Blogs

A photo album containing 58 albumen prints of Cambridge University taken for William Winfield, circa 1870, was recently acquired by Kimberly Blaker, owner and president of New Boston Fine and Rare Books, at auction. If you can identify any of the colleges, buildings, and landscapes in these photographs that have not been identified, please feel free to contact them (info@NewBostonFineandRareBooks.com). 

The photos can be viewed here, or the entire album can be bought from them here.

Photo: Cambridge University, Bridge of Sighs, St. John

Our world is constantly in motion. The National Media Museum’s exhibition In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement explores our fascination with movement and the desire to capture it through photography, film, television and new media.

Showing from 9 March to 2 September 2012, this free-to-enter multimedia exhibition  showcases the Museum’s unrivalled National Collections alongside specially commissioned works by contemporary artists. It reveals the many ways motion has been captured and simulated through a variety of moving images and images of movement, and examines the relationships between art, science, entertainment, sport and historical record.

In the Blink of an Eye is the National Media Museum’s contribution to imove, Legacy Trust UK’s cultural programme for Yorkshire, and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. With this programme Legacy Trust UK is creating a lasting cultural legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games across the UK.

The exhibition offers a unique opportunity for people of all ages to understand more about how movement has been captured and displayed – from Victorian optical toys like the zoetrope, to a CGI motion-capture suit. It will feature new artworks and many rare objects and images from the National Collections of Photography, Television, Cinematography and New Media.

Classic images by photographers as diverse Harold Edgerton, Eadweard Muybridge, Roger Fenton, Richard Billingham and Oscar Rejlander will be shown alongside historic items of equipment, films and interactive displays. The exhibition also examines how high- speed, time-lapse and time slice photography have revealed a world invisible to the naked eye.

For the newly commissioned pieces, artists Quayola and Memo Akten will be unveiling Forms, an interactive video installation inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s seminal studies of movement. Bob Levene and Anne-Marie Culhane have created Time Frame an artwork filmed at the UK Olympic training centre in Loughborough. Barnet Fair is a new animation by Jo Lawrence, which is inspired by the theme of the exhibition.

Together they tell the fascinating story of media and movement.

Image: The Juggler, c1860, Oscar Gustav Rejlander
© Royal Photographic Society collection at the National Media Museum

In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement

9 March-2 September 2012

National Media Museum, Bradford

We've just sent out the latest edition of our Newsletter - which gives details of our forthcoming Fair on February 26th  and confirms the date for our final event of the year - November 11th.  To read the Newsletter please click here - or to sign up to join our mailing list click here. Anyone joining the mailing list will be entered in a draw for a £100 voucher to be spent at the Fair. (Image courtesy of Christophe Lunn.)

Your local Police Needs You! Yes, you!  

And to be precise, it's the Essex Police Museum. Their collection consists of objects, paper documents and photographs relating to the history of the force from 1840 to the present day. They are now looking for a committed and enthusiastic volunteer to identify and document their photographic collection.

This position is a great opportunity to get an insight to work with a museum collection and see how a small museum operates. Knowledge of Microsoft Office programmes Word, and Access are essential and it is desirable for the volunteer to have an interest in museums and history. 
The Volunteer will be expected to: 
- To assist with the documentation of the museum’s photographic collection 
- To identify and record photographs onto an electronic database 
- To file and organise the collection within the museum store 
- Attend the Essex Police Museum at times and days of the week as agreed with the Volunteer Supervisor in advance. (Monday - Friday daytime) 
- Carry out work at home if desirable.

The closing date for this position is Monday 20th February 2012 at 4pm. 
Interviews will take place the week beginning February 27. Please email curator, Becky Wash, at museum@essex.pnn.police.uk for an application form. 

PS. They are also looking for a Birthday Party Organiser too!

Partridges auctioneers of Macclesfield, Cheshire, is holding an auction called The Great Exhibition Auction 1851 to Present Day on 11 February 2012. The auction includes printed material, ceramics, posters, textiles and, of particular interest to BPH readers is an extensive collection of some 10,000 stereo cards, lanterns slides and photographs. The auction begins with the 1851 Great Exhibition and continues with all the major international and national exhibitions up to date. The auction is the property of one collector.

For more details and the online catalogue see: http://www.adampartridge.co.uk/lots/  

Duke's of Dorchester in Dorset will be offering for sale in their 12th April auction, a previously unseen photograph of Winston Churchill on a horse following his daring escape from a prison camp during the Boer War. Dated around 1899, it has been consigned for sale by the descendants of Arthur Knight, a trained photographer who was the son of pioneer diamond miner William Knight. It is thought that the photo was taken either by him or his mentor, David Barnett.

Wandsworth Museum presents Portrait of London, a new photography exhibition, presenting a collection of fascinating historic images from both the Museum of London’ and the Wandsworth Museum, never before seen together.

