Blogs

To kick off the 'Rethinking Early Photography' conference, the University of Lincoln is hosting a free public lecture by distinguished photo-historian Larry J. Schaaf. Professor Schaaf will be talking about the controversy that was sparked in 2008 over his identification of the now-infamous 'Quillan Leaf' as possibly originating with Thomas Wedgwood.

In 2008, a simple photograph of a leaf was due to be sold at the famous New York auctioneers Sotheby’s. One newspaper suggested that the image could be worth millions. The leaf made headlines around the world when Professor Larry Schaaf’s speculations as to its age threatened to rewrite photographic history. A media firestorm ensued and the leaf was removed from sale. Come and hear Professor Schaaf publicly discuss his conclusions about the leaf for the first time.

The paper will discuss the implications of the row for photographic historiography. It will also draw on subsequent research into 'The Leaf'. Discussing the dating and authorship of the image, Professor Schaaf states: 'the answer lies within my original bookends...Beyond that, however, I feel that there needs to be an examination of just what is history, how do we approach constructing or re-constructing it, and how do we accommodate evolving information and perspectives without destroying the historical record in the process?'

This lecture will be the first time that Professor Schaaf has publicly aired his conclusions about 'The Leaf'. The lecture is free. All are welcome.

Details of the 'Rethinking Early Photography' conference (16th-17th June) can be found here. There is no need to come to the conference to attend the public lecture, though you are of course very welcome to register and take part in this event as well. Queries can be directed to rethinkingphotography@gmail.com

Free public Lecture by Larry J. Schaaf, 4pm 15th June 2015

'The Damned Leaf: musings on history, hysteria & historiography'

Co-op Lecture Theatre (MB0312), Minerva Building, Brayford Pool, University of Lincoln (UK), 4pm 15th June 2015.

You can read more about the leaf photograph and the Sotheby's auction here and news of the withdrawal from auction here

PARC launches its second Moose on the Loose Biennale of Research. Highlights this year include Martin Parr and Nicholas Barker talking about making films, Paul Lowe's remarkable panoramic photographs from the Siege of Sarajevo, Sara Davidmann on the new film about her family archive 'To be Destroyed', British Council films from the 1940s, Anna Fox Work Stations files from the Camerawork archive,  Women and photography in the 1970s, Shadows conference on alternative photography techniques and much more.

It's all free and everyone's welcome.

Full programme and booking at www.mooseontheloose.net.

The National Gallery of Art’s web feature for the exhibition Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860 aims to preserve the exhibition as an online resource for the artist and includes additional material on the photographic practices of Tripe and his contemporaries.

The exhibition opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 24 June and runs until 11 October.

See the website at the following URL: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/captain-linnaeus-tripe-photographer-of-india-and-burma.html   

Peepshows were introduced in the mid-eighteenth century by Martin Engelbrecht in Augsburg. They called for a long wooden cabinet designed for purpose incorporating a viewing lens and sometimes a mirror. In the 1820s peepshows made entirely of paper appeared on the scene more or less at the same moment in Vienna, London and Paris. The clumsy cabinet was no longer called for. The new peepshow was equipped with paper bellows so it could be expanded or contracted in a trice. Paper peepshows were light; they were comparatively cheap. They fitted neatly into the pocket. Viewing a Paper Peepshow is an intimate, individual experience that, in the age of television and hand-held computers, gives a real sense of personal discovery. The viewer engages by peeping through a tiny hole and thereby discovers inside layers of images, like a pocket-sized stage set.

The format lent itself to a wide variety of subjects: to coronations and to state visits and funerals, to pleasure gardens, to trips up rivers and to the ceremonial openings of new railways, to distant views of cities and to tourist landmarks, to military engagements in exotic places, and to the July Revolution and the fall of the Bourbons in France in 1830. The Crystal Palace, erected in Hyde Park 1851 for the Great Exhibition, inspired the production of very large numbers of peepshows, mostly made overseas and imported. Peepshows made possible visits to sites existing in the imagination, to plunge down Alice's rabbit hole, for example, and to wander through the Garden of Eden in Paradise.

