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The mystery surrounding the identity of a girl, known only as ‘Christina’, has been solved after her striking 102-year-old colour portraits were seen around the world, including on BPH. The images are part of The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum, and three are currently on show in the exhibition Drawn By Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection (National Media Museum, Bradford, until June 21).

Initially, Christina was thought to be the daughter of Mervyn O’Gorman, the amateur photographer who took the shots. But research showed O’Gorman had no children, meaning her true identity remained a mystery, until now.

As a result of seeing the images, Mr Stephen Riddle contacted National Media Museum curator Colin Harding to say he had a set of stereoscopic slides by Mervyn O’Gorman, which had been passed to him by his father-in-law. The slides feature colour autochrome pictures not previously seen by anyone at the Museum.

Captions on the slides refer to Edwyn and Daisy Bevan, along with ‘the children’, Anne and Christina, picturing them in various locations including the beach at West Lulworth and outside an address in Chelsea Embankment.

Colin Harding, Curator of Photographs and Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum, said: “We are very grateful to Mr Riddle for contacting us and it was a genuine thrill to see these images. After all the recent attention Christina had been getting I hoped they would give us sufficient clues to finally confirm her identity. It turns out Christina wasn’t O’Gorman’s daughter. Indeed, she wasn’t a relative – either close or distant.

“Christina’s full name was Christina Elizabeth Frances Bevan. She was born in Harrow on 8 March, 1897 and died in 1981. Christina was the daughter of Edwyn Robert Bevan (1870-1943), a prominent philosopher, writer on comparative religions and lecturer in Hellenistic Studies at King’s College, London.

“On 25 April 1896, Edwyn married Hon. Mary Waldegrave (born 1870), the daughter of Granville Waldegrave, 3rd Baron Radstock. Edwyn and Mary, who was known to family and friends as Daisy, had two daughters – Christina and Anne Cornelia Favell Bevan (1898 – 1983).

“The Bevan family lived at no. 6 Chelsea Embankment – just a two minute walk from the O’Gorman’s home at 21 Embankment Gardens. The precise relationship between the two families still needs to be explored – perhaps Edwyn and Mervyn were members of the same club, or perhaps they shared a mutual interest in automobiles. Perhaps Mervyn O’Gorman’s wife, Florence, and Daisy were friends.

Whatever the link, both families were clearly on friendly, first name terms. Certainly, the friendship was sufficient for Mervyn to accompany Daisy and her two daughters on a trip to Lulworth Cove in August 1913, where he took portraits of Christina.”

The exhibition Drawn By Light: The Royal Photographic Society Collection was previously displayed at Media Space in the Science Museum, and runs until Sunday 21 June at the National Media Museum.

Images:

Above: Christina, Daisy & Anne, walking to the beach in West Lulworth - the location of Christina’s portrait shots, August 1913. Stereo-autochrome. By Mervyn O’Gorman, courtesy of Stephen Riddle.

Below: Windsor Park, Daisy Bevan and the children watching for birds, June 1913. Stereo-autochrome. By Mervyn O’Gorman, courtesy of Stephen Riddle.

A few weeks ago BPH and several national newspapers and publications asked the question 'Who was Christina?'. Several BPH members undertook geneaological research and others have provided information. BPH now understands that the mystery of Christina has been solved. The National Media Museum and curator Colin Harding will be revealing the answer shortly...so watch this space. 

In the meantime images of Christina can be seen in Drawn by Light, Treasures of The Royal Photographic Society Collection on view at the National Media Museum, Bradford, until 21 June. The catalogue featuring Christina on the cover and can be purchased here.

See: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/planavisit/exhibitions/drawn-by-light/about

I am researching a number of different aspects of mid 19th century Bermondsey (Southwark, South London), but when I search for early photographs of the parish, usually the images that I find in most local history or photographic collections are circa 1890-1930. I realise that Bermondsey was a pretty unappetising place for photographs in the 1840's, 1850's and 1860's and that any photographs may have been taken to highlight the plight of the poor or the workers in the predominant industry of leather manufacture. The earliest images I have seen relate to Bevington's Leather Factory in Neckinger in 1862.

Would any members be able to give me any advice on whether such images exist anywhere ?

Many thanks

Peter

On the retirement of Professor Elizabeth Edwards, applications are invited for the full-time, permanent post of Professor of Photographic History, based within the School of Humanities.

