Blogs

The Daguerreian Society is seeking authors and articles for the next Daguerreian Society Annual. The mission of the Society includes all early photographic processes up to ca 1870, as well as contemporary Daguerreians. We are particularly interested in including more international content, and articles about photographic processes, personalities and events in addition to our traditional foundation of daguerreotypes to reflect our broader mission. Please contact Mark Johnson MSJandA@comcast.net or Jeremy Rowe Jeremy.rowe@asu.edu. 

The 2015 Daguerreian Society Symposium will be held November 5 – 9 in Los Angeles, California at the Pasadena  Hilton is on the horizon. Thursday is a tour of the Getty and the “In Focus: Daguerreotypes” exhibition. The Getty will be hosting us for a lecture and public reception Thursday evening.

Friday is our presentation day with sessions by Sarah Allen, Cybele Gontar, Michael Lehr, Grant Romer, John Stauffer, and Jack and Beverly Wilgus. See the program for abstracts and more information. Friday evening we will have a second reception for attendees at the hotel.

Saturday, the day before the November Rose Bowl Flea Market, is our Trade Fair. Please contact Erin Waters erin@finedags.com, Cindy Motzenbecker motz48073@yahoo.com or Diane Filippi diane_dagsoc@comcast.net for table reservations and details.

Saturday evening we will have our banquet and auction.  Sunday is the Rose Bowl and “on your own” time to visit the Green & Green house, Huntington Library, Norton Simon Museum and other local attractions. Monday we will have a behind the scenes tour at the Huntington.

Please consider attending the Symposium. Registration is open and tables for the Trade Fair are still available http://daguerre.org/symposia/symposium2015.php. We look forward to seeing you at the Symposium.

With the summer holidays upon us it's time to catch up on some reading. This new publication which BPH came across by chance a few weeks ago and purchased is a much needed study of an overlooked subject, from a country which has done so much to influence photography.Highly recommended!

The Japanese passion for photography is almost a cliché, but how did it begin? Although Japanese art photography has been widely studied this book is the first to demonstrate how photography became an everyday activity. Japan's enthusiasm for photography emerged alongside a retail and consumer revolution that marketed products and activities that fit into a modern, tasteful, middle-class lifestyle.

Kerry Ross examines the magazines and merchandise promoted to ordinary Japanese people in the early twentieth century that allowed Japanese consumers to participate in that lifestyle, and gave them a powerful tool to define its contours. Each chapter discusses a different facet of this phenomenon, from the revolution in retail camera shops, to the blizzard of socially constructive how-to manuals, and to the vocabulary of popular aesthetics that developed from enthusiasts sharing photos.

Ross looks at the quotidian activities that went into the entire picture-making process, activities not typically understood as photographic in nature, such as shopping for a camera, reading photography magazines, and even preserving one's pictures in albums. These very activities, promoted and sponsored by the industry, embedded the camera in everyday life as both a consumer object and a technology for understanding modernity, making it the irresistible enterprise that Eastman encountered in his first visit to Japan in 1920 when he remarked that the Japanese people were "almost as addicted to the Kodak habit as ourselves."

Kerry Ross is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at DePaul University.

Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Kerry Ross

Stanford University Press

288pp  9780804795647 PB £16.99 now only £13.59* when you quote CSL815PHFE when you order from: 

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/photography-for-everyone  

Is it possible for organisers or planners of conferences and lectures to have the speakers recorded on video? For the many readers who cannot attend these events it would be a way to keep updated. The lecture by Prof. Scharf recently was absolutely superb and I am sure there are ways to do this. Thanks, Vivienne Silver-Brody

Icon Photographic Materials Group, Icon Scotland Group and National Museums Scotland are proud to present:

Photography: A Victorian Sensation in Focus

An afternoon of talks exploring the challenges addressed in the curation, conservation and design of a major exhibition of photographic material.

Date: 15th September 2015

Time: 12.45 – 17.00 (+ optional Icon PhMG AGM: 10.30; exhibition ticket pick-up from 10.00 onwards)

Location: National Museums of Scotland

Ticket prices:

Icon Member Standard Rate: £20

Icon Member Reduced Rate: £7.50 (students, interns and unwaged)

Non-member Rate: £30

Ticket prices include entry into the exhibition, usually £10.

