Harold White FRPS visited the village of Lacock in 1944 to undertake an assignment for the British Council to take photographs for a pamphlet about English village life. Followers of the British Photographic History Blog may be interest in viewing a new community web site called Lacock Unlocked where Harold White’s photographs are celebrated.
http://www.wshc.eu/lacock/lacock-community/harold-white-and-lacock.html
This is new book that looks at the developments of motion picture film technology from a British perspective between 1895 to 2015. Renowned film historian Kevin Brownlow says: 'the book is not only unputdownable - it's heavy enough to be unpickupable!' The book will be of interest to film archivists and those interested in the technical side of film and includes chapters on How It Worked; The Film Business Gets Going; The 1920s - Time of Change; A Quest For Colour; The 1930s and 40s; New Film, New Colour, New Sound, New Screens of the 1950s and 60s; The Film Laboratory, and Slow Fade Out covering from the 1970s to 2015.
The chapters cover the very first cameras and projectors and how they worked; the development of equipment for both professional and amateur film making; colour and sound; Kodak and other manufacturer’s motion picture film stocks; how film was developed and printed at the laboratory; and cinema, non-theatric and home projection.
How Films Were Made and Shown
David Cleveland and Brian Pritchard (no relation!)
453 pages, over 900 illustrations
Price: £45 including delivery in UK, for overseas delivery, please email: brian@brianpritchard.com
and remit by Paypal to brianrpritchard@aol.com
See more about the book here. and a flyer can be downloaded here..
On the occasion of Professor Elizabeth Edwards’ retirement, the 2016 PHRC Annual International Conference will address themes from her complex and wide ranging scholarship on the cultural work of current and historical social photographic practices. Thus, Photography: Between Anthropology and History aims to showcase scholarship driven by engagements with research methodologies that informed the material and ethnographic turns in the study of photographic history, and opened up a variety of innovative critical spaces for the re/consideration of photography and its history.
We welcome applications from all disciplines and career stages, and would like to invite abstracts for 20 minute papers on topics such as, the colonial-era photographic image, photographic museum practices, photography’s printed ephemera, the sociability of photographic knowledge, its development and dynamics of exchange, and the local, national or trans-national photographic imagination. Applicants might also consider different subject matters, related but not limited to the following themes:
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to: phrc@dmu.ac.uk by the 20 January 2016.
See more here.
The successful candidate for this post will have a track record of internationally-recognised research, including successful grant bids as well as published work of a calibre which meets the standards of the Research Excellence Framework, and clear plans for future research. They will be able fully to contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and programme development, undertake senior administrative duties, and be prepared to work collaboratively with colleagues across the School.
About the Department
For further information about the department and, please visit the following website: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/art-history/
Further Information
Salary: Grade 9 (Senior Lecturer/Reader) of the College's London Pay Scale which is £52,780 rising to £58,939 per annum.
Carlos Relvas (1838-1894) is the best know among 19th Century Portuguese amateur photographers’, he was a very healthy farmer from the Ribatejo region and built his unique “Casa da Fotografia” is his hometown Golegã (http://www.casarelvas.com/ ; ). In the not too rich panorama of Portuguese photo history he has already been the subject of a few writings[1], his studio house, a very interesting 19th Century iron building, was subject of major works and his now a museum.
The last published, and most likely the deepest study is Uma Família de Fotógrafos, Carlos e Margarida Relvas, written, as a MA thesis by Cátia Salvado Fonseca, and published by Chiado Editora. In his writing Cátia Fonseca underlines, for the first time, the work of Carlos Relvas daughter, Margarida Relvas, justifying the title of the book. In the past there was even the idea that Margarida Relvas name was only used as vehicle to the presentation of photographs in contests and exhibitions. In this book Margarida Relvas (1867-1930) is clearly treated as an independent author, sometimes even opposed to Carlos Relvas, however without the importance of her father. The author emphasizes differences between the work of father and daughter. Treating Margarida Relvas as a separate author allows the author to approach upper class female education, socialization and culture, including photography as a part of it.
