Blogs

I am currently researching the last photograph in this album - William Blackmore and Red Cloud, taken by Alexander Gardner in 1872.

I stumbled across this site and a very interesting blog from 2014 in which Kevin J McCann was researching an aspect of the William Blackmore Collection and both Paula Richardson Fleming and Antony Hamber contributed.

I am hoping that they might be able to answer some questions I have. I am awaiting the arrival of Antony Hamber's biography of William Blackmore and have consulted and enjoyed Paula Richardson Fleming's books on the Shindler Collection and Native American photography at the Smithsonian.

So I am trying to discover:

1 Why did William Blackmore choose to be photographed with Red Cloud? Was William Blackmore part of the 1872 delegation? If so, why, as he wasn't American.

2 Is it certain that Alexander Gardner took this photograph?

3 Was this album of photographs entirely of Red Cloud? 

4 Is the negative of the photograph in the Smithsonian?

5 When was the last copy made?

And specifically for Paula if she happens to read this blog:

1 What year did you come to the British Museum to research with Harry Persaud?

2 Did the Blackmore Collection include photographs from the Shindler Catalogue?

3 What state was the Blackmore Collection in when you began to catalogue and digitize it? Had it been touched since arriving at the British Museum in the 1930s?

4 To confirm: Blackmore had the photographs copied for the Smithsonian before the albums were sent to his museum in Salisbury. How many albums were sent?

5  It would be very helpful if you have any more information about the William Blackmore meets Red Cloud photograph. I had a very fruitful afternoon of research at the British Museum archive, but info on this particular photograph is elusive as it wasn't part of the Shindler Catalogue.

Any help on the above questions gratefully received! Thankyou!

Suzy Quinn

Birkbeck's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre has announced its Autumn/Spring 2016/17 seminar programme. Each is free and open to all, at 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.

Monday 24 October, 6:00-7:30pm

Room 106

Tim Satterthwaite (Visiting Lecturer, University of Brighton)

Spiritualising the machine: the modernist photography of UHU magazine

The photo-illustrated monthly UHU was at the heart of the progressive photographic culture of Weimar Germany. In a stream of articles and photo-pages in the late 1920s, UHU showcased the work of modernist photographers, such as Albert Renger-Patzsch and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, alongside the radical new perspectives of scientific and aerial photography. UHU’s modernism offered more, however, than a simple embrace of technological modernity; like the great photographic exhibitions of the period, the magazine sought a reconciliation between the rationalising forces of the machine age and the organic principles of the natural world and traditional life. This talk describes how UHU’s modernist synthesis was expressed through a unifying aesthetic of repetition and regularity. The magazine’s photographs of microscopic plant forms, aerial landscapes, and the textures of urban life, were symbolic of alternative visions of social order – the organic or technocratic principles of an ideal future society.

Wednesday 16 November, 6:00-7:30pm

Room 106

Samuel Bibby (Association of Art Historians)

‘New! Art… Plus Added Social Purpose’: BLOCK and the Periodical Landscape of 1970s British Art History

Thursday 2 February 2017, 6:00-7:30pm

Room B04

Marcia Pointon (Professor Emeritus in History of Art, University of Manchester, and Research Fellow, Courtauld Institute of Art)

Robert Harris’s Photography at De Beer’s Kimberley Diamond Mine 1875-1890

Robert Shanebrook writes...In 2010, I published a 94-page book Making Kodak Film. The book provided a high level view of the technology used to provide silver halide films. The positive response encouraged me to write a second edition with much more in-depth coverage of the subject.  To gather information, I consulted over 100 photographic film experts.  This resulted in a 470-page book that includes an additional 225 illustrations and over 600 footnoted references.

The first edition provided a great deal of information that had never been published. Nearly all of the additional information in the new book has never been published. Certainly never gathered together in a comprehensive explanation of film manufacturing.

The book includes:

1. History of film base manufacturing including American Film, cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, Estar Base and others.

2.      Expanded discussion of historic and modern emulsion making processes and equipment.

3.      History of coating technology and expanded discussion of curtain coating including photographs of an operating Kodak curtain coater and the thread-up path of Kodak’s Building 38 Film Coating Machine.

4.      Expanded description and photographs of finished film configurations and the finishing processes. Of special interest is motion picture film finishing using high speed T-perforators.

5.      Detailed descriptions of photographic film image forming mechanisms for black-and-white films, color negative films, Ektachrome Films, and   Kodachrome Films.  

