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Photography is an art form of modern times, but it also arises from artistic traditions that long predate its advent. The new National Gallery exhibition, Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, is a three-way project which argues that historical art was an engine for early photographic invention, and that both those precedents inspire today’s photography.

This exhibition takes a different tack to surveys of well-known relationships between fine art and photography. This is not a review of photography’s many ruptures with the past, nor does it inventory the coincidences with contemporaneous art, whether Pre-Raphaelite, impressionist, or surrealist. Photography’s debt to historical art is more than imitation or homage; historicism validates new art in the conventional terms of the old. Seduced by Art aims to develop an artistic dialogue between past and present, and this seminar will address that axis with an introduction to the exhibition.

Details can be found here.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Modernism and Modernity - The circle of photographers Gustave Le Gray (1850-1860) - details of which can be found here.

The photograph was just ten years ago, when a generation of men and women under the umbrella of Gustave Le Gray, painter, chemist, "photographiste" inventor sets a new artistic language in complete break with the traditions inherited from Renaissance.

Accommodated in a large house phalanstery limits of Paris by a benevolent master, these practitioners of the new art lovers from the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie easy for most, design instinct irrevocable identity of the new medium. As in the construction of images in the treatment of the subject, their recognizable style allows the concept of school. In this period so fruitful beginnings of the Second Empire (1850-1860), well before the daring celebrated impressionism, photographers circle Le Gray will foreshadow the revolutionary vision of the next century.

They shed new light on the works of Henri Secq, Charles Adrien Tournachon or Negro, Anne and Marc Mondenard Pagneux, with access to public and private collections of the most prestigious, reveal a body recently discovered unpublished authors: the revelation of the production and Count Alphonse Delaunay Du Manoir disrupts long fixed hierarchy. Linking parts and unknown masterpieces found in 193 events can be held about one argued. A directory of authors, due to Vincent Rouby, brings an amount of new information that will identify future appearances ...

The authors, historians and critics of the photograph "primitive" by their texts thematic profiles, engage in uninhibited reading the origins of photography.

Photographers celebrates the truly innovative men and women behind the camera; trailblazers in their field, who captured and immortalised our world.

This definitive edition shows rarely seen photographs of some of twentieth-century photography’s greatest names. From Henri Cartier-Bresson and Weegee, to David Bailey and Richard Avedon by way of the men and women ofLife and Picture Post magazines as well as anonymous pressmen, they are all shown at work with their camera. Photographers shows photographers with their celebrity subjects, who range from the best-known Hollywood stars to players of sport, musicians and politicians. It also shows some of those same celebrities turning the camera back on to the photographer.

Photographers shows off the classic cameras used by the press, photojournalists and fashion photographers. The Leica, the Nikon, the Pentax, the Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic are among the cameras shown in use. A section on wartime photographs shows aerial cameras in action.

Amongst the photographers shown are: Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Cecil Beaton, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Terence Donovan, Philippe Halsman, Bert Hardy, Annie Leibovitz, Tony Ray-Jones and Weegee. Stars include Sean Connery, Sammy Davis Jr, David Hemmings, Audrey Hepburn, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Sellers, Terence Stamp, James Stewart, Robert Vaughn and John Wayne; and subjects such as the Beatles, Christine Keeler, Bobby and John F Kennedy, and shots on film sets.

An introductory essay by one of the world’s leading photographic specialists, Michael Pritchard, sets the photographers and their cameras within a wider context of the rapid growth in demand for photographs of celebrities from the 1890s and the development of celebrity culture associated with the rise of the movies from the 1920s.

Produced in association with Getty Images, one of the world’s leading collections of photography, Photographers reproduces each of the images to the highest standards supported by detailed captions.  You can pick up a copy at a special pre-launch price of £30, instead of £45, at the publisher's website here.

Media Space's Gala Opening has been put back to June - on a day yet to be confirmed - according to information published by the Science Museum for its Patrons. The brochure notes: 

Media Space gala opening
Date to be confirmed
Join us for the gala opening of our new flagship gallery. Using the unrivalled collections of the National Media Museum, Media Space will present photographers’ and artists’ perspectives on science, technology, photography and visual media through a rich programme of exhibitions and events.

This represents a change from the previously published March or 'Spring' opening previously publicised.

