In July 2013, the Musée Maison Nicéphore Niépce in St Loup de Varennes - founded and exclusively financed by the Speos International Photography School since 1999 -- was nominated Maisons des illustres by the French Ministry of Culture in the presence of high-ranked French government representatives. The house where the world's first photo was taken has finally received national recognition as a museum.
Visit the house website at: http://www.niepce.com/
20 July: One of the oldest, extant, dedicated photographic archives in the world, the Barnardo's photographic archive, currently housed in Barkingside, East London is under threat. Following its digitisation the archive will be transferred to another organisation or will be destroyed.
Over the next few months, Barnardo's will be having its entire photographic archive digitised in Manchester. Due to space issues at Barnardo's, the organisation will then destroy the original images unless an archive or museum can be persuaded to save these important historic documents. The material consists of about of shelving around fifteen feet in length holding archival boxes about 8 inches deep and about 20 inches high. The pages from the original admissions ledgers have been cut out and placed in archival plastic sheets.
Dr. Thomas Barnardo began photographing the 'waifs and strays' that came into his care at his first childrens home in Stepney causeway as early as 1875, employing two photographers, Barnardo preceded most prisons and asylums by seeing the benifits of photography for institutional record keeping. He soon came into legal trouble for faking the condition of the children for the purposes of publicity.
The importance of these beautiful images - not just to photographic history but to the study of archive practices and British social history - cannot be overstated. It is imperative that their material importance is upheld and that they do not simply become yet another archive solely made up of a smattering of zeroes and ones.
There are certain stipulations regarding the public use of images of children within their care and the images would be subject to a 100 year privacy rule but would still be accessible for private and/or scholarly work.
If you might know of an institution, archive, museum, group of people or persons that would be willing to help save this archive of historical importance please contact the head archivist at Barnardos.
Read more about the Barnardo archive here: http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/who_we_are/history/family_history_service/family_history_service_our_service/photo_archive.htm
Update 1: A petition has been launched to 'save' the archive. Click here to view and sign. The petition addressed to Culture Minister Maria Miller has been signed by over 1000 people.
Update 2: Barnardos has commented publicly for the first time. http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/1192660/fears-circulate-barnardos-photo-archive-destroyed/ It says it is 'confident it will find a destination for 500,000 historic photos'.
Update 3: According to Amateur Photographer magazine over forty offers to house the archive have been received.
An oil portrait of Benjamin Brecknell Turner is being offered by a British seller on eBay. The auction closes on 28 July. According to the auction entry Turner was was one of Britain's first photographers and a founding member in 1853 of the Photographic Society of London.
See the auction entry here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/400535415777
UPDATE: The painting sold for £310.
Born in London, Turner was the eldest son in a family of eight children. The family lived above the family tallow-chandlers business where candles and saddle-soaps were made and sold. At sixteen Benjamin became an apprentice to his father, he joined the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers in 1837 and became a Freeman of the City of London in 1838. On 17 August 1847, he married Agnes Chamberlain, a member of the Worcester China family.
In 1849 Turner took out a licence to practice paper negative (Calotype or Talbotype) photography from its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. He quickly mastered this form of photography and went on to produce many images during the 1850s, taking part in many photographic exhibitions during this time. He joined the Photographic Society, later the Royal Photographic Society, and was recorded as a member from 1854, although it is likely he joined in 1853 and remained a member until at least 1893, albeit with a break in membership between c.1871, rejoining in 1883. Brecknell's personal album from The Photographic Club, a grouping of members of the Photographic Society is held in the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was a British pioneer in photography, yet he also embraced the wider preoccupations of the Victorian Age—a time that saw many political, social, intellectual, technical, and industrial changes. His manuscripts, now in the archive of the British Library, reveal the connections and contrasts between his photographic innovations and his investigations into optics, mathematics, botany, archaeology, and classical studies.
Drawing on Talbot’s fascinating letters, diaries, research notebooks, botanical specimens, and photographic prints, distinguished scholars from a range of disciplines, including historians of science, art, and photography, broaden our understanding of Talbot as a Victorian intellectual and a man of science.
