The Royal Photographic Society presented two British curators and photo-historians with awards last night at a ceremony in London. Dr Sophie Gordon, Senior Curator of Photographs at Royal Collection Trust, received the Colin Ford Award which is given to honour an individual who has contributed in a major way to curatorship. She is shown, right, with Colin Ford CBE.

Terence Pepper OBE HonFRPS received the Society's Award for Outstanding Service to Photography. The award recognises major sustained, outstanding and influential contributions to the advancement of Photography and/or Imaging in their widest meanings. Pepper was Curator of Photographs from 1978 until 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery and is now Senior Special Advisor on Photographs at the Gallery. He is shown with his wofe and curatorial colleagues.

Read more here: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/september/rps-awards-2014

Images: © The Royal Photographic Society / Nick Scott Photography

The next London Photograph Fair takes place on Sunday, 14 September, at the Holiday Inn, Coram St, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1HT from 11am to 4pm. Admission: £5; tickets on the door. For a full exhibitor list and further information go to www.photofair.co.uk. 

Since 1982 the London Photograph Fair has been the meeting place for collectors, enthusiasts, museum curators and dealers on the hunt for original photographs and photobooks. Taking place four times a year in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum and Kings Cross/St Pancras Stations, the fair attracts up to 50 dealers from across the UK, Europe, and further afield.

A great variety of works are on display and for sale, from Vintage Fine Art, Press and Fashion photographs, to Contemporary, Modern and 19th Century rarities. Specialist bookdealers offer a range of original and collectible photobooks as well as reference material. Prices range from a few pounds well into the thousands.

Whether you are an experienced collector or new to the field, you will find a warm and friendly atmosphere and a wealth of specialist knowledge at hand.

Sotheby’s is to auction a magnificent collection of 31 albums, containing over 2,000 photographs of India and Southeast Asia, assembled by the distinguished Indian art historian, collector, and dealer, Sven Gahlin during the 1960s.Apart from 8 individual photographs which were exhibited at the Photographers’ Gallery in London in 1983, none of the albums have ever been exhibited or seen in public since their acquisition over 40 years ago.

Fine albums of early photographs of India are becoming increasingly scarce at auction, and so it is a wonderful opportunity to view and acquire these images which range in date from the mid-1850s to the early twentieth century. The collection includes beautiful portraits and landscapes by the celebrated photographers Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne, John Burke, Charles Shepherd, Fred Bremner, and Charles Scowen.

The albums depict views across India (including Bombay, Calcutta, Arni, Cawnpore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Agra etc.), together with stunning views in the Himalayas and Kashmir. The albums also contain fine images of Ceylon, Burma and Southeast Asia (including Singapore), which were then part of the British Empire.

Many of the albums have notable provenances: four finely bound red leather albums (lots 343-346) are believed to have been commissioned by a member of the Curzon family, and one album (lot 350) came by descent from the family of the celebrated artist William Prinsep to Mr Gahlin. Of particular interest is a set of 9 albums (lots 351-359) which were compiled by Lt. Col. Charles Harbord, 6th baron Suffield. Harbord had the privileged position as aide-de-camp to three successive Viceroys of India: Lord Ripon (1880-1884), Lord Dufferin (1884-1888), and Lord Lansdowne (1888-1894). The Suffield albums cover a period of almost 20 years of service in India and Southeast Asia, at work and at leisure; the photographs include formal group portraits of the Viceroys on official engagements, together with images of leisure, such as polo matches, theatricals, picnics in the mountains, hunting, and riding.

View the catalogue online:

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2014/art-imperial-india-l14502.html#&page=1&filter=mediums/Photographs&sort=lotNum-asc&viewMode=list

Auction details: 

Art of Imperial India. Photographs of Imperial India and Southeast Asia: The Sven Gahlin Collection 1857 - 1914

London, Wednesday, 8 October 2014, 2.30pm

Exhibition dates: Friday, 3 October 9am-4.30pm; Sunday 5, 12noon-5pm; Monday 6, 9am-4.30pm;  Tuesday 7, 9am-4.30pm

Treasures from the world’s oldest surviving photographic society are to go on display in South Kensington, the site of one of the UK’s first ever public exhibitions of photography. Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection  will show at the Science Museum's Media Space gallery from 2 December 2014-1 March 2015 and then at  the National Meidia Museum from 20 March-21 June 2015. It will tour to the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany in 2017. 

