Blogs

The V&A Photographs department will be producing a display in Gallery 38A titled: The Camera Exposed. It will explore themes around the presence of ‘the camera’, or some trace of it, in photographs. Spanning the history of photography, the display will present works that explore this theme different ways, from photographers’ self-portraits with their cameras to more conceptual pieces. Artists featured include Charles Thurston Thompson, Lady Hawarden, Bill Brandt, Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Image: Charles Thurston Thompson, ‘Venetian mirror circa 1700, from the collection of Mr. John Webb’, 1853

Bronwen Colquhoun, Assistant Curator of Photography at the V&A, London, is leaving to take up the recently advertised post of Senior Curator of Photography at the National Museum of Wales in February 2016. The role was noted on BPH in October - click here to see the job description. Bron has been with the Photographs Department since 2012.

Her PhD, which she was awarded earlier this year from Newcastle University, examined how photo-sharing website, Flickr The Commons, supports community engagement and builds new knowledge and meaning around historic photographic collections.

She has previously worked at the Library of Congress, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, English Heritage and volunteered at the National Media Museum. 

I am looking for information about an early image of the Rosetta Stone. Here is an albumen print by Mansell & Co., presumably from the 1870's. However it is not an image of the stone itself, but some sort of graphic image- a lithograph, a rubbing?  I know that such images were made as early as 1800, but can find no information about this particular graphic  Is it still in existence? In the British Museum?  The top left corner seems to have been cut off at some point. 

The exact same graphic appears in a remarkable Daguerreotype by Mayall, from the Thomas Harris Collection in New York. That Dag was exhibited in 1847, so the image was around for a while. It even seems darker in the Mansell albumen, but that may just be the fading.

Any information would be appreciated,

Thanks, David

The Science Museum is to present a major exhibition exploring the work of British photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph, which opens in the Museum’s Media Space in April, will present the birth of photography in Britain within its industrial and social context, and reveal the extent of Talbot’s remarkable experiments as the figurehead of a new and influential medium that changed the way people saw themselves and the world.

The Science Museum Group, as custodians of the world’s most comprehensive and important collection of work by William Henry Fox Talbot, is uniquely placed to tell the story of how photography was borne out of a 19th century desire to experiment with emerging ideas and technologies. Photography was one of many fields in which Talbot was working, but it was his invention of the negative-positive process which formed the basis of photography around the world for over 150 years, that immortalised him as the father of the medium.

Five years after making his discovery public he published The Pencil of Nature, the first commercial publication to be illustrated using photographs. Alongside his artistic and scientific aspirations for the medium, Talbot had one eye on its commercial potential. The exhibition is a testament to Talbot’s magical and industrial visions for his invention, ranging from the delicate capture of natural specimens to functional ambitions for photography as a means of mass production.

In 1934, Talbot’s granddaughter Matilda organised an exhibition marking the centenary of his first photographic experiments at Lacock Abbey, the site of production for what is considered to be the earliest photographic negative - the latticed window - taken using an improvised ‘mousetrap’ camera. Shortly after this exhibition, approximately 6,500 items were transferred from Talbot’s former home to the Science Museum so that his unique and valuable works, including some incredibly fragile items, could be preserved for the nation. Some of the earliest examples of his processes will be displayed for the first time in this exhibition.

Russell Roberts, co-curator and Reader in Photography at the University of South Wales said: ‘Photography without question was one of the most profound inventions of 19th 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.’

Greg Hobson, co-curator and Curator of Photographs, National Media Museum said: ‘William Henry Fox Talbot wasn’t only one of the key figures in the invention of photography; he anticipated its uses and usefulness with intelligence and a vision for its critical role in modernity. It is a delight to be able to examine these significant contributions through our remarkable holdings in the National Photography Collection.'

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. The Science Museum’s industrial collections will complement the early Talbot work in the exhibition. They will situate Talbot’s experiments in the context of other contemporary innovations and set the scene for how people shared ideas at the time.

The exhibition 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 artistic contribution and social legacy, it reflects on how enthusiasm for photography was initially limited to a small close-knit, elite group of people.

Towards the end of the exhibition, the work of Talbot’s contemporaries including Anna Atkins, Hill and Adamson, and Calvert Jones will be displayed in an exploration of how technology, techniques and practices were shared or inspired others in different parts of the country to a variety of ends.

Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photography
14 April – 11 September 2016, Media Space, Science Museum, London
Admission £8, Seniors £7, Concessions £6 (prices include donation)

William Henry Fox Talbot, a special catalogue published to accompany the exhibition will feature 100 high-quality reproductions of Talbot’s work, RRP £27.95.

For more about the exhibition, visit www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/foxtalbot

Call for Papers is now open for the upcoming ICOM-CC (Conservation committee) Photographic Materials Working Group Interim Meeting, to be held at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 21-24 September 2016. The theme of the meeting is: Uniques and Multiples.

Please follow the link below to find all details related to the Call for Papers and the meeting itself. The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 15, 2016. The Technical Committee looks forward to your abstracts and your participation in the meeting!

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/icom-cc.pmwg

The email address for questions related to the conference is icom-cc.pmwg.2016@rijksmuseum.nl.

