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UPDATE 28/10/2013: This event has been cancelled. 

On 5 December 2013 the Getty Conservation Institute is holding a one-day symposium Turning Over An Old Leaf: Thomas Wedgwood, Humphry Davy, and Their Early Experiments in Photography. 

The first published article on photography "An Account of a method of copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles, by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, ESQ. With Observations by H. Davy" was published in 1802 by Humphry Davy in the Journals of the Royal Institution.

In his article, Davy described his and Thomas Wedgwood's pioneering work experimenting with light-sensitive materials, creating photographic copies of plant leaves, and testing the feasibility of creating "views from nature" using a camera obscura. Generations of photography historians have searched for any material sample of Wedgwood and Davy's experiments, as these photographic images, if found and authenticated, would be nearly a quarter of a century older than Niepce's "First Photograph."

In April 2008, a photographic image known as The Leaf was placed for auction. The image attracted a great deal of interest from photography experts and enthusiasts when questions were raised about its origins. The Leaf was subsequently removed from auction for further research.

Turning Over An Old Leaf will present results of recently completed scientific analyses by GCI scientists of The Leaf and results from analyses of two botanical images from the Getty Museum's collection that once belonged to the same album as The Leaf, an album of photographic images assembled by British watercolorist Henry Bright.

Conservation scientists and conservators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present results from their analytical study of Shark Egg Case, an image from their collection that was also part of the album assembled by Bright.

These scientific results and findings will be discussed in light of current advances in historical research of the Henry Bright album and in light of a series of experimental scientific, photographic, and recreational studies of the photographic work of Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy as described in their 1802 article. In addition, demonstrations will be held to provide symposium participants with a deeper insight into photographic experiments from this important era of the prehistory of photography.

List of Scheduled Presenters

Geoffrey Batchen, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Roy Flukinger, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin

Michael Gray, Image Research Associates, United Kingdom

Art Kaplan, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Nora Kennedy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jill Quasha, Private Photography Dealer, New York

Grant Romer, Independent historian of photography, Rochester

Larry J. Schaaf, Independent historian of photogrpahy, Baltimore

Dusan Stulik, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles

Frances Terpak, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

For more information, contact oldleaf@getty.edu or see: https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/public_programs/turning_over.html

Titled Sharing Photography and Photographs, the event is a series of talks which will explore an alternative history of photography as a shared activity.

Roger Hargreaves will give a talk while Colin Harding will look at the work of groups such as the Photographic Exchange Club in the 1850s as well as later manifestations of print-circulating societies such as the Postal Photographic Club in the 1890s.

The talk is organised by the National Media Museum in conjunction with The Royal Photographic Society and will be held on 25th Oct. For more details on booking, times etc, click here.

Derek Birch takes over from Roy Robertson and is the sixty-third President since the Society's was formed in 1853.

"Reflecting The Society's interests across the art and science of photography Derek's background is from the science of traditional photography," says the Society. "For 33 years he worked for Kodak as a research scientist helping to develop products including colour films and papers. He retired in 2006."
Birch joined the Society in 1986 and has been active within its Imaging Science Group. He was Vice-President between 2011 and 2013 and has chaired the Science Committee.
"I am deeply honoured to have been elected president" comments Birch. "The Society has much to offer all photographers as well as supporting all aspects of imaging more widely. During my term as president I would like to build on the work of my predecessors and further enhance the Society's educational role through online learning and to expand the membership which will allow us to more fully realise our founding aim of promoting photography."

Birch will serve his term until 2015. You can read the full report here.

The first Anamorfose Cahier is a photo essay about the two World Wars who dominated Europe in the twentieth century. The Cahier is based on vintage photos from the Anamorfose photo collection.

The essay starts with photos of destroyed Ypres over photos of the upcoming nationalism in Germany with a private album of a German Officer towards the landing in Normandy with vintage photos taken by Capt. Herman Wall to the liberation of the camps.Some of this photos are published for the first time.

Some of these images may shock you.

I am searching for information on these 2 photos of the Wedgwood family. One portrait of "Fanny Wedgwood, (Mrs. Francis) and one portrait of three children listed as "Aunt Rose, Aunt Mab, and Grandaddy Wedgwood (Lawrence).

They are both about 8 x 10" albumen prints, mounted behind arch-topped boards. Fanny heavily painted(oil?), and the children, well sadly it looks as if they were painted at one time and someone has tried to remove the paint.

Would anyone be able to tell me if these indeed are Wedgwood family members descended from Josiah Wedgwood? Are they related to Emma Wedgwood? Is the boy Lawrence the one who eventually took over the pottery factory?

Thanks in advance for any information!

David 

Sotheby’s has announced the discovery of a previously unknown album of photographs by the foremost female pioneer of nineteenth century portrait photography, Julia Margaret Cameron.