Carlos Relvas was an amateur whose work covered most fields for 19th Century photography. The better known are the portraits, quite similar to portraits made at the same time by professional studio photographers, his subjects range from peasants to the Royal Family. Some photographs represented ethnic types with Portuguese folk costumes; however these are mostly studio acted photographs using his employees, friend and himself. His passion for horses and bullfights produced another large number of photographs. And there are of course the usual landscapes and countryside scenes, many of Ribatejo, where he lived. Photographing art works may not be considered too creative, but was an important and highly regarded branch of 19th century photography, even for an amateur, Carlos Relvas made an important work on this area. He had the kind of photographic output only attainable to the very wealthy, using all the latest materials and processes, but also having a paid worker to help him with photography.
Relvas was highly regarded among European 19th century photographers participating in exhibitions and contests, he was also rather well known in Portugal with publications on the most important Portuguese press of his time. However his work remains unknown internationally, and does not even get a footnote on Histories of Photography.
His studio/house is built as it were a professional studio, with a waiting room, and a studio with the greatest possibilities of natural light control. It is a magnificent ironworks building, now working as a museum, a drive of just over an hour from Lisbon.
Cátia Salvado Fonseca works at Casa Museu Carlos Relvas and has a deep knowledge of Relvas work, his documentation and library. Relvas negatives were restored over a long period; unfortunately many of them were lost. Her experience is really unique, as “Casa Museu Carlos Relvas” besides the negatives still keeps Relvas cameras, as well as his darkroom. This is a wonderful visit, as well as a blessing to the researcher.
With such a comprehensive work, spanning for three decades, published in the most influential Portuguese press, Relvas photographs are a good way of understanding Portuguese landowning bourgeoisie, as well as a general view of what were the picture worthy subjects. Portuguese royal family with almost any member being an amateur photographer may be also an interesting case study.
This new book is a good way to be aware of the work of the family Relvas. It is not as abundantly illustrated as the 2003 catalogue, but it is certainly more comprehensive on Carlos and Margarida Relvas work.
[1] Vicente, António Pedro, Carlos Relvas Fotógrafo 1838-1894, Contribuição para a História da Fotografia em Portugal no Século XIX, Imprensa Nacional, Lisboa, 1984
AAVV, Carlos Relvas e a Casa da Fotografia, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisboa 2003
The British Journal of Photography has been digitised up to 2005 with the remainder to be completed early in 2016, BPH first reported on the project here back in 2013. The digital archive is currently only available to colleges, universities and institutional subscribers via Proquest.
The publisher of the BJP, Apptitude Media, is intending to make the digitised BJP from 1854 to the present day accessible to the wider public in 2016, although BPH understands that the charging model has yet to be determined.
See the Proquest Art and Architecture catalogue here.
BPH will report when the BJP becomes publicly available but in the meantime from its January 2016 issue the BJP is delving in to its digital archive for a regular back page feature.
This one-day conference will present new research on the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron's social, religious, colonial and artistic contexts. International speakers will explore themes such as Cameron’s experimental techniques and exchanges with other artists and her lasting impact and relevance for contemporary practitioners.
Programme
10.00 -10.30 Coffee and Registration
10.30 Welcome and Introduction, Matilda Pye, Department of Learning
New Research
Marta Weiss, Curator of Photographs, V&A
Erika Lederman, Researcher, V&A
11.15 Chance. Robin Kelsey, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
11.45 Little Holland House. Barbara Bryant, Independent Scholar
12.15 Discussion
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Religion. Joanne Lukitsh, Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
14.30 Class and Colonialism. Juliet Hacking, Programme Director, MA Photography, Sotheby’s Institute
15.00 The Herschel Album. Colin Ford, Founding Director of Bradford in conversation with Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A