The authors: Brusius, Mirjam, Dean, Katrina, Ramalingam, Chitra (Eds.)., William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography, Studies in British Art 23 (New Haven; London: Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in association with Yale University Press, 2013).
With essays by Katrina Dean, Eleanor Robson, Mirjam Brusius, Graham Smith, Larry J. Schaaf, Simon Schaffer, Herta Wolf, Vered Maimon, Anne Secord, Chitra Ramalingam, and June Barrow-Green
Mirjam Brusius is postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University Katrina Dean is a university archivist at Melbourne University. Chitra Ramalingam is postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.
In the 19th Century, the vast majority of photos were shot with the extremely popular Petzval lens. The lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840 and had a huge impact on the development of photography. Photos shot with a Petzval lens are immediately recognisable for their sharpness and crispness, strong colour saturation, wonderful swirly bokeh effect, artful vignettes and narrow depth of field. The totally distinctive look of Petzval photos is all about the fantastic lens design that gives you the satisfaction of the instant optic experience that goes far beyond using photo editing software and filters.
This legendary lens has now been reinvented and updated for 21st century use (eg a larger f/2.2 maximum aperture) for all Nikon F and Canon EF Mount Analog & Digital SLR cameras by Lomography. Expected delivery date of the lenses is on February 2014. However, they are confident to have the first 1000 lenses shipped out by December 2013.
And to help kick-start the project, they have used the growing popularity of crowd-funding. You can part some of your cash with them here.
A website has been set up to showcase photographer Andrew Paterson, whose studio was based in Inverness between 1895-1980. He was an internationally renowned, multi-award winning artist-photographer. His services were sought over several decades by many leading political and commercial figures of the day. In 1935 the Glasgow Daily Record wrote that his 'name is known wherever the camera is regarded as a serious medium of expression in portraiture.'
Paterson won in total 23 awards and diplomas, both national and international, for his work and gave many exhibitions both at home and abroad. The Daily Record noted that 'his portraits have been regarded as setting new standards of excellence in the expression of character.” He was one of those who helped to elevate portrait photography into an art form equalling that of an oil painting.'
To coincide with the imminent 350th anniversary of Philosophical Transactions, the world’s oldest scientific journal, The Royal Society and the AHRC research project “Publishing the Philosophical Transactions” are organising a conference, to be held at the Royal Society in March 2015, on the history of science journal publishing. Phil.Trans. has a long association with the early history of photography.
Publish or Perish? Scientific periodicals from 1665 to the present
19-21 March 2015
The Royal Society, London
CALL FOR PAPERS
To celebrate the anniversary of the Philosophical Transactions, the world’s oldest scientific journal, the Royal Society will be hosting a major conference in spring 2015. At a time when the future of scientific publishing is in flux, this conference will take the long perspective by examining the transformations and challenges in the publishing of scientific journals over the last three and a half centuries, and into the future. We seek offers of papers, or proposals for three- or four-paper panels, which engage with any aspect of the commercial, editorial and distribution practices of scientific journal publishing, in any period since 1665, preferably with a comparative or longue durée perspective.
Papers or panels might address:
Offers of papers, including a 250-word abstract, should be sent to publishorperish@royalsociety.org by the 30th of November 2013.
Participants must be willing and able to prepare their paper for speedy publication in autumn 2015.
Philosophical Transactions at 350
The Philosophical Transactions turns 350 on March the 6th, 2015. To celebrate this milestone in the history of science communication, a programme of events and activities is being planned for the Anniversary year. In addition, a major AHRC-funded research project, led by Dr Aileen Fyfe at the University of St Andrews in partnership with the Royal Society, is already under way, which will produce the first full history of the Philosophical Transactions.
https://arts.st.andrews.ac.uk/philosophicaltransactions/
Dr Noah Moxham
School of History, University of St Andrews
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
In the latest issue of Ancient Egypt magazine (No.78, June-July 2013) I have an article entitled “Egyptology and Photography: Two Founding Fathers” which traces the correspondence between W H F Talbot and Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius in the 1840s. Lepsius was then preparing for his pioneering expedition to Egypt, and wanted to learn the art of photography from Talbot so that his team could use cameras to record inscriptions and ancient monuments. As well as examining the evidence for what actually happened in Egypt, the article discusses Talbot's interest in Egyptology and ancient languages.
