I thought that immersing a 100 year old+ RP (real photo) postcard in water would assist me to soak off marring patches stuck to the postcard that obscured a particular collectable photo postcard's right side edge. Once satisfactorily soaked 'marring bits' stuck to the photo could be picked off - thus, enabling restoration of my old RP postcard of the famous early 1900s violinist Jan Kubelick (of which I have a varied collection of his image as a child prodigy and into adulthood as the renowned violinist) to something of a satisfactory photo postcard (c.1910) collectable completeness. Further (before the disaster to ensue) I thought photo images were photographically 'fixed'. Or, was it that I made the disastrous mistake of boiling a kettle of which 'hot water' I poured over 'the to be restored 100 year old+ RP postcard' laid in a Pyrex glass dish - and to my horror saw the image immediately dissolve away before my eyes. I lifted the card out of its hot solution and the lovely Victorian image, smeared and smarmed, drained away terribly of its positive photographic life leaving a ghost of its former self.
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The newly formed Photographic Collections Network has appointed staff who will be taking the PCN forward over the next 15 months, supported by the steering committee. They are:
- Paul Herrmann, Manager
- Johanna Mannerfelt Empson, Coordinator
- Helen Trompeteler, Researcher
- Steve Slack, Evaluator
For more on the PCN see: http://www.photocollections.org.uk/
There are a number of events, talks and exhibitions taking place across the United Kingdom that include the photography of Helen Muspratt throughout 2017.
Glasgow School of Art: 4 March - 27 May: Exhibition: Franki Raffles “Observing Women at Work”
Two of Helen Muspratt’s photographs of women working in the fields, taken in the Soviet Union in 1936 will be shown and compared with those taken by Raffles during a visit to Russia in 1989.
Cambridge Science Festival: 20 March: talk by Jessica Sutcliffe: "Experiments in Photography - Cambridge in the Thirties"
Monday 20 March: 5.30 pm: Cambridge University Library
The talk will concentrate on the experimental work; solarisation, multiple exposure and rayograph techniques, carried out by by Helen with her partner, Lettice Ramsey after they set up Ramsey & Muspratt in Cambridge;
Booking opens on 20 February.
Durlston Castle, Swanage: 20 June - 12 July: Exhibition: Helen Muspratt Photographer
Exhibition of Helen,s work in her home town of Swanage. I will also de giving a talk during the exhibition. Date to be confirmed
Open daily 10.30 am - 5 pm
Exhibition: Oxford Central Library
An exhibition will be held in the Oxford Central Library later on this year. It already owns, and is digitising a number of Ramsey & Muspratt images and will reopen its newly revamped library with the show. There should be a considerable interest in the city where Helen Muspratt spent most of her working life and took portraits of numerous local people, both Town and Gown.
See more here: http://www.helenmuspratt-photographer.com/
Shadows of War is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Roger Fenton's pioneering photographs of the Crimean War, taken in 1855. Fenton was already an accomplished and respected photographer when he was sent by the publishers Agnew's to photograph a war that pitched Britain, France and Turkey as allies against Russia. Arriving several months after the major battles were fought in 1854, Fenton focused on creating moving portraits of the troops, as well as capturing the stark, empty battlefields on which so many lost their lives. 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.
A book of the same title by Sophie Gordon, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Royal Collection Trust will be published in August 2017, priced at £35.
Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea, 1855
4 August 2017 – January 2018
Edinburgh: The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse; then London: Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from November 2018.
Hello everyone, I am a Kingston University filmmaking student in my third year and I am trying to track down a wet plate camera for my final project. We are making a film inspired by these portraits of hidden mothers. (linked below)
The film is about these beguiling sittings. We plan to shoot through the wet plate camera (almost using it as a lens/filter). We have worked in this way before, using through the viewfinder photography but with a Mamiya C330. Below are some stills from this work.
I was wondering if anyone had a wet plate camera they would be kind enough to let us take a look at it - to see if what we plan is feasible and possibly use it for our shoot. I am also quite keen on learning how to do wet plate photography (I’ve heard you can adapt an old Polaroid camera - any advice on this would be great.)
