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'The sun never sets on the British Empire' was more than a celebratory assertion of the vastness of colonial dominion; it embodied the ideological underpinnings of the British imperial project. Central to this ideology was the interplay between the symbolic and material constructs of 'light' and 'darkness,' through which the empire represented itself as an 'empire of light.' This framing, grounded in epistemological and symbolic discourses, positioned the British as agents of enlightenment tasked with dispelling the metaphorical 'darkness' of regions perceived as less developed, thereby legitimising the so-called ‘civilising mission’ (Dinkar 2020). Such narratives extended beyond abstraction, significantly shaping the physical and cultural landscapes of the colonies.

Within this binary of light and darkness, the colonial night emerges as a critical site of imperial meaning-making. Engrained in negative connotations and framed as a space “beyond our reach” (Phillips, 2023), the colonial night became deeply entwined with notions of eeriness, filth, and degeneration. These associations were often reinforced through the lenses of tropicalism and orientalism, which permeated colonial travelogues and literary accounts (Baker, 2015). Additionally, the night metaphorically served to construct racial ideologies, symbolising an unconscious darkness that underpinned imperialist perceptions of racial and cultural inferiority (Goggin, 2024).

The antithetical relationship between light and darkness also translated into the strategic implementation of illumination and electrification across the British Empire, particularly in colonial urban centres. The introduction of lighting played a pivotal role in colonial governance, symbolising the imposition of ‘modernity’ and the technological advancement associated with imperial control. By dispelling the obscurity of night and transforming public spaces into illuminated, surveillable environments, colonial authorities reinforced their dominance and sought to showcase the supposed benevolence and progressiveness of the imperial mission (Hasenöhrl, 2018; Schivelbusch,1995).

Building on this multifaceted context, this two-day conference seeks to deepen the emerging yet underexplored discourse on the visual construction of the night within the British colonies, spanning the late 19th to the mid-20th century – a period marking the height of imperial domination and the gradual processes of decolonisation. The conference invites critical engagement with the ways in which visual culture contributed to constructing and entrenching imperialist narratives about the colonial night, particularly through the symbolic and material dichotomy of light and darkness, while also examining how these frameworks were resisted, contested, and reimagined.

Based on the themes outlined above, key questions for exploration include:

• How were conceptions of night and nocturnality – and, by extension, light and darkness – visually constructed within the ideological frameworks of the British Empire?
• In what ways did colonial subjects engage with, subvert, or reconfigure these visual narratives?
• Furthermore, how might indigenous conceptions of nocturnality have been creatively employed to disrupt imperial discourses and assert alternative visual epistemologies?

While contributions focusing on the impact of photography on these narrations are particularly welcome, submissions addressing a broad spectrum of visual practices – including painting, illustration, advertising, posters, and beyond – are encouraged.

Potential themes for investigation could include, but are not limited to:

• The industrialisation of light and the modernity project in the British colonies
• The colonial night as a space of danger, vulnerability, and marginality
• The night as a site of othering
• Propagandistic constructions of gendered and racialised narratives of the colonial night
• Urban nocturnal public life and night entertainment in the colonies
• Nocturnal labour and productivity in colonial economies
• Nighttime journeys, exploration, and the exoticisation of nocturnal colonial landscapes
• Chiaroscuro and nocturne motifs (e.g., moonlit nightscape paintings)
• Domestic, institutional, and symbolic illuminated and unlit interiors
• The night as a time for indigenous spiritual practices, dreams, or supernatural encounters
• The night as a time for contestation and resistance
• Indigenous conceptions of light and darkness

Light and Darkness: Imaging the Night in the British Empire
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, 26–27 June 2025
Deadline: 15 February 2025

Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biography to Manila Castoro at mcastoro@brookes.ac.uk by 15 February 2025. Contributions from diverse academic and geographic contexts are especially welcome. In your submission, kindly indicate whether you would attend in person or online, as hybrid panels will be available to facilitate participation from underrepresented regions.

