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This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated individual to join the team of curators working in our History Collections Department.
You will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the photography collections including cataloguing, answering enquiries, processing acquisitions and loan requests, as well as organising visits to the stores. In particular, you will contribute to the development of content for our Collections Online project.
You will be educated to degree level, or equivalent, in art history, photography, fine art or a related subject. A postgraduate qualification in museums studies or the history of art is desirable, and you must have experience of working with visual art collections within a museum or art gallery. You must also have excellent written and verbal skills as well as an ability to work to tight deadlines.
The closing date for applications is 11th November 2011 at 5pm. Interviews will be held on the 24th November 2011.
Full details, including application etc can be found here. Good luck!
21 hours per week £25,524 p.a. pro rata, plus final salary pension scheme
Fixed-term maternity cover for up to 12 months
Equal Opportunities
Only with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and cultures can we bring London’s diverse histories to life and truly reflect the city and its people today.
As a member of the Employers’ Forum on Disability, we encourage applications from applicants with disabilities and will interview all who meet the minimum criteria for a job vacancy.
Ruth Wilcock has just published her book "Whitby Photographers, their lives and their photographs from the 1840s" that can be purchased via her website http://towlard.com. It has 218 pages A4 containing over 260 photos and 170 illustrations, many never published before that help tell the story of Whitby’s many photographers. Their story is closely woven in with the history of the town, which is illustrated on their cartes-de-visite and postcards. Many of their stories have never been published before, and for those that have, like Sutcliffe, Watson and Ross, much new information has been discovered, including links with Beatrix Potter. Lewis Carroll pops up like the White Rabbit in Samuel Braithwaite’s studio on several occasions. The history of the Camera Club, founded in 1897, and the later Photographic Society is also told.
Whitby’s resident photographers have included William Stonehouse, Francis Pickernell, Samuel Braithwaite, George Wallis, John Waller, John Harrison Dawson, William Wallace Herbert, James Aston Briggs, William Henry Heming, Edmund Hall, John Tindale, plus many more who worked for shorter periods or even just for a few seasons.
Two photographic “dynasties” are represented in the town’s photographic history - the Seaman family, originally from Chesterfield, who were in town for a few years, and the Doran family, who came to Whitby via London and Peterborough and stayed in business for 85 years. There is a short chapter on photographers of the district, including Henry Charles Morley of Staithes and Joseph Readman of Glaisdale.
Due for release on 2 February 2012 is Professor Elizabeth Edwards' new book: The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885-1918 published by Duke University Press. The book's synopsis reads:
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, hundreds of amateur photographers took part in the photographic survey movement in England. They sought to record the material remains of the English past so that it might be preserved for future generations. In The Camera as Historian, the groundbreaking historical and visual anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards works with an archive of nearly 55,000 photographs taken by 1000 photographers, mostly unknown until now. She approaches the survey movement and its social and material practices ethnographically. Considering how the amateur photographers understood the value of their project, Edwards links the surveys to the rise of popular photography, concepts of leisure, and understandings of the local and the national. Her examination of how the photographers negotiated between scientific objectivity and aesthetic responses to the past leads her to argue that the survey movement was as concerned with the conditions of its own modernity and the creation of an archive for an anticipated future as it was nostalgic about the imagined past. Including more than 120 duotone images, The Camera as Historianoffers new perspectives on the forces that shaped Victorian and Edwardian Britain, as well as contemporary debates about cultural identity, nationality, empire, material practices, and art.
About The Author
Elizabeth Edwards is Professor of Photographic History and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester. From 1988 until 2005, she was Head of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, where she was also a Lecturer in Visual Anthropology. Edwards is the author of Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology, and Museums; editor of Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920; and a co-editor of Photography, Anthropology and History; Visual Sense: The Cultural Reader; and Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Material Culture and the Senses.
For more information: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=17745
I found this and thought it might be of interest. 50 Masters, I will probably go.
If it is worth a look I will let you know.
I have enjoyed the blog and there have been some good posts.
The Victorian photographer Francis Frith is chiefly remembered for the company he helped found in 1859 which embarked upon the daunting task of documenting every town and village across the UK. Working with a team of photographers Frith ran a photography studio which proved enormously successful, leaving an archive of several hundred thousand images. Frith himself was a prolific photographer, and his journeys across Egypt and the Middle East with his camera and team of helpers reveal a true craftsman who could create images of great quality in hot, dry and difficult conditions.