In 1858, the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) held an open exhibition at The South Kensington Museum, which later became the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Pioneers of photography whose work was exhibited at this first show from Roger Fenton to Lewis Carroll and Hugh Welch Diamond will now be displayed in Media Space alongside remarkable images from some of modern photography’s most influential figures such as Don McCullin, Terry O’Neill and Martin Parr.

This exhibition will also showcase key artefacts from the history of the medium – Nièpce heliographs, Talbot’s camera lucida sketchbook, The Pencil of Nature (the first commercially published book to be illustrated by photographs) and seminal images such as Oscar Rejlander’s The Two Ways of Life.

Founded in 1853, as the Photographic Society, The RPS began making acquisitions following Prince Albert’s suggestion that the society collect photographs to record the rapid technical progress of photography. The society and its membership have developed over time, with its collections now holding some of the greatest examples of photography and photographic equipment and ephemera across all genres and eras.

Now held at the National Media Museum, Bradford as part of the National Photography Collection, the RPS Collection is one of the most important and comprehensive photographic collections in the world, with over 250,000 images, 8,000 items of photographic equipment and 31,000 books, periodicals and documents. It continues to expand today under the management of the National Media Museum, with acquisitions of contemporary work by present members and RPS Award winners.

Co-curated by Colin Harding, Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, and Claude W. Sui, Curator and Stephanie Herrmann, Associate Curator of the Forum of International Photography of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany, this exhibition is the first major London show highlighting the contents of this internationally-renowned collection.

Revealing the stories behind some of the most famous photographers and their photographs, Masters of Light will feature exquisite landscapes, still lives, nudes, portraits, photo-reportage and composites from some of the art’s most important practitioners, from William Henry Fox Talbot to Ansel Adams and Madame Yevonde to Edward Weston.  

Colin Harding, Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, said: ‘The Royal Photographic Society Collection is one of the greatest resources for the study and appreciation of photography anywhere in the world. Working with this collection is daunting but it is also an incredible privilege. The collection reveals how photography has fundamentally shaped our perception of the world and illustrates photography’s enduring power, richness and variety over nearly two hundred years of innovation and creativity.’

Claude W. Sui, Curator and Head of the Forum of International Photography of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany, said: ‘As a curator it is a dream to work with these tremendous items from The Royal Photographic Society Collection. There is a fascinating contrast of well known and unknown treasures by the same photographers all belonging to one of the oldest existing photographic societies, which shows a wide range of different categories from landscape, architecture, portrait, journalism to experimental and artistic approaches. A whole range of photographers are represented, as are all the significant movements from the history of photography; from the beginning of the form to the present, from pictorial photography to the trend for straight photography, the new vision, the new objectivity. Immersing oneself in the depth of this collection is like diving for pearls – it’s an exciting adventure to bring to light the highlights and the hidden treasures.’

Michael Pritchard, Director-General, The Royal Photographic Society commented:  ‘The RPS Collection is one of the world’s outstanding photography collections and The Society is excited that the public in the UK and Germany will have the opportunity to see highlights in two very special exhibitions. There is nothing like seeing original photographs and objects, and those being shown, covering both the art and science of photography from the 1820s to the present day, are amongst the best anywhere.’

Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection is the third major exhibition to open in Media Space and the exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany where the exhibition will go on display in 2017.

Image, top: Rudolf Koppitz, Bewengungsstudie (Movement Study), 1926; centre: Refugees: A Mother and Her Child in Bangladesh, Don McCullin, 1971; below: Eastern Madonna, Walter Bird, 1935 / The Royal Photographic Society Collection © National Media Museum, Bradford / SSPL.

- See more at: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/july/masters-of-light-exhibition#sthash.EJ0sxYJq.dpuf

UPDATED: originally published 9 July,  the exhibition now has a new title and is called: Drawn by Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection. (see: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/drawn_by_light) 

A hard-hitting collection of photographs taken by Nick Hedges for Shelter between 1968 and 1972 are to be shown together for the first time in a new exhibition in the Virgin Media Studio, Media Space, London, from 2 October 2014-18 January 2015. 

The Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group has announced an essay prize for younger photographic historians. The competition has been funded to promote interest in the history of photography amongst students and researchers and is open to anyone who will be aged under 25 years on 28 February 2015. 

