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Known as an adventurer, a scholar, and possibly a spy (!) - Dutchman, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, (1857 - 1936) proved that he was also a pioneering photographer with his rare 1885 photographs/sound recordings of the holy city of Mecca.

Started life as a theology student at Lieden University, Netherlands, Hurgronje was later appointed as an adviser on the native affairs of colonial Netherlands East Indies. In 1880, he wrote his doctorate thesis entitled "Het Mekkansche Feest" (The Festivities of Makkah) which described the Haj pilgrimage and its customs.

In 1884, through a partial funding from the Dutch government, he was sent to Mecca/Jeddah. During this short but comprehensive stay, he observed and chronicled the daily lives of the local society through photos, written memoirs and sound recordings. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave earlier than intended after unfound accusations of his involvement in an attempt to steal a historical artifact.

His camera equipment wasn't wasted. After Snouck's departure, Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar, a local physician that the Dutchman had worked alongside, began using the camera, possibly becoming Mecca's first home-grown photographer. Al-Ghaffar continued sending his images to Snouck in The Netherlands. Many of the photographs were originally credited solely to Snouck but they are now jointly credited, with experts unable to tell who shot what.The images, archived by Leiden University Library, were published four years after Snouck's trip. Original copies of the album now sell for about $45,000, according to the gallery.

Under the patronage of Princess Reem Al-Faisal and in collaboration with Netherland’s Leiden University Library and Hes & De Graaf Publishers, this exhibition “Mecca — A Dangerous Adventure,” features re-photographed and re-produced 19th century platinum prints of the works of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936).

Details of the Snouck Hurgronje article, including a slide show, can be found here, and the exhibition here.

Photos: Group portrait of sharif Yahya with camel slave and two lower sharifs; Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje.

9 5/8 in. x 7 1/2 in. (244 mm x 191 mm) Purchased, 1980; Primary Collection, NPG P140(27);

Walton Adams is Reading's oldest commercial and family photographic business established since 1867.

If you’ve been looking for yet another good reason to come visit us at the Fox Talbot Museum in the historic village of Lacock, here it is! The Fox Talbot Museum is presenting a series of photographic workshops for next summer, comprising:

Registration for these workshops starts now and is limited to small classes so sign up soon to avoid disappointment.

Come visit us at www.talbotworkshops.co.uk for more information and registration details.

In a blog report earlier this year BPH noted that the National Media Museum was looking to save a rare photograph by pioneering 19th century British photographer, Roger Fenton, entitled 'Pasha and Bayader'. Today it has been confirmed that the photograph has been saved, and it is no longer in danger being moved abroad.

Leicester's De Montfort University will be supporting the MA research of Brian Carr on 43 extremely rare daguerreotypes. The daguerreotypes are part of the collection of Maidstone Museum where Carr, a photography enthusiast, has been a long-standing volunteer.
The valuable collection of early photographs date back to 1851 and include stills of the King of Hawaii, his wife and the Royal entourage. They were brought to Maidstone by Julius Brenchley, the third son of wealthy Maidstone brewer. He was educated at Cambridge University and undertook a scientfic expedition in 1851 to the Sandwich Islands (now known as Hawaii). He later he went on to the Great Salt Lake City, visited the plains Indians in America and brought back further images.

Brian, who took up photography at 14, said he cannot wait to get to grips with the collection: “Naturally I had read about Daguerreotypes, but actually holding one of these early images made the hairs on the back of my neck stand-up. The thought went through my mind that I am in effect travelling back 150 years and here is a person looking back at me. This is something that I have never felt with any other process. To hold a one-off Daguerreotype is to hold a slice of time, frozen into perpetuity. I am extremely honoured to have unrestricted access to such a rare collection, and hope that I can do it justice in my MA.”

The full press release is here and report from the Kent News can be found here.

LENS is held from 19-20 November 2010 at The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, which holds the largest photographic collection in Wales (over 800,000 photographs). The collection includes the earliest surviving Welsh photograph, a daguerreotype of Margam Castle taken by Calvert Jones in 1841.

This is the only festival of its kind held in Wales, aimed specifically at those interested in documentary photography, in the history of photography and/or Welsh social history.

The dates have been announced for the 2011 London Photograph Fairs which will take place on 20 February, 15 May, 11 September and 20 November 2011. The venue will be the Holiday Inn, Coram Street, London, close to Russell Square tube station and within walking distance of Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross mainline stations. Admission is £3. For more information see www.photofair.co.uk

Launching in December, 2010 The Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938-1957 is the complete, fully text searchable facsimile archive of the Picture Post, the iconic newspaper published in Britain between 1938-1957 that defined the style of photojournalism in the 20th century. It is primarily intended as a resource for academic institutions.

As the latest addition to Gale Historical Newspaper Collections, the Picture Post provides students and researchers with online access to a remarkable visual record of the 1930s to 1950s – from the humorous and light-hearted snapshots of daily life in Britain to the serious and history-defining moments of domestic and international affairs.

