Blogs

This coming Sunday, BBC's Countryfile programme will focus on the West Yorkshire town of Holmfirth. Located on the A6024 Woodhead Road in the Holme Valley, did you know that this town played a role in the growth of the British film industry in the early part of the 20th century?

It was in 1899 that James Bamforth, creator of saucy seaside postcards, started making films in Holmfirth. In the following 15 years, he shot and produced over 50 films in and around the town - all starring local people. Over a century later, the BBC's Countryfile team has been back to rediscover the man behind the movies. In this documentary a selection of lantern slides, postcards and greetings cards from the Bamforth collection which is held at the Tolson Museum in Huddersfield will be shown.  Bamforth progressed from portrait photography to lantern slides and then films with great commercial success at every stage.

The collection held by Kirklees Museums and Galleries at the Tolson Museum covers all aspects of Bamforth's work.  It ranges from 19th century portrait and landscape photographs to greetings cards from the 1980s. It also includes over 20,000 postcards, 1,500 pieces of original artwork for postcards and greetings cards and hundreds of lantern slides. Though now most famous for saucy seaside postcards, Bamforth worked in a range of styles producing religious song sets, sentimental wartime cards, photographic views and comic photographic postcards. He produced postcards, greetings cards, calendars, lantern slides and, of course, films.

The history of Bamforth's in Holmfirth is revealed on BBC One's Countryfile at 1900 GMT on Sunday 20 February, though I'm sure you can watch it on BBC iPlayer too. The full BBC report can be found here.

Image:  Photography and filming was at the heart of Bamforth's business.

A museum is trying to trace biographical details for a commercial photographer called David Kronig who was working from a London studio at 1 Marylebone Street. London W1,  Telephone: WEL 6985 c1960s. If anyone is able to assist with any information (dates work and where, date of death, details if he is still living, or any other information) if would be gratefully received. Please contact me at michael@mpritchard.com or comment here. I will pass the information on.

Thanks!

British Photographic History blog readers may be interested to learn that my latest book that has just been published by the Society of Genealogists. How to Get the Most from Family Pictures (London: SoG, 2011) includes inherited artworks, as well as family photographs, and spans the years c.1780-1950. It features around 220 images, the majority photographs encompassing daguerreotypes (including a late-1840s Claudet), ambrotypes, cdvs, cabinets, postcard photographs and amateur snapshots.

The book is priced £12.99  and is available from the SoG Online Shop (http://www.sog.org.uk/library/intro.shtml ) or it will be available at the forthcoming Who Do You Think You are? LIVE show being held at Olympia 25-27 February (http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk/ ).   

Jayne Shrimpton, MA History of Dress

A copy of Antoine Claudet's will has just been sold on eBay. The will was described by the American seller as: UK 19th C probate of the will of Antoine Francois Jean Claudet dated 30th January 1868, extracted by Scadding & Son, London, 100 pounds for filling, excise stamp, fold-out seal, 3 pages plus small page, 22" x 27" on vellum, left most of estate to wife, (even liquors and looking glasses noted) complete.

The link will take anyone interested to the full eBay entry: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300523505412&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT or search on item number: 300523505412

Speakers will include Dr Michael Pritchard and Dr Ron Callender who have both completed a PhD and RPS Fellowships in different aspects of photographic history and are active researchers. There will also be presentations from other researchers presenting their research. One session will discuss how photographic history can be used to achieve a RPS distinction.

Admission is free but please register in advance. Click here for more information: http://www.rps.org/events/view/1989?m=0&y=2011&d=&t=0&g=Historical&r=0&reset=reset

On March 25-26, 2011, the conference 'Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History III' will take place at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York. This is the third in an ongoing series of conferences that investigate the role of photographic archives and collections in art historical studies. The discipline of art history and the technologies of image reproduction have developed concurrently, and their histories are closely interlinked. Presenters at this conference will explore the role of "hidden" photo archives in current art historical research, emphasizing those collections that re not digitized, catalogued, publicized, or readily accessible in person or on-site. For further details see http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/research/photoarchives.htm

For those who didn't quite manage to make it to Paris for this exhibition earlier in the year, the accompanying book is now available through Amazon UK, by using the link on the right.

Richly illustrated, this monograph reference brings together some 180 works from the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the French Society photography, the Musée d'Orsay, the Museum of Decorative Arts, Library of the Institut de France ... and who are the important calotype in the history of the photographic medium, the dictionary of over 350 photographers who practiced in France calotype etc.

There are always a number of interesting British-related photographic items that pop up on offer at this site, the next online auction being scheduled for 5th March. Check them out here, and see if anything takes your fancy .......

