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John Stauffer is co-editing a book, Picturing Frederick Douglass:  The Most Photographed American in the Nineteenth Century. He has discovered that there are more separate poses of Douglass than of Lincoln and of other contemporaries (not counting, for example Twain, who was a generation younger).  

In his search through archives there is a black hole in the British Isles.  So far he has not found a single photograph of Douglass in British archives. This is strange as Douglass sat for his photograph whenever he could, and was beloved by the British during his stays in 1845-47, 1859-60, and during brief subsequent visits.  

He would welcome news of any images made by British studios. 

Contact: John Stauffer, Professor of English, History of American Civilization and African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Tel: +1 617-642-7108 (cell) or email: johnwstauffer@gmail.com

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In a landmark partnership, Impressions Gallery is depositing its archive with the National Media Museum. It will become part of the National Photography Collection, where it will be titled as  'Impressions Gallery Archive' and receive the highest standards of collections management. It is believed to be the first time a publicly funded photography gallery will have its archive cared for and made accessible by a national institution. It joins The Royal Photographic Society Collection and other notable collections housed and managed by the museum. 

Impressions Gallery, one of the oldest and most respected venues for contemporary photography in Europe, has accumulated an unrivalled collection of archival materials and photographic work since its inception in 1972. The aim of the partnership with National Media Museum is to make this rich period of British photographic exhibiting history available to curators, scholars, photographers and the wider public.

The National Media Museum is home to 3.5 million items of historical significance including one of the finest photographic collections in the world.  With an active programme of collections management, exhibitions, loans to peer institutions and an international reputation, the National Media Museum is the ideal partner to continue and develop the Impressions Gallery’s collection for the future, and make it available to the public.

Impressions Gallery is known for its directional role in the photography world, recognising and supporting photographers in the early stages of their careers such as Martin Parr, whose first show was staged at the gallery in 1972. Impressions has consistently set critical agendas by commissioning and showing work that addresses (sometimes controversial) issues of politics, race, gender and identity. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the gallery was the first in the UK to show photographic work responding to the AIDS crisis, and led the field in showing new work using then-emerging technologies of video and digital media.

Director of Impressions Gallery Anne McNeill said, ‘Impressions Gallery has played an incisive role in expanding people’s perceptions and understanding of photography. To coincide with achieving our milestone 40th anniversary, we are delighted to realise the next steps in the development and long term preservation of our archival materials’.

Jo Quinton-Tulloch, Head of National Media Museum said, ‘Naturally, the Museum is thrilled to be able to secure such an important archive and collection of photography – one which not only records and evidences the considerable contribution of Impressions Gallery over the past 40 years and counting, but which also further enhances the National Photography Collection’

This is the second major collaboration for the two Bradford-based photography venues, following the successful launch of the inaugural photography festival Ways of Looking in 2011. The Chairman of Impressions Gallery Board of Trustees Darryn Hedges said, ‘This exciting project demonstrates Impressions’ ongoing commitment to making Bradford known as the UK destination for photography’.

The museum has not yet commented upon whether opening hours at its Insight facility will be extended to support the likely interest in the Impressions archive or whether it will expand its curatorial staff to support access to the material and facilitate the 'highest standards' of collections management. The museum has lost curatorial staff in recent months and opening hours at Insight have been reduced in recent years limiting access to researchers. 

Charlotte Cotton and members of Ph: The Photography Research Network will discuss ideas emerging out of Either/And (www.eitherand.org) , a collaboration between the National Media Museum and Ph.

Either/And has been devised as an online framework in which to debate and share perspectives on photography’s place in contemporary culture. Commissioned essays, interviews, images and films are published on the website on a weekly basis, which serve as the catalyst for online public discussion. Material from the project will form the basis of a printed publication next year.

This Research Seminar has been scheduled to mark the half-way point in the tenure of Ph as Guest Editors of Either/And. It will provide an opportunity for Either/And contributors past, present and future to consider the conditions of photography today.

Charlotte Cotton is a curator and writer. Previously held positions include Creative Director of Media Space, Director of the Wallis Anneberg Department of Photographs, LACMA and Curator of Photographs at the Victorian and Albert Museum. She is the author of The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2004) and founder of Words Without Pictures (2009-9) and EitherAnd.org (2012-3).

Ph: The Photography Research Network was established in 2010 as an inter-disciplinary research forum for early career scholars working in the field of photography. Ph currently consists of more than thirty researchers drawn from twenty UK universities. It was initially funded by the AHRC as part of its Beyond Text scheme. See www.ph-research.co.uk.

