Now entering its 21st year, UK’s longest running photography festival will be returning next month with 40 exhibitions featuring more than 75 artists from across the globe. One of the highlights for this year will be an exhibition at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, co-curated by Simon Bainbridge, editor of the British Journal of Photography. The exhibition Time and Motion Studies features documentary work from six leading artists – Donald Weber, George Georgio, Manuel Vasquez, Robbie Cooper, Tim Hetherington and Vanessa Winship. They demonstrate the process between seeing a potential photo and making the conscious decision to take it. The exhibition will open with a panel discussion and Q&A with the artists.
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Well, apart from being pioneering Victorian photographers, they both seem to be on a lucky streak! After the report of Llewelyn's £2 million grant here, there is now news of the Heritage Lottery Fund awarding £40,000 to the community interest company, The Share Initiative (TSI), which is backing the display of Winterbourn's work.
Only around half of Winterbourn's 8,000 glass plates have been scanned to-date. The project, VIEW+, will chart the work of these images taken by him of Leominster and its surrounding villages. Schools, community groups and history societies could also benefit, while workshops will include help on how to interpret the images.
It is hoped the three-year project, leading up to the 100th anniversary of the First World War being declared, will give all ages the chance to learn what life in the county was like in previous generations.
The full news article can be found here.
Photo: Thomas Henry Winterbourn’s photograph of the construction of Dinmore tunnel.
I am an art historian, currently completing an article on an illustrated book - Jim Dine's photographic illustrations for Apollinaire's 'Le Poète assassiné', published in 1968. In one of the photographs included in the book, there is what I thought initially might be an acrylic paint tube - it is rather crumpled and it is hard to read the label properly. However some conservation experts agree that it is not any paint that they recognise and have suggested that it may in fact be a photographic product, perhaps a tube of retouching paint or something. It apparently seems larger than standard tubes of retouching paint, but just in case this is a photographic product, I wondered if there might be a member of this community who might be able to help me identify it! I include the photo here, and would be grateful for any light anyone can shed on it:
I have been involved in two projects recently which might be interesting to some of the members of this community. Over the past few years I have been compiling a bibliography, with excerpts and annotations, of articles about photography published in America and in England from 1839 to 1869; describing its practitioners and practices, and displaying the impacts of those activities and events upon the general culture of that time. I have reviewed more than 800 magazines and newspapers published in the United States and in Great Britain from January 1839 through December 1869 and indexed more than 300 of these titles which contained articles in which photography was featured, discussed or mentioned in some illuminating manner, or which acknowledged the use of the medium in the creation of at least some of their illustrations.
Although not completely finished I hope to complete this project within a year. For reasons too arcane to explain at this time this work is contained in a Microsoft Word file that is very close to 9000 pages in length when set in single-spaced 10 pt Arial typeface. I have not settled on the most effective way to publish the work. – as a self-published on-demand set of 3 or 4 volumes, or in a database on a cd disk, or as a subscription service electronic file, or with a traditional publisher, or in some manner I don’t even know about. Anyone in the community who is willing to offer advice or suggestions about the most useful formats for their purposes would be gratefully received.
The second project consists of my wife and I setting up an ETSY “store” named “vintagephotosjohnson” to sell off the collection of photographs we have gathered during the past forty years. That long ago many of these photographs were not considered to have any value and were often in danger of immediate destruction when we obtained them, on more than one occasion, one day ahead of the dumpster. Beyond the motive of preservation, as teachers of photographic history, one of our aims was to find examples that trace the history of photography from 1845 to the 1990s rather than specifically collect “rare and valuable” artwork. For us, it has always been “all about the image” and interesting images have always taken precedence over other factors that professional “collectors” display when considering their choices. Nevertheless we are posting literally hundreds of British photographs by Bedford, Frith, Valentine, Wilson and many others at the “vintagephotosjohnson” store site (As well as the works of other photographers.) To me, at least, many of these images seem “fresher” than others by similar photographers being offered by other dealers on-line, and we are trying to offer the items at prices that are reasonable for both the buyer and for us; so some good stuff is going pretty cheaply by today's standards. I am also attempting to set up a corresponding “blog” which would feature “exhibitions” from these images, excerpts from the bibliography, and discussions about photography in general. I am posting new stuff every week, so please feel free to look in on the site. I would appreciate any amplifications or comments or corrections that anyone might bring to these posted images.