Please forgive my intrusion and thank you for your time and help,
Best,
Flo Wallace
During this 3-day workshop participants will learn about the deterioration affiliated with the various photographic processes. Storage, housing and exhibition guidelines will be discussed for negatives, 19th Century photographs and for modern and contemporary processes. During course practicals participants will view damage and deterioration on study collection photographs. The course also covers the main aspects of loan requirements and condition surveying of photographs.
Clara von Waldthausen, instructor of the course, received her Masters in Conservation in 2000. After her studies she researched the autochrome process at the CRCC in Paris under the supervision of Bertrand Lavedrine. Waldthausen has since been in private practice working for most of the major museums in the Netherlands, and teaching workshops and students internationally. Since 2014, she coordinates and teaches the Master in Photograph Conservation at the University of Amsterdam. (http://www.conservation-restoration-training.nl)
Read more here: Preservation of Photograph Collections
Date: 29, 30 & 31 March 2017
Costs: 695,00 euro excl. VAT
Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The course will be taught in English. The costs include lunch & coffee breaks, and the course reader. To register for this course please send an email to: fotorestauratie@icloud.com
The Constructing Scientific Communities (https://conscicom.org/) and the Million Pictures projects (http://a-million-pictures.wp.hum.uu.nl/) are pleased to announce a special workshop, hosted at London’s Royal Institution, to consider the multiple relationships that existed between popular science and the magic lantern, with an emphasis on the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider magic lantern slides, instruments, and instrument makers, as well as considering issues of curation and performance. A special attraction will be Jeremy Brooker’s evening entertainment concerning John Tyndall’s celebrated lectures at the RI.
All workshop attendees will be also welcome to join this public lecture without charge. Attendance is free, but space is limited. To attend, email: gb224@le.ac.uk by March 1st, 2017.
Programme
9:30-10:15 – Coffee on arrival
10:15-10:30 – Introductory Comments. Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford) and Geoff Belknap (Leicester University), Constructing Scientific Communities Project.
10:30-12:00 – Panel 1: Approaches to Science and the Magic Lantern
- Iwan Morus (University of Aberystwyth), ‘Seeing the Light: Fact and Artefact in Victorian Lantern Culture’
- Sarah Dellmann (Utrecht University), ‘Images of Science and Scientists: Lantern Slides of Excursions from Utrecht University, NL (c. 1900-1950)’
- Emily Hayes (Exeter University), ‘Fashioned by physics: the ‘scope and methods’ of Halford Mackinder’s geographical imagination’
12:00-1:00 – Lunch
1:00-2:30 – Panel 2: Magic Lanterns and Museums/Curation
- Charlotte New and Meagan Smith (Royal Institution), ‘Shedding light on yesterday: Highlighting the slide collections of the RI and relevant preservation’
- Frank Gray (Screen archive South-east, Brighton), ‘Working with Archive Collections: Development, Access and Historical Context’
2:30-3:00 – Coffee break
3:00-4:30 – Panel 3: Materiality of the lantern
- Phillip Roberts (York University), ‘Science and Media in the Industrial Revolution: Instrument Makers and the Magic Lantern Trade’
- Kelly Wilder (De Montfort University), ‘From Lantern Slides to Powerpoint: Photography and the Materiality of Projection’
- Deac Rossell (Goldsmiths University), ‘Changing Places: Tracking Magic Lantern Culture from Physics to Chemistry to Cinema’
4:30-4:45 – Closing Remarks. Joe Kember and Richard Crangle (Exeter University), Million Pictures Project.
6:15-7:15 – Drinks Reception
7:30-9:00 – Evening lantern show for the general public:
- Jeremy Brooker, A Light on Albemarle Street: John Tyndall and the Magic Lantern
The pre-launch beta version of the William Henry Fox Talbot catalogue raisonné is now available in advance of the formal launch announcement on Friday, 10 February - the day before what would have been Talbot's 217th birthday on 11 February.
At the time of writing there are some 1345 searchable records but this is will expand significantly to more than 25,000 records as the project continues to document the whole of Talbot's photography corpus.
