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To coincide with its 40th anniversary, The Photographers' Gallery will stage a charity auction at Christie's South Kensington on Thursday 17 February 2011. Designed to raise the final portion of funds to transform its Ramillies Street Gallery, the event will comprise a Live and Silent Auction, offering nearly 70 lots. With estimates ranging from £600 to £10,000, this will be the perfect opportunity for collectors of photography to add to their collections, while supporting a new state-of-the-art photography gallery in London. 

From Helmut Newton to Rineke Dijkstra, Sebastião Salgado to Corinne Day, the works on sale will reflect some of the extraordinary talents who have exhibited at the Gallery during its 40 year history. Many of the included artists, such as Lee Miller and Sally Mann, exhibited for the first time in the UK at The Photographers’ Gallery.

The works will be on public display at Christie’s South Kensington from Saturday 12 until Thursday 17 February 2011, culminating in the Live Auction of over 30 lots at 20.00, Thursday 17 February 2011. A series of free public talks by featured artists Simon Roberts, Rut Blees Luxemburg and Karen Knorr, as well as Gallery Curator Stefanie Braun, will be programmed during the viewing days.

All proceeds from the Auction will go towards the Gallery’s ongoing capital campaign to build a new photography gallery at Ramillies Street, just off Oxford Street, in the heart of London’s West End. The transformed Photographers’ Gallery will comprise three dedicated gallery floors, an education floor, improved Bookshop and Print Sales, and a street level Café/Bar area. Construction has already started on this impressive project with the Gallery due to open in Autumn 2011.

The press release can be found here: AuctionP.pdf.

Photo:  Jeff Wall, After ‘Landscape Manual’ 1969/2003 © Jeff Wall.

As mentioned in an earlier BPH blog, the BRLSI is in the process of mounting an important new exhibition of the Rev Francis Lockey's work who was born in the late 19th century and died in 1869.  The Rev Lockey used the calotype photographic process, which had been patented by WH Fox Talbot and he used it to take masses of photographs of both Bath and the surrounding districts during the years from 1849 to 1861. 

The Rev Lockey and his family lived in Swainswick in the house known as Swainswick Cottage. The building survives today, complete with Lockey's purpose built photographic printing studio.  The earliest surviving images, including one of Bath Abbey dates from 1849 and were taken within eight years of the invention of the calotype process in 1841 by Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey.

Gill Silversides at BRLSI says: "Although no paper evidence currently exists of correspondence between Francis Lockey and William Henry Fox Talbot, Lockey did produce photographs of the cloisters in Lacock Abbey in the mid 1850s, which would suggest direct contact between Fox Talbot as the inventor of the technique and Lockey.

Full details of the Bath in Camera 1849-1861 exhibition can be found here. A collection of 62 of the surviving plates are printed in a book entitled Shadows and Light by David McLaughlin and Michael Gray which can be bought for £5 at BRLSI reception, or you can try the Amazon link on the right.

A launch event where Michael Gray will explain how the prints were produced will be held on 14th Jan at 7pm. The full news report can be found here.

Photographic collections are found in libraries, archives and museums all over the world. Their sensitivity to environmental conditions, and the speed with which images can deteriorate present special challenges. This one day training session is led by Susie Clark, accredited photographic conservator. It is aimed at those with responsibility for the care of photographic collections regardless of institutional context.

The day provides an introduction to understanding and identifying photographic processes and their vulnerability, information on common conservation problems and solutions, and the preservation measures that can be taken to prolong the life and accessibility of photographic collections. Contact with real examples of different photographic processes is an important feature of this training session which is therefore limited to only 16 places. At the end of the day participants will be able to:

• identify historic photographic processes
• explain how damage is caused
• implement appropriate preservation measures
• commission conservation work.

Feedback from previous participants

• I learned how to store photographic material, how to identify different photographic processes and techniques to preserve photographic stock.
• Very worthwhile due to practical nature of the training day. I am able to leave here today confident that we can improve and upgrade basic preservation solutions, particularly storage, based on information learned about photographic processes and supports.
• I will review our approach to preserving photographic collections, upgrade storage media, and survey collections to identify preservation priorities.

Programme

Preservation Advisory Centre Training Day

Friday 20 May 2011

British Library Centre for Conservation
96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB
 

Click below for details of the event:

http://www.bl.uk/blpac/photographic.html

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/events/preserving-historic

Invented by the Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1907, autochromes are one-of-a-kind transparencies that are extremely beautiful when backlit. Its invention was a milestone in the history of photography as it was the first commercially available means of making colour photographs.

The five autochromes exhibited are Steichen's portrait of Rodin in front of his sculpture The Eve and his widely reproduced portrait of Stieglitz holding an issue of his influential publication, Camera Work.These fragile photographs-composed of minute grains of potato starch dyed red, blue, and green-cannot withstand the exposure of long-term display without suffering irreversible damage.