The main center of peepshow manufacture in the nineteenth century was toy-making Nuremburg. Briefly in the 1950s it was Britain. Nowadays it is the United States. Paper peepshows are no longer intended essentially for children but for bibliophiles and art-appreciating adults.

This stunning book charts the history of these charming collectables. The illustrated catalogue section includes the following data where known: country of origin, publisher, date, method of printing (eg chromolithograph), shape and dimensions, and number of scenes. As well as a full description of each piece, the author gives fascinating historical and cultural context for these items - ranging from depictions of the July Revolution (Paris, 1830), or the opening of the Thames Tunnel to the nursery tale of 'Puss in Boots'.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has received about 350 of these fragile toys from the British collectors Jacqueline and Jonathan Gestetner, who own Marlborough Rare Books in London.

ISBN: 9781851498000
Publisher: Antique Collectors' Club
Territory: USA & Canada
Size: 9.25 in x 11.75 in
Pages: 272
Illustrations: 511 color
Hardcover

See more here

Dominic Winter's spring Photography auction comprises 225 lots and is strongest on 19th-century material with good albums and collections featuring Asia, India, Africa and Europe. Highlight of the sale is an album of 79 Hugh Owen photographs (lot 370, slideshow link available on request). The albumen prints were made in the 1870s from the original paper negatives of the early 1850s. This ‘Canon Cole album’ has not been at auction before having been fortuitously given to Bristol photographic historian Reece Winstone in 1962 since when it has remained in his family’s hands. A number of the photographs are reproduced in Winstone’s Bristol’s Earliest Photographs (1970) but many of these ‘art’ photographs are unknown as salt prints, making this a unique and important treasure trove carrying an estimate of £20,000-30,000.

Other photographers represented in the auction include James Anderson, Antonio Beato, Thomas Biggs, Bisson Freres, Bonfils, Samuel Bourne, Jane Bown, Larry Burrows, Skeen/Scowen/Apothecaries & Co., Alvin Langdon Coburn, James Craig Annan, Howard Coster, Edward S. Curtis, Frantisek Drtikol, Olive Edis, Roger Fenton, Francis Frith, Frank Mason Good, Pietro Guidi, John W.G. Gutch, Lai Fong, William Baker, William Henry Jackson, Yousuf Karsh, Rudolf Koppitz, John Dillwyn Llewelyn, Maull & Polyblank, Farnham Maxwell-Lyte, Angus McBean, Felix Nadar, Carlo Naya, Talcott Harmon Pankhurst, James Robertson, Shepherd & Robertson, Benjamin Stone, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, William Henry Fox Talbot, Charles Thurston Thompson, John Thomson, Pierre Verger and film director Paul Morrissey. 

Dominic Winter Auctioneers

Photography 1850-2000

Friday 17 April : 1.30pm

Online catalogue: http://www.dominicwinter.co.uk

Viewing times:

Thursday 16 April 9am - 7pm

Friday 17 April from 9am

Earlier times by appointment only

Session 1: Charles Clifford: 83 photographic views of Spain from between 1853 and 1863. These views are studio experiments made by Charles Clifford, creator of the first photographic archive in Spain. The photographs on sale are mostly inedited either as far as format, framing and the use of title cards are concerned or because they have been unknown until now. This important photographic production cannot be found in any of the major international collections in which the artist’s work is included. The photographs are related to the catalogue found in A Photographic Scramble through Spain, A. Marion & Co., London, (1861).