BIOGRAPHICAL
STATEMENT
William Johnson began teaching the history of photography at Harvard University in 1970
while working as a professional librarian there; and since then has taught and
worked at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston College, the
Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, the International Museum of
Photography at George Eastman House, the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester,
NY, and elsewhere.
He wrote W. Eugene Smith: Master of the Photographic Essay (Aperture); eight of the sixteen chapters in Photography from 1839 to today George Eastman House, Rochester, NY (Taschen); The Pictures Are A Necessity:
Robert Frank in Rochester, NY November 1988 (Rochester Consortium, George Eastman House), and the self-published Horses, Sea Lions, and Other Creatures: Robert Frank, Dave Heath, Robert Heinecken and John Wood, with Susan E. Cohen.
He has organized more than thirty exhibitions and is the author or contributor to more than fifteen exhibition checklists or catalogs, including a half-dozen or so on W. Eugene Smith, as well as ... one thing just sort of led to another ...The Photography of Todd Walker; Lucien Aigner's Paris; More Than Meets the Eye: Landscape Photography 1850 – 1910 and John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning.
He has also
published extensive bibliographies on the photographers Lucien Aigner, Eugene
Atget, Carl Chiarenza, Walker Evans, Robert Heinecken, William H. Rau, W.
Eugene Smith, Southworth & Hawes, Edward Weston, Whipple & Black, John
Wood, and on the 1930s journal Photo Notes. He compiled and edited the annual International Photography Index (G. K.
Hall & Co.) from 1977 to 1980 and also published Nineteenth-Century Photography: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1879.
(G. K. Hall & Co.) Currently he is extending the range of
Nineteenth-Century Photography: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1879 by
compiling a large annotated bibliography of articles that indexes, annotates
and excerpts articles from more than 800 periodical and newspaper titles
published in America and Great Britain between 1835 and 1869.
A rare presentation album containing 42 sepia toned salt and albumen prints of Persia in 1860 by pioneering photographer Luigi Pesce fetched an impressive £39,000 (or £44,850 including premium) - more than double the estimate - at a Norfolk auction house last week. It drew bidders from afar, including France and the United States, before the hammer came down to a London dealer.
The images showed buildings such as mosques and palaces along with desert scenes, in a book inscribed to Sir Henry Rawlinson who was in Persia training the Shah’s troops. According to the Keys Aylsham sale room, only two similar books have ever come up for sale in the past - one given to William I of Prussia and the other to an Italian Count. Hence it was easy to see why bidding was tense with seven phone bidders and two in the room for this rare Middle Eastern album.
The Lot details can be found here.
Photo: LUIGI PESCE (1818-1891): ALBUM PHOTOGRAPHICO DELLA PERSIA, 1860.
The Arab Image Foundation's (AIF) photographic collection spans over a century (1880 to 1990) and includes 400,000 original images from across the Middle East, which range from amateur family portraits to professional studio shots. It's core collection (80 percent of their images) consists of photographs taken in Lebanon from 1920 through the 1960s, where photography was thriving in a cosmopolitan country.
The Foundation recently opened its research center to the public. The center was created to encourage the study of Middle Eastern photography and contemporary practices. Its library holds approximately 1200 books about photography and photographic history, as well as documents related to preservation.
An ongoing AIF project is the Middle East Photograph Preservation Initiative (MEPPI), a program promoting the preservation of photographic heritage in the Arab world. The foundation selected 15 applicants from eight Arab countries to participate in the first series of workshops in Beirut this November. Three international experts are coming to Beirut to teach photographic preservation techniques. The goal is to create a large network of photographic collections in the Arab world. Next year, MEPPI will convene in Doha, then in Cairo in 2013. MEPPI will create a photographic directory, enabling everyone interested in preserving cultural heritage to unite.
If this is of interest, the AIF website can be found here.