Bernard Quaritch Ltd has confirmed the acquisition by the Hong Kong based Moonchu Foundation of the Terry Bennett Collection of Early Chinese Photography, now to be known as The Moonchu Collection of Early Photography of China. Comprising approximately 10,000 photographs from 1844 to the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Bennett collection has been acquired in its entirety.The selling price has not been disclosed but it is believed to be a significant seven-figure sum.
The Moonchu Foundation was established in 2007 and is a tax-exempt charity established by, but not beneficially owned by Mr Zhang Songyi and family members Ms Mui Bing How and Mr Chang Tsong Zung. The Moonchu Foundation has entered into a loan agreement with the Hong Kong Museum of History for a major exhibition from the collection at the end of 2013, with the further aim that this loan should become a permanent gift.
The range and depth of the collection is renowned, unrivalled in documented private or institutional holdings. It includes a daguerreotype (right) from Jules Itier’s visit in 1844, when he made the earliest surviving photographs of China; 70 albums by amateur and internationally acclaimed photographers such as Felice Beato, Milton Miller, John Thomson, and Lai Fong, William Saunders, Pow Kee, Paul Champion and William Floyd; some 325 cabinet and carte-de-visite portraits by Chinese and Western studios; many lantern slides and glass and paper stereoviews; hundreds of larger format portraits and views; rare photography periodicals such as The Far East and the China Magazine; multi-plate panoramas of Peking, Hong Kong, Macau and the treaty ports; awe inspiring scenes of natural landscape by Lai Fong and Tung Hing; and an early mammoth plate view of Hong Kong by C. L. Weed.
These photographs illuminate China’s history during the second half of the nineteenth century and the history of photography in China.
From the introduction of the daguerreotype to the era of the ‘Kodak’, the scope of this collection allows for comparative studies across multiple social, cultural and historical subjects.
Bernard Quaritch established a Photography Department in 2005 with Consultant Specialist, Lindsey Stewart, and a photobook department in 2010. It has published six catalogues and five photography books including the landmark three volume series History of Photography in China by Terry Bennett and Odalisques and Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839-1925 by Ken Jacobson.
Contact: Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 40 South Audley Street, London, W1K 2PR. Tel: +44 (0)20 7297 4888. Fax: +44 (0)20 7297 4866. rarebooks@quaritch.com or www.quaritch.com
We are looking for a Curator to take responsibility for the BFI National Archive’s collection of posters, designs and museum objects as part of a fixed-term maternity cover post, commencing late September/early October 2013. Working as part of the BFI curatorial team you will be required to document, develop, research and interpret the poster and designs collections, ensuring they are embedded within the cultural programme of the BFI.
You will have a strong knowledge of British film and television in both its historical and contemporary contexts. You should also have an interest in, and demonstrable knowledge of, 20thand 21stcentury British art and design, particularly as it relates to the film and television industries.
You need to be educated to degree level or equivalent, with a recognised qualification in art/paper conservation or a related area, as well as having a minimum of 2 years’ relevant experience in a gallery, museum or archive.
You will be based at the John Paul Getty Conservation Centre, Berkhamsted but you will be required in central London on a regular basis.
You will enjoy benefits such as a final salary pension scheme, 28-33 days annual leave, tickets to BFI festivals and events plus many others.
For more information and to apply please visit
http://www.bfi.org.uk/about-bfi/job-opportunities/current-vacancies/curator-posters-designs
The closing date for applications is 10.00am Monday 05 August 2013.
