Blogs

A colleague of mine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been conducting research on early American photographers for more than twenty-five years, and is now making it available on wordpress blog. As many of these photographers either trained in Europe or in Britain, or in some cases emigrated from Britain, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide the link to this important resource at https://pioneeramericanphotographers.com/ . 

On 19-20 May, the special edition of The London Photograph Fair returns to The Great Hall at King's College, adjacent to Somerset House. The fair, which coincides with Photo London, is the only established fair devoted to vintage photography in the UK.

For this year's edition, Daniella Dangoor will present a collection of 40 rare photographs of Samurai. It should be noted that most photographs purporting to be of Samurai, and often used as illustrations in books and magazines, are nothing of the kind. They were taken well after 1877, when the Samurai system was abolished, in commercial studios, with actors or studio assistants dressing up in Samurai clothes and armour, for the benefit of the tourist trade.

These however, are images of genuine Samurai, taken 1860-1877.  The collection has been researched and catalogued by Sebastian Dobson, one of the world's leading authorities on early photographs of Japan. Several prints constitute the only known copies, with most of the rest known in only a few copies, held in museums and private collections.

The photographs in the collection offer a rare glimpse into the vanishing world of the Samurai, including a group of Samurai gathered around a map during the civil war; the half-brother of the last shogun, photographed in Paris where he was sent as a special emissary; a portrait of a female samurai as well as a portrait of a rōnin, the masterless samurai who were often forced to eke out a vagabond existence on the edge of society, offering their swords for hire.

In a portrait taken by the Japanese photographer Suzuki Shin’ichi I in Yokohama in the mid 1870's, a young Samurai glances wistfully into the distance. The era of the Samurai was nearing its end and the occupation and the role he had trained and prepared for since childhood was about to be rendered obsolete. The introduction in 1873 of compulsory military service for all Japanese males, regardless of class, had made the samurai an anachronism.

Japan was changing. The country had until 1853 been completely closed to all foreigners. The Dutch were the only Westerners permitted to trade with Japan and a small group of employees of the Dutch East India Company were corralled on the artificial island of Deshima constructed for their exclusive use in Nagasaki in 1636.

The opening of the country's borders would lead to a modernisation process and a civil war that would see the overthrow of the Shogunate in 1868. The Shoguns had been the de facto rulers of Japan since the 12th Century, ruling in the name the emperor. The Shogun’s military might depended on the Samurai. As a warrior caste, war was their raison-d'être, so the so-called Age of Warring States (Sengoku Jidai) with almost constant civil war between contenders for the shogunate during 1460 and 1603 represented a sort of golden age.

The installation of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 enshrined their position at the top of the social order, but the ensuing 250-odd years of peace would see them take on other roles as well, as administrators, bureaucrats and scholars, the latter playing an important role in the diffusion of photography in Japan.

The Last Samurai. A collection of rare photographs by Nadar, Shimooka, Suzuki, Disdéri, Beato and others
19-20 May 2018 as part of the London Photograph Fair and presented by Daniella Dangoor
at The Great Hall at King's College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS 

Images: top: Suzuki, YOUNG SAMURAI. Below: Felice Beato (c.1834-1909):KUBOTA SENTARÔ IN ARMOUR WITH RETAINERS, Yokohama, c.1864. Hand-coloured albumen print from wet collodion negative.

The early history of paper photography in the United States is a formative but rarely studied aspect of the medium’s evolution. While Americans were at first slow to adopt Europe’s negative-positive photographic practices, the country’s territorial expansion and Civil War increased demand for images that were easy to reproduce and distribute.

The exhibition Paper Promises: Early American Photography, on view until 27 May, 2018 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, features rare 19th-century paper negatives and paper photographs from this important era of American experimentation, including portraits of some of the country’s most notable political and cultural figures, as well as searing images from the Civil War. “In the mid-nineteenth century, photographs did much more than merely document the development of the nation; increasingly they became central to debates about the U.S. and its place in the world,” explains Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “The photographs on view in this exhibition offer a rare insight into the forces and movements that shaped the country’s character at a formative stage of its development.”

