Blogs

A new exhibition which explores the birth of Turkish photography has been curated by Bursa-born Engin Özendes. Entitled “Kez Gı Sirem İstanbul/Seni Seviyorum İstanbul” (“I love you İstanbul”), the exhibit will display over 100 images and documents showing how İstanbul has changed through the eyes of Armenian photographers, based on three different periods over the past 150 years.

The earliest photographs exhibited focus on a period dominated by the ethnically Armenian Ottoman Abdullah brothers, who were instrumental in the birth of Turkish photography, as well as the likes of Pascal Sebah (Sebah & Joaillier) Mihran İranyan, Aşil Samancı (Ateliers Apollon) and Boğos Tarkulyan (Photographie Phebus).

Özendes also presents an in-depth display of the post-1950 works of globally acclaimed İstanbul-born photographer, Ara Güler. Of Armenian ancestry, Güler’s striking İstanbul shots, such as that of Armenian fishermen at Kumkapı taken in 1952, have marked him as one of the foremost figures in international creative photography.

Curator Özendes explains that the importance of the exhibition lies in raising awareness of the strong Armenian influence in the birth of Turkish photography. “The 19th Century was a period when many young Armenians were sent beyond Ottoman soil to various parts of Europe for education. Here, arts institutes such as the Murad-Raphaelian in Venice were instrumental in schooling young Armenians in various art disciplines, including photography. These skills were then brought back to İstanbul, where many of the Armenians opened distinguished photography studios, most notably that of the Abdullah brothers. This was to be the main introduction of professional photography to Turkey, where the trade quickly filtered throughout İstanbul and wider Anatolia.”

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

Founded in 1985 by the Hungarian publisher Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards showcase excellence among books on the still and moving image. The foundation awards two prizes of £5,000 per year to books offering the most significant contribution to photographic and/or moving image scholarship, history, criticism, science and conservation. The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards will be announced during the Sony World Photography Awards in London, 27 April 2011.

This year's Best Photography Book Award shortlist includes  Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life 1834–1910 (£25), the catalogue for last year’s exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery by Mark Haworth-Booth, and for the Moving Image category, Philip Brookman’s catalogue for the Tate show, Eadweard Muybridge.

The full list and details of the judges can be found here.

Best Photography Book Award Shortlist

•TJ: Johannesburg Photographs 1948-2010 / Double Negative: A Novel, David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislaviċ (Contrasto)
•The Thirty Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon, John Gossage (Steidl)
•Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life 1834 – 1910, Mark Haworth-Booth (The National Portrait Gallery)
Best Moving Image Book Award Shortlist

•Von Sternberg, John Baxter (The University Press of Kentucky)
•Eadweard Muybridge, Philip Brookman (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Tate Publishing, Steidl)
•Illuminations: Memorable Movie Moments, Richard D. Pepperman (Michael Wiese Productions)
•Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the 20th Century, Matthew Solomon (University of Illinois Press)

If you're feeling rich or have some loose change in your pocket after the cuts, how about an early original salt print of Daguerre made by Whipple in 1855? Apparently used to illustrate the February 1855 issue of The Photographic and Fine Art Journal, only 4 other examples are know to exist!

All this for a mere US $100,000 (or approx. £61,500 in good old English notes). Check it out on the ebay listing here. Or it's item number 200535461355.

Birmingham Library and Archive Services has acquired a rare set of the suite  of  3  portfolios  entitled  "Photographic  Pictures Made By Mr. Francis Bedford  During  the  Tour in the East in which, by command, he accompanied His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales" , published by Day & Son, 1862. These contain 172  prints, each  approximately 8 3/4x11 inches (22.2x27.9  cm.), many with Bedford's credit in the negative with a single photograph mounted to each leaf.  The portfilios were aquired for £55000 with grants of £32500 from the Art Fund and £15000 from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.  The collection will be housed in the Library of Birmingham, currently under construction and due to open in 2013.

Birmingham  Central Library already  holds  a substantial body of work by and about Francis Bedford.  This includes 2700 glass negatives and 2049 prints, mostly architectural and topographical views of Great Britain c1870-1880, published works illustrated with Bedford photographs including W.M. Thompson, The Holy Land, Egypt, Constantinople and Athens, 1866; Photographic Views of Torquay c1865, Photographic Views of Warwickshire c1865 and a comprehensive catalogue of all Bedford topographical photographs including Cabinet, Large Cabinet, Panoramic, Small Cabinets, Large Photographs, and Small Panoramic Miniature Views. The acquisition also complements an already significant collection of 18^th and 19^th century published works on the archaeology, history and culture of the Middle East.  

Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, said, “We’re thrilled to have helped with the purchase of this fantastic collection of historic photographs which tell us so much about the UK’s history in ‘the  East’ and offers a fascinating insight into the role of the Royal family some 150 years ago. Over the past few years we’ve helped Birmingham Library and Archive Services with a number of major photography acquisitions and look forward to the opening of the Library of Birmingham and the fantastic displays it will bring to members of the public.  The acquisition bolsters Birmingham’s reputation locally, nationally and internationally as a centre for the history of photography, particularly within the context of the photography research centre to be created as part of the new Library of Birmingham.  In recent years, the Art Fund, the national fund-raising charity for works of art, has helped Birmingham Library and Archive Services with a number of major acquisitions. These include a £42,695 grant towards the John Blakemore Archive (2010), £6000 towards the Back to the Village series by Anna Fox (2009) and £12,000 towards the Sir Benjamin Stone Legacy Collection (2008).

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.