Photo: General view of Beirut and Lebanon 1870-1885 by Felix Bonfils. (Copyright: AIF)
The ‘long 19th century’, identified in the West with the age of the rise of nation states, is also the century of the ‘invention’ and diffusion of photography, as well as the birth of modern archival science. Photography was soon placed at the service of the iconic needs of nation states. The photographic collections and archives, both public and private, founded between the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, thus had the function of restoring and creating the fragmented image of the nation, on the one hand, and helping to construct the image of a nation, on the other. Yet the problem of the representation of the national identity is clearly not limited to this period. Following the Second World War, the subsequent disintegration of the world colonial system, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the national question was once again placed at the centre of attention but now in a planetary dimension. The debate of the contemporary world is thus torn between globalization and forms of national, or even sub-national, particularism. It is also having to face the question of the proliferation of images in a globalized world, in the age of digital media and internet, with its simplification of production (or over-production) of images and access to them. Despite these changing historical conditions, however, photographs have continued, and will continue, to be gathered in collections and archives, with the aim of giving visual substance to the image world of the national identity, and contributing to its formation.
The conference is aimed at studying the relation between photography or photographic archives and the idea of nation, yet without focusing on single symbolic icons and considering instead the wider archival and sedimental dimension.
The conference forms part of a series of international meetings dedicated to photographic archives and the interaction between photography and the academic and scientific disciplines, with a particular focus on the history of art. After London (June 2009), Florence (October 2009) and New York (March 2011), the fourth meeting in the series will once again be held in Florence (October 27-29, 2011).
PHOTO ARCHIVES IV: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE AND THE IDEA OF NATION
Programme
THURSDAY, 27 OCTOBER 2011
14.30: Alessandro Nova (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz): Welcoming remarks
14.45: Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Introduction
15.00, Opening Keynote: Elizabeth Edwards (DeMontfort University, Leicester): The Invisibility of History: Photography, the Colonial, and the Refiguring of Nation
16.00: coffee break
16.30: Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Cultural Heritage, Nation, Italian State: Politics of the Photographic Archive between Centre and Periphery
17.15: Bernhard Jussen (Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt): Towards an Iconology of Medieval Studies: Approaches to the Pictorial Formation of Historical Knowledge in Modern Scholarship
19.00, Evening Keynote: Joan M. Schwartz (Queen's University, Kingston): Images and Imaginings: Photographs, Archives, and the Idea of Nation
FRIDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2011
9.30: Roberto Mancini (Università Iuav di Venezia): La fabbrica degli albanesi. Lo studio fotografico Marubi e la definizione della identità nazionale del ‘paese delle aquile’ tra età moderna e contemporanea
10.15: Ewa Manikowska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): Turning local into universal. Museums, Photography and the Discovery of Poland’s Cultural Patrimony (1918-1939)
11.00: coffee break
11.30: Justin Carville (Dublin / Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire): Performing Ethnography/Projecting History: Photography, Archives, and Irish Cultural Nationalism
12.15: Josko Belamaric (Institut za povijest umjetnosti – Institute of Art History, Split, Croatia): Il ruolo della fotografia nel Kulturkampf attorno al 1900 in Dalmazia
lunch break
15.00: John Mraz (Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico / Princeton University): Archives & Icons: Constructing a Postrevolutionary Identity in Mexico
15.45: Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame, Indiana): A War without Pictures: Japan's Official Photography Magazines as National Archive
16.30: coffee break
17.00: Pietro Clemente (Università degli Studi di Firenze): Resistenza, memoria e fotografia nei processi identitari dell’Italia postbellica
17.45: Rolf Sachsse (Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar): Microfilm Services and Their Application to Scholarly Study, Scientific Research, Education and Re-Education in the Post-War Period: a Draft Proposal by Lucia Moholy to the UNESCO Preparatory Commission, 1945, and its Prehistory in Modern Art
18.30: Patricia Hayes (University of Western Cape, South Africa): The 'struggle archive' and the Loss of the Subject: Portraits of Namibian Contract Workers by John Liebenberg, 1986
SATURDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2011
10.00: Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University): Majestic Landscapes and Disappearing Indians: Photography and the Invention of an American West
10.45: Martina Baleva (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin): Von der fotografischen Inflation zur nationalen Revolution. Konstruktionen bulgarischer Nationalrevolutionäre im fotografischen Bild
11.30: coffee break
12.00: Lucie Ryzova (University of Oxford / Cairo): Mourning the Archive in Egypt: Vintage Photographs in the Age of Neoliberalism and Digital Reproduction
12.45: Round Table / Final Discussion
Organization: Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, caraffa@khi.fi.it) and Tiziana Serena (Università degli Studi di Firenze, tiziana.serena@unifi.it)
Location: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, Photothek, Via dei Servi 51, 50122 Florence
Contact: Maja Häderli (haederli@khi.fi.it)
More information on http://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung313/index.html.