See more at:http://www.rps.org/special-interest-groups/historical/about/hall-marriott-prize

Hello. A group of us in Australia are trying to work out the identity of this Aboriginal girl, location in Australia, date of this tin type, photographer/studio ...  - all thoughts/information very welcome. 

Currently haven't obtained any further information than the article - link is:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-26/tintype-photo/5687622

Contact: Julie Gough

This carte de visite by the Coxhead Brothers of Dunedin and Invercargill, New Zealand shows a subject type I have not seen before from this era. It shows a doll in period costume posed with miniature furniture, perhaps Catherine of Aragon or her daughter Mary I of England.  

The brothers Frank Arnold Coxhead and Harry Coxhead were photographers in Dunedin and Invercargill during the period from about 1875 to 1879. Harry Coxhead was born in London about 1848 and died in Timaru, NZ in 1885. His brother Frank Arnold Coxhead was born in London about 1851 and died in Berkeley, California, USA in 1908.

Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to learn from an interdisciplinary and international team of distinguished photograph historians, scientists, and conservators who will present groundbreaking information about historic and contemporary platinum and palladium photography in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian October 22-23, 2014.

You can access the full program here: http://www.conservation-us.org/platinum

or read more here:http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/events/platinum-and-palladium-photographs?xg_source=activity

Image: Frederick H. Evans, York Minster, North Transept: "In Sure and Certain Hope," 1902, platinum print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Carolyn Brody Fund and Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund

The National Archives (TNA) keeps a year-by-year track of UK (+ Channel Islands) accessions to archives, categorised by subject. There were two directly photo-history related accessions in 2013: 

Kingston Museum and Heritage Service

• Kingston Photographic Society: minute book 1901-1906 (KX543)

National Library of Wales: Department of Collection Services

• Angus McBean, Welsh photographer: visitors' book from his Endell Street, Covent Garden studio with over 1000 signatures incl Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Marlene Dietrich, Spike Milligan and all four Beatles c1949-1987 (NLW MS 24041D)

Take a look for previous years and across different categories here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/accessions/

The Northern Photography Consortium (NPC) is a group of 6 organisations funded by Arts Council England’s Catalyst programme: Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, Amber Side, Redeye, Look Festival and North East Photography Network. A key aim of the Catalyst programme is to support arts organisations to diversify their income streams and to build robust business models.

Three of these organisations, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery and Redeye: The Photography Network, wish to capitalise on their directional influence and knowledge of contemporary photography to explore the possibility of establishing a print sales business of original, limited edition photographs whose profits would support public programmes of the participating organisations. This group of three partners is seeking to appoint a consultant who can provide comprehensive research into establishing this print sales business.

Note that the successful candidate must have a substantial knowledge and operational experience of the photographic print or broader fine art sales market in the UK. This research is to be submitted by the end of November 2014.

For further information please see the attached pdf document or contact Anna Taylor |anna@redeye.org.uk

BPH reported in July about the project to put art in to public spaces. Julia Margaret Cameron's Iago is one of the artworks to be featured (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/art-everywhere-to-feature-cameron-s-iago. Sophie Gordon Goodchild has spotted Iago across the tracks at Pinner station. 

If you spot him elsewhere please take a photo for BPH 

Image courtesy: Sophie Gordon Goodchild

On April 24-25, 2015, scholars, artists, students, and members of the Waterville community will come together at Colby College to interrogate the relationship between photography and migration. This conference is one of many events taking place at Colby that address the college-wide humanities theme in 2014-2015, “Migrations,” hosted by the Center for the Arts and Humanities. It will include formal presentations and roundtable discussions, film screenings, as well as displays of historical photographs and artworks.

Throughout its history, the photographic medium has played an important role in the movement of people, objects, identities, and ideas across time and space, especially in the human crossing of geographical and cultural borders. Scholars have shown how cameras documented, enabled, or controlled such forced and voluntary movement, while photographers attempted to put a face on immigration around the world, making visible its associations with transition, displacement, hardship, and opportunity. The goal of the conference is to consolidate and expand upon the critical questions asked about photography and migration. What does it mean, for instance, to represent photographically the experiences of immigration, exile, diaspora, and passing? How might we reimagine concepts essential to migration, such as (im)mobility and dissemination, in specifically photographic terms? How do photographs themselves, moreover, migrate across local, regional, national, and global contexts?