BPH exclusively published the first photograph of Media Space recently (http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/michael-wilson-honoured-and-media-space-revealed) 

In 1889, upon returning from a trip home and after finishing his term working for his brother-in-law in Lucknow, Bremner set up on his own in Karachi. Over the years he based himself in studios from Karachi to Lahore during the winter, moving to mountainous towns such as Simla during the stifling summers.

Like many commercial photographers in India he relied on portraiture to keep his business operating on a day-to-day basis but he still found time to complete personal projects. In 1900, he produced a collection of photographs called ‘Baluchistan Illustrated’, showing the diversity of the landscape and local customs. Several of his photographs depict apparently everyday scenes, although on closer inspection many are artfully arranged compositions.

Bremner produced several photographs of Indian artisans at work which hint at the abundance of material wealth that placed India at the heart of Britain’s colonial economy. Such images satisfied the huge interest in the subcontinent that had been fuelled by the International Exhibitions of London (1886) and Glasgow (1888). Displaying a rich selection of art wares, fabrics, carpeting, carved furniture and curiosities, these major events catered to the European consumer’s conception of India. The 1888 Exhibition, which included demonstrations by native craftsmen, presented Victorian Glaswegians with the opportunity to observe at close quarters some of the more ‘exotic’ subjects of their Empire.

Throughout his travels Bremner was struck by the expanse of the Indian landscape. His photographs often used the familiar European visual language of the Picturesque, nowhere more so than in Kashmir. Travelling there in 1896, he was following in the footsteps of poets, artists and early photographers. Like countless others before him he compared the scenery to that of Switzerland, writing: ‘Switzerland is without the charm of oriental life, the quaint manners and customs of the people . . . which all add to the attractions of a trip to the Valley of Kashmir’.

Details of the exhibition can be found here. On 8th November, Sheila Asante, Migration Stories Curator, gives an insight into this photographic display which explores the work of Bremner and his forty years working on the Indian subcontinent.

Since 1978 the History and Archives department of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh) has given an award that recognises scientific research into the history and theory of photography. A call for the 2012 award has been made.  

The Erich Stenger Award was initially aimed exclusively at published books, it was transformed into an advancement award in 1981.

 Its present reorientation as the DGPh Research Award for the History of Photography emphasizes the award’s international, broadly-based orientation to all elements of the photographic. Besides traditional history and theory of photography, topical areas are thereby also addressed that deal with photography’s societal significance and the traces that it has left behind, beyond its own object, in societal life.

The award is aimed at researchers from all fields of the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences whose scientific work represents an autonomous, innovative, and original contribution to these areas.

Applications and manuscripts for the DGPh Research Award for the History of Photography may be submitted in either English or German. It is possible to divide the award into two halves. Allocation will be the decision of an expert jury, whose decision will be published. The jury may hand the award to one applicant or to two applicants in equal parts. The jury’s decision will be final and binding.

The award is worth a total of 3,000 Euro and will be handed over at a public ceremony.

Required submissions:

• a completed manuscript in paper form () and in electronic file form (pdf). 
• The final date for submissions is 1 December 2012 (date of postmark). Recipient’s address is: Geschäftsstelle der DGPh (Overstolzenhaus, Rheingasse 8-12, D-50676 Cologne, dgph@dgph.de).

To be enclosed with the application:

• An abstract of the submitted work (approx. 3,500 keystrokes), including information regarding the status of the manuscript (dissertation, research project – funded or not funded), essay (accepted in specialist magazine or not accepted); is there already a publisher for this manuscript (target publication date); has publication of the manuscript already been funded by another body?
• A Curriculum Vitae (résumé)
• A list of publications

More information about the German Photographic Society: www.dgph.de

Did you know that the ground where Brent Cross Shopping Centre (in London NW4) is currently situated was once the chemical works site of Johnsons of Hendon?

Johnsons of Hendon Limited began with a goldsmith named Richard Wright with a business in 1743 in Maiden Lane in the City. John Johnson took over the business and was the first independent Assayer in the City. In 1839 Johnson and Sons began making chemical salts of silver and gold for Fox Talbot’s photographic process.

The photographic chemical side of the business grew rapidly and in 1927 the offices and warehouse were moved from Finsbury (23, Cross Street, Finsbury, London E.C) to Hendon. The company became so closely identified with the district and its address (their Head Office and Chemical Works were located at 335, Hendon Way, London, NW4) that in 1948 the company name was officially changed from Johnson and Sons, Manufacturing Chemists Ltd; to Johnsons of Hendon Limited.

