This exhibition offers a chance to discover the evolution of photography. What are the optical and chemical principals that brought us photography? Why are there pairs of the same photographs? And what has this got to do with 3-D films today?

The photographs in this exhibition document an important feature of Irish rural life – ‘the Big House’ – or the homes of local landlords. These photographs are interesting because they are rare and give us an insight into daily life at a relatively prosperous and peaceful time. All seemed prosperous but in only a few years after these photographs were taken the landlord system was torn down ending the era of the ‘Big House’.

In this exhibition, one can step back in time into the homes and lives of the first photographers. Put faces to the names of those that lived in the ‘Big Houses’ of the 19th century. See what they wore, their carriages and motor cars, how they spent their leisure time. Meet those ‘downstairs’ - the house servants, farm workers and tenants that kept the gardens and houses. Stand where Castlebar photographer, Thomas J. Wynne stood around 1880 and took a photograph of workmen by the lakeshore of Turlough Park, which is now home to the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life.

Power and privilege is a selection of photographs drawn from the National Photographic Archive’s collection of over a million photographs. This is the first time these photographs will be exhibited in the West of Ireland.

Prints for Power & Privilege were created from four of the National Library glass plate collections and from selected photographic albums. The glass plate collections are from the Commerical firms of William Mervyn Lawrence Collection (1865-1914), and A.H. Poole Collection (1884-1954). The 19th century Stereo pairs collection are by two Dublin photographers, James Simonton and Frederick Holland Mares. The Clonbrock collection (1860-1930) was taken by members of the Dillon family from Ahascragh, east Galway.

The framed copy prints on display were produced by scanning the original glass plate negatives or photographing the original prints. The final images were printed using a pigment ink set onto Hahnemühle fibre based archival paper.

If this exhibition sounds interesting to you and you'd like to view it, details can be found here.

Workington is an ancient market and industrial town at the mouth of the River Derwent. Some parts of the town north of the River Derwent date back to Roman times. It was in the eighteenth century, with the exploitation of the local iron ore and coal pits, that Workington expanded to become a major industrial town and port.

Derek Woodruff, 79, a historian from Salterbeck, has complied a new book entitled Workington Through Time, a collection of photographs from the 19th century and early 20th century of people and places of Workington. He has been collecting old photographs of the town since the 1980s. The book compares how the town has changed with photographs of the town as it is now. He has also written earlier books on the history of the town called Workington in Old Picture Postcards Volumes One and Two, Weird Workington, Workington Wheels and Curious Tales of Workington.

You can obtain the book through the Amazon link on the right.

Although in the same style and format as the previous publication, this, the fourth volume in the series varies from the first three volumes. Malta & Gozo Volume IV covers a broad area of the islands instead of a specific locality. It depicts the island on the threshold of modernism but still an agriculture-based society especially in the regions away from the central harbour area.
A number of well-known experts have analysed the glass plate photographs selected from the vast archives of the Richard Ellis collection. Their insights, comments, and conclusions turn simple photographs into individual studies of different aspects of Malta and Gozo.
The photographs are supplemented by the contributions from Katya Stroud, curator of the National Museum of Archaeology: she looks at Malta's rich archaeological history. Joseph Attard Tabone, a prominent member of Malta's Heritage Committee and Paul P.Borg a distinguished scholar of Maltese folklore, analyses the rural development of Malta and Gozo. Kenneth Zammit Tabona, writer artist and music critic comments on some of Malta's fine palaces, gardens and their residents.
The complete archive contains some 36,000 images, most of which are glass-plate negatives, the oldest coinciding with Richard Ellis's arrival in Malta in 1862. The photographs, mostly taken on a large-format studio camera, have been carefully reproduced from the original glass plates using the latest digital technology.
Richard Ellis has given the Maltese nation a treasure of timeless images placing Malta in the forefront in the development of photography from its infancy.

Book editor Ian Ellis, the photographer’s great grandson, along with picture researcher and photo editor, Patrick J. Fenech, have once again pieced together an extraordinary volume with this 4th sequel which will dwell on the influence of modernism captured by this master of photography. The Richard Ellis Collection is an invaluable source of reference for photographic and historical research.

If this is of interest, you can try picking a copy (80 Euros) through the Amazon link on the right. If not, try here.

The Ransom Center is now accepting applications for its 2012-2013 Research Fellowships to support projects that require substantial on-site use of its collections. The fellowships support research in all areas of the humanities, including literature, photography, film, art, the performing arts, music, and cultural history. 

Application deadline is 1st February 2012, and details can be found here.

Good luck!