Selected papers from the conference will be considered for inclusion in an edited volume with a respected academic journal or publisher.

The Association of Historians of Nineteenth Century Art (AHNCA) is hosting two virtual salons, one on 17 January 17 and the other on 24 January to learn more about books published in 2024 by AHNCA members. Each author will give a brief presentation about their book, followed by a discussion among the authors and a Q&A with the audience.

of particualr note is the salon taking place on 24 January which will include Jeff Rosen who will be discussing his book Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography. The full programme is: 

Ruth E. Iskin, Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York: The Making of a Transatlantic Legacy
Sarah Lewis, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America
Kimberly A. Orcutt, The American Art-Union: Utopia and Skepticism in the Antebellum Era
Jeff Rosen, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography
Paul mellon Centre for Srtudies in British Art
ISBN: 9781913107420
292 pages
Rosen examines how Cameron and her family processed news of the rebellion alongside former colonists and government officials, men such as Sir John Herschel, Lord Lansdowne, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and her husband, Charles Cameron. He also demonstrates how Cameron's artistic choices were inspired by the fine art criticism associated with the Arundel Society and the South Kensington Museum. In the process, Rosen analyses the symbolism in Cameron's portraits, the political codes in her imagery of widows and orphans, and the historical narratives that informed her allegories of the revolt and its aftermath.

Attendance for the Salon is free but registration in required.

Virtual Salon
24 January 2025 at 1400 (EST) | 1900 (UTC) | 2000 (CET)
Register at: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlf-ihrDsuEtf3pWA02hVoYI5MJ22Vx45

How can creative practices disrupt power structures within the archive? In March 2025, Autograph and Parse Journal will host a new symposium Encounters: Art, Power and Archives in London to discuss strategies and methodologies to rethink, reimagine and reshape the histories embedded in archival collections.

We are calling for presentations that examine how reactivating archival materials through diverse perspectives and disciplines can challenge dominant narratives. With a focus on decolonial and queer methodologies, the symposium will emphasise approaches that encourage a continual reengagement with archives.

We are looking for a broad range of interdisciplinary voices to present their work. This could include – but is not limited to – proposals that share artistic or scholarly research, creative or social projects, and provocations. You might be a historian, archivist, researcher, educator or artist: or any mix of disciplines. Submissions are encouraged by contributors from all backgrounds.

Encounters: Art, Power and Archives will take place on 18 March 2025 in London.

https://autograph.org.uk/blog/news/call-for-papers-encounters-in-the-archive/

The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art has awarded grants for a number of photography projects. These include: 

• Sara Stevenson for the publication The Two-way Gaze. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson’s Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth (author grant - large)
• Whitechapel Gallery for the publication Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey (Exhibition publication grant)
• Lucy Howie for research on the project Franki Raffles and Sandra George: Disability and Community Photography in 1980s Scotland (Research support grant)
• Aindreas Scholz for research on the project Rediscovering Anna Atkins: Illuminating the Forgotten Female Pioneer of British Photography (Research support grant)

See: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/grants-and-fellowships/awarded/autumn-2024/page/1

Spring 2025 sees three films looking at photographers and their work. First up is I am Martin Parr which is in cinemas from 21 February. Since the 1970s, British documentary photographer Martin Parr has fearlessly held out his unique photographic mirror and given us some of the most iconic images of the past century. Through an intimate and exclusive road trip across England with the artist, director Lee Shulman (The Anonymous Project) uncovers the life of Magnum photographer Parr: an ironic chronicler of British kitsch, a fierce critic of consumerism, and a narrator of stories suspended between comedy and tragedy. Compiled from exclusive archival footage alongside interviews from various individuals in Martin’s life - close family, fellow photographers, artists and filmmakers, from artist Grayson Perry to musician Mark Bedford (Madness). The film offers a portrait of an extraordinary photographer who revolutionised contemporary photography by inventing a political, humanist and accessible photographic language.