You can read more of it here and here.

DCMS has released visitor numbers broken down by month for various UK museums for financial years from 2004/5 to 2011/12. BPH has published these in the past.  These have been put together in an accessible form and are available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdEpQUFZHUC0yYUtXUHZxczFIc0NBSHc#gid=5

The figures for the first few months of 2012 appear to show an increase in numbers compared to 2011 reflecting the opening of the new Life Online gallery. 

The National Media Museum numbers are shown below: 

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.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, for 30 minute papers , should be sent to Professor Elizabeth Edwards (eedwards@dmu.ac.uk) and Dr Kelley Wilder (kwilder@dmu.ac.uk) by November 30th  2012.

Details of the conference will be posted in December 2012.

UPDATED: 

DMU is pleased that the generous support of the Economic History Society has enabled us to offer three student bursaries to the value of £150 each towards travel and accommodation costs for PhD students to present their work at this conference. If you wish to be considered for a bursary please state this in your abstract submission.

Workers and Consumers: The Photographic Industry 1860-1950

Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester

24-25 June 2013

Photo: The Thornton-Pickard camera factory, Manchester, c.1890. Courtesy: Michael Pritchard

The Black Star Collection of approximately 292,000 black and white photographs is one of the world’s most significant collections of photojournalism. Tracing the social and political history of the 20th century, the iconic images were gifted to Ryerson University by an anonymous donor. The Black Star Collection now makes its home at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), Toronto's newest cultural destination.

The collection includes spectacular images of famous figures from every avenue of life (Marilyn Monroe, Fidel Castro, Muhammad Ali, Marc Chagall, etc.) as well as photo essays documenting key historic events of the past century, such as the Great Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the American Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War.

New York’s Black Star Agency commissioned the images for publications that defined 20th century journalism, including Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Time and Newsweek. The agency worked with some of the most influential photographers in the history of photography: the father of modern photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson, legendary war photographer Robert Capa, Britain’s famed Bill Brandt and the early 20th century female photographer Germaine Krull among many others.

“The Black Star Collection forms a valuable repository of collective global memory,” says John Isbister, Interim Provost and Vice President Academic, Ryerson University. “The Black Star Collection — the single largest gift of cultural property ever made to a Canadian university — has allowed us to build our Centre on a foundation that will lead to years of cutting edge scholarly research and creative activity.”

The story of The Black Star Agency is fascinating in and of itself. In 1935, Ernest Mayer, owner of the Berlin-based Mauritius photo agency, fled Nazi Germany, bringing with him some 5,000 images to New York. Together with fellow émigrés Kurt Safranski, a literary editor, and Kurt Kornfeld, a literary agent, he created The Black Star Agency, located in the Graybar building near Grand Central Station. The Black Star Agency went on to represent major photographers documenting cultural, social and political history.

Ryerson University has been entrusted with preserving this historic visual archive, and making the photographs accessible to the public through exhibition and publication. The Black Star Collection - the “raison d'être” of the RIC, as Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre, puts it - already functions as muse to Canadian artists and image makers. The Ryerson Image Centre’s grand opening exhibition, Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection, features the multi-disciplinary response of internationally renowned Canadian artists Stephen Andrews, Christina Battle, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Vid Ingelevics, David Rokeby and Michael Snow, to the collection. Reflecting on their respective processes of working with the Black Star Collection, each of the artists has also produced six artist pages for the exhibition catalogue. Their interpretations bring new and contemporary meaning to the powerful, historic Black Star Collection.

Co-curated by Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre, and Peggy Gale, Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection opens on September 29, 2012 to December 16, 2012

New works by Stephen Andrews, Christina Battle, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Vid Ingelevics, David Rokeby and Michael Snow inspired by the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University.
Curated by Doina Popescu and Peggy Gale. 

Ryerson Image Centre: 33 Gould Street, Toronto, Canada

Admission to The Ryerson Image Centre is free.
www.ryerson.ca/ric

Image: Charles Moore; Reproduction from the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University. Courtesy of the Ryerson Image Centre

Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection is made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ryerson University, the Goethe-Institut Toronto, Partners in Art, The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Family Charitable Foundation, and The Paul J. Ruhnke Memorial Fund.

