Blogs

The London-based Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in collaboration with the National Museum and Archaeological Survey of India will be presenting the exhibition: Imaging the Isle Across: Vintage Photography from Ceylon (see poster here: India.jpg). The exhibition will be inaugurated on Saturday, 26 September 2015 at 5pm at the National Museum Auditorium. The exhibition is a partner event of the Delhi Photo Festival, 2015.

The history of photography in South Asia is a story of itinerant practitioners, seeking to expand the eye of the lens by exposure to the farthest corners of the world. Though Ceylon came under British rule only in 1815, it followed the maritime expansion of the Portuguese, the Dutch, Danes and the French – the first of which identified it in their sea-charts as Zeilon, from which the modern name Ceylon was derived and maintained till 1972.  Featuring vintage photographs drawn primarily from the Alkazi Collection of Photography, this exhibition takes its viewers through a mapping of sites as well as visual tropes and themes emerging from early photography via diverse mediums of production such as albums, illustrated books and postcards. These traces remain foundational in generating a imagistic canon that etched the life of a swiftly transforming country, as did the coming of a modern, pictorial language instituted by Lionel Wendt, the art photographer and patron.

We are extendedly grateful to the contributions and support of the University of Cambridge, Centre of South Asian Studies; the India-Sri Lanka Foundation, Ismeth Raheem, Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes, Dominic Sansoni and Anoli Perera.

Leicester's Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University has announced its autumn seminar programme. The evening talks are free of charge and open to everyone. The first takes place on 20 October and the full programme is available here.

Peter Eric Palmquist was killed by a hit and run driver on January 13, 2003, at the age of 66. He had been a professional photographer for more than 50 years, 28 of them at Humboldt State University. He is considered one of the most important photo historians of the 20th century. His emphasis was the American West, California, Humboldt County before 1950, and the history of women in photography worldwide. He published over 60 books and 340 articles. With co-author Thomas Kailbourn, he won the Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize for their book, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. Professor Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University, wrote, “He (Peter) established new ways of pursuing the history of photography, and with his collections and research notes soon to be accessible at Yale, he will be speaking to and inspiring new generations of students and researchers forever.” Established by Peter’s lifetime companion, Pam Mendelsohn, this fund supports the study of under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present, and under-researched Western American photographers before 1900.

A small panel of outside consultants with professional expertise in the field of photohistory and/or grant reviewing will review the applications in order to determine the awards. Applications will be judged on the quality of the proposal, the ability of the applicant to carry out the project within the proposed budget and timeline, and the significance of the project to the field of photographic history. Each recipient of the award will agree to donate upon completion of the project a copy of the resulting work (i.e., published book, unpublished report, thesis, etc.) to the Humboldt Area Foundation to submit to the Peter Palmquist Archive at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and a report to Humboldt Area Foundation at the end of the grant period.

Click here to download an application form.

RANGE OF AWARDS: $500 - $1,500

ELIGIBILITY

Individuals researching Western American photography before 1900 or women in photography as well as nonprofit institutions conducting research in these fields are eligible to apply.

APPLICATION GUIDELINES

1. Complete application form and budget form

2. Write a short statement explaining your study of either:

• Under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present
• Under-researched Western American photographers before 1900

3. Since submission of a vague plan of work often results in rejection of an application, we urge you to provide as clear and complete a statement of your work plan as possible.

4. Statement must be double spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point font, and no more than 1,250 words. Statement must describe how funds will be used.

5. Include a copy of your resume or curriculum vitae no longer than 3 pages.

6. Previous Palmquist Grant recipients may reapply if they include the following information:

• Report the specifics of what was accomplished with the award
• Report the specifics of how the funds were used to reach that accomplishment

No other materials (additional samples of work, etc.) will be considered: please enclose only the items listed above.

Completed applications must be postmarked by: November 2, 2015 by 5:00 pm, and submitted to:

Humboldt Area Foundation • 363 Indianola Road, Bayside, CA 95524

Award Recipients will be notified by December 16, 2015

A new exhibition Cameras of the United Kingdom has opened at the JCII Museum, Tokyo. The exhibition includes one of William Henry Fox Talbot's original 'mousetrap' cameras from The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum. This is the first time that any of the Talbot cameras have been loaned for an overseas exhibition.

The exhibition provides a survey of the history and development of the British camera. and runs from 15 September until 20 December. 

