Blogs

To coincide with the start of America's observance of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, which began 150 years ago on 12th April, a new exhibition featuring 400 haunting images will be held at the Jefferson Building, Library of Congress. Entitled “The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection,” these are striking images, especially of young enlisted men. They often show weapons, hats, canteens, musical instruments, painted backdrops, and other details that enhance the research value of the collection. Among the most rare images are sailors, African Americans in uniform, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits of soldiers with their families and friends.

The pictures are from the collection of the McLean jeweler Tom Liljenquist and his sons, who donated 700 glass ambrotypes and metal tintypes to the library last year. The family has been collecting the photographs for 15 years. Most of the photographs are small, some not much bigger than a pack of matches. They are arranged in neat rows inside glass cases in a way that almost gives the effect of a quilt. The library is also setting up two interactive stations at the exhibit where the pictures can be uploaded onto a computer screen and then enlarged to reveal the most minute details.

Details of this collection can be found here, and of this forthcoming exhibition here.

An introduction to Victorian and Edwardian portraits (Peter Funnell and Jan Marsh) selected by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust. From the revolutionary ideas of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century to outstanding society portraits of the early twentieth century, this guide encompasses the invention of photography, large narrative paintings and popular prints depicting events, royalty, statesmen, soldiers, scientists, actors and writers.

The Victorians and Edwardians believed passionately in the historical importance of their age and wanted to record the great figures of their time. During Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901) Britain became the world’s first industrialised commercial power. This wealth, combined with the prestige of the British empire, created an extraordinary source of patronage for portraiture, and a legacy that includes the world’s first dedicated gallery of portraits – the National Portrait Gallery, London.

This informative and accessible guide reveals an astonishing range of styles, techniques and subjects from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Illustrations and engaging commentaries on sitters, from Charles Darwin to Virginia Woolf, shed light on the various ways in which people chose to be presented – wherever possible using the actual words of the artists, photographers and their subjects themselves.

Although Edward VII’s reign lasted for less than a decade (1901–10), he oversaw not only the growth of a more democratic state, but also the development of art education and training for women artists. The Edwardian sitters featured in this book reveal the changing society that came to influence twentieth-century British portraiture.

Published in association with the National Trust. Click on the Amazon link on the right to purchase a copy.

Eugène Atget was not a trained photographer. Instead he only turned to this medium having been unsuccessful in other vocations. Having to earn a living, he took up photography and started out in the provinces but soon arrived in Paris where he lived for the rest of his life. Atget worked anonymously and was considered a commercial photographer who sold what he called “documents for artists”, i.e. photographs of landscapes, close-up shots, genre scenes and other details that painters could use as models. However, as soon as Atget turned his attention to photographing the streets of Paris, his work attracted the attention of leading institutions such as the Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque Nationale, which became his principal clients.

Now Atget's work can be viewed in a new exhibition which is organised into 12 sections that correspond to the thematic groupings used by the man himself. They are: small trades, Parisian types and shops, 1898-1922; the streets of Paris, 1898-1913; ornaments, 1900-1921; interiors, 1901-1910; cars, 1903-1910; gardens, 1898-1914; the Seine, 1900-1923; the streets of Paris, 1921-1924; outside the city centre, 1899-1913; and the outskirts of Paris, 1901-1921.

Details of this exhibition can be found here.

Photo:  Chanteuse de rue et joueur d'orgue de Barbarie, 1898 | Eugène Atget | Musée Carnavalet, Paris | © Eugène Atget / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet

De Montfort University, Leicester, has appointed Dr Elizabeth Edwards as Research Professor in Photographic History. She joins the De Montort team from her previous role as Senior Research Fellow at University of the Arts, London, on 1 June 2011. Her research interests are noted here: http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Elizabeth_Edwards_research.htm.

The post was advertised in November last year and was previously noted on BPH http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/job-research-professor-in.  Edwards will offer some support to De Montfort's acclaimed History of Photgraphy and Practice MA course led by Dr Kelley Wilder, but as with her predecessor Roger Taylor who held the Professorship from its inception, Edwards' focus will be on securing research funding, developing the research base and profile of the photographic history department, and she also becomes the first Director of the Photographic History Research Centre based at the university. The PHRC is currently recruiting a PhD student to examine the nature of Kodak research.