15.45 Refreshments
16.10 Legacies.
Cameron and Sri Lanka. Sunara Begum, Visual-Anthro-Mythologist
Cameron and Dimbola Lodge. Tracy Shields, Screenwriter
17.00 Closing Remarks
17.15 Close
£35, £30 concessions, £15 students
See more here and book: http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/5919/julia-margaret-cameron-at-200-275264027/
The year 2015 marked the bicentenary of the birth of Calcutta-born photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. In eight short statements, researchers and curators will reflect on the status of the Victorian photographer in the history of photography at large while also using her work as a springboard to think about the present and the future of an increasingly globally conceived historical field. Besides historiographical contributions, some speakers will contemplate on their previous research on Julia Margaret Cameron and how they see it today, while others will present new insights, for example on her colonial work made in Ceylon or her intellectual connections with networks of scientists, artists and collectors. Chaired by Geraldine Johnson and Richard Ovenden, with contributions by Mirjam Brusius, Elizabeth Edwards, Nichole Fazio-Veigel, Colin Ford, Pamela Roberts, Larry J Schaaf, Emilia Terracciano and Marta Weiss.
This symposium is accompanied by a small display, 'Julia Margaret Cameron: The Henry Taylor Album', in Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, from early January.
The photographs of Victoria photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) can be found in a number of albums held at the Bodleian Library, amongst them an album, which she had compiled for Sir Henry Taylor. But beyond her friendship with the dramatist, the Calcutta-born photographer was connected to a wide range of 19th century artists and savants. Some of these friends received albums as gifts specifically compiled for them while others collected her photographs for pleasure or as a means of support of the contested photographer. This display showcases works by Cameron, supplementing the Taylor Album by letters and further photographic items. Tracing the individual histories of these objects reveals much about the movement of photographs over decades and about the intellectual ownership networks in which they circulated.
This event is free but places are limited so please complete the booking form to reserve tickets in advance.
In March 2016, the V&A will present the first retrospective of the American artist Paul Strand (1890-1976) in the UK for over 30 years. Revered as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, Strand defined the way fine art and documentary photography is understood and practiced today.
Part of a tour organised by Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and made possible by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the V&A exhibition will reveal Strand’s trailblazing experiments with abstract photography, screen what is widely thought of as the first avant-garde film and show the full extent of his photographs made on his global travels beginning in New York in 1910 and ending in France in 1976. Newly acquired photographs from Strand’s only UK project will be shown – a 1954 study of the island of South Uist in the Scottish Hebrides supplemented by further works already in the V&A’s own collection.
Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century will encompass over 200 objects from exquisite vintage photographic prints to films, books, notebooks, sketches and Strand’s own cameras to trace his career over sixty years. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition will broaden understanding to reveal Strand as an international photographer and filmmaker with work spanning myriad geographic regions and social and political issues.
Martin Barnes, curator of the exhibition said: “The V&A was one of a handful of UK institutions to collect Paul Strand’s work during his lifetime and the Museum now houses the most extensive collection of his prints in the UK. Through important additional loans, the exhibition will not only explore the life and career of Strand, but also challenge the popular perception of Strand as primarily a photographer of American places and people of the early 20th century.”
The exhibition will begin in Strand’s native New York in the 1910s, exploring his early works of its financial district, railyards, wharves and factories. During this time he broke with the soft-focus and Impressionist-inspired ‘Pictorialist’ style of photography to produce among the first abstract pictures made with a camera. The influence of photographic contemporaries Alfred Stieglitz and Alvin Langdon Coburn as well European modern artists such as Braque and Picasso can be seen in Strand’s experiments in this period. On display will be early masterpieces such as Wall Street which depicts the anonymity of individuals on their way to work set against the towering architectural geometry and implied economic forces of the modern city. Strand’s early experiments in abstraction, Abstraction, Porch Shadows and White Fence will also be shown, alongside candid and anonymous street portraits made secretly using a camera with a decoy lens, such as Blind Woman.