See:http://www.jcii-cameramuseum.jp/top_e.html

and a Japanese news report here: http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20150915_721205.html

Image: Left - Hiroshi YANO (Director of JCII) -Right- Yasuhito KOBAYASHI (Director-General of KYPC) unveil the Talbot 'mousetrap' camera one of the highlights of the exhibition at the opening ceremony on 15 September. 

The Science Museum has announced a new exhibition of portraits by pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, marking the 200th anniversary of her birth. The exhibition, which will include the only existing print of her iconic portrait Iago, draws from the world’s largest collection of Cameron’s photographs, part of the Science Museum Group’s unparalleled National Photography Collection.

Cameron’s bold portraits of influential artistic and literary friends, acquaintances and family members including Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, William Holman Hunt and several striking photographs of her niece Julia Jackson, mother of Virginia Woolf, both revolutionised photography and immortalised the Victorian age. Her purposefully unconventional approach, using a lack of sharp focus and technical faults to harness photography’s expressive power, instilled feeling and energy into her images and became a hallmark of her style despite fierce criticism from the photographic press.

Exploring the vibrant life and genius of the trailblazing British artist, the exhibition will feature unique objects including a daguerreotype portrait (the first known image of Cameron) and her camera lens (the only piece of her photographic equipment known to survive). Also on display will be handwritten notes from the original manuscript of her autobiography Annals of My Glass House, personal letters by Cameron and others and a selection of extremely rare photographs taken in Sri Lanka during her final years.

A key element of the exhibition will be one of the National Photography Collection’s greatest assets: The Herschel Album, compiled by Cameron in 1864 as her finest work to date and a gift to her friend and mentor, the scientist and photographer Sir John Herschel. Representing for many the finest album of Victorian photography, it was the first photographic item to be placed under an export ban and saved for the nation in 1975. This marked a major milestone in the classification of photography as art and vindicated Cameron’s artistic aspirations for her medium.

The exhibition is co-curated by Colin Harding, Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, Bradford, and Tim Clark, Associate Curator, Media Space. Kate Bush, Head of Photography, Science Museum Group said: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron is deservedly regarded as one of the founding figures of modern photographic portraiture. The range of her work, from tender, naturalistic observation, to dramatic staged tableaux, anticipates every subsequent approach to the genre. Her closely framed faces, bold, expressive and minimal, are as radical and visionary as the woman who created them.’

Julia Margaret Cameron: Influence and Intimacy
24 September 2015 – 28 March 2016
Virgin Media Studio, Media Space, Science Museum, London.
Entrance free.

See more at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediaspace.

Image: Iago, Study from an Italian, 1867, Julia Margaret Cameron © National Media Museum, Bradford

In 1864, Walter Woodbury patented a photo-mechanical printing process which effectively allowed carbon prints to be mass produced. Many consider that this was the definitive process developed to produce permanent photographs.

Peter McCallion is completing his PhD documenting how he has reprised the process at the University of the West of England’s Fine Print Research Centre. Peter will explain the process’s history and his research. He will demonstrate the final stage in the process: the printing/pressing of an actual Woodburytype. This is a very rare opportunity to see a demonstration of this process.

The associated blueprint-II exhibition includes a modern carbon print comparison with an 1870s vintage Woodburytype print.

12 September, 2pm. More information: http://institutephotographyscotland.org/Woodburytype.html

Trongate 103 – Glasgow Print Studio

103 Trongate
Glasgow
G1 5HD

FURTHER INFORMATION

Glasgow Print Studio

A rare opportunity to see the original 1870s album containing experiments by amateur photographer Fanny Pickard which have inspired some 21st century ‘coffee prints’ (on exhibition in Java – ology) Alongside will be 19th century reference works on photography and fine examples of woodburytypes and photogravures, processes used in book and magazine illustration. The technology behind the mass-production of photographs is explored further in Blueprint II.

Visitors can drop in to see the dozen items on display, selected from the University’s collections. Blueprint curators and printmakers Roger Farnham and Harry Magee will also be present to discuss processes.

Organised by Sarah Hepworth/University of Glasgow Special Collection. More information: http://institutephotographyscotland.org/fanny_pickard.html

University of Glasgow Library
Wednesday, 9 September, 2-4pm.

University of Glasgow Library

(Level 12: Special Collections)
Hillhead Street
Glasgow G12 8QE

0141 330 6767

FURTHER INFORMATION

Blueprint II
Java-ology

Just to mention that the book about Walking Pictures is nearly complete.  The publisher has posted two short videos about the project on their YouTube channel.