Photographic Pioneers

Today, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat create a thirst for casual selfies, views of our surroundings, and documentation of the most mundane aspects of daily life. Yet reproducible photography was not initially popular in the United States. In the earliest years of the medium Europeans quickly adopted techniques that enabled multiple photographs to be printed from negatives, but Americans initially preferred singular formats intended for intimate viewing, such as those produced directly on metal or glass.

A few intrepid American photographers experimented with negative-positive techniques in the 1850s. The earliest photographs they produced used papers sensitized with silver salts that resulted in matte images well suited to register a range of textures. Paper Promises showcases dozens of rarely exhibited salted paper prints.

To secure the widest possible market for photographs that could be printed in multiple, entrepreneurial photographers made salted paper prints for a variety of purposes: scientific investigation, celebrity portraiture, tourism, historic preservation, corporate and self-promotion, and first-hand documentation of newsworthy events. Their ambition to develop a technique suited to the quickened pace of modern life is apparent in a salted paper print made around 1860 by an unknown photographer, in which a group of men and women gather excitedly aboard the front of a train.

The railroad was a potent symbol of progress, and it was anticipated that photography, like locomotives, might connect Americans to places and people far away. In the 1850s, however, alarmist reports that photographic negatives were being used to counterfeit currency caused widespread anxiety. At the time, banks printed their own money and thousands of different paper bills were in circulation. Around forty percent of the bills that passed through American hands were counterfeit, so banknotes began to be thought of as little more than flimsy “paper promises.”

The exhibition features photographic counterfeits from the era, revealing a previously unstudied aspect of initial American resistance to photographic reproducibility. Though “paper promises” was originally a derisive phrase, the promise of paper photography soon swept the nation.

Also included in the exhibition are examples of other pioneering photographic techniques, including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, albumen silver prints, a pannotype, and an ivorytype.

Portraiture

As the use of negatives to produce photographs in multiple sizes and shapes began to catch on, photography studios rushed to secure famous sitters in the hope of gaining wide distribution for popular images. The exhibition demonstrates how celebrities of the era grew savvy about circulating carefully crafted images of themselves. For example, an 1860 portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass by an unknown photographer emphasizes the gravitas of the fiery orator and prolific writer. Douglass sat for portraits throughout his life, countering racialized stereotypes by circulating dignified images of himself.

Family photographs also became increasingly cherished as the medium gained in popularity. At a time when life expectancy was short and child mortality common, photographic portraits were thought of as especially precious souvenirs. The exhibition features several intimate portraits of families and children, some of which were carefully handtinted to further strengthen the sense of personal connection.

Universities capitalized on the ability to produce images in multiple and compiled volumes of students and staff into what is today the familiar yearbook format. An example from about 1852 by John Adams Whipple (American, 1822-1891) was commissioned by Harvard – a proto-Facebook more than 150 years before Mark Zuckerberg’s start.

The West and the War

As disputes over state and federal sovereignty as well as American Indian rights intensified, photographers sought how best to portray the people and places most frequently in the news. Photographs of several treaty negotiations will be on view, such as images of the first Japanese delegation to the United States, and an 1858 portrait by Alexander Gardner (American, born Scotland, 1821-1882) of a delegation of Upper Sioux who travelled to Washington, D.C., for treaty talks. While most of the delegates pictured wore contemporary clothing, Gardner kept costumes on hand to outfit visitors in “traditional” attire, in keeping with East Coast ideas about Native dress. Photographs of American Indian sitters proliferated as their autonomy became a highly contested matter of public debate.

In the territorial struggles of the 1860s, families torn apart by the Civil War sought personal mementos that could be easily shared and saved, and paper photographs served that purpose well. Soldiers had their portraits made upon enlistment, and civilians clamored for images of the battlefield. Images of slaves and of Abraham Lincoln were increasingly wielded as tools for political change, and the exhibition will spotlight several examples. Freedom’s Banner. Charley, A Slave Boy from New Orleans (1864) by Charles Paxson (American, died 1880) is one of many small-scale images carefully composed and widely circulated to encourage empathy with the plight of enslaved families. The photographs were sold to support education for freed slaves and to sustain support of the abolitionist cause.

“As we struggle to adapt to today’s digital revolution, with its capacity for unchecked manipulation and proliferation of images, it’s valuable to look to an earlier era in which ideas about photography and its role in society were similarly exerting profound effects,” says Mazie Harris, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “Because early paper photographs became an integral part of everyday life, not many survive. So this is a unique opportunity to see rare images from a tumultuous period of American history.”