Photo: London Stereoscopic Co., 24 page catalog from 1856

Ashley Givens from the V+A, London, will be presenting a short paper about her research titled Painted and Photographic Portraits of Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie at the Courtauld's Postgraduate symposium in London on Friday 11 March. Details are here: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2011/spring/mar10_phdsymposium.shtml. Entry is free.

Her abstract is below:

Painted and Photographic Portraits of Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie
This dissertation explores the issues surrounding the public display and circulation of portraits of one of the mid-Nineteenth Century’s best-known figures, the Emperor of France, Napoléon III. The purpose is to understand how images of Napoléon III were conceived and created in various modes, and how they were then assessed by critics and disseminated among constituents. Many portraits of the Emperor were officially commissioned or sanctioned as appropriate depictions of France’s sovereign. These provide some sense of the range of roles played by the Emperor (and his wife and son).
In this symposium paper the roles include military commander, diplomat and redeemer of the people. This paper analyses a range of depictions which were broadly considered genre paintings. Alongside the portraits, genre paintings present a parallel means of relaying and, further, reinforcing information about the sovereign to his people. Themes of the paper include the relationship between nature and artifice and efforts to find a rhetoric for inscribing Napoléon III in France’s unfolding history. It examines which events of the 1850s and 1860s were chosen for commemoration, or as opportunities to showcase the work of the Emperor, as well as the reception of the resulting paintings.

The world’s first filmed kiss has been resurrected for Valentine’s Day after laying unrecognised in photography books for more than a century. The images of two unclothed women kissing were created by pioneering Kingston photographer Eadweard Muybridge between 1872 and 1885 using a bank of still cameras firing in sequence.

The eight-frame sequence predates the 1896 film The Kiss, showing an actor and actress re-enact the final scene from The Widow Jones, which was selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress in 1999. American artist and academic David Gordon compiled the frames – first published as plate 444 in Muybridge’s book Animal Locomotion – into a digital loop to bring the kiss to life once more.  Mr Gordon, who teaches in Beverly, Massachusetts, is creating a short film called Victorian Dream from Muybridge’s photos, and hopes to visit and lecture in Kingston.

The film will be unveiled on muybridge.org on Monday, February 14. You can read the full news article here.

The National Archives has digitised thousands of unique images of Africa and published them on Flickr this week. The collection spans more than 100 years of African history, from as early as the 1860s, including images of people, places, national and imperial events, conflict and natural disasters.

The images were transferred to The National Archives from the Colonial Office Library's photographic collection and offer a unique insight into life in the colonies. Approximately 10,000 images, a third of the entire collection, have been digitised so far.

As some of the images have minimal context, the public is invited to contribute to these historical assets by adding comments and captions, filling in knowledge gaps.

Oliver Morley, Acting Chief Executive of The National Archives, said: 'An online collection like this reaches beyond the academic world and into people's living rooms, enabling everyone to contribute to our understanding of past events.'

The 'Africa through a lens' collection is available now to view. Find out more and access the images here: nationalarchives.gov.uk/africa.  There is also a news report here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/10/national-archives-empire-era-photos

Braintree District Museum traces its origins to a Museum room in the Town Hall that opened in 1928 to display the collections of Alfred Hills, a local clerk and historian and the Courtauld family. After a succession of different homes, today's Museum opened in the former Manor Street School on 6th October 1993. Since then the collections expanded from boundaries of Braintree and Bocking to the whole of the District of Braintree. 
Current collecting strengths include: archaeology, ceramics, local history, photographs and textiles. The  Museum possesses a large and important collection comprising snapshots of the District's people and places from the 1880s to the present day.

Museum visitors can now view more than 500 historic photographs at the touch of a button.The Friends of Braintree District Museum have paid for the electronic archive, which visitors can use to order copies of photographs at £5 a copy.

Photo: A 'Scold's Bridle' being modelled by Alfred Hills.

In a recent recording of the ever popular BBC series of 'Flog It!' at Henley Town Hall, the stand-out item of the day was a photograph of scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel taken by Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the preeminent photographers of the 19th century.  Researchers are to investigate the history of the photograph, which could fetch thousands when it is flogged off at Cameo Auctioneers, near Reading, next month!

Staying with Herschel, The Harry Ransom Centre, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has also recently announced that it has received a $10,000 grant from the Friends of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics to rehouse and rearrange its holdings of the Herschel family papers and to create an online finding aid.

The Herschel family papers, acquired in 1960 with subsequent smaller accessions of additional materials, largely represent the life and work of Sir John F. W. Herschel (1792-1871), the English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and experimental photographer/inventor. John Herschel has been called Britain's first modern physical scientist, and his correspondence has been noted as one of the most valuable archives for 19th-century science.