6.      Technical descriptions and history of Kodak Films that are used for consumer, professional, motion picture, x-ray, micrographic, graphic, aerial, and scientific applications.

7.      Description of past and current Kodak Worldwide manufacturing plants, interactions between the plants, and technology transfers.  

8.      First-hand description of working in Kodak’s film business in the 1980’s.  

9.      Information based on private communications with over 100 photographic experts.  

10.  Addition of over 225 photographs and diagrams.

11.  Identification of sources of information; over 600 footnoted references.

12.  A table of figures and an index to facilitate finding information in the book.

The book is 470 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches and four-color printed on 80-pound gloss paper.  It is gloss-film lamination hard-cover bound.  Shipping weight is 5 pounds.  It was printed and bound in Rochester, NY. USA

The price of the book will be $125 after December 31, 2016. Before then the price is $100. If requested books will be signed by the author.

                                                                          Priority Mail         Media Mail  

      USA with USPS shipping                                 $73.45               $65.45             

      to New York address with sales tax:                 $79.33               $71.33

PayPal is  makingKODAKfilm@yahoo.com     

International Shipping: I charge what USPS charges for shipping.  USPS flat rate shipping cost is about the same for 1, 2, or 3 books to many countries.

PayPal is  makingKODAKfilm@yahoo.com     All prices $US

                                                            1 book             2 books            3 books

Canada                                                $143.35           $245.95           $345.95          

United Kingdom                                 $165.50           $266.50           $366.50

France                                                 $154.35           $266.50           $366.50

Germany                                             $154.35           $266.50           $366.50

Italy/Switzerland                                $156.05           $266.50           $366.50

Australia                                              $164.70           $275.95           $375.95

Others                                                 contact  makingKODAKfilm@yahoo.com

The life, work and inventions of William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of modern photography, are presented in a major exhibition at the National Media Museum, Bradford.

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph (18 November, 2016  – 5 February, 2017. Free entry) features more than 200 images and objects, including a selection of the earliest cameras and photographs in existence, as well as original documents relating to some of the first experiments in photography.

Scientist and inventor WHF Talbot (11 February 1800 – 17 September 1877) became interested in the idea of the photograph in 1933 during a trip to Italy. Having traced with a pencil a landscape as seen through the lens of a Camera Lucidia, he was inspired to start work on a process that directly reproduced the “inimitable beauty of the pictures of nature’s painting, which the glass lens of the camera throws upon the paper”.

Following several years of experimentation he announced the news of his photographic process in January 1839, just weeks after Frenchman Louis Daguerre had revealed his invention, the Daguerreotype, to the world.

Both men used light sensitive chemicals to permanently create a photographic image, however Talbot’s produced the image on paper (Daguerreotypes used silver-plated copper) and, significantly, allowed multiple copies to be produced. He called his system the ‘negative-positive’ process, and it became the foundation for mainstream photography for more than 150 years, until the advent of the digital camera.

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph features some of the original apparatus used by the British inventor including the famous ‘Mousetrap’ camera (named by Talbot’s wife Constance due to their small box-like appearance), his Calotype Camera, and Camera Obscura.

Also exhibited are examples of Talbot’s earliest photographs – images renowned throughout the world of science, photography and culture: The Haystack (c. 1844), Chess Players (c. 1844), Constance Talbot (portrait, 1840), Notre Dame, Paris (1843) - plus many taken around Lacock Abbey, Talbot’s home and workplace.

Five years after making his discovery public Talbot published The Pencil of Nature, the first commercial publication to be illustrated using photographs. It demonstrated that, alongside his artistic and scientific aspirations, Talbot had one eye on photography’s commercial potential, and an ambition to serve both a creative medium and one of mass production. 

The exhibition, which first appeared in Media Space at the Science Museum, is co-curated by Greg Hobson and Russell Roberts. Roberts, Reader in Photography at the University of South Wales said: “Photography without question was one of the most profound inventions of nineteenth century Britain. Talbot not only set in motion a new way of seeing but, through his writings and experiments, identified the distinctiveness of photography as an art, science and industry. He left an extensive visual record of the medium’s possibilities that reveals a sophisticated consciousness at work. This exhibition allows us to fully appreciate the extent of his achievements and to reinforce the impact of his invention on social and cultural life.”

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph explores how the work of this pioneer bridged art, science and industry to define what was possible in the formative moments of photography.  It also explores the relationships between a network of photographers who gravitated towards Talbot’s process but who each took photography into different territory. Assessing their cultural contribution and social legacy, it reflects on how enthusiasm for photography was initially limited to a small close-knit, elite group of people.

