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Born to a family of lapidaries (precious stone merchants) in 1840 in Edinburgh, Thomas Begbie only took up photography in the late 1850s before becoming a member of the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1867. He set up a professional photography studio at 7 Leith Street (now the site of the St James Centre), and appeared in trade directories from 1874, advertising himself as a professional photographer from 1879-1881.

Begbie travelled all over the city to chronicle what he saw – from the Port of Leith and Newhaven with its fishwives and schooners docked onto the cobblestone quayside, to John Knox's house with a group of scruffy urchins outside, to Princes Street when Waverley Station was still under construction.

The Cavaye Collection of glass negatives by Begbie was discovered in a house in St James' Square in 1950, and is currently held at the City Art Centre. They cover a wide range of subjects, most notably Edinburgh's Old Town, but also the coastal communities of Leith, Granton and Newhaven and further afield such as Roslin and Stirling. Some of the photos in the collection pre-date the first record of his studio (in the 1880s) and it seems that Begbie was a teenager when he took them, which is quite extraordinary.

Now you can view some of Begbie's intimate images of Edinburgh in an exhibition here, and a news article here.

Registration has now opened for Polar Visual Culture: An International Conference, which will take place at the University of St Andrews on 17-18 June 2011. For speakers and registration details, see the conference website:

http://www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk/newsandevents/pvculture/

Convened by Natalie Adamson and Luke Gartlan, this conference brings together a diverse, internationally recognised group of scholars to present new research on the visual culture of polar exploration. We aim to focus attention upon the unique, prolific and hitherto under-examined visual culture - with a strong focus on photography, but also including film, painting and graphic illustration, expedition and frontier narratives, installations and poetic geographies - that the expeditions to the two polar regions have inspired since the early nineteenth century, and which forms a fundamental part of our perception of these environments.

We invite all those interested in these themes to register for this important conference and join us in St Andrews. 

De Montfort University is pleased to announce the availability of one Wilson Fellowship for its innovative MA course in Photographic History and Practice. The Fellowship offers £5,000 toward the defrayal of tuition and other costs related to the MA and is open to all students from the UK, EU and international. To apply for the Wilson Fellowship, please submit a piece of recent writing on photographic history no longer than 10,000 words, in English, to the Admissions Committee.

For applications to the MA, please contact Student Recruitment at the Faculty of Art and Design at artanddesign@dmu.ac.uk or apply online at www.ukpass.ac.uk.

For questions about the MA programme or the Wilson Fellowship please contact Programme Leader, Dr Kelley Wilder at kwilder@dmu.ac.uk.

The MA in Photographic History and Practice is the first course of its kind in the world. It lays the foundations for understanding the scope of photographic history and provides the tools to carry out the independent research in this larger context, working in particular from primary source material. In addition to our collaboration with the Wilson Centre for Photography Studies in London, we work closely with the collections of the National Media Museum, Bradford, the Central Library, Birmingham, the British Library and private collections throughout Britain. Students handle photographic material, learn analogue photographic processes, write history from objects in collections, compare historical photographic movements, and debate the canon of photographic history. They also learn about digital preservation and access issues through practical design projects involving website and database design.

Research Methods are a core component, providing students with essential handling, writing, digitizing and presentation skills needed for MA and research level work.

Further modules will encourage independent thinking in theory and in history writing, introduce students to methodologies commonly encountered in photographic history, and set the students on a course for finding their own MA dissertation topic. Students receive expert advice on the thesis topic of their choosing, which is written in the summer months and submitted in September, one year after the course begins, in the case of full time study, or two years in the case of part-time. For further details on the course and application process, please download a course brochure from the web site: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/faculties/art_and_design/pg_courses/photographic-history-practice.jsp

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is holding a special exhibition of 247 precious pictures taken by 114 famed photographers dating from from 1871 to 2011. The exhibition, titled “Eye of the Times: Centennial Images of Taiwan,” spans 140 years and is divided into three periods: the Qing Dynasty (1871-1895), the Japanese rule (1895-1949), and the R.O.C. in Taiwan (1949-2011).

