Blogs

The Royal Collection has two cataloguing vacancies available both of which involve working with photographs held in the Collection.

• Cataloguer Twentieth Century Photographs.
• Based in the Royal Photograph Collection the role will entail working under the direction of the curator on cataloguing the remaining material in the collection, which is primarily 20th century. This ranges from official works by leading British photographers like Beaton, Snowdon and Lichfield, to press photographs and to personal snapshots taken by members of the Royal Family. . The role is for a fixed term of two years.
  Required: A broad knowledge of 20th-century British history and the history of photography;  relevant graduate or post-graduate qualification or equivalent experience; sound IT skills and a familiarity with art-collection databases.
  
  This is a fixed term post from April 2011 to April 2013. At a salary of £19,100. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/6klg6zp The deadline for entries is 13 February 2011.
  
  
• Raphael Collection Cataloguer
• The Print Room is part of the Royal Library section of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. It is responsible for the works of art on paper in the Royal Collection, including old master drawings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century watercolours, and prints – over 150,000 items in all. Among this material is the Prince Consort’s Raphael Collection, a unique assemblage of over 5,000 prints and photographs begun by Prince Albert in 1853 and intended to record every work by or after Raphael and his workshop.
  
  Although the Raphael Collection was catalogued in 1876 it has never been widely accessible, and the intention is now to record it on the Royal Collection’s Collections Management System (CMS) and make it available on the Royal Collection’s website. We are therefore seeking a cataloguer on a fixed-term basis, who will be responsible for entering information about each item to a uniform scholarly standard on the CMS.
  
  This is a fixed term post from April 2011 to April 2013. At a salary of £19,100. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/63zng4a Download a job description here: http://tinyurl.com/5tcq3gl

Richard was born to James and Sarah Harriet ELLIS in their home at 2 Pounds Passage , Johns Row, City Road, ST Luke , London UK.

His father James was a Shoemaker and his mother was Sarah Harriet nee Jardine of Scots and French Heugenot background.She registered him 2 Feb 1842.

Richard was 1 of 13 known children of his parents- all except 1 reached adulthood , so his parents must have been good at their job !

My GGGrandfather was one of his older siblings..... they stayed in contact throughout the decades of living apart.

Family photos of them together c1910 in London confirm this

The Musée de l’Elysée is pleased to announce a major event: the arrival of the Chaplin Photographic Archive, a large collection consisting of approximately 10,000 photographs documenting the whole career of Charlie Chaplin.

“I am thrilled that the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne will take care of my father’s archive. My siblings and myself totally trust that the museum will preserve this heritage which is so dear to us."
Joséphine Chaplin, daughter of Charlie Chaplin 

The origin of the collection 

For each of his films, several photographers documented the filming at the request of the Chaplin Studios. These archives were owned by Charlie Chaplin, then his family. 

A significant collection
Composed of vintage prints and negatives, these archives document the whole career of Charlie Chaplin. To these documents, which were collected film by film since the late 1910s, are added more personal pictures. The exhibition Chaplin et les images shown at the Musée de l'Elysée in 2006, gave an overview of the importance of the Chaplin Photographic Archive by presenting around 350 of its photographs.

The major exhibits 
To this collection, which has a considerable aesthetic and historical significance, are added some extremely valuable photographs, including two photographs of Charlie Chaplin by Edward Steichen, taken in 1925 for Vogue, or the Keystone album, which is composed of approximately 750 photographs that document the first 35 films of Chaplin, created in 1914 for the Keystone Studios. 

The relevance of the collection
By housing such an archive, the Musée de l’Elysée enriches its collection with a unique and universal heritage. This major event, along with the donation last autumn of 144 photographs by Gilles Caron, demonstrates the attraction of the Musée de l’Elysée, and confirms its position as a centre of excellence in the conservation of photographic collections. Such a collection participates in the reputation of the museum with immediate effect: supervising both the conservation and promotion of the Chaplin Photographic Archive, the Musée de l’Elysée will launch, as early as 2012, through the creation of an Ecole du regard, an educational programme based around the work of Charlie Chaplin, as well as exhibitions and publications.

The full press release can be found here. Details of a special screening of the 1921 movie "the Kid' in the presence of the Chaplin family can be found here too.

Photo:  Courtesy Roy Export Co. Est. / Musée de l’Elysée

The University of Ulster reports today that Dr Sarah Edge of the Centre for Media Research in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at the Coleraine Campus has been appointed Professor of Photography and Cultural Studies.

Professor Edge’s appointment recognises her innovative work across a number of areas. She is an acknowledged pedagogic expert on the delivery of media practice in an academic context.

She has published extensively in the area of early Victorian photography and has enjoyed a successful career as a feminist photographer. The appointment also recognises her leadership and management role within the University as demonstrated by her roles as Head of School for Media, Film and Journalism and Director of NI Skillset Media Academy, the innovative industry education partnership.  Originally from Farnborough in Hampshire, when Professor Edge joined Ulster’s lecturing staff in 1991, she already had a well established career as a feminist photographer, curator and writer.

She is currently working on a book that will examine the earliest known photographic archive of working class women that was complied by Arthur J Munby in the 1860s.

The official press release can be found here.

The National Media Museum is one of the leading museums in the north of England, receiving over 500,000 visitors a year and we want you to contribute to our ongoing success.

We are looking for extrovert, engaging and entertaining communicators to fill these stimulating roles. With your excellent presentation and performance skills and your keen interest in media, you will help bring the galleries to life for our diverse range of visitors. As part of the Explainer team in the Learning Department you will present live shows and use your creative skills to develop and deliver art, craft and media based activities for families and groups. It will be up to you to ensure visitors including families, school groups and teachers have an enjoyable, safe and educational visit.