Session 2: Photographs and Photographic books: 230 lots from the beginnings of photography to the present day. The photographs and photographic books are by important nineteenth century artists such as: Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Charles Marville, Auguste Salzmann, Félix Teynard, Alphonse Delaunay, Charles Clifford and J.Laurent, as well as artists who actively participated in twentieth century artistic debates during the inter-war period such as: Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Rodchenko, Joaquim Gomis, Piet Zwart, Man Ray, Brassaï, Raoul Hausmann and Emili Vilá. There are also documentary photographers such as: Dorothea Lange, George Rodger, Francesc Català-Roca, Werner Bischof, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Joan Colom, Colita and abstract photography by Annelisse Hager, Gyorgy Kepes, Myron Kozman and Mario Giacomelli. There is also an important group of photographs taken in Latin America by Hugo Brehme, Leo Matiz, Hermanos Mayo, Walter Reuter, Kurt Severin, Fritz Henle, or by contemporary artists such as: Joseph Beuys, Buby Durini, Pere Noguera, Francesc Torres, Ralph Gibson, Pierre Gonnord, I J. H. Engström, Eduardo Cortils, Juan Pablo Ballester, Bela Adler and Daniel Steegmann.

Viewing:

7, 8, 9 &10 April 2015

13 & 14 April 2015

9.30 to 14.00 and 16.00 to 19.00

Auction Date:

15 April 2015

Balclis, Rosselló, 227, 08008 Barcelona, Spain.

Tel: (34) 93 217 56 07

Fax: (34) 93 217 10 92

Email: info@balclis.com

Download catalogues:

Charles Clifford

http://juannaranjo.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/clifford-web1.pdf

Fotografías y Fotolibros

http://juannaranjo.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/general-web-1.pdf

The Photographs collection consists of more than 250,000 original photographic images of which at least 130,000 are original negatives. They date from the 1840s to the present day. The department is also responsible for the upkeep of records pertaining to the Photographs Collection as well as records relating to photographic portraiture.

Six month internship

We have an opportunity for a paid intern to work on the addition of past photographic display records (including press releases, review excerpts and hand lists to the Gallery’s website).  This frequently visited web page on the photographs section of the website has become a valuable archival resource detailing important exhibitions and displays dating back to the 1970s.

The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to shadow work of the photographs department and assist with shared tasks such as integrating archival records, retrieving original works and re-housing elements of the collection.

This opportunity will suit someone who has an interest in photographic portraiture and British history and can demonstrate accuracy and attention to detail and is able to work as part of a small team. It will provide the successful candidate with an invaluable insight into how a national photographs collection has been managed, interpreted and exhibited over time.

Main duties

1. The addition of past photographic display records to the website. Ensuring the correct documents are included and filed in the correct manner before past display files are passed to the archive.
2. The integration of records into Notes on Photographers and archive Sitter files.
3. Working with aspects of the Photographs Collection including tasks such as the re-housing of original photographs. This will include re-wrapping original negatives and expanding sequences in our Special Collections Store.
4. Curating a photographs section web featurhttp://www.npg.org.uk/about/jobs/curatorial-internship-photographs.phpe, such as a slideshow or spotlight feature. There may be an opportunity to contribute to a small display within the Gallery.

Read more and apply here: http://www.npg.org.uk/about/jobs/curatorial-internship-photographs.php

Leicester's De Montfort University Photographic History Research Centre's (PHRC) Annual International Conference will address the complex and wide ranging question of ‘photography in print.’ The conference aims to explore the functions, affects and dynamics of photographs on the printed page. Many of the engagements with photographs, both influential and banal, are through print, whether in newspapers, books, magazines or advertising. Photography in Print will consider what are the practices of production and consumption? What are the affects of design and materiality? And how does the photograph in print present a new dynamic of photography’s own temporal and spatial qualities? In addition, photography can be said to be ‘made’ through the printed page and ‘print communities’. Therefore, the conference will also explore what is the significance of photography’s own robust journal culture in the reproduction of photographic values? How has photographic history been delivered through the printed page? What are the specific discourses of photography in the print culture of disciplines as diverse as history and art history, science and technology? In this sense, Photography in Print continues the theme of previous PHRC conferences, which have explored photographic business practices and flows of photographic knowledge.