It opens with a photo of Fort Zeelandia, Formosa in 1871 – now known as Anping Fortress, Tainan, Taiwan taken by Scottish travel photographer John Thomson on his first visit to Taiwan in 1871. It is believed to be the earliest well-kept image in the history of Taiwanese photography. After visiting southern Fujian in China, Thomson went to Taiwan by ship with James Laidlaw Maxwell, the first Presbyterian missionary to the island in 1865. They arrived in Dagou (now Kaohsiung) in early April 1871 and from Liouguei in Kaohsiung, headed north to Muzha in Taipei. Thomson took many photos of landscapes, rivers, valleys, harbors and indigenous tribes, especially the Pingpu, on the west of the island.

But before Thomson’s trip to the island, St. Julien Edwards active in Xiamen in the late 19th century was likely to be the first photographer to visit Maxwell’s mission in southern Taiwan, but unfortunately his pictures were not handed down.

Another Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay came to southern Taiwan from Canada in 1871. The following year he arrived in Danshui, northern Taiwan, with Rev. Hugh Richie and Dr. Matthew Dickson to start their missionary work because of Maxwell’s suggestion. Well-known and remembered in Taiwan for his outstanding contributions to the religious, educational and medical fields, Mackay married a local woman in 1878 and settled in Taiwan – his home for the rest of his life.

He established a number of important institutions that exist today. They include the Mackay Hospital; the Danshui Girl’s School, the first school for girls in Taiwan; and the Oxford College, now part of Aletheia University, Danshui. Practicing medicine in northern Taiwan, Mackay used a pair of pliers to help local people pull out their decayed teeth. In the exhibition, one picture collected by Aletheia University shows the missionary pulling a patient’s tooth in Danshui on an unknown day.

Chuang Ling, a veteran photographer and one of the exhibition’s curators, believes that through those photographers’ lenses, viewers can get a better understanding of early and modern Taiwan at the museum.

You can read the rest of the article here, and details of the exhibition here.

If you happen to be hiking in the Swiss Alps this summer, do drop in to the town of Vevey by the north shore of Lake Geneva to view this exhibition.

When the film on a flexible support appeared on the market in the 1880s, the whole world of photography was radically transformed. Cameras underwent a complete metamorphosis, rapidly becoming smaller and smaller and more and more sophisticated mechanically. The arrival of the film meant that a sequence of shots could be linked up and with the added advantage of glass-plate negatives, the use of cameras as a whole was greatly simplified, leading to a total revolution in the way people saw everything and communicated their observations. This was the beginning of the intensive activity of 20th Century photographers.

Long before George Eastman’s invention, Prudent René-Patrice Dagron, a chemist and photographer, produced the first type of film during the French-German war in 1870. On this occasion, important documents were reduced photographically onto a sheet of collodion, then transmitted by pigeon carriers to the besieged Parisians. When Eastman came up with the Kodak, a compact, user-friendly camera with a flexible film, promoted by the famous slogan "You press the button, we do the rest", photography rapidly became the witness of happy days for so many amateurs and their families. Photographic images, now accessible to one and all, suddenly became more spontaneous... This was the beginning of the intensive activity of 20th Century photographers.

This new exhibition portrays the ways in which photography has spread to all age groups, all social categories, amateurs and professionals alike. Visitors will be able to admire all kinds of photographic devices, many unusual, rare items and amazing applications, not forgetting the users themselves, whether behind or in front of the camera.

Details of the exhibition can be found here, and the official press release here: Le%20sie%CC%80cle%20du%20film%20communique%CC%81%20presse_GB.pdf:

Photo: 35 mm film, cellulose nitrate for the Cinématographe with Lumière perforations, and its metal box.

The Gernsheim Collection, published by the University of Texas Press, written by Roy Flukinger and designed by Pentagram, won the Fred Whitehead Award for Best Book Design at the Texas Institute of Letters 75th anniversary awards ceremony last Saturday.

The Gernsheim Collection housed at the Harry Ransom Center on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, is one of the most important photography collections in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, including the world’s earliest-known photograph, made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. Its encyclopedic scope—as well as the expertise and taste with which the Gernsheims built the collection—makes the Gernsheim Collection one of the world’s premier resources for the study and appreciation of the development of photography.

