Blogs

Edinburgh and Boston-based publisher MuseumsEtc has launched new editions of two classic books on photography, newly-designed and typeset to be accessible for a contemporary audience. Both highly readable, they provide fresh and fascinating insights into the complex photographic practices - and society - of the Victorian period. A History and Handbook of Photography was first published in 1876, and The Photographic Studios of Europe in1882.

John Thomson, editor of A History and Handbook of Photography, is renowned for his photobook Street Life in London, “a pioneering work of social documentation [and] one of the most significant photobooks in the medium’s history” (The Photobook: A History, Parr & Badger, Phaidon 2004). In a career which also included a series of outstanding photographic portfolios - shot in challenging conditions - documenting life, landscape and architecture in the Far East, followed by a successful studio portraiture business in London, Thomson also took time to translate from the French and edit this edition from the original of Gaston Tissandier.

The Photographic Studios of Europe by H Baden Pritchard (“a distinguished name in photography” - Mark Haworth-Booth) is the only detailed account available of working practices and conditions in the studios of the leading photographers of the Victorian period. Revealing, surprising, perceptive and authoritative, this first-hand report is based on seeing scores of photographers and their workshops in action. The result is fascinating and valuable both as a social historical record and as a classic of photographic literature.

Read more here: http://museumsetc.com/products/studios and http://museumsetc.com/products/thomson

London auction house Sotheby's is to put on sale a collection of photos on Beijing taken by Italian-British photographer Felice Beato in 1860, which includes the first photographic panorama of Peking showing the interior of the city, under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Sotheby's believe that the photos could fetch between £100,000 to £200,000, adding that the auction house has received phone calls from potential buyers, including private collectors in China.

You can find full details of this lot (185) which goes under the hammer on 14th May here. 

Born one hundred and fifty years apart the achievements of the struggling landowner and inventor Nicéphore Niépce and the groundbreaking photo historian Helmut Gernsheim were inextricably linked when Gernsheim rediscovered Niépce’s long-lost first photograph in a trunk. Graham Harrison looks at the exploits of the photographer turned historian and of the brilliant, but ill-fated, Frenchman who Gernsheim proved was the true inventor of photography.

Making History: The Gernsheims and Nicéphore Niépce on Photo Histories.

With thanks to Michael Pritchard who provided information concerning Helmut Gernsheim’s membership of the Royal Photographic Society and to Sir Roy Strong who kindly answered questions about the Gernsheim Collection in Oxford in March 2013.

On Saturday 27 April 2013 a new project was started on Luminous-Lint to consolidate the content collected over the last ten years. Building the website has been complex and it is the only online freely available resource that brings together photographs, ephemera and related materials on the History of Photography based on thousands of public and private collections. If there is another one let me know!

Lots of you have helped in all sorts of ways (thanks) but essentially Luminous-Lint is only me!

The evolution of Luminous-Lint has taken time to mature and there are now 50,428 images on the website. These are organised into hundreds of online exhibitions and many thousands of visual indexes that connect images to others in obvious and not so obvious ways. This wealth of content is supported by increasingly thorough reading lists.

I’m now ready for the next step.

If you haven’t been to Luminous-Lint in a while it now has 1,108 Themes which is pretty amazing.With this structure the next step is to bring together the photographs, original sources and texts for each theme.

The themes will have visual examples traced back to individual collectors or institutions along with the texts and footnotes that link them together. Gradually each theme will become an ever-improving history and we will have many hundreds of them making a rich visual resource for all of us.

Take a look at a few pages to get a sense of what is already available – how about Art, Daguerreotypes, Camera Work or USSR in Construction as examples. These are only the starting points and there are vast amounts of supporting material.

So how do we support this endeavour?

Kickstarter is a website for making pledges to creative projects. The $50,000 Kickstarter Project I announced is to work on the Themes in order to bring these histories together – it won’t be perfect but it will provide a framework for us to add to as time goes on.

Here is the KIckstarter project - and you can see a video of me explaining the next step (scary thought). To date this fundraising effort has raised $3,521 in about four days which is gratefully received. Fund raising is all or nothing and it ends on 27 May 2013.

We tend to accept free resources and assume they will always be around but they require nurturing to survive. As a community passionate about Photohistory we will need to find institutions or philanthropists who are prepared to support large scale projects on the History of Photography and place them on a secure footing.

Many of you have provided content, advice, texts and scans for which I’m grateful. In the background I’ve financed it over the last ten years and done the heavy lifting. I’d be grateful if those of you with connections and influence discuss the best means of supporting Luminous-Lint. There is a vast amount of content and knowledge that is available nowhere else.