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is released on 7 March. Winner of the L'Œil d'or for Best Documentary Film at Cannes Film Festival 2024, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is directed by celebrated filmmaker Raoul Peck, best known for his BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro (2016). Narrated by Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield, it documents the life of Ernest Cole (1940–1990), the South African photographer whose groundbreaking work exposed the horrors of Apartheid-era South Africa to a world audience. The film recounts Cole’s wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence and complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. Through his photographs, writings, and audio from the expanded Cole archive, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found paints an intimate portrait of a remarkable photographer who is finally getting his dues.

Finally, on 21 March is Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other. Nominated for two British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), the film is the story of artist couple Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett. Meyerowitz (84) is a world-renowned photographer. British-born Barrett (75) is a talented but less recognised artist and writer. Thirty years after a chance encounter, Maggie and Joel are still very much in love. But there is a knot of unease in their relationship, which is further strained when Maggie falls and breaks her leg and Joel becomes her caregiver. In the shadow of mortality, each with a long and dramatic life behind them, the hard truths of life together provoke in Maggie and Joel an attempt to find a shared inner-peace while there is still time. With unique access to the couple’s lives, directors Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet have created a profoundly moving film about living, creating and loving. 

A trailer for I am Martin Parr is available here: TRAILER

More details or to arrange a screening see here: https://releasing.dogwoof.com/

A new book looks at the history of polar exploration. Of particular note to BPH readers are a number of chapters of photographic interest which show and discuss the Goodsir daguerreotype and Adamson calotype of him, Challenger expedition icebergs, an early Beechey Island image, the Franklin daguerreotypes, Antarctic stereoviews, a pre-1900 Antarctica photo, and Ponting's kinematograph, although historic photography features throughout. The book has been researched and written by Anne Strathie who will be known to BPH readers through her recent biography of Herbert Ponting. 

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects. From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age
Anne Strathie
£22.00
The History Press, 2024
https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/a-history-of-polar-exploration-in-50-objects/

This year - 2025 - marks the fiftieth anniversary of two significant British photography institutions. 2025 marks Four Corners’ 50th anniversary. A programme of events and exhibitions looking into its radical heritage and looking forward to its future. The year also marks fifty years since the Fox Talbot Musuem opened in Lacock on 28 June 1975.The Museum will be hosting an exhibition from May of the little known colour photography of Werner Bischof and has exciting plans for the museum and gardens. A short history is in preparation. 

Separately to British photography, 2025 sees the centenary of the launch of the Leica camera in spring 1925. Leica will, no doubt, be commemorating this significant anniversary in Wetlzar and across the world.   

If you know if other significant anniversaries please comment below. 

Image: the Fox Talbot Museum from the Museum's Newsletter (Summer 1977, No.1)

The photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen received an Member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to photography in the New Year's Honours announced earlier this week. She was also recognised with a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship in November. 

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen has worked in Britain since the 1960s. Born in Finland, Konttinen moved to London to study film in the late 1960s at the Regent Street Polytechnic. In 1968, she co-founded the Amber Film and Photography Collective, which moved to Newcastle in 1969. Konttinen’s series Byker (1969–1983) and Writing in the Sand (1978–1998) document the devastating impact of Newcastle’s East End redevelopment on the local community alongside the moments of joy and escapism that the beaches of Whitley Bay and Tynemouth provided. In 1980 Konttinen became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in China. Her next project Step by Step, was a study of girls and their mothers at a dance school in North Shields, and their later lives after leaving the school. This series became a heavy influence in Lee Hall's development and writing for his play Dancer, which later became the cult coming-of-age film Billy Elliot. Her other long-term projects include Byker Revisited and The Coal Coast plus related films.