The Gernsheim Collection is an oversized 360-page volume, designed by Stout and Savasky, that presents masterpieces of the Gernsheim Collection, along with lesser-known images of great historical significance. Arranged in chronological order, this selection effectively constitutes a visual history of photography from its beginnings to the mid-twentieth century including iconic works by groundbreaking photographers like Sir William Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy Henry O’Sullivan, Eadweard J. Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Jean-Eugéne-Auguste Atget, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész, Brassai, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Arthur Rothstein, Robert Capa, Edward Weston, Arnold Newman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Aaron Siskind and Lucien Clergue.

Each photograph in the book is accompanied by an extensive annotation in which Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator at the Harry Ransom Center, describes the photograph’s place in the evolution of photography and also within the Gernsheim Collection itself. In a scholarly introduction Flukinger traces the Gernsheim’s passionate and colorful careers as collectors and pioneering historians of photography, showing how their untiring efforts significantly contributed to the acceptance of photography as a fine art form and as a field worthy of intellectual inquiry.

If you like to own a copy of this Award-winning book yourself as reference, just search for it on the Amazon link on the right.

The Photographers’ Gallery is due to reopen in a transformed space at Ramillies St in late 2011/early 2012, providing, for the first time in our history, artists, audiences and our funders with the high calibre facilities expected of a photography space in the 21st century. Opportunities for effective fundraising from the corporate, private, and public sector will be dramatically improved through the new facilities on offer.

Reporting to the Director and working closely with the 3 members of the development team, you will be responsible for developing and implementing the fundraising strategy to raise the revenue needs for the new gallery programme.

With at least 5 years minimum experience in revenue fundraising, with 2 years at senior level, you will have a proven track record of successful fundraising within the corporate sector and have some experience in securing grants from foundations, trusts and the public sector.

Closing date for application June 1st 2011

See: http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pid=243

This exhibition which ended just a few weeks ago, included more than 100 photographs from the National Gallery of Canada's own collection, ranging from the historical images of William Henry Fox Talbot, taken circa 1839, to the sophisticated architectural studies made by Frederick H. Evans at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

You can read an interview with Lori Pauli, Associate Curator of photographer at the NGC, on her thoughts behind the exhibition, her favourite photographs, which she considered to be most important etc, in an interview found here.

A Victorian science expert at St. John's University, Snyder offers a four-in-one biography of 19th-century scientists -  Whewell, Babbage, Jones, as well as John Herschel, who mapped the skies of the Southern hemisphere and coinvented photography. 
In 1812, when academic science was still a backward field, the four Cambridge students founded the Philosophical Breakfast Club, devoted to scientific discussion. Snyder provides insights into their personal lives, their myriad professional accomplishments, and their influence on science and economics.

An excerpt of this book can be found here, and if you are still keen you can search for it through the Amazon link on the right.

The International Mission Photography Archive offers over 60,000 historical images from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections in Britain, Norway, Germany, and the United States. The photographs, from the 1860s until World War II, offer a visual record of missionary activities and experiences in Africa, China, Madagascar, India, Papua-New Guinea, and the Caribbean. The photographs reveal the physical influence of missions, visible in mission compounds, churches, and school buildings, as well as the cultural impact of mission teaching, religious practices, and Western technology and fashions. Indigenous peoples' responses to missions and the emergence of indigenous churches are represented, as are views of landscapes, cities, and towns before and in the early stages of modern development.

The online archive can be accessed through this link here.

South Shields Local History Group is looking for volunteers from outside the group with a knowledge of ships and trains to help identify and research a collection of glass negatives dating from the late 1800s to about 1930.  The photographic images are held in the local history section of the town library in Prince Georg Square. Having just  gained funding from the Community Foundation under its Active At 60 scheme, the images will also be digitised to help the library preserve the glass negatives for future generations.

Anyone interested in becoming involved or wishing to find out more is invited to the library on May 17, between 2pm and 4pm. For information about the photographic collection, contact the Local Studies Library on 424 7860, or log on to localstudies.library@southtyneside.gov.uk. The full report can be found here.

Photo:  Anne Sharp of South Shields Local History Group with an old glass photographic plate (The Shields Gazette).

John Thomson, a Scot who was born two years before the invention of the daguerreotype and the birth of photography, is considered a pioneer of photojournalism and one of the most influential photographers of his generation.