The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), a new public gallery in the heart of the city, has opened heralding the transformation of Gould Street into a public cultural destination and a pedestrian-friendly environment, complete with the Ryerson Image Centre art gallery, adjacent park with pond and rock garden, Balzac's café, outdoor patio, trees, and a car-free street.

The RIC is part of Ryerson University's major city-building initiative in the core of downtown Toronto – Canada's economic, academic, research and cultural capital. The RIC is located in the new Image Arts Building, designed by Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects, one of the world’s top ten design firms for the cultural building sector.

The Image Arts Building is a rare example of a building that is digitally programmable, making the structure itself a work of art as the public and artists can program the illuminated glass walls transforming Toronto’s night time skyline. The building also features the Salah J. Bachir New Media Wall, a unique grid of arts-dedicated LED screens that are visible from the street. “The Ryerson Image Centre is an international academic facility for teaching, research and exhibitions, but it is also a terrific opportunity to make so many of Ryerson’s holdings - amazing images and works of art - accessible to the public,” said Sheldon Levy, President of Ryerson University. “We are thrilled to be opening this new gallery in the heart of our campus, in the heart of our city.”

The inaugural exhibition, Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection, co-curated by Doina Popescu, Director of the Ryerson Image Centre, and Peggy Gale, features new work by eight of Canada’s foremost artists. Internationally-renowned Canadian contemporary artists Stephen Andrews, Christina Battle, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Vid Ingelevics, David Rokeby and Michael Snow have each created new work, commissioned for the grand opening of the Ryerson Image Centre and inspired by the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University.

The RIC grand opening also features an exhibition of works by current students and recent alumni of the School of Image Arts, entitled The Art of the Archive, curated by Gaëlle Morel, Exhibitions Curator at the Ryerson Image Centre. The Ryerson Image Centre brings an exciting new voice to the arts dialogue in Toronto and across the country. Exhibitions and public programs that reflect highly relevant contemporary themes speak to and welcome people from many different walks of life, part of a growing trend toward creative inclusion and openness that will bring the world to Toronto.

Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection is made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ryerson University, the Goethe-Institut Toronto, Partners in Art, The Howard and Carole Tanenbaum Family Charitable Foundation, and The Paul J. Ruhnke Memorial Fund. Ryerson Image Centre Grand Opening Saturday, September 29, 2012 7 p.m. to Sunday, September 30, 2012 7 a.m. Part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection New works by Stephen Andrews, Christina Battle, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Vid Ingelevics, David Rokeby and Michael Snow inspired by the Black Star Collection at Ryerson University. Curated by Doina Popescu and Peggy Gale. September 29 - December 16, 2012 Admission is free. Ryerson Image Centre: 33 Gould Street (one block northeast of Yonge and Dundas), Toronto, Ontario, Canada www.ryerson.ca/ric

I am trying to find out who took the iconic image of Myra Hindley used as the basis for the 1995 Marcus Harvey painting. Can anyone help?

Autograph ABP one of the UK’s leading arts agencies, working nationally and internationally in the fields of photography, cultural identity and human rights is looking to appoint a Deputy Director with the proven track record to help the organisation build on its successes and assist in the next phase of business and artistic development.

The candidate will play a key role in managing the organisation’s staff, projects and business, including finance and HR issues. They must have extensive experience in a public sector arts organisation at a senior level, be calm under pressure and able to prioritise and undertake a wide range of duties.

The post holder will report to the Director.

Deadline for applications: 22 October 2012.

We regret that applications received after that time will not be considered.

We proudly promote cultural diversity and equal opportunities.

See: http://www.autograph-abp.co.uk/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=ABP_Programme&FRM=CMSRightFrame:ABP_558

Help needed:

I have just been sent a very poor photocopy of a published photograph of my great grandfather Henry Sutton, the photograph was published in an old Australian magazine and the printing quality is not very good. The photograph was taken in london around 1891/2 by Herbert Rose Barraud who was in Oxford St at the time. Henry was a notable Australian inventor and this photograph is quite an historic and important one to Australian history. I know it may be a long shot but as the photographer was quite well known as was Henry I was wondering if a copy of the photograph might be in a collection or book etc in England.

If anyone can help with suggestions on where I might look or has access to Barraud's photographs and could have a look for me please contact me, I can supply a photocopy of the photograph if need be.