Because of the high risk of the color fading, the Metropolitan-like most museums-has had a policy of not exhibiting its important collection of Autochromes. The Metropolitan recently completed a three-year study of the stability and light-sensitivity of Autochrome dyes, conducted by Luisa Casella, the Museum's first Mellon Research Scholar in Photo Conservation, in close collaboration with Masahiko Tsukada of the Museum's Department of Scientific Research, and supervised by Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum. The study established that the Autochrome dyes are partially, though not completely, protected from light fading when in an environment where all oxygen has been removed.

Guided by this research, the Museum will display these five original autochromes within individual oxygen-free enclosures and under carefully controlled lighting conditions for just that one week only. So catch it while you can!

Westminster City Council's vast archive of London history will be serialised and available online for the first time, as part of a new project. It will be a visual celebration of life in Westminster through the ages. Each day throughout 2011, a selection of some of the most fascinating, thought-provoking, entertaining and poignant images (photographs, engravings, sketches) from their extensive image collection will be put online.

The archive can be seen here. 

Photo: The Open Air School in St James's Park, with Miss Walsh taking the lesson. Image property of Westminster City Archives.

For anyone with an interest in the market for historic and contemporary photography internationally The Photograph Collector is a monthly newsletter of required reading. Published in the United States since 1980 The Photograph Collector has an international reach is is concerned with auctions, dealer activity, exhibitions and relevant news and reviews globally. Of particular interest is the PC's annual index of photograph values based on a basket of regularly offered material.

Editor Stephen Perloff reports in the current issue dated December 20 2010 that the newsletter will no longer appear in print from January 2011 and instead will be mailed as a PDF to subscribers which will benefit international readers and allow for more timely information to be included. As postage is no longer an issue all subscription rates are being equalised at $149.95.

Email: info@photoreview.org or www.photoreview.org for more information about the newsletter and other publications.

William Blackmore (1827-1878) remains a little knownmillionaire mid-Victorian polymath. He was a successful lawyer based in Liverpool and subsequently London. An international financier involved in numerous North American land grants, he was also principal financier of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. His reputation by the mid 1870s within London financial circles was that he ‘has means of obtaining information in the City such as very few men possess.’ Blackmore visited Salt Lake City and met Brigham Young (1801-1877), president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and wrote a confidential report on the ‘Mormon Empire’ for the Cabinet of the British government and independent industrial leaders; in April 1872 Blackmore dined at the White House with United States President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885); he funded and populated with artefacts perhaps the leading ethnographic museum in 19th century Great Britain, located in his home town of Salisbury; he was an early patron of the leading Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and the commissioner of an influential set of watercolours of the Yellowstone region by Thomas Moran (1837-1926); and he was acknowledged by contemporaries to have so effectively exploited photography to document North American Indians that his photographic collection was copied to form the basis of the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Yet Blackmore’s legacy was to be comparatively limited. He went bankrupt and committed suicide in 1878. Shortly after his untimely death, his papers and other materials were consigned to storage and lay apparently unused for almost half a century. William’s other art collections were subsumed within those of his brother and loyal ally, Humphrey. Following Humphrey’s death in 1929 a major dispersal campaign began in earnest. While some of William’s business documents were saved, a significant number were apparently destroyed, and artefacts were subsequently dispersed through auction and sale to other public and private institutions. The Blackmore Museum was incorporated with that of the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum after Blackmore’s death, and was amalgamated in 1902; it remained something of a place of pilgrimage to American archaeologists until the early 20th century. While a new gallery was built in 1933 linking the buildings of the Blackmore Museum to the Salisbury Museum, William’s museum was already in terminal decline and its collections were to be broken up and dispersed over a period of over four decades.

Anthony Hamber has written the first biography of William Blackmore to cover the wide gamut of his professional and private interests and the significance and impact of his wide ranging achievements. With reproductions of many Victorian photographs, and a diligently researched text, fully referenced with bibliography and index, Hamber’s work is a major contribution to understanding an important but neglected figure and his world.

Collecting the American West: the Rise and Fall of William Blackmore, by Anthony Hamber is published by Hobnob Press, December 2010, 320pp paperback, many illustrations,

The flyer can be downloaded here: Collecting%20the%20American%20West%20%20A5%20flier.pdf

I am researching early photography in Nottingham (UK) and would appreciate viewing any daguerreotypes from the Nottingham studios. These may be difficult to identify as the cases may only indicate ‘licensee of Beard” or similar  BUT if you have any cases (or indeed any other information) relating to the following I would greatly appreciate some details:  Alfred Barber, George Popowitz, E. Kaim, or Richard Young Booker. All pre 1851.   The Whitlocks of Birmingham (Joseph W. or Whitlock & Thompson) also operated in Nottingham for a short while but it may be difficult to distinguish any Nottingham examples from work at the more successful Birmingham studio.