A number of full-time University of Westminster Studentships are available to candidates with either Home or Overseas fee status in any area of Arts, Film, Photography and Cultural Criticism starting in September 2012. The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) is a leading centre for research across the disciplines of visual arts, photography, film and digital media. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise CREAM was rated 20% 4*, 55% 3*, 25% 2*. The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked CREAM in the top six art and design departments in the UK and the number one department in this field in London.

With 30 research active staff, and 35 doctoral students, CREAM is a leading provider of both practice-based and theoretical PhD research in photography, film, digital media, ceramics, visual art and moving image work. The research practices of its members also cover a broad field including arts-science, music, Asian cinema, and theoretical and critical writing.

The Studentship consists of a fee waiver and a stipend of £16,000 per annum for three years full-time. Successful candidates will be expected to undertake some teaching duties.

Prospective candidates wishing to informally discuss an application should contact Prof. Joram ten Brink, J.tenbrink@wmin.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is 5pm Friday 3 February 2012. 

For further information, including how to apply, please visit

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/research-areas/media,-arts-and-design/research-studentships

A new exhibition, which opened recently, displays some of the rarest, earliest and most important photographs in America. The materials are highlights from a magnificent set of more than 16,000 19th-century American photographs from the Beth and Stephan Loewentheil Family Photographic Collection.

Through photographs, ephemera, and original publications, Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections explores photography during its first fifty years in America, featuring examples of the earliest photographic processes and multiple stages of its technological evolution. From this look at photography’s early technical development, another story emerges: that of the dynamic and complex relationship between the new photographic medium and the turbulent historic currents that shaped the American nation.

Highlights of the exhibition include multiple photographs by Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, including a large 1861 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, warmly inscribed to the wife of Lincoln's oldest and closest friend; images documenting the Civil War, including a photograph of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton sitting with soldiers; a personal photograph album compiled by Mark Twain; and photographs documenting African American life, westward expansion and the rise of celebrity culture.

Details of the exhibition can be found here. But don't worry if you can't get to Stateside, as they have a great online version which you can view here.

Photo: Alfred Brisbois. William F. Cody "Buffalo Bill,” late 1880s, albumen print, 6½ by 4½ inches.

Of all the sciences it is arguable that images have played the greatest role in astronomy, both for the professional and for the interested public. This discussion meeting will consider both the history and technology of imaging in the era of the telescope, and the implication of representing physical phenomena by images created by visualisation techniques, particularly where the radiation is invisible to the eye. Capability and limitations will be traced from drawing and painting, through photography and image intensifiers, to the digital era at all wavelengths. Discussion will be encouraged about the role imaging has played in constructing the astronomical object, and in shaping the public’s view, delivered by astronomers, of the nature of the sky and its contents. We hope to reinforce interaction between practising astronomers and historians of science by reflection from philosophers and historians of art.Royal Astronomical Society

Specialist Discussion Meeting

'The History of Astronomical Imaging'

13 January 2012

10:30–15:30 in the Geological Society Lecture Theatre, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG

The day includes: 

Peter Hingley (Royal Astronomical Society) on The Reception of Photography in the Royal Astronomical Society

The programme is at:

http://www.ras.org.uk/images/stories/ras_pdfs/meetings201112/January%202012%20Geological%20Society%20Meeting.pdf

There is no prior registration but a charge of £15 to non-members (£5 to

students) for all or part of the day, cash or cheque only, will be collected at the door. Admission to the subsequent Open (Monthly A&G) Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society is open to all, at no charge.

A new exhibition which includes two daguerreotypes from the 1840’s-1850’s from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum, the Museum of the Russian Literature Institute of the Russian Academy of Science and the Library of the Russian Academy of Arts is currently on display in Saint Petersburg.

Among the first examples of daguerreotype in Russia, sent from Paris by Daguerre, were exhibited at the Academy of Arts in autumn of 1839. After Daguerre announced his discovery that year, crowds of people gathered in front of display cases of art stores in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the hope of seeing pictures created with the light of the sun. The devotees of this new technological achievement, busily occupying themselves by experimenting with daguerreotype plates, were not deterred by the expensive materials, or by their rarity in Russia. The sales of cameras and plates were sold by intermediaries, usually optometrists; Schedel in Saint Petersburg and the Beckers brothers in Moscow. In October of 1839, Beckers placed daguerreotype views of Moscow in his store’s display case, having put their production on firm commercial basis.

A Davinion’s studio enjoyed great popularity in Petersburg, where portraits of the Decembrists S.G. Volkonskiy, I.V. Podzhio, N.A. Panov and P.A. Muhanov were made, among others. The peak of daguerreotype portraiture also includes the work of I. Veninger, who aspired to express certain spiritual conditions in his art; melancholy reflection and dreaminess. In 1850, daguerreotype portraiture was still in higher demand than paper printouts, but it fell into neglect soon after. Sergey Levitzkiy, the last significant master of daguerreotype, is represented at the exhibit by complementary portraits, diverse in their composition and plastic solution.