Paper Promises: Early American Photography is on view 27 February, 2018 - 27 May, 2018 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition is curated by Mazie Harris, assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. A book of the same name and authored by Dr. Harris, with contributions from scholars of American history and photography, will be released by Getty Publications in February 2018.

See more here: http://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_1893.html

Images, from top: 

William Langenheim
American, born Germany, 1807–1874
Frederick Langenheim Looking at Talbotypes, about 1849–1851
American
Daguerreotype
Image: 12.1 x 8.9 cm (4 3/4 x 3 1/2 in.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Gift of The
Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.177)
Image: www.metmuseum.org
EX.2018.2.62

Unknown, American
Locomotive on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, near Oakland,
Maryland, about 1860
Salted paper print
Image: 16.2 x 16 cm (6 3/8 x 6 5/16 in.)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Horace W.
Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel,
1991 (1991.1151)
Image: www.metmuseum.org
EX.2018.2.63

J. E. Whitney
American, 1822–1886
Portrait of a Dakota Sitter, about 1862–1864
Salted paper print
Image: 20 x 15.3 cm (7 7/8 x 6 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased in part
with funds provided by Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara
Timmer
2016.37.1

Join the Photographic Collections Network on Monday, 23 April, 2- 5pm, for a special afternoon with Martin Parr and his colleagues at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. Attendees will get behind the scenes insights into the work of the Foundation, looking specifically at the material in its archives, and hearing how it manages workflow from acquisition to access.

Available to PCN members.

To join the PCN or to book a place on this visit please go to: https://www.photocollections.org.uk/events/archive-visit-martin-parr-foundation-visit  

For enquiries contact Maura McKee, PCN Coordinator at maura@photocollections.org.uk  

This two-day masterclass course on the Identification and Care of Photographic Negatives will be held by Monique Fischer at the Photographic Archive of the American Academy in Rome (AAR). It offers an in-depth introduction to the preservation of negatives, focusing particularly on their identification, deterioration, and care. The participants will have the exceptional opportunity to examine several examples of 19th and early 20th century negatives selected by photograph conservator Sandra M. Petrillo from the important and valuable Photographic Archive of the AAR (in particular from the Parker, Askew, Moscioni and Van Deman collections).

After a brief introduction by Lavina Ciuffa on the specialized collection of art, archaeology and architecture photography conserved in this archive, attendees will learn how to recognize various historic photographic techniques and formats and will study the preservation problems associated with each one. The masterclass will also discuss storage concerns and preservation priorities, including environmental guidelines and proper care and handling.

Paper, Glass, and Plastic: Identification and Care of Photographic Negatives" on May 3-4, 2018
Venue: Photo Archive of the American Academy in Rome. Via Angelo Masina 5b, 00153 Rome, Italy
Deadline for registration: 31st of March, 2018 Masterclass fee includes two lunches at the AAR and a course binder: 450,00 euro
Language: English
Masterclass fee: 450.00 Euro

Deadline for registration: 31st March 2018 Applications are on a first come basis. A maximum number of 12 participants will be accepted.

More information: https://www.smp-photoconservation.com/new-masterclass-paper-glass-plastic-identification-care-photographic-negatives-may-3-4-2018/

Many will not have heard of Dom Angelico Surchamp, because his name did not appear in the credits for his photographs. He was a monk at the abbey of La Pierre-qui-vire in Burgundy. He was the moving spirit behind the Zodiaque series of books on Romanesque, which on any measure is the largest collection of published photographs of Romanesque architecture and sculpture. As André Malraux observed, it was "a very big thing". It was the photographs that made the books, beautifully printed, beautifully presented. Most of the books are in French but there are English versions of the three books on Irish Art with text by Françoise Henry. Here is the text of the letter announcing his death by the Abbot:

Chers Amis,

notre frère Angelico, José Surchamp

a rendu son dernier souffle à Dieu, ce jeudi matin 1er mars 2018, à l’hôpital d’Avallon.

José Surchamp est né le 23 juin 1924 à Troyes (Aube) dernier de six enfants. Son père, inspecteur des eaux et forêts, est un écrivain régionaliste connu sous le pseudonyme de Jean Nesmy. José suit sa formation secondaire au Collège Urbain IV puis au lycée. Pensant se faire religieux, il étudie l’art durant une année. Il passe un mois auprès du sculpteur Henri Charlier.