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph
18 November 2016 – 8 February 2017, National Media Museum, Bradford

The National Portrait Gallery has acquired a group of portraits of leading British cultural figures photographed in the 1990s - including Daniel Day-Lewis, Damon Albarn, Alan Bennett, Tilda Swinton, Bob Geldof and Salman Rushdie.

They have been saved from destruction after being rescued from a condemned warehouse in King's Cross. The important body of portraits from British photographic team The Douglas Brothers had sat in a disused storage unit in London for two decades.

The Douglas Brothers began working together in the 1980s, producing photographs for the magazine press and music industry. Their photographic partnership ended in 1995, with both pursuing separate careers in the United States directing movies and commercials. They are both now based in Los Angeles. The brothers stored their photographic archive in a King's Cross lock-up that, nearly 20 years later, was earmarked to make way for redevelopment.

Andrew Douglas says: 'The storage company took over a year to track us down. Even then it was nearly too late'. Stuart Douglas says: 'The building was about to be demolished. Ten years of work came very close to ending up as landfill.'

The brothers contacted London-based artist manager Tim Fennell (bonabattoir.com). 'I received a phone call asking me to drop everything,' says Fennell, 'and clear a lock-up on a demolition site. I had 48 hours before the building was bulldozed. I retrieved 30 crates of negatives and prints that hadn't seen the light of day for nearly two decades. It was a remarkable body of work, just sitting there, forgotten.'

Fourteen of their evocative and atmospheric portraits were accepted for the National Portrait Gallery's Primary Collection. The photographs feature Bob Geldof, Shaun Ryder, Tilda Swinton, Damon Albarn, Alan Bennett, Bryan Ferry, Daniel Day-Lewis, Eric Clapton, Ian McEwan, John Le Carre, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kenneth Branagh, Peter Gabriel and Salman Rushdie.

The Douglas Brothers (thedouglasbrothers.com) spent a decade photographing leading figures from the worlds of art, literature, film, music, sport and fashion. The brothers - real life siblings Stuart and Andrew Douglas - were once described as 'the most desirable photographers of their generation.' They were the last people to photograph Salman Rushdie before he went into hiding following the death threats made against him in response to the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

Dr Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: 'The Douglas Brothers produced some of the most distinctive portraits of the 1990s. Although their photography has since become less well known, this is work that has stood the test of time. Making use of older, historic processes, their pictures are still as fresh and exciting as the day they were made, and make a wonderful addition to the national collection of photographic portraits.'

The Douglas Brothers' portraits will go on display at the National Portrait Gallery in August 2017.

Image: A portrait of Damon Albarn from the collection. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London

The National Portrait Gallery houses a unique collection of all forms of portraiture of the people who have made or who are currently contributing to British history and culture. The Gallery attracts over 2 million visits a year and is among London’s most popular attractions, it reaches and engages these, and further UK and global audiences, with its extensive display, exhibition, research, learning, outreach, publishing, digital and national programmes.

Artist Lala Meredith Vula will speak about her exhibition Flowers of Earth and Blood and about her journey in photography documenting important political and social events. The audience are invited to view the exhibition in the Alison Richard Building before the symposium begins.

POLITICS THROUGH THE ARCHIVES OF PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM AND ART

SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER 2016, 2.00 – 3.00 PM

The 2016 Daguerreian Society auction is available on both the Daguerreian Society web site and on LiveAuctioneers. It is the first annual fully online auction and offers a spectacular collection of offerings thanks to Greg French, Tim Lindholm and the Auction Committee team.

Please register and follow the auction, mark your favorites and feel free to bid...

https://new.liveauctioneers.com/auctioneer/5675/the-daguerreian-society

This seminar will offer a talk about – and in the guise of – the South Kensington Museum, which was the original home of what was later split into the V&A Museum and the Science Museum. It was created by the government's Department of Science and Art, which was run by Henry Cole, the South Kensington Museum's founding director and the prime mover behind the Great Exhibition of 1851. The seminar will have a particular resonance for photographic historian because of the different ways that photography has been considered by the two institutions over their history. 

 By considering the prehistory of the Department and Museum, we intend to put the Victorian relationship between science and art into both long and local perspectives. We will cover the period of roughly 50 years during which the two collections lived in a single organisation, the reasons why they were split circa 1900, and the present-day opportunities in museums and universities for reconnecting them.