The album - known as The Valentine Prinsep Album -  of 32 large scale portrait photographs - containing images of leading Victorian celebrities and two unrecorded photographs - represents a major addition to Cameron’s oeuvre. Estimated at £250,000-350,000, it will be offered at Sotheby’s auction of English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations in London on 10 December 2013.

The sale will mark the first time in over thirty years that any album compiled by Julia Margaret Cameron containing her own photographs has appeared at auction. The "Signor 1857" Album, compiled by Cameron, but containing images taken by various other photographers, was sold for £121,250 at Sotheby’s London on 12 December 2012. It is currently the subject of an export licence deferral pending an attempt to secure it for a British institution. 

Specially compiled by Julia Margaret Cameron for her godson and “illustrious” nephew the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Valentine Cameron Prinsep, on his 31st birthday in 1869, this highly-important album was completely unknown until it was discovered earlier this year.

It is one of only eleven known albums compiled by Cameron with her own photographs, and represents hours of meticulous work. The album contains carefully chosen portraits of her friends and family including leading figures in Victorian society such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Sir John Herschel and her goddaughter Julia Jackson (the mother of Virginia Woolf). While several of the images are known in only a handful of other prints, two others are previously unrecorded and possibly unique. The two unseen pictures both depict Mary Hillier, the daughter of a local shoemaker and Cameron’s personal maid.

Exhibition Dates
The first public exhibition of the album will be in Sotheby’s New York from 28 September through to the 2 October, to coincide with Sotheby’s New York Photographs auction and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition dedicated to Julia Margaret Cameron (19 August 2013 – 5 January 2014) . The album will also be exhibited in Sotheby’s Paris in mid-November.

Images: 

Top: Mary Hillier (1867). The daughter of a local shoemaker and Cameron’s personal maid. Middle:Sir John Herschel (1867).Secretary of the Royal Society and first president of the Royal Astronomical Society before the age of 40. Lower:  The dedication: A birthday gift to my godson & illustrious nephew!!! From his old auntie Julia Margaret Cameron 14th Feb. 1869

The press release can be found here: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/BID/2704525427x0x693461/aad7...

£75,900 to be precise - which was more than double its estimate!

It was the most expensive book to be sold by Keys, the Norfolk auctioneers. The book in question was 'Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads' which contained 40 platinum prints of photographs taken by Cuban-born, Peter Henry Emerson. Just 25 copies of a deluxe version of the book were printed in 1886 with a further 175 copies of a standard edition, including the one sold yesterday. Many have since been broken up and the photograph pages sold separately.

Competition in the sales room yesterday afternoon had been fierce, with five live phone bidders, two private bidders in the room, and a Canadian bidding live on the internet. It was finally snapped up by someone in the London book trade who did not show their interest until the bidding had reached about £62,000, according to Andrew Bullock head of auctioneer Keys’ book department. The previous highest price paid for a copy was $70,000 in America a few years ago, then equivalent to about £52,000. The vendor brought in the book, which had belonged to her father, unaware of its value.

You can read the full report here.

Photomonitor publishes a thoughtful review of Media Space's opening show from Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr. Hodgson introduces his exhibition review with some considered thoughts on Media Space. Commenting on the opening '[The Science Museum] has at last opened its exhibition space specifically devoted to showing the priceless and largely inaccessible collections which have spent so long doing so little in Bradford at the National Media Museum, the Science Museum’s daughter house there'.  He also poses a question: 'The great national collections of photography now have a jewel box in which to be seen, and first-rate research, touring shows, publications and so on should naturally follow.  Whether they will do so or not is the sixty-four thousand dollar question.'

Read the full review here: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2013/09/tr-j-in-context/

Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs will present an exhibition of more than 40 early photographs by French photographer Charles Nègre (1820-1880) from 17th September through 1st November, 2013. Nègre is primarily known for his landscapes and architectural photographs of Paris and the South of France made in the 1850s. The exhibition will be the first one-man show of Nègre's photographs in the United States. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.Charles Nègre began taking photographs in 1844, just five years after the discovery of photography. Attracted to the medium as a way to collect visual images for his painting, Nègre quickly mastered photography, using a process modified by fellow student Gustave Le Gray.

Among the highlights in the exhibition is Une rue à Grasse, 1852, a waxed salt print of a street in Nègre's hometown, which, with its dynamic abstract composition anticipates 20th-century art photography.  Jacob W. Lewis, an historian of 19th-century art and photography, notes in the catalogue, "This view of Grasse and its sun-soaked buildings and oil presses that line up on a steep zigzag road, interlocking like puzzle pieces, is no mere indulgence in the picturesque. Rather, it represents a test for photography as a means to capture the infinite variety of rough-hewn Provence into a fully considered tableau of pleasing effects, where no element is without its formal significance." Another print is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

You can read more about this exhibition here and here.

