Blogs

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

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

The full news article can be found here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opening Keynote Speaker: 

Professor Steve Edwards (Open University) Working Lives in Photography

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

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

£55  (Full price 2 days)

£30  (Full price day ticket)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.