Keynote Lectures:

22 June 2015 – Professor Jennifer Green Lewis (George Washington University Washington DC USA)

23 June 2015 – Professor Thierry Gervais, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

See the provisional programme and register here 

Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History

London

30 April 2015

Viewing 25-29 April

(early viewing by appointment)

 Online catalogue:

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2015/travel-atlases-maps-natural-history-l15401.html

Photographic highlights include:

 Lot 157

Sir William Everett’s album of 43 silver prints and 14 watercolours of Eastern Turkey [1879-1887]

£5,000-7,000

Lot 210

Edward Chapman’s personal annotated set of 89 albumen prints of Yarkand and Kashgar (1873-74)

£10,000-15,000

Lot 215

Dr Charles Hose. Album of 169 platinum prints of Sarawak [c.1884-1900]

£30,000-40,000

Lot 224

John Thomson. The Antiquities of Cambodia, 1867, First edition, with 16 albumen prints

(illustrated above)

£20,000-30,000

Lot 225

John Claude White. Sikhim, and Sikhim & Tibet frontier. Two albums of 60 carbon prints [c.1903]

£10,000-20,000

Lots 226-234

SINGAPORE. A private collection of 19^th century photographs of Singapore and region

Lot 240

St Julian Hugh Edwards. Album of 63 albumen prints of Amoy (Xiamen) and vicinity [China, 1860s]

£40,000-60,000

Lot 256

Major J.C. Watson. Presentation album of 100 albumen prints of Ningpo (Ningbo). [China, c.1870]

£40,000-60,000

Lot 257

Major J.C. Watson, Dr John Dudgeon, John Thomson. Album of 99 albumen prints of Peking (Beijing), Ningpo (Ningbo) and environs. [China, late 1860s]

£40,000-60,000

Other Photographs:

EUROPE & GENERAL TRAVEL

Lots 68-70, and 86

POLAR

Lot 77

NEAR & MIDDLE EAST

Lots 146, 148, 156, 157, 160, 163, 173, 179, 184-188, 190, 193,

ASIA

Lots 205-210, 212-220, 222, 224-234, 239-243, 245-247, 250, 256-258

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2015/travel-atlases-maps-natural-history-l15401.html#&page=all&filter=mediums/Photographs&sort=lotNum-asc&viewMode=list

Icon Photographic Materials Group is pleased to announce that we will be co-hosting a one day event with Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales on the theme of digitisation and display to coincide with their exhibition, Historic Photography Uncovered and the recent launch of their online database of images from their historic photography collections.

Speakers at the event will be talking on a range of subjects such as support for digitisation projects, considerations relating to the display and loan of photographs, and mounting methods for water sensitive materials. There will also be behind-the-scenes tours and a guided tour of the exhibition. Please see the ICON PhMG webpage for more details ( http://tinyurl.com/IconPhMGCardiff).

Date: 16th April 2015

Time: 11.00 to 15.30 (registration/coffee at 10.30)

Location: Cardiff, National Museum Cardiff

Cost: £20 Icon members; £30 non-members; £7.50 Icon member concessions (includes lunch)

Booking: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sharing-photographs-digitisation-and-...

Can anybody identify these images please? They are possibly salt prints but have no identification. Thank you

Can anyone help with the three photographs below and the questions posted? 

Date of Photo and age of man

Date of Photo and age of woman

Can anyone help - we think they are relatives but the date and age would help to decide ?

Is this a mourning photo - mother of a lost baby ?

can anyone explain the photo - any idea when and how old she is - was this a usual thing to do ?

The exhibition Drawn by Light. The Royal Photographic Society Collection was opened today by photographer John Swannell HonFRPS at the National Media Museum after a very successful showing at Media Space, London.

The exhibition spans Gallery 1 and 2 in the museum and admission is free. It is open until June.

The Bradford showing includes new works recently added to the RPS Collection, including photographs by Swannell and Susan Derges. A series of public events are planned over the next three months. 

Find out more here.

Photos: John Swnnell opens the exhibition; left, Colin Harding the exhibition curator with John Swannell / Credit: Michael Pritchard.

Sir Harold Evans, former Sunday Times editor and prolific writer on photojournalism is to receive the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation’s Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award at a ceremony on 18 May 2015, while South African photographer David Goldblatt will be awarded the first ever Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship in recognition of his extraordinary work in books throughout a distinguished career.