 Le 8 septembre 1942, il opte pour la Pierre-qui-Vire où vit déjà son frère Claude. Le 2 octobre 1942, il est reçu au noviciat sous le nom de frère Angelico. Un stage auprès du peintre cubiste Albert Gleizes, en août 1946, le marque profondément dans son désir d’unifier vie monastique et recherche picturale. Il fait profession solennelle le 5 octobre 1947 et est ordonné prêtre le 22 mai 1948. De l’Atelier du Cœur Meurtry qu’il initie avec les frères Eloi Devaux et Yves Vitry sortent des créations d’œuvres liturgiques et des fresques.

Une exposition sur l’art sacré à Vézelay en juillet 1951 est le point de départ de « l’aventure Zodiaque », avec la Revue, puis en 1953 avec les éditions de livres d’art. Sous la direction du f. Angelico, les ouvrages sur l’art roman sont édités et imprimés par les frères. Lui-même assure en partie les photographies de nombreux livres, ainsi que la chronique musicale de la revue. Il tisse alors de nombreux liens avec des artistes ainsi qu’avec des maisons d’édition étrangères.

En 1995, il laisse sa charge de directeur des éditions. En 1997, il devient aumônier des bénédictines à St Julien l’Ars, avant leur transfert à Prailles, puis des bénédictines de Venières, près de Tournus. De retour « à la maison », en 2013, il reprend très simplement sa place parmi nous, avant de gagner l’infirmerie.  

Artiste et moine, f. Angelico a cherché à unifier sa vie, non sans tension lors des évolu-tions de la liturgie après le Concile. Son regard pétillant et malicieux laissait entrevoir sa forte personnalité, et son sourire accueillant, sa simplicité ainsi que sa belle confiance en Dieu.           

Nous nous réunirons auprès de notre frère afin de prier pour lui, dans l’espérance de la Résurrection, au cours de l’eucharistie :

ce mardi 6 mars à 11 heures.

Il sera inhumé dans le cimetière du monastère à la suite de la célébration.

                                                                                            Père Luc CORNUAU, Abbé

On 12 March De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre will present two seminars which are open to the public:

• Women Photographers, Institutional Practices and the South Kensington Museum from Erika Lederman. This paper will locate the career of 19th century institutional photographer Isabel Agnes Cowper within the history of the photography and the institutional history of the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).  It will present the biographical details I have uncovered to date, and will identify other 19th century female professional photographers from whom the SKM acquired photographs.  It will examine the challenges involved in identifying and researching material culture produced by women and will suggest a multidisciplinary research approach that acknowledges the multiple strands of photography’s history.
• Future of the Past: Commemorating 150 years of photography in Hungary, 1989 from Catherine Troiano. In 1989, exhibitions of photography were staged around the world to mark 150 years since the announcement of the medium. In Hungary, the commemorations comprised twelve exhibitions staged in Budapest and collectively titled ‘the month of photography’. These events came at a poignant moment culturally, socially and politically. This paper aims to use the anniversary celebrations as a case study through which to understand photography’s place and purpose in Hungary’s broader socio-cultural landscape. It interprets the 1989 events as a lens into the Communist past and a forebear of the Democratic future, exploring how photography was posited within the framework of this political change.

Seminars take place from 1700-1830 in room 2.30 of the Clephan Building. They are free and open to all. See more here:  https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/march-12-2018-research-seminar-in-cultures-of-photography/

World renowned daguerreotypist and teacher Dr Mike Robinson brings his three day workshop back to Lacock. Participants will make their own daguerreotypes from start to finish. The workshop which usually sells out is limited to only six participants and early booking is advised.

Details: foxtalbotmuseum@nationaltrust.org.uk

The Martin Parr Foundation has a number of  events coming up over the next few months. They include book signings from Niall McDiarmid, Bieke Depoorter and Peter Bialobrzesk. April 20-21 sees the film premiere of Do Not Bend - The Photographic Life of Bill Jay and a day seminar of British photography in the 1970s and on 12 May Parr will be leading a tour around the Foundation and archive. McDiarmid's Portraits exhibition continues until 12 May. 