You can view these and more at this exhibition entitled The Age of Daguerreotype. Early Russian Photography - the first exhibit ever at the Hermitage to explore such an interesting and ultimately vanished phenomenon as daguerreotype, as well as the stages of its development, so widely and deeply. The curator of this exhibit is Natalya Yurievna Avetyan, academic associate and custodian of the photography collection of the Photography Fund of the Department of Russian Culture of the State Hermitage. Details can be found here.

Photo: Self-portrait by Aleksey A Bobrinskiy, 1842

To help shed some light into this minefield, a PhD student in communications at Columbia University, Lynn Berger, recently presented a paper at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Cleveland (USA). Entitled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Photography: Privacy, Copyright and the Camera in the US, 1883-1905," her paper traces the movement & meaning of early photography into the courtroom and the beginning of two, somewhat contradictory legal models: copyright and privacy.

Such was the case of the unauthorized copies of Napoleon Sarony's iconic photograph of a pensive Oscar Wilde. By posing the writer in a certain position Sarony had changed nature enough to make the photograph a piece of art, and therefore the Supreme Court in 1884 decided that copyright protection should be extended to photographs.

For this early period of photography, Berger argued that there were two opposing concepts of photographs that coexisted uncomfortably. For copyright purposes, the photographer "made a picture" -- they were the author of the photograph. For privacy purposes, the photographer "took a picture" -- the picture was the property of its subject, the photographer a "mere mechanic."

You can read the rest of the news article here.

Photo: National Media Museum

Does anyone have access to that veritable Bible of Photography, the Encyclopaedia of Photographic and Photomechanical Processes, by Luis Nadeau ?

Or more to the point, does anyone have a copy that they are prepared to lend, hire or sell to me ?

atvb Stan Newton.

To celebrate his pioneering 3D photography exhibition, A Village Lost and Found, Brian May will be visiting the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol. Don't miss this chance to meet the artist and have your copy of the accompanying book signed by the man himself. (Including all your Queen CDs, vinyl, DVDs, tee-shirts, guitars, rock memorabilia etc - just joking!)
The book will be available from the RWA shop, priced £35, for signing on 26th January 2012 from 4pm to 5.30pm, and details of the exhibition can be found here.

The West Dunbartonshire Heritage Centres will be organising a series of events for their Photography Month in January which will include talks on one of the most extensive collection of Scottish road transport images in private hands, the Clyde Shipyard Photography of John Edward Kerr Smith, as well as an introduction to 19th century photography.

All events can be found in the January listings in the Events section of BPH.

Photo: Copyright: John Edward Kerr Smith

De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre's free seminar programme for Spring 2012 has been announced: 

RESEARCH SEMINARS IN CULTURES OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Spring 2012

Tuesdays 4 – 6pm

Edith Murphy Building 5.15

De Montfort University, Leicester

January 17^th

Simon Fleury (Victoria and Albert Museum)

‘Positive Negative: a work in progress'

 February 14^th

Dr Kris Juncker (Photographic History Research Centre, DMU)

‘Photographs of the Crossroads: Afro-Cuban Spiritism before the Revolution’

 March 6^th

Beatriz Pichel (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

‘Death that matters: Bodies and Masculinity in French Photography during the First World War’

All welcome, no need to book, just turn up.

Any queries, please contact the convener: Dr Kelley Wilder, Photographic History Research Centre (kwilder@dmu.ac.uk) 

A previously unknown cache of of photographs showing the construction of London's Tower Bridge in 1892 has been discovered the Mail online reports. The unique pictures, dating back to 1892, document the construction the iconic bridge, which at the time was a landmark feat of engineering nicknamed ‘The Wonder Bridge’.

The discarded pictures, which were retrieved by a caretaker who was looking after a building being turned into flats in 2006, have spent the last five years in a carrier bag underneath his bed.

For the full report see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067581/Stripped-youve-seen-Pictures-Tower-Bridge-construction-dumped-skip.html

Janet Mary Burnett Brown the great, great, granddaughter of William Henry Fox Talbot and the last of the Talbot family to live at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, Talbot's home  died peacefully on Wednesday 14th December 2011, aged 84. The funeral service will take place at St Cyriac's, Lacock on Thursday 29 December at 2.30pm. No flowers but donations to St Cyriac's Church, Lacock PCC.

The Times newspaper carried a death notice on 21 December. 

The Delhi Government this week launched their official calendar for 2012, and it features 12 photographs taken during the early era of photography.

Entitled “Delhi: Early Photography in the Capital”, it showcases photographs captured by local, State and European photographers, including Bourne, Shepherd & Vernon and Co. who travelled to the city over a 100 years ago.