The university will be making a formal announcement in due course but as news now appears to be public BPH feels able to note the appointment now.

Although the following is a little outside of BPH's main areas of interest it does fall in to the category of material that is of wider interest... The Rochester, NY, City Newspaper carried a feature on Eastman House which looked at future plans. Details are Here: http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/entertainment/art/2011/03/ART-FEATURE-George-Eastman-House-focuses-on-the-future/ 

Of interest to fellow BPH members are some of the documents published online today. They include accounts from Robert Falcon Scott, commander of the expedition to the Antarctic, during the earliest British attempt to survey the frozen continent between 1901 and 1904. He talks of balloon flights over the unexplored continent and an account of a sledge journey to the furthest point south then reached, a journey that almost killed his companion Ernest Shackleton.

Another one are pages from the diary of the astronomer (and also botanist, chemist, mathematician, to name but a few!) John Herschel from 1839 which give some insight into his role as the co-inventor of photography. According to Keith Moore, head of library and archives at the Royal Society's Centre for History of Science, "William Henry Fox Talbot has this great idea to use a camera to take an image, but he couldn't fix the image and make it permanent on paper. It was John Herschel who did that. Herschel was effectively the co-inventor of photography and that's evident from the diaries in 1839 where he's talking about his photographic experiments."

You can check them out for yourself at the Royal Society's website here.

A piece of trivial:  Herschel was held in high esteem by his Victorian peers; he is buried in Westminster Abbey and lies next to the two aforementioned titans of science, Darwin and Newton.

Through the Colonial Lens will feature more than 70 images, looking at the history of photography in India from its early adoption dating from the 1840s through the early 1900s and will explore themes of the subjective view, consumption of images and photography’s growing prominence over earlier forms of visual media. Drawing from local private collections, Through the Colonial Lens will feature the work of both amateur and professional photographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Samuel Bourne, Lala Deen Dayal, Edward Lyon and John Murray.

Each photographer exhibited in Through the Colonial Lens responded in varying degrees to the dual demands of their artistic eye and professional duties, whether Captain E.D. Lyon in south India, a British military officer tasked with documenting a historic site, or Lala Deen Dayal (1844-1910), a professional photographer with a studio in Mumbai. Samuel Bourne (1834-1912), along with others, brought his idea of the ‘picturesque’ with him from Britain to many of the images he took in India, a concept steeped in the Romanticism of 18th-century Europe.

The Victorian era’s emphasis on the role of science and technology, specifically natural history, led to a seeming mania for taxonomy. This urge to classify newly encountered phenomenon can be seen in the development of photography in the subcontinent. Military officers such as Captain Thomas Biggs and Captain Linnaeus Tripe were given reassignments from their military duties in order to photo-document local architecture, which provided key information to the newly-formed Archaeological Survey of India. Photography was understood to be closely linked to other scientific pursuits, with doctors in the British military, such as Dr. John Murray and Dr. William Henry Pigou, as early enthusiasts. Efforts to provide comprehensive photography of a wide swath of the diverse population of India were closely tied to the nascent fields of anthropology and ethnography.

Further information can be found here, and details of the exhibition here.

Photo:  Samuel Bourne (British, 1834-1912)
Kutub Minar with the Great Arch, from the West
Delhi,1866, Albumen print. Loaned by Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Barbara Timmer

Some of you may have caught the BBC series last year. But for those who missed it, here's a reminder of an entertaining clip of Jeremy Paxman doing Victorian photography ..... The clip features the Reeves of Lewes photographic, established 1855 which still has its negatives back to its founding.

The hatchet has finally come down, and the full extend of the government's austerity measures on the Arts Council and photographic galleries/organisations have been laid bare for all to see. A quick glance reveals the following:

Photography galleries and organisations that will receive increased funding from ACE: Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool): +15.4%; The Photographer's Gallery: +10.4%; Redeye Photography Network: +55.7%; Photoworks: +2.5%; Impressions Gallery: +5.1%; Focal Point Gallery (South-on-Sea Borough Council): +157.3%.