These look at the book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBtsgqyPBg), and also at a series of images taken on one spot in Mablethorpe over 40 years or more (https://youtu.be/cwB9aZ9-h3M)

The Blue Plaques Group is unveiling a blue plaque to photographer Henry Peach Robinson on Wednesday, 23 September, 2015 at 2.30pm. The unveiling will take place at 60-64 Parade, Royal Leamington Spa, CV32 4DB and the plaque has been supported by The Royal Photographic Society and Leamington History Group. Following the unveiling there will be tea and a short talk at Leamington Town Hall. Anyone wishing to attend should RSVP to the Clerk to the Town Council, Town Hall, Royal Leamington Spa, CV32 4A, tel: 01926 450906, or email: clerk@leamingtonspatowncouncil.gov.uk no later than 16 September, 2015. 

Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901) opened his first photography studio in Leamington Spa in 1855. He joined the Photographic Society, later the Royal Photographic Society, in 1857 and was a member at his death sitting. he was Vice President and sat on its Council for many years. He broke from the Society when he joined the Linked RIng in 1891.

Robinson was a founder member of Birmingham Photographic Society (1855), published a number of books on photographic practice and wrote extensively in the periodical press of the time. He is perhaps best known for his combination printing and exhibited works such as Fading Away. The RPS Collection holds a large number of his work.

The only substantive study of Robinson is Margaret Harker's Henry Peach Robinson. Master of Photographic Art 1830-1901 (1988). 

Not so long ago the idea of a radio programme devoted to discussing photographs might have seemed a bit odd. How effective could a presenter be in describing the images? In fact, the idea has worked well in the past. Earlier this year Radio 3 did a series of five programmes which discussed The Five Photographs That (You Didn’t Know) Changed Everything.  With the right presenter radio is often a more effective medium than television in discussing with visual media. These days, of course, for much of the audience radio is supported by online resources and the images can be viewed before or during the programme. For many, of course, the images will already be familiar, part of our personal visual memory.

This programme uses the photographer and former Picture Editor at The Guardian, Eamonn McCabe, to curate his personal photography exhibition on the radio. He has selected ten images that have inspired or moved him during his fifty years in the business.

The selection includes Don McCullin’s The Guvnors, Finsbury Park, London  (1959). This was the image that launched McCullin’s career with a half-page in The Observer and inspired McCabe who came from a similar background just a few streets from McCullin. David Bailey’s The Kray Twins (1965) and Chris Smith’s Mohammed Ali in Miami are each powerful portraits. By contrast Willi Ronis’s Le Nu Provençal, Gordes, 1949 is an intimate portrait of his wife. Nickolas Muray’s Soldiers of the Sky which McCabe first discovered in The Royal Photographic Society Collection applies a fashion aesthetic to war propaganda;  and McCabe’s former Observer colleague Jane Bown’s portrait of Anthony Blunt, 1979, is perceptive, revealing more than her subject would have wished.

There are four photographs that are not portraits: J H Lartigue’s Automobile Delage, Circuit de Dieppe, 26 June 1912 marks a start in photo-journalism and clearly resonates with McCabe. Joel Meyerowitz’s  Assembled panorama of the World Trade Center site, Fall 2001 captures a high-definition view of Ground Zero showing a detail and stillness that remains gut-wrenching and painful to observe nearly fifteen years on.  The final two: Michael Kenna’s Curraghs, Dingle, 1982, and Raymond Moore’s Pembrokeshire, 1967, both provide a sense of peace and calmness and a view into other worlds.

So what does McCabe’s selection tells us as viewers of photography? The interviews with some of the photographers and the use of the own words adds a background to the images. The photographs reflect McCabe’s own interests as a photographer and photo-journalist. As someone who has looked at millions of images he concludes that, ultimately, photography is not about freezing a moment in time, nor about the equipment used. The best photographs are about capturing an emotion and connecting us with the past. Bailey says as much ‘it’s the emotion that counts’ and McKenna’s black and white image of upturned curraghs reducing the scene to its monochrome core and bring out emotions in McCabe from childhood. Ronis’s work, to McCabe, is ‘pure poetry’.

And that is why a radio works so well with photography.  Look at the photographs, listen to the programme, feel emotions inside you stir and hear the images speak.

Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS

The Spoken Image

BBC Radio 4
To be transmitted Monday, 7 Sept 2015 at 4pm and then available on the BBC iPlayer
Producer:  Olivia Landsberg
The images can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b068tsvg

Hear more photography on BBC Radio 4 here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01w0hly

Image: © Jack Stephenson / BBC. Eamonn McCabe.

In research I am conducting about the first exhibitions of photography, I have been made aware of entries in the 1841 Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition catalogue. 

Roddy Simpson, in his book The Photography of Victorian Scotland, states that four Daguerreotypes were exhibited, but information I received directly from the RSA indicates only three were displayed.The catalogue provides entries for three Daguerreotypes, all by a photographer identified only as "Montreal, D. 18 Drummond Street, Paris."

I am unable to find anything online about this individual, and I am posting this to see if anyone has any further information. Here is the entry page from the catalogue:

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) was one of the most important and innovative photographers of the 19th century. Criticised in her lifetime for her unconventional techniques, she is now celebrated as a pioneering portraitist. 2015 marks the bicentenary of Cameron’s birth and the 150th anniversary of her first museum exhibition – the only one in her lifetime – held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1865.

Drawing on the V&A’s significant collection, which includes photographs acquired directly from Cameron and letters she wrote to the museum’s founding director, Curator Marta Weiss tells the story of Cameron’s artistic development. She also presents, for the first time, a group of photographs recently revealed to have belonged to Cameron’s friend and mentor the artist G.F. Watts. This discovery sheds light on previously unacknowledged aspects of Cameron’s experimental approach.

The book also reveals - for the first time - a view of Cameron's glass house in a photograph by Oscar Rejlander, probably in collaboration with Cameron. You can see the picture in a review of the book here: http://fannycornforth.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/review-julia-margaret-cameron-by-marta.html

The exhibition opens in London on 28 November 2015.

Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world
Marta Weiss
MACK, in partnership with Victoria & Albert Museum, London
188 pages, 22 cm x 26 cm, paperback
Publication date: November 2015, shipped from August 2015
£25.00

Read more here: http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/1068-Julia-Margaret-Cameron.html

The book accompanies a touring exhibition:
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (18 Nov 2014 – 1 Feb 2015)
Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (14 March 2015 – 14 June 2015)
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (13 August 2015 – 25 October 2015)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London (28 Nov 2015 – 21 Feb 2016)
Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (15 March 2016 – 15 May 2016)
Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo (2 July 2016 – 19 September 2016)

This exhibition of the work of the British photographer Thomas Child (1841-1898) is curated by Stacey Lambrow and selected from the collection of Stephan Loewentheil. It runs from 10-15 November at China Exchange, Gerrard Street, London. A collector's talk will be held on 10 November at 5pm. Admission to both is free.

Qing Dynasty Peking. Thomas Child's Photography
10-15 November 2015
China Exchange, 32A Gerrard Street, London, W1D 6JA. Admission free.
www.chinaexchange.uk

Our friends at the (new) London Stereoscopic Company have launched Victorian Gems a selection of high quality Victorian stereographs and viewer. It was shown at the National Stereoscopic Association convention last week so we've yet to see the set but based on the LSC's past products we're not going to be disappointed. The set includes: OWL’s nest containing an OWL, three new sets of cards (Scenes in Our Village 1-12, Diableries 1-12, The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery), and an explanatory booklet. 

See more and pre-order here.

Watch the video and description here:

London's National gallery has a series of six interactive lunchtime lectures around the subject of photography designed to investigate how photography has shaped both the Gallery and the history of Western European painting.

Find out more here: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/photography-talks

Edward Reeves took up photography c.1855. Today his great-grandson Tom is still running the business in the High Street in Lewes. The Edward Reeves Studio, situated at 159 High Street is believed to be the oldest continuously operated photographic studio in the world.

Today it houses an archive of over 100,000 photographic glass plates, the work of the first three owners. The archive also includes approximately 150,000 images on film and as digital files, the work of the present owner Tom Reeves. Unusually the family has kept business ledgers and the related paperwork. This archive is both a unique record of the daily life of Lewes and the history of commercial photographic practice.

Stories Seen Thorough A Glass Plate exhibits work by the first three generations, displayed as light boxes in 56 windows on the specific locations where they were originally taken, celebrating the continuing vibrancy of this old market town. This exhibition was first shown last November as part of the Brighton Photo Biennial.