The exhibition explores Strand’s experiments with the moving image with the film Manhatta (1920 - 21), the first time it has been screened in its entirety in the UK. A collaboration with the painter and photographer Charles Sheeler, Manhatta was hailed as the first avant-garde film, and traces a day in the life of New York from sunrise to sunset punctuated by lines of Walt Whitman poetry. Strand’s embrace of the machine and human form is a key focus of the exhibition. In 1922, he bought an Akeley movie camera. The close-up studies he made of both his first wife Rebecca Salsbury and the Akeley during this time will be shown alongside the camera itself. Extracts of Strand’s later, more politicised films, such as Redes (The Wave), made in cooperation with the Mexican government are featured, as well as the scarcely-shown documentary Native Land, a controversial film exposing the violations of America’s workforce.
Strand travelled extensively and the exhibition will emphasise his international output from the 1930s to the late 1960s, during which he collaborated with leading writers to publish a series of photo books. As Strand’s career progressed, his work became increasingly politicised and focused on social documentary. The exhibition will feature Strand’s first photobook Time in New England (1950), alongside others including a homage to his adopted home France and his photographic hero Eugène Atget, La France de profil, made in collaboration with the French poet, Claude Roy. One of Strand’s most celebrated images, The Family, Luzzara, (The Lusetti’s) was taken in a modest agricultural village in Italy’s Po River valley for the photobook Un Paese, for which he collaborated with the Neo-Realist writer, Cesare Zavattini. On display, this hauntingly direct photograph depicts a strong matriarch flanked by her brood of five sons, all living with the aftermath of the Second World War.
The images Strand took during his 1954 trip to the Scottish Hebrides reveal his methodical and meticulous approach to photography, much like a studio photographer in the open air. Strand conjured the sights, sounds and textures of the place steeped in the threatened traditions of Gaelic language, fishing and agricultural life of pre-Industrial times. The intimate set of black and white photographs include the V&A’s newly acquired image of a brooding youth, Angus Peter MacIntyre, South Uist, Hebrides; the patinated geology of Rock, Lock Eynort, South Uist, Hebrides and the all-encompassing expanse of the Atlantic Ocean depicted in Sea Rocks and Sea, The Atlantic, South Uist, Hebrides.
From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Strand photographed Egypt, Morocco and Ghana, all of which had gone through transformative political change. The exhibition will show Strand’s most compelling pictures from this period, including his tender portraits, complemented by remarkable street pictures showing meetings, political rallies and outdoor markets. The exhibition will conclude with Strand’s final photographic series exploring his home and garden in Orgeval, France, where he lived with his third wife Hazel until his death in 1976. The images are an intimate counterpoint to Strand’s previous projects and offer a rare glimpse into his own domestic happiness.
Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century
19 March – 3 July 2016
Supported by the American Friends of the V&A
vam.ac.uk/paulstrand | #PaulStrand
Image: Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides, 1954, Paul Strand. © Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation. Photograph Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The National Gallery of Canada in conjunction with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation has announced the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute, a national research and exhibition centre of excellence devoted to photography. The Institute will foster transformative partnerships and cooperation opportunities worldwide for the integrated study of its collection, drawing upon a broad range of disciplines interested in social, cultural, aesthetic, scientific and historical issues.
The National Gallery’s ambitious photography initiative will be supported through a partnership of unprecedented scope with collector and philanthropist David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters Corporation. The creation of the Institute is also being made possible by Scotiabank with the largest corporate financial donation ever made to the Gallery.
“These transformative gifts will allow the National Gallery of Canada to take its place among the very deepest, most comprehensive, and broadly useful public collections of photographs in the world. Indeed, the scale of the Canadian Photography Institute is such that we will be able to entirely reimagine how to collect, present, study, preserve and disseminate our photographs collection, while enabling countless others to reach a greater understanding of humankind through the culture of pictures” stated Gallery Director and Chief Executive Officer Marc Mayer. “We are profoundly grateful to David Thomson and to Scotiabank for their magnanimity and for their trust”, he added.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, is delighted to be part of this announcement. “I commend the National Gallery of Canada on the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute. Thanks to its partnership efforts, the visual arts community and Canadians will benefit from a national research and exhibition centre that presents and preserves an outstanding collection of photographic works. This is a fine example of how important philanthropy is to our cultural institutions.”
