Back in October 2009 BPH reported on the National Media Museum's revised signage project and subsequently reported on the positive reaction to it. The London-based designers behind the project, Carter Wong, have published their own short report on the signage project. Click here to read it: http://www.carterwongdesign.com/projects/national-media-museum.php
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These prints - revered by collectors for the depth of tone in the final image - are taken from Emerson's photo album 'Life and Landscape on the Norfolf Broads' published in the 1880s.
If the austerity cuts haven't reached your wallet yet, details of the lots and auction can be found here.
The Victorians were the harbingers of the modern age, their society driven by curiosity, a zeal for invention, and an enormous appetite for economic and imperial consumption. The boiler room of the era was stoked furiously, and its frequent combustions produced advances in everything from science and philosophy to industry and architecture.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Scotland was a nation transformed. Glasgow had exploded into the second city of the Empire, the majestic Forth Bridge was celebrated as a wonder of the modern world, and railways had opened the remote Highlands to new industries of leisure and tourism. But for every grand museum or gothic-revival country house, tenements and slums rose in their thousands – overcrowded living for the vast army of workers that sustained the great Victorian machine. Ambition and wealth saw social divisions become ever more acute, producing a society obsessed with class hierarchy.
Now, for the first time, RCAHMS is showcasing images from its National Collection in a remarkable illustration of this landmark era. From the pioneering work of photographers like John Forbes White, William Donaldson Clark, Thomas Annan and Harry Bedford Lemere, to never before seen excerpts from private family albums, Victorian Scotland is a window on the lives of the generation who changed the world.
Available to buy at £30 - just click on the Amazon link on the right to search for it!
Photo: A team of Victorian surveyors ready their instruments outside an unidentified building. c1890
Details of this Sotheby's sale on 19th November can be found here.
The photography portion of the collection has more than 12,000photographs from the South and Alabama ranging from the late 1850s to the mid-1930s. Civil War photographs, perhaps one of the finest of its kind and a specialized archive and research collection titled “The Southern Photographer, 1860-1910” are features of this collection. The work of Southern photographers contains approximately 4,000 images from 2,500 different studios.
The collection is housed on the third floor of Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, University of Alabama and is open to the public, with the opening ceremony tomorrow, 9th November. A dedicated website to this extraordinary collection can be found here, and a video here.
Photo: Among the items in the Williams Collection is an extremely rare copy ofScottish photographer, Alexander Gardner's "Photographic Sketch Book of the War." (Photo by Robin McDonald)
This exhibition of remarkable Antarctic photography by George Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley marks the 100th anniversary of Captain Scott’s ill-fated journey to the South Pole. Ponting’s dramatic images record Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910–12, which led to the tragic death of five of the
team on their return from the South Pole. Hurley’s extraordinary icescapes were taken during Ernest Shackleton's Polar expedition on Endurance in 1914–17, which ended with the heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Both collections of photographs were presented to King George V and are today part of the Royal Photograph Collection.
Details of the NZ exhibition can be found here, and the one in London here. You can also preview a selection of the exhibit highlights or buy a copy of the book here. Or perhaps try the Amazon link on the right.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, details have now been released by the Getty Museum on their forthcoming exhibit in the new year which seeks to redefine the history of photography in China by illuminating the intersection of traditional Chinese artistic media and the modern technology of photography, drawing special attention to indigenous Chinese photographers.
Brought to Asia in the early 1840s by European travelers, photography was both a witness to the dramatic changes that took place in China through the early-twentieth century, and a catalyst for further modernization. Employing both ink brush and camera, Chinese painters adapted the new medium, grafting it onto traditional aesthetic conventions.
"Until now, these early photographs have received scant attention and there has been little attempt to study them within a social and cultural context. This exhibition helps provide a historical and visual background for understanding modern and contemporary China and its current relation with the West," said Frances Terpak, curator of photographs in the Getty Research Institute.