The images, on loan from the Museum of London, include dozens of images dating back to the 19^th century. The collection highlights include the earliest known photographic image of London from 1839, a captivating photo of a Suffragette stand at the woman’s exhibition of 1909 and a view of Trafalgar square from 1857 taken by Roger Fenton who is regarded as the most pular and influential British photographer of the 1850s.

In addition to Museum of London’ images, the exhibition will also include an exciting selection of historic photos of the Borough of Wandsworth from Wandsworth Museum’s own collection.  Most of the photos have not been exhibited for over a decade. These 19^th and early 20^th century images are drawn from all reaches of the borough: Balham, Battersea, Earlsfield, Putney, Roehampton, Southfields, Tooting and Wandsworth.

The exhibition offers a glimpse of a forgotten London and gives visitors the chance to see some of London’s iconic historical buildings before they were demolished - delving into the development of one of the world’s greatest cities. The images of Wandsworth allow local visitors to discover how their neighbourhood has changed over the decades.

Portrait of London                                                                     

Historic Photographs of London & Wandsworth

 8 March - 12 August 2012   

£4 Adults and £3 Concession, Children 6 and under are Free

Wandsworth Museum, Open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00am – 5:00pm.

38 West Hill SW18 1RX.

Tube: East Putney; Rail: Wandsworth Town or Putney; Bus: 28, 37, 39, 44, 87, 156, 170, 220, 270, 337, 485.

BBC Two Daytime has commissioned Reef Television to produce Britain's First Photo Album, a 10x30-minute series on the extraordinary achievement of Francis Frith, the pioneer Victorian photographer who embarked upon a colossal project to photograph as much of the United Kingdom as possible during the second half of the 19th century. The series will air from 12-23 March 2012. 

The pictures taken by Frith and his staff are viewed as one of the first and most comprehensive pictorial records of the UK, a wonderfully evocative record of our shared history, and equally a present-day insight into the social landscape of Britain.

Presented by John Sergeant, each episode will focus on four storylines, all inspired by a Frith photo. Over the series, 40 of Frith's best images will be showcased, demonstrating his remarkable endeavour to visually capture Britain on camera, along with another 40 new ones that John will take himself.

To get to the heart of each picture, John will look to unfold the significance of each image, bringing them to life by meeting present day people who have a connection to these stories from the past. Each show will have a fascinating mix of different stories, taking us on a journey across Britain.

This is the first time Frith's collection has been brought together in one series, and so Britain's First Photo Album will offer viewers a look back on this astonishing visual record of our nation: at what has changed; at what remains the same, and ultimately, what it tells us about who we are today.

A book with the same title will be published in February to accompany the series. John Buck of The Francis Frith Collection said: “We are delighted to be part of this project, which showcases our archive photographs in such an entertaining way. This tie-in book from the TV series will link the evocative Frith images with an insight into present-day Britain, forming a fascinating record of our shared history and the social landscape of our country, past and present.”

The book will include a selection of Frith’s photos, plus those taken by Sergeant of the same locations in the present day. Each chapter will focus on four storylines inspired by Frith’s photographs, as Sergeant travels the country to meet those with a connection to the images. Sergeant will also write a foreword.

In addition to the television programmes and book, and to harness the enthusiasm generated from the programme, BBC Learning is  working with a range of partners, including museums, libraries and historical societies to support free events which will tie in to the series. The programme airs at the beginning of March, with a call to action at the beginning of the series, and events will take place from the weekend 16-18 March.

How you can get involved

Organisations will be encouraged to host events and activities which encourage the public to find out about their local heritage and the history of photography. There are lots of ways to get involved - host an event or talk, design a walk, showcase local photographer’s work or the work of Francis Frith and much more.

BBC Learning is producing a number of resourses to support events and activities of many sizes these include:

 - Suggested Activity Guide

- Marketing Materials e.g. Posters and Postcards

- Souvenir learning booklets to accompany the series

- Stickers

- Downloadable bunting

Want more information?

If you are planning to run a Britain’s First Photo Album event, open workshop or exhibition the team can also offer support and help add your event to the Things To Do website, www.bbc.co.uk/thingstodo  

If you would like more details about Britain’s First Photo Album, or would like to order resources, please email:  britainsfirstphotoalbum@bbc.co.uk

Designed by award-winning Irish architects O'Donnnell + Tuomey, the building features three dedicated floors of gallery spaces. By doubling the exhibition area we will be able to showcase established and high-profile artists alongside emerging photographic talent from around the world.

Situated at the heart of the building is the education floor, which will host a busy schedule of talks, workshops and events as well as a Study Room.

Complementing the exhibition and education floors will be new spaces for the Bookshop, Print Sales Room and Café, creating a lively street level meeting place.