Photo: "The port at Toulon," salt print from glass negative, ca. 1853.

For those of you who missed the Open Day earlier this month, no fear as you can watch a clip of it on the link at the bottom.

W. W. Winter is a long established photography business in the UK, operating today from its purpose-built studio premises in Midland Road, Derby, which the firm moved into in 1867. The building and contents offer an historical insight into the progression of photography; from total dependency on daylight, the move to early electric lighting, colour film and processing, to present day in which digital photography dominates.

Company MD, Hubert W. King, LBIPP, will be available to reminisce about his career at Winter's beginning in the 1940s and continuing actively in the studio today! Also on site will be artist Debbie Cooper, who is currently working on a project with Winter's extensive archive of glass negatives. Winter's continues to be run as a studio for contemporary portrait photography, and is also renowned for specialist copy and restoration of old photographic images. Available on the day will be; a tour of the premises including the studio and daylight retouching rooms, access to unseen archives (including glass plate negatives, photography equipment and other historical family business treasures), display of images from The Winter Collection, informal talk from owner Hubert King (recipient of long service award from the BIPP). W. W. Winter is a treasure trove of delights for the photographic enthusiast. 

You can catch the ITV news clip on this link here.

The university has enlisted the Parisian auction house Ader Nordman to catalogue the 200 lots, which are scheduled to go to sale at Hotel Drouot on 17 November, coinciding with the last day of the fair Paris Photo. The best lots from the sale are scheduled to go on display from 5 to 8 November at the university’s campus on rue d’Assas, Paris. 
The collection has a number of rare lots including a series of 13 photographs of the Holy Shroud of Turin from different angles, estimated at €15,000-€20,000 for the set, and a series of unique life-size gelatin silver prints of the shroud in its entirety, estimated at €8,000-€10,000 for the set, both created by the Italian photographer Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. 

The rest of the story can be found here.

Photo: Among the works being sold is an out-of-print album of 45 photographs of Central America’s ancient ruins taken by the French traveller and archaeologist Désiré Charnay between 1857 and 1860, estimated at €200,000-€300,000.

Magnum Photos collection, which contains nearly 200,000 press prints of images taken by world-renowned Magnum photographers, has been donated to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The gift was made by Michael and Susan Dell, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman and John and Amy Phelan.

The donation of the Magnum Photos collection is expected to be the single-largest gift to the Ransom Center ever. The collection, more than 1,300 boxes of photographic materials, has been integrated into the university's curriculum, accessed by students and scholars and promoted through a variety of lectures, seminars and fellowships. You can read the official press release here.

The Museum of Fine Art, Houston's world-renowned photography department will have a new curator by the end of the year. Malcolm Daniel is the long-standing and highly-respected curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and will move to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where he will replace Anne Tucker who is retiring. Daniel is an expert in nineteenth-century photography and has been at the Met for 23 years

Tucker, named America's best curator by Time Magazine in 2001, will not retire until June 2015, but she will cede her leadership duties to Daniel on 9 December. The two will work together for six months. Daniel, 56, commented: "One of the things that makes the job so appealing to me is that Anne has already built this amazing collection and community," he said.

Tucker, the museum's founding curator of photography, expanded the collection from 141 works in 1976 to about 29,000 works by 4,000 artists today. She's also staged more than forty exhibitions over the years, including landmark shows such as 1989's Czech Modernism: 1900–1945, 2003's The History of Japanese Photography and the currently touring  War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath.

See: http://www.chron.com/entertainment/arts-theater/article/Museum-of-Fine-Arts-Houston-announces-new-4827932.

Image: Anne Tucker and Malcolm Daniel / Cody Duty-MFA

Two new publications on Stefan Lorant are published on 1 October in hardback editions. Paperback editions will follow early in 2014. 

• Stefan Lorant: Never a Dull Moment  /  Michael Hallett
  The biography, Stefan Lorant: Godfather of Photojournalism (Scarecrow Press, 2006. Hardback, 240pp. ISBN 0-8108-5682-4) was always seen as the first of three books. It is only now, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the publication of Picture Post that Never a Dull Moment and A Hungarian in England will reach a public.
• Stefan Lorant: A Hungarian in England  /  Michael Hallett
  A Hungarian in England is the story of Stefan Lorant's life in England from 1934 to 1940, where he created and edited Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post. This unique working collaboration between Lorant and the author was originally expected to provide as a small 64-page publication. That never happened in Lorant's lifetime. Only now, this 2013 edition reinstates original and unpublished material, adding a postscript on the aftermath and implications of Lorant’s time in England that was played out between 1940 and 1982.

