Blogs

Launched in time for Australia Day today (26 January), one can now view images of Australian towns, buildings, landmarks and people dating back as far as the mid 19th century. The National Archives has released online thousands of early photographs and drawings of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and other Pacific Islands.

Archives show many of them were displayed at an 1873 international exposition in London, causing somewhat of a sensation among those with little understanding of life on the other side of the world. But then they were stored away. Staff at the National Archives UK spent the past 18 months digitising and cataloguing them to "show Australians their past".

The site can be found here, and Flickr here. G'day mate!

One hundred and thirty years ago Eadweard Muybridge invented stop-motion photography, anticipating and making possible motion pictures. He was the first to capture time and play it back for an audience, giving birth to visual media and screen entertainments of all kinds. Yet the artist and inventor Muybridge was also a murderer who killed coolly and meticulously, and his trial is one of the early instances of a media sensation. His patron was railroad tycoon (and former California governor) Leland Stanford, whose particular obsession was whether four hooves of a running horse ever left the ground at once. Stanford hired Muybridge and his camera to answer that question. And between them, the murderer and the railroad mogul launched the age of visual media.
Set in California during its frontier decades, The Tycoon and the Inventor interweaves Muybridge's quest to unlock the secrets of motion through photography, an obsessive murder plot, and the peculiar partnership of an eccentric inventor and a driven entrepreneur. A tale from the great American West, this popular history unspools a story of passion, wealth, and sinister ingenuity.

You can read a review from the New York Times here, and purchase the book using the Amazon link on the right.

The Lumière Autochrome. History, Technology and Preservation is a thoroughly illustrated guide to the history and technology of autochromes with a practical guide for storage & preservation. Louis Lumière is perhaps best known for his seminal role in the invention of cinema, but his most important contribution to the history of photography was the autochrome.

Engagingly written and marvelously illustrated with over 300 images book tells the fascinating story of the first industrially produced form of colour photography. Initial chapters present the Lumière family enterprise, set out the challenges posed by early colour photography, and recount the invention, rise, and eventual decline of the autochrome, which for the first four decades of the twentieth century was the most widely used form of commercial colour photography. The book then treats the technology of the autochrome, including the technical challenges of plate fabrication, described in step-by-step detail, and a thorough account of autochrome manufacture. A long final chapter provides in-depth recommendations concerning the preservation of these vulnerable objects, including proper storage and display guidelines. There are also engaging portfolios throughout the book showcasing autochrome photographs from around the world as part of an initiative founded by the French banker Albert Kahn, as well as engrossing testimonials by children of men who worked in the Lumière factories in the early twentieth century. The appendix includes transcriptions and facsimile reproductions from the Lumière notebooks as well as original patent documents.

Bertrand Lavédrine is director of the Centre de recherche sur la conservation des collections (CRCC) in Paris. He is the author of Photographs of the Past: Process and Preservation(Getty Publications, 2009) and A Guide to the Preventive Conservation of Photograph Collections (Getty Publications, 2003). Jean-Paul Gandolfo teaches at the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière near Paris.

• Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: J. Paul Getty Museum (1 February 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606061259
• ISBN-13: 978-1606061251

Last week saw 5 years since the Library of Congress became the inaugural member of Flickr Commons. Since then it has grown to 56 institutions and just under 250,000 images. What's more over 28,000 images have had a location set, and over 50,000 have had an estimated date recorded. This has made it possible for me to do some interesting experiments such as a world map, an interactive timeline, and an 'on this day in history' gallery.

Quite a lot has been reported about the anniversary online, so here are a few links:

National Media Museum blog - http://nationalmediamuseumblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/flickr-commons-is-five-years-old/

Flickr blog - http://blog.flickr.net/en/2013/01/16/happy-commons-anniversary/

Library of Congress blog - http://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2013/01/flickr-commons-happy-5th-birthday/

National Library of Ireland blog - http://www.nli.ie/blog/index.php/2013/01/11/celebrating-the-commons-on-flickr/

Gallery of images from The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/9809222/Flickr-Commons-most-viewed-or-most-favourited-photos-of-the-last-five-years.html

My personal blog - http://www.whatsthatpicture.com/2013/01/five-years-of-flickr-commons-a-personal-review

The Val Williams Archive will become part of the collection at Birmingham Central Library. The material includes objects from the early years of Impressions Gallery, including the first exhibition poster and design work, plus letters from photographers including Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows. The archive also contains full documentation of Val Williams' exhibition projects and books, including The Other Observers, Who's Looking at the Family and How We Are at Tate Britain, plus photo documentary of the first and second Shoreditch Biennales, press responses, correspondence, and lists of participants.