BPH exclusively revealed that London's V&A Museum was to open a new photography gallery in October (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exclusive-vampa-to-open-new). The opening is scheduled for 25 October 2011.
A permanent new gallery to show highlights from the V&A’s internationally renowned collection of photographs will open this autumn, considerably extending the space dedicated to photographs at the Museum. The gallery will launch with a display of works by key figures of photographic history including Victorian portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and significant works by Henri Cartier-Bresson,Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn.The gallery will chronicle the history of photography from its invention in 1839 up to the 1960s,after which developments in scale, concept and technology mark a shift in approach andappearance. The display will be re-curated every 18 months.
Temporary displays, primarily showcasing contemporary photography, will be shown in the V&A’s existing photographs gallery.A broad range of works will be displayed in the new gallery, including the oldest photographin the V&A collection, a daguerreotype from 1839 of Parliament Street from Trafalgar Square in London.
Other highlights will be an early botanical photograph created without a camera by Anna Atkins (1854); a dramatic seascape by Gustave Le Gray praised at the time for its technical and artistic accomplishment (1856); and a commanding portrait by Robert Howlett of Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing in front of the chains of The Great Eastern ship (1857). Laterworks on display will include Curtis Moffat’s camera-less photograph of a dragonfly (about 1925) influenced by Man Ray’s pioneering style and an astonishing scientific photograph by Harold Edgerton of the coronet formed by a single milk drop falling into liquid (1957).
There will also be two ‘In Focus’ sections, each featuring a photographer represented in depth in the V&A collection. The first will be dedicated to British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who used long exposures and soft focus to create some of the most powerful portraitsof the 19th century. The second will present Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most influentialphotographers of the 20th century, who used a small hand-held camera to capture the extraordinary in the everyday.
In 1856, the V&A became the first museum to collect photographs and in 1858, was the first to exhibit them. The V&A is home to the UK’s national collection of the art of photography, one of the largest and most important in the world. The gallery, formerly a study space, is being designed by the V&A’s design department as part of the V&A’s FuturePlan to transform the Museum through new galleries and redisplays of itscollections. Architectural details will be restored, including ten magnificent semi-circular paintings, commissioned in the 1860s as part of the original decorative scheme, to illustrate the principles of art education and show the highest achievements from the history of art.
Image: Julia Margaret Cameron, Circe, 1865.
The news doesn't look good for Eastman Kodak. From the Wall Street Journal: Kodak Hires Restructuring Lawyers. Eastman Kodak Co. has hired law firm Jones Day for restructuring advice as it faces growing concerns from investors over its turnaround prospects, people familiar with the matter said.
The move to hire restructuring lawyers signals Kodak is intensifying efforts to ensure it has the financial wherewithal to complete a difficult strategic and financial revamp. Shares in the 131-year-old company have lost around a third of their value this week following Kodak's disclosure that it pulled $160 million from a credit line.
That drawdown heightened concerns about the company's cash flow and triggered downgrades of its credit rating.
Kodak shares plunged Friday afternoon, down 60% in recent trading to 68 cents...
Business Week carries some more detailed analysis: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-01/kodak-said-to-weigh-bankruptcy-to-clear-path-for-patent-sale.html
These pictures of children from the 1950s and ‘60s, are a mere fraction of John Chillingworth’s work, but remain as fresh today as they were when picture magazines were at their zenith. In the 1950s John was a member of the ‘star’ team of photographic journalists whose images told stories for the seminal British picture magazine, Picture Post. During the celebration of 150 years of photography, at the National Museum of Photography,Film and TV (now the National Media Museum), he was described as a ‘maker of photographic history’.
His earlier images, held by the London-based Getty Images-Hulton Archive, are still reproduced in publications around the world. All are available to dedicated collectors of classic photography, both in the UK and abroad. “Like so many great British photographers,” says Matthew Butson, vice-president of London-based Getty Images/Hulton Archive, “the work of John Chillingworth deserves wider recognition today.”