I’m prepared, with your support, to do the work to make Luminous-Lint all that it can be to assist the community. I’d be grateful if you would show you support by Making a Pledge and by starting a dialogue on how Luminous-Lint can be supported long term.

All the best and thanks for all your help over the years,

Alan Griffiths - alan@luminous-lint.com

A reception was held at Daunt Books, Marylebone High Street, London, last night for Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport's book Capturing the Light. The well-researched and written book tells the story of Daguerre and Talbot as they developed and launched their distinctive photographic processes in 1839. Published by Pan Macmillan the book is eminently readable and comes highly recommended. 

Images: right: Roger Watson holds a copy of his book; below: Helen Rappaport and Roger Watson. © Michael Pritchard 

See: 

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/capturing-the-light-in-2013

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/publication-capturing-the-light-fiction

Raja Deen Dayal (1844 – 1905) was the first Indian photographer to earn international renown. Noted for remarkable beauty, aesthetic nuance and technical skill, Deen Dayal's photographs capture the architectural heritage of India, its landscape and people, and provide a lens through which we can explore a dynamic time in India's history and the role Deen Dayal had in fashioning a new identity for an emerging nation.

Born in Sardhana, near Delhi, he trained as a surveyor in the mid-1860s and took up photography in the mid-1870s. Over the course of his remarkable career, he ran three successful studios, had over fifty staff, and produced more than 30,000 images. In 1894, he was appointed court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the wealthiest men in the world at the time.

The haunting beauty of his images reflect the extraordinary talent of Deen Dayal as a master of the photographic process, while his ability to make the images speak to the viewer played a critical role in how India's past came to be visualized. His photographs remain some of the most iconic views of India today.

This exhibition features over 100 works from three major collections, including the ROM's collection of photograph albums produced by his studio in the latter decades of the 19th century. It also features one of the cameras used by the Dayal Studio in the last decade of the 19th century.

The exhibition is presented in association with The Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi, and coincides with a major new publication "Raja Deen Dayal: Artist-Photographer in 19th-century India."

The exhibition is held at the Royal Ontario Museum until 12th Jan 2014, details of which can be found here.

This new website hosts the diaries of Lady Charlotte Bridgeman (1827-1858) covering the period of 1847 until 1857.  The diaries containing many references to early photography including visits from Mr Cheney, possibly a member of the Photographic Society in the mid/late 1850s and mentioned in Roger Taylor's Impressed by Light.

Lady Charlotte wrote almost daily in her journals and often doing so shortly before going to bed.Charlotte Anne Bridgeman was born on November 11th 1827, being the 4th child of George Augustus Frederick Henry Bridgeman (1789-1865), 2nd Earl of Bradford and of Georgina Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir Thomas Moncreiffe, 5th Bt. Charlotte had two older brothers, Orlando and George, and two older sisters, Georgiana Elizabeth and Lucy. Sadly Georgiana Elizabeth died in 1843 in Brighton, aged 18. After Charlotte her parents had another daugther, Mary, and another son, John.

See: http://ladycharlottesdiaries.co.uk

In 2003 the Nederlands Fotomuseum became the most recent addition to this museum dense country. In this talk, Professor Frits Gierstberg, Head of Exhibitions at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, will talk about the challenges that have faced the Museum since its inception, including issues relating to project-based collecting and the development of new interfaces in the museum environment.

He will also speak about his contributions to two recent publications: the critical history of photography in the Netherlands, ‘Dutch Eyes’ (2007) and ‘The Dutch Photobook’ (2012). This lecture forms part of a series accompanying a project by Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales to work on its rich and diverse historic photographic collections – a project made possible through a major gift from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

In partnership with the eCPR, at University of Wales Newport, the lecture series reflects the exciting work that the Museum is undertaking from 2012 to 2015.

For further partner details visit: www.newport.ac.uk/research/ResearchGroups/ecpr/Pages/eCPR.aspx and www.museumwales.ac.uk

European Centre for Photographic Research
University of South Wales & National Museum Wales
Photography Lecture Series

2 May 2013 at 5.45pm, doors open at 5.15pm - Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum Wales

The event is FREE but booking is essential as places are limited. To reserve your place, please email: Historic.Photography@museumwales.ac.uk with your name and contact telephone number.

“Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here”. The famously succinct wartime interpretation of the Americans in Britain in World War II might give some insight into the culture clash that ensued when thousands of American servicemen arrived in wartime austerity Britain. 

