Blogs

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has made an incredible archive of historic family photographs available online through the free photo-sharing website Flickr. The historic photographic collection includes over fifty years of wedding and family portraits taken between 1900 and 1952 by the Allison Photographic Studios in Armagh, an especially rich resource for genealogists with connections in County Armagh, South Down and also in County Monaghan in the Irish Republic.

About 200 digital images are currently available, browsable alphabetically by family surname. The remainder of the photos will continue to be transferred from fragile glass plate negatives into digital format until all 1530 images have been posted on Flickr.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has issued its 2009/10 Acceptance in Lieu Report. Of interest to BPH is the acceptance of 49 prints from the twentieth century which was settled in August 2009 and are now in the Tate Gallery, London. The collection was used to settle tax worth £227,290. The collection consists of the material described below:

The offer comprised 49 photographs by the following artists: Bernice Abbott (1898-1991), 3 prints; Richard Avenden (1923-2004); Roger Ballen (b.1950); Herbert Bayer (1900-1985); Hou Bo (b.1924); Dorothy Bohm (b.1924); Bill Brandt (1904-1983), 4 prints; Brassaï (1899-1984), 3 prints; Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902-2002); Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004), 2 prints; Calum Colvin (b.1961), 12 prints; Martin J Cullen (b.1967); František Drtikol (1883-1961); Elliot Erwitt (b.1928); Robert Frank (b.1924); Jo Alison Feiler (b.1951); Lee Fridlander (b.1934); Tim Gidal (1909-1996); Lucien Hervé (1910-2007); Paul Joyce (b.1944); Dorothea Lange (1895-1965); Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), 2 prints; Yau Leung (1941-1997); Man Ray (1890-1976); Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989); Dario Mitidieri (b.1959); Irving Penn (1917-2009), 5 prints; Sebastião Salgadio (b.1944); W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978); Peter Suschitzky (b. 1941); Edward Weston (1886-1958), 2 prints and James Van der Zee (1886-1983).

The collection has been assembled over the last 30 years by Barbara Lloyd and the photographers represented include many of the greatest names in photography from the 20th century. Of particular significance are the five images by Irving Penn which include two New York cityscapes of 1947 and 1985; two portraits from New Guinea and Morocco; and a portrait of the French writer Colette of 1960. The Mapplethorpe is a 1976 portrait of the New York singer-songwriter Patti Smith. One of the Edward Weston photographs, taken in 1924, is a dramatic image of the Mexican senator and general, Manuel Hernández Galván, titled Galván Shooting. Galván fought by the side of the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. When Weston took the photograph, Galván was campaigning for political office, but was assassinated shortly after their meeting.

Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1935 is one of the outstanding images of the 1930s. In 1960, Lange spoke about taking the photograph: “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

The Panel considered that the collection met the second and third criteria that it was in acceptable condition and fairly valued. The photographs have been permanently allocated to Tate in accordance with the condition of the offeror.

The full AIL Report is here: http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2010/~/media/Files/pdf/2010/AELU/MLA_acceptance_in_lieu_report_2009_2010

Colin Harding reports on the National Media Museum blog that the museum's Fay Godwin exhibition 'Land Revisited' has recently received a welcome addition when a delayed loan from the British Library was finally installed. These include two of her cameras, together with some of her original printing notes and contact sheets. There are two of Fay Godwin's cameras on display - a Hasselblad 500C/M camera fitted with a Planar f2.8 50mm lens and a Leica M6 camera fitted with a Summicron f2 35mm lens. Both of these cameras would have been used to produce some of the images included in the exhibition.

Also on display is a folder containing some of Fay Godwin's contact sheets. Contact sheets show an unaltered positive print of the original negative that has not been enlarged. They are useful to show the quality of the negatives and are used by photographers to select which print to enlarge. Colin has chosen to show the contact sheet for one of Fay Godwin's most celebrated images, Flooded tree, Derwentwater (1981). Careful study of the contact sheets reveals that she photographed this location several times on different occasions, waiting until the conditions were exactly what she wanted.

A folder containing Fay Godwin's original negatives is also added to the display, open at the page containing her negatives for the Flooded Tree image. She made careful notes on a pencil sketch of the photograph to remind her how best to print from the chosen negative. These notes show areas highlighted to 'hold back' and others which need additional exposure. Such detailed attention resulted in the final exhibition print, framed and on show next to the display case.

Cllr Simon Hancock, who has been Haverfordwest Museum’s curator for 30 years, launched his book ‘A Photographic History of Victorian and Edwardian Haverfordwest 1860 – 1914’ as part of the town’s 900th anniversary celebrations.