Interviews will be held Monday 19 August 2013 (at Berkhamsted
Photography was invented by William Fox Talbot in the world of the English country house. The leisured and affluent upper classes went on to make an art form of their new toy, creating intimate portraits of stunning beauty. Their work stands as poignant testament to a way of life that has all but vanished.
With a Preface by Michael Pritchard, Director-General of the Royal Photographic Society and previously unpublished photographs from the author’s archive this is a treasury of arisoctratic photography from the 1850s to 1930s.
"An unparalleled collection of photographs ... No serious student of the turn of the century or period drama can afford to be without it." - Julian Fellowes
Christopher Simon Sykes is a writer and photographer. He is the author of David Hockney: The Biography, The Big House and The National Trust Country House Album. He contributes to a number of magazines including House and Garden, World of Interiors and Vogue.
Nigel Nicolson, the son of Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackvile-West, co-founded
Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the late 1940s. He was a writer for The Spectator and the
Sunday Telegraph and was the author of many books on heritage and biography.
Clive Aslet is editor-at-large of Country Life magazine. He writes on British
architecture and regularly contributes articles to the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail
and The Sunday Times.
Details
Christopher Simon Sykes’s
Country House Camera
Publication date: 10 October 2013
£29.99 • ISBN 978-1-909022 40-9
Stacey International,
128 Kensington Church Street, London W8 4BH
Tel: 44 (0) 20 7221 7166
Email: marketing@stacey-international.co.uk
I have just won 1st prize for my cyanotype print on watercolour paper called Vintage Blouse & awarded a one woman show at the Pallant House Gallery in 2014 (dates to be confirmed).
The Sussex Artists Award is a collaboration between St Wilfrid's Hospice & Pallant House Gallery Chichester aiming to raise funds for the two charities & championing the work of artists from across the country. The selectors were Toni Arden of Arden & Anstruther photographic gallery, James Steward of Zimmer Steward Gallery Arundel, Matthew Sergison-Main 2012 Outside In National Award Winner & Simon Martin Head of Collections & Exhibitions at Pallant House Gallery. Then from the selected pieces the judges Gregory Perry Director of Pallant House Gallery & John Gill former Director of the Brighton Photo Biennial & Chairman of the British School at Rome chose the 1st, 2nd & 3rd prizes plus 2 x highly commended works.
The exhibition of winners & selected entries continues at the Pallant House Gallery ,Chichester, West Sussex until 4 August 2013.
I thought it might cause some amusement to post this picture from an the event held last weekend in Bath by the RPS Historical Group.
My picture touches four periods of photography: The sitter is David Burder, Daguerreotype aficionado, being photographed by Dr Guy Brown using a freshly made collodion wet plate in the camera while being captured on a digital camera by an attendee - my picture was from my smart phone. How photography has changed!
An absolutely great event and many thanks to all the organizers and presenters who's knowledge and skill was in abundance. There a real difference in the appreciation you have for these processes when you can see them in action. I should also mention the Wolcott & Johnson camera that on show by Roger Smith and the wonderful Bromoil preparation skills of the Preece's.
During his lifetime, the path-breaking and prolific lensman Raja Deen Dayal (1884 1844-1905) was one of the most widely recognized photographers from the Indian subcontinent. Today he remains among the most celebrated figures from this earlier era. This book brings together for the first time extensive archival research with close analysis of the significant body of Dayal s work preserved in the Alkazi Collection of Photography. Over the course of his remarkable career, Dayal opened studios in Indore, Secunderabad, and Bombay, employing over fifty staff photographers and assistants. Together, they produced more than 30,000 images of architecture, landscape, and people that have played a central role in how India's past has been visualized. This volume explores varied topics, from Dayal's public works, state visit, and hunting photographs to his images chronicling India's elite and growing middle classes. In this way, he lays the groundwork needed to rethink the history and practice of photography in India: as a commercial business, as an engagement with new technology, and as an aesthetic enterprise.