Far from being a mere ‘journeyman’, John followed the path trodden by the great miniature camera pioneers and as he did so, helped bring a fresh dimension to the craft of ‘story-telling’ photography. It has been said that his way of seeing pictures influenced the visual development of subsequent generations of photographers. ‘Memory Lane’ it may be for some and surprising to others, but each one of this selection of his images from around the world still has its own story to tell.
The Innocence of Childhood Photographs by John Chillingworth Hon FRPS - 3rd October - 28th October 2011
Free Entry: Monday–Friday. 9.30–16.30
The Royal Photographic Society, Fenton House, 122 Wells Road, Bath BA2 3AH For further information please contact Lesley Goode. 01225 325720 lesley@rps.org.
Image: John Chillingworth, Whitechapel girl, London, 1953, Getty Images-Hulton Archive.
John's own website is at: www.johnchillingworth.co.uk
After the appointment of a new Director-General a few weeks ago, the Royal Photographic Society has today announced its new President.
Roy Robertson, its first Scottish president since the Earl of Crawford in 1897, resides in Newport-on-Tay and will be replacing Rosemary Wilman at the helm of this 158-year-old institution. He will hold the position until 2013. Robertson's photographic interests include documentary, contemporary and landscape photography.
The full news article can be found here.
Photo: Copyright Robert Gates
Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War is a compilation of 100 photographs of the American Civil War (1861-1865), made by Alexander Gardner and other photographers (Timothy O’Sullivan, John Reekie, David Knox, D.B. Woodbury etc.) in his employ. This two-volume book contained 50 hand-mounted original prints.
I came across a blog featuring a fascinating image of London with St Paul's in the background taken in 1844 by Joseph Cundall (1818-1895) (aka Stephen Percy). He was both a Victorian children’s book publisher as well as an early pioneer of photography. Ever eager to 'network', Cundall would provide employment for many of the best artists of the day by using them as illustrators.
Together with Robert Hunt, he started the Calotype Club in 1847. His passion for photography grew when he moved to 168 New Bond Street where he founded The Photographic Institution. He was also a founder member of the Royal Photographic Society of London.
According to the blog, "One day in 1844, twenty-six year old Joseph Cundall walked from his printing shop on Old Bond Street down to the Thames River carrying the box camera he recently designed and built, along with bottles of’ silver nitrate and gallic acid. Once settled on the Blackfriars Bridge, under a black cloth, he painted the chemistry onto some writing paper that had already been treated with silver nitrate and potassium iodide and then, inserted it into the camera. Focusing on St. Paul’s Cathedral in the distance, Cundall opened the lens and made a single exposure.
This calotype (paper negative) was used later to make several positive prints, one of which was given to his friend, optician Richard Willats, who pasted it into an album. That album and what might be the earliest photograph taken by Joseph Cundall is now at Princeton University."
If you're interested in all things London during the Victorian days, there is a database of approximately 9,000 biographical entries on photographic companies and the people who worked within the photographic industry in London during the 19th century, produced in collaboration with English Heritage's National Monuments Record, on this link here.
Photo: London in 1844 (J Cundall).
A small display featuring portraits of children by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79), one of the most influential figures in early photography, opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Museum of Childhood, London on 15 October 2011. It closes on 13 February 2012
The images explore Cameron’s vision of childhood, in which children are sacred and the embodiment of innocence. She strove to establish photography as an art form, using soft focus and compositions inspired by Renaissance paintings, and incorporating the irregularities of early photographic processes in her pictures. In doing so, her portraits succeed in conveying the emotional and spiritual aura of the sitter.
After the Museum of Children showing the exhibition will move to Cameron's former home, Dimbola, on the Isle of Wight which is dedicated to her life and is home to a gallery.
Image: Florence [Fisher], Julia Margaret Cameron, 1872, from the V+A Collection.
For more information see: http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/exhibitions_and_displays/julia_margaret_cameron/index.html
The V+A has a small display running - curated by Marta Weiss - that explores photographs that make reference to themselves, other media and texts. It aims to demonstrate how such Postmodernist approaches to photography have persisted for over 30 years. Spanning the mid-1970s to the present day, it shows work by some of the most influential artists associated with Postmodernism, such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, alongside more recent work by Anne Hardy, David Shrigley, Clare Strand and others.