Confirmed keynote speakers include: Anthony Lee (Mount Holyoke College), who will discuss the art photography of F. Holland Day in relation to period discourse on immigration; anthropologist Jason De León (University of Michigan) and photographer Michael Wells, who have collaborated on the Undocumented Migration Project on the US-Mexico border; and Thomas Allen Harris, a New York-based writer and documentarian who co-founded the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion project and directed the critically acclaimed film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2013).

To stimulate lively and productive exchanges during the conference, we are soliciting proposals for 10-minute presentations from scholars, curators, image-makers, and others that highlight major questions about photography and migration. Following each presentation will be a short response by a discussant from Colby College and 20 minutes of conversation with the audience. We are looking for proposals that address directly the theme of the conference; foreground their own critical and creative interventions; and engage deeply with a set of images, or even a single image.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Photography and Migration

April 24-25, 2015

Colby College, Waterville, ME

Please submit the following materials to Tanya Sheehan, Associate Professor, Department of Art, Colby College, tsheehan@colby.edu by December 15, 2014:

• Cover letter; please include your contact information and explain your interest in the conference theme
• Abstract; no more than 200 words, including a working title for your presentation
• Professional bio; no more than 100 words
• Curriculum vitae

Decisions on proposals will be made by January 15, 2015. Details about the conference will be posted to http://web.colby.edu/photomigration.

This conference is sponsored by the Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities, Colby College Museum of Art, and Colby Libraries Special Collections. For more information about the college’s annual humanities theme, please go to http://www.colby.edu/centerartshumanities. 

Morphets of Harrogate is offering at an album of seventy albumen prints by Oscar Gustav Rejlander from the former estate of Surgeon Commander Herbert Ackland Browning RN on 11 September. The album is estimated at a modest £7000-10,000 and the complete album is to be re-created as a page turner pdf book on the Morphets website shortly, see:  www.morphets.co.uk. 

Details of the album are below: 

REJLANDER (OSCAR), AN ALBUM OF SEVENTY ALBUMEN PRINTS, CIRCA 1865-66

A rare and interesting folio of seventy portrait and figurative photographs by this pioneer, the albumen prints mounted on gilt-edged card leaves in a single volume with gilt and tooled black morocco bindings, the sitters including Rejlander himself, Mary Rejlander (nee Bull), Sir Henry Taylor, Hallam Tennyson (son of Lord Alfred Tennyson), John and Minnie Constable, the youngest of Lord Hawarden's children, possibly including Elphinstone 'Eppy' Maud and other unidentified subjects, album 30cm x 25cm, prints varying in size from 12cm oval up to 21cm x 15cm, some with titles or annotations in pencil. 

Provenance: This album was part of the estate of Surgeon Commander Herbert Ackland Browning RN and thence by descent to the vendor.  Commander Browning served throughout the First World War, never married and died at the family home in Dawlish in 1955.  Herbert's father, Captain George Browning RN, was a naval hydrographer and married Elizabeth (nee) Kendal, daughter of Dr Marsters Kendal of Kings Lynne, honorary surgeon to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, at Sandringham.  It is possible that the album belonged to him and was thus lent to the Prince of Wales and others as annotations indicate. 

Footnote: Oscar Gustav Rejlander (1813-1875), known as the Father of Art Photography, was born in Sweden and studied art in Rome, settling in England in the 1840s.  He lived in Lincoln and later Wolverhampton, working as an artist and portrait miniaturist.  He took an active interest in photography, seeing its potential for assisting artists and in 1853 attended lessons in the London studio of Nicholas Henneman.  This inspired him to develop his own techniques experimenting with portraiture although it is his pioneering work in photo-montage, combining several negatives to form one image, that brought him to wider renown.   His best known work The Two Ways of Life comprised thirty-two negatives and took six weeks to produce.  Following its exhibition in Manchester in 1857 a copy was ordered by Queen Victoria for Prince Albert.  Rejlander became a member of the Royal Photographic Society, regularly lecturing and publishing on the subject and in 1862 he moved to London where he built a photographic studio designed to make the best use of natural light for his subjects.  During his work he came into contact with Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), Lady Clementina (Maud) Hawarden and Charles Darwin.  In the early 1870s he worked with Darwin on illustrations for his treatise on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Although Rejlander sold volumes of his photography through book shops and art dealers it is unknown if the album in this lot was obtained thus by Captain Browning.  One pencil annotation suggests it may have been bought directly from the photographer as it reads 'Rejlander had refused to sell this copy (the only one obtained from the negative taken) at any price: but the offer of £2.2.0 for the Swedish poor was too much for his nerves and I obtained it DEO GRATIAS'.