Housed within the National Gallery of Canada, the Institute will expand upon the renowned national collection of photographs, to establish one of the world’s most important and comprehensive collections covering the entire history of the photographic medium.
Scotiabank has pledged $10 million as the Founding Partner and the exclusive donor from the financial services sector to the Canadian Photography Institute, in support of programs and research. The gift is the largest donation in Scotiabank’s 183-year history and celebrates its ongoing commitment to photography in Canada. In recognition of this outstanding financial support, the National Gallery of Canada also announced today that its Great Hall will be renamed the Scotiabank Great Hall. “Scotiabank has a long history of supporting arts, culture, and heritage in communities across Canada,” said Brian Porter, President and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank. “We are proud to partner with the National Gallery of Canada and David Thomson in the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute, which will showcase Canadian and international photographic works at the National Gallery and through the auspices of the Gallery across Canada and around the world.”
Mr. David Thomson has agreed to support the Gallery in building the Institute’s collection through an evolving series of donations and acquisitions over the next ten years. A long-standing patron of the Gallery, Mr. Thomson will have donated in 2015 alone over 12,000 photographs, books and related objects from his own rare Origins of Photography collection. Mr. Thomson hopes that this partnership will attract other major donations and support that will fortify the Canadian Photography Institute as a global leader.
Thomas d’Aquino, Chair of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, saluted the creation of the Canadian Photography Institute “as an historic first for the Gallery, the launch of a centre of national and global importance. It also signals the triumph of a creative partnership of David Thomson, Scotiabank, the National Gallery of Canada and the Gallery Foundation. This is farsighted philanthropy at its best,” he said.
More information about the Canadian Photography Institute can be found on the Gallery’s website: gallery.ca/cpi
Eveleen Myers (née Tennant) (1856-1937) was a beauty, but certainly not a “professional beauty” in the commercial sense of the term; hers was a physical attractiveness recognized and portrayed by the celebrated artists of her time. None other than John Everett Millais and George Frederic Watts painted her in her vibrant youth. Myers herself would recall meeting photography pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron as a child and having posed for her. This meeting seems to have been transformative.
In the late 1880s after her marriage to Frederic William Henry Myers and the birth of her three children Eveleen would seek an outlet for her own artistic impulses by becoming a photographer. Within a short time she became a well-respected portrait photographer and also an heir to the aesthetic photographic tradition of Cameron.
Today a collection of over 200 images, now at London's National Portrait Gallery, remains her legacy. Since 2012 together with the curatorial staff at the Gallery Dr. Nic Peeters and I have been studying her work.
While many of her portraits are of celebrities and known models there remain a group of unidentified sitters for whom we seek information. Those titled are from inscriptions on photos but we have been unable to trace their certain identities. Others may be professional models or members of Myers's household.
Here is a list of images for which we ask help in identification.
Judy Oberhausen
San Mateo, CA, US
Dr. Nic Peeters
Edinburgh, UK
1. Renee Tennant (inscribed)
Platinum Print 1890s
9 1/2in. x 7 3/4in. (240 mm x 178 mm)
Purchased 1991
NPG Ax36323
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Photo: Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
2. Miss Judd (inscribed)
Platinum Print, 1890s
9 1/2 in. x 7 in. (241 mm x 178 mm) overall
Purchased, 1991
NPG Ax36320
© The National Portrait Gallery, London
Photo: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
3. Unidentified Woman with Musical Instrument
Platinum Print 1890s
© The Terence Pepper Collection
Photo: Courtesy of the Terence Pepper Collection
4. Unidentified Woman with Hat
Platinum print 1890s
© The Terence Pepper Collection
Photo: Courtesy of the Terence Pepper Collection
5. Unidentified Robed Model
Listed as “Lady in Pajamas”
Postcard reproduction of platinum original
http://www.playle.com/listing.php?i=KDL61281
6. Unidentified Woman-1
Platinum print, 1890s
© The Terence Pepper Collection
Photo: Courtesy of the Terence Pepper Collection
7. Unidentified Woman-2
Platinum print 1890s
© The Terence Pepper Collection
Photo: Courtesy of The Terence Pepper Collection
8. Unidentified Woman-3
Platinum print 1890s
© The Terence Pepper Collection
Photo: Courtesy of The Terence Pepper Collection
In the late 1960s. twenty-one year old David Peat created a portfolio of Glasgow photographs to help him gain entry to the film business. Shortly before he died in 2012, Peat, long respected as a leading and award-winning cinematographer and documentary film maker, finally made these extraordinary images available to the public. As perceptions of street life in Gorbals and other parts of Glasgow, they are beautifully crafted and touching, especially as the bulldozers were about to move in and an entire way of life was coming to an end.