The showing is show at the V+A in London until 27 November 2011 in Gallery 38A and admission is free.
See the links here for more information:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/signs-of-a-struggle-photography-in-the-wake-of-postmodernism/
and reviews:
http://i-donline.com/2011/08/say-cheese-in-a-postmodern-way/
Image: Clare Strand, from the series Signs of a Struggle, 2002. Gelatin silver print.
The International Street Photography Award is looking for exceptional international photographers that display a unique style and depth of work in the genre of street photography. The genre crosses over into portraiture, documentary and art photography (see the 2011 finalists for inspiration and a guide to what defines street photography). The 2011 winners can be seen here: http://www.londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/gallery/international-street-photography-award
So what is street photography?: http://www.londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/what-is-street-photography The London Street Photography Festival defines Street Photography as:“Candid photography which captures, explores or questions contemporary society and the relationships between individuals and their surroundings.”
Prizes and categories
The international winner will receive £2,000 cash PLUS a solo exhibition in London PLUS an all-expenses paid trip to the exhibition launch and awards ceremony in London in June 2012 - total value £10,000. Selected finalists will be exhibited in the same gallery and one image from each entrant will be showcased in a digital display. The first 500 applicants will be automatically entered into a draw to win some fabulous prizes including: a signed print from one of the 2011 exhibitions, an Olympus PEN camera, £100 Blurb voucher, a Crumpler Muffin Top camera bag, photo-books by Magnum and Thames & Hudson. Categories include an overall winner, a runner up, and 10 finalists.
Entry fee
£30.00
• Participants from certain countries receive a 50% discount on the entrance fee.
• You can submit between 5 and 8 images within the fee.
• One image from ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS will be displayed on a large screen during the Awards exhibition and profiled (optional) on the LSPF website.
• ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS who enter will receive a £28.95 voucher to print their own book with Blurb, which expires on 31 March 2012.
• FEEDBACK: For an additional £15, LSPF can provide written feedback by an Award judge on your submissions. Choose the "Written Feedback" drop down when you submit your images to the Awards.
Register online
Application deadline
05 January 2012
BPH recently took notice of a new photography festival based in Bradford (click to see the original posting). The Yorkshire Post carries an interview with Anne McNeill, the Director of Impressions Gallery, who co-founded and has been instrumental in driving the festival.
Part of the interview by Nick Ahad is shown below:
McNeill has led a consortium which will create the city-wide festival showcasing the work of leading contemporary photographers in established venues, pop-up sites, and in public spaces around the city.
McNeill has high hopes for the festival. “We really do think Bradford can become the UK’s top destination for photography,” says McNeill.
You’d be forgiven for raising your eyebrows at this statement. That Bradford is beleaguered, there is no doubt. McNeill, who moved Impressions Gallery to the city from York, says it is time for a change in attitude when it comes to Bradford – and a city-wide, month-long photography festival can play a major part in achieving that.
“I think the reputation of Bradford is a misperception. People perceive Bradford as a certain thing, as a city on its uppers, but it has beautiful buildings, the university, it has been named the City of Film and it has this great swell of cultural activity happening all around the city.”
The seeds were sown for next month’s festival over a decade ago, when a similar photography festival took place across Yorkshire in 1998. A decade later, McNeill combined with Nicola Stephenson, director of Leeds based Culture Company to run another photography festival which ran in venues in Bradford and Leeds in 2008.
McNeill says: “Having a festival spread between two cities was confusing for visitors, who didn’t understand why or how a festival could run in two different places. We knew there was an impetus to do something like this, but realised the way to make the festival a success would be to have it based around a single city in and around the city centre.”
It was a good idea, clearly and a consortium was pulled together, with partners including Leeds Met and The National Media Museum. An application was made to the Arts Council, which stumped up £100,000 to fund the festival.
McNeill says it was enormously encouraging that, in a time of stringent cuts, the Arts Council had the faith in the project to invest such an amount.
With the funding in place, you’d be forgiven for thinking Leeds might be the obvious venue for a cultural event of this magnitude but, despite a number of Leeds-based companies involved in the consortium organising the festival, Bradford, it was agreed, with its history in photography and with a national museum dedicated to the art form, was the natural home for Ways of Looking.