Photography galleries and organisations that will see their funding cut in part: Autograph: -2.2%; Rhubarb Rhubarb: -14.2%; Photofusion: -6.9%; De La Warr Pavilion: -6.0%.

Photography galleries and organisations that have lost their ACE funding: Side Gallery, Hereford Photography Festival, Pavilion, and Four Corners Film.

A full report can be found in the official Arts Council website here, and also in a BJP report here.

On a happier note, the recent Photographer's Gallery/Christie's auction as reported in a BPH blog raised over £325,000. The press release can be found here: AuctionR.pdf.

The Hampstead Photographic Society (HPS) will be celebrating its 75th anniversary next year (est 1937). The HPS has been busy researching the society’s history, especially in the society’s early years, as much of their own documentation was mislaid back in the 1980s.

Writing in last week's Camden Journal, the Chairman, David Reed, would love to trace individuals who helped create the society back in the pre-war period, plus any information about what happened to it during the war and when it became active again after the war. The society was called the Hampstead and North West London Camera Club before the 1960s and members used to enter a regular competition called the North London Exhibition in the 1950s and 1960s.

So if you are able to help, or know of any former members, then please do contact the HPS via their website.

Well, if you call stereoscopic photography magic, that is! You've listened to his music, got the T-shirt, the CDs/DVDs.

You then got his book and the owl stereoscopic viewer.

Now, get ready for Brian May's foray into his other interest - astrophysics .....

Probably best known for his writing on photography and photographic history - he co-wrote with Martin Parr two volumes of The Photobook: A History which 
won the 2006 book award for photography from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation - Gerry Badger's photography skills are now on display in a solo exhibition. The images are unframed A4 portrait style taken from three of his photo-book projects. 
 Badger was one of ten photographers invited to shoot a series from their own part of the world: One Day June 21, 2010; Breakfast at Mario’s 2008-2010;  The Word on the Sidewalk 2009-2010.

Badger also curated a number of shows in the past, amongst them "The Photographer as Printmaker" for the Arts Council in 1980 and  "Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945-1989" in 1989.

Details of his solo exhibition can be found here.

The conduct of yesterday's (March 25th) photograph auction at Dorotheum in Vienna left a sour taste in the mouths of many buyers - mine included, where purchasers of most of the 19th century section found their winning bids cancelled.

The auction house had received a large consignment of 19th century prints from a geographical association and had divided it into 55 lots. The majority of lots sold, many at or above estimate.

I bought several lots and left the room. When I went to get my invoice I was handed a saleroom notice and told my bids had been voided, with all 55 lots aggregated and re-sold at the end of the section. I gather the notice had been read out at the beginning of the sale. I had wasted two days and 500 euros in expenses attending the sale.

The practice may be controversial, but is clearly not unheard of. What is however unacceptable, is that no effort had been made to inform buyers in advance that this selling strategy was going to be used - not highlighted either in the catalogue or on the website. To find out you had to be in the room for the start of the auction, and to speak German.

That they failed to draw this to the attention of buyers, and thus allow us to work out whether to invest time and money in such a lottery, ought to be below a prestigious auction house like Dorotheum, but clearly is not. It displays a disgraceful  arrogance and contempt for the customer, who pays just as much to the auction house as the vendor. I won't ever be going back, and I guess I won't be alone.

Once again a case of buyer beware - or even would-be buyer beware.

Held in a cold dark room, the exact opposite of the warm balmy glow that an Indian Summer conjures up, are a remarkable set of Victorian photographs collected by a Victorian businessman from Horsham. These incredibly delicate photographs, whose survival has occurred only because so few people have seen them, have been digitally copied and are now on display in Horsham Museum’s new photographic display ‘Indian Summer’.

The images on show range from the grand architecture for which the continent is known, through to the scene of everyday workmen. These images though show an India pre Edwin Lutyen’s, an India whose own striking architecture inspired and challenged Britain’s own idea of Imperial splendour. The images date from around 1865 to 70, at a time when India’s past and its culture provided a rich fascination for the English. This fascination would culminate in 1876 when Queen Victoria would be proclaimed Empress of India and continue through to the 1920s with the inspiration for Wembley.