This is the first time these photographs, hidden for forty years, will have been exhibited in London.
Two books of David Peat's work will be available at Panter and Hall, Eye on the Street and Eye on the World..
Panter and Hall
11-12 Pall Mall
London
SW1Y 5LU
We'd appreciate comments and suggestions regarding this mystery.
https://pastonglass.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/the-case-of-the-mysterious-roving-moustache/
I am researching some photographs by the British camera manufacturer and dealer James A. Sinclair, FRPS. (d.1940). A great deal seems to be known about his famous cameras; very little about himself. It may well be that his life is more familiar to specialists in cameras and the camera industry than to specialists in photographs themselves. I suspect, for example, that as an eminent dealer in the heart of London – and as the author of distinguished how-to books – Sinclair may well have had extensive correspondence with amateur photographers; but I have found no vestige of it so far.
If members have come across references to this once-eminent person in photographic circles, I would be glad if they would let me know.
Physicist, inventor and businessman, Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) was professor of experimental philosophy at King’s College London for over 40 years, during which time he invented the electric telegraph, the stereoscope and a number of musical instruments. He embodied in his career and accomplishments the developing significance of science as a discipline and its relationship to society during the Victorian era.
King's College, London, is holding an exhibition of material relating to Wheatstone including his stereoscopy, until 19 December 2015.
See: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/exhibitions/maughan.aspx
Dr Kelley Wilder, currently Reader in Photographic History, has been appointed director of De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre. She will take over from Professor Elizabeth Edwards who steps down at the end of the year.
Kelley is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice.
Kelley's biography can be found here.
To coincide with the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron, The Royal Photographic Society in partnership with the National Media Museum and the University of Westminster presents a day of lectures that celebrate women in photography from both sides of the lens.
The talks reflect on the historical and contemporary contribution made by women to photography. We will be discussing their work from the perspective of the photographer, asking how and if gender makes a difference to the way women work, and considering the influence it may have on their subjects.
To book: http://www.rps.org/events/2015/november/21/women-in-photography---bradford
Thomas Galifot is curator of photographs at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Thomas's talk will look at both amateur and professional women photographers who have played a more significant role in the history of photography than has been accorded to them in the field of the traditional fine arts.
Antony Penrose is the Director of the Lee Miller Archives. Lee Miller made the transition from being a top model for Vogue to a photographer for the magazine in less than a year. She was intensely beautiful, highly intelligent and driven to succeed in a man's world. Her early apprenticeship to surrealist photographer Man Ray gave her the skills she needed to start her own studio in New York in 1932, after which she embarked upon an extraordinarily adventurous international career.
Linda Marchant is a Senior Lecturer in Photography in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. She will take a close look at Cornel Lucas's stunning portraits of female film stars from a golden era of British filmmaking. From Jean Simmons to Joan Collins, Bacall and Bardot, Lucas's lens presented a plethora of female film stars to the cinemagoing public, and a uniquely British vision of stardom.
Helen Clarke is a Lecturer in History and Theory of Photography at Leeds College of Art. The story of Vivien Maier, 'the nanny who took pictures', captured the public's attention after her work was published on John Maloof's Flikr account in 2009. This talk looks at some of Maier's photographic work, particularly her self-portraits, and provides a reading of her character based on the evidence they present.