To find out more see: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/events/ or download the attached MPF_Upcoming_Events_March-May_2018.pdf.

I am trying to trace correspondence (nearly 40 years of if) between daguerreotypist Prof Leone Glukman (Dublin) and William Constable (Brighton) which I have seen reference to. Anyone know where it is?

Dominic Winter's auction catalogue, which includes the John Hannavy collection of cased images, is now available on line: https://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/catalogues/78_dw_9_mar_2018_low_res.pdfhttps://www.dominicwinter.co.uk/dominic-winter-catalogues

Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903-1917) committed itself to the establishment of photography as a form of art and in the course of its publication became an important distributor of European modernism in the United States. In both respects the international network of the journal was an important prerequisite. Camera Work’s global reach manifested itself in the content of the texts and images as well as in the production of the magazine, its distribution, and reception.

As one of the outputs of international research project this conference examines Camera Work’s internationality. It analyzes cultural specifics, intercultural relationships, and their theoretical reflection. With a special focus on the reception and distribution of Camera Work in Japan, the presentations investigate transpacific and transatlantic connections. The aim is to identify specific conditions, such as the extended duration of Pictorialism in Japan, its amalgamation with the aesthetic strategies of New Vision, and simultaneous integration of traditional Japanese pictorial formulas, materials, and motives. In addition, the technical and material requirements for the institutionalization of Camera Work in Europe and the U.S. are examined, for instance the international correspondence of the people involved and the reproduction techniques used—facts that shed light on the social background of Pictorialism and emerging modernism.

The Japanese case asks for a theoretical and methodological discussion on modernism in the plural whilst the second example requires an angle of vision from below, especially with regards to an elite venture such as Camera Work. The conference thus opens up a further emphasis: it invites the investigation of the localization of research on the topic of Camera Work itself.

Programme

Friday 9 March 2018
Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK-ISEA, Zollikerstrasse 32, 8032 Zurich
15:30 Viewing of original issues of Camera Work (for invited guests only)
16:30 Registration
17:00 Welcome address: Roger Fayet, director SIK-ISEA
17:05 Evening lecture: Bettina Gockel, University of Zurich: “Camera Work and Gender in a Globalized Photographic World.”
18:35 Reception (Apéro riche)

Saturday 10 March 2018
University of Zurich, Building Rämistrasse 59, 8001 Zurich. Auditorium, Room G01
9:30 Registration and coffee
10:00 Welcome address: Kaspar Fleischmann, Dr. Carlo Fleischmann Foundation
10:15 Opening remarks: Bettina Gockel, University of Zurich Seite 2/2 Kunsthistorisches Institut
10:30 Anne McCauley, Princeton University: "Production/Reproduction: Circulating Pictorial Photographs in the Era of Camera Work"
11:15 Lauren Kroiz, University of California, Berkeley: “Anne Brigman, Camera Work, and California”
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Julien Faure-Conorton, École du Louvre, Paris: “Making Camera Work an International Endeavor: Alfred Stieglitz and French Pictorial Photography”
14:15 Thilo Koenig, University of Zurich: “Camera Work in Europe: Italy and Germany”
15:00 Coffee
15:45 Catherine Berger, University of Zurich: “Camera Work: A Quarterly Containing All the Arts”
16:30 Reception (Apéro riche)
17:30 Evening lecture on the occasion of Bettina Gockel’s ten-year anniversary: Kelley Wilder, De Montfort University, Leicester: “The Furtherance of Modern Photographic History: On a Decade of Photo Historical Innovation.”

Sunday 11 March 2018
University of Zurich, Building Rämistrasse 59, 8001 Zurich. Auditorium, Room G01
10:00 Registration and coffee
10:30 Yuko Ikeda, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo: “Jugendstil and the Japanese in Camera Work: Their Aesthetic Exchanges”
11:15 Kerry Ross, DePaul University, Chicago: “Magic in the Darkroom? Pictorialism and Amateur Photography in Early Twentieth-Century Japan”
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Jennifer Coates, Kyoto University: “Pictorialism and its After-Images: Post-War Japanese Cinema Culture”
14:15 Stephanie Tung, Princeton University: “A Fusion of Feeling and Scene: Liu Bannong and Art Photography in Republican Era Beijing, 1923-1928”
15:00 Coffee, discussions, farewells and final tours in Zurich