It will also contain a full archive of Val's writing about photography in publications such as Creative Camera, the New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and many other publications, and including the series of interviews Val made for the Guardian Women's page in the early 1990s and her lengthy series of obituaries for the Independent.

Preserved by Val over the last 40 years, the archive has now been ordered and partially scanned, and marks the beginning of a new research resource at Birmingham, in collaboration with the University of the Arts London, where Val is Professor of the History and Culture of Photography.

I have recently uncovered in the loft, a box containing about 2500 CDV cards c1860-1870, the majority of which are Art History images from all the major European and British collections of around 1865. These images are organised according to country artist and school of art with printed and embossed dividers for each section. The rest of the cards are portraits including images of celebrities, artists, politicians, nobility, European royalty and American civil war generals. The third type are views of Edinburgh, Glasgow and other parts of Scotland also some of the Isle of White.

Each card is labelled "Collection Sumichrast" and numbered, some are dated, there is also a full hand written catalogue that lives in a sliding drawer at the bottom of the box.

I have discovered that

F C Sumichrast, was an Academic, writer and translator from French to English who was a professor of languages at Edinburgh University in the late 1860s and then moved to work at Harvard University in America. 

Frederic Caesar John Martin Sumichrast-Roussey was born in Belgium in 1845. He was of Hungarian origins and held Hungarian citizenship. His parents had moved to Edinburgh by 1858 when his sister was born.

By 1888 he has moved on to America and he is working at Harvard University and has become a Professor at Harvard by 1896

Professor F C Sumichrast went on to be a well respected translator of the works of Theophile Gautier and Victor Hugo but is also known for his own works including “The Making of America”. He was president of “The Victorian Society in Harvard and established his reputation as an academic and writer there. He is listed in “Who was who in American History”.

He stayed at Harvard until 1911 when they move back to England and lived in Ealing from 1912-1932

He died in 1933 aged 88, he had no children.

I believe this collection may have been used by him for academic reference in Edinburgh and came to my family when he moved to America in 1888, by direct purchase or by auction. I have a relative who was a Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh at this time and can trace the box via his daughter who then put it into storage in 1922. She was my wife's Aunt.

I am not a collector but would like to do something with this collection and would love to know more about its origins and purpose. I know it was unusual to have a large collection of this kind at the time and most CDVs were put into small albums as domestic talking points with mostly personal images.

The purpose made box is also unusual and may be as used in a photographic studio for storing cards!

Who should I contact for academic reasons? The V and A, National Portrait Gallery, Bradford Museum, Scottish National Collection, Harvard...

Where can I get a fair valuation of this collection?

I have scanned in the cards and created a basic website if you are interested in seeing the collection @

F.C.Sumichrast's Collection of Victorian Carte Des Visites:Home

Thank you

Martin Ferrabee

Looks like a contact frame for doing a test strip either in 0.3 log progression i.e. 2,4 8 16 or possibly 0.15 log.

Will be interested in views form other ancient photographers who used these things back in the days when we  had darkrooms. 

Chemistry of Light is Traeger's response to a large collection of 19th Century photographs, negatives and camera equipment left to her in the 1960's by a great uncle in Tunbridge Wells. The collection includes very early Daguerreotypes and waxed paper negatives, leading up to large glass plates from the 1890’s.

Untouched since the 19th Century, many are severely damaged. Various forms of chemical decay have set in as well as dramatic lifting and tearing of the gelatin emulsions which are peeling from the glass. This damage and destruction became a metaphor for Traeger of the steady but inevitable loss of the materials and rituals of her craft as darkroom photography and chemistry has been superseded by digital technology. Traeger has made new discoveries in these old and disintegrating emulsions, finding new and unexpected relevance in their corrupted materials and fading images. They are a hymn to the layered mystery of time and light in photography, and to the miraculous work of its pioneers. They are living again in the present, born, resurrected as the originals die in the splendour of their almost psychedelic chemical erosions and photography’s early crafts die with them.