Lorayne Branch

During 11-15 February 2013 the world's photographs conservation specialists will be meeting in Wellington, NZ.  The meeting will bring together, for the first time in the southern hemisphere, the photographic materials groups from the International Council of Museums, Conservation Committee (ICOM-CC) based in Paris and the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) based in Washington, DC.  The event, initiated by ICOM-CC, will include three days of meeting at Te Papa Tongarewa, and two days for tours and workshops.

The two international groups exist to:

• promote the science and art of conservation of photographic materials
• inform and advise their policy makers and organisations on the preservation and access to photographic material
• foster cooperation and exchange of information and ideas between professionals in their field.

We are expecting 200-250 delegates, representing the greatest number of countries and individuals doing the most diverse work in photographs conservation and preservation.  They will come from the great libraries, museums, archives and galleries of the world and of course from New Zealand.  As well as conservation specialists the delegates will include directors, curators, collection managers and teachers of conservation, museology, etc.

The website for the meeting is www.wellington2013photographicmaterials.org.nz  and over the next couple of weeks and months it will be added to and enriched. Registration opens in October when there will also be more information about workshops and Wellington accommodation available on the site. A large number of abstracts for papers was received and there has now been a Call for Posters. Details for the call for posters are on the website.

The Call for Posters is available for download at the meeting website:

http://www.wellington2013photographicmaterials.org.nz/index.html  and the information is included below in this email message.

The deadline for Poster submissions is November 2, 2012.

-----------------------

Call for Posters

The joint meeting of the AIC Photographic Materials Group and the ICOM-CC Photographic Materials Working Group will be held at the Museum of New Zealand

Te Papa Tongarewa, during 11–15 February, 2013. The meeting will include three days of conference (Wednesday - Friday, February 13-15) and two days for workshops and tours (Monday and Tuesday, February 11 and 12). Additional information about related events and activities appears on the website: http://www.wellington2013photographicmaterials.org.nz/index.html    (Information will continue to be added to the website over the next couple of weeks and months.)

The combined meeting brings together the world’s practitioners in the field of photographs conservation. There will be a limited amount of space at the meeting venue for posters. Submissions of posters concerning all aspects of photographic preservation and conservation are welcome.

The posters cannot exceed 1.2 m (48 inches) in height by 1.0 m (40 inches) in width.

The deadline for submissions is 2 November 2012.

Please send your abstracts for posters, including the following:

1. Title

2. Author(s) name(s) and contact details 3. A summary of the poster, outlining its purpose, principal findings and conclusions, not exceeding 300 words.

Abstracts will be evaluated by the PMG Program Chair and the PMWG Coordinator.

Please email your submissions or questions to:

AIC PMG Program Chair

Monique Fischer

mfischer@nedcc.org

or

ICOM-CC PMWG Coordinator

Marc Harnly

mharnly@getty.edu

On receipt of an abstract, authors should receive an email confirming the receipt of their submission.

Notification of acceptance for posters will be confirmed by 14 November, 2012.

-----------------------------

Barbara Brown

PMG Chair

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film announced today the appointment of Dr. Bruce Barnes as the Ron and Donna Fielding Director. Barnes will assume his role as eighth director of the museum—the world’s oldest museum of photography and one of the largest motion-picture archives—in October 2012. 

Barnes is the president and founder of American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation (ADA1900), a private foundation based in New York City, that works independently and in collaboration with museums across the United States to foster understanding and appreciation of American decorative art from the period around 1900.

Barnes is coauthor and editor of The Jewelry and Metalwork of Marie Zimmermann (2011), which was copublished by ADA1900 and Yale University Press. ADA1900 also copublished The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs (2008), an award-winning scholarly book that accompanied an exhibition of the same title co-organized by ADA1900 and the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Huntington Art Collections, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Barnes was chief executive officer of Element K, a Rochester-based company and pioneer in online learning, from 2000-2004, overseeing more than 800 employees. Over the course of his career, Barnes has held senior executive positions at Ziff Communications Company, Ziff Brothers Investments, Wasserstein Perella & Co., Reservoir Capital Group, and QFS Asset Management. He received a B.A., magna cum laude, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.       