Symposium organized as part of the project “Camera Work: Inside/Out,” University of Zurich, Institute
of Art History/Center for Studies in the Theory and History of Photography, in collaboration with the
Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA)

Find out  more here: https://www.khist.uzh.ch/de/chairs/bildende/tgf/Projekte_Publikationen/camera_work.html

Contact: Catherine Berger, Rämistrasse 73, CH-8006 Zürich e: catherine.berger@uzh.ch

Victorian Giants. The birth of art photography showing at London's National Portrait Gallery from 1 March includes a number of events based around the exhibition. They include: 

Lecture: Through the Camera Lens, and What Lewis Carroll Found There. 1 March at 1900.  Lindsay Smith, Professor of English at the University of Sussex, explores Carroll’s fascination for the technology of photography, and for the material and conceptual aspects of photographs, in the context of his larger creative achievement. Book here.

Weekend Workshop: The Victorian Studio. 10 and 11 March. Photographers Kasia Wozniak and Eddie Otchere lead a one-day workshop in which you will experience a Victorian Portrait Studio, focusing on the camera, print technology, production values and fashion of the era - with a few modern workarounds. Each participant will gain an appreciation of the patience and care Victorian photographers had to consider in order to create affordable portraits, working with a model in a recreation of a Victorian studio setting, and using a large format camera to capture that one perfect shot on direct positive paper. You will develop and process your portrait, ending the day with your print. Book for 10th or the 11th.

Lecture: Portraits for the Stereoscope: Seeing the Victorians. 22 March at 1900. Denis Pellerin, photo historian and curator of Dr. Brian May's collection of Victorian photographs, takes us on a stereoscopic journey through the studios of photographic artists including Antoine Claudet, William Kilburn, John Jabez Mayall and Thomas Richard Williams. Discover the Victorians as you have never seen them before, in full colour and in glorious 3-D. Book here. 

Lecture: Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer of Genius. 29 March at 1900. Colin Ford CBE, photographic curator and historian, looks at the life and work of Julia Margaret Cameron, who was not only a brilliant photographer but aimed to photograph as many Victorians of genius as she could. Book here.

Lecture: Outside/In: Clementina Hawarden’s Domestic Portraits. 10 May at 1900. Art photographer or portrait photographer—or both? Clementina Hawarden (1822-1865) won awards for artistic costume tableaux of her daughters. Using images selected from the 775 Hawarden photographs in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, Virginia Dodier discusses how Hawarden’s photographic style evolved while her family remained the focus of her life and work. Book here.

Weekend Workshop: Pop-Up Wet Plate Collodion Studio. 12 and 13 May 2018.Come and experience one of the most popular early photographic processes, discovered in 1851 and used by photographers including Julia Margaret Cameron. Artist Almudena Romero is taking up residence for the day to create unique individual portraits in timed sittings. Book your half hour slot during which you will sit for your portrait and observe the process in real time via a video link from inside the dark room. Book here. 

There are a number of other photography-related events taking place at the Gallery during March-May. Find out more here.

Photo London and Hans P. Kraus Jr. are presenting an exhibition which looks at the pioneering work of the British inventor of photography William Henry Fox Talbot and the legacy of this within contemporary photography. With the opportunity to see vintage Talbot prints alongside contemporary artworks by artists and photographers including Adam Fuss, Cornelia Parker, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mike Robinson, Vera Lutter and others, this exhibition reflects on the influence and inspiration of the inventor.

To accompany the exhibition Cornelia Parker will be speaking in conversation with Hans P. Kraus Jr., and Vera Lutter in conversation with Martin Barnes, curator V&A, as part of the Photo London Talks Programme.

PhotoLondon takes place from 17-20 May 2018 at Somerset House, London. 

See more here: https://photolondon.org/event/sun-pictures-then-and-now-talbot-and-his-legacy-today/

Image: William Henry Fox Talbot, Thalictrum minus (lesser meadow-rue), probably early 1839. Courtesy of Hans. P. Kraus Jr.

The Duchess of Cambridge is to select photographs from the National Portrait Gallery’s forthcoming exhibition Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography as part of a Patron’s trail.The Duchess will visit the exhibition on the evening of Wednesday 28 February, prior to its opening on Thursday 1 March.