The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards are the UK’s leading prizes for photography and moving image books. Judged by a panel of prominent experts, they celebrate the books which have made original and lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contributions to the field. The longlisted and shortlisted publications for The Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award and The Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award will be revealed at the opening of the awards display in Media Space’s Virgin Media Studio on 20 April 2015. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 18 May 2015, with a £10,000 prize split between the two categories.

On Sir Harold Evans’ naming as recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Award, Michael G. Wilson, Chairman, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation said ‘With a distinguished career spanning many decades and both sides of the Atlantic, Sir Harold Evans represents the very highest standards of professional journalism. He has been both a writer and editor for many of the great periodicals of our time as well as author of books about the recent history of America. It is our great pleasure to award him the Kraszna-Krausz Outstanding Contribution to Publishing prize.’

On the awarding of the Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship to David Goldblatt, Wilson said: ‘David Goldblatt is the 2015 inaugural Kraszna-Krausz Fellow in recognition of his incredible achievement as a photographer working in the medium of the photography book. Throughout his career, Goldblatt's projects have exemplified the highest standards of intellectual rigour and creative production. His photography books have inspired multiple generations of photographers and are among the most influential of the 20th and 21st centuries.’

The First Book Award is the world’s leading book prize for emerging photographers. The Award was established in 2012 by MACK and the National Media Museum and is open to photographers who have not previously had a book published by a third party publishing house. Media Space will present a display of the winning project, together with an overview of the winners from the first three years of the Award and this year’s shortlisted projects. The winning project will be published by MACK on 20 April at the opening of the display accompanying the awards.

The photographers (and works) shortlisted for the First Book Award 2015 are announced as: Ciarán Óg Arnold (I went to the worst of bars, hoping to get killed but all I could do was get drunk again), Fine Bieler (Traumkaßte Bilder mit Anspruch auf Wahrheit), Marguerite Bornhauser (Plastic Colors), Ivars Gravlejs (Early Works), Tine Guns (The Diver), Kevin Lear (A Glass Darkly), Vittorio Mortarotti (The First Day of Good Weather), Musa Nxumalo (I, II, III, IV, In search of …), Charlotte Tanguy (In a Sense), Ofer Wolberger (billie).

Lucy Kumara Moore, Director, Claire de Rouen Books and First Book Award judge, said: ‘For me, the pleasure of judging this prize was in knowing that I could focus on the quality of the work contained within the submitted book dummies, rather than the material and conceptual ways in which the dummies had themselves been assembled. Michael Mack's understanding of photo book publishing is exceptional, and this is the strength of the First Book Award - it allows a talented practitioner to begin to refine the way in which their work is presented to the world. Importantly, this year the prize also involves an exhibition at Media Space for the winner, thereby foregrounding further the sensitivities of different formats of presentation - the book, the exhibition, etc - and how these might complement each other.’

The display accompanying The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards and the First Book Award 2015 will run from 20 April to 28 June 2015 in the Virgin Media Studio, Media Space, Science Museum, London. Visitors will have a unique opportunity to look through copies of the newly and soon-to-be-published books by each of the shortlisted entrants and award winners, alongside a selection of striking images from the previous First Book Award winners.

Details can be found at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediaspace<http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediaspace>.

Image: Children on the border between Fietas and Mayfair, Johannesburg, c.1949 © David Goldblatt, courtesy The Goodman Gallery

Last year BPH reported that George Eastman House was changing the status of the library within the institution. A consequence of this was the departure of Rachel Stuhlman after nearly thirty years. One year later and BPH can report that Virginia Dodier was appointed Associate Librarian of the Richard and Ronay Menschel Library at George Eastman House last June and that the library continues to provide a service to GEH and to external researchers. 

Dodier will be familiar to many in the UK as she worked on the V&A's Clementina, Lady Hawarden: Studies from Life, 1857–1864 exhibition and book. Hawarden was also the subject her MA thesis. 