Earlier this year I was asked to contribute to a six part programme on Francis Frith which will air on the BBC in spring 2012. As a contemporary practitioner of the process Frith used (wet plate collodion) it was felt that I might be able to help explain to the host of the series, John Sergeant, some of the challenges facing the photographer.
Arriving early on a Sunday morning at the imposing gates of Stirling Castle, a fortress which sits on a rocky outcrop high above the town, Douglas Thomson, who would be assisting me with the days shooting, were greeted by the film crew. We then drove in convoy across the defensive moat, through the battlements, and up the steep winding road which leads to the heart of the castle, and began to unload an almost endless supply of chemicals, glass plates and the all important camera and darkbox.
Setting up the camera on the battlements, it was impressed upon us that our segment would be filmed shortly, and that we would only have time to make one test plate to test UV levels (unlike conventional photography wet plate uses UV light which cannot be metered using a standard handheld meter). Given that filming was taking part in late autumn in Scotland, a country not known for an abundance of sunshine, Douglas and I estimated a longer exposure than usual , and were shown an image made by a Frith Photographer in 1899 (coincidentally too late for wet plate) of the courtyard which they wanted us to make a modern view of.
Having made our test image (a tintype) the director and John quickly told me what they wanted me to talk about, remembering to keep it nontechnical and nonspecific because the audience might not be as passionate about alternative processes as I was. We then quickly concluded the short interview segment, and the filming of the wet plate collodion process began.
Normally a slow, methodical and thoughtful process, I was urged that time was of the essence, and had to contend with a TV crew, John’s many questions, an audience of tourists, and my own nerves as I poured the collodion rather haphazardly onto the prepared glass plate.
After having spent several minutes in the darkbox with the plate in the silver bath, it wasn’t long until I was loading the sensitised plate into the camera. I then had to spend several minutes adjusting the camera which the public had been playing with while I was being interviewed– some curiously looking through the lens believing it to be a telescope, others bemused by its Victorian design. The plate was then exposed, and I rushed back to the darkbox to develop and wash the image, which appeared under the glow of the red lights. Emerging from the darkbox, I fixed the plate using KCN (Potassium Cyanide), revealing an image of the Great Hall which John seemed delighted with. Wrapping up the segment we talked briefly about the aesthetic and technical differences between digital and chemical photography, and John professed his enthusiasm for the process.
I look forward to when the show airs in February-March next year, and hope that the rest of the series is as interesting as the afternoon I spent making images in one of Scotland’s great buildings.
You can learn more about the programme 'Britain's First Photo Album' here.
The Harry Ransom Center seeks a curator to provide leadership and vision for an internationally renowned photography collection with strengths in the history of photography, photojournalism, documentary photography, Texana, and literary iconography.
The Ransom Center is a special collections library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin with over 37 million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, over 5 million photographs, and 100,000 works of art.
Salary: Minimum $75,000 depending on credentials.
Responsibilities: Serve as department head and supervise Research Curator in Photography, Associate Curator of Photography, and Associate Curator of Art, in addition to several support staff; work in association with the Academic Curator of Photography. Plan and prepare major exhibitions devoted to photographic materials, placing them in the context of other Ransom Center collections. Engage with scholars and support research and instruction in the photography collections. Responsible for overall direction of acquisition in photography; build relationships with collection donors, photographers, and dealers.
Benefits: Standard state benefits package including annual vacation and sick leave, paid holidays, and health insurance options. Eligible for Optional Retirement Program (TIAA-CREF and other options). Deferred compensation and supplemental tax-sheltered annuity programs also available. Significant professional travel funding.
Required Qualifications: Master's degree in a field related to the collection. A minimum of five years experience in museums or special collections libraries. Experience curating photographic materials. At least five years supervisory experience.
Preferred Qualifications: Ph.D. in a field related to the collection. Ten or more years experience in museums or special collections libraries. Distinguished record of publications, preferably in the history of photography. Experience curating major exhibitions on photography, creating exhibition catalogs, and exhibition-related public programming. Knowledge of the trade in photographic materials. Extensive experience with development and donor relations. Experience with public relations and marketing of photographic collections.
Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Application procedure: Go to https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/hr/jobs/nlogon/111026010606
Applicants must complete the online job application and submit a letter of interest, a current resume, and contact information for three references to: Dr. Richard W. Oram, Associate Director & Librarian, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, PO Box 7219, Austin, TX 78713-7219, roram@mail.utexas.edu. Review of applications begins January 23, 2012 and will continue until position is filled. Security sensitive; conviction verification. EEO/AA.
More than 300 evocative pictures of the past are in a new book by David Kindred called Ipswich: the Changing Face of the Town, which is being published this week. The oldest photographs date from the 1880s.
Other early pictures include high-quality images taken by Harry Walters, who worked in the town from the 1890s to 1926. Most of his photographs chronicle Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee celebrations in 1897 and show the streets and buildings of Ipswich as they were at the turn of the century.
The publisher is Suffolk-based Old Pond priced at £19.95, and further details can be found here.
Photo: Tavern Street, Ipswich, in 1897, from a point near St Lawrence Lane and looking towards the Cornhill. Hatton Court is to the right
As mentioned in an earlier blog, details are now available of the third instalment of "Another Story: Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection" which has the subtitle Written in Light. It delineates the infancy of photography, from the moment when the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre developed the photographic process of the daguerreotype in 1839, to August Sander’s fascinating project People of the Twentieth Century, black-and-white portraits of German citizens from the first half of the 20th century.
Across six rooms, several pioneering feats of photography will be presented with unique works that contribute to Moderna Museet’s exceptional position among photography-collecting institutions. The section includes Julia Margaret Cameron, who portrayed famous Brits in the 1860s, revealing both their inner and outer character. Guillaume Berggren’s photographs from 1880s Constantinople are legendary, as are Carleton E. Watkins’ documentation of the American West a few decades earlier. In addition to portraits, landscapes, nature and architecture were typical subjects for the early photographers. A few examples of present-day photography are inter- spersed, for instance Tom Hunter’s series in which he explored the urban landscape in the wake of industrialism around the turn of the millennium.
Details of the exhibition can be found here. And an interview with Daniel Birnbaum, Moderna Museet's director, who took the radical step to rehang the museum’s whole collection, can be read on this link here.
The Observer and Guardian's photography commentator Sean O'Hagan reports on a scaling back of plans for London's Photographers' Gallery and the National Media Museum's Media Space, due to the difficulty of raising funds in the current economic climate. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/nov/01/london-photographic-spaces-photographers-gallery?newsfeed=true The Photographers' Gallery budget was scaled back from £15.5 million in 2009 to £8.7 million and Media Space has yet to secure the projected £8.7million it needs and has also changed its vision for the space.
Elsewhere in Britain the re-opening of the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool is a sign of activity outside of the capital. O'Hagan's weekend piece in the Observer (reported here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/britain-s-leading-photography-galleries-together) was criticised in the blogosphere for its London-centric perspective, unfair perhaps when his focus was on four London based curators and their spaces. That said, there is plenty happening outside of London that is equally worthy of celebration.
This new V&A photography exhibition will feature over eighty photographs celebrating the diversity of photography in the UK since 1945. It is one strand supporting the V&A's major exhibition British Design 1945-2012. Island Stories will look at the narratives told through individual bodies of work by photographers held in the V&A's permanent collections. Featured photographers include Elspeth Juda and Maurice Broomfield, each of whom promoted the image of Britain 'on the up' during the immediate post-war years, photographing manufacturing and fashion industries with an artistic eye. Juda turned 100 this year and her work for Ambassador magazine is celebrated in a new V&A publication. Broomfield donated his extensive archive to the V&A shortly before his death at the age of 94 in 2010.
BPH will publish more details as they become available.
Local Bygones is a new website featuring thousands of photographs from North and Mid Wales, Cheshire and Shropshire. Created by NWN Media, the interactive site displays pictures from its vast photographic archive, some of which date back to the 19th century.
It lets users browse, share via sites such as Facebook and comment on pictures, as well as download high quality copies. Most images have never been posted online and some have not been published anywhere before. Thousands more pictures will be added to the site in the months ahead.
You can check out the website yourself here.