The exhibition features more than 100 works, culled primarily from the Getty Research Institute's strong holdings on the early history of photography in China. The works in the exhibition range from an 1859 portrait of a Chinese family made near Shanghai to glass slides of revolutionary soldiers created in 1911 in Shansi province.
Organized into five sections, the exhibition, which coincides with the beginning of the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit, includes works by Lai Afong and Tung Hing, two of the most notable Chinese photographers of the nineteenth century. Lai's specialty was the closely observed portrait group, while Hing was a master of Chinese landscape, excelling in extraordinary multipart photographic panoramas. Hing's six-part landscape of the Min River snaking through the city of Fuzhou exemplifies how Asian photographers drew upon the Chinese literati tradition of landscape scrolls for inspiration. Also notable are a series of photographs depicting street trades and goods made for Chinese export, and rare gouache and oil paintings made by Chinese painters, such as the Cantonese artist Tingqua, on loan to the exhibition from The Kelton Foundation in Los Angeles.
Brush & Shutter: Early Photography in China runs concurrently with Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Western Road and Photography from the New China. Details of the Brush & Shutter exhibition are available here.
Photo: "Collage of many photographs." China, late 1800s. Anonymous. Albumen print. Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
"In 2007, the Getty Museum acquired a substantial collection of more than 800 photographs by Beato, a partial gift from the Wilson Centre for Photography. This important acquisition is the impetus and foundation for this exhibition, which covers Beato's entire career from his war photography to his commercial studio work," said Judith Keller, senior curator of photographs.
The exhibition looks closely at the photographs Beato made during his peripatetic career that spanned four decades. Following in the wake of Britain's colonial empire, Beato was among the primary photographers to provide images of newly opened countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, and Burma. A pioneer war photographer, Beato recorded several major conflicts, including the Crimean War in 1855-1856, the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858-1859, the Second Opium War in 1860, the Western punitive campaign to Shimonoseki, Japan, in 1864, and the American expedition to Korea in 1871. His photographs of battlefields, the first to show evidences of the dead, provided a new direction for war photography.
"Felice Beato was one of the first global photographers," explains Anne Lacoste, assistant curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. "No one before him was present with a camera in so many different countries to chronicle conflicts or to record their foreign cultures ranging from the Crimea, to India, to China, to Japan, to Korea, to Sudan and finally Burma."
Beato's experience in the Crimea was a decisive point in his career. There he learned to make photographs in extreme and unpredictable conditions. He insinuated himself into the world of the officers' mess and assiduously cultivated his connections with those men. Such relationships would serve him well throughout his career, particularly in covering military campaigns in India, China, and Burma.
Eager to take advantage of Western interest in the conflict in India, Beato arrived in 1858 to record the rebellion's aftermath. Guided by military officers, he made images of the mutiny's main sites—Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow—that he sequenced and captioned to re-create the primary events. In some views, he added enemy corpses to increase the dramatic effect.
Under the extreme wartime conditions of the Second Opium War, where Beato accompanied the French and British troops, he made a series of photographs that documented the progress of the military campaign, including gruesome scenes taken immediately after the ravages of battle.
Known in Beato's time as the Hermit Kingdom, Korea was one of the last countries still closed to the outside world. Beato was hired to document an American punitive expedition to Korea to seek a treaty and negotiate trade relations. However, violence broke out and retaliatory actions were taken by the Americans. From his trip, Beato brought back 47 photographs, including numerous portraits of military crews and views of the fleet and battlefields. Among these views of the local scenery and portraits were the first known photographs of Korean natives.
Details of the exhibition can be found here. After premiering at the Getty this winter, the exhibition will be on view at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Japan, in Spring 2012.
Details of the exhibition can be found here.
Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road will present the first survey of Felice Beato's (British, born Italy, 1832-1909) long and varied photography career which covered a wide geographical area—from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. This exhibition will run concurrently with Photography from the New China. The official press release is as follows.
"In 2007, the Getty Museum acquired a substantial collection of more than 800 photographs by Beato, a partial gift from the Wilson Centre for Photography. This important acquisition is the impetus and foundation for this exhibition, which covers Beato's entire career from his war photography to his commercial studio work," said Judith Keller, senior curator of photographs.
