Blogs

A huge slice of Scottish photographic history has been uploaded onto the internet in a bid to share the nation’s history with the world. Over 2,000 previously archived pictures were posted onto Flickr by the National Library of Scotland. The formerly hidden treasures include the World War One photographs and an image of the chilling order for the massacre of Glencoe.

Library bosses decided to post the pictures online using Flickr’s Commons licence, meaning anybody can use them for non-commercial purposes. A further batch of 1,000 photographs will be added by the NLS before the end of the year.

Gill Hamilton, the NLS systems librarian, said: “This is a fantastic resource for the general public.

“There are no known copyright restrictions on Flickr’s The Commons photos, so everyone has access to use these images for non-commercial purposes.

“Flickr Commons is a great way for the National Library of Scotland to share its photographic collections with the world and we’re looking forward to adding to our Flickr Photostream throughout the coming year.”

Pictures of Scotland’s cities dating back to 1840 were posted on the site by the National Galleries of Scotland earlier this year.

Click here to see the Library's photo sets online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlscotland/

The National Media Museum/Getty Conservation Institute conference being held in October has published a short video explaining the purpose of the conference (click below to play). The video features Dusan Stulik talking about Niepce and the importance of his work within the conference context.

For more information about the conference click here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/niepce-in-england-conference

Can you demonstrate solid experience and achievements in raising funds from trusts, foundations and public bodies? Would you like to apply this within one of the world’s most prestigious museums? Our ability to meet our funding targets is critical to the delivery of world-class projects, exhibitions and visitor attractions. For this reason, we’re looking for a Senior Development Executive at The National Media Museum. With your experience in raising funds in the cultural sector, we will look to you to develop and manage a portfolio of key prospects and donors.

You will identify and research funding opportunities, then devise and implement cultivation strategies. Engaged and enthused by Museum plans and future projects, you will be able to communicate with clarity and accuracy;, passion and insight, building strong relationships internally and externally and a network of repeat-income sources. Experience in preparing fundraising applications, demonstrating fundraising success and bringing a strategic, professional approach to senior-level relationships is essential.

The Science Museum, The National Railway Museum and The National Media Museum form the unique NMSI family of museums. We aim to be the most admired museum in the world by engaging and inspiring diverse audiences, while at the same time rewarding and developing the people who contribute to our success.

For a full job description please email recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk or visit http://www.nrm.org.uk/AboutUs/Jobs.aspx

Interested? Please send your CV and covering letter by clicking the Apply button clearly stating which role you wish to apply for.

Closing date: 1st August 2010

We welcome applications from all sections of the community in which we work. We particularly welcome applications from disabled people and we guarantee interviews to suitably qualified disabled applicants.

Better late than never ! Deadline is this Friday 23rd July 2010.

Project Scanning Technician
Salary Grade 3 £17,111 - £19,743
Full time fixed term appointment until 31 August 2011

The Pitt Rivers Museum is seeking a Project Scanning Technician to work with the Museum’s Photographic Collection scanning photographs from the Wilfred Thesiger Collection as part of a project funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage.

The post holder will carry out the digitisation of photographic collections relating to the United Arab Emirates The ideal candidate will be a team player who has a proven experience of working with archival photographs or an interest in photography, experience of using Adobe Photoshop, image editing software and previous digitisation experience, have good organisation and record keeping skills and shows an attention to detail.

A completed application form (also available in MS Word format) with a CV and covering letter, should be sent to the Museum Administrator, Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP.

A Freedom of Information request by JIm Bretell to the National Museum of Science and Industry has thrown light on the NMeM's plans for its London presence - although the NMSI declined to make available the 'substantial' documentation that the project has generated. In a token gesture it has published a partially redacted section of the NMSI Trustee minutes of 8 February 2008 these show:

• the aim of the London presence is to raise the national and international profile of the NMeM and to draw people to Bradford
• the space would be occupied by charging exhibitions with free entry to a media cafe. It would also act as a learning space
• the space could also be used to show photographic images from the National Railway Museum collection
• The funding plan would commence when at least 50 per cent was committed

The running cost and break-even number of visitors was dedacted.