Stefan Lorant’s life spanned the twentieth century and he is the acknowledged ‘godfather of photojournalism’. He was concerned with language, both verbal and visual, and was one of the greatest storytellers of his time, having worked as filmmaker, journalist, a literary and picture editor, and recently as an author and biographer.

He edited the Münchner Illustrierte Presse in Germany, Pesti Napló magazine in Hungary, and created and edited Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post in England, publishing work of the early photojournalists.  He was acquainted with political figures of the century including Hitler, Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy, and knew Marlene Deitrich, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe amongst others.

Anybody who met Stefan Lorant, even just in passing, could not remain ambivalent. Lorant was a chameleon, maverick and an inspiration. He reflected: ‘I wanted to have a life where I left a tiny little scratch on the world.’ Through the legacy of his work we have all been touched by this combative, contradictory, complex and charismatic man.  

My edited diaries, made between 1991 and 1999 are the record of our seven-year conversation. There was never a dull moment...

Stefan Lorant: Never a Dull Moment is published in October 2013 by Henwick Hill Press and will be available as a 'library edition'. (Henwick Hill Press, 2013. Hardback, 346pp. ISBN 978-0-9561570-2-7). 

Stefan Lorant: A Hungarian in England will be published in October 2013 by Henwick Hill Press and available as a 'library edition'. (Henwick Hill Press, 2013. Hardback, pp166.)

Library editions are only available directly from the author who may be contacted at mike@michaelhallett.com. Prices on request. See: www.mikehallett.com 

This event consists of a symposium, workshop, and tours, 21-24 October 2014, in Washington, DC. Organised by the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution this event will look at the technical and aesthetic history of these two processes, the chemistry and connoisseurship. More information and details of the programme will be published later.

UPDATE: The programme has now been published. http://www.conservation-us.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=1703

See: http://www.conservation-us.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=499

The Getty Conservation Institute has started to release an important new resource for photographic historians and conservators. The Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes is intended for practicing photograph conservators, curators, art historians, archivists, library professionals, and anyone responsible for the care of photograph collections. Its purpose is to aid in the formulation of analytical questions related to a particular photograph and to assist scientists unfamiliar with analysis of photographs when interpreting analytical data. The Atlas contains interpretation guides with identification of overlaps of spectral peaks and warnings of potential misidentification or misinterpretation of analytical results.

The introduction is available here to download: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/atlas_intro.pdf

Read more here: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/atlas.html

There is an article about the project an d an interview with Dusan Stulik here: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/new-getty-atlas-to-preserve-data-on-nondigital-photography/?smid=tw-share&_r=1 which quotes Grant Romer: “In essence this can start to rewrite the history of photography. It’s already provoked a sort of crisis in the understanding of what we think we know about some photographs.”

Following yesterday's Media Space press call there has been plenty of coverage of the space at London's Science Museum.  Chris Derwent of the Art Fund Review provides a historical survey of the demand for a photography space; the BBC, and Sean O'Hagan in the Guardian cover the Tony Ray-Jones/Martin Parr show, while Wallpaper reports on Universal Everything's digital installation.

There's little wider analysis of the likely impact of the new exhibition space and what the possible repercussions might be for the National Media Museum but the Ray-Jones/Parr show and the space generally gets a thumbs up.  

Media Space opens to the public today (Saturday).

At a special gathering 1000 guests attended the long-awaited opening of Media Space, previously the NMeM's London presence, at London's Science Museum. The new space is a joint venture between the Science Museum and National Media Museum. At the opening ceremony Michael G Wilson OBE alluded to the tortuous history that had culminated in last night's opening. He described the gallery development, first mooted 25 years ago and which had seen off six museum directors and the making of four Bond films as difficult. Wilson was presented with a Science Museum Fellowship in recognition of his determination in ensuring the project was realised. The current Science Museum Director Ian Blatchford deserves praise for committing to the project.  

The opening exhibition Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr was stunning with Ray-Jones' work, particularly, retaining a sense of humour and incisiveness over the forty years since it was first made. Parr was showing rarely seen work from the mid-1970s that was clearly influenced by Ray-Jones.  The show moves to Bradford in March 2014.  

The gallery space is large, simple and plain. As such it offers the potential to become a must-go-to place when exhibitions, based on the National Media Museum's unrivalled collections, are shown. Ray-Jones and Parr are just the start future. Future shows dealing with science and colour will be more challenging and will do more to demonstrate the breadth of Bradford's holdings. The adjacent cafe area has the potential to become as popular as that of the Photographers' Gallery as a place for those working in, or just interested in, photography to meet. The fact that Media Space has a (modest) admission charge may temper that somewhat.

In the Virgin Media Studio space Universal Everything & You, a new specially-commissioned digital installation of two artworks by art and design collective Universal Everything, was stunning. 

See: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/media_space.aspx

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/exhibitions/only_in_england.aspx