A further annotation inside the front cover reads 'This album has the honour of being submitted in 1866 to HRH The Prince of Wales by Colonel Teesdale (3 weeks), in 1870 at the request of Cardinal Antorelli to HH Pope Pius IXth by Monsignor Pacca (1 week), into 1871 to Her Majesty by Lady Elgin (several weeks)'.  

Some of the prints herein are well known examples also held in the collections of the Royal Photographic Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

For more information contact: Fran Hazlewood on 01423 530030 or email enquiries@morphets.co.uk.

Images: courtesy Morphets of Harrogate

BPH recently previewed the Linnaeus Tripe exhibition which opens in Washington DC in September and comes to the UK in June 2015. The book of the exhibition by Professor Emeritus Roger Taylor and Crispin Branfoot is now available. Listed at £40 it is being offered on Amazon as low as £22 including postage. Needless to say, the book is superbly produced with essays from Taylor, Branfoot, Sarah Greenough and Malcolm Daniel and it is extensively illustrated. High recommended.  

Read more about the exhibition here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exhibition-captain-linnaeus-tripe-photographer-of-india-and-burma

The 2014 Daguerreian Society Annual Symposium will be held in Austin, Texas at the Texas State Library and Archives. The conference Hotel is the Sheraton Austin At the Capital. Our tours and program start on Friday, September 26, 2014, with the opening reception and an exhibition of early Texas photography from 6 to 8 pm, at the Texas State Library and Archives.

The program continues Saturday with lectures, a banquet and auction. Speakers include: Sandra Petrillo from the European Daguerreobase project; Mike Robinson on The Colours of the Daguerreotype; Jeremy Rowe on evolution of early photographic businesses in New York City; Jane Turano-Thompson on Early Images of the Captivity and Contact Experience in Native American and Non-Native Cultures; Larry Schaaf on the work of William Henry Fox Talbot; and Ralph Wiegandt on the nature of gilding daguerreotypes.

The trade show is on Sunday and is open to the public from 11:00 to 4:00. Additional one-hour tours are being explored for Friday, September 26th and Monday, September 29th from 9 to 11 am. Details will be posted here as schedules progress. 

Hosting institution: the Texas State Library and Archives (website).

Registration information is available at:

http://daguerre.org/symposia/symposium2014.php

An online catalog of auction items (updated regularly) is available at: http://daguerre.org/symposia/auction2014.php

Symposium Schedule:

Running from 1 November 2014–11 January 2015, Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century will be Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum’s first ever photography exhibition to showcase the outstanding collection of 20,000 20th-century works that it has amassed since deciding in 1994 to extend its photographic holdings beyond the 19th century.

In a display of more than 400 images, the exhibition will trace photography’s key developments during the 20th century, including the introduction of colour, the growth of documentary and news photography, and photography as a pure art form. A wide-ranging overview, it will also explore photography’s role in fashion and advertising and will feature some amateur works.

Rare photographs by Brassaï, Ed van der Elsken, John Gutmann, Lewis Hine, William Klein, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Joel Meyerowitz, László Moholy-Nagy, Eadweard Muybridge, Man Ray and W. Eugene Smith will be displayed as part of the exhibition Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century. This major photographic survey will inaugurate the Rijksmuseum’s newly renovated Philips Wing, the final stage in the museum’s recent acclaimed transformation.

The exhibition and its accompanying publication, Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, have been made possible thanks to the long-standing sponsorship of Baker & McKenzie.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is the Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history. The Museum’s Philips Wing, newly renovated by Spanish architects Cruz y Ortiz, will open its doors for the first time on 1 November 2014 with the launch of Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, the inaugural exhibition, which will occupy all nine of the Wing’s new exhibition rooms.

A richly illustrated publication will be released for the exhibition. Also entitled Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century, it will be available in the Rijksshop, through the webshop and in bookstores.

Responsible for both the exhibition and its accompanying publication are Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Curators of Photography at the Rijksmuseum.

Modern Times. Photography in the 20th Century 
1 November 2014 – 11 January 2015
Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands

Image: Modeportret van Rita Loonen, Paul Huf, 1961. 