Brigitte Lardinois, Senior Research Fellow at London College of Communication is researching this archive. She has curated this exhibition with Matt Haycocks of the University of Ulster. They were assisted by Yaz Norris, photographer.

For more information on the research project and exhibition see http://www.reevesarchive.co.uk

Related exhibitions at Edward Reeves Photography Studio & Gallery 159 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XU

Renowned for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was also one of the most important amateur photographers of the Victorian era and the period's finest photographer of children. This new book by Edward Wakeling, perhaps the world's leading Carroll scholar, presents almost 1000 of his photographs along with a supporting text. BPH readers receiving the weekly update will have received a discount code giving a 20 per cent discount on the book's published price of £87. 

From 1856 to 1880, Carroll took around three thousand pictures, the majority of which were portraits of family, friends, and colleagues. He also sought out and photographed celebrities of the day, including Alfred Tennyson, Samuel Wilberforce, Michael Faraday, William Holman Hunt, Henry Taylor, George MacDonald, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Ellen Terry, John Everett Millais, Charlotte Yonge, and Prince Leopold. Carroll's remaining output includes images of landscapes and architecture, works of art, and skeletons; assisted self-portraits; and other miscellaneous pictures. 

This catalogue raisonné presents images of the nearly one thousand surviving photographs of Lewis Carroll—including many from private collections that have never been published—and provides information on their subjects/sitters, their locations, and the dates when they were taken, as well as extracts from Carroll's private diaries that mention his relevant photographic activity and background information concerning known prints. Edward Wakeling, an internationally recognized Carrollian scholar, has also reconstructed Carroll's lost register of his complete photographic opus. In addition to the catalogue, Wakeling discusses Carroll's activity as a photographer, his contacts with other Victorian art photographers, and his nude studies, and he provides a full listing of the contents of Carroll's various photographic albums. This is the most comprehensive study of Carroll's photography ever produced, and it will be a standard work for anyone studying Victorian photography and for Lewis Carroll's photographs in particular.

See more and order the book here: http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-photographs-of-lewis-carroll?dm_i=1GOG,3LNWR,7J6D0K,CXTQZ,1

Hi. I am a mature student studying Photographic Media at Blackburn University. I am starting my third and final year for my BA honours degree. I am writing my dissertation on the trio David Bailey, Brain Duffy and Terence Donovan, so any help and pointers would be much appreciated :-)

The Royal Photographic Society's Archaeology and Heritage Group is holding a workshop on making negatives for printing by alternative processes or traditional methods from digital files. It is led by Peter Moseley. 

This introductory workshop  covers the essential steps in creating contact negatives to print your digital images using the cyanotype method (maximum five people). Photographic artist, Peter Moseley uses digital origination to capture his images, which are then realised individually on hand-coated art paper using authentic techniques discovered over 150 years ago. Peter will teach the method to convert digital files to create beautiful cyanotype prints.

The workshop covers: how to create the contact negative from a digital file, mix solutions, coat the paper, exposure, and develop prints. This workshop is suitable for beginners and advanced photographers. The only requirement is that the images you provide have a ‘heritage’ connection, if possible. A second part to this workshop will explore other methods, upon request: platinum, gravure, kallitype or carbon transfer printing.

See more at: http://rps.org/events/2015/september/12/peter-moseleys-digital-negative-one-day-workshop

Rachel Nordstrom has been appointed Photographic Collections Manager at the University of St Andrews Library’s Special Collections Division. She replaces Marc Boulay who returned to Canada earlier this year. She has taken on the leadership of the Photographic Collections team and will soon be recruiting for a new Photographic Cataloguer.

Rachel will continue to have oversight of the preservation needs of the University’s rich and varied collection of photographs in all formats, whilst also taking on strategic oversight of the team and the development of the collection. She aims to provide a community resource for research and discovery, and to contribute actively to the sharing and interpretation of the collection's content for the benefit of the public. She also strives to position photography so as to complement, inform, or be the result of some form of intellectual discourse and to build upon the collection's strengths.

A graduate of the International Museum Studies program at the University of Gothenburg, and the Collections Conservation and Management program at Fleming College, Ontario, Rachel came to St Andrews from the Fox Talbot Museum in 2013. She is currently Secretary of ICON-Scotland, and is a committee member of both the Scottish Society for the History of Photography, and the Institute for Photography in Scotland.

BPH wishes Rachel well in her new role and the continuation of making the rich photography collections at St Andrews better known and appreciated.