Find out more

As many researchers and museum visitors will be aware the National Media Museum's Insight research centre has been closed while the Collections were reorganised. Insight has just re-opened. Brian Liddy, Curator of Collections Access, explains what has happened - and why it needed to happen...

'The Search for Eugenia Fynch - the story of Norfolk's unknown Victorian photographers' is the first book produced by the Acle Community Archive Group (ACAG) with the support of the Norfolk County Council Library and Information Service. It was published on 8th September 2011. 

The book recounts the forgotten story of a family of Victorian photographers and in reproducing over 100 of the stunning photographic images of the Finch family, depict the social history of Norfolk over almost three decades from 1860 to 1888. Photographs include views of Acle, Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Thetford, Aylsham, Cromer and many villages in the Broadland area such as Blofield, Cantley, Reedham, Fleggburgh, Winterton, Rollesby and Filby. It is a compelling tale of the fortitude and entrepreneurship of a struggling Victorian family that will be of interest to social, family and photographic historians alike.

The book can be purchased through Ebay.

No, not your next Terminator sci-fi sequel from Schwarzenegger, but New York Public Library's own take on its collection of 19^th century stereograms. The term comes from the combination of "stereogram plus animate".

Through this website, NYPL provides access to a wide selection of its archive of stereogram images, including shots of city architecture, outdoor landscapes, and even a few photos taken inside museums to bring it to 'life'. Users select composition and speed, creating an animated GIF that flickers between the two stereogram frames, giving the impression of 3D.

Give it a try yourself through the website here, and you can read an article on the artist who inspired the library to create the project here too.

And if you are hooked on these animated stereograms, check this website here too for some amazing ones by the Japanese photographer, T Enami, who shot 3D stereoviews of Japan during the Meiji Period.

Last on public view in 1913, this is the largest collection of Ponting’s original carbon prints assembled for nearly a century!
The Atlas Gallery, Marylebone, will unveil a major collection of rare vintage photographs – the original prints taken from the negatives in 1913 - by Herbert G. Ponting, the official expedition photographer of the infamous British Antarctic “Terra Nova” Expedition to the South Pole, lead by Captain Robert Falcon Scott between 1910–1912.  In total over 50 images by Herbert Ponting and Captain Scott will be on display.

The unique selling exhibition - The Great White South - will offer collectors the opportunity to purchase these valuable antique Carbon Print Photographs, which range in price from £12,000 - £27,000. The original 1913 carbon prints on display, which are in exceptional condition, have not been exhibited publicly for nearly 100 years, and many remain in their original Edwardian frames.  The Atlas Gallery show is the largest exhibition of Ponting’s original Polar photographic prints assembled since first being displayed at the Fine Art Exhibitions between 1913 and 1915.

The Atlas Gallery’s selling exhibition is from the collection of antique photography collector Richard Kossow, who started collecting Ponting’s polar photographs over 25 years ago.  Kossow, a Literary Dealer, had his interest in Ponting’s photography sparked through his research into the diaries and memoirs of the Edwardian Polar explorers.  After finding many of Ponting’s original prints in appalling states of decay, he devoted his collecting towards finding Ponting’s best-preserved original photographs, wherever possible in their original frames. These museum-quality works are exclusively represented by the ATLAS Gallery.

In addition to the collection of the original carbon prints produced in 1913, there will also be a new limited edition collection of 48 platinum prints, published in a special portfolio in association with the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, available for purchase.  Handmade from Ponting’s original negatives, the prints will be exhibited with specially commissioned essays by experts including author and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, which provide a fascinating insight into the incredible story behind these remarkable photographs.  The platinum print portfolios are priced at £25,000 for the complete portfolio with individual prints from around £800.

The official press release, including the price list, can be found here, and details of the exhibition here.

A case, heard at the Patents County Court in London on 12 January, could have serious implications for photographers, according to photographic copyright expert Charles Swan, a lawyer at Swan Turton, who said: 'His honour Judge Birss QC decided that a photograph of a red London bus against a black and white background of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with a blank sky, was similar enough to another photograph of the same subject matter to infringe copyright.'

Hence, photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind. You can read the rest of the article in this Amateur Photographer report here.

The Star newspaper reports on Simon Robinson's collection of photographs taken by street photographers which is 'exciting' officials at the National Media Museum which is organising an exhibition on them in 2012. A book is also being published.

Simon Robinson had been collecting old photos for more than three decades when, two years ago, his sister noticed something rather peculiar. Among the thousands of snaps bought in bulk from antique shops, jumble sales and postcard fairs were hundreds of strikingly similar pictures of people walking along town streets. They featured different subjects in different places from different decades but the style was always virtually identical – person mid-stride, rarely looking at the camera, urban-life carrying on all around them.