Thursday 6 June 2013 

18.00, Research Forum South Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution is exhibiting prints of some of the Reverend Francis Lockey’s photographs, taken between 1849 and 1861, at the Central Library, Bath, between the 20-25 May.

Copies of Shadows and Light. Bath in Camera 1849-1861. Early Rare Photographs, compiled by David McLaughlin and Michael Gray will be on sale.

For more on Lockey see: http://www.brlsi.org/node/18262

Image: Weirs south of Argyle Bridge, Bath ca.1853-61.

The announcement today of the acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum of John Everett Millais’s celebrated portrait of John Ruskin at Glenfinlas marks a final chapter in the history of a painting intimately associated with one of Ruskin’s pupils, the photographer Sarah Angelina Acland. Lent and bequeathed by Ruskin to Miss Acland’s father, Henry Wentworth Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, for three decades the portrait hung above Miss Acland’s writing desk in her home opposite the Sheldonian Theatre. The painting also served as a subject for her experiments in orthochromatic photography in the late 1890s, which she pursued in the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelites, whom she knew as a child.

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Two important daguerreotypes showing Antoine Claudet and his son F J Claudet are being offered by Special Auction Services on Thursday, 16 May on behalf of a descendent of the family.

Antoine Claudet was an important daguerreotypist and photographic scientist from 1839 until his death in 1867 his portrait, although undated appears to be one of the earliest known. F J Claudet, his son, ran his own photographic studio in London. 

For more information see: http://www.specialauctionservices.com/large/me150513/page26.html

The portrait sold for 30,000 GBP (see¨: http://www.specialauctionservices.com/large/me150513/index.html)

A priceless archive of golf photography covering the development of golf from the 19th century onwards, which includes the extensive golf photography archives of the Lawrence Levy collection and the collections of Scottish photographer George Cowie, is to benefit from the support of the Mission Hills Golf Group in China.

Mission Hills is strengthening its ties with St Andrew's by committing a six-figure sum to support the 600th anniversary celebrations of the university (founded in 1413), as well as the development of these special collections.

The full news article can be found here.

A group of 18 photographs of China by Felice Beato taken in 1860 was sold for £218,500 on the 14th May 2013 at Sotheby's London in the sale of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History. The collection included a magnificent 6-part panorama of Beijing, the first ever taken showing the interior of the city. The price is believed to be an auction record for a group of photographs by Beato. Link: Sotheby's catalogue 

An album of 71 albumen prints by John Thomson of Swatow (Shantou), Amoy (Xiamen) and Formosa (Taiwan) sold for £134,500 at Sotheby's London on 14th May 2013 in a sale of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History. The album had been purchased from Thomson by Dr Edward Irwin Scott (1846-1914), who ran a medical practice with his brother Dr Charles Scott in Swatow. The album included a presentation inscription by Dr Edward Scott to his mother-in-law dated 8th March 1874. Link here: Sotheby's catalogue

ENLARGING PICTURES FROM SMALL PHOTOGRAPHS. -On the evening of October 7, the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held a soiree at the Guildhall, Cambridge, which was numerously and fashionably attended.

During the evening, M. Claudet exhibited pictures enlarged from small photographs. After having read on Monday, in Section A, a paper on the means of rendering more accurate the measurement of the distances which regulate the enlargement of small photographs by the solar camera, M. Claudet exhibited last night a number of cartes de visite enlarged by the solar camera, showing the great perfection of proportion and the natural expression which may be imparted to portraits when they are taken in a very short sitting, and with apparatus placed at a proper distance from the persons, as is the case for small pictures.

M. Claudet, in order to show the working of the solar camera, had brought from London and placed in a room adjoining  the great hall all the apparatus employed for the enlargement of photographs. Although, of course, unable to produce photographic pictures without the light of the sun, he employed artificial light to throw on a white screen the enlarged photographs, which was sufficient to illustrate the principle of the process. M. Claudet exhibited in this manner pictures of persons enlarged to the size of nature, and some considerably larger from small cartes de visite. The effect was very striking and beautiful.

He also exhibited some photographs, taken by the Comte de Montizon, of all the most curious animals of the Zoological Gardens, and some views of Java, taken by Messrs Negretti and Zambra, with instantaneous views of Paris by Ferrier, showing the boulevards full of carriages and people, as they are in the middle of the day.