Key dates to remember:

15 January 2016   Submission deadline for abstracts for talks and posters

1 March 2016   Notification of speakers and authors

15 March 2016   Announcement of programme, Registration opens

21-22 Sept. 2016   Workshops and tours

23-24 Sept. 2016   Interim meeting

Anthropology & Photography is a new open-access publication series edited by the RAIPhotography Committee. Emerging from the international conference of the same name organized by the RAI at the British Museum in 2014, the series will highlight and make available to the widest possible audience the best new work in the field.

The RAI Photography Committee consists of: 
Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)
Haidy Geismar (University College London)
Anita Herle (University of Cambridge)
Christopher Morton (University of Oxford)
Christopher Pinney (University College London)
Patrick Sutherland (University of the Arts)
Ariadne van de Ven (independent photographer)

Volume 1 Daniel Miller, Photography in the Age of Snapchat (published December 2015)

From the 1850s to the 1950s, photography was one of the most open avenues for Jews in Britain to make a living, as well as to contribute to mainstream culture. If one’s picture was snapped for a price in Britain, the person behind the lens was more than likely born a Jew. Through the 1970s, Jews were prime movers behind nearly all things photographic in Britain, including photojournalism, portrait studios, collecting, applications of photography to the fine arts, and the emergence of photography criticism and history as distinct fields. Yet despite Jews having played such remarkable roles, far out of proportion to their number and in all facets of photography, little attention has been paid to ethnic-religious difference in studies of British photography.

Richly illustrated with both color and black-and-white images, Jews and Photography in Britain is the first-ever historical investigation of this topic, ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to Queen Elizabeth’s controversial photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz in 2007. Michael Berkowitz explores subjects such as the attempts of H. W. Barnett to unsettle portrait conventions, the spectacular photo editing of Stefan Lorant, the influence of Erich Salomon on Fleet Street, the inception of the “Gernsheim Corpus” (a seminal resource for art historical research) conceived by Walter and Gertrud Gernsheim, the innovative photography practices at London’s Warburg Institute under Fritz Saxl, and the pioneering efforts at collecting and publishing about photography as history and art by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim.

Jews and Photography in Britain
Michael Berkowitz
University of Texas Press
Hardcover
392pp, 96 b&w photos
ISBN: 978-1-4773-0556-0

A FINE AND RARE PHOTOGRAPH OF IRISH POET AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE (1814-1902), who was brother in law to Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886). Carroll had been seeking an opportunity to photograph Taylor since July 1862, and when he was invited to lunch on 3 September, he "found Mr. Taylor walking in the garden with Mr Aubrey de Vere, another poet... Settled to take over my camera on Friday." (Lewis Carroll's Dairies (1997), vol. 4, p.125).

That Friday, Carroll recorded in his diary: "about 10 went in a fly to the Taylors', and photographed until nearly 5. Took Mr Taylor himself, Mr de Vere, Aubrey, Ida and Una. As there was not time for all, I left the camera there" (ibid, p.126). The resulting photographs of de Vere and Taylor are held in the collections of Princeton University. The portrait of de Vere is identical to the one at Princeton (Album II), however the print present here is slightly larger than Princeton's and reveals a little more of the subject along the lower edge.

De Vere was also photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, a friend of Sir Henry Taylor, who used him frequently as a model; presumably it was Taylor who acted again as the link between photographer and subject.

Click HERE to view online catalogue

Image: ALBUMEN PRINT (176 x 150mm.), the poet shown in profile seated in a chair, numbered "12Q" in the negative, 5 September 1862, East Sheen, London [Carroll image number 880]

AN ALBUM OF EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS, SOME ATTRIBUTED TO MAJOR FRANCIS GRESLEY. [C.1859-EARLY 1860S]. This album includes 15 photographs of Radley College pupils and staff taken in 1859 by an unidentified photographer, comprising 12 individual portraits (each sitter named on the mount in pencil), and 3 group photographs: the 1st VIII, the 2nd VIII, and 'The Warden and Fellows of St Peter's Radley'.

The album also contains 7 photographs taken around 1860 in and around Winterdyne House, Bewdley, Worcestershire, the owner of which was Major Francis Gresley (1807-1880), a member of the Amateur Photographic Association, and these photographs may have been taken by him. Gresley exhibited at the London Photographic Society in 1863 and 1864 and won awards. The connection between the two parts of the album are unclear, because Gresley's children did not attend Radley, however a few miles from Winterdyne is Arley Castle which was home to the Woodward family. Some of the Woodward children attended Radley, so there might be a connection.

Click HERE for e-catalogue

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:

• Photography and anthropology
• Photography in historical studies
• Photography and geography
• Photographic collections
• Photographic ethnographies
• Photography and material culture
• Historiography of the social history of photography
• Photographic practice and social as well as technical change

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to: phrc@dmu.ac.uk by the 20 January 2016.

See more here.

The Department of History of Art at Birkbeck is expanding, and is looking to appoint internationally established scholars to help lead growth in areas of excellence. As part of this expansion, the Department invites applications for a permanent senior academic post in the History and Theory of Photography/Digital Culture. This will underpin the expansion of our current portfolio of taught programmes, research initiatives (including funded research), collaborations with external organisations and public engagement initiatives. The postholder will have expertise in the history, theories and cultures of photography and digital visual culture.

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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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.

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. 

Booking

This event is free but places are limited so please complete the booking form to reserve tickets in advance.

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events/2016/jan/julia-margaret-cameron-victorian-networks,-empire-and-the-history-of-photography-today

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