At that time, foreign travel was much more arduous and rare than it is today, and photography was still in its infancy, requiring a cumbersome mass of equipment. But Thomson, with energy and perseverance, captured a wide variety of images - landscapes, architecture and people from all walks of life - that give us an extraordinary insight into the everyday life and people of 19th century China.

Organised by the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, and supported by the Wellcome Trust and Friends of Glasgow Museums, a special symposium to expand on the current Burrell Collection exhibition China through the Lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872 will be held on Saturday 7th May 2011. The one-day event will bring together speakers from the world of visual art and culture to present in-depth discussions on the Scottish photographer John Thomson’s experiments in China, and on his significance as one of the pioneers of documentary photography and photojournalism. The day will also offer an opportunity to see some new images from John Thomson’s glass negatives, never before shown in public.

Details of this symposium can be found here, and the symposium programme here: China%2520Through%2520the%2520Lenses%2520of%2520the%2520Western%2520Photographers.pdf.

You can secure a place at this symposium by contacting The Burrell Collection direct on 0141 287 2593. The accompanying exhibition is on-going, and separate details can be found here.

Some of you BPH members may have already come across this site, but nevertheless, a useful resource for those who haven't.

This national 'on line' catalogue contains art-historical information on the earliest photographs owned by the Rijksmuseum (Rijksprentenkabinet) in Amsterdam, the Print Room of the University of Leiden and 25 other museums, archives and libraries in the Netherlands. The catalogue encompasses more than 3,700 portraits, city views and landscapes from the pioneering period 1839 -1860. These photographs were taken in the Netherlands, France, England, Germany and the United States by both Dutch and foreign photographers. Famous images by photographers such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Edouard Baldus and Gustave Le Gray are found along with the earliest photographs of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Haarlem. Every technique is represented, from daguerreotypes to salted paper prints, glass negatives, paper negatives and photolithographs. The various uses of photographs are also presented; photographs in a case or in a frame; photographs pasted in books or albums; and stereographs. The catalogue contains a wonderful cross-section of photographic production from the pioneering period.

More than 2100 photographs are from the National Photograph Collection in the Rijksprentenkabinet in the Rijksmuseum, which has actively collected international and Dutch photographs since 1996. The Leiden Print Room and Study Center for Photography , which administers the oldest public photograph collection in the Netherlands, owns almost 900 photographs from before 1860.

The information and the available visual material is presented in an `online' collection catalogue which can be found on this link here.

Amateurs and Artists: 19th and 21st Century Photography in the South West. A conference presented by Royal Photographic Society, Historical Group, from Friday, 13 May– Sunday, 15 May 2011 in the Lecture Theatre 2, Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA.

Early photography in Plymouth is an untold story. Robert Hunt, independent inventor of photographic processes, Richard Beard, the first daguerreotype licensee, Charles Eastlake RA, first RPS president, and Linnaeus Tripe, an early calotypist, were all from Plymouth. W.H.F. Talbot, inventor of the positive/negative (calotype negative) process, photographed Plymouth in 1845 and Roger Fenton photographed the Royal Albert Bridge, Saltash, in 1858. Local interest in photography was such that the Devon and Cornwall Photographic Circle was established in January 1854.

The conference is linked closely to three exhibitions. Amateurs and Artists: Early Photography and Plymouth at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, on display 9th April to 30th July 2011. Out of the Ordinary, a group exhibition of work by members of the Royal Photographic Society, South West Contemporary Group is on display at Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth, 9th to 27th May 2011. The third exhibition, Chemical Traces, is a response to Amateurs and Artists: Early Photography and Plymouth, and will be on display in Scott Building, University of Plymouth. Tours of these exhibitions form part of the conference on Friday and there will be a special viewing of Amateurs and Artists on Friday, 5.30 – 7.00 pm.

The speakers, who represent a wide range of photographic expertise: curators, university staff, photohistorians and contemporary photographers, include Carolyn Bloore, Jon Blyth, Colin Ford, Rod Fry, Michael Gray, John Hannavy, Jenny Leathes, Richard Morris, Nigel Overton, Matthew Pontin and Jem Southam. Speakers correct at time of printing.

Friday 13th May and Saturday 14th May 2011 10.30am-5.00pm. Main speakers and lecture programme. 