The Department of Science and Art Revisited: The View from South Kensington
Tuesday 18 October 2016, 13.00–14.00, Science Museum Lecture Theatre
Dr Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public History at the Science Museum Professor Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Full programme details can be found on the Science Museum webpages:http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us/collections-and-research/news-and-events/autumn-research-seminars

The transit of Venus in 1874 has long been of interest to the photographic historians and the periodicals of the period. A newly released collection of digitised papers at Cambridge Digital Library has been added to the successful Board of Longitude Collection that was released in 2013. The Transit of Venus collection includes a selection of papers and photographs from the Royal Greenwich Observatory archive, including journals kept by Captain George Lyon Tupman as he oversaw training at Greenwich from 1872, led the expedition to Honolulu in 1874 and returned to the Observatory to process the mass of observations until 1880. There are also images and lists of the instruments and stores taken, and the Kailua sub-station journal kept by George Forbes.

In addition to this we have had permission to photograph private papers from the Tupman family, including an album and private journal kept by Tupman and two wonderful volumes of caricature drawings by one of the Honolulu observers, Lieutenant E.J.W. Noble. 

You can see and search the collection here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/tov

You can read an introductory post here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/oct/10/astronomy-expedition-history-hawaii

The ACP is looking for a new Director with the vision, skills and capacity to lead the institution successfully through the next phase of its history.

The Director is ACP’s chief executive officer reporting directly to the Board and is responsible for leading the organisation strategically and operationally to achieve its goals and deliver its artistic program.

This position requires a visionary individual with exquisite judgement who can engage with the artistic and photographic community both nationally and internationally, and prominently represent the art of photography and photo media in Australia.

ACP is at a crucial and exciting phase in its development as a national cultural institution, which will generate challenges and opportunities for our new Director. The organisation has the benefits and strength of its powerful reputation, a strong digital and web capability, an energetic and committed Board, significant operational agility and an optimistic and entrepreneurial spirit.

It is crucial that our new Director has the interpersonal and communications skills to engage with multiple and varied stakeholders, and especially with the community of photographers and artists who closely associate with the ACP. It is also vital that the new Director has a strong understanding of the role that digital technologies and platforms can play in this engagement, from social media right through to exhibition and education.

Other key stakeholders include elected officials and public servants in all three tiers of government, business partners and corporate sponsors, private donors and philanthropic foundations as well as representatives of arts and cultural organisations generally.

ACP has a track record of partnering with other arts and cultural organisations so it is critical for the Director to identify and leverage resources in order to sustain our operations and achieve our artistic objectives.

The Director needs to have a close working relationship with the Curator in the development and realisation of ACP’s artistic program of exhibitions. Working closely with and supporting other staff is critical to achieving successful outcomes in Education & Public Programs, and the ACP Workshop.

Having the ability to provide informative and appropriate reporting to the Board and in particular to develop an honest and robust relationship with the Chairman will be important to the successful execution of the Director’s responsibilities as the CEO of ACP.

See more here and apply by 4 November. 

'Photographic Studies' ( working title ) is a collection of scholarly essays in Chinese and partially English published on a flexible basis. Each issue centers around new trends in contemporary photography, approaching it from a historical and theoretical perspective. Through this, the publication seeks to dig deep into issues on the forefront of photography and further the discussion about them. The focus of "Photography and Culture Studies" is to emphasize the relationship between photography, visual culture studies, sociology, anthropology, aesthetics, philosophy, and other disciplines in the humanities as a whole. We are focused on frontline issues within the Western-style study of contemporary photography; we are devoted to photographic historians and theorists; and as a publication we provide a platform for academic discussion and medium for a diverse array of critics and scholars of photography.

Through established, scholarly articles that focus on the fundamentals of Chinese and Western photography –its theory, practice, and history— 'Photography Studies' looks to combine the newest conceptual frameworks in Western theory with the topics that have contextualized both historical and contemporary photography in China. With this, we hope to create a critical, interdisciplinary dialogue: a complement for the current shortcomings in the study of Chinese photographic history and theory. 

'Photographic Studies' will highlight original articles from academics in China and abroad. We will also be open to a certain percentage of pieces previously released in other publications that we consider to be outstanding. We welcome readers to become active contributors and to recommend photographic works, from both China and around the world, that they find to be particularly spectacular. Each publication will have something to suit all those interested in photography: from photographers, artists, and those involved in Visual Studies to college students, graduate students, and those who merely enjoy photography and the study of the image.