The one-year project will allow the Center to arrange and describe the papers according to current archival practices and enhance access to the materials. The papers will be re-housed to better protect and preserve the materials long-term. The creation of an online finding aid will raise awareness and enhance access to the papers and represents the first complete and searchable description of the collection, making it readily available to users.

The Ransom Center's collection of the Herschels is exceeded in size only by the collection at the Royal Society in London.

Both news reports can be found here and here.

Photo:  1867 photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, further information on this exhibition is now available.

Photography was born in 1839, making the 19th century the first to be recorded in this medium. Since then, photography has evolved dramatically from the original chemical processes to today’s digital technology. But its transformation during its first decades was an equally important transition. Until April 17, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) presents 19th-Century British Photographs from the NGC, a fascinating exhibition of some of the national collection’s key holdings, including some that have rarely been shown. The exhibition traces the development of photography in Britain over the course of the Victorian era, from early, salted paper prints, to daguerreotypes, to magnificent turn-of-the-century platinum prints.

From the portraits of family and friends, small, familiar and domestic scenes, to grand and exotic scenes, the photographs in 19th-Century British Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada present a great range of subjects. Viewers will see images of a rapidly changing society: old courtyards and buildings, urban landscapes and village scenes that record daily life in Victoria’s Britain. In all, more than 100 photographs, many taken by the most celebrated photographers of the time, such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Frederick Evans, chosen among more than 2,000 images in the NGC’s 19th-century British photographs collection. This is an outstanding collection, which began to take shape in 1967, and which comprises some of the most important 19th-century British photographs in existence.

“The Gallery has a superb collection of British photographs,’’ said NGC Director Marc Mayer. “We owe its success in no small part to the passion and generosity of our donors who helped us build it for Canada.’’

Who were the British photographers of the 19th-century…
What began as a series of experiments conducted by men of science quickly turned into a leisure activity for wealthy upper-class men and women. Rapid changes in photographic technology coupled with an insatiable public desire for images meant that not long after its invention photography, as a source of employment or pleasure was available to the middle and, in some cases, even the working classes. Census records show that several of the photographers whose work is now part of the NGC’s collection began their professional lives as opticians, lens makers, chemists, or merchants.

…and what were their interests?
19th-Century British Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada also reveals some of the major preoccupations of the period, subjects that were of interest to photographers of the Victorian era along with the tastes, biases and prejudices of their time and place. Contemporary issues such as the need for reshaping the urban environment, the plight of the poor, and debates about social reform along with an unquestioning optimism about Britain’s continuing imperial power are implicit in many of the photographic images from this era. The photographs are evidence of their makers' fascination with the natural world, their need to understand how things work and their drive to codify and to document.

19th-Century British Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada is the third instalment in a series of exhibitions that showcase the depth and variety of the national collection of photographs. Modernist Photographs appeared in 2007 and 
19th-Century French Photographs in 2009. The latter is currently on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until March 20.

Lecture
On Thursday, March 3 at 6 pm, the public is invited to hear Larry Schaaf internationally respected photo historian, Baltimore, Maryland, as he gives a lecture entitled "I have captured a Shadow!" William Henry Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography. Organized in conjunction with the exhibition. In the Lecture Hall. 
Cost: adults $5, seniors and students $4, members $3.

Exhibition curator
Lori Pauli is the Associate Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Canada and and curator of 19th-Century British Photographs from the National Gallery of Canada. She curatored several exhibitions including Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky (2003), Acting The Part: Photography as Theatre (2006), and Utopia/Dystopia: The Photographs of Geoffrey James (2008). She has contributed an essay on the work of Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and August Sander for a catalogue for the Kunsthalle, Vienna, and one on the work Oscar Gustave Rejlander for the Moderna Musset in Sweden and has published essays, reviews and entries for journal History of Photography, Queen’s Quarterly, Scottish Journal for the History of Photography and the Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Photography.

Catalogue
With an introduction by the exhibition curator Lori Pauli, and an essay by NGC Photographs Conservator, John McElhone, the catalogue documents the developments in photographic technologies in 19th-century Britain; from historically important paper negatives to platinum prints, works by Julia Margaret Cameron, William Henry Fox Talbot, Frederick Evans, Roger Fenton, and Henry Peach Robinson, among others, are beautifully illustrated and examined. The catalogues also comprises texts by Ann Thomas, Jim Borcoman, Larry Schaaf, Roger Taylor, and David Harris. The 176-page soft cover volume is on sale at the NGC Bookstore for $49 and at www.ShopNGC.ca, the Gallery's online boutique.

The official press release can be found here, and details of the exhibition here. And if you like a copy of the catalogue, try the Amazon link on the right.