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's work is in numerous collections and, she has been seen in a number of recent exhibtiions in Britain, Europe and the United States in recent years. She is included in Tate's The 1980s on show until 5 May.  She continues to work and her earlier projects are rightly recognised as seminal and significant documentary photography. 

Sirkka-Liisa ROBERTS (Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen) Photographer. For services to Photography (North Shields, Tyne and Wear)

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen MBE HonFRPS

See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-year-honours-list-2025 and https://rps.org/about/awards/the-rps-awards-2024/rps-awards-2024-recipients/

Image: Portrait of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen by Liz Hingley

Now available in paperback. This book offers an analysis of the socio-historical conditions of the rise of postwar Italian photography, considers its practices, and outlines its destiny. Antonella Russo provides an incisive examination of Neorealist photography, delineates its periodization, traces its instances and its progressive popularization and subsequent co-optation that occurred with the advent of the industrialization of photographic magazines. This volume examines the ethno(photo)graphic missions of Ernesto De Martino in the deep South of Italy, the key role played by the Neorealist writer and painter Carlo Levi as "ambassador of international photography", and the journeys of David Seymour, Henry Cartier Bresson, and Paul Strand in Neorealist Italy. The text includes an account the formation and proliferation of Italian photographic associations and their role in institutionalizing and promoting Italian photography, their link to British and other European photographic societies, and the subsequent decline of Neorealism. It also considers the inception of non-objective photography that thrived soon after the war, in concurrence with the circulation of Neorealism, thus debunking the myth identifying all Italian postwar photography with the Neorealist image.

This book will be particularly useful for scholars and students in the history and theory of photography, and Italian history.

To purchase it : Italian Neorealist Photography: Its Legacy and Aftermath - 1st Edition 

If you wish to write a review of it to be published on a photography magazine/ journal or a photo blog do write to: info@antonellarusso.it  to get a free complementary copy

visit:

https://youtu.be/FVQX-ix3o_E?si=jhKfafURxyayKprA

https://youtu.be/FVQX-ix3o_E?si=Pyvn5Vgz2BjAq3g1

Italian Neorealist PhotographyIts Legacy and Aftermath
Antonella Russo
Routledge, £31.99
https://www.routledge.com/Italian-Neorealist-Photography-Its-Legacy-and-Aftermath/Russo/p/book/9781032180403

The obituary below will help reflect the life of a good friend and wonderful photographer PAUL CAPONIGRO.

The photo was taken in 1978  on a workshop when Paul was showing me(beard) and participants his 5x7 camera.

He was one our early workshop leaders at The Photographers Place in Derbyshire where he lead workshops in 1978 and 1980. I was also involved with an exhibition of his work at The Watermans Art Centre in the 80s, and was chair of an accompanying seminar with Paul and Thomas Joshua Cooper. He was a generous human being, great teacher and his seminal photographic art speaks for itself. I first met him in 1975 at his home in New Mexico with his wife Eleanor. He and Eleanor, who worked at a museum in the area, were wonderful hosts to Tom Cooper and me. We were compiling interviews for Dialogue with Photography and he wanted to know if we were going to interview him. "No, you're far too young - you're only 8 years older than me!" I told him much to Tom's amusement.

But it is always the amusing and quirky anedotes that reveal much more than eulogies and dates. Fay Godwin came to Bradbourne to watch Paul print in my darkroom and was delighted that he confirmed that her approach and technique in the wet darkroom matched his. Cream teas featured heavily on our field trips in the Peak District National Park, but it was one episode that I and the participants will remember on Stanton Moor near an ancient stone circle. He genuinely believed in wood nymphs, but I digress. I pointed out three abandoned round millstones and he was away. Out came his 5x7 former New York press camera (he liked it because it had a cartridge for dark slides that tumbled into it after use) and tripod and dark cloth. The millstones were under the branches of a silver birch, but one fell over the top of the upright stones. In a flash he marched over to the tree and snapped off the branch. One of the more sensitive nature-loving participants, who had been enthralled watching his hero, exclaimed: "Why did you do that,Paul?" "I was just improving on Nature," he replied, which proved that despite his legendary spiritual credentials he was more a photographer than an environmentalist. After all, we know that the photograph is the event and the experience, and will last longer than the tree if you tone and wash the print properly.....😉