The exhibition looks closely at the photographs Beato made during his peripatetic career that spanned four decades. Following in the wake of Britain's colonial empire, Beato was among the primary photographers to provide images of newly opened countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, and Burma. A pioneer war photographer, Beato recorded several major conflicts, including the Crimean War in 1855-1856, the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858-1859, the Second Opium War in 1860, the Western punitive campaign to Shimonoseki, Japan, in 1864, and the American expedition to Korea in 1871. His photographs of battlefields, the first to show evidences of the dead, provided a new direction for war photography.
"Felice Beato was one of the first global photographers," explains Anne Lacoste, assistant curator of photographs and curator of the exhibition. "No one before him was present with a camera in so many
different countries to chronicle conflicts or to record their foreign cultures ranging from the Crimea, to India, to China, to Japan, to Korea, to Sudan and finally Burma."
Beato's experience in the Crimea was a decisive point in his career. There he learned to make photographs in extreme and unpredictable conditions. He insinuated himself into the world of the officers' mess and assiduously cultivated his connections with those men. Such relationships would serve him well throughout his career, particularly in covering military campaigns in India, China, and Burma.
Eager to take advantage of Western interest in the conflict in India, Beato arrived in 1858 to record the rebellion's aftermath. Guided by military officers, he made images of the mutiny's main sites—Delhi,
Cawnpore, and Lucknow—that he sequenced and captioned to re-create the primary events. In some views, he added enemy corpses to increase the dramatic effect.
Under the extreme wartime conditions of the Second Opium War, where Beato accompanied the French and British troops, he made a series of photographs that documented the progress of the military campaign, including gruesome scenes taken immediately after the ravages of battle.
Known in Beato's time as the Hermit Kingdom, Korea was one of the last countries still closed to the outside world. Beato was hired to document an American punitive expedition to Korea to seek a treaty and negotiate trade relations. However, violence broke out and retaliatory actions were taken by the Americans. From his trip, Beato brought back 47 photographs, including numerous portraits of military crews and views of the fleet and battlefields. Among these views of the local scenery and portraits were the first known photographs of Korean natives.
Details of the exhibition can be found here. After premiering at the Getty this winter, Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road, will be on view at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Japan, in Spring 2012.
An archive of Brunel material consigned by a descendant of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel was sold at auction on 2 November 2010 (click to see the full sale) by Tooveys in Sussex. Included in the sale were several items of photographic interest, click to see the full descriptions:
- BRUNEL, Isambard Kingdom (1806-1859). - Robert HOWLETT and George DOWNES (photographers). A stereoscopic 'double' patent, titled on pink paper label verso '16. "The Leviathan" Steam Ship. Portrait of Mr. Brunel'. [London:] Photographic Institution, [n.d. but circa 1857?]. Overall card size 174 x 85mm. (images with arched top, each 75 x 73mm.). - And four other related images (stereocard views of the Great Eastern). Provenance: Lady Sophia Macnamara Hawes neé Brunel (1802-1878), sister of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (inscriptions verso). Sold for £17,000
BRUNEL, Isambard Kingdom (1806-1859). - Unknown photographer. A shaped photographic portrait of Brunel. [N.p.: n.d. but circa 1857 or earlier]. Irregularly shaped and laid down on thin card. (Faded). Provenance: Lady Sophia Macnamara Hawes neé Brunel (1802-1878), sister of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Apparently a calotype, sold for £2200
