Blogs

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

Matt Butson, Vice President, Hulton Archive walks and talks us through another sectionof the vast Getty Images collection.

This two-day conference has been organised in association with the exhibitions, 'Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience, 1950s-1990s' which are currently on display at the V&A and Black Cultural Archives, Brixton. The conference raises awareness of the contribution of black Britons to British culture and society, as well as to the art of photography. Speakers include Barbie Asante, Jennie Baptiste, James Barnor, Pogus Caesar, Ingrid Pollard, Syd Shelton and The Islington Twins.

The conference is free but booking is essential. For further information and to book a place please phone the V&A Bookings Office on +44 (0)20 7942 2211

Staying Power: Narratives of Black British Experience

Friday 22–Saturday 23 May 2015

Day One: Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, V&A, South Kensington

Day Two: Lambeth Town Hall and Black Cultural Archives, Brixton

To view the conference programme please visit the V&A's website:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/4580/staying-power-narratives-of-black-british-experience-22-may-1043047073/

Starting a digitisation project completely from scratch has its challenges but it also has a great number of advantages, not least being given the opportunity to thoroughly understand the reasons for digitising the collection and being able to research and think through the workflow and methodology in advance to make sure that we get it right first time.  So often, digitisation is undertaken piecemeal and without a clear plan, and what results is a collection of disparate images of varying quality which need to be revisited over time.

The challenges of the project, namely a limited budget, tight time frame (two years of initial funding), reliance on a volunteer workforce and need to use pre-existing kit could have proved difficult but in fact, as we worked through our approach to this project, these limitations have actually helped to clearly inform decisions about what we can and cannot manage and how we should approach the material, and in their way have largely simplified the process.

You can read the rest of the blog here 

Our latest blog, by The Past on Glass Project Officer Abby Matthews

Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822-1902) was a pioneer of early photography who created an outstanding body of work depicting the landscape and architecture of India and Burma (now Myanmar) in the 1850s. This major presentation of Tripe’s photographs will include more than 60 of his most striking views taken between 1852 and 1860.

On display will be Tripe’s photographs of architectural sites and monuments, ancient and contemporary religious and secular buildings, as well as roads, bridges, moats, landscape vistas and geological formations throughout India and Burma. Many of the images are the first photographic records of these sites and the prints on view represent the highlights of Tripe’s output. They will be shown alongside bound albums of his work, a panoramic scroll and two models of monuments similar to his subjects.

Linnaeus Tripe was born in 1822 in Devon, the ninth of 12 children, joining the East India Company army in 1839 and stationed in India throughout the 1840s. He learned to photograph during several years on leave in England in the early 1850s. The exhibition will highlight Tripe’s considerable skill at a time when photography was about to undergo rapid change and the practice and recognition was becoming more widely adopted. It will also show his understanding that photography could be used to convey information about unknown cultures and places to the general public.

The photographs on view represent two major expeditions and preserve an important period in Indian, Burmese and British history. In 1855 Tripe was appointed by the governor-general of India to accompany a mission to Burma to study the area. Here Tripe became the first person to photograph the region’s remarkable architecture and landscapes. He then went on to be the first to photograph extensively in south India after his subsequent appointment as photographer to the Madras government. Through this official role Tripe aimed to capture as much of the south Indian region as possible. After each trip he returned with more than 200 large format paper negatives, from which he carefully oversaw the complex printing in his Bangalore studio that he founded for this purpose.

Tripe’s photographs are technically complex and he is known for his innovative precision with the camera, paying close attention to both his composition and its realisation when printing. To evoke atmospheric effects Tripe retouched most of his negatives by applying pigment in thin layers and included in the exhibition will be a selection of waxed-paper negatives that reveal these working methods. Also on display will be a segment of a panoramic scroll showing the inscriptions around the base of the Great Pagoda temple in Tanjore. Composed of more than 20 prints assembled and mounted onto a long canvas scroll, it is now regarded as a considerable technical achievement, given the physical and climatic conditions of the time.

Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860 is organized jointly by the National Gallery of Art, Washington and and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in association with the V&A. It includes photographs from the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Library and many private lenders, as well as photographs and objects from the V&A’s own extensive collection of Tripe’s works. The exhibtion is curated by Roger Taylor, Professor Emeritus, Photographic History, De Montfort University. It has been adapted for the V&A by Martin Barnes, V&A Senior Curator of Photographs.

Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860 Part of the V&A India Festival
24 June – 11 October 2015 www.vam.ac.uk/linnaeustripe| #LinnaeusTripe

Image: Amerapoora: Colossal Statue of Gautama Close to the North End of the Wooden Bridge, 1855, Collection of Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro

Soldiers and Suffragettes curator, Anna Sparham, Edwardian postcard expert, Guy Atkins and women’s history specialist Di Atkinson, will discuss the remarkable career of Christina Broom and review the role of the image in Edwardian society. There will also be an exclusive after hours viewing of the exhibition at the first of the museum's late night openings of the exhibition.

See more here

Soldiers and Suffragettes: The Photography of Christina Broom
Friday 19 June – Sunday 1 November 2015 

For information on the exhibition and associated events see more here.