But the reality was, of course, much more complex. Two highly contrasting worlds met with mixed results, despite the fact that both US and British authorities made great strides to maintain good relations between American servicemen and women and their hosts. 

The Yanks arrived at Duxford in rural Cambridgeshire in late 1942, and the 78th Fighter Group made their first combat mission from RAF Duxford on April 13 1943.  Commemorating the 70th anniversary of this first sortie of thousands, the museum has selected a series of photos from its Roger Freeman collection of more than 15,000 images of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces in Great Britain during the Second World War. The collection, which has recently been acquired by IWM, was compiled by the son of an Essex farmer who lived close to Boxted airfield.

Entranced by the Americans as a young teenager, Freeman (1928-2005) amassed the photographs during a life-long interest during which he publish several highly-respected books on the subject. “As an aeroplane-mad youth, I was soon to relish the American presence in the East Anglian sky...” he later remembered. “They were to leave a considerable impression on those who knew them, which did not fade easily when they departed.”

The Duxford exhibition offers a tantalising glimpse into this world. It also reveals the diversity of the roles undertaken by the men of the United States Army Air Forces and the women of the Women’s Army Corps and the Red Cross. 

Among the black and white images are a journalist, public relations officer, barber, weather officer, adjutant, armourer, chaplain, parachute packer, intelligence officer, runway control officer, medical corpsman, ground crew and members of the air crew - all going about their daily activities.

The individual stories of these men and women accompany the images, illustrating their wartime experiences in Great Britain and how their own personal war ended.
 

Somewhere in England: Portraits of the Americans in Britain 1942 to 1945, Imperial War Museum, Duxford, April 14 - December 31 2013

Open 10am-6pm (4pm from October 27). Admission £12.25-£17.50 (free for under-16s). Book online.

The BBC website has put up a slideshow of rare 19th century images of India by the legendary Indian photographer, Raja Deen Dayel (1844 - 1905) which you can view on this link here.

Talk, followed by wine reception and private view of the exhibition of photographs -  Cairo to Constantinople - taken by Francis Bedford in 1862 during a tour of the Middle East with the Prince of Wales.

The Museum’s Photographic Studio creates and supplies images for a wide range of internal and external clients. The Studio is part of the Commercial Division consisting of income-generating departments including Picture Library, Retail, Admissions, Events and Marketing.

Carry out scanning, post-production, printing and photography for the Studio. You will be part of a photographic team providing a comprehensive service within the Museum. Reporting to: Deputy Head of Photography.

Key responsibilities:
•Digitise archival material including scanning and retouching.
•Deliver images to Museum’s high photographic standards and agreed specifications.
•Save image files to the server with accurate metadata to agreed Studio guidelines.
•Regularly scan negatives and ship plans held off-site at Brass Foundry archive, Woolwich.
•Produce prints to client specification and to deadline.
•Handle and manage imaging equipment including scanners, printers and RIP. Monitor stock of consumables such as ink and paper.
•Support Studio and museum colleagues with other tasks, including occasional photographic assignments.

To apply please email a CV and covering letter to recruitment@rmg.co.uk or post to Human Resources, National Maritime Museum, Park Row, Greenwich, London, SE10 9NF.

The Other Art Fair is London’s leading ‘artist-led’ fair and this year’s contributing artists have been handpicked by Turner Prize nominee Yinka Shonibare (as the head of this year’s selection committee) ensuring that 100 of the best unrepresented artists from across the globe will be at the fair.

Celebrating the best fifteen unrepresented photographers from the UK and beyond, The Other Art Fair’s PHOTO 15 section suits visitors particularly interested in the genre and highlights the importance of photography as a medium within the fair.

Photographers include:

Megan Revel - A largely self-taught photographer, Revel’s photography explores the hidden beauty within London and beyond. Experimenting with many photographs of the same scene, each image is exposed at a different level and then collated.

Jaykoe - The foundation of Jaykoe's practice is drawing and tracing movements in a city space. The work stems from a fascination with the centres we construct, the forms they take and what they reveal about us, at a time when more than half of the world's population live in cities, a proportion that is expected to rise to three quarters by 2050

Urbantag – Acting as a pho­tog­ra­pher and an icon­o­clast, Urbantag creates urban tales that are full of urgency and immediate impact. In particular, the focus is on subjects that are con­tra­dic­tory and dis­torted. Enclosing photographs in a rect­angle, a fleeting moment is frozen in an instant.