During my daily research into the history of photography, its origins, and tools, I came across this photograph in 2019. I found it among a pile of old photos, magazines, and newspapers, almost falling apart, in one of the antique and secondhand markets in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Intrigued by the photograph, I began investigating its history with only the name of the studio and the country printed on it. My initial findings indicated that the photo was taken between 1880 and 1884 in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, by a photographer renowned in academic and artistic photographic circles worldwide and in Romania’s photographic culture, Franz Duschek.

I often delve into the history of photographs and cameras to document them and deepen my understanding of their historical, artistic, and technical contexts. These insights later serve as material for my research articles on the history of photography. However, what caught my attention and piqued my curiosity about this particular photograph was the embroidered attire of the woman in the image. The dress bore a striking resemblance to traditional Palestinian embroidered garments, known as the "thobe," as well as the attire of the broader Levant region. This resemblance prompted me to investigate further.

I began questioning whether the woman could have been from a migrant generation from the Levant, specifically Palestine, to Romania. Research revealed that a significant number of Palestinian and Levantine families had migrated to Romania and neighboring countries during the Ottoman presence along the Black Sea coasts. After a brief investigation, I found that the traditional Romanian attire closely resembled, almost to an astonishing degree, the Palestinian embroidered thobe and traditional clothing from other Levantine countries. While this resemblance was intriguing, I did not delve deeply into the possible cultural influences between Palestinian or Levantine migrants and Romanian folk attire, as it was outside the scope of my research. Nevertheless, I hope that someone might someday explore whether the ancient Canaanite Palestinian thobe influenced Romanian folkloric dress.

The most surprising discovery about this photograph came when I searched the Romanian National Archives for historical photographs using the time period and the photographer’s name. I found that the image I had was of Queen Pauline Elisabeth of Romania. She had a passion for photographing herself in traditional Romanian attire to present herself to Romanian society as one of their own, as she was of German descent. Pauline Elisabeth became a princess after marrying a Romanian prince in the 1860s and later ascended as Queen of Romania when her husband, King Carol, was crowned in 1881, marking the establishment of the Romanian monarchy.

This photograph is one of the rare copies, most of which were directly sent to the queen or kept in the royal archive. Some were distributed by the royal palace as gifts to princes, princesses, and the aristocracy of Romania on national occasions, along with other photographs of the king and the royal family. Therefore, finding a copy of such a photograph among a heap of deteriorating papers, newspapers, and magazines is an extraordinarily rare occurrence. My search into the storage locations of such royal photographs revealed that the original copies are preserved only in Romania’s historical archives and the Romanian Museum.

What adds even more fascination to this story is that the queen in the photograph, before becoming a princess, during her time as a princess, and even after her coronation as queen, was an accomplished poet. She wrote and published poetry in German, French, English, and Romanian under her literary pseudonym "Carmen Sylva," a name well-known in German literary circles in particular and European and Romanian literary circles in general. After her coronation, she earned the title of "The Literary Queen."

The photographer Franz Duschek, who captured this image, was one of the most celebrated and renowned photographers in Bucharest. Although not Romanian himself, he became known across Europe for his artistic indoor portraits, taken either in his studio or in the homes of wealthy aristocrats and the royal family. Duschek also gained particular fame for his children’s portraits, considered some of the most challenging to capture. He would often use sweets and toys to distract the children from the camera.

In 1883, Duschek decided to leave Romania due to health issues exacerbated by the cold climate. Seeking a milder environment, he moved to Alexandria, Egypt, after selling all his possessions in Bucharest. Unfortunately, Duschek passed away a year later in Alexandria.