Take a look here: http://foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
BPH reported in September 2016 that Rock House, Edinburgh, was up for sale. After an extended period Rock House has finally sold for more than £1.7 million. The new owner wishes to remain anonymous.
Rock House was built in the 1750s, the house became part of photographic history when in 1843 Robert Adamson moved into the property, followed by his business partner and artist, Hill, in 1844. The partnership created some of the most beautiful and important calotype portraits during the photography's early years. As a consequence, Roddy Simpson, an photographic history based at the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, commented: "Rock House, Calton Hill, Edinburgh, has an unrivalled place in the history of Scottish photography and could be said to be the most famous address in photography.'.
Read more here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/15071987.Historic_home_of_Scottish_photography_sold_for_more_than___1_7m/ and see the property details here: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42425952.html
From the sepia-toned mass graves of the American Civil War to today’s drone shots of the destroyed Syrian city of Aleppo, war photographs have shaped and continue to inform our understanding of human conflict. Far from neutral, war photographs challenge our sense of humanity in a complex exchange between ‘taking’ and ‘viewing’. Exploring this relationship through an analytical rather than aesthetic perspective, our six-week course will introduce you to the ethical, theoretical and practical issues connected with taking, viewing and reproducing war photographs.
Beginning with a historical overview and rare opportunity to view original war photographs from the Library’s collection, we’ll consider key themes including photography and truth, ethics and aesthetics, and the idea of cultural memory. Throughout the course we’ll refer to the Library’s extensive photography collections, and analyze photographic images using a variety of theoretical approaches.
Centering our course within contemporary practice, we’ll also spend an exclusive evening at the nearby Foundling Museum, where innovative documentary artist Mark Neville will talk frankly about his photographs taken on the frontline in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Kenya, on display in the exhibition Child’s Play (3 February–30 April 2017).
This course is led by Dr Eleanor Chiari (University College, London) with contributions from British Library curator John Falconer (Lead Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photography Collections) and documentary artist Mark Neville.
In collaboration with the Foundling Museum.
Course dates: Tuesdays 21 and 28 February and 7, 14, 21 and 28 March
Times: 18.00 – 20.00
Read the course outline and see more here.
Books from the fourth printing are now available. Demand for the book has been much greater than expected. Since it was first offered in October, 2016, three printings have been totally sold out. The quality of the books from the four printings are indistinguishable. I personally inspect, sign, pack, and ship each book.
I have accomplished my goal of placing books in many of the World’s major photographic libraries so I am going to exit the “business”.
The book's 470 pages document the history and the technology Kodak used to make photographic films and plates. The products include those used for pictorial, professional, motion picture, x-ray, micrographics, graphics, and scientific applications.
Over 90% of the information in the book is not published elsewhere. Nearly all of the over 400 photographs and drawings were made specifically for this book. In addition, information is included from unpublished interviews and writings from Kodak employees. There are over 600 footnotes that document the sources of information.
Best regards,
Robert L. Shanebrook
makingKODAKfilm@yahoo.com
Britain in Focus: A Photographic History is a major new exhibition at the National Media Museum, exploring the fascinating and remarkable history of British photography; from everyday snapshots to world-renowned iconic images. It partners a three-part documentary series on BBC4 with the same name presented by award-winning photographer and picture editor Eamonn McCabe, part of a wider season of programmes exploring photography in the UK.
Both the exhibition (17 March – 25 June. Free entry) and the series start their journey with the dawn of photography in Britain in the 19th century, before charting its progress throughout 20th century to the present day, and the impact of the social media explosion.
Britain in Focus not only illustrates how a selection of acclaimed photographers documented, reflected and commented on their home country, and in doing so became known around the world, but how countless others have also contributed to the recording of national and social history over nearly 200 years.
Alongside pictures taken by anonymous soldiers in the First World War trenches and press shots of historic moments, the exhibition includes examples from the colourful world of post card producer John Hinde; John Bulmer’s ground breaking images from the North of England, which appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine in the 60s; WHF Talbot’s photographs of Lacock Abbey in the 1840s – some of the earliest ever taken; a selection of Jane Bown’s portraits of cultural figureheads from the 60s and 70s; Martin Parr’s inimitable views of the 1980s; Eamonn McCabe’s reports from the Heysel stadium tragedy; and Fay Godwin’s visual hymns to the British landscape.