Thanks

Geoff Blackwell

One of the world's greatest institutions, the British Library, has just launched a smartphone application (covering the iPhone, iPad and Android OS platforms) to allow easy and convenient exploration on the move of some of its many priceless collections.

There are over 100 highlights, including literary, historical, music-related and scientific documents - alongside illuminated manuscripts and sacred texts. Each is presented through high-resolution images, allowing the viewer to zoom in and explore in detail. 'Treasures' offers smartphone users a true multimedia experience. 

I have been reliably informed that there is a section entitled 'Invention of Photography' under the Science category!  The official press release can be found here.

So what is the connection between this Hertfordshire borough, Captain Robert Scott's doomed Terra Nova expedition of June 1910 and photography?

Well, I only just came across this news article published in the local Watford Observer (August 2010) of an unexpected find of Watford photographic history in the Antarctica by a South Oxhey conservation expert, Georgina Whiteley. The project project was centered on restoring items, including 150 packages of glass plate negatives, from photographer Herbert Ponting's darkroom. 

Ms Whiteley, 30, said: "The majority of plates are by the Paget Prize Plate Company, an old Watford-based manufacturer. The company was not in existence for very long, which makes these packages very rare indeed. It was a very nice surprise to be working on so much Watford material out there."

The full news article can be found here. So, I guess no more 'north of Watford' jokes from now on, as it appears this town has made its mark in photo history!

Photos: A selection of glass plate negatives by Paget Prize (copyright Georgina Whiteley)

After capturing the horrors of the Civil War for Matthew Brady's studio, 19th century photographer Timothy H O'Sullivan uncovered the beauty of the great expanses of the American west which can be seen through this video produced by the Smithsonian Museum.

Photo: Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho, View Across the Top ofthe Falls, 1874 albumen print, 20.4 x 27.3 cm (8 x 10 3/4 in.). Smithsonian Art Museum

For those BPH members who read the BPH Bourne blog with interest, a video of a collection of this Staffordshire photographer's images of India has been posted by the Farhat Art Museum.

Rare Roger Fenton photographs are at the heart of an upcoming Wives and Sweethearts exhibition which launches on 9 February 2011 at the National Army Museum.  

The exhibition celebrates love at the front-line with remarkable images by Roger Fenton, which document the powerful presence of 'Women of the Regiment' during the Crimean War.  Spanning over 200 years the Museum’s newest exhibition will explore all aspects of soldiers’ relationships from the joy of courtships, weddings and births to separation and tragic deaths.

Exhibited for the first time, Wives and Sweethearts presents the treasured personal items of soldiers and their sweethearts from letters of engagement and poignant photographs to dazzling diamond love tokens. 

Drawing on the Museum’s collections visitors can discover the love, fears, doubts and joys of generations of soldiers and the profound effect of Army life on the personal relationships of soldiers and their partners and families from the Napoleonic period to the present day. 
Frances Parton, Curator of Wives and Sweethearts exhibition, said: “As curator, it has been a challenge as much as a joy to select the items for the exhibition. The Museum has such a wealth of social history material on the subject of soldiers and their love lives that I was spoilt for choice. These items provide us with a touching insight into the lives of others and remind us of the people behind the conflicts.”

The exhibition highlights the fascinating and changing roles of soldiers’ partners from nineteenth-century ‘Women of the Regiment’ who worked as cooks and laundresses to modern Army families, where both partners may in the Armed Forces. From the wives of Wellington’s armies to those currently missing a partner in Afghanistan, theWives and Sweethearts exhibitions brings alive for today’s visitors the personal aspects of war and its continued relevance.

The official press release can be found here, and details of the exhibition here.

Photo: Image 4607: Photograph: Cantiniere by Roger Fenton (1819-1869). From photograph album of 52 photographs associated with the Crimean War (1854-1856).

The Common Guild in Glasgow is showcasing a selection of works by Tuner Prize nominated English visual artist, Tacita Dean. Living in Berlin, Dean's work is a blend of German and British cultures. This exhibition presents a selection of recent works that can be seen as still lives, by using imagery of various natural forms, including trees and neolithic stones or ‘dolmens’, and by focussing on the gradual processes of growth, transformation and demise.

Of interest to BPH members, is a series of fragile works take as their ‘found’ canvas six 19th century damaged albumen silver prints of bare trees taken by the pioneering German photographer, August Kotzsch (1836-1910).

Dean has laboriously filled the backgrounds of these photographs with white gouache, incarcerating the deciduous branches forever leafless, highlighting its barren, fruitless beauty.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

Photos: Damaged August Kotzsch albumen prints c1875. Courtesy of the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.