The successful candidate will be appointed as the Director of the Photographic History Research Centre which was established in 2010 and is already widely acknowledged as a world-leading centre for the interdisciplinary study of the history of photography in all its aspects. He or she will also be expected to contribute to the broader development of History and of Photography as subjects at De Montfort.

Applicants should have an international scholarly and/or curatorial reputation in one or more fields of photographic history, an outstanding publication record, and be able to demonstrate experience of research leadership and funding development.

Closing date 18 September 2015 / Interviews: mid-October 2015

See the full specification and job description here

A recent paper in the Journal of Museum Ethnography discusses Lewis Carroll's photograph 'Dressed as a New Zealander' and discusses the props use by Carroll and the wider context around the image, the sitters and its subsequent history.

The full paper reference is available here: Jeremy Coote and Christopher Morton, 'Dressed as a New Zealander', or an ethnographic mishmash? Notes and reflections on two photographs by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Journal of Museum Ethnography, no.28 (March 2015), pp. 150–172; and it may be available directly from the authors. 

Image: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

With thanks to Professor Elizabeth Edwards. 

The 2015 PHRC Annual International Conference addresses the complex and wide range 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?

Photography in Print
June 22-23, 2015
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Registration closes 18 June

For registration details and programme

https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2015/

Open Book Publishers have published Thomas Annan of Glasgow: Pioneer of the Documentary Photograph by Lionel Gossman. It is claimed to be the first account of Annan’s full achievement as a photographer. 

The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, Thomas Annan’s photographic record of the slums of the city prior to their demolition in accordance with the City of Glasgow Improvements Act of 1866, is widely recognized as a classic of nineteenth-century documentary photography. However, Annan’s achievement as a photographer of paintings, portraits, and landscapes is less widely known. To repair this neglect, Thomas Annan of Glasgow offers a handy, comprehensive and copiously illustrated overview of the full range of the photographer’s work. Successive chapters deal with each of the main fields of his activity, touching along the way on issues such as the nineteenth-century debate over the status of photography — a mechanical practice or an artistic one? — and the still ongoing controversies surrounding the documentary photograph in particular.

Lionel Gossman, a native of Glasgow whose own graduation portrait was made, in 1951, at the studio of T. &. R. Annan in Sauchiehall Street, has spent his career as a teacher of literature at universities in the United States (Johns Hopkins and Princeton). Here he returns to his roots to produce a tribute to one of his city’s most talented and conscientious nineteenth-century artists. He chose to publish with the innovative Open Book Publishers so that Thomas Annan of Glasgow could be read for free online and reach the largest number of readers possible.

The book can be accessed here: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/339/thomas-annan-of-glasgow--pioneer-of-the-documentary-photograph It is also available in interactive PDF and e-book versions.

Open Book Publishers is a non-profit organization, run by academics in Cambridge and London. We are committed to making high-quality research freely available to readers around the world. This dedication to changing the nature of the traditional academic book continues with Thomas Annan of Glasgow.

Special Auction Services is holding an auction of cameras on 1 and 2 July 2015 which includes a large collection of British cameras, especially brass and mahogany. Also included is a telescope reputed to be the former property of William Henry Fox Talbot.

The description reads: An early 19th Century three-draw brass and mahogany Abraham of Bath, 1½in. Pocket Telescope, believed to be formerly the property of the great photographic pioneer William Fox Talbot (1800-1877), engraved ‘William Talbot Esq’ to brass collar ring, with hinged eyepiece dustcap, clear fingerprints to third draw, 550mm long extended, F-G, lacquer worn, objective dust cap missing; although the provenance of this piece is not known, researches have indicated that it is extremely unlikely that anyone else of the same name would have purchased a telescope engraved in such a manner and bought from a source so close to Fox Talbot’s home at Lacock Abbey; it could have been a gift from his stepfather, Rear-Admiral Charles Fielding or Sir John Herschel,a known patron of Abraham’s; the Abraham family were involved in the retailing of early photogenic paper £4,000-£6,000

More details of the cameras and the telescope can be found at the SAS website here. 

The Royal Photographic Society is encouraging everyone interested in photography to nominate an individual connected with photography to become the face of the new £20 banknote. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has announced that the next £20 note will celebrate Britain’s achievements in the visual arts and The RPS believes a UK photographer or photographic scientist is well-placed to be selected. 