Among the pioneers featured are Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn and Cecil Beaton, as well as contemporaries currently living and working in Britain, such as Nadav Kander, Peter Mitchell and Mishka Henner.
Through their images, Britain in Focus also traces the path of an industry: how glass plates gave way to film cartridges, black and white transformed to colour, and photographic paper was replaced by digital pixels. A selection of Cartes de visite – one of the first commercially available methods of sharing photographs - sit with a selection of images from the social media network Instagram, originally posted by a teenager from Huddersfield.
John O’Shea, Senior Exhibitions Manager at the National Media Museum, said: “Throughout Britain in Focus we see the fundamental role photography and photographers have played in recording the last two centuries in Britain – not only major social changes and historic moments, but also everyday life. Equally the exhibition shows the development of photography over this time, pointing to the incredible pace that technology, technique and subject matter have advanced, as its popularity made it the medium of choice for people to view and record their lives.”
Britain in Focus: A Photographic History is a BBC and National Media Museum partnership.
BRITAIN IN FOCUS: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY
17 March – 25 June 2017, National Media Museum
Image: John Bulmer, Washing line, Halifax, 1965.
I am in the process of cataloguing a very large - c.4500 - collection of medium format negatives that, I believe, were taken by Mr. J. G. Combes of Lincoln, and have discovered one negative in particular that is puzzling me.
The image is that of two ladies, one seated, one standing, posing on a garden path at an address I believe to be in Lincoln, and which was taken by Mr Combes in 1930, when he would have been about 17 years of age.
Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that lurking in the bottom right-hand corner of the image is a clear, if a little fuzzy, image of a medium-sized, woolly dog. This, according to other captioned images in the collection, is Rex. Or at least, an impression of Rex.
I am very keen to hear members' views regarding how this 'apparition' could have positioned itself on this otherwise plain and commonplace family photograph.
I have examined the negative very closely but cannot find any evidence of double-exposure, or other forms of image manipulation. The negative immediately preceding this frame displays an image very similar in content and pose, but without the misty canine presence.
I am a 'spirit photograph' sceptic, and in any case, there are further photographs of Rex in the collection that would appear to have been taken after the image in question is dated.
Any ideas?
Michael Holden,
Lincoln
Don't Fence Me In provides an entire career retrospective, made with the enthusiastic cooperation of Fay Godwin, filming from 2001 until 2005, which turned out to be the last five years of her life. She graduated from taking family snaps to documenting Camden social services, followed by a remarkable sequence of literary portraits, before moving on to landscape photography for a series of walkers' books which evolved into photographic collaborations with major writers, notably Ted Hughes. In 1985 she published Land, a substantial volume which provided a conspectus of British landscape, followed in turn by the polemical Our Forbidden Land, 1990, made when she was elected President of the Ramblers Association and documenting much that is wrong with the way the landscape is managed. Godwin was appointed Photographer in Residence at Bradford's National Media Museum and wanted to work in colour for the first time, documenting the city's dazzling multicultural landscape. Illness caused her to move from the macro to the micro, and she became increasingly obsessed with details of gardens and plants close to home, often seen through glass, gauze and netting. Whilst for much of Godwin's career she used a black and white chemical darkroom, latterly she eagerly embraced digital colour technology with the same enthusiasm and eye for detail. Godwin herself recounts her life and the film is structured through her appearance on Desert Island Discs and around three major retrospective shows of her work, first at London’s Barbican Centre, then the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia and finally at Scottish National Portrait Gallery Edinburgh. 75 mins 4:3 aspect ratio
ADDITIONAL FILM Talking About Fay Godwin