As Patron of the National Portrait Gallery since 2012 and an enthusiastic, amateur photographer, The Duchess has written a foreword to the exhibition catalogue in which she discusses her interest in nineteenth-century photography, the subject of her undergraduate thesis while an art history student at the University of St Andrews. She also explains that photographs of children, which feature predominantly within the exhibition, are of particular interest to her. This is the first exhibition at the Gallery to include a Patron’s trail in which The Duchess will select a number of portraits, which will be displayed with additional information labels that will be written by Her Royal Highness.

The Duchess also points out that Queen Victoria and especially Prince Albert, became enthusiastic patrons of the new art form following its invention in 1839. One of the exhibition’s four featured photography pioneers, Oscar Rejlander, undertook commissions for the Royal Family and works by him have been borrowed for the exhibition from the Royal Collection at Windsor.

Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography will show together for the first time portraits by Oscar Rejlander (1813–75), Lewis Carroll (1832–98), Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) and Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-65). The four created an unlikely alliance. Rejlander was a Swedish émigré with a mysterious past; Cameron was a middle-aged expatriate from colonial Ceylon (now Sri Lanka); Carroll was an Oxford academic and writer of fantasy literature; and Lady Clementina was a member of the landed gentry, the child of a Scottish naval hero and a Spanish beauty, 26 years younger. Yet, all three briefly studied under Rejlander, and maintained lasting associations, exchanging ideas about portraiture and narrative. Influenced by historical painting and frequently associated with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, they formed a bridge between the art of the past and the art of the future, standing as true giants in Victorian photography. Their radical attitudes towards photography have informed artistic practice ever since.

The exhibition will be the first to examine the relationship between the four ground-breaking artists. Drawn from public and private collections around the world, it will feature some of the most breath-taking images in photographic history, including many that have not been seen in Britain since they were made.

Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography will feature the work of Swedish-born ‘Father of Photoshop’ Oscar Rejlander and will include the finest surviving print of his famous picture Two Ways of Life (1856-7), an example of his pioneering technique of combining several negatives to create a single final image. Constructed from over thirty separate negatives, Two Ways of Life was so large that it had to be printed on two sheets of paper joined together.

An album of photographs by Rejlander purchased by the National Portrait Gallery following an export bar in 2015 will also go on display together with other treasures from the Gallery’s world-famous holdings of Rejlander, Cameron and Carroll, which for conservation reasons are rarely on view. The exhibition will also include works by Clementina Hawarden, a closely associated photographer; the first major showing of her work since the exhibition Lady Hawarden at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1990.

Lewis Carroll’s photographs of Alice Liddell, his muse for Alice in Wonderland, are among the most beloved photographs of the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection. Less well known are the photographs made of Alice years later, showing her as an adult. The exhibition will bring together these works for the first time.

Visitors will be able to see how each photographer approached the same subject; both Cameron and Rejlander photographed the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the scientist Charles Darwin, and Carroll and Cameron photographed the actress, Ellen Terry. The exhibition will also include the famous studies of human emotion that Rejlander made for Darwin, on loan from the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library.

Lenders to the exhibition include the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Hulton Archive, Getty Images; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Munich Stadtmuseum; the Royal Collection; Tate; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Wilson Centre for Photography.

Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography will include portraits of sitters such as Charles Darwin, Alice Liddell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Carlyle, George Frederick Watts, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘The National Portrait Gallery has one of the finest holdings of Victorian photographs in the world. We are delighted that our Patron, HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, has supported this exhibition in such a direct and personal manner, given her longstanding interest in this material.  As well as some of the Gallery’s rarely seen treasures, such as the original negative of one of Lewis Carroll’s portraits of Alice Liddell and images of Alice and her siblings being displayed for the first time, this exhibition will be a rare opportunity to see the works of all four of these highly innovative and influential artists.’

Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs, National Portrait Gallery, London, and curator of Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography, says: ‘When people think of Victorian photography, they sometimes think of stiff, fusty portraits of women in crinoline dresses, and men in bowler hats. Victorian Giants is anything but. Here visitors can see the birth of an idea – raw, edgy, experimental — the Victorian avant-garde, not just in photography, but in art writ large. The works of Cameron, Carroll, Hawarden and Rejlander forever changed thinking about photography and its expressive power. These are pictures that inspire and delight. And this is a show that lays bare the unrivalled creative energy, and optimism, that came with the birth of new ways of seeing.’

Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography 
1 March –20 May 2018, at the National Portrait Gallery, London www.npg.org.uk
Tickets with donation: Full price £12 / Concessions £10.50
Tickets without donation Full price £10 / Concessions £8.50 (Free for Members and Patrons)

It will tour to Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, from 30 June – 23 Sept 2018

Following on from the sale of the Dr Swaine Taylor daguerreotypes last month another interesting collection has surfaced in East Anglia. From a deceased estate and held in storage for the last 40 years or so a group of 20 portraits of the Stacey family by Claudet/Le Beau/Beard/Kilburn/Mayall etc. is to be sold by Cheffins Auctioneers in Cambridge on February 21.

George Stacey (1787-1857) English Quaker and Anti-Slavery Campaigner appears in several of the 12 daguerreotypes, either singularly or with his second wife Mary Barclay. Other family members /associates form the remainder of the group which will be offered in several Lots. Further details in due course from the auctioneers: http:/www.cheffins.co.uk/auctions/fine-art

UPDATE: Catalogue now on-line for Cheffins Library Sale next week which includes 20 daguerreotype/ambrotype portraits of the British Abolitionist George Stacey and members of his family. The relevant lots start at 135 (click here)

I recently purchased this stereoview, apparently made in the UK. It looks to be 1850s- early 1860s. I believe this may be a portrait of he great P. T. Barnum,  There is no written information on it. I do know that Barnum regularly travelled to England during his career. perhaps he meant this as a kind of advertising. His jaunty stance seems in keeping with other photos of Barnum.

Does any member have a resourse that mentions or confirms a portrait stereoview of Barnum? Who may be the photographer? What event may have this been?

Or, is this just wishful thinking on my part? Any thoughts?

Included, photos of the stereoview, and crop of the famous Daguerreotype with General Tom Thumb, for reference.

Many thanks, David

To celebrate Charles Darwin’s 209th birthday today, the Darwin Correspondence Project, Cambridge Digital Library, and English Heritage Trust, have released online for the first time, two albums of portrait photographs presented to Darwin in 1877.  They were sent by his admirers in Germany and Austria, and in the Netherlands. Also online for the first time are the texts of a series of poems written in Darwin’s honour by Friedrich Adler, a young lawyer from Prague.

See the albums and poems here: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/german-and-dutch-photograph-albums

The albums provide a snapshot of networks of supporters of Darwin on the Continent, and will also be a useful resource for people studying Dutch, German and Austrian social history. Very little is known about many of the people featured in these albums. If you can help to identify any of them, please get in touch.

Dr Francis Neary
Editor, Darwin Correspondence Project e: fjn26@cam.ac.uk
Website: www.darwinproject.ac.uk

BPH recently reported on a new film looking at the writer, teacher and photographic historian Bill Jay.  Do Not Bend: The photographic life of Bill Jay will premiere in the UK on 20 April at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, and will be followed by a panel discussion including David Hurn, Brian Griffin, Daniel Meadows and Grant Scott, chaired by Martin Parr.

A few tickets are remaining and are available here: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/…/british-photography…/  A seminar looking at British photography in the 1970s will take place on the following day. 

The second screening and an accompanying exhibition of Bill's portraits of UK based photographers takes place at the Oriel Colwyn/Theatr Colwyn, Wales on Friday 11 May 2018 / 6.30 to 10.30pm. The exhibition will be open from Saturday, 12 May-Saturday 30 June 2018. Following the film screening, Tim Pellatt and Grant Scott will host a discussion on Bill’s impact on the world of photography and share our experience of producing the film with a limited budget and minimal resources. Tickets can be purchased at http://orielcolwyn.org from 13 February.

Further screenings around the UK and US being announced over the coming weeks and months and a book featuring Jay's photographs of UK photographers will be published and available from 20 April. 

The amateur photographer and Princess, Alexandra, is featured in a BBC4 television programme Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection, Series 1, Modern Times. The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer and includes an interview with Sophie Gordon, senior curator of photography. 

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05qh7j9 or visit the Royal Collection Trust page here.