All images featured are from the Alkazi Collection of Photography, and they depict the Lat of stone pillar and ruins of the Palace (1860), the Jama Masjid from the North Delhi (1865), Chandni Chowk (1865), Sunehari Masjid (1890), Chandni Chowk Bazaar (1865), Jama Masjid from Red Fort (1911), the Begum of Bhopal in 1911, Delhi Darbar, their Majesties entering the Fort 1911, Darbar Light Railway, Tis Hazari Station 1911-12, crowd at Jama Masjid 1903, the Coronation Darbar 1911 and the Kingsway 1911.

One for the Christmas stocking .....

Photo: Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit releasing the calendar in Delhi this week. Photo:Sandeep Saxena.

The UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper made the British Photographic History blog one of its photography websites for the week of 17 October 2011. Click here to see more. BPH is not a commercial site and relies on its contributors to make it a success. Thank you to everyone who is signed up or posted material over the past year.  

A collection of explicit mid-19th century daguerreotypes — among the first known nude photographs — sold for well above their estimates, with prices of up to 24,000 euros, at a major auction of erotica in Paris yesterday. According to the auction house, E.E.E. Leroy, the works collected from around the world are a testament to the universal and timeless nature of erotica. They were sold to a mixture of French and foreign bidders, many of them from Asia.

You can view the lots here, but you have been warned that the catalogue for sale was 18-rated!  So, not for the faint-hearted! 

Now, where did I keep my collection .......

Photo: Daguerreotype enhanced stereo erotic color of a young nude woman kneeling front right arm raised. Attributed to Bruno Braquenié (home GUOIN) Towards 1854-1856 8.5 x 17.4 cm. Provenance: Former collection Nazarieff. Estimated 10,000-12000 Euros.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts seeks a creative, dynamic, and experienced Assistant/Associate Curator in the Department of Photography and New Media. Reporting to the Department Head, the curator is responsible for the care, research, exhibition, and study of over 11,500 photographs and media works in the collection. The curator will also have the unique opportunity to organize annual exhibitions in two gallery spaces and to develop an innovative series of collection catalogs.

The ideal candidate possesses an in-depth knowledge of the history of photography combined with a broad understanding of modern art, history, and culture; is an adventurous risk-taker who does not fear experimentation, and who enjoys challenging curatorial conventions and proposing ambitious projects. The successful candidate will be a congenial colleague who is open to new ideas and comfortable collaborating with curators, scholars, and artists from a variety of disciplines; thinks strategically and creatively about engaging diverse audiences through insightful scholarship, installation design, text, media, programming, and education.

Requirements include: Master's degree in the field of photography, art history or related cultural fields (Ph.D. preferred); proven track record of organizing photography exhibitions and publications on photography and its related histories; at least three years' museum and/or gallery experience; hands-on and historical knowledge of photography's techniques and materials; knowledge of the art market, dealers, galleries, collectors, fellow professionals and other constituents in the field; ability to work independently and coordinate complex projects to completion; ability to write interpretive material for a diverse audience; significant art historical research skills and experience; excellent written and verbal communication and organization skills; team skills and ability to work effectively with staff, trustees and other vital contacts.

Further job description and application information can be found here. Good luck!

A hundred and twenty years after G. Eastman launched his Kodak box camera with the slogan ‘You press the button we do the rest’, the sweeping developments in the areas of mobile-phone technology and the Internet have revolutionized amateur image making anew. In this digital universe the means of production, (micro)publishing and displaying of photographs have come to the hands of the people at the largest ever scale, enabling a new culture of making and consuming photographs, and thus breathing new life (and afterlife) into vernacular practices. Although at an institutional level vernacular photographic practices had traditionally been excluded from the official history of photography, and the museum as a consequence, since the mid-90s several large-scale exhibitions have attempted to recontextualize the historical vernacular in the museum.

In recent years the participatory nature of ‘crowdsourcing’ afforded by social media platforms has also captured curators’ imagination, leading to an increasing number of exhibitions that either focus entirely on public-generated photography or accommodate public-contributed photography within a wider exhibition concept. So what makes vernacular imagery so appealing to curators and art museums and institutions today? This session aims to articulate the historical, institutional and curatorial motivations that underpin the integration/ assimilation of such imagery and its mundaneness and renewability in art exhibitions online and onsite. 

The 38th Annual AAH Conference & Bookfair invite academic and practice-based papers that explore current display practices around public-generated photography, the existing tensions between art and nonart artifacts, and the role of public-contributed photography in the formation of more inclusive curatorial narratives.

To be held at The Open University, Milton Keynes from 29th to 31st March 2012, details of the academic sessions, paper submissions, fees, registration etc can be found here.