“I hadn’t noticed the similarities before,” says the 57-year-old of Stannington. “But I was fascinated – especially because some were clearly taken in Sheffield. I had no idea what the connection was.” Two years on, his quest to find out has seen him travel across the country, discover hundreds more photos, and will, this year, result in a unique book which is already exciting officials at Bradford’s National Media Museum... The full report can be found here: http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/the-diary/a_brisk_walk_down_memory_lane_1_4176252

Simon is still looking for more ‘walkies’ for the book. If you have one which might be suitable email admin@easyontheeye.net or call 0114 233 3024.

Colin Harding, Curator at the National Media Museum has undertaken extensive research into 'walkies', the photographers and companies which led to the exhibition Sunny Snaps. 

If you happen to be in Jo'burg this summer, do try and pop into this unique museum located on the top floor of Museum Africa along Bree Street, Newtown. Established in 1968, the collection includes more than 400 antique cameras, 5,000 photographs and 2,000 photographic books, dating back to 1860 - all of these were part of a 30-year collection donated to the museum by Dr Arthur Bensusan, an amateur photographer and one-time Johannesburg mayor, in 1968.

It houses spy cameras from the 1800s, a camera that once belonged to Winston Churchill, as well as what may well be the first official war photograph, a Crimean War scene taken in 1854. There is also a display on the development of cinematography. For those research/ephermera fans, there is a specialised library filled with photographic cuttings, pamphlets, journals, books and magazines on the work of photographers, their equipment and processes and techniques. The book collection is broad and includes reference works, how-to guides in many fields, and a large collection of the published work of photographers.

One of their star attractions on display is the negative of the oriel window in Lacock Abbey by Fox Talbot.  It was purchased by the City of Joburg from Bensusan back in 1970 for R860.

Details of the Museum can be found here.

How do we tell the story of photography’s beginnings? Who invented the medium? When and where was the first photograph made? What shaped the earliest ideas about and conventions of photography? Why do we ask such questions?

Friday, April 27, 2012
9:30am-5:30pm

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Teleconference Lecture Hall, Alexander Library

169 College Avenue

New Brunswick, NJ

Participants: Jordan Bear, University of Toronto; Mirjam Brusius, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Cambridge; Marcy Dinius, DePaul University; Anne McCauley, Princeton University; Terry Matilsky, Rutgers University; Julia Munro, Georgia Institute of Technology; Stephen Pinson, New York Public Library; Beth Saunders, CUNY Graduate Center; Shawn Michelle Smith, Art Institute of Chicago

Introductions by organizers Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Zervigón, Rutgers University

Sponsored by the Center for Cultural Analysis, School of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Vice President for Research at Rutgers University.
 
For more information, please visit http://cca.rutgers.edu or contact developingroom@gmail.com.
  
Photography&its Origins Poster

If you want to know what the connection is, then have a read of this interview with Brian May, whose exhibition is currently on at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol.

Organised in partnership with the National Media Museum and featuring photographs from the Collection of The Royal Photographic Society, this new exhibition to be held at the Holburne Museum in Bath surveys the many ways in which photographers have explored still life.

Entitled Art of Arrangement: Photography and the Still Life Tradition, it includes photographs by Ansel Adams, Harold Edgerton, Roger Fenton, T R Williams, Edward Steichen, William Henry Fox Talbot and Madame Yevonde, as well as contemporary photographers such as Chris Killip and Don McCullin.

Details of the exhibition can be found here, and the 3 accompanying exhibition talks are also listed in the Events section. The talks include former RPS Curator Pam Roberts talking about Roger Fenton.

Photo: Dessert, about 1923. Frederick G.Tutton. The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum

Brass, a Leeds-based marketing agency, has been appointed by the National Media Museum to help it launch and attract visitors to the museum new gallery called Life Online which will open in March 2012..
Life Online will be the world's first gallery to explore the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet and web. It will trace the history of the internet, show how it has changed people's lives and track the latest trends.

Brass is engaged to work with the National Media Museum, to devise digital content and social media strategies that will generate physical footfall to the gallery and provide long term interaction with various digital exhibits being created to keep the Life Online content up to date and relevant to changing trends and technological advances.

Mark Kelly, Andrew Brown and Ally Manock from Brass are also part of the Museum's Life Online Advisory Panel tasked with informing elements of the exhibition content and audience marketing.

Commenting on the creation of Life Online, Tom Woolley, curator of new media at the National Media Museum said, "Life Online is an exciting project which will be powered by ideas, thoughts and opinions of physical and virtual visitors to the gallery. We hope to create an invaluable and continuous public archive of society's relationship with the internet and web."

Mark Kelly, digital solutions director at Brass said, "This is a fascinating assignment for Brass to be associated with and will ensure that we remain at the forefront of knowledge with regard to the evolution of the internet and web based communications and how they change and impact on people's daily lives".