The BBC's Arts Correspondence Will Gompertz has come out as a supporter of Cameron. See here.

RPS Director-General said: "Photography has been the defining medium of the ninteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and it's inconceivable that a photographer or someone connected with photography would not be chosen as the face of the new £20 banknote. If you own or use a camera or enjoy looking at photographs think about who you would like to see on the £20 note and nominate that person - and let the Society know by emailing director@rps.org so we can keep the UK photography community updated ".

Members of the public will have two months to nominate people of historic significance from the visual arts including photographers and filmmakers – whose work shaped British thought, innovation, leadership, values and society. The public can nominate characters from within the field of visual arts on the Bank’s website.

Nominations are required by 19 July 2015. Click here to make your own nomination and to learn more. 

The public nomination programme is the first to be held under the Bank’s new character selection process which was put in place to ensure that the choice of characters for the Bank’s notes commanded broad respect and legitimacy. In line with principles announced in December 2013, the field of visual arts was chosen by a new Banknote Character Advisory Committee. Following the two month nominations period, the full Committee, with input from public focus groups, will draw up a shortlist of characters from which the Governor will make the final choice. The selected character will be announced during spring 2016. The new £20 note will be introduced into circulation in 3-5 years.

- See more at: http://www.rps.org/news/2015/may/nominate-a-photography-person-for-a-new-banknote#sthash.2WdA0X3b.dpuf

UPDATE: The Bank of England has issued a list of visual artists nominated by the public which can be seen here. It features a number of photographers. Please continue to visit the link above and continue to nominate photographers to ensure that they make the final short-list.

The works in these two component displays are drawn from around 2500 photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries generously donated by Terence Pepper, Senior Special Adviser on Photographs. Curators’ Choice is a tribute to his skills of detection and identification, and his eye for an overlooked or mis-identified sitter or photographer, as well as his interest in charting cultural life in all its variety.

Terence’s long and illustrious career at the National Portrait Gallery as Curator of Photographs and Head of the Photographs Collection (1978-2013) has left its mark in the remarkable body of photographic works acquired for the Collection in this period. Terence’s expertise, energy and enthusiasm transformed the Gallery’s photographic holdings, and today the Photographs Collection comprises over 250,000 portraits by leading photographers including many that he has helped bring back to prominence.

This selection, taken from the gift, has been made by staff who worked with Terence Pepper over a number of years: Georgia Atienza, Clare Freestone, Imogen Lyons, Constantia Nicolaides and Helen Trompeteler.

The display in Room 24 shows photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Beginning with cartes-de-visite and continuing with cabinet cards, stereoscopic cards, cigarette cards and postcards, presented broadly chronologically, the selection reflects Terence’s recognition and championing of the popular forms of photography that helped drive the medium’s development during the nineteenth-century and which are integral to its history.

The themes covered in the display in Room 31 aim to reflect Terence’s career, his appreciation of the arts, his championing of press prints as an invaluable record of key historic moments, his breadth of knowledge of popular culture, notably from the 1960s, as well as the defining exhibitions he curated.

Curators' Choice: Photographs from the Terence Pepper Gift

The 2015 bicentennial anniversary of Julia Margaret Cameron’s birth is a timely opportunity for a reappraisal of the interdisciplinary significance of her work. The last twenty years have witnessed growing art-historical and literary interest in this pioneer of Victorian photography, yet much remains to be said about the range and import of her cultural influences, as well as her participation in Victorian debates surrounding the arts and sciences, religion and philosophy.

While scholarship on the interrelations between Victorian visual and verbal cultures has flourished in the past two decades, Julia Margaret Cameron’s contribution to this paradigm has received relatively little attention. With the exception of her photographic illustrations of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, her engagement with biblical, classical and literary narratives has been overlooked. Similarly, the critical focus on Cameron’s photographic portraiture has occluded her participation in wider Victorian artistic, scientific, philosophic and religious discourses.

This conference aims to generate renewed interest in Cameron’s intellectual and aesthetic exchanges with Victorian artists, theorists, writers, and scientists.Planned to coincide with the 2015 bicentenary celebrations of her birth, it aims to debate the importance and legacy of her cultural contribution; to emphasise the interdisciplinary appeal of her photography; and to examine her significant engagement with key aspects of Victorian technical and cultural innovation.