The photographs’ were collected by Robert Henderson of Sedgwick Park, Horsham who undertook a tour of the country in January through to July 1874, before travelling to the rest of Asia and America, looking at his business interests. Some of the photographs were taken by the celebrated photographer Samuel Bourne whose photographs were described at the time as having a "luminescent quality". His work gave birth to a studio, Bourne and Shepherd, which still operates in Calcutta. As Bourne operated in India between 1863 and 1870 it is more than likely that Robert Henderson collected the prints from the studio itself. They were then pasted in to green leather bound albums and eventually donated to Horsham Museum in 1930.

Visitors can see four albums at the Museum, reconstructing Henderson’s tour. Volume One, from January to July 1874, shows India, Singapore and Jahore. The other three volumes contain images from Bangkok, China, Japan and America.

For further information please contact Jeremy Knight, Curator, or check out the event details here.

This exhibition entitled 'History Drawn with Light' opens with a handsomely appointed re-creation of a portrait studio of the antebellum era: oriental carpet, leather-upholstered armchair with stained-oak walls.  Adding to the domestic atmosphere are the presence of several contemporary paintings and an 1855 group portrait of society members. An 1877 panoramic photograph of the waterfront comes with a selection of smaller, numbered photographs of the waterfront today.  Light shields are available to offset the glare on the daguerreotypes on display. Boston boasted 43 daguerreotype studios by the end of the 1840s.

A news report can be found here, and details of the exhibition here. If you can't get across the pond, the Society has an interesting website with an online exhibition of early photography which can be found here.

Photo:  The Branded Hand (by Southworth & Hawes, Boston’s leading daguerreotypists) depicts punishment for trying to help slaves escape.

The Oxford Mail reports of an exhibition of rare original prints of images taken in Oxford by Victorian photographer Henry Taunt. More than 130 pictures from the 1850s to 1900s by Taunt and other early photographers are on show at Sanders of Oxford in High Street. They depict university buildings, parks and cobbled streets, with scenes include the Ashmolean Museum, Magdalen Tower and the view from Folly Bridge.

Gallery manager Phil Marston said: “It’s very interesting to see how little Oxford has changed since the Victorian times. Henry Taunt was born in St Ebbe’s in 1842 and became a professional photographer capturing hundreds of images of Victorian Oxford and the surrounding area. He was also responsible for producing a pioneering pocket guide with photographs of the River Thames. He was considered at the cutting edge of photography for his skilful use of tents, tripods. He was also hailed for using water to instantly develop images.

The exhibition runs until Thursday, March 31. For more details, call 01865 242590 or check Sander's website.

Photo:  Phil Marston, of Sanders of Oxford, with a photograph of High Street in the 19th century.

Who says luxury leather goods and vintage photography do not go together? The high-end French leather & fashion goods manufacturer has recently launched their new campaign entitled Double Exposure. As can be viewed in the video  below, photographer Tom Craig  uses the 19th century ‘wet plate’ photographic process to capture a series of intimate and ethereal portraits of Sam Taylor-Wood.

Patience is very much the virtue as Taylor-Wood had to pose for up to 12 seconds in some of the shots. In the video, she also  shares with us some of her most treasured possessions, amongst them her trusted Leica M7 .....

On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London.
The author,  Simon Winchester, deftly uses the resulting image--as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation--as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature. Dodgson's love of photography framed his view of the world, and was partly responsible for transforming a shy and half-deaf mathematician into one of the world's best-loved observers of childhood. Little wonder that there is more to "Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid" than meets the eye. Using Dodgson's published writings, private diaries, and of course his photographic portraits, Winchester gently exposes the development of Lewis Carroll and the making of his Alice.

According to one review, fascinating as that story is, it has been told many times. What Winchester offers that is new, largely, is a detailed explanation the nascent field of amateur Victorian photography. He meticulously tracks Dodgson’s 1856 purchase of his first mahogany-and-brass folding camera. He carefully works through the history of the development of the camera, and explains the difference between the daguerreotype, the calotype, and the wet-plate collodion that Dodgson relied on. What is frustrating, however, is to hear a good deal about Dodgson’s photographs but to see only the one of Alice, as no others are reproduced in the book.

If you are still keen, you can purchase the book through the Amazon link on the right.