The first issue of 'Photographic Studies' is set to be released in the middle of 2017; it will be independently published by Jiazazhi Press, China. 

We invite submissions from scholars and graduate students working across all times and places on photography and culture. Send a 250-word abstract and CV by December 20, 2016 to taylor110800@gmail. Please don't hesitate to contact me.

This Alfred Silvester Stereoview puzzles me. I'm unable to understand its meaning. A goose (a Gallic cock, maybe ?) whose head is that of Napoleon III, is pushed or kept at bay by a group of maidens. Knowing that the relations between the French Emperor and Queen Victoria were reasonably good in the early 1860s, then… what in the diplomatic dealings between the two countries, or the political situation at the time, might explain this rather humiliating satire of a sovereign ally? I would not be able to solve the puzzle without the help of a knowledgeable member familiar with the intricacies of British politics at the time.

Does anyone know anything about this image or its significance ? Any idea would be much welcome.

Thank you.

Photo historians Brian May and Denis Pellerin will give a 3D talk on the birth and rise of the stereoscopic craze between 1832 and 1862, and on the prominent place held by King’s College London lecturer, Charles Wheatstone, in the history of 3D, then known as Stereoscopy. Professor Wheatstone was the first to demonstrate, using drawings and an optical instrument that he designed and named the ‘stereoscope’, how binocular vision works. Work began to demonstrate why most of us can see the world around us in three dimensions, and how, with only two flat pictures, our brain can recreate the illusion of depth.

King’s College London Archives house an important collection of Wheatstone’s personal papers and material, including over 90 large stereoscopic pairs that were made by various photographers from 1851 onwards, to be viewed in Wheatstone’s reflecting instrument. In the talk, some of these will be shown in 3D for the very first time, thanks to the use of two projectors and interferometric passive glasses.

Given on the 141st anniversary of Wheatstone’s death, this talk is the result of a collaboration between Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company and King’s Archives. In part, it acknowledges and celebrates the role that King’s Archives has played in preserving our unique scientific heritage. The talk will also put the name and work of Charles Wheatstone back in the limelight, recognising him as the pioneer of today’s age of 3D movies and Virtual Reality.

Wednesday,  19 October 2016, 1930 – 2100

at the Edmond J Safra Lecture Theatre, King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College London, London, WC2R 2LS

Admiisson is free but must be pre-booked click here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/charles-wheatstone-the-craze-for-the-stereoscope-tickets-27431266657

The Swains involvement in photography spans over 150 years and encompasses the making of cameras and magic lanterns, studio, wedding, commercial, aerial and war photography, photographic retailing, photographic processing, photographic wholesaling, cinematography and much more.

Little has been written about the work of individual photographers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and there are few contemporary accounts by photographers themselves. This book is intended to shed some light on the work of provincial photographers and the development of some of those businesses.

The book explores the history of photography through the lives and work of members of the Swain family in the context of photographic developments generally. It is extensively illustrated with photographs held by the author, members of the Swain family, and a range of archive sources. Historic images from the Royal Photographic Society Collection are used to illustrate key photographic developments.

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: The Cloister House Press
• Price: £17.44
• ISBN-13: 978-1909465527

Available online here. 

Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders features a selection of over 35 original nineteenth-century albumen silver prints, most hand-tinted, by William Saunders from the Stephan Loewentheil Historical Photography of China Collection. This is the first exhibition devoted to Saunders’s work. 

Saunders holds a distinguished place in the history of photography for the exceptional body of work he produced in Shanghai during the late Qing dynasty. For over a quarter of a century, Saunders operated Shanghai's leading photographic studio, adjacent to the Astor House Hotel, a centre of social activity on the Bund in the 19th century. Saunders made his photographs, some of the earliest of the city and its people, at a critical time in Chinese history, just as Shanghai was emerging as an international commercial city.  Saunders’s images are an unrivalled photographic resource for the study of life in late Qing dynasty Shanghai.

Venue: China Exchange, 32A Gerrard Street, London W1D 6JA 

4 November –12 November, 10am – 6pm

Gallery Talks and Panel Discussions:

November 4 at 6pm -7:30pm
Preservation of Culture: Custodianship of 19th Century Photography

By Stephan Loewentheil, Dr. Phillip Prodger, Terry Bennett, and Richard Fattorini

As part of the historical photography exhibition 'Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders' the panel will discuss custodianship of 19th century photographs taken in China and Asia.