Details of this exhibition at Purdy Hicks Gallery on 65 Hopton Street, London SE1 from 25th Jan till 21st Feb can be found here. The Financial Times also has a review here.

Photo: Thomas Batting (left), 'great uncle' Godfrey’s father, standing outside the family’s chemist shop in 1880

Sotheby's auction of Fine Travel and Plate Books, A private collection includes a copy of Francis Frith's Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: a series of twenty photographic views. London, [c.1858]. The copy is estimated at £100,000-150,000.  The catalogue will be available online at sothebys.com shortly.  

The lot description reads:

57

Frith, Francis. Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: a series of twenty

photographic views... with descriptions by Mrs Poole and Reginald

Stuart Poole. London: James S. Virtue, [c.1858]

Large folio (738 x 530mm.), 20 mounted albumen prints (485 x

390mm., or the reverse), several signed and dated 1858 in the

negative, contemporary dark green half morocco, flat spine, gilt

edges, upper cover lettered in gilt, some scattered spotting, binding

slightly rubbed, some restoration to spine and corners

“The largest book with the biggest, unenlarged prints ever

published.” (Gernsheim). “Few publications in the history of

photography are its equal in either presentation or ambition. The

twenty photographs feature Egyptian subjects, with just a single

view of Jerusalem. Frith’s views of the Pyramids, in particular, are

ground breaking and became the works for which he is now best

known. The photographs are accompanied by texts written by

Sophia Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole (a mother-and-son team),

recognised writers on Egyptian history and customs” (Imagining

Paradise).

References: Gernsheim, Incunabula (London, 1984) 130; Röhricht

p.506; Hilmy I, p.249; Jacobson, K., Odalisques & Arabesques:

Orientalist Photography 1839-1925 (London, 2007, pp.88-89, 232-234);

Parr and Badger, The Photobook (London, 2007, vol.1, p.28); Foster,

Heiting and Stuhlman, Imagining Paradise (NY, 2007, p.63)

£ 100,000-150,000 € 124,000-186,000

RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Fellows will swarm London this weekend along with members of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and close out a 24-hour long photo shoot at the RSA – where the  RPS was founded in 1853. 

To help celebrate the 160^th Anniversary of the Royal Photographic Society, RPS London is organizing a 24-hour photo shoot, “London1853”, in and around iconic London landmarks.  It will start at 16:00 on Saturday 19^th January at Trafalgar Square and finish at or near the RSA in John Adam Street at 16:00 on Sunday 20^th January – the venue, time and date of the founding meeting. Details of this event can be found here.

You can also read the original handwritten notes from the RSA meetings in 1853 that led to the founding of the society on the RSA Flickr Group - and they have got plenty more in the RSA Archive if you are interested (big thanks to their archivist, Eve, for pulling the notes out).

Photo: RSA Council Minutes 19th Jan 1853, p 153 on the founding of the Royal Photographic Society RSA/AD/MA/100/12/02/05 – Minutes of Council Volume 4 June 1852 – June 1853

An exhibition of photographs from the Royal Photographic Society which illustrate the progression of photography from its inception to the current day, opens at King Edward’s Art and Photography Department TAG Gallery on Tuesday 15^th January until Friday 15^th February.

The exhibition is a rare opportunity to see some early prints from the Royal Photographic Society’s Collection, ranging from 1845 to 1940, alongside the outstanding work from today’s RPS digital photographers who use their cameras and computers to develop exciting images and art.

Details can be found here.

The Photo Art Fair is a new five-day exhibition of some 2,000 carefully curated, collectable works from up to 200 international photographers. As a brand new show, Photo Art is designed to provide visitors with the unique opportunity to purchase affordable and collectable photographs DIRECT from both undiscovered and also well-known artists.

The inaugural event will be held in an 8,000sqm event space in Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B, 2nd – 6th May 2013 and is a celebration of photographic art throughout the eras of photographic art and across all genres from classic prints to hitherto unseen contemporary photography. Photo Art will extend a totally democratic experience to both existing and prospective collectors of photography in a stimulating, informal and highly original environment. Photographs will range from £500 to £150,000, giving entry level excitement and also high-end investment opportunities.