George Eastman House announced [2 June 2014] that Virginia Dodier has joined the museum as associate librarian for its Richard and Ronay Menschel Library. A specialist in libraries, archives and museums (LAM), she will maintain the research library and rare books collection of George Eastman House; serve as chief cataloger of the library’s collections and acquisitions; contribute to exhibitions, publications, and public programs developed by museum curatorial staff; and collaborate with other staff to provide an integrated approach to technology and other museum initiatives.

Dodier brings more than twenty years of professional experience to her new role at George Eastman House. She previously served as director of the Carlsbad Museum and Art Center in New Mexico for ten years. Prior to that, she was the study center supervisor in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where she facilitated access to the museum and departmental collections, oversaw library acquisitions, and assisted researchers.   

She received a master’s degree in the history of art from Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, as well as a master’s degree in library science with an archives studies certificate from Emporia State University in Kansas. Recently, Dodier worked with the independent press archive at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in Rochester as part of her practicum for her master’s degree in library science. She is the author of Clementina, Lady Hawarden: Studies from Life, 1857–1864, which accompanied an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

She can be reached :

George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607

e: vdodier@geh.org

t: 001 585 271-3361 x307, x336

Photo; Michael Pritchard, October 2014

Kate Bush, the Science Museum Group's Head of Photography and Dr Jonathan Miller opened Revelations. Experiments in Photography last night at Media Space, London. The exhibition has been curated by Dr Ben Burbage and Greg Hobson.

The exhibition looks at how photography was used to record and measure phenomena which lay beyond human vision from the 1840s to contemporary artists. The show is fills the three galleries of Media Space. 

To read more about the exhibition or to book tickets click here

Right: Dr Jonathan Miller opens the exhibition (left and below)

The Royal Photographic Society's Documentary and Visual Journalism Group is running a one-day conference on war photography on Sunday, 19 April 2015, at the Discovery Centre, Winchester. Speakers include Dr Hilary Roberts, Research Curator of Photography from the Imperial War Museum. A supporting exhibition Then and Now, is on show at the same venue from 17-28 April.

The conference, which is open to everyone, features five respected speakers who will discuss different aspects of the genre

Read more about the speakers and event here. 

The inaugural Photography Oxford Festival in 2014 offered a wide-ranging programme of exhibitions and events throughout September 2014, including a number of historic shows. The Festival trustees are inviting applications from interested groups or consortia to submit proposals to manage the Festival for three years, the first of which will take place in 2016. 

An invitation to tender is available here Photography%20Oxford%20Invitation%20to%20tender_Festival%202015-17.pdf.

Last night saw the launch of Ken and Jenny Jacobson's Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin's Lost Daguerreotypes at the publishers, Quaritch. The long-awaited book more than lived up to everyone's expectations - it is a stunning volume, well-research and well-illustrated as one would expect. BPH will carry more on the content shortly.

You can read more about the history of the book here and how to purchase a copy. It remains at a special price of £75, until 31 March 2015. Contact: Alice Ford-Smith at Quaritch (a.ford-smith@quaritch.com) to order. The United States launch will be in New York at AIPAD in April.  

The images show Ken and Jenny with their book, with their daughter, and views of the launch.

Considering the photography as a tool, channel, support and a relevant object for the study of Art History, the Department of Science and Technical Heritage of the Faculty of Arts, University of Porto plans to open a course of study and dissemination on the subject entitled Encounters with Photography. This first reedition is dedicated to the Urban Body. Developped by the XIVthSemana de História da Arte, this conference will be held between April 15 and 16, 2015 and has as main objectives:

• Reflect on issues and problems related to the state of the art and historiographical practices of photography;
• Launch the discussion on categorization, classifications, practices and techniques;
• Address new perspectives on the use of photography and image in the sciences;
• Push for inter- and multidisciplinary field of expression and photographic aesthetics.

Link to the conference

https://encontrosdefotografia.wordpress.com/

Link to the program

https://encontrosdefotografia.wordpress.com/programme/