Sean O'Hagan in The Observer newspaper interviews four of Britain's leading photography curators. Martin Barnes of the V&A, Brett Rogers of the Photographers' Gallery, Simon Baker of Tate Modern and Charlotte Cotton of Media Space [the National Media Museum] discuss the place of photography in their respective organisations and more widely. The wide-ranging interviews look at recent developments and, in the case of Media Space, looks ahead to a Spring 2013 opening.
The article can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/30/v-a-photographs-gallery-tate?newsfeed=true
The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, seeks a curator of photography.
Photography is one of five focused collecting areas of the Harn, each of which is headed by a senior staff curator with a devoted permanent collection exhibition space. The curator of photography position is supported by an endowment that provides generous annual support for travel, research and special projects. In addition a dedicated endowment for photography acquisitions is available to the curator for development of the collection. The museum currently houses a collection of over 1000 photographs ranging from daguerreotypes and mid-19th century images to large-scale contemporary works. The museum has an established record of major photography exhibitions ranging from shows of modernist photography to the presentation of contemporary work.
The School of Art and Art History, with studio and art history programs in photography, provides opportunities for interaction with professional colleagues and collaborative educational programming, and at the Harn the five curators often collaborate on acquisitions, exhibitions and programs. The curator of photography will manage and develop the collection and related programs. Other responsibilities include preparation of installations from the permanent collection, conception and implementation of exhibitions and related publications, original research for publication, lectures for academic audiences and the general public, cultivation of donor relationships, and conception and development of grant projects in collaboration with the development office and others.
A PhD in art history with specialization in the history of photography is strongly preferred. The successful candidate will have a distinguished record of scholarship and at least three years of curatorial experience dealing with research, acquisitions, exhibitions, best practices for care of photographic materials and collaborative programming.
The ideal candidate may be a specialist in any area of photography, but should have curatorial interests that embrace the broad history of the medium and should be engaged with the intellectual concerns of the fields of photography and with creative practices in museum exhibitions. To view application instructions and complete an online resume, visit http://jobs.ufl.edu. Reference number for this vacancy is 0809612 and the deadline date to apply is December 15, 2011. Application must be made on-line to be considered for this position.
The post is full-time, with an expected starting salary of $55,000 - $70,000, commensurate with education and experience.
Full job description etc can be found here. Good luck!
Just as when you thought it was safe to head to V&A's new Photograph's Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland today announced upcoming exhibitions for 2012, including the first exhibition in the newly revamped National Portrait Gallery which opens to the public on 1st December.
The opening ‘masterpiece’ exhibition of the new Photography Gallery highlights some of the greatest works in the National Galleries of Scotland photography collection. Entitled Romantic Camera, it is the first exhibition within the new Photography Gallery in the refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It explores questions of identity, specifically the close relationship between romanticism and photography in Scotland. Over 60 works are included, ranging from iconic images by Adamson and Hill to new acquisitions being shown for the first time.
This exhibition suggests that rather than vanishing during the 1840s, the romantic impulse has been vital to the development of the medium, up to and including the present day. Romanticism emerged as a literary form in the 1790s and had a powerful impact on Scottish culture, particularly through the influence of the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott. Photography in Scotland was born in Scott’s shadow and was profoundly shaped by his creative imagination. Characterised by nostalgic longing, nineteenth-century photographers hunted out traces of Scotland’s turbulent history or ranged across the landscape in search of poetic subjects.
Details of this exciting, new Gallery can be found here, and exhibition details here. This space will display a rolling programme of shows and exhibitions throughout the year. Looks like a great year for photographic history in the UK!
For all you Beato fans out there, there is a forthcoming exhibition opening end of the month that might be of interest (Stateside, unfortunately!).
A British subject of Italian ancestry, Felice Beato (1832-1909) was one of the most successful early photographers in Japan, which was newly opened to Westerners in the 1850s. Arriving in Yokohama in 1863, Beato quickly established the model for commercial photography in terms of subjects, style, and marketing to a Western audience. The first in the United States devoted exclusively to Beato’s photographs of feudal Japan, this special exhibition features nearly 100 albumen photographs, many of which were hand painted by Japanese artists. Beato’s subjects include geisha, samurai, landscape views, and historic sites.
The exhibition features photographs from the private collection of Tom Burnett, New York City, details of which can be found here. If you are heading there and want to learn more about the Burnett collection which consists of several thousand images, contained in albums, stereoviews, cdv's, and single photographs, from 1859 until 1900, then do try and attend the accompany Collectors Series talk: In Conversation with Tom Burnett found here.
