Blogs

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. 

Bromley House, a private members library in Nottingham City centre has an interesting photographic history. It was the home of one of the first commercial photographic studios in the country when Alfred Barber opened a daguerreotype studio in 1841 under licence from Richard Beard.

The late Pauline Heathcote carried out research into the photographers who were at Bromley House as well as Richard Beard. She also carried out research on a great many studios and photographers throughout the British Isles.

Samuel Bourne and Arthur Marshall were members of Bromley House Library. Although they did not use the studio they were important photographers in the history of photography and were thoroughly researched by Pauline.

Bernard Heathcote has donated his late wife's archive of research notes and photographs to Bromley House Library. The archive contents are listed at www.bromleyhouse.org > About us > Our history > The Pauline Heathcote Archive.

Further information about the studio can be found at www.bromleyhouse.org >About us > our history > The Photographic Studio.

The studio and dark room are open to the public on Wednesday afternoons, by appointment only. Please contact Eric Butler at photo@bromleyhouse.org

To access any part of the Pauline Heathcote archive email photo@bromleyhouse.org to make an appointment and complete a research booking form. I.D. will be required.

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