The extract can be viewed here: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/38445/response/99877/attach/3/donotreply%20nmsi.ac.uk%2020100713%20164649.pdf

and details of the original request and MNSI covering letter here: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/national_media_museum_possible_l#incoming-99877

The National Portrait Gallery's Camille Silvy exhibition opens this week on 15 July. For any BPH readers in London the NPG bookshop is already selling curator Mark Haworth-Booth's book and catalogue of the show along with other relevant books, poster, cards and souvenirs. As one would expect the book is a fascinating read with well-reproduced illustrations and excellent value at £20 (hardback only). The exhibition space itself remains hidden behind locked doors...

Details of the exhibition and associated lectures and events can be found here: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2010/camille-silvy1.php Most of the events are free but are likely to be popular and you are advised to turn up early to ensure a place.

Made at Lacock Abbey by William Henry Fox Talbot in August 1835, the world’s first photographic negative changed the world. A new exhibition, Celebrating the Negative launching on 3 July at the Fox Talbot Museum will display images by John Loengard, a highly acclaimed American photographer, who travelled the world during the 1990s visiting archives and photographers’ studios to see the original negatives of images that have changed photography and the world.

The images show the original negatives in the hands of the archivist or photographer which brings their scale into play and points up the fact that the negatives are objects as well as images.

The negative is not just another picture – it is THE picture. There is an intimate connection between the negative and the subject. Looking at a negative you are looking at an artefact of a time and place. The sun that shone on Abraham Lincoln on that day in 1863 was captured by that negative. All of the positive prints from that negative were made later, probably on a different day and by different sunlight and almost certainly not in the presence of Lincoln. Loengard says of Fox Talbot’s discovery: "It is a quirk of nature that silver and chlorine combine in the dark but separate when struck by light, leaving behind tiny, black, round particles of silver.

The 1st Negative

Talbot asked Lacock’s village carpenter to make up a few small wooden boxes to which he could insert his microscope lenses. These cameras, dubbed ‘Mousetraps’ by Talbot’s wife Constance, due to their size and shape, were the cameras through which he was finally able to capture an image.

On a sunny day in August, 1835 he aimed a mousetrap camera at the latticed window in the South Gallery of Lacock Abbey and in a few minutes he had made the world’s first photographic negative.

Three of the original ‘Mousetrap Cameras’ have been loaned to the museum by the National Media Museum. It is their first visit to their original home of Lacock Abbey in more than 75 years.

There will also be examples of the most important negative processes on display and an explanation of how they were made and how each was a technological advance in the history of photography. Roger Watson, curator of the Fox Talbot Museum says: "This is a really important and exciting celebration for us at Lacock. The negative is the primary image. It is the sensitive surface that faced the subject and first recorded the light. All positive prints are secondary images derived from the negative and are therefore one step removed from the original scene. The negative was the eye witness and the positive print the story related after the fact."

In August a recreation of the first photographic negative using Talbot’s original formula and methodology in a new mousetrap camera made by Mark Ellis, a carpenter who currently lives in Lacock will be re-enacted. Present at this re-enactment will be Talbot’s great-great granddaughter Janet Burnett Brown."

Participants at a (fully subscribed) workshop in August entitled ‘The Dawn of Photography’ will recreate all of Talbot’s earliest photographic experiments including working with modern replicas of the mousetrap camera. They will be working in and around Lacock Abbey and there will be staff members to answer questions about what they are doing.

Lacock Abbey

3 July-12 December 2010

From Saturday 10 July to Saturday 9 October, Guildford Borough Council's Heritage Service is celebrating the lifetime and legacy of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), with an exhibition and events programme dedicated to the 19th century author.

From photography exhibitions and informative talks, to craft workshops and countryside walks, there is something on offer for everyone. Some of the retailers in Guildford are also getting involved in the Lewis Carroll celebrations... keep your eyes peeled for something 'curious' in many of the shop windows.