Fifteen of Fay Godwin’s friends, colleagues, associates and family talk about her life and work: Geraldine Alexander (Fay’s assistant); Peter Cattrell (Photographer); Margaret Drabble (Novelist); Colin Ford (Founding Head, National Media Museum); Ken Garland (Graphic Designer & Photographer); Nick Godwin (son); Paul Hill (Photographer & Teacher); Richard Ingrams (Writer); Ian Jeffrey (Writer & Historian); Peter Melchett (Environmental Campaigner & Organic Farmer); Brett Rogers (Director, The Photographers’ Gallery); Tony Stokes (Gallery Owner); Maggie Taylor (Friend & Colleague); Roger Taylor (Photographic Historian) and Shirley Toulson (Writer). 60 mins 16:9 aspect ratio
ADDITIONAL FILM Optics & Chemistry
Fay Godwin’s technical explorations and methods and their impact on her work, from Agfa Rapid papers to the Zone System, are discussed and analysed. 27 mins 16:9 aspect ratio Filmed and Directed by Charles Mapleston Edited by Libby Horner & Charles Mapleston
Don’t Fence Me In
Fay Godwin’s Photographic Journey
Production Company: Malachite Ltd. www.malachite.co.uk 01790 763538
Fay Godwin - The Drovers' Roads of Wales and other photographs is being shown as MOMA MACHYNLLETH opening at 11am on Saturday, 18 February 2017 and runs until 1st April, 2017. Also A Clearly Marked Path - original photographs by leading British photographers reflecting Fay Godwin's influence at PEN'RALLT GALLERY BOOKSHOP
The Ghost Road – MOMA, talk with writer, Mike Parker Sunday, 5 March, 10am – 1.30pm - £3.00
DAY EVENT
Saturday 11 March 2017, 10.30 – 3.30 - £15.00 (£10 unwaged) at MOMA, Heol Pen'rallt, Machynlleth, SY20 8AJ
A day of talks, film, discussion and homage to British landscape photographer, walker and campaigner, Fay Godwin (1931 – 2005) including Don't Fence Me In – exclusive film preview and gallery talk, lecture and panel with photographers: Peter Cattrell, Pete Davis, Marian Delyth (chair); Film-maker: Charles Mapleston; Fay Godwin archivist: Dr Geraldine Alexander, and Paul Hill.
For details, to book the walk and register for the day event contact: www.penralltgallerybookshop.co.uk, 01654 700559, penralltbooks@gmail.com
This conference investigates photographs and photographic archives in relation to notions of place. In this context, place is used to explore both the physical location of a photograph or archive, as well as the place of photography as a discursive practice with regard to its value or significance as a method of viewing and conceiving the world. Photographs are mobile objects that can change their location over time, transported to diverse commercial, artistic, social, academic and scientific locations. The photograph’s physical location thus has an impact upon its value, function and significance; these topics are explored at the conference through a range of archives and across disciplines. How might the mobility of photographs open up thinking about archives and, in turn, classificatory structures in disciplines such as Art History, Archaeology and Anthropology, or in the Sciences? The conference also addresses questions of digital space, which renders the image more readily accessible, but complicates issues relating to location. What is the place, or value, of the photographic archive in the digital age?
The conference features internationally-renowned speakers, with a keynote lecture by Geoffrey Batchen and a final discussion led by Elizabeth Edwards. Site visits to Oxford’s outstanding photographic collections are also planned, including to the Bodleian Library’s Talbot Archive, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the History of Science Museum, the Griffith Institute’s archives of archaeological expeditions, and the History of Art Department’s Visual Resources Centre.
Photo Archives VI: The Place of Photography
April 20–21, 2017
Department of History of Art, University of Oxford
Conference Venue: Christ Church, Oxford
See more here: http://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/events/photo/
I am researching these two ambrotypes, recently acquired through eBay. They appear to be images of John Lee, Astronomer, Numismatist, 1858 and 1861, antiquarian, philosopher, et al. of Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire.
I can only find one actual photographic image of Dr. Lee, an apparent albumen, via the Science Photo Library website here.
These two ambrotypes are in remarkably good condition, and quite large. The first is 9 x 12cm, and the second 12 x 15cm, visible areas, I am assuming that the actual sizes are larger.
Ink inscriptions on the back indicate that these were taken by 'George Axtel'. My preliminary research finds no such photographer. Maybe it was mistaken for Axtell?