The venues taking part include Gallery II, Impressions Gallery, National Media Museum, the Hungarian Cultural and Social Centre and there will be photographs on billboards around the city.
The quality of the artists taking part is impressive, with Turner Prize winners Douglas Gordon and Jeremy Deller, renowned Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie, and photographer Red Saunders all working to the festival theme of Evidence.
The full report and interview can be read here: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/art/bradford_is_perfect_home_for_new_photo_festival_1_3804604
'
Image: Peasants Revolt 1381, 2010 by Red Saunders at Impressions Gallery.
The Natural History Museum in London will be hosting a groundbreaking new exhibition in 2012 exploring the captivating story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s last expedition to Antarctica in 1910-1913, the Terra Nova expedition.
The exhibition goes beyond the familiar tales of the journey to the South Pole and the death of the Polar Party to explore the Terra Nova expedition from different perspectives. It will reveal powerful stories of human endeavour and struggles for survival, and celebrates the expedition's scientific achievements. At the centre of the exhibition will be a stylised representation of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition hut that still survives in Antarctica today.
To commemorate the centenary of the expedition and celebrate its achievements, there is a chance to relive the daily events of the Terra Nova Expedition, as recorded by Robert Falcon Scott in his famous journal. Dividing the text into daily blog entries - combined with a twitter account and RSS feed - and linking to the famous photographs held in the Scott Polar Research Institute, means that the latest communication technology will add an extra dimension to a well known text: the dimension of time. It will follow the expedition's progress day by day, over many months, beginning with its departure from New Zealand, and ending with its tragic and heroic conclusion.
twitter.com/scottslastexp 
RSS Feed
The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge will also be running a series of exhibitions and events to mark the centenary over the next 12 months (spri.cam.ac.uk/museum). You can also watch a video here which includes rare photographs, BBC archive footage of the Antarctic, and interviews with polar historians and scientists. They explore the legacy of Capt Scott's Terra Nova expedition, bringing to life the experiences of the men who took part.
The NHM exhibition opens on 20th January 2012, and further details will be posted in BPH shortly. If you can't wait for this, there is another exhibition entitled "The Heart of the Great Alone" opening in London next month, details which can be found here.
Photo: Installation of Scott's last Expedition at The Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.
Mention was made here of Tripe photographs being offered by Bonhams. Sotheby's has now revealed that it will be offering an important cache of previously unseen Tripe material.
Sotheby's London is pleased to announce that it will offer for sale a remarkable group of more than 220 newly-discovered photographs by Linnaeus Tripe depicting India and Burma in the mid-1850s, including 42 images of which no other prints are recorded, and five previously unknown photographs.
Tripe was one of the greatest photographers working in India in the 19th Century and this is the largest single collection of his photographs ever to have been offered for sale. Tripe’s Views of Mysore of 1854 (estimated at £100,000-200,000) and his Views of Burma of 1855 (estimated at £200,000-300,000*) are highlights of Sotheby’s Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History Sale on 15th November 2011.
These extraordinary photographs were presented by Tripe to the Governor-General of India, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, and have come by descent to the present owner. They have not been seen by scholars for 150 years and are being offered for sale for the first time.Sotheby’s Specialist Richard Fattorini said: “This is a ground-breaking discovery and represents the largest group of photographs by Linnaeus Tripe ever to be offered for sale. These rare and beautiful images, printed by Tripe from waxed paper negatives, will rewrite the scholarship on his work. The images are among the first photographs taken of Mysore and Rangoon. They were presented by Tripe to the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India, who sent Tripe as part of the Mission to Ava in 1855 as an “Artist in Photography”.
The title was apt - Tripe was truly an artist in his medium, with an extraordinary compositional eye. Linnaeus Tripe (1822-1902) is one of the most important photographic innovators of the 19th century. His works are often stylised and his subtle use of light and shade remarkably accomplished. Tripe was also a master of photographic printing. He used albumenized paper and hyposulphite of gold as a toning agent, which gives his best preserved works a wonderfully rich violet hue. While on leave from the Army in December 1854, Tripe embarked on a private expedition from Bangalore, accompanied by fellow amateur photographer Dr A.C.B. Neill.