Cyrus Mahboubisn – Inspired by his daily journeys, chance encounters and the natural world, Mahboubisn’s photography aims to record significant memories. Preferring analogue film to digital photography due to its tangible nature, Mahboubisn often uses polaroid as his medium of choice because he sees it as the immediate manifestation of a memory. Once shot, the instant polaroid print is a physical object that becomes part of the experience.

Seungmi Lee - Seungmi Lee is a South Korean artist currently living in London. Her works focus on the postures and gestures of human behaviour and the hilarious characters that spring out of this process of thought.  More generally, her works consider the delicate and ever evolving artistic world, which is in constant evolution, as well as her own self-examination.

See: http://www.theotherartfair.com/

The Other Art Fair
Thursday, 25^th–Sunday 28th April, 2013
Ambika P3 gallery, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road , London , NW1 5LS

This May, a new and exciting international photography art fair will take place for the first time in London. The Photo Art Fair is a four-day exhibition that will showcase the work of 50 established and up-and-coming photographers from around the world.

Curated in London, the international panel of experts includes Susie Babchick (Photography consultant and trustee of the Corinne Day Estate), Gert Elfering (Internationally renowned collector and gallery-owner), Simon Bainbridge (Editor of the British Journal of Photography), Andrew Page (CEO of Positive View Foundation) and Steve Macleod (International photography curator and consultant).

Photo Art Fair’s central manifesto of ‘intelligent collecting’ will connect photographers with established and potential collectors. The project has been an open call to exceptional collectible photographic art, spanning decades, territories and disciplines. 

Hundreds of photographic artworks will be available at the exhibition with an online gallery to cater to international buyers and enthusiasts who are unable to make it to the show. In addition to the new and established talents on display, Gert Elfering will unveil his personal collection of previously unseen works of Will McBride, which will include reportage and portrait images.

The event will also feature panel discussions, talks, Q & A’s and workshops from some of the most established and talented practitioners in their field. Panel discussions will focus on some of the current debates surrounding contemporary photography. Workshops on how to collect intelligently will be chaired by the selection committee and tastemakers in the photography world.

Meanwhile, the schedule will include talks by photographers who will reveal the stories and inspiration behind their work. Susie Babchick commented: ‘Photo Art Fair Talks is an exciting chance to listen to, debate with and learn from some of the most interesting photographers creating today. We are thrilled to be able to welcome such a fascinating cross-section of speakers to the fair this May.’

Photo Art Fair will allow visitors the unique opportunity to purchase affordable and collectable photographs direct from undiscovered and well-known artists. Visitors will be able to see and buy pieces from established names alongside the up-and-comers. Prices range from between £250 and £10,000 and visitors will be able to buy works from recognisable names in the photography world as well as those fresh on the art radar, such as Jane Hilton, Joey L and Marlene Marino.

Opening Times and Dates:  2-6 May 2013; Thursday 2^nd Collector’s Preview;  Friday 3rd, Saturday 4^th 12pm-7pm; Sunday 5th, Monday 6^th 12pm-6pm

Address: Victoria House,  London WC1B

Tickets: Advance Tickets available from SEE Tickets Adults: £11 Students: £8. Tickets at the door: £15, Tel:  +44 (0) 871 231 0847.

Website: www.photoartfair.co.uk

The photograph is the new work of art – and a Chelsea gallery has plans to make great pics available at affordable prices in a special two-day event at the end of this month.

The most expensive snap ever cost a New York buyer a cool £2.8millon two years ago. But thanks to Splinter, a concept from the Michael Hoppen Gallery in Jubilee Place, the event will offer a wide range of 19th, 20th and 21st century photography with many pieces priced at a few hundred pounds and all under £1,000, it’s the perfect environment for new and experienced collectors to browse through hundreds of photographs to add or start a collection, or simply find the perfect present.

MACK, publishers of some of the most respected contemporary photography books today will also take part as will the Royal College of Art students.

info@michaelhoppengallery.com | +44 (0)20 7352 3649 | www.michaelhoppengallery.com

Saturday 27th April (10am – 5pm) and Sunday 28th April (11am – 5pm) 2013.