Sources differ regarding his birthplace and place of death. Some suggest he was born in Prague, while others claim Budapest. Similarly, his death is variably reported as having occurred in Suez or Alexandria. What remains undisputed in all accounts is that Franz Duschek was an exceptional and pioneering photographer who left behind a remarkable legacy in photographic art, particularly in portraiture. His iconic portraits of the "Literary Queen," Carmen Sylva, remain a testament to his artistry.

By Mohammad Hannon / originaly written in Arabic and published in Arabic newspapers.

Palestinian-Jordanian Photographer

Early Visual Media Lab — CICANT, from Lusofona University, together with the International Panorama Council and the Art History Institute (IHA, NOVA-FCSH/IN2PAST) invite scholars, artists, panorama enthusiasts and visual media researchers to submit proposals for presentations that explore the theme “The World at a Glance. Panoramic and Peep Technologies.’” This recasting of Robert Barker’s original title for his invention (1787), “Nature at a Glance” (in French, “La Nature à Coup d’ Oeil”), will explore the modern desire to experience the world visually through panoramic or peep technologies and to embark in virtual travels. Panoramas and panoramic imagery shared these early immersive experiences with (itinerant) peepshows, cosmoramas, neoramas, dioramas, and, among others, in the domestic space, zograscopes, stereoscopic photography, graphoscopes and polyoramas. These theatres of visuality were key achievements in art, education and science, fostering visual curiosity and new skills of looking. Either engaging a distant or a proximate gaze, requiring lenses or a specific vantage point on a viewing platform, these technologies made the world in all its aspects admirable and available at a glance. In addition to challenging the visual sensorium, panoramic and peep technologies often intersected and mobilized a synesthesic universe. By exploring their coexistence and intermediality, new light will be shed on the visual cultures and worldviews they promoted. 

This next IPC conference in Lisbon will showcase such intersections and remediations with the exhibition The Cosmorama: The 19th-Century Hidden Travels, held at the Portuguese Cinematheque. Curated by the research project Curiositas. Peeping Before Virtual Reality, this exhibition will draw on extensive historical research that unearthed the cultural history of the European Cosmoramas. It will include physical and virtual recreations of cosmorama rooms, showcasing Panorama and Cosmorama artists such as Hubert Sattler from Salzburg.

We welcome proposals for field reports, creative presentations, media presentations, and scholarly papers of up to 20 minutes in length that focus on panoramic or/and peep technologies, their specificities, intermedialities, socio-cultural and political roles, as well as their current digital and virtual cultures, and their conservation, display and mediation challenges.    

The IPC conference will present a diverse range of session topics based on the proposals, as well as workshops, round tables and visits. It will be of interest to academics, professionals, students and enthusiasts of art, visual media, art history, conservation and preservation, cultural heritage, design, history, museum practice, panorama management, restoration, virtual reality, and visual culture, as well as to thinkers and makers from other disciplines or whose work is transdisciplinary with an interest in immersive and peep media, media archaeology or any other related field. 

Full details: https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/stereo/announcement/view/219

The London Archives and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have announced a unique collaboration that will - for the first time ever - showcase their impressive collections alongside one another. From summer 2025, the London Archives - formerly the London Metropolitan Archives - will host some of the most popular items from the RIBA Collections, one of the largest architectural collections in the world, alongside the archives’ collections of books, documents, manuscripts, maps, images, and photographs.

The partnership will coincide with the temporary closure in April 2025 of RIBA’s renowned library to enable the refurbishment of RIBA’s London headquarters at 66 Portland Place, as part of its House of Architecture transformation programme.

The collaboration will help ensure that RIBA’s collections currently housed at Portland Place remain accessible to users, and within short distance, during the building’s closure period.