Visitors to the Fair will have the chance to explore all aspects of the work as a true art form. The photography selection will be truly inspiring and will have the potential to add a real aesthetic difference to homes and work spaces. The Photo Art Fair Trade Exhibition will sit alongside the show of photographic art and feature a select cross-selection of the latest equipment, publishers, courses and retailers providing visitors with a point of purchase opportunity.

The Intelligent Collecting workshops will be comprised of panels of international experts with long-standing track records of identifying photographers, selecting artworks and collecting photographic art that has delivered exceptional results and truly rewarding experiences. The Selection Committee will be made up of leading experts and experienced collectors of art and art photography. Working in conjunction with the Intelligent Collecting^©programme,  the Selection Committee aims to see that visitors can take part in the experience of art collecting. Attendees can learn how to evaluate and identify potential iconic imagery that may potentially raise in value. Most importantly, the photography will be intriguing, high quality and an experience in viewing.

Details can be found here.

The Financial Times have been running a special series on photography which appeared in the FT and FT Weekend. The last instalment was on an image - The Queen's Target' - by a pioneering Victorian photographer which is both a royal souvenir and a strikingly early piece of abstract art.

As the founder and first secretary of the Photographic Society, established in 1853, Fenton held a pivotal national position. He was instrumental in gaining the interest in photography of Queen Victoria and her technically minded Prince Consort. No doubt his long connection with the Queen was behind the making of this picture. Yet by 1860, when “The Queen’s Target” was taken, Fenton’s career was on the wane. The pioneering campaigner on behalf of photography had been left behind by the popularity of the medium he had done so much to promote.

You can read the rest of the article and others in the series by FT photo critic, Francis Hodgson, here.

A book of vintage photographs of German cities and festivals taken between 1840 and 1890 has just been published in Germany. They give an intriguing glimpse of the clash between tradition and modernity in Germany at the outset of the industrial age.

"From Biedermeier to Gründerzeit: Germany in Early Photographs 1840 - 1890," accompanies a major exhibition of the photographs opened in Munich's city museum in November.  The photos were collected by Munich collector Dietmar Siegert over more than four decades. 

The book shows landscapes and cityscapes ranging from the North Sea island of Helgoland to the picturesque Lake Königsee in the Bavarian Alps, from the Alsace city of Strasbourg in today's France to the Baltic port of Gdansk in what is now Poland. The images convey the lost beauty of many German cities whose centers were razed by aerial bombing in World War II. They also convey the rich regional diversity of a nation that was made up of many kingdoms, duchies and principalities and didn't unify until 1871. Some pictures, such as that of a carnival procession in Mainz and the back view of the Brandenburg Gate, could have been taken yesterday. Other street scenes have an almost medieval feel to them.

Details can be found here.

The School of Art History at the University of St Andrews is offering 6 fully-funded PhD Scholarships of £15,000 in the areas of Museum & Gallery Studies, Art History and History of Photography to begin in September 2013. The Scholarships will cover the cost of fees (at the UK/EU home rate) and provide a tax-free bursary to successful candidates.

The School is one of the most highly rated departments in Britain for research and teaching, and with 17 faculty members, it is also one of the largest. Staff research interests include Late Medieval art in Britain and Northern Europe, Italian art and architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, French art of the 19th and 20th centuries, art, architecture & design in Britain from the 18th to the 20th century, modern art in Eastern Europe, Sculpture from the 13th to 21st centuries, and the History of Photography.

The highly regarded Museum & Gallery Studies programme at St Andrews attracts students from across the world. The four members of staff offer full and part-time postgraduate tuition in museology and aspects of current museum practice. They also run courses in Abu Dhabi for Zayed University.  Staff interests include collections management, museum governance and management, ethics, visitor studies, learning and access, interpretation, and the history of collecting.