Trained as a draughtsman, Dayal rose quickly through the ranks as a Surveyor with the Public Works Department of the Central India Agency in Indore. He began photographing in the mid 1870s, becoming a master in the delicate art of developing glass plate negatives and albumen prints and producing what are still some of the most stunning views of the architecture and landscape of northern India. Ever the consummate businessman, Dayal soon counted the elite of British and Indian society amongst his clients. Eventually, he was appointed court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, and the studio became the first Indian firm to receive the Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. Dayal's career testifies to photography's paramount role in the overlapping arenas of the Princely states, British Raj, and the emerging cosmopolitan centers of nineteenth-century India.
You can pick up a copy using the Amazon link on the right.
A non-profit research project named Daguerreobase launched by the Nederland’s Fotomuseum, and joined in 2009 by the Fotomuseum of Antwerp with the aim of generating as much as knowledge as possible, by identifying preserving and disclosing detailed information on daguerreotypes held in Dutch and Flemish collections. A dedicated website www.daguerreobase.org was created to allow institutions and private collectors to view, edit and store records on individual daguerreotypes and establish relationships between records, based on collections, owners and a wide range of typologies such as size, mounting, hallmarks, etc.
Recently a further step has been taken with a project proposal being submitted, on June 1st, 2011, by the FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerp and the Nederlands Fotomuseum to the European ICP program Call 5. The project aims to improve the current Daguerreobase structure and functionality and to connect the Daguerreobase to the portal for European Cultural Heritage. The main goal of this initiative is to enrich the portal’s content with 25.000 descriptions of European daguerreotypes kept in private and institutional collections together with 6.500 pages of related European historical literature.
The project has a long list of objectives including: developing standards for the description of the daguerreotype plates together with a multilingual set of entries, high quality digitization parameters to reproduce the plates, aggregating metadata on historical and contemporary daguerreotypes and interfacing with Europeana and the founding of an European Daguerreotype Association (EDA)
The proposal was carefully examined by the European Commission, received a very good evaluation for its relevance, impact and implementation and, after a period of negotiation, the project was awarded a grant. SMPhotoconservation is one of the eighteen official participants forming the European consortium, for this project and is responsible for collecting daguerreotypes, descriptions and related objects in Italy.
Since November 1st 2012, the international consortium of eighteen European partners has now been invited to initiate this exciting adventure, that will span over thirty months; it will be completed by March 2015.
Read more here: http://www.daguerreobase.org/
The Getty Conservation Institute has joined with the Arab Image Foundation, the Art Conservation Department of the University of Delaware and the Photograph Conservation Department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to form the Middle East Photograph Preservation Initiative (MEPPI).
MEPPI is a strategic initiative designed to gather information, raise awareness, and build capacity in the preservation of photograph collections throughout the Middle East - here defined as the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Gulf. The third in a series of courses will begin with a workshop that will take place in Amman, Jordan from 20-28 January, 2014. The deadline for application is 19 August, 2013.
Details about the course and the application process can be found here: http://www.meppi.org/blog/meppiamman2014courseannouncement
Dr Gil Pasternak has been appointed Senior Research Fellow in Photographic History at De Montfort University. He was previously at the University of Huddersfield.
Dr Gil Pasternak studied for his Ph.D. in the History of Art Department at University College London (UCL), specialising in the theory and history of photography in the context of fine art, visual and material cultures. His published research work looks into the role photography plays in the formation of Middle-Eastern cultural historical topoi. His investigations consider the photographic apparatus within contexts such as the construction of physical and human landscapes, the geographical and political imagination, the domestication of militarism, private acts of political protest, and social rituals of mourning and nationalism.
Read more about his interests at: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/academic-staff/art-design-humanities/gil-pasternak/gil-pasternak.aspx
Gil can be contacted by email at: gpasternak@dmu.ac.uk
This book is the first extensive survey of early Chinese photographers in any language. It is profusely illustrated with more than 400 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, including a fine selection of Foochow landscapes from the studios of Lai Fong, China’s leading photographer during this period, and Tung Hing.