German born, yet English by citizenship, photographer Emil Otto Hoppe has been called one of England’s most influential photographers of the Edwardian era. Born in Munich in 1878, Hoppe was actively photographing from about 1910 to 1940. Known for his portrait studies, his subjects ranged from the upper class British society to the natives of the Americas and Asia.

While Hoppe’s still life images were remarkable in their own right. As a photographer he also documented London before the First World War and published a number of books on the city in the early 1930’s. He is known to have photographed famous personalities including Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, TS Eliot, Albert Einstein as well as Rabindranath Tagore.

Two exhibitions showcasing his work can now be seen this year, The first one is shown in India for the first time, and is entitled "Hoppe’s Bombay 1929 and Santiniketan". It commemorates the 150th birth centenary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who invited Hoppe to visit India in 1929. The exhibition includes photographs of Mumbai and Santiniketan, the university started by Tagore in West Bengal. The EO Hoppe Estate Collection in California published these pictures in the 1990s. The Mumbai photos are of street scenes of south Mumbai, Malabar Hill etc. The exhibition will then travel to Tagore's city, Kolkata, where it will be displayed at the Victoria Memorial Hall from April 16 to May 30, and from there the exhibition will travel to New Orleans. Details of the Mumbai exhibit can be found here.

The second one entitled "Hoppe Portraits: Society, Studio and Street" will be held at the National Portrait Gallery in London from February. Details of the exhibition can be found here, and a news article here.

Photo: Victoria Terminus, Bombay 1929, by Emil Otto Hopp ©

In 1909, R. Herman Cassens, a young entrepreneur, started a postcard company, the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company, in the mid-coast town of Belfast, Maine. Postcards have always been a popular item, especially for travelers, but at the turn of the century they were the absolute rage.

Cassens saw a niche between personal/amateur postcards and the mass-produced postcards available in the bigger cities. He had a dream of "Photographing the Transcontinental Trail--Maine to California," focusing on small rural towns and villages. He and his small crew of photographers traveled through rural New England and New York focusing their lenses on locally known landmarks, street scenes, country stores and businesses, events and people.  Cassens sold his business in 1947 and died in 1948. Though his dream of photographing all 48 states was not realized, his company did manage to make over 40,000 glass plate negatives of New England and New York between 1909 and 1947.

The glass plate images seemed to die along with Cassens. The company stopped producing the "real photo post cards" and eventually switched to the more contemporary color postcards. The glass plates were left in storage, collecting dust for the next 40 years, until the Rockport Institute for Photographic Education acquired them in the late 1980s. In June of 2005, the monstrous task began of cleaning, identifying, organizing, cataloging and scanning the glass plates. In early 2007, the collection once again changed hands after a near disaster. A broken pipe caused a flood in the building on Rockport Harbor where they were stored. The collection was soaked but a strong effort saved it and the collection was ultimately donated to the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, just a few miles from where the whole story began.

Details of an exhibition based on this archive can be found here, a video here and information on the collection here.

I spotted this on Luke McKernan’s excellent blog which deals with silent and early cinema which can be found at  https://bioscopic.wordpress.com/. I can do no better than take Luke's words: A new tool from Google Labs offers interesting ways of analysing silent film subjects (or any other subject, for that matter). The Ngram Viewer uses data taken from the 15 million books and other documents scanned by Google Books to trace the occurrence of words or phrases (up to five words) between 1800 and 2000, showing how often they occur each year.

All you do is enter your search term or phrase, then choose a time period and your language, and you get the results presented as a graph. Having searched for your term, below the graph you are given the option to search Google Books itself for your term by particular time periods or universally. You can also compare your term with others, by adding a comma-separated second term into the search box. You can compare any number of terms, though there are only five colours available.

There seem to be any number of interesting applications for this as a tool, even if the results are approximate and erratic. The frequency of appearance of terms in books is not necessarily a reliable guide to their importance, and some terms register no scores at all (e.g. Gaumont, Muybridge, Mary Pickford), presumably because Google Books hasn’t indexed them yet. But there is more than enough there to encourage imaginative searches and to yield interesting discoveries.

I have included some examples here. Most of us have some awareness of the origins of the word Photography and a Ngram produces an expected graph. If one adds ‘imaging’ then it’s clear how, with the rise of digital photography, this word has begun to supersede photography. Another interesting graph was produced by showing platinotype and palladiotype (the subject of discussions on BPH) the others are self-explanatory.

Although there are issues with the data (it’s dependent on the books google has scanned and the use of which words or phrases to use needs careful consideration) this could be a useful tool for representing trends

Do have a go, and let me know of any interesting Ngrams that you are able to create.

Click on the link here to see if you agree with them, and have your say!