The School is keen to build on its research strengths and to develop an already vigorous postgraduate community by offering studentships to outstanding candidates whose research interests in Art History, History of Photography or Museum & Gallery Studies broadly coincide with those of members of the academic staff. Applicants should have an excellent first degree or Masters in a relevant subject area. Further information on the School of Art History may be found at http://www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk/

Informal enquiries should be addressed to Professor Brendan Cassidy (Head of School) atbfc1@st-andrews.ac.uk or Dr Natalie Adamson (Director of Postgraduate Studies) at na14@st-andrews.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications will be 1 April 2013.
Interviews will be held between 29 April-3 May 2013.

Applications should include:

• Application Form: (http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/admissions/pg/apply/forms/)
• CV/Resume
• Personal Statement or Letter of Intent
• 1000-word Research Proposal plus bibliography
• Sample of your Academic Writing (e.g. an undergraduate or Masters degree essay)
• University Transcripts
• Two Academic References
• English Language Qualification - IELTS/TOEFL Certificate where applicable

Do you have any stereoviews that date from 1914? These are required for a 3D documentary film about the period and we are searching for stereoviews from 1914, either dated by protocols, archives or by scene/people/events on the photography. We are interested in all all scenes and/or subjects as long as they are stereo-photography from 1914.

We are interested in access to scans/photos of materials or access to them at their current location in order to do scans/photos ourselves. Any other form of guidance, interests, links or other clues that may lead to to locating stereo-photography dated as being shot in 1914 are most welcome.

The working title for the documentary is “1914” and relates to the Genesis of Modern Man’s Mind, being an adaptation of parts of Robert Musil’s “Man Without Qualities” with stereograms from 1914 and present day 3D film sequences.

Contact: Pelle Folmer

Telephone: +45 4085 6052

E-mail: pelle@coordinates.dk

Postal Adress: Magic Hour Films

Att. Pelle Folmer

Baldersgade 6
2200 Copenhagen N.
Denmark

Between Art and Information: Collecting Photographs is a one-day meeting organised by the Museums and Galleries History Group and the Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University. It takes place on Saturday, 2 March 2013 and is open to students and the wider public. 

Attendees can register at: www.mghg.org/collectingphotographs/

Provisional Programme

9.45-10.15. Registration

10.15-12.45 Session 1  Photographs and Museum Practices

Simon Fleury (Victoria and Albert Museum), A Fitting Response? Positive Negative: An interdisciplinary and site-specific photography research project

Danielle Wilkens (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), No Flash Allowed

Mark Steadman (University of Leeds), Title tbc

Eleni Papavasileiou (SS Great Britain Trust), Private to public: the David MacGregor photographic collection

Anne Hodge (National Gallery of Ireland), The ‘p’ numbers: Photography in the National Gallery of Ireland – neglected and misunderstood

12.45-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3 Session 2: Photographs, Museums and Science

Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) Collecting portraiture, exhibiting race: Augustus Lane Fox’s photographs at the South Kensington Museum, 1879.

Sophie Defrance (Darwin Correspondence Project, University of Cambridge), Nineteenth century scientists' perception of scientific objects and aesthetics in Charles Darwin's correspondence

Caroline Cornish (Royal Holloway), Collecting Photographs, Constructing Disciplines: The Rationality and Rhetoric of Photography at the Museum of Economic Botany

3-3.30 Tea

3.30-5 Session 3: Photographs and Histories in the Museum

Gareth Syvret (DMU), Photography in Jersey under German Occupation: the 1940 ‘Order Concerning Open-air Photography’ and photography at the Société Jersiaise Museum

Athol McCredie (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa), From Them to Us: Changing Meanings of Photographs of Maori at Te Papa

Caroline Edge (Bolton Museum/University), Looking for Bolton in the Worktown Archive

Damarice Amao (Paris Sorbonne), Collect and preserve negatives: the Eli Lotar collection at the Centre Georges Pompidou

5.15pm Finish

The 2013 Scottish Society for the History of Photography Annan Lecture will be given Dr Mike Ware FRSC. It is titled: Cyanotype: a Blueprint for Visual Vandalism? Ware is a chemist who has undertaken extensive and ground-breaking research into various aspect of photography and early processes. His website is here. 

The lecture takes place on Thursday 14 February at 6pm in the Jeffrey Library, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Admission is free.  Further information at www.sshop.org.uk/?p=639

This year’s Annan Lecture is presented in collaboration with b l u e p r i n t  2 0 1 3