I would posit that the Royal Meteorology Society, or Royal Astronomical Society, or Society of Antiquaries would want these.
Are these unrecorded images of Dr. Lee? Any guesses out there?
Many Thanks, David
This symposium marks the opening of ‘Usakos – Photographs Beyond Ruins: The Old Location albums, 1920s-1960s’, an exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London. The exhibition centres on three private collections of historic photographs preserved and curated by four women residents of the former ‘Old Location’ in Usakos, an urban railway hub in central Namibia. With a view to reflect the resonances of these personal archives, Paul Grendon’s contemporary photographs enter a visual dialogue with the women’s collections, thereby providing a particular opening into the present and future.
Demolished under the apartheid plan for Namibia in the 1950s, the Old Location is remembered with nostalgia by its former residents, who were forcibly removed to a new township on the outskirts of Usakos. In the course of their research into Usakos’s history, Lorena Rizzo and Giorgio Miescher were introduced to the photograph collections of Cecilie //Geises, Wilhelmine Katjimune, Gisela Pieters and Olga //Garoës. These women had for many years been collecting, curating and circulating photographs taken in the Old Location, thus preserving and reshaping memories of this time and place.
These photographs, and the collections of which they are part, shed new light on southern African histories. Viewed from an urban history perspective, they differ strongly from hitherto dominant narratives of location life, focusing as they do on sociality and social relations, and the dignity and self-respect with which subjects presented themselves to the camera. In Usakos today, these images have become a particular historical form through which women negotiate their past, its bearing on their present and what it holds for imagining their future. Unlike the collections of African photographers’ studios, it is the people in the photographs to whom names can be attributed, and the photographers – some of whom were itinerant – who remain largely anonymous.
This conference takes the lead offered by this new research to focus on African women and photography. On the one hand, papers are invited that cover aspects of photographic practices defined in the broadest sense: African women as clients, as photographers, as photographic subjects and as collectors and curators of photographs and private photographic archives; women engaged in aesthetic practices that bridge conventional distinctions such as that between the visual and the oral; and women’s role in memory work – whether through purely photographic collections, or other private collections that include photographs, letters, identity documents, moving image, objects and other manifestations of material culture. We are particularly interested in the themes of historic collections and memory work, but will also consider papers looking at women’s engagement with photographic practice today.
On the other hand, the conference will reflect on how far female photographic practices constituted a domain in which women represented, commented on, responded to and made sense of their experiences of the transformations brought about by colonialism and apartheid. We invite papers which reflect on how women’s photographic and other archival and memory-work practices help to illuminate the specific histories of life under segregation, apartheid and colonialism more broadly – whether (for example) of urban planning, forced removals, housing, the railway system, migrant and domestic labour, cosmopolitanism, education and cultural life.
We expect that the majority of papers will focus on the African continent, but we also welcome proposals dealing with similar issues in the diasporic context.
The conference will be of relevance to academics and researchers in these fields as well as practitioners and a more general audience with an interest in Namibia and/or in African history and photography. Contributors are asked to bear this in mind when drafting their presentations.
The one-day conference will take place on Friday 14th July 2017 in the Senate Room, Senate House, University of London. More details and registration arrangements will be available shortly after the close of the call for papers. Unfortunately the symposium organisers are unable to assist with travel and accommodation costs.
Please send abstracts (300 words max.) and your name, title, affiliation (where appropriate) and contact details to:
Dr Giorgio Miescher, University of Basel, giorgio.miescher@unibas.ch and Dr Marion Wallace, marion.wallace@wallpear.plus.com by 17 March 2017.
Photographs Beyond Ruins: Women and Photography in Africa
A one-day symposium at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Friday 14 July 2017
Sponsored by:
Centre for African Studies, University of Basel
Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
With support from:
Centre of African Studies at SOAS, University of London
College of Arts and Humanities, University of Brighton
Hutchins Center, Harvard University
For the Brunei Gallery exhibition see https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/forthcoming/.