Booking and full programme: http://photography-victorian-sensation-in-focus.eventbrite.co.uk

Photography: A Victorian Sensation is a major exhibition currently on display at the National Museum of Scotland which explores the evolution of photography during the Victorian period. Innovations in photography are explored through more than 1500 photographs and related objects from the museum’s collections.

Principal Curator of the exhibition, Dr Alison Morrison-Low, will provide the curatorial perspective, and exhibition designer, Esther Titley describes how a common ground was found between exhibition design and conservation concerns. In addition, Kirsten Dunne from the National Galleries of Scotland will provide an introduction to Microfading, data from which was used to aid decision-making in the planning stages of the exhibition. The conservation team - Vicki Hanley, Lisa Cumming, Rosalind Bos and Emmanuelle Largeteau  - will be presenting on a range of areas including: bespoke mounting and suitable display; conservation of Ambrotypes and Daguerreotypes, and the planning and prioritising that took this vast collection from storage to display.

Ticket prices include entry to the exhibition itself so that attendees have the opportunity to view the exhibition at their leisure in the morning before the event.

Please note, the Icon Photographic Material Group AGM will also be held at the National Museum of Scotland in the morning at 10.30. While primarily for Icon Photographic Materials Group members, all are welcome. The AGM is also open to those not attending the afternoon event. Please email us directly if you would like to attend the AGM, but will not be attending Photography: A Victorian Sensation in Focus iconphmg@gmail.com

The full programme and booking is available through the Icon Photographic Materials Group Eventbrite page: http://photography-victorian-sensation-in-focus.eventbrite.co.uk

 We would like to thank National Museums Scotland for their generous support in hosting this event

Icon Photographic Materials Group will be holding its AGM on the morning of the 15^th September 2015 at the National Museum of Scotland. If you would like to attend, then please email us at iconphmg@gmail.com and reserve your place as spaces are limited.

Please note, the venue for the event, the Dunfermline Room, is set out in a lecture room layout. While there is lift access to the floor where the room is located, the banked seating may cause access difficulties for those with mobility problems, particularly anyone using a wheelchair. Please get in touch if you would like more information.

Date: 15th September 2015

Time: 10.30 – 11.30 (assemble at the Tower Entrance at 10.15)

Location: National Museums of Scotland, Dunfermline Room

Ticket prices: free

We’d like to thank the National Museums Scotland for their generosity in hosting this event.

Attendance at the AGM is free, but if you are attending you may also be interested in a separate event being held on the same day by Icon PhMG, Icon Scotland and National Museums Scotland. Photography: A Victorian Sensation is an afternoon of talks, and an accompanied tour of the exhibition. Talks will explore the challenges addressed in the curation, conservation and design of a major exhibition of photographic material.

More details, ticket prices and a full programme for the afternoon event can be found here: http://photography-victorian-sensation-in-focus.eventbrite.co.uk

The Public Domain Review carries an interesting article on photographs from the collection of Tempest Anderson, the pioneering Victorian volcanologist. It is written by Pat Hadley, Sarah King and Stuart Ogilvy from The Yorkshire Museum (York Museums Trust) which holds a collection of 5000 lantern slides which have been digitised. 

You can read the full article here: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/tempest-anderson-pioneer-of-volcano-photography/ which also carries links to further references. The digitised slides are here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_Tempest_Anderson_Collection_(vulcanology)

Rare folios of cyanotypes by 19th century British naturalist and early photographer Anna Atkins, held in the Horniman Museum and Gardens’ collection, have inspired a new display by artist and academic Edward Chell.

Chell’s fascination with collecting and classification led him to these folios and in Bloom he responds to them with a series of detailed painted plant silhouettes inspired by plants, and images of plants, in the Horniman’s Gardens and historic collection.  Painted onto individual gesso panels, and accompanied by other related objects he has made, Edward’s images are shown alongside some of the artefacts that inspired them including one of Atkins’ books documenting British algae, widely recognised as the first to be published with photographic illustrations.

Bloom can be seen in the Horniman’s Natural History Gallery until 6 December 2015.  Entrance to the display is free. See: http://www.horniman.ac.uk/

Image: © Edward Chell, Photographer Peter Abrahams

Hello, I was hoping someone here can help me identify or understand this recently acquired albumen photo.I believe it is British, and shows a man, a dog, and a dead bird. Can't really tell what's going on here...Was the bird a pet-parrot perhaps? did the dog kill it? or is this a hunting photo?

