide-ranging changes in perception brought about by the technology since its invention in 1839. How has photography shaped the aesthetic sensibilities and ethical sensitivities of the modern world?
Through a series of discrete but related talks by experts in the field, this programme considers how the camera has informed our understanding of art, politics, nature and the self.
The programme is:
21 February - ‘Introduction to Series: What Is Photography?’
Dr Sean Willcock, Birkbeck, University of London.
28 February - ‘Portraiture, the Album and the Self’
Dr Patrizia Di Bello, Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck University of London.
7 March - ‘Making an Art of Photography’
Dr Juliet Hacking, Program Director, Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
14 March - ‘Reframing Fields of Vision: From “Pencil of Nature” to Environmental Futures’
Prof Liz Wells, Plymouth University.
21 March - ‘War Photography: The Pleasure of Ruins’
Simon Norfolk, award-winning freelance photographer whose work has featured in many leading publications and galleries around the world.
Enrolment for the course is now open. To see the syllabus for the course or to book click here.
Photography and its histories
21 February to 21 March 2019
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Every Thursday for five weeks.
Open to all and free to attend, but enrolment is required.
London: Paul Mellon Centre
As The Photographers' Gallery approaches its fiftieth anniversary in 2021 it is seeking an archivist. The Gallery is the UK’s leading centre for the presentation and exploration of photography in all its forms and a dedicated home for an international photographic community. Established in London in 1971, the Gallery has been instrumental in reflecting photography’s pivotal role in culture and society and championing its position as a leading art form through a rich programme of exhibitions, talks, events, workshops, courses and other activities.
The principal job objective of the Archivist is to oversee the acquisitions, management, preservation and dissemination of the collections within The Photographers’ Gallery’s Archive. Core duties will include:
The ideal candidate will be someone with knowledge and experience of 21st century archiving practice within a visual arts organisation. The post holder will be diligent, resilient, flexible, proactive and a good problem solver with a keen eye for detail. Among other criteria, they will have 3 or more years' experience in an equivalent post, a strong commitment to digital preservation and a passion for photography and the visual arts.
Please apply by reading the full job description and using the application form on our website: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/about-us/jobs
The Val Williams Archive is to become part of the collection at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. The archive consists of papers, letters, audiotapes, video, manuscripts, published material, invitations, posters, press cuttings and research materials documenting the work of one of the UK’s most important curators and writers on photography.
The material spans Williams’ entire career from the early years of Impressions Gallery, through to more recent exhibition projects and books including The Other Observers (1986), Who's Looking at the Family (1994), How We Are (2007) and a full archive of Val's writing about photography in publications such as Creative Camera, the New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and many other publications.
Highlights of the archive include a collection of letters from Martin Parr, many written while he was working and living in Ireland at the end of the 1970s, the handmade dummy book for Daniel Meadows’ National Portraits, the original manuscript for The Other Observers: Women’s Photography in Britain, published by Virago in 1986, the exhibition files made by Val Williams and Susan Bright for How We Are at Tate Britain (2007) and the vintage projection slides for Plastic Metropolis, the outdoor projection for the 1998 Shoreditch Biennale, featuring the work of Derek Ridgers, Hannah Starkey, Nick Knight and many others.
Preserved by Val Williams over the last 40 years, and also including important sets of magazines, including Picture Post, i-D and The Face, the archive represents a unique record of one of the most important periods in British photographic history. It was previously held at the Library of Birmingham.
The archive was explored in the recent film Storage, made by Wendy Short, Belinda May and Hannah Blackmore, to coincide with Val Williams’ Professorial Platform in 2011.
Almost 200 boxes of archived material have been transferred to the Martin Parr Foundation, which opened in 2018, and which includes extensive holdings of books and photographic works of British photography. The archive will be accessible to researchers later in 2019.
Val Williams said: "I am delighted that my archive will now be part of the Martin Parr Foundation and that it will form a new resource for the study and interpretation of photography and cultural networks from the early 1970s. The Foundation is preserving and disseminating the history and heritage of British Photography as well as supporting contemporary photographers. I have worked with Martin Parr throughout my career, and am very impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of Martin and the team at the MPF."
Martin Parr commented: "I am delighted to welcome the Val Williams Archive into the collection of the Martin Parr Foundation. Val is one of the most esteemed British photography curators, with a long and illustrious career. But also for me, we have intertwined career trajectories from early days at the Impressions Gallery in the 1970s, when Val offered me (and colleague Daniel Meadows) our first shows, during our college days, then a few years later, staged the 'Home Sweet Home' exhibition. Val also edited and wrote my retrospective book, published by Phaidon (in 2002, revised 2012) to accompany my show at the Barbican Gallery, which Val also curated."
https://www.martinparrfoundation.org
Roger Fenton’s (shown right) letters home from the Crimea in May 1855 indicated that he was taking stereoscopic pictures of the ruins of Inkerman, the valley at Inkerman and the battlefield of Balaklava. However, these views have never come to light.
It has been suggested by Roger Taylor and Denis Pellerin that they were taken for Wheatstone’s reflecting stereoscope (which by 1855 had been almost totally superseded by the most portable Brewter-type instrument) and that later the various halves may have been mistaken for two copies of the same print and dissociated.
A search in various collections for Roger Fenton’s images taken at Inkerman and the heights above the Plains of Balaklava has now revealed the existence of images that appear to be stereoscopic pairs. To date, two of these stereoscopic pairs have been found for Fenton’s landscapes: The Plains of Balaklava IV and The Quarries and the Aqueduct at the Head of the Harbour. Other possible pairs are still being assessed. This discovery seems to have solved the mystery surrounding Fenton’s lost stereoscopic images.
The two pairs of stereoscopic pictures are shown as anaglyphs (red/cyan) courtesy of Denis Pellerin.
The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford (NSMM) houses a 3-screen cinema operation including Europe's first IMAX. The NSMM Pictureville cinema (300 seats) and Cubby Broccoli cinema (100 seats) screen the best of independent cinema with selected mainstream titles and a Screen Arts programme. IMAX (218 seats) screens the best feature titles available in IMAX format and a regular programme of shorter educational IMAX films for families and pre-booked groups.
As of 31st October 2019, the Museum's cinema operation will transfer from Picturehouse Cinemas to the Science Museum Group, to be managed in-house. To support our growth and vision, we are looking for a Project Manager to oversee this transfer on a fixed term contract until 31st December 2019.
Using your experience and a collaborative approach, you will work closely with the Project Steering Group and wider teams across Picturehouse, National Science and Media Museum and Science Museum Group, to ensure an efficient transfer of operations within the defined timescales.
Joining us, you will have enthusiasm for our vision and a passion for film. Bringing experience and an understanding of how projects are successfully planned and delivered, you will be able to drive decisions, manage budgets and proactively identify and mitigate project risks.
You will be offered excellent benefits, including 25 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays, a contributory pension scheme, BUPA medical and dental care, an annual season ticket loan and numerous staff discounts whilst developing your career in a world class museum group.
See more here.