Image: Joan Collins 1952. © Cornel Lucas www.cornellucascollection.com
It was a flying visit to Sydney to see the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The trip was so very worthwhile, for I had never seen JMC's large contact photographs "in the flesh" before, let alone over 100 vintage prints from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. They did not disappoint. This exhibition is one of the photographic highlights of the year.
When you think about it, here is one the world's top ten photographers of all time - a woman, taking photographs within the first twenty five years of the birth of commercial photography, using rudimentary technology and chemicals - whose photographs are still up there with the greatest ever taken. Still recognisable as her own and no one else's after all these years. That is a staggering achievement - and tells you something about the talent, tenacity and perspicacity of the women... that she possessed and illuminated such a penetrating discernment - a clarity of vision and intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight into the human condition...
The road to spirituality is the road less travelled. It is full of uncertainty and confusion, but only through exploring this enigma can we begin to approach some type of inner reality. Julia Margaret Cameron, in her experiments, in her dogged perseverance, was on a spiritual journey of self discovery. In Philip Roth's Exit Ghost, he suggests Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs as the ideal music for a scene his character has written:
"Four Last Songs. For the profundity that is achieved not by complexity but by clarity and simplicity. For the purity of the sentiment about death and parting and loss. For the long melodic line spinning out and the female voice soaring and soaring. For the repose and composure and gracefulness and the intense beauty of the soaring. For the ways one is drawn into the tremendous arc of heartbreak. The composer drops all masks and, at the age of eighty-two, stands before you naked. And you dissolve."
These words are an appropriate epithet for the effect of the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron in this year 2015, the 200th anniversary of her birth.
Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart
Word count: 1,336
Read the full text here: http://wp.me/pn2J2-7lg
Julia Margaret Cameron
Sappho
1865
Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative
Given by Alan S. Cole, 19 April 1913
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In late 1865 Julia Margaret Cameron began using a larger camera, which held a 15 x 12-inch glass negative. Early the next year she wrote to Henry Cole with great enthusiasm – but little modesty – about the new turn she had taken in her work. Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, close-up heads. These fulfilled her photographic vision, a rejection of ‘mere conventional topographic photography – map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form’ in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture.
This striking version of Sappho is in keeping with Cameron’s growing confidence as an artist. Mary Hillier’s classical features stand out clearly in profile while her dark hair merges with the background. The decorative blouse balances the simplicity of the upper half of the picture. Cameron was clearly pleased with the image since she printed multiple copies, despite having cracked the negative.
In our contemporary image-saturated, comprehensively mediated way of life it is difficult for us to understand how "sensational" photography would have been in the Victorian era. Imagine never having seen a photograph of a landscape, city or person before. To then be suddenly presented with a image written in light, fixed before the eye of the beholder, would have been a profoundly magical experience for the viewer. Here was a new, progressive reality imaged for all to see. The society of the spectacle as photograph had arrived.
Here was the expansion of scopophilic society, our desire to derive pleasure from looking. That fetishistic desire can never be completely fulfilled, so we have to keep looking again and again, constantly reinforcing the ocular gratification of images. Photographs became shrines to memory. They also became shrines to the memory of desire itself.
Dr Marcus Bunyan for Art Blart
See the full posting here: http://wp.me/pn2J2-7oK
Photography - A Victorian Sensation shows at the National Museum of Scotland until 22 November.
Ross and Thomson of Edinburgh
Unknown little girl sitting on a striped cushion holding a framed portrait of a man, possibly her dead father
1847-60
Ninth-plate daguerreotype
© Howarth-Loomes Collection at National Museums Scotland
Learn the photographic art of bromoil printing from negative to finished print, and leave with a finished bromoil, plus transfer demonstration. Arranged by The Bromoil Circle of Great Briatin. Places are limited to 15.
The cost is £50 including tea and coffee.
See more at: http://www.rps.org/events/2016/march/05/bromoil-and-bromoil-transfer-workshop