The partnership will allow RIBA to utilise our state-of-the-art conservation and digitisation spaces, ensuring that vital work on conserving rare books and digitising RIBA’s collections continues seamlessly during the refurbishment of 66 Portland Place.Executive Director of Architecture Programmes & Collections at RIBA, Oliver-Urquhart Irvine said: 'Our partnership with The London Archives is an exciting step towards ensuring that our invaluable collections are as widely accessible and well-cared for as possible. This collaboration is not only about preserving access to RIBA’s collections while we undertake the transformative refurbishment of 66 Portland Place, but also inspiring new discoveries and connecting more deeply with architectural professionals, researchers, students, and the public – indeed, anyone with an interest in, or passion for, architecture. Together, we will unlock exciting opportunities that showcase the dynamic interplay of architecture, history, and culture.'

See: https://www.thelondonarchives.org/your-research/riba-at-the-london-archives

Image: Oaklands Estate, Poynders Road, Eastman House, 1936. London Picture Archive - 265971

Professor Annebella Pollen's covid-delayed inaugural professorial lecture will take place on 5 March in Brighton. She will be talking through and reflecting on some of her core interests and major projects of the last 20 years, and pose the questions: What kind of stories can historic images and objects tell us about the past? When objects and images are preserved, in personal collections or in institutional archives, what kinds of futures are they expected to serve? And what happens when those stories get lost, or those histories are forgotten?

For over two decades, Professor Pollen has built a series of studies that reinterpret undervalued collections and examine visual and material culture that has been pushed to the margins. From photographs found in end-of-life house clearances to the visual archives of utopian movements, she questions what gets wasted and saved, what gets culturally consecrated and what gets overlooked. The lecture reflects on how we use images and objects to narrate our lives, and how seeing and feeling historic images and objects can offer fresh perspectives for the present day.

The talk will be recorded and made available after the event. 

Images, objects and their afterlives
Professor Annebella Pollen
Wednesday 5 March 2025 at 6.30pm
Sallis Benney Theatre,
University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade,
Brighton, BN2 0JY
Free event. All are welcome, but register: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research/research-news/films-and-publications/inaugural-lectures/professor-annebella-pollen.aspx

The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum is recruitng for two postdoctoral posts to support the work of Professor Helen M Hanson (Project Lead), and the project team on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project: Women’s Screen Work in the Archives Made Visible (2024-2028). The two roles are: Postdoctoral Research Associate (Archives) and Postdoctoral Research Associate (Curation). 

The Project researches the work of British women filmmakers in the British Film Institute National Archive at the Conservation Centre, Berkhamsted and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter. It aims to make their work more discoverable in film-related archives through innovative archival practice, and to translate their work to public audiences through curation of exhibitions in film museum contexts

You will work primarily with the Project Lead (Helen M Hanson) and BFI Project Co-Lead (Wendy Russell) in the BFI National Archive (Conservation Centre, Berkhamsted), spending approximately 3 days per week at the archive during the project. You will become familiar with archival practice at the BFI and will have the opportunity to apply this to agreed collections. You will innovate and test feminist approaches to archiving and will contribute to cataloguing collections of selected women filmmakers (such as Tina Gharavi, and Gurinder Chadha). You will also disseminate the research findings of your work by engaging a range of audiences: the archival community, academics and wider publics.

Details: https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/etrec179gf.open?WVID=171839ediw&LANG=USA and https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/etrec179gf.open?WVID=171839ediw&LANG=USA

Dogs in Early Photography  is based on Koh’s extensive collection of early dog photography, now donated to the Bodleian. Dogs explores the physicality of the dog, the human obsession with breed, and how pet dogs came to reflect the status and personality of their owners. Most importantly, this collection celebrates the unique relationship between humans and dogs, as photographs, either purposely or accidentally, capture the charm and endless appeal of dogginess across breeds, class, roles, and time.