A 64-page catalogue will also be available for purchase in the Museum of Art shop.
Here's your chance to own the iconic Julia Jackson (1867) portrait taken by her aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron. Cameron made at least two negatives from the Spring 1867 sitting showing Jackson full-face with hair down.
One depicts Jackson with her head tilted downwards in a display of intimacy and tenderness. The other shows her confronting the viewer directly with a gaze that is altogether more defiant and powerful. Cameron was keen to show that the Victorian woman was not inward with a stony reserve but rather that she could exhibit myriad feelings that went against the stereotype of the period. The photographer employed a reversal technique to produce several variations from each negative - these are believed to be the only examples in her work of this technique, which she later abandoned in favour of soft focus to achieve the same ethereal results.
The other recorded versions of this image are in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Henry Taylor Album), and a private collection in the UK (Norman Album).
Acquired by the present owner with full provenance (Sotheby's Belgravia, 26 June 1975, lot 55), Lot 4 (pre-sale estimate of £25,000 – 35,000) is up for graps at the next Bonhams Photographs sale, details of which can be found here.
Or a cheaper option is to head to the new V&A Photography Gallery, and view some JMC work up-close, and free-of-charge!
Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879), Julia Jackson, 1867; Albumen print. 26.4 x 20.7cm (10 3/8 x 8 1/8in).
Following from the stunning Reports by the Juries (1852) sold at Bonhams in June this year (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/reports-by-the-juries-brings) another Commissioners' set in being offered by the same auction house on 22 November 2011. This new set was presented to Philip Pusey. Pusey was a politician and agriculturalist and served as a juror for the class of Agricultural and Horticultural Implements. Details of the lot which is estimated at £80,000-100,000 can be found here: http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/WService=wslive_pub/pubweb/publicSite.r?screen=LotDetailsNoFlash&iSaleNo=18992&iSaleItemNo=5157017
As mentioned in an earlier blog here, dates of this new exhibition to be held at the Natural History Museum has now been released. "Scott's Last Expedition" will explore the captivating story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition to Antarctica in 1910-1913, the Terra Nova. This groundbreaking exhibition will also be commemorating the centenary of the expedition and celebrates its achievements. It reunites for the first time real artefacts used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected on the 1910–1913 expedition. Visitors can also walk around a life-size stylised representation of Scott’s base-camp hut that still survives in Antarctica.
To accompany the exhibition, a new book entitled "The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott" has just been published. Most of the photographs taken by Scott during the Terra Nova expedition in the book have not been seen before. A handful were published shortly after Scott’s death, but most of the 120 surviving images have never been published. The once-lost images are accompanied by text from Polar historian Dr David M Wilson, great-nephew of Dr Edward Wilson, who died with Scott and his fellow explorers in 1912.
The series of breathtaking photos capture panoramas of the continent, superb depictions of mountains and formations of ice and snow, and portraits of the explorers on the polar trail. Scott was trained by Herbert Ponting, the official expedition photographer, who had his own dark room in Scott's hut. Some of Scott's photographs will feature in this forthcoming exhibition.
Details of the exhibition can be found here, and you can purchase the book through the Amazon link on the right. Looks like another one for the diary!
On a different note: A case of whisky buried beneath a hut used by the explorer Ernest Shackleton during his unsuccessful 1907 to 1909 expedition to reach the South Pole has been returned to Scotland. The Scotch spent more than 100 years buried in the Antarctic before 5 cases were dug up and carefully thawed by museum officials in New Zealand. One of these cases - of Mackinlay whisky - has been flown to Scotland by the billionaire owner of the Glasgow-based Distillers Whyte and Mackay, on his private jet. It will spend up to six weeks in full laboratory conditions and subjected to analysis before reporting back to the Antarctic Heritage Trust. The bottles are to be eventually returned to Shackleton's hut, unlikely to ever leave the ice again.
That's what I call vintage!
Photo: Taken by Captain Scott of the Terra Nova team with their ponies. This is one of many unseen photos revealed in David M Wilson's new book, The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott. Some of the photos will also be on display at Scott's Last Expedition at the Natural History Museum, Jan 2012. © Richard Kossow