Featuring the work of Berty Hardy, Kurt Hutton, John Chillingworth, Bill Brandt, Humphrey Spender, Thurston Hopkins and many more iconic photojournalists.

The online archive consists of the complete run of the paper – from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957 and includes almost 50,000 pages – all newly digitised in full colour from originals from Getty Images’ Hulton Archive, holders of the Picture Post Photographic Collection.

For further information see www.gale.cengage.co.uk/picturepost

Geoffrey Crawley, one of Britain's best photographic editors and scientists, has died aged 83. Crawley was editor of the British Journal of Photography between 1967 and 1987 and worked there until 2000, when he joined Amateur Photographer as photo-science consultant. He wrote for the magazine until recently.

Crawley had a long career in photography and invented the developer Acutol which was sold by Paterson from 1963. He also investigated the Cottingley Fairies hoax and was, for the first time, able to conclusively show how the 1921 fairy photographs had been produced. Crawley was widely consulted within and outside the photographic industry for his expertise in photographic chemistry and science. His active involvement in photography and photographic publishing brought him into contact with many of the leading photographers and photographic personalities from the 1940s onwards.

Fuller obituaries have been published in Amateur Photographer and the British Journal of Photography click the links to read them.

8/11/10 update: there is a rather nice obituary of Geoffrey here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/world/europe/07crawley.html?_r=1

which sums up the Cottingley Fairies story ands his role in it rather well.

BBC Radio 4 included a feature on Crawley as part of its Last Word programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00vryrj/Last_Word_12_11_2010 the Crawley section begins at 22mins 58 secs and contributors include Colin Harding from the National Media Museum and Chris Dickie, a former editor of the BJP.

Michael Pritchard writes... I first met Crawley in the late 1990s when he decided to sell at Christie's the Cottingley fairy cameras, photographs and related material that he had acquired as part of his research into the story. An appeal was launched and the material was subsequently passed to the then National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford. I visited him at his house in Westcliffe-on-Sea and spent an enjoyable morning listening to his stories about the BJP in the 1960s and the wider photographic world. I proposed that he be interviewed as part of the British Library's Oral History of British Photography but sadly the suggestion was not taken up  by the project. He was an impressive man with a great recall of people of events that have now passed into British photographic history.

See: Geoffrey Crawley, 'That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingley Fairies' in British Journal of Photography Part One (24 December 1982, pp. 1374-1380); Part Two (31 December 1982, pp. 1406-1414); Part Three (7 January 1983, pp. 9-15); Part Four (21 January 1983, pp. 66-71); Part Five (28 January 1983, pp. 91-96); Part Six (4 February 1983, pp. 117-121; Part Seven (11 February 1983, pp. 142-145, 153, 159); Part Eight (18 February 1983, pp. 170-171); Part Nine (1 April 1983, pp. 332-338); Part Ten (8 April 1982, pp. 362-367)

Geoffrey Crawley, 'Cottingley Revisited' in British Journal of Photography, 24 May 1985, pp. 574-562.

Elinor Carucci‘s photographs have consistently explored the types and levels of intimacy, focusing on her own body, her parents, her husband, and more recently, her children. Often photographing in close-range, Carucci relies on bits and pieces, expressions and symbols to communicate joy, pain, and the sometimes-elegiac sentiments that accompany relationships.

Born 1971 in Jerusalem, Elinor Carucci graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York in the same year. She was awarded the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for Young Photographers in 2001 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. Carucci has had solo exhibitions at galleries including Edwynn Houk Gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery and Gagosian Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others. She has published two monographs to date, Closer (Chronicle, 2002) and Diary of a Dancer (Steidl, 2005). Carucci is represented by James Hyman Gallery, London.

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

6.00pm, Research Forum South Room,

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

Open to all, free admission

Contacts:

Alexandra Moschovi (alexandra.moschovi@courtauld.ac.uk)

Julian Stallabrass (julian.stallabrass@courtauld.ac.uk), or

Benedict Burbridge (benedict.burbridge@courtauld.ac.uk)

I am researching my great grandfather Henry Sutton who was an Australian inventor. In the 1890s Henry lived in London and was a member of The London Camera Club. Henry invented a halftone photographic process called Electro-Phototypy, He set up a Company called Sutton's Process Syndicate Ltd in 1891 which ran out of 4 Tokenhouse Buildings and the place of production was in Blackfriars Rd just around the corner from Fleet St. His process was used in two weekly newspapers and a number of book publishers used his process also.

Henry was also a photographer and exhibited many of his photographs at the time and won a Gold Medal for one of his stereoscopic photographs, a number of his photographs were published at the time and I have managed to find a few but I'm sure there are more. One of the private investors of Henry's process was the photographer Samuel Bourne, Henry also knew Captain Abney, Lord Rayleigh etc.

In 1892 he met Nikola Tesla, Tesla and Henry arranged with Rayleigh and Preece from the Telegraph office to use another invention of Henry's to transmit a photograph via the telegraph.

I am trying to find out more information about this transmission and anything in relation to the above information about Henry. I have more information if you think you might be able to help me or know anything please let me know.