Tripe recorded a series of views of little-known Hindu and Jain temples in Mysore. The photographs in the series are the earliest views of India by Tripe to be recorded. These, and Dr Neil’s images, are the earliest photographs made of the sites. The set includes 56 albumen prints, of which nearly every image is signed by Tripe in ink. It contains 26 unique prints, including three previously unknown photographs for which the negatives have not survived. Of the remaining 30 prints, only one or two other prints by Tripe have been previously recorded. The only other set of Tripe’s Views of Mysore known to exist, but comprising just 22 prints, is held by the J. Paul Getty Museum in the United States of America.Colossal statue of Gantama, Amarapoora. In April 1855, Lord Dalhousie recommended that a political trip to Amerapoora (Amarapura), Burma, take place following the 1852 Anglo-Burmese War. An artist had been intended to accompany the group, but it was decided photography was a more suitable medium for accurate documentation of architecture and Tripe was employed on Lord Dalhousie’s recommendation.
This presentation set of 134 albumen prints including two 2-part folding panoramas, is the largest single group of Tripe’s Burma photographs and are among the first photographs taken in that country. They include wonderful images of religious and secular architecture in the capital, as well as palace remains at Ava and the remarkable Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Rangoon (pictured, page one).This unique set, of which nearly every image is signed by Tripe, contains 13 unique prints, including two newly discovered and previously unseen photographs for which the negatives have not survived. They are preserved in the original blue morocco presentation portfolio.Also in the sale is another group of 36 photographs of Burma by Tripe, from the same consignor, estimated at £40,000-60,000.
On October 17th 1874, Kingston born photographer Eadweard Muybridge shot dead the drama critic of The San Francisco Post, Harry Larkyns, with a single bullet from a Smith and Wesson No 2 revolver. A jury, convinced by lawyers under the patronage of railroad magnate Leland Stanford, acquitted him of “justifiable homicide” and Muybridge went on to photograph and publish his outstanding 1887 work “Animal Locomotion” in eleven volumes and 781 plates measuring 19 1/8 inches by 24 3/8, composed from over 20,000 gelatin dry plate individual glass negatives, printed as paper collotype photographs of men, women, children, horses, and other animals shot sequentially for the first time in stop motion and full photographic resolution.
Commissioned and organized by the University of Pennsylvania the work comprised: Vols. 1–2 Males (nude), Vols. 3–4 Females (nude), Vol. 5 Males (pelvic cloth), Vol 6 Females & Children (semi-nude and transparent drapery), Vol. 7 Males & Females (draped) & Miscellaneous Subjects, Vol 8 Abnormal Movements Males & Females (nude and semi-nude), Vol. 9 Horses, Vol. 10 Domestic Animals and Vol. 11 Wild Animals & Birds.
Muybridge’s plates were to be sold as full sets by subscription, in individual folders of an “Author’s Edition” of 20, and were also offered in a 100 – plate “Subscription” set where the buyer could choose plates from a prospectus. Copper collotype plates for the work were prepared by the Photo -Gravure Co. of New York City and the “Elephant Folio” books were printed by J.B. Lippincott of Philadelphia. Complete copies were sold for $500 unbound and $550 in leather. The attenuated version, bound in “full Russia leather” was priced at $100 plus + $1 per additional plate.
Only 47 complete sets of Animal Locomotion were ever completed on commission. Housed today in museums and libraries around the world, exhibited in galleries such as London’s Tate Britain, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, London’s Victoria & Albert, they have been described as ‘the eighth wonder of the world” for their analysis of human and animal movement in all its wonder and eccentricities.
“Muybridge’s Revolver” at London’s Horse Hospital (http://www.thehorsehospital.com/now/muybridge%e2%80%99s-revolver/) is a rare opportunity to re-examine Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” in an “Author’s Edition” accompanied by a selection of projected animations taken from original plates, culminating on the 2nd October with a live performance finale installation to Muybridge’s moving images from sound archeologist Aleksander Kolkowski of the Recording Angels, accompanied by Marek Pytel’s film “Eadweard Muybridge” premiered in 2010 at the British Library. Also rare screenings of Thom Andersen’s “Eadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer” (1974) on the 27th September, and a discussion evening on the 14th with renowned Muybridge and pre cinema chronophotographic specialist Stephen Herbert.
A selection of original “Animal Locomotion” plates on exhibition will be offered, framed, for purchase and a further 60 original plates, also framed, for sale by prospectus.