The conference will include an evening performance of Virginia Woolf’s Freshwater: A Comedy on Friday 3 July and an organised tour on Sunday 5 July to Dimbola Museum and Galleries, Julia Margaret Cameron’s home in Freshwater, Isle of Wight.

Full 3 day package

Cost: £120.00. Includes 3 day conference registration, a ticket for Freshwater: A Comedy and travel and entry to Dimbola Museum and Galleries

Single day package

Cost: £50.00 .1 day conference registration for Saturday 4 July only

The programme is here. 

More information and registration is here.

Image: © The Royal Photographic Society Collection / NMeM / SSPL.

Olhares sobre a fotografia is a new e-book by Nuno Pinheiro, free to download from Academia.edu. It is a collection of texts, mostly published in the extinct Lisbon daily A Capital dealing with early Portuguese photography. One of them is "Gramophones da Luz" a 1990's academic paper, which is the first try on having photography seen by a social history point of view, preceding other works from the author.

There also some newer texts up to 2015.

https://www.academia.edu/12459152/Olhares_sobre_a_fotografia

Nuno Pinheiro

Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) in Istanbul hosts the exhibition Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914 between 21 April and 19 August 2015. Curated by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem and Bahattin Öztuncay, the exhibition mainly consists of albums and archival materials from Ömer M. Koç Collection as well as photographs from the albums commissioned by the Sultan Abdülhamid II.

The exhibition explores some of the most striking aspects of the close connection between photography and modernity in the specificity of the Ottoman Empire. After the birth of photography in 1839, the Empire embraced the new technology with great enthusiasm. In fact, the impact and meaning of photography were compounded by the thrust of modernization and westernization of the Tanzimat movement. By the turn of the century, photography in the Ottoman lands had become a standard feature of everyday life, of public media, and of the state apparatus.

During Sultan Abdülhamid II’s reign modernity was often embedded in the photographic act, transforming it into a common and mundane practice showcasing his empire for Western audiences. Camera Ottomana displays different forms of these images disseminated through the illustrated press, postcards sent out to family members or anonymous collectors, portraits presented to friends and acquaintances, or pictures taken of employees and convicts, photography had started to invade practically every sphere of public and private life. The exhibition brings together the Empire’s modern image with an extensive selection of photographs, emphasizing the widespread use of photography in various areas such as propaganda, journalism, education, criminology, and medicine.

Designed by PATTU Architecture, delicate materials such as daguerreotypes, glass negatives and stereographs are carefully placed in the gallery among the meticulous selection of archival documents and photos most of which are on display for the first time. Visitors are also able to examine different techniques that are used throughout the history of photography by the digital technology applied in the exhibition.

A book titled Camera Ottmana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914 by Koç University Press containing essays by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Bahattin Öztuncay, Frances Terpak and Peter Bonfitto accompanies the exhibition.

Camera Ottmana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840 - 1914
21 April – 19 August 2015
Curators: Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Bahattin Öztuncay

Visiting Hours

Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00 – 18:30
Sunday: 12:00 – 18:30
Exhibition is closed on Mondays.

Admission is free.

Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations
İstiklal Cad. No: 181 Merkez Han
34433 Beyoğlu İstanbul - Türkiye
T: +90 212 393 61 14 F: +90 212 245 17 61 http://rcac.ku.edu.tr

http://cameraottomana.ku.edu.tr/

I have borrowed this negative from a local historian. It is in an envelope labelled “Bishop’s Bridge Norwich” and dated 1st June 1899. The negative measures 6x9cm approx and is on a translucent rather than transparent film base that I assume to be celluloid. The top and bottom edges are cut with castellations with processing marks on each castellation.

Has any member of this forum any idea why this was cut in this way or what type of camera was used to take the image?

The Bodleian Library is delighted presenting a lecture by Ken Jacobson marking the appearance of a book published by Bernard Quaritch and written by Ken and Jenny Jacobson: Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin’s Lost Daguerreotypes.

At a small country auction in 2006, the authors discovered one lightly regarded lot, a distressed mahogany box crammed with long-lost early photographs. They were daguerreotypes and all are now confirmed as once belonging to John Ruskin, the great nineteenth-century art critic, writer, artist and social reformer. Moreover, the box turned out to contain the largest collection of daguerreotypes of Venice in the world and probably the earliest surviving photographs of the Alps.