"I am honored to be selected to serve as the next director of George Eastman House,” said Barnes. “The range of its activities and opportunities is exhilarating. George Eastman House is a vital part of Rochester’s community. The museum’s unparalleled collections—in the areas of photography, cinema, and their technologies—and curators make important contributions on the international cultural scene, and its leading post-graduate programs advance the imperative of photography and film preservation around the world."

“Having devoted most of the last seven years to collaborating with major museums across the country and furthering art scholarship, I am eager to apply my strategic and management skills to leading George Eastman House,” he said. “The house and a great many of the museum’s objects fall precisely within my longstanding interest in American art, decorative art, and architecture of the period from 1876 to 1940. My background in innovative online education will be invaluable to the creation of a virtual museum that will provide global access to its superb collections. I look forward to returning to Rochester and working with the Eastman House board of trustees and staff to advance the museum’s tradition of excellence and service to the community.”

“George Eastman House is an international treasure, a source of local pride, and a complex organization,” said Thomas H. Jackson, chairman of the George Eastman House Board of Trustees. “In Bruce Barnes, we have found the perfect individual to continue the museum’s progress and build the local, national, and international infrastructure and connections that will be essential to Eastman House’s future.

“Our collections and location, important in themselves, are also the springboard for essential work in preservation and an understanding of how the image can inform as well as reflect society,” Jackson said. “Dr. Barnes understands these interconnections in an impressively deep way and has the vision to take our past accomplishments and turn vision into reality. His extraordinary talents across so many dimensions are matched by his passion for George Eastman House and its potentiality. That’s a wonderful, winning, combination.”

Barnes’s appointment is the outcome of an international search process. He succeeds Dr. Anthony Bannon, who retired from George Eastman House in May after 16 years in the position.  

“The Search Committee feels extraordinarily fortunate to have found in Dr. Barnes the combination of skills, experience, and passion needed for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the George Eastman House,” said James A. Locke III, the George Eastman House trustee who chaired the Search Committee. “He is quite a remarkable fit for us with his excellent academic background, financial acumen, with prior positions with top Wall Street financial firms, and tested leadership as a CEO in Rochester.

“He is also an engaged collector with scholarly and passionate interests in the arts and museums,” Locke said. “Dr. Barnes can and will be an energetic and transformational leader who surely will make a great difference at George Eastman House and, in the view of the Search Committee, he will make a great difference in the presence and importance of the museum and its varied missions here and globally. We are thrilled with his appointment.”

About George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film

George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film combines world-class collections of photography and film with an active program of exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and the National Historic Landmark house and gardens of George Eastman, the philanthropist and father of popular photography and motion picture film. Eastman House is also a leader in film preservation and photograph conservation, educating archivists and conservators from around the world through historic-process workshops and two graduate schools, the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and the Photographic Preservation and Collections Management master’s degree program. Eastman House, which was established as an independent non-profit museum in 1947, is one of the world’s foremost museums of photography and the third largest motion-picture archive in the United States. The museum intertwines unparalleled collections, totaling more than 4 million objects, of photography, motion pictures, and cameras and technology, as well as literature of these fields of study. Learn more at eastmanhouse.org

Foto8 is pleased to announce an exhibition of photography by Mike Seaborne, comprising two of his long-term projects, Thames Estuary and Facades. East of the City of London, the Thames was traditionally both the industrial backbone and backyard of London. The gradual loss of docks and heavy industry in favour of business and residential development has drastically transformed parts of east London. Seaborne’s Thames Estuary series explores the effects of neglect, dereliction and development on that large swathe of London which comprises the estuary and its hinterland. It shows us places we had never noticed and raises questions about the relationship between the city’s river and the people and wildlife that coexist along its edges.

Seaborne began the Facades series in 2004, photographing what he refers to as the ‘zone of transition’ in inner city London where the urban fabric reflects the constantly shifting population. In these images he has focused on the south and east of the city where run-down residential, commercial and industrial buildings, often built during the Victorian period or earlier, were relatively cheap to rent or to buy and therefore attractive to economic migrants and new businesses. These are the buildings that Seaborne concentrates on, the derelict and undeveloped that are ‘For Sale’ or ‘To Let’, awaiting change. These areas are now subject to the economic forces of regeneration and the buildings await their fate from either redevelopment or gentrification.