November 10 at 6pm -7:30pm
Traditions of Photography in China

By Dr. Michael Pritchard, Betty Yao, Grace Lau, and Stacey Lambrow

As part of the historical photography exhibition 'Life in Qing Dynasty Shanghai: The Photographs of William Saunders', the panel will discuss early photographic studio practices and traditions of photography in China.

In 1892, brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton took the first ever photograph of a bird’s nest with eggs. Realising the camera’s potential to reveal secrets of the natural world, they resolved to make the best possible records of their discoveries in the habitats, habits and behaviour of birds and other creatures. The following three years of field work resulted in the first nature book to be illustrated entirely with photographs.

This was the springboard to two outstanding careers in wildlife photography. Richard developed the photographic hide through a series of devices which included the extraordinary Stuffed Ox, was author of numerous best-selling nature books, and with an exhaustive programme of public lectures did more than anyone of his generation to popularise nature studies. Cherry excelled at both still and cine photography, made the first recording of birds singing in the wild, and brought back the first film footage of African big game. They were, as numerous natural history photographers have proclaimed, founding fathers of their discipline.

This new and definitive study by John Bevis concerns itself with the lives and partnership of the Keartons, especially their role in the history of nature photography; their attitudes to and interaction with nature; and the status of invention in their work. Reproduced throughout the book are the remarkable photographs that they declared as having been taken ‘direct from nature’. 

The Keartons. Inventing nature photography
John Bevis
ISBN 978 1 910010 09 9
192pp, 234 x 142, paperback with flaps
2016, £14.00

To Order click here: http://www.colinsackett.co.uk/thekeartons.php?x=64&y=7

The latest online publication from the RAI Photography Committee is now available. Volume 5 Carol Payne's Culture, Memory and Community through Photographs: Developing an Inuit-based Research Methodology can be download free of charge, To see - and download - all the publications available click here: https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-and-photography

In the summer 1896 two strangers to Gorleston walked along the South Pier and set up a tripod mounted wooden camera and pointed it inland towards the harbour bend (see: https://youtu.be/ua2MStD2J00). By then the locals must have been used to seeing photographers like Alfred Yallop and James Liffen with their cumbersome mahogany and brass cameras recording scenes and events in the neighbourhood. But on this day in 1896 East Anglian photographic history was about to be made. The cameraman was Birt Acres or his assistant Arthur Melbourne Cooper and their camera was no ordinary camera as it took moving photographs. The camera had been made the previous year by engineer Robert W Paul. It’s possible that the very same camera had been used by Birt Acres to record the finish of the Epsom Derby in the summer of 1895.

Acres or Cooper shot the very first moving pictures to be taken in East Anglia. Their first subject was a paddle tug towing the fishing smack “Thrive” YH120 out of Great Yarmouth harbour. A second shot in the sequence shows the smack “I Will” YH 723 also leaving the harbour. YH120 was owned by William Buckle of 67 South Quay, Great Yarmouth and YH723 was owned by A Bland of 57 St George’s Road, Great Yarmouth. This film was one of twenty one films shown by Birt Acres on 21^st July 1896 to the royal family. This was the day before Princess Maud married Prince Charles of Denmark. The audience enjoyed the performance so much that Acres was invited to film the wedding.

The Gorleston Pier film was shown to Yarmouth audiences at the Royal Aquarium in March 1897 as “introducing the Cinematograph with local pictures of fishing boats leaving Yarmouth Harbour.” This was one week after the very first presentation of “living photographs” in Yarmouth at the Liberal Club Assembly Rooms in the Market Place.

To celebrate this event Gorleston-on-Sea Heritage Group GOSH has invited Great Yarmouth’s Mayor Malcolm Bird to unveil a blue plaque on the lookout building at the end of the Gorleston Pier on Monday 17 October at 12 noon. The plaque will carry information so that tablet and smart phone users with access to the Internet can look at the archive footage while standing where Acres or Cooper stood over 120 years ago. Unlike most blue plaques that celebrate a person or a building this plaque celebrates a little known event that was an East Anglian and Gorleston first.

The archive cinematograph footage can be viewed on the East Anglian Film Archive web site http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/1410 or on the British Film Institute’s  YouTube pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2MStD2J00

Peter Brunning has written a short biography of the London studio photographer Robert Hellis. The piece was published in the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery newsletter. The newsletter containing the article can be downloaded here: newsletter87.pdf. The same newsletter also contains an article on J H Pepper, of Pepper's ghost fame. 

BPH would like to thank Peter Brunning, Bob Flanagan and FOWNC for permission to make the newsletter available.