Ruskin's daguerreotypes aided the creation and influenced the style of his watercolours and in some instances reflected his emotional state of mind. Despite his sometimes vehemently negative sentiments regarding the camera, Ruskin ambivalent attitude towards the new art meant he never stopped using photography.

Despite being intended as simple documents, the quality and unorthodox style of many of Ruskin's daguerreotypes will come as a revelation to both photographic historians and Ruskin scholars. There are exemplars, however, within the history of both painting and photography that provide a historical and aesthetic framework within which Ruskin's work can be located.

The lecture on 3 June will be followed by a reception 6-7pm in the Visiting Scholars' Centre, Weston Library (2nd floor). Registration is required.

See: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/whats-on/upcoming-events/2015/jun/carrying-off-the-palaces

Photo London, London city wide celebration of photography centred on Somerset House attracted more than 20,000 visitors over five days. 70 galleries from 20 countries participated in the first edition of the fair, along with 10 publishers and 3 special exhibitors. They showed the best photography from all over the world, with strong sales across a range of photography from vintage and rare prints to contemporary and new work by established and emerging talent.

Michael Benson, Director of Photo London said: "The reaction to our first edition has been astonishing - far exceeding our own expectations and predictions. Indeed many of our exhibitors have told us that Photo London is the best art fair they have ever attended. Our aim was not to be the biggest, simply to be the best and with our first edition we have taken a huge stride in that direction."

PhotoLondon saw a major public programme which included three specially commissioned exhibitions, including Beneath the Surface showing works from the V&A's Photographs Collection will remain open until the end of August (see image left); performances and talks. Sebastião Salgado's accepted the first Photo London Master of Photography Award.

Photo London will returned in 2016 from 19-22 May 2016. See more and sign up for emails here: http://photolondon.org/

It is announced that The Irving Penn Foundation is providing a generous grant toward the production of the book, Platinum and Palladium Photographs: Technical and Aesthetic History, Connoisseurship, and Preservation.

This publication represents the extended proceedings of the International Symposium on this subject, held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, last October, and reported on BPH here

The book will be published by The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Photographic Materials Group (AIC/PMG), Washington, DC.  The book project coordinator and chief editor will be Constance McCabe, Head of Photograph  Conservation, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The probable date of publication is Summer 2016.

As readers will know, Irving Penn played a critical role in the modern history of the art of platinum photography, passionately exploring the medium in his quest for the perfect and permanent platinum print, which led to a revitalization of this exquisite photographic process. What some readers may not know is that the origin of this present collaborative study of platinum and palladium photographs, which finally involved about 40 researchers across some 20 institutions, can be traced to the preparations for the National Gallery of Art’s 2005 exhibition and publication, Irving Penn: Platinum Prints, during which many questions were raised regarding the highly technical nature of Penn’s photographs and platinum prints in general.  Now, ten years later, new scientific research has made great advances toward a meaningful understanding of the chemical, technical, and aesthetic nature of these complex photographs.

Photo Archive News Twitter follower, budding photographer, Holly Rollins is currently studying for a BA in Photography from Falmouth University part of which she has to do a work placement week, which she did at Mary Evans: "I had to undertake a work placement as part of my professional practice module, photo archiving immediately sprung to mind"

Read the Full article and more photos

BPH Is pleased to report that Julien Faure-Conorton has been awarded a doctorate for his thesis on Robert Demachy. Julien defended his work on 11 May at the EHESS, Paris. His research was carried out under the supervision of Michel Frizot and was titled Characterization, contextualization and reception of Robert Demachy’s photographic work (1859-1936). An abstract is available here. Following his defence he was award the title of Doctor of Art History and Theory, summa cum laude.

Julien is working on an exhibition which examines the work of Robert Demachy and is interested in hearing from institutions interested in hosting it. He can be contacted here:  

Julien FAURE-CONORTON, Ph.D.

Docteur en Histoire et Théorie des Arts

Historien de la Photographie / Photography Historian

j.faureconorton@gmail.com

+33 (0)6 83 16 12 04

LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julien-faure-conorton/60/453/696/en

Twitter : @Photo_Secession

The Royal Opera House in the UK are looking to clear usage on an image beleived to be by photographer Richard Dormer of Margot Fonteyn ,1960.  The only details I have are that it is an image of Margot Fonteyn as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty ...details on PhotoArchiveNews.com