For more information on the Usakos photographs see: http://www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/photographs-beyond-ruins/
and: Paul Grendon, Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo and Tina Smith, Usakos: Photographs beyond Ruins. The Old Location Albums, 1920s–1960s (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2015)
A combination of technological, cultural, and economic factors during the “long” nineteenth century made images more readily available in a wider range of media than ever before. These transformations raised new questions about the ownership and use of images.
Working in the new field of lithography, artists produced portraits, topographical landscapes, caricatures, everyday scenes, and representations of events done "on the spot,” which publishers distributed quickly and relatively cheaply. Thanks to changes in printing techniques and the commercial strategies of publishers, engraved images became more common in books, magazines, and newspapers. The development of photography led to the production and circulation of images in the form of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes-de-visite, and stereographs. The quest to reproduce photographic images in print inspired numerous photomechanical processes that raised questions about the status of the image and its creator. Meanwhile, increasingly sophisticated printed reproductions of visual works raised new questions about what constituted “authorship” under copyright law; about how to balance the interests of artists, distributors, and collectors; and about how to protect the privacy of individuals whose images were being reproduced and displayed in public. As images and the techniques used to produce them spread across national borders, the question of colonial and international copyright became increasingly important.
This project aims to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines and fields (printing history, art history, law, literature, visual culture, book history, etc.) to explore the cultural and legal consequences of the proliferation of images in the long 19th century. Our geographic focus will be on Great Britain and the United States in connection with the wider world, not only their colonies and territories, but also their commercial and artistic links with other countries. Contributions that consider the transnational circulation of images, or provide a comparative perspective on copyright, are most welcome, as are case studies that reveal the local factors that shaped attitudes and practices related to the circulation of images. In referring to the “long 19th century,” we want to encourage specialists of earlier and later periods to help us elucidate the broader history of imaging and printing techniques and the legal and cultural norms that surrounded them.
As the first stage in the project, we invite interested scholars to propose papers for a conference to be held at Winterthur Museum, Delaware, March 29-30, 2018. Following the conference, authors will be invited to revise papers for possible publication in a special issue of a journal on this topic. In the spring of 2019, a follow-up workshop for contributors will be held at Université Paris Diderot, with the goal of finalizing the joint publication and discussing further research opportunities in this field.
The following list is in no way exhaustive, but reveals some potential lines of inquiry:
· To what extent did changes in imaging and printing techniques affect the status of images as understood by those who made them and those who viewed them?
· What norms did artists, architects, photographers, engravers and others establish to govern the circulation and reproduction of their works?
· How were copyright and/or patent law understood by the people who produced, distributed, and viewed images of various kinds?
· Was there a sense of a “public domain” in the realm of visual culture, and if so how was this articulated?
· How did attitudes toward the authorship and attribution of images evolve during this period?
· What were the perceived boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate copying, and how did these vary across media?
· In cases where the law was silent or ambiguous, what cultural practices and commercial strategies were developed, either to promote the ownership of images or to contest it?
Submission instructions:
Please send an abstract (one page) of your proposed contribution and a short CV (two pages) to imagecopy19@gmail.com by February 1, 2017. We will notify accepted participants by June 1, 2017.
Questions may be addressed to imagecopy19@gmail.com.
Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, Paris VII Diderot, March 29 - 30, 2018
Deadline: Feb 1, 2017
Call for Papers: “Images, Copyright, and the Public Domain in the Long Nineteenth Century”
Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library: March 29-30, 2018.
Co-conveners: Stephanie Delamaire (Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library: www.winterthur.org) and Will Slauter (LARCA, Univ. Paris Diderot, http://www.univ-paris-diderot.fr/EtudesAnglophones/pg.php?bc=CHVR&page=LesAxesduLARCA&g=sm)
On This Date In Photography presents an event that happened, or is happening, on the date of posting. Journalistic, not necessarily academic, it aims to broaden the interests of devotees of photography, with some posts specifically on British photo history, others more wide ranging.
Written on the day, of the day, your news of upcoming items for potential content, or other input, is most welcome.
(It's a 'labour of love' I am undertaking for one calendar year to revive my research and writing in preparation for penning a book on an aspect of photography next year.)