Early chapters introduce the historical milieu from which the earliest Chinese photographers emerged and illuminate the beginnings of photography in China and contemporary Chinese reactions to its introduction. Early Chinese commercial photography – both portrait and landscape – are also discussed with reference to similar genres in a more international context. Individual chapters are devoted to Chinese photographers in Peking, Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, Hankow, Tientsin and other ports, Macau and Formosa. These are followed by a series of appendices: writings on photography in China by John Thomson and Isaac Taylor Headland and an invaluable guide to the identification of photographs from the Afong Studio. It concludes with an extensive bibliography, general and regional chronologies, and a biographical index. Combining existing knowledge of the subject with a mass of new research material, this major work also introduces and identifies the work of a number of previously forgotten or overlooked Chinese masters. It includes the work of: Chow Kwa (Su Sanxin), Hing Qua John & Co., Jiu San & E Fong, Kai Sack, Kung Tai, Lai Chong, Lai Fong, Liang Shitai (See Tay), Luo Yuanyou, Man Foc, Pow Kee, Pun Lun, Sang Cheong, Tung Hing, Wo Cheong, Ye Chung and many others.
This book completes a three-volume series on the photographic history of China until the late 19th century and will prompt a re-evaluation and heightened appreciation of these early Chinese photographers.
ISBN: 978-0-9563012-4-6
Available from Quaritch: http://www.quaritch.com/news
This project took off in Shawbost when a ‘treasure chest of pre-WW1 glass negatives were discovered in the barn of a local lady, now sadly deceased. The negatives are the work of Dr Norman Morrison (1869-1949), who was born and raised in Shawbost. A successful author publishing works on local history, folklore, adder snakes, and politics. He is best known as a co-founder of the Scottish Police Federation having been a serving police officer for many years.
Public workshops on this 19th century wet plate photography will be held on the morning and afternoon of Monday 15 July 2013 led by photographer David Gillanders. Further details can be found here.
An iconic Swansea building where a pioneering scientist took one of the earliest ever photos of the moon will soon be brought back to life. Swansea Council has signed a 25-year lease with the Penllergare Trust for the 19th Century equatorial observatory and laboratory at Penllergare Valley Woods that once formed a local hub for stargazing.
The historic building, also a Scheduled Ancient Monument, was built in 1846 and went on to house a telescope for John Dillwyn Llewelyn, a groundbreaking photographer and astronomer of the period. From the observatory, John and his daughter, Thereza, would experiment by taking photographs of the moon.
Cllr Nick Bradley, Swansea Council’s Cabinet Member for Regeneration, said: “We signed an agreement with the Penllergare Trust last month to work in closer partnership than ever with them to protect, restore and regenerate the natural and cultural landscape of the stunning Penllergare Valley Woods. The lease agreement for the observatory building there shows considerable progress has already been made for the benefit of the thousands of people who visit the woods every year.
“The observatory building has a rich and fascinating history and its restoration forms part of what’s going to be an exciting future for this much-loved beauty spot.”
A £2.9 million restoration project is currently underway at Penllergare Valley Woods with funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Parks for People programme. Swansea Council has contributed a grant towards the observatory works.
The observatory will be repaired and restored over the next 18 months. It will also be made accessible along with other attractions in the woods like the terrace gardens, the upper lake, the waterfall and an old stone bridge known as the Llewelyn bridge.
Terry Jones, Chairman of the Penllergare Trust, said: “The observatory is the scientific legacy of John Dillwyn Llewelyn. It has survived over half a century of neglect along with the picturesque designed landscape garden in the valley below. We’re looking forward to bringing this nationally important historic structure back into good condition and conserving it for public benefit.”
A new woodland car park and kiosk is also being constructed that’s due for completion this summer. A micro hydro turbine will be installed to generate electricity and ensure a sustainable future for the Valley Woods.
The Penllergare estate was at the height of its prosperity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its creator, John Dillwyn Llewellyn, was known for his scientific experiments, pioneering photography (he was a founder member of the Photographic Society, later Royal), landscape design and horticulture.