The book is a social history of the town between 1860 and 1914 and includes a host of new visual and textual material that has never been seen before. The book has been a monumental undertaking for the local historian, who began his research in 1998, when he originally planned to create a small picture book of the town.

The full report can be found here.

Photo: The book is the culmination of 12 years worth of work for Simon Hancock.

The second volume of Quaritch's series on the history of photography in China is now available. The History of Photography in China: Western Photographers 1861-1879 is the most extensive general survey, in any language, of Western photographers who began working in China in the 1860s and 1870s. Over eighty different photographers are discussed – from well-known professionals to little-known amateurs – with a mass of biographical information, much previously unpublished.

The book is divided into chapters on the Hong Kong Studios, Photography in Peking (Beijing), Photography in the Treaty Ports, Roving Photographers, The Ruins of the European Palaces in the Yuanmingyuan, and Photographic Periodicals. Documentary appendices list the published work of various photographers and print extensive extracts from contemporary reviews and other writings. The book concludes with a bibliography, general and regional chronologies, and a biographical index.

An acclaimed international authority on the subject, Terry Bennett has been collecting and researching nineteenth-century Chinese, Japanese and Korean photography for over twenty-five years. This volume is illustrated throughout with over 400 images, sourced from private and institutional collections worldwide.

The book is available at a pre-publication special price of £60 (normal price £70). To order please contact Daniella Rossi at the address below or email d.rossi@quaritch.com. Copies will be available for shipment on 6 December 2010.

For Christmas delivery, please place your orders by the following dates:

Domestic

First Class - Tuesday, 20 December

Second Class - Saturday, 18 December

International Airmail

Western Europe - Monday, 13 December

Eastern Europe, USA and Canada - Friday, 10 December

South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia and New Zealand - Monday, 6 December

Details of volume 1 can be found here: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-publication-chinese Quaritch is also offering vols 1 & 2 for £100 (pre-publication only).

Bernard Quaritch Ltd

40 South Audley Street, London, W1K 2PR

Tel: +44 (0)20 7297 4888 Fax: +44 (0)20 7297 4866

www.quaritch.com

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents In Focus: The Tree, a survey of important technological and aesthetic developments in photographic representations of trees. The latest in the In Focus series of thematic exhibitions, this presentation of nearly 40 photographs provides visitors with an opportunity to explore the Getty Museum’s world-renowned permanent collection of photographs through the inspiring subject of trees.

Loosely organized into single tree portraits, trees in the landscape, abstract forms drawn from trees, and daily uses of the tree, the exhibition highlights photographers from different eras, juxtaposing their works to create an interesting dialogue, says Lyden. One of the earliest works in the exhibition is William Henry Fox Talbot’s iconic An Oak Tree in Winter (1842-1843), which captures the lace-like pattern of bare branches against a stark winter sky.

A daguerreotype by John Jabez Edwin Mayall from 1851 entitled The Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London, captures the site as it appeared when new, an impressive glass structure built around existing Elm trees. Mayall’s image shows man’s progress in using modern materials such as glass and steel in an attempt to surpass nature and showcase science and industry.

In conjunction with In Focus: The Tree, a book by co-curator Reynaud entitled The Tree in Photographs will be published in January 2011, and will expand the theme of the exhibition. The book will include all of the images featured in the display, as well as many others. Click on the Amazon link on the right to search for it.

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

He is most famous for the pictures he took of the Titanic. But the work of Cork-born Jesuit priest Father Francis Browne extended to four continents and nearly 42,000 prints. Hailed as "Ireland's greatest photographer", a new book has revealed never-seen-before images taken by the cleric in Ireland from when he first picked up a camera in 1897, until shortly before his death in 1960.

Father Browne's great collection of negatives lay forgotten for 25 years after his death in 1960. It was by chance in 1986 that Father O'Donnell discovered the lost collection in a large metal trunk and brought the negatives to the attention of the features editor of the 'Sunday Times' in London, who dubbed them "the photographic equivalent to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls".

His legacy was a collection of nearly 42,000 photographs, including the ones he took aboard the Titanic in 1912. Fortunately, he disembarked at Queenstown, now Cobh, on the orders of his superiors. All rights to the Father Browne collection are owned by the Jesuits in Ireland.

As a result, this new book, The Father Browne Yeats, is published by Messenger Publications, publishers of 'The Scared Heart Messenger', or search for it in the Amazon link on the right.

The full news report can be found here.

Manchester design consultancy NRN Design has been appointed to create new Internet galleries at the National Media Museum in Bradford, which will explore the history, evolution and social impact of the Internet. The contract is worth £88,000. More illustrations are available here. The same company was responsible for the computrer games lounge situtated in the museum foyer.