Is the man wearing a clerical collar? Is that a fluffy cat by his feet?

The dog bears a resemblance to Charles Dogson's brother's dog Dido, although that would be quite a stretch.

Just fascinated by the mystery of what is going on here.

Any info-or guesses- would be appreciated.

Best,

David

This beautifully bound, large-format, 296 page hardcover book was written by Pamela Roberts to accompany her exhibition based on the unique contribution to the developing photographic aesthetics made by the pioneering artistic photographer Alvin Landon Coburn. Having been unveiled at Fundacion Mapfre in Madrid, the exhibition is now en route to George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, where it will open in October 2015.

Prior to starting as a freelance writer and curator in 2001, Pamela Roberts was the curator of the RPS collection for nineteen years, until its transfer to the National Media Museum. This is the most recent one of many insightful volumes she has written on lesser known histories of photography and photographers.

Drawing on the world’s leading collections of Alvin Langdon Coburn’s prints and negatives, cameras, correspondence and ephemera from George Eastman House and the National Media Museum, along with contributions from smaller yet still significant collections, Roberts has assembled for the first time in one exhibition and one book the most comprehensive collection of his life’s work. Through a detailed understanding of his life, writings and letters, Roberts reveals a hitherto underappreciated, intellectual and creative depth and breadth to his photographic exploration and range of production. From portraits to monuments, stereographs to Vortographs, from his colourful prints and paintings to his stirring cityscapes and landscapes, the reader is led through Coburn’s decades of globetrotting and his tenaciously pioneering relationship with photography. Leaving none of his life out of focus, Robert’s coverage of the time when Coburn stepped away from the limelight to seek a more spiritual life is empathetic, revealing much more of the man himself away from the camera and photography.

The one hundred and eighty photographs featured in the book are meticulously reproduced to show the subtle nuances in tones and colours between each of the many processes Coburn chose over his lifetime. His breathtakingly beautiful images are exquisitely framed by Robert’s meticulously detailed and exhaustive text that brings to life the man behind the camera, pen and paintbrush. Her closely observed, rich contextualisation far exceeds Coburn's own painstaking autobiography or his collaborations with others in the latter part of his life. That which Coburn either dismissed or forgot Roberts has evoked to enrich our perspective of his life’s work.

Once Roberts has covered the early works and portraits, the layout and structure of the catalogue have been designed, due to Coburn’s apparent wanderlust, in geographical chronologies ending with his later work and paintings.

This book is unique and beautifully crafted, rendered with a similar spirit of craft, passion, consideration and empathy for Coburn as he had for his photography. As a catalogue it is an amazing permanent record of a unique exhibition. As a book it is a beautifully rendered biography in words and deeds, and comes highly recommended.

Janine Freeston
Chair of the Historical Group of The Royal Photographic Society

Alvin Langdon Coburn
Pamela Roberts and Anne Cartier-Bresson
Fundación Mapfre, 296 pages, 
ISBN 978-8498444988

Available from: FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE or from Amazon.

In 113-pages Rita and Jack Tait relate the story of Ifor and Joy Thomas and the Guildford school of photography. Part biography and part a history of early post-war photographic education the book shows the importance of the Thomas’s and their influence across a large swathe of photographers and educators – including Jane Bown, Tessa Traeger, Julia Hedgecoe and Adam Woolfitt.  The Guildford school influenced a generation of photographers many of whom are still involved in the field.

The book is believed to be the first in-depth study of photographic teaching.

Guildford Photography. The life and work of Ifor and Joy Thomas
Rita and Jack Tait
Bronydd Press, £10 plus £3 p+p
Order from Jack Tait: machinedraw@btconnect.com

Released early in 2015 and shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June Eadweard is a psychological drama centred around the British photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, famous for his studies of motion who is recognised as the godfather of cinema. Along the way he murdered his wife’s lover, and was the last American to receive the justifiable homicide verdict.