HAWES, Sir Benjamin, (1797-1862), and Lady Sophia Macnamara HAWES neé BRUNEL (1802-1878). An album of topographical, military and portrait photographs, apparently assembled by or for Sir Benjamin and Lady Sophia Hawes. [N.p.: n.d. but circa 1857-1868]. Large 4to (283 x 226mm.), 66 leaves mounted with an original pencilled watercolour portrait of Lady Hawes by her daughter, dated 1865; 96 mounted photographic portraits (most carte-de-visite format, including 16 of royalty, a number accompanied by clipped signatures); 59 British topographical photographic views; 5 topographical photographic views of Canton (one inscribed 'taken by Corporal Wotherspoon R.E. April 1850' but torn into image area); 35 photographs of cannons, military equipment and constructions (one with associated label 'Photographic Establishment of the War Department'). (The majority slightly faded.) Original green morocco gilt, g.e. (scuffed, lower joint split). Note: Sir Benjamin served as Minister of War during the Crimean War. Sold for £13,000
DICKINS, Frederick Victor (1838-1915, ?compiler). - Unknown photographer. An album of mounted topographical photographs of Japan. [Japan: n.d. but circa 1870-1879.]. Folio (360 x 260mm.) 54 mounted photographs (most 210 x 283mm.); 35 mounted coloured scenes of Japanese life printed on cloth; 4 mounted Japanese botanical prints on paper, on 55 card leaves. Original green half-morocco (worn). Provenance: Thomas Dickins (Edgemoor House, Manchester, bookplate). Note: Frederick Victor Dickins, an orientalist of note and translator of Japanese literature, lived in Japan from 1871 to 1879. He appears to have annotated the album for Thomas Dickins. Sold for £4000
RAILWAYS. Unknown photographer. A fine side view of 'The Puffing Billy'. [N.p.: n.d. but circa 1855-1862.] 1 photograph (200 x 278mm.) backed onto paper with early manuscript caption slip. (Somewhat faded). Note: 'The Puffing Billy is one of the two earliest surviving locomotives. Sold for £750
PHOTOGRAPHS. A carte-de-visite album containing a good selection of photographs depicting 19th Century authors, scientists and others. [N.p.: n.d. but circa 1870-1890.] 4to (285 x 215mm.) 23 leaves with 140 carte-de-visite or cabinet photographs, a few with associated clipped signatures, subjects include C. Darwin, T. Huxley, L. Pasteur, T. Edison, H.W. Longfellow, N. Hawthorne, C. Dickens, E.A. Poe, Gen. R.E. Lee, Charles Peace, J.E. Millais. Original morocco (worn). Sold for £4000
TALBOT, William Henry Fox (1800-1877). A mounted calotype from 'The Pencil of Nature', with manuscript title to mount 'Bust of Patroculus' [n.p.: n.d. but 1843]. Calotype (143 x 139mm.) With ruled ink border, on original thin card mount (303 x 240mm.), with number '17' below lower-right corner of the calotype, and title in ink at lower-right corner of the mount. (Print faded, light soiling to mount). Note: plate 17, showing Talbot's plaster cast of a Hellenistic marble, from his 'The Pencil of Nature'. Sold for £600
Monday 8th November will be a dark and creepy evening at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, as Professor Heard, the world’s finest Phantasmagoria Magic Lantern Projectionist, will be performing a show in the library.
There will be 2 performances, a family friendly show at 4.30 – 5pm, then at 7.30 – 9pm an evening event where things get a bit more sinister and spooky!
ALL WELCOME, the event is free, however booking is essential! call 0161 06 0555 to reserve yourself a free seat or email jrul.events@manchester.ac.uk at the John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3EH.
Until recently John Deakin has been missing from photographic history. He resisted his talent fiercely, treating success with mistrust and greeting failure with indifference. His career began with Vogue but, despite achieving recognition for the photographs he took there he never took it seriously and never expected it to make him a living. Deakin's bad behaviour was legendary and he remains the only staff photographer in the magazine's history to be hired and fired twice by the same admiring but exasperated editor.
Deakin yearned to be a painter like his friends Francis Bacon, Robert Colquhoun, Lucian Freud and Michael Andrews, whom in time he would photograph. In turn, Andrews and Freud both painted his likeness. Loved and loathed in equal measure, Deakin was a celebrated part of the artistic circle that convened in the pubs and clubs of Soho, London's bohemian quarter, the lure of which eventually led him away from regular employment.