One of the principal objects of M. Claudet was to explain how it is possible to trace or draw with pencil on the canvas those enlarged portraits when they are to be painted, and for this purpose how it is even more advantageous to apply the colours not on a surface containing the chemical substances of photographic pictures, but on the usual medium employed by artists without the black shadows forming the delineation of photographs. Several portraits as large as nature drawn by this means and painted on canvas may, we believe, be seen at the International Exhibition in the space allotted to M. Claudet in the British Department of Photographs. These portraits show the advantage of this process, and afford reason to hope that it may be one of the most, useful applications of photography.

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW, Australia) Saturday 27 December 1862 page 5
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper

The draft programme for De Montfort University's Workers and Consumers: The photographic industry 1860-1950 conference which takes place from 24-25 June 2013 has been announced. The history of photography has largely been dominated by concerns about aesthetic production and its political framings. Such ‘art historical’ approaches have marginalised the study of the economic base of the medium manifested through a developing photographic industry, its related trades and its mass consumers. 

Work is now emerging in this field, scattered across a number of disciplines: history, anthropology and history of science in particular. While there has been extensive research on both the politics and the affective qualities of popular photography, family albums, for instance, the missing component in the analysis is often a detailed and empirically informed understanding of the social and economic conditions of product development, labour forces, marketing and consumer demand.

This two-day conference aims to bring together a critical mass of research in this area, to explore the state of play in this overlooked but crucial aspect of history of photography, and to suggest new directions for research in the economic, business and industrial history of photography. The conference will explore the period 1860-1950: from the rise of a clearly defined photographic industry, which had a profound effect on the practices and thus social functions of photography, to the expansion of mass colour technologies.

Opening Keynote Speaker: 

Professor Steve Edwards (Open University) Working Lives in Photography

Draft Programme available at:  http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/research-faculties-and-institutes/art-design-humanities/phrc/photographic-history-research-centre-phrc.aspx

Register On-line at http://store.dmu.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&catid=74&modid=1&prodid=0&deptid=0&prodvarid=180

£55  (Full price 2 days)

£30  (Full price day ticket)

£25 (Students, Unwaged and Retired rate, 2 days )

£15 (Students, Unwaged and Retired rate – day ticket) Note: evidence of concession may be required.

£38 Conference Dinner, including wine  (Case Restaurant, Leicester, June 24^th)

Noel Chanan’s latest hardcover, The Photographer of Penllergare - a life of John Dillwyn Llewelyn 1810 to 1882, is an in-depth, richly illustrated and forensically researched hardcover book. Llewelyn was married to a cousin of William Henry Fox Talbot, the British inventor of photography, and consequently became an inspired pioneer of photography from the 1850s. In addition to being an accomplished photographer, he was a highly productive polymath, benevolent landowner and a driving force in social and economic change around him in South Wales and London. Far from being a mere coffee table book, the scholarly endeavour employed to enrich the images and narrative, results in a rewardingly revealing history with oft times touching tales of sadness and joy.

The book has been published http://www.the-photographer-of-penllergare.co.uk

The Daguerreian Society will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in Bry-sur-Marne and Paris between 9-14 October 2013. Speakers include: Dr Dusan Stulik, Professor François Brunet, Dominique de Font-Réaulx, D.E.A., and Herman Maes, Daguerreobase Project.

The City of Bry, and its Mayor Jean-Pierre Spilbauer, have invited members of the Daguerreian Society (and interested friends) to witness the results of a six-year restoration project bringing Daguerre's last surviving Diorama painting back to life. The Diorama is a large-scale painting with illusionary effects that seem to magically transform the small church in Bry into a cathedral.

Other events include the first exhibition of photographs ever held in Daguerre's mansion in Bry. This exhibit features more than 70 American portrait daguerreotypes from the collection of Daguerreian Society member Wm. B. Becker, Director of the online American Museum of Photography. The exhibition in Daguerre's mansion continues at the Musée Gatien-Bonnet in the nearby city of Lagny-sur-Marne. Here, images from the daguerreotype period and later works through the year 1900 show the evolution of portrait photography in America.

All details are at: http://daguerre.org/symposia/symposium2013.php

The Isle of Man Photographic Society is celebrating its 75th anniversary with an exhibition at the House of Manannan in Peel from Saturday 18 May 2013 to Sunday 4 August 2013. 
Jointly curated by Manx National Heritage and the Isle of Man Photographic Society, the exhibition will feature works by the society’s members together with vintage cameras and photographic equipment. There will also be a mock darkroom and a studio set out as a Victorian drawing room to serve as a backdrop for visitors to take their own photographs.
The exhibition will be supported by a series of special events including professional photography workshops hosted by leading Isle of Man photographer Andrew Barton LBIPP LMPA. For full details on the exhibition and workshops visit www.iomps.com, via Andrew Barton on Facebook at Andrew-Barton-Photography or via www.manxnationalheritage.im.