See the trailer here:

Read more here: http://www.motion58.com/films/eadweard/

As part of the Brighton programme in this year's Scalarama Film Festival The Luxbry celebrates the 160^th birthday of William Friese-Greene, photographer and experimental film maker, with a screening of the Boulting brothers’ romanticised biopic of the obsessive inventor. The film, featuring a star-studded cast, was made for the 1951 Festival of Britain based on the biography by Ray Allister, and presents Friese-Greene (Robert Donat) on his quest to create moving pictures. This screening takes place in Middle Street, where Friese-Greene had his workshop for a brief period during his years living and working in Brighton as a photographer and inventor.

The Luxbry: Don't Dream It - Screen It! Pop Up film events and cinema history tours hosted by Alexia, The Usherette of Brighton.

Full Scalarama programme

Click here to book tickets

As the cradle for both global and domestic photographic talents, Britain has always been a frontier in British photography education, which keeps focusing on the critical thinking and creativity in their students under the principle of interdisciplinary speculative knowledge. Graduates from such education usually impress the public as well as enrich the entire British photography with their personal ideas and practices into new curriculums. Based on a research on the modern British photography history, this lecture is about to conduct the audience through the changes and stages of its photography education under the influence of British politics, and to explore the current cases in nowadays universities featuring how different teaching modes make a difference to the photographers.

Talk given by Yining He
Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
19:00, 7 August 2015

The J. Paul Getty Museum has announced the acquisition of thirty-nine French and British photographs from the 1840s through 1860s, representing some of the most impressive architectural and landscape prints and negatives produced in photography’s early years. The works were acquired from Jay McDonald, a Santa Monica resident who has actively collected photographs since the 1970s and has amassed one of the finest private collections of 19th-century photography in the United States.

“With this acquisition, the Getty Museum is poised to become one of the most important resources for the sustained study of early negative/positive photography that came out of the revolutionary first generation of experimentation with the new medium. It represents one of the rare moments when science and art come together to produce something totally unexpected – indeed a totally new art form,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This acquisition also reinforces our commitment to collecting photography that spans the full history of the art form and places the Getty among the most significant repositories of early paper negatives in an American collection, rivaled only by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the George Eastman House.”

The group of works includes six prints and four negatives by Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880), four prints by Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (Bisson Frères) (French, 1814-1876 and 1826-1900), three prints by André Giroux (French, 1801-1879), three paper negatives by Louis–Rémy Robert (French, 1810-1882), a print and negative by Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882), a print and negative by Captain Linnaeus Tripe (English, 1822-1902), as well as single works by Édouard Baldus, Eugène Cuvelier, Louis De Clercq, Roger Fenton, Frédéric Flacheron, John Beasley Greene, Louis-Adolphe Humbert De Molard, Gustave Le Grey, Charles Marville, Léon-Eugène Méhédin, Dr. John Murray, Victor Regnault, Captain Horatio Ross, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, and an unknown photographer. All works are in excellent condition, underscoring the degree to which early practitioners became invested in the craftsmanship of the medium.

Created by some of the most significant photographers of this period and primarily featuring landscapes and architecture, the works reflect the active debate on aesthetic and scientific aspects of early photography that animated the medium at the time. The experimentation and bold compositional choices of these photographers became foundational for subsequent generations who sought to capture the natural and man-made wonders of the world. Subjects include important architectural sites around the world, from Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Roman Coliseum to the Taj Mahal and sites in Burma; as well as historic examples of early photojournalism, including a flood in Southern France, the aftermath of an earthquake in a Swiss village, and one of the battlefields of the Crimean War. Other scenes depict villages, ruins, and tree-lined roads across Europe.

The acquisition also ensures that the Museum’s photography holdings will better complement its collection of paintings from this period. Because many early photographers were trained as painters, there was a sustained dialogue between the two media. The spirit of experimentation in photography played a critical role in the development of modern art, and the Getty will now be an important West Coast resource for the study of this relationship, both as established during photography’s early decades and as demonstrated by practitioners working today who apply similarly experimental approaches that revel in the immediacy of the materials and potential of the medium. The work of seven such artists can be seen in the current exhibition, Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, on view at the Getty Center through September 6.

“As rare as it is to find individual prints and negatives of this quality, it is all the more extraordinary to have the opportunity to acquire a collection that has been so expertly assembled and preserved,” says Virginia Heckert, curator and department head of the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs. “The sixteen paper negatives in the group comprise a particularly important component of the acquisition, as they triple our holdings of paper negatives by French makers and add four excellent negatives by British makers.”