There has been a photography studio in Midland Road, Derby since at least 1857. This was owned by Monsieur Emmanuel Nicholas Charles who employed our founder, Walter William Winter. Winter eventually took over the business and in 1867, he opened his new purpose built studio directly across the road. The business has been here ever since. In 1896, William Henry King joined the business as a photographic assistant and by 1910, he and Henry Bernard Sheppard formed a partnership buying the business. The company is still in the King family to this day. What this means is that W W Winter is a photo studio with a rather exciting past.

Join us to peak behind the scenes at a history of photography and photographic ephemera. A must for the photo enthusiast and fans of local history.

Book and see more here: http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory/w.-w.-winter-photographers

More about Winters here: http://www.wwwinter.co.uk/historyandheritage.html

This is the first book to study the history of photography via international exhibitions. The foremost historians of the medium describe the most important shows and set them in the context of their times: London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) in the 1850s, the magnificent Vienna International Exhibition of 1891, and Film und Foto in Stuttgart in 1929, organized by the Deutscher Werkbund, feature in a wide-ranging global survey.

In the United States, the Museum of Modern Art took a lead in the 1930s; in the postwar period, The Family of Man toured over sixty countries and drew nine million visitors, and as the twentieth century drew to a close, curators began to make formal links between photography and contemporary art. In this century, the photographic aftermath of 9/11 is marked here by an interview with Charles Traub, co-founder of Here is New York; dubbed ‘a democracy of photographs’, it remains possibly ‘the most seen exhibition in history’. In the age of Flickr and other internet hosting services, curating photography is one of the most dynamic activities in our visual culture.

Edited by Alessandra Mauro, with contributions by and interviews with Quentin Bajac, Gerry Badger, Paul-Louis Roubert, David Spencer, Francesco Zanot, Michel Frizot, Alessia Tagliaventi, Charles Traub, and based on conversations with Robert Delpire, Sebastião Salgado and Gilles Peress, among many others, this is the most important history of photography from its earliest days up to the present, told via a tour of the most significant photography shows that have ever taken place. It will be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in photography and curating, and provides the most informative and wide-ranging survey available of the era’s defining medium.

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd (Published October 6, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500544425
• ISBN-13: 978-0500544426

This powerful new book offers an evocative snapshot of New Zealanders facing the First World War. Detective work on the part of Te Papa curators and a heartfelt public response has resulted in this extraordinary new book about soldiers and their families, and the changing face of the First World War.

This August, Te Papa Press is releasing Berry Boys: Portraits of First World War Soldiers and Families, showcasing more than 100 remarkable portraits of First World War servicemen.

The portraits come from the William Berry Collection; more than 3000 glass plate negatives found at a historic building on Wellington’s Cuba Street in the 1980s.

Many of the soldiers who had their portraits taken at the Berry & Co photography studio then left immediately for war. Many are posing with friends and family. But who were they and what In 2011, Te Papa launched its “Berry Boys” identification project. A generous public response and careful research has since seen many of the soldiers named, their stories brought to light, and their descendants traced. In September 2013, TVNZ’s Sunday programme helped to spread the word, reducing the number of unidentified soldiers.

History curator and co-author Michael Fitzgerald says, ‘We have been overwhelmed by the public response from living descendants of the Berry soldiers. The information people have shared with us reflects the powerful emotional response these war stories evoke, even one Berry Boys: Portraits of First World War Soldiers and Families features beautifully reproduced photographs showing the servicemen and their families, alongside their intriguing stories, and information that could help readers identify those who remain a mystery. Fitzgerald’s co-author, History curator Claire Regnault, says ‘Known or unknown, every one of these Berry portraits tells a story.

Fitzgerald undertook intensive research to tell each soldier’s story, reconstructing their lives from digitised army records, newspaper reports and family information. Regnault says, ‘Some of these men died overseas, others lived long after the war and were no doubt changed by it.’

Although the Berry Boys represent only a fraction of the thousands of men who served, they offer a potent snapshot of wartime New Zealand.

The release of Berry Boys: Portraits of First World War Soldiers and Families coincides with the national screening of Production Shed’s new TVNZ documentary, Berry Boys, on Sunday 3 August 2014.

The book is part of Conflict & Identity, Te Papa’s four-year, multi-disciplinary programme of research, discussion and reflection on the dynamics of conflict and its impact on our identity in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Berry Boys: Portraits of First World War Soldiers and Families

By Michael Fitzgerald and Claire Regnault