At: 3 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TD

Entry Fee: £2

Participating Dealers:

Jenny Allsworth, Daniella Dangoor, Brad Feuerhelm, Sean Sexton, Pierre Spake, MACK & RCA

Image:  Inselele, from the series The Afronauts, 2012, Cristina de Middel - Exhibited by Brad Feuerhelm

Today, 21 April, would have been photographer Norman Parkinson's birthday. He is commemorated with a google doodle. See more about Parks by clicking here

2013 marks the centenary of the birth of Norman Parkinson, one of the greats of British photography with an incomparably glamorous career which spanned seven decades. To celebrate the occasion, the Norman Parkinson Archive has granted Arena access to its entire collection of over 350,000 negatives. Arena presents an amusing and visually stunning profile of this uniquely talented man with original contributions from his colleagues and admirers including Jerry Hall, Iman, Grace Coddington (American Vogue), Celia Hammond, Nena Thurman and Carmen dell’ Orefici – the world’s oldest working supermodel. The Arena film is broadcast on BBC2 on Sunday, 21 April 2013 (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s40mv) 

A man of great charisma and a true English eccentric, Arena examines Park’s larger-than-life persona, and considers how his well-rehearsed eccentricities were deployed to reassure the uneasy sitter and disarm the experienced model. Once described as an ‘elegant giraffe’, Parkinson, who was 6’5”, sported a twirling moustache, liked to dress in kaftans, loud beach shirts, heavy gold jewellery and a Kashmiri bridal cap.

He grew up in a semi-detached house in Putney, South London, and failed to distinguish himself at Westminster School. After an apprenticeship with a declining firm of staid court photographers in Bond Street, he set up his own London studio at the age of just twenty-one. One of a new generation of heterosexual photographers, he was among the first to 'get girls to run and jump and let the air through their knees' and to photograph them on buses and in pubs rather than the genteel confines of the studio. Parkinson concentrated on taking pictures of beautiful women. 'Being photographed is a whole section of a woman’s identity' he claimed, and felt they should always be flattered by the camera.

Filmed in New York and London, the Arena documentary presents an abundance of glamorous images and explores the life and times of ‘Parks’, heir to Cecil Beaton and precursor of David Bailey, whose singular ability to tune into the vibe of the times meant he outlasted all his peers and never went out of fashion. Parkinson became the Royal Family’s favourite photographer and brought a new informality to their portraits. The documentary includes BBC archive material and interviews with Parks dating back to 1965.

In his later years, (describing himself 'I look like a decaying colonel'), he further distinguished himself with his Mr Porkinson’s sausages, which he produced on the pig farm at his Tobago dream home and would sometimes smuggle back to England wrapped in pairs of socks. In 1990, he collapsed on a location shoot for luxury magazine Town & Country and died a few days later, aged 76.                                                                                                                   

In addition The Norman Parkinson Archive is working exclusively with Bath in Fashion 2013 to stage a unique centenary exhibition (13 April-12 May) which will celebrate one of Britain’s most influential and idiosyncratic fashion photographers. The free exhibition has been curated by high profile fashion designer, Roland Mouret.  See: http://tinyurl.com/brn2k4o. 

Image: © The Norman Parkinson Archive 

The head of Bradford's National Media Museum, Jo Quinton-Tulloch, responds to a series of questions from The Guardian newspaper. Read the piece here. 

A project using Google hopes to map worldwide photographic preservation projects in order to strengthen photographic preservation efforts across the world. A Google Map of World Wide Photographic Preservation Projects can be found by clicking here. This Google map is designed to record our progress in working collaboratively and across boarders to preserve the world's photographic heritage.  As a tool, this map is designed to inspire and facilitate future international collaborations in education and training, collection assessments, conservation treatment, research, digitization and much more. More information can be found here.

This map was first presented by Debra Hess Norris at the 2013 joint Winter Meeting of the American Institute for Conservation Photographic Materials Group (AIC-PMG) and the International Council of Museums Conservation Committee Photographic Materials Working Group (ICOM-CC PMWG) in Wellington, New Zealand.

Map Pin Keys for Types of Projects: Collaborative projects are listed by city and country in the left column of the map.  By clicking on one of the projects, the viewer is brought to that location on the map and more detail about the project is revealed.

How to add content. We encourage you to add your collaborative projects to this map. Anyprojects connecting two or more countries are welcome to be represented.  Please organize your project information to mimic the example format along with your project's web-link if available, and email this information to Debra Hess Norris (e: dhnorris@artsci.udel.edu) or Megan Kirschenbaum (e: meganjane123@gmail.com) Example Format:

    1.  Location: City/Country

    2.  Project Title:

    3.  Type of Project: (preventive care or education and training

        or treatment and documentation or research and analysis)

    4.  Engagement Dates:

    5.  Collaborator: (agencies, institutions, etc.)

    6.  Funders: (if relevant)

    7.  Project's Primary Goal: (one sentence or so only)

Future Goals. We hope that this map will serve as a resource as we work together to strengthen photographic preservation efforts across all continents and to imagine new initiatives aimed at building capacity and knowledge in underserved regions of the world.