Selected French works from the acquisition will be included in the Getty exhibition and publication Real/Ideal: Photography in France, 1848-1871 (working title) in preparation by assistant curator Karen Hellman for fall 2016.

Images (Left to Right):
Taj Mahal, 1862, Dr. John Murray (British, 1809 – 1898). Paper negative, sky opaqued with ink and graphite, 37 x 47 cm (14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015.42

Notre-Dame, Paris, about 1853, Charles Nègre (French, 1820 – 1880). Waxed paper negative, 33.6 x 24 cm (13 1/4 x 9 7/16 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015.43.1

Village Scene with Geese, about 1855, André Giroux (French, 1801 – 1879). Salt print from a paper negative, 21.5 x 27.5 cm (8 7/16 x 10 13/16 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015.35.3

There's just over one week left to apply for two roles available with Candlestar and Photo London. Candlestar which manages the Prix Pictet Prize and PhotoLondon is seeking to appoint two individuals to important senior roles.

The first is for a Project Manager for Prix Pictet and the second will join the Photo London team as Gallery Development Manager.

Candidates for both roles will need a thorough understanding of the international photography and art markets and will be enthusiastic, diplomatic project management professionals who have a considerable track record of achievement.  The successful candidates will need to be able to deliver high quality results for complex projects on time and on budget. They should be used to meeting deadlines and working under pressure.  A minimum 3 years managerial experience gained working in a gallery, auction house, art fair or art production environment will be particularly important in both instances.

Find the Job Description and Person Specification for the role of Project Manager for Prix Pictet by clicking here

Find the Job Description and Person Specification for the role of Gallery Development Manager by clicking here

The closing date for applications is Monday 3rd August and interviews will take place in the week commencing 10th August.

Please send all CVs and a covering letter to Kathryn Hill at Kathryn.hill@candlestar.co.uk if you are interested in applying for either role.

Read more about Candlestart here.

Early scientific ‘photographs of the invisible’ — from x-ray to photomicrography, motion studies to pictures of electrical charges — have had a profound effect on the development of modern and contemporary art.  Bringing together world-renowned artists, curators and academics, and coinciding with the final days of Revelations: Experiments in Photography, this one-day symposium examines the importance of early scientific photography for the creative arts and the ways in which its meanings have shifted across time and space.

Speakers include:

• John Blakinger, Stanford University / National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• Marta Braun, Ryerson University
• Ben Burbridge, University of Sussex / co-curator Revelations
• Ori Gersht, artist
• Marek Kukula, Royal Observatory Greenwich
• Corey Keller, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Sarah Pickering, artist
• Kelley Wilder, De Montfort University  

Panels will be chaired by: Greg Hobson (National Media Museum / co-curator Revelations); David Alan Mellor (University of Sussex); and Sean O’Hagan (The Guardian).

Organised in collaboration with the Centre for the Visual, University of Sussex.

Beyond Vision: Art, Photography and Science
12 September 2015
10:30 – 17:30

£15 adult/ £12.50 senior/ £10 concessions

For more information and to book tickets visit the Science Museum website here.

Hello, I am writing an article on what I am calling the 'Abused Tintype' - short bit of explanatory blurb below:

"The Abused Tintype: The Tintype was a form of early photography that was extremely popular in the mid nineteenth century. It was cheap to produce and versatile enough to be sent in the post as the image was printed onto Japanned metal. However, partly due to its versatility it also became the first form of photography that could survive having its surface scratched into, bearing the physical marks of peoples emotional pain in the19th century."

I am looking for Tintypes from any region that may have had hands or faces scratched out or anything else that might bear the physical impression of violent emotion. 

Any that are published I will of course credit their owners.

Feel free to post below or get in touch at gavinmaitland80@hotmail.com

Many thanks.

Gavin Maitland.

Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Professor of Photographic History, Director of Photographic History Research Centre, at De Montfort University, Leicester, has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). The honour is given in recognition of outstanding research and it is the first time that a photographic historian has been recognised by the Academy in this way.

Edwards is retiring from DMU at the end of the year and her post has been advertised and applications remain open until 18 September.