Mike Seaborne began photographing London in 1979 when he was appointed Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London. Since then he has explored much of the capital and has completed many projects for the museum and independently. In 1986 he began a long-term landscape project recording deindustrialisation, changing patterns of land use and new city infrastructures. He has concentrated on using medium and large-format cameras to reveal the minutiae of his subjects and, while embracing digital technology, his finished work retains obvious links with that of earlier practitioners whose aim was to assemble visual collections of aspects of the city that might soon be lost or have simply been overlooked or forgotten.

Mike Seaborne
London: Landscapes in Transition
16–27 October 2012
In collaboration with BERNARD QUARITCH

An illustrated catalogue is available. 

For further information and images contact yasmin@foto8.com, 020 7253 8801

The 2012 UK conference of the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography (AHFAP) is to be held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery on Monday, 19 November. It  promises as ever to be an exciting event with speakers on a wide range of subjects and with plenty of opportunity for social and professional exchange. Highlights of the day will include:

• Tate Gallery painting conservator Annette King, will speak on a project to xray some of the gallery’s paintings by Picasso
• James Davis from Google talks about Google Art
• James Stevenson talks about the life and work of photographer Claude Cahun
• Sophie Gordon from the Royal Collection will speak on the collection’s extensive photographic archive
• Dave Baker will speak about his photographic project Urban Guerilla
• Poster display, members are invited to submit proposals, printing will be arranged by the association

Members and their guests are invited to attend, with limited availability on the day.
Conference fee is £25. Further details will be posted on the association’s website as soon as they become available. http://www.ahfap.org.uk/conferences/2012-uk-conference/

The details for Day 2, the customary and popular day of social activities for members are also now available on the website page above.

About AHFAP
AHFAP was founded in 1985 by groups of photographers in the photographic studios at some of the national museums in London. Hitherto these studios were working in isolation from each other and there was little communication between them. It was recognised that closer ties would benefit the profession and the association has met regularly ever since with an annual conference held in London in the autumn. The association’s main function is to raise the profile of image professionals in the cultural heritage sector and to encourage the exchange of professional knowledge and experience. There are now over 300 members in the UK in all types of cultural institutions, from the largest museums to small commercial galleries and freelance fine art photographers.  AHFAP membership is restricted to imaging professionals in the cultural heritage sector. Please contact the membership secretary for further details. http://www.ahfap.org.uk/contact-us/

Birmingham's Library has loaned two sets of important photographs from its nationally and internationally significant collections to a major exhibition in Guangzhou, China. The photographs are being hand-carried by curator Pete James. 

The exhibition, The Unseen, to be shown at the Guangdong Museum of Art, forms part of the Guangzhou Triennial Festival. The Fourth Guangzhou Triennial, one of the biggest art events in China, is curated by Jiang Jiehong, Director of Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (Birmingham City University) and Ikon Gallery director Jonathan Watkins. The Unseen refers to the complexity of ways of seeing, focusing our attention on the invisible, but by no means precluding the visible. http://www.gdmoa.org/

The Library is loaning 18 photographs by Felice Beato taken in Canton in 1860 and 12 photographs by Dr Harold E. Edgerton, the pioneer of high-speed photography, from his portfolio Seeing the Unseen, 1977.

The loan of the Beato images follows the visit of Dr Luo Yiping, Director of Guangdong Museum of Art, to the Library earlier this year to see a range of historical and contemporary photographs of China held in the Library Collections. The Beato photographs were first shown in an exhibition From Canton to Guangzhou, curated by Pete James, Head of Photography at the Library and Dr Jiang Jiehong, at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2008.

The Edgerton photographs are drawn from a portfolio of prints, Seeing the Unseen, which were shown as part of a collaborative project with the Ikon gallery in 2010. Edgerton’s invention in the 1930s of a photographic process based on rapid, stroboscopic instances of light or ‘flash’ was a catalytic event in the history of photography, science and art. Using this method Edgerton’s images reveal in precise detail previously unseen aspects of reality.

See: www.nicolashipleyarts.blogspot.com

Image: Dr Jiang Jiehong, Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham City University, and Dr Luo Yipping (2nd right) and family visiting Birmingham Central Library.

I'm seeking information about this tintype I've recently acquired (see photo below). Its approximately 10" by 8". The backing paper (as shown) is American and dated 1896. I'm interested to find out who this lady was and more about this photo. 

Any information gratefully received.

Liz