The selections from the collection that prompted this book show a variety of dogs in settings ranging from the studio to the field and stream. They demonstrate the difficulty in capturing a moving subject in early photographic formats ranging from unique daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes in the 1850s to popular cartes de visite after the middle of the century. It also explores the physicality of the dog, the human obsession with breed, and how pet dogs came to reflect the status and personality of their owners. But most importantly, this collection celebrates the unique relationship between humans and dogs, as photographs, either purposely or accidentally, capture the charm and endless appeal of dogginess across breeds, class, roles and time.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Library said: 'This book is most eloquent in celebrating the art of collecting. Having been a librarian involved in special collections for almost 40 years (and for 35 of those a customer of Bernard Quaritch), I have never encountered such a niche collecting area so beautifully executed into a fully-fledged collection (and in such a short space of time).’

A noted book collector, John Koh has spent years building a vast private collection of photographs and other historical ephemera, including the many nineteenth-century photographs of dogs which are presented in this new book. John Koh is the owner of Bernard Quaritch Ltd and has long been a Friend of the Bodleian and a member of the Bodleian Advisory Board.

Dogs in Early Photography
John Koh
Bernard Quaritch Ltd, 2024
£50
See: https://www.quaritch.com/books/koh-john/dogs-in-early-photography/U68/

From popular photo-magazines published for British citizens, to wall newspapers and pamphlets addressing Indian audiences, a wealth of dynamic visual propaganda in multiple languages and formats was produced to communicate Allied war aims and progress across the globe. Following the surrender of Japan, the machinery of ‘public information’ directed its work (including the network of photographers and the range of photographic outputs) towards the question of colonialism in the postwar world. 

The enormous resources commanded by this initiative, as well as the wealth of institutional archives and published artefacts left behind, evidence the faith placed in visual communications in this period. The continued postwar commitment to the value of visual propaganda is seen in the public relations work of the United Nations. Yet, its relevance for the era of decolonisation has yet to be researched in depth. 

This project addresses the use of official photography and commercial photojournalism in visual propaganda concerning British India (now Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) during the Second World War and up to Partition.  

This project invites candidates to: 

• Assess the centrality of photography to the evolution of public information campaigns about British India and for diverse Indian audiences.  
• Critically analyse the aims and activity of the people and institutions involved in producing visual propaganda, and the photographic material circulated. 
• Examine the interactive roles of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, the MOI (London) and the Bureau of Public Information (Delhi).  

Aiming to deliver a new cultural history of public information work between war and empire and assessing the relevance of wartime experience to postwar developments for the first time, this project will make a significant contribution to a developing research field addressing visual propaganda and British imperialism (e.g., Chandrika Kaul, James Ryan, Gabrielle Moser).  

Research questions

Drawing on the successful student’s interests, expertise and language skills, the project will bring exciting new interdisciplinary perspectives to the study of pioneering visual propaganda both catalysed by the anti-fascist struggle, but also marked by twentieth-century European colonialism.  

The project will address the following key research questions: 

• Which professional photographers, publications and networks were engaged in the production and circulation of visual propaganda depicting and directed at soldiers and civilians in British India?  
• What was the relationship between official departments such as the Ministry of Information (London) and the Bureau of Public Information (Delhi) in this period? 
• To what extent were Indian photographers being trained, commissioned or employed to record the war effort and the impact of the conflict?
• What photographic publications, pamphlets and artefacts were produced? And what differences can be traced in how the war and the postwar moment were represented in the UK and India?  
• What research methods and historiographical frameworks best facilitate critical examination of the genesis, aims and legacies of visual propaganda across the British Empire? 

Supervisory team

• Helen Mavin, Head of Photographs, IWM hmavin@iwm.org.uk.  
• Dr Gajendra Singh, Exeter University, g.singh@exeter.ac.uk.  
• Dr Tom Allbeson, Cardiff University allbesont@cardiff.ac.uk. 

Full details here: https://www.sww-ahdtp.ac.uk/collaborative-doctoral-award-cda-projects-2024-2025/war-photography-empire/