Check out BPH's Events section for further information or the official site here.

Ikon presents Seeing the Unseen, a revisit of the gallery’s 1976 exhibition of high-speed photographs by the pioneering American scientist and photographer Dr Harold E. Edgerton (1906-1990). Forming part of Ikon’s retrospective of the 1970s It Could Happen To You, this presentation takes place in Birmingham’s Pallasades Shopping Centre, in a shop unit just a few doors away from Ikon’s home during that decade.

The 1976 exhibition formed Edgerton’s first solo presentation in Europe, and was conceived as a collaborative effort between Geoffrey Holt and John R. Myers, then both lecturers in fine art and photography at Stourbridge College of Art. Their aim was to draw attention to the breadth of work created by of ‘one of the masters of the optical unconscious’ which had, until that point, been largely neglected by the art world.

Edgerton’s invention in the 1930s of a high-speed photographic process based on rapid, stroboscopic instances of light or ‘flash’ was a catalytic event in the history of photography, science and art. Using this method, his images revealed in great detail aspects of reality hitherto invisible to the naked eye. As Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Edgerton made great strides in reconnaissance photography during the Second World War and later became the first to photograph test explosions of atomic weaponry. It is, however, the hands-on experimentation of ‘real world’ phenomena for which he is best remembered.

Edgerton’s remarkable multiple-flash pictures of tennis players, golfers and divers such as Swirls and Eddies of a Tennis Stroke (1939) break down intricate movements into singular moments. Other images appear to stop time: Milk-Drop Coronet (1957) illustrates the perfect crown formed by a drop of milk hitting a hard surface, whilst Cutting the Card Quickly (1964) shows a .30 calibre bullet, travelling 2800 feet per second, slicing a king of diamonds into two pieces. The startling Bullet and Apple (1964) portrays the explosion of an apple pierced by the bullet, moments before its total disintegration.

Edgerton’s film Seeing the Unseen (1939) is shown alongside his photographs plus an archive of correspondence, technical papers and printed materials relating to the 1976 exhibition.

This exhibition is organised in collaboration with Birmingham Central Library.

21 July – 5 September 2010

Unit 39-40, The Pallasades Shopping Centre, Birmingham

Events

Stopping Time in Stourbridge

Sunday 8 August, 2pm – FREE

The Pallasades Shopping Centre

Pete James, Head of Photography, Central Library Birmingham talks about the Pallasades exhibition and the photo-historical context through which Ikon’s 1976 Harold E. Edgerton exhibition came about. Refreshments are provided. Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.

Aspects of Edgerton

Sunday 22 August, 2pm - FREE

The Pallasades Shopping Centre

An event with Jonathan Shaw, photographer and Associate Head of Media & Communication, Coventry University and artist Trevor Appleson. The speakers discuss the influence of Edwaerd Muybridge and Harold Edgerton’s photography on their recent work. Refreshments are provided. Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.

Photoworks, the UK’s leading agency for photography is seeking to appoint a new Director following the appointment of David Chandler as Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth.

The new Director will provide artistic vision, leadership and ambition for the organisation, building on its outstanding achievements of the last decade and taking it forward into a new and exciting period of further development. This post demands exceptional leadership qualities and we are seeking a respected professional in the field of photography with a minimum of five years experience at a senior level in an arts or related organization. As well as proven management skills, you will have a thorough and authoritative knowledge of contemporary photographic practice and be able to demonstrate notable achievements in organisational development and growth. You will be a strong team player, with the ability to motivate and inspire colleagues, and the confidence to advocate and operate for Photoworks regionally, nationally and internationally across a broad network of artists, individuals, trusts and organisations.

Photoworks Director
application deadlne 20 July 2010

Director
c. £40K
Central Brighton Office

Email photoworksapplications@gmx.com for an application pack.

Deadline for applications: Tuesday 20 July 2010
Interviews: Tuesday 14 September 2010
Photoworks is committed to equal opportunities