Gods and Monsters is drawn largely from a portfolio commissioned by Vogue in 1951 and 1952 of twelve contemporary artists, shown here in its entirety for the first time, along with other portraits of painters and sculptors Deakin made for the magazine at various times throughout his brief career. Vogue has agreed to lend its vintage prints, which in their ragged state show the patina of age and handling that accrues to a magazine's raw material. Further, like so much of Deakin's oeuvre, they are lucky to have survived him. They were only re-discovered in Vogue's archives in the early 1990s.
Details of the exhibition can be found here.
Leicester, UK: The De Montfort University Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) draws together and integrates scholarship across a diverse range of disciplines and research on primary sources from the 19th through the 21st centuries of photographic history. It has strong strategic alliances with institutions such as the British Library, V&A, National Media Museum, Société française de photographie, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, reflecting its standing as an internationally recognised centre of research excellence. Current Centre members include Dr Kelley Wilder, Senior Research Fellow and MA Photographic History and Practice Programme Leader; Roger Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Photographic History and internationally renowned specialist in mid-19th century photography; Professor Stephen Brown, Head of the Department of Imaging and Communication Design and Director of Knowledge Media Design at De Montfort University.
You will have a clear vision of the future of photographic history, that will enhance the profile and status of photographic history and conservation internationally. You will raise the international standing of DMU in the area of photographic history, by attracting research students and producing excellent research scholarship. In addition to being Research Professor, you will become the first Director of the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC), a rotating position to be held for up to five years. You will encourage the initiatives already begun at PHRC and bring your own vision to the Research Centre.
You should have a PhD (Equivalent qualifications accepted) or equivalent relevant experience in the field, extensive publication experience and have produced scholarship considered by peers to be ground breaking in the field. You should also have a track record of winning grant funding and have supervised students at MA and Phd levels.
Closing Date : 26 November 2010
Interview Date: w/c 3 January 2011
Application forms and further details are available from our website: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/jobs
Alternatively telephone 0116 250 6433 (24 hour answerphone). Or write to:
The Human Resources Team, De Montfort University,
The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH.
Salary to be set by the Vice Chancellor in accordance with the Senior Staff Pay and Grading Structure. Please Quote Reference : 6605
Details of the exhibit can be found here, which is just a short hop across the channel on the Eurostar!
Quote:
When an age is ripe for discovery it is rare for an invention to occur to only one mind.
The Powerhouse Museum has just announced plans to create an open-access image repository to showcase the organisations’ extensive image archive. The portal will initially begin with about 5000 images and grow to include the museum’s glass-plate negatives collection, including some 7903 images from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection.
The Collection consists of 7903 glass plate negatives from the studios of Charles Kerry (1857-1928) and Dorset-born, Henry King (1855-1923), who had two of Sydney's principal photographic studios in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Tyrrell Collection provides an important record of city and country life at the time with a number of broad themes: Sydney and suburbs; south coast; Blue Mountains; transport; rural New South Wales; shipping; caves; sports; Indigenous peoples of Australia and the South Pacific.
The Museum in Sydney also has the Hedda Morrison Collection which comprises images taken in the Far East.
Photo: Glass negative, half plate, 'Coogee', Kerry and Co., Sydney, c. 1884-1917
Entitled "Samurai in New York: The First Delegation, 1860", it features 19th century Japanese photography amassed by a Wall Street executive which is known to be one of the world's largest in private hands. Tom Burnett's collection includes over 4,000 images of geishas, samurais etc in albums, stereoviews, cdvs and single photographs from 1859 onwards. It has taken him more than a decade to collect, and has been insured for more than $1 million. According to a photography dealer, some of his albums are the very beginnings of Japanese photography!
Details of the New York exhibition can be found here, and Mr Burnett's collection here.
Mmm, Steiff dolls earlier this month @ Christies ... I wonder what else these Wall Street executives collect?
Photo: Carte-de-visite, Studio of C.D. Fredricks & Co., New York. Collection of Tom Burnett