Check out too the JM Nicholson "Recording his World with a Camera' in the Events section.

In 1862 Albert, Prince of Wales, toured the Middle East. At the time it was still predominantly controlled by the Ottoman Empire. As he travelled, his photographer Francis Bedford kept a detailed photographic record of the trip. In this series John McCarthy revisits the scenes of Bedford's photographs - Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Greece. He considers how the immediate physical, political and social landscape has evolved during the intervening 150 years.

Some of Bedford's photographs are of widely known locations - the Pyramids at Giza, the Mount of Olives, the temples at Baalbek, the Acropolis - others are of remote hilltops and apparently random buildings, scenes without any obvious significance. Both however hold fascinating and unexpected tales and insight.

The series will reflect on the rise and fall of empires - the Ottoman, British and French all play their part in these stories. They are now all gone, but the world's powers still seek to influence the politics of the region.

This radio series coincides with a major exhibition of Bedford's photographs by the Royal Collection, currently showing at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Presenter: John McCarthy, the programme also features Dr Sophie Gordon, curator of photographs from the Royal Collection. 

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s8vwf The programme will be available on the BBC iPlayer after transmission. 

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College seeks applications for the inaugural Linda Wyatt Gruber '66 Curatorial Fellowship in Photography. The Gruber Fellowship is a new and dynamic opportunity for emerging curators focused on the realm of photography, and offers an outstanding 2-year curatorial appoint to a recent Ph.D. in Art History and or an allied field with specialization in the history of photography. The successful appointee will mine an aspect of the Davis photography holdings to produce an exhibition at the Museum. 

The Gruber Fellowship will be awarded to a candidate with exceptional credentials and promise, and who produces an outstanding proposal for an exhibition rooted in the Davis collections.

Applicants must have received the Ph.D. with a focus on photography within 3 years prior to the application deadline. Important criteria for successful appointment are evidence of outstanding scholarship and expertise in the history of photography, including its materials and processes, from its mid-19th century invention to contemporary explorations; strong commitment to curatorial practice and museum work; and willingness to be a collegial member of the Davis Museum staff and the larger community at Wellesley College.

The Davis collections are accessible via the website at: https://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu. Applications accepted through June 15, 2013. Full details, including application, can be found here.

Cased images of Australian aborigines are few and far between so the discovery of six images, three daguerreotypes and three ambrotypes in the Mill Cottage Museum in Port Lincoln, South Australia is particularly exciting news.
https://open.abc.net.au/posts/rare-daguerreotypes-found-97xr2kf
http://www.portlincolntimes.com.au/story/1481746/great-great-grandfather-identified/?cs=1500

The earliest known aboriginal daguerreotypes were taken by Douglas Thomas Kilburn (eldest brother of the London photographer William Edward Kilburn) in Melbourne in 1847. Few South Australian daguerreotypes of any subject, let alone aboriginal people, have come to light. Only a handul of people are known to have practiced the form commercially in that State.

A reference database of daguerreotypists in Australia I maintain includes the following who were active in South Australia: Samuel Thomas Gill, George Barron Goodman. Professor Robert Hall, Robert Hastings Norman, George Augustus Frederick Hezeltine, Edward Schohl, Samuel Ogelsby, Norwood Potter, Thomas Luke, Kopsch and May, and the Duryea Brothers, Townsend and Sanford. Only one identified and one other possible daguerreotype by the Duryeas for instance, despite being prominent and prolific photographers who started in New York, are currently known to me. Who actually made these freshly announced images is yet to be determined.

The Yorkshire Post has interviewed Greg Hobson, curator of photographs, at the National Media Museum, Bardford about the collections housed there. The film also shows Brian Liddey, curator of collections access .

See: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/art/moments-in-time-precious-archive-puts-world-of-our-forefathers-back-into-focus-1-5624872

The National Portrait Gallery in London has launched a series of weekly blogs from members of staff. One of the first deals with the Bassano studio. See: http://www.npg.org.uk/blog/bassano-the-man-himself.php It is written by photographs cataloguer, Constantia Nicolaides.  

Image: Queen Alexandra by Alexander Bassano, 5 May 1881, NPG x137324