People looking to uncover the true spirit of the iconic and currently ubiquitous wartime poster, Keep Calm and Carry On, may want to head to the Royal Air Force Museum to see the real backdrop of this chirpy wartime notice. The Mayor of London’s photographic and image based exhibition, commissioned by Boris Johnson for City Hall to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the London Blitz, is heading from its temporary home for a spell at the historic Hendon site.
Dedicate to the individuals involved in the emergency, volunteer, transport and specialist services who kept London going during the darkest days of the War, the exhibition features hard-hitting wartime images together with histories culled from the collections of various London organisations.
Each of dramatic photographs vividly portrays the story of London’s people, their determination and ‘Blitz Spirit’ at time when 30,000 Londoners were killed, entire communities destroyed and countless thousands left homeless.
The aerial bombing campaign on London during the Second World War ran from September 7 to May 11 1941. During this period 50,000 bombs and millions of incendiary devices fell on the city.
“We are particularly honoured to display this collaborative effort,” said Ian Thirsk, Head of Collections at the Royal Air Force Museum, “Iwhich narrates the story of how so many of the capital’s organisations were central to the on-going delivery of vital public services during late 1940 and early 1941.”
Mayor of London Boris Johnson also welcomed the exhibition's showing at the RAF Museum and similarly paid tribute to the “bravery and dogged determination of the men and women who battled to keep London going in the face of a terrifying and unremitting bombardment. This tremendous spirit and resilience remain at the very heart of the capital and we owe a huge debt of gratitude and respect to all those who helped secure London's future.”
The rarely seen images have been provided by London Transport Museum, the Museum of London, the Metropolitan Police Historical Collection, the Fire Brigade Museum, London Ambulance Service, Barts and London NHS and the Royal Pioneer Corps Association.

The London Blitz 70th anniversary Exhibition, The Bomber Hall of the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon until May 31 2011.

The exhibition consists of a selection from the Ottoman portrait photographs from Ömer M. Koç collection shows the high level of technical and artistic terms of photography by the interest of the Ottoman imperial family. 

This exhibition marks the importance given by the Ottoman sultans, other members of the royal dynasty and statesmen in the 19th century and includes the photographs of Prince Ömer Faruk the son of Caliph Abdülmecid, Nazime Sultan the daughter of Sultan Abdülaziz, Fehime Sultan the daughter of Sultan Murad V, Prince Yusuf İzzeddin the son of Sultan Abdülaziz, Sultan Murad V, Prince Mehmed Selim the son of Sultan Abdülhamid II, Prince Mehmed Seyfeddin and Esma Sultan the children of Sultan Abdülaziz. 

During the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz, who acceded to the throne in 1861 and was keenly interested in various branches of fine arts, Ottoman portrait photography reached a pinnacle of achievment in both technical and artistic terms, thanks to the skill of the Abdullah Brothers, who specialised in portrait photography. Vasilaki Kargopulo, who was appointed as court photographer in 1878, two years after Sultan Abdülhamid II came to the throne, contiuned to take similarly high quality portraits of the royal family and statesmen. As ameteur photography gained momentum from the turn of the century onwards, members of the royal family began to take their own photographs, the number of family photographs taken in private areas of royal residences increased significantly. 

Some members of the Ottoman royal family were particularly interested in portrait photography, notably Caliph Abdülmecid Efendi, Heir Apparent Yusuf İzzeddin Efendi, and the royal princes Ömer Faruk, Mehmed Selaheddin and Osman Fuad, who had their portrait photographs on various occasions from their childhood onwards, and pioneered this interest among other members of the royal family as expressions of loyalty and friendship continued for many years.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

Robert Leggat who researched and maintained one of the first useful photographic history resources on the internet died on 20 January 2011. His A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s (http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/index.html) was designed for school and college students and started in 1995. It is still available today and was being maintained by Leggat until shortly before his death. Put many historical photographic terms or personalities into a search engine and the chances are that Leggat’s website will be somewhere near the top of the results list.

Since its launch the site has had nearly 10 million visitors and the online guestbook from the early years (the guestbook was later discontinued as Leggat was unable to keep up with responding to questions and queries) was full of praise and thanks from students who had made use of it.

Leggat was involved in photographic education throughout his career and took an active role in the Royal Photographic Society as its Honorary Education Officer amongst other positions. A fuller obituary has been prepared but if anyone has any recollections or further knowledge of Robert's career and life please contact Michael Pritchard (email: michael@mpritchard.com)

We are delighted to offer free entry to visitors to the London Photograph Fair on February 20th after 2pm. All we ask is that you email us on info@photofair.co.uk for a voucher: this is essential so we can keep track of how many people we might expect. We will have around 40 dealers exhibiting vintage and contemporary images, as well as a wide range of photo books. For visitors arriving earlier in the day, a number of dealers have offered to refund the cost of admission, on purchases of £20 or above in most cases.