Saturday 14th May 2011 7.30 pm (Optional)
Conference Dinner, Jurys Inn, 50 Exeter Street, Plymouth. Menu options are to be pre-booked, see menu choice sheet and booking form. The cost is an additional £19.95. Jurys Inn is conveniently located for the Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth and Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery in Drakes Circus, Plymouth. Preferential rates have been agreed for overnight accommodation with Jurys Inn. See rates at bottom of menu choice sheet and booking information.

*Sunday 15th May 2011 Events 11.30 am – 4.00 pm (Optional)
A calotype demonstration. Revisiting the site of William Henry Fox Talbot’s photograph, The Victualling
Office, Plymouth, 1845, a view from the Battery at Mount Edgcumbe across Plymouth Sound. Meet at the
Orangery, (café) Mount Edgcumbe, 11.30 am. The Cremyll ferry leaves Admirals Hard, Stonehouse,
Plymouth at 11.15 am (ferry time 8 minutes). Departure times, 09.15 quarter to and quarter past the hour
until 21.15. Return journey depart Mount Edgcumbe 09.00 on the half hour and hour until until 21.00.
Single fares only £1.20.

2.30 – 4.00 pm Reconstruction of the position of the early 19th century Camera Obscura on The
Promenade, Plymouth Hoe. An opportunity to view the optics and the panorama within the Fotonow
VW Camper Obscura. The Fotonow VW Camper Obscura will be on this site, Friday – Sunday, 13th – 15th
May, 9 am until 6.30 pm.

Conference fee £50 per person  Conference dinner £19.95 per person (optional)

Booking forms and information can be downloaded from: http://www.rps.org/events/view/2052?m=0&y=2011&d=&t=0&g=Historical&r=0&reset=reset

For further information please contact:
Jenny Ford, Secretary, RPS Historical Group
Jennyford2000@yahoo.co.uk or tel. 01234 881459

As mentioned in an earlier BPH blog, The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has just published a new book containing never-before seen photographs of Mecca taken by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in the late 1800s.

The Islamic scholar Hurgronje was the first westerner to capture images in this ‘forbidden city’. He did so by converting to Islam so that he could take part in the Hajj. He became world famous the moment his books of photographs were published. Now, for the first time, we learn about the obstacles that Snouck Hurgronje had to overcome in order to obtain his photographs. He took those in his first book himself, while the second is filled with photographs by his assistant, the Meccan doctor ‘Abd al-Ghaffar. His share in Snouck Hurgronje’s books and their remarkable collaboration have never been studied before. One of the high points is an exceptional circular, six-shot photograph taken with a homemade ‘detective camera’. It was made with the ‘revolver method’ of a rotating glass plate that enabled six photographs to be taken in succession without changing the plate.

You can try searching for the book through the Amazon link on the right, or direct from the Museum here.

Bill Brandt portrayed the lives of all levels of British society in both staged and documentary photographs from the 1930s and 1940s. Now four of his works, including Soho Bedroom (1936), depicting a couple locked in a passionate embrace which was published in his influential book A Night in London (1938) can be viewed in a new exhibition at the Met, details of which can be found here. 

Brandt also made night views of London during the Blitz, when the city imposed blackouts.

Photo: Soho Bedroom, Bill Brandt (1938)

Did you know that the Mariannhill Monastery, near Pinetown (South Africa) was a fully fledged photographic studio (complete with painted backdrops for people to pose) from the 1880s to the 1930s? In the late 1890s this studio, then run by Brother Aegidius, produced an album of ethnographic photographs depicting the local Zulu people that found its way into the collections of ethnographic museums all over Europe.
It was this album that led Christoph Rippe to his interest in the monastery and its photographic record. A doctoral student in cultural anthropology at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Rippe is currently researching the photographs archives of Mariannhill Monastery produced since the 1880s. 
The museum purchased an album of photographs — 156 in all — from Mariannhill in 1899. “In 1897 Brother Aegidius sent out letters to ethnographic museums in Europe, making them aware of the album,” says Rippe. “He produced a standard set accompanied with a pamphlet giving a detailed account of objects, the ritual practices depicted, along with the Zulu names for objects depicted in the photographs.  Most major museums in Europe have Mariannhill collections — in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, even Hungary.” 

According to Rippe, these images were not just ethnographic photographs, but also used as propaganda and to raise funds for the mission as well as to foster an interest in vocations.

You can read the rest of the report here.