If you have a passion for media, for communication, and for engaging children and adults of all ages, we’d love to hear from you.

This post is 4 days per week including one weekend day.

Part time - 28.8 hours per week
£10,674.40 per annum (£13,343 FTE) plus weekend allowance
Fixed term until January 2013

Closing date for applications: 5 February 2011

For a full job description please email
recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

Interested? Please send your CV and covering letter to recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

Many collectors would love to lay their hands on what is probably Malta's most precious photography collection. One of the biggest archives on the island, the Richard Ellis glass plate negatives number about 40,000, dating from between 1862, when the Englishman landed in Malta, to his death in 1924.

After almost 150 years, the name of Richard Ellis is still synonymous to photography. He was one of the first photographers in Malta, although at that time there was Orazio Agius, Preziosi and a few other Englishmen.

Richard Ellis ended up in Malta quite by chance in April 1861. He had studied photography in Paris, which was the hub of the emergent art, and came to Malta at the age of 19 with his adoptive parents, James Conroy and his wife Sara, as the family were caught up in the Garibaldian struggle. On settling in Malta, Mr Conroy opened a photo studio in Senglea and Richard Ellis acted as his assistant. Nine years later they opened a studio in Strait Street, Valletta, and in 1871 Mr Ellis left the Conroys and set up his own studio.

Apart from buildings and scenes of Malta, Mr Ellis took many photos of ships, crews and ongoing projects. His son, John, gave up a career in medicine and joined the business to help his father and produced what must be the first X-ray images taken in Malta in November 1896.

John's son, also called Richard, continued to run the business in 1931, after the death of his father. He continued to take photos just like his grandfather had done and saved the Ellis archive from devastation in World War II by moving the negatives to the safety of a Wardija home. The building in Valletta where the photographs had been stored was badly damaged.

The 261-page book, "Richard Ellis: The Photography Collection", contains over 200 photos of Valletta and Floriana, reproduced from the original glass plate negatives taken by Ellis, some of which are over 140 years old, and documents important aspects of Malta's social history, as well as the history of the Ellis family. Published in 2007, it was the first of three volumes.

According to the local artist-photographer, Patrick Fenech, there is an urgent need for a national photography museum as entire archives are being sold off abroad, one in particular was a collection of 500 photos dating back to the period between the world wars, including cameras and related paraphernalia, which was sold for only £200!

Mr Fenech has been researching The Ellis archive for three years and he claims he has not even gone through half the collection yet. His wish is to have the vast archives, including equipment and massive studio cameras, displayed – “if not in a national museum, in an Ellis Photography Museum!”

The full report can be found here, and some information on the Ellis family legacy here.

The fellowship is open to international competition. 

Open to art historians, curators, critics, independent researchers, conservators, conservation scientists and other professionals in the visual arts, museology and related disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, who have a graduate degree or equivalent publication history.

Fellowships are tenable only at the National Gallery of Canada. The term of full-time residency must fall within the period 1 September 2011 to 31 August 2012. Awards can be up to $5,000 a month, including expenses and stipend, to a maximum of $25,000. Fellowships are not renewable. 

The Library and Archives provides office space and supplies for the program, with desktop computer workstation running the Windows XP operating system and equipped with Microsoft Word, as well as internal and external telecommunications facilities, and full library support services, including extended hours of access.

Completed applications must include all of the following:

A full curriculum vitae, including education, professional employment history, awards and honours, publications, exhibitions, and work-in-progress

Three letters of recommendation, sent under separate cover by the referees to the Gallery. These letters must address the candidate's achievements in general, and the fellowship proposal in particular

The proposed dates and timetable of the residency at the Gallery

Information on other grants applied for or received, employment commitments and paid sabbatical arrangements, for the proposed period of residency.

A statement of the aims, methodology and anticipated results of the investigation headed by a summary of the proposal (this section of the application is limited to a maximum of three pages)

Proposals for the dissemination of the results of the inquiry

A brief outline of the research materials and facilities required (e.g., bibliography of primary and secondary resources; access to National Gallery of Canada collections; access to the expertise and resources of other Ottawa area institutions; etc.)

An outline of projected costs, including expenses and stipend. Eligible expenses include relocation to Ottawa, subsistence during the residency, and project-related travel, supplies and services

Examples of finished work, textual, visual, or both.

All documentation, in English or French, should be postmarked no later than 30 April 2011.

Full details of the Fellowship including tenure, application, assessment criteria, posting deadlines etc can be found here.

Good luck to all!

I am interested in the Beard licensed studio that was set up in Cheltenham in 1841 by John Palmer. What most interests me is the quality of any known images either held privately or known to be in public hands such as museums etc. There are three family daguerreotypes that are believed to have been taken by Palmer in 1841 and com-parison with any known examples would be interesting. Thanks

What's the link, I hear you ask? The Institution founded back in the 1940s and 50s by Alfred Kinsey looking into the modern field of sexology, and which provoked much controversy even right into this present day and age. And good, old innocent photographic processes of the 19th century?

The Institute will be holding an exhibition entitled "As We See Them: Exotic and Erotic Images from Modern Alternative Process Photographers" which presents the work of eleven artists using some of the earliest photographic processes to create contemporary images dealing with sexuality and the human figure. These will include cyanotyes, platinum-palladium prints, gum bichromate prints, photogravures, tintypes, ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, aluminum-types etc. The images featured deal with sexuality and the human figure.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

Well, I guess the only clear visible link I can find is the blue in cyanotypes!

Just in case you have not come across this wonderful, free resource from The British Library, it's a great site for those lazy Sunday afternoon reads. For starters, there is a section on the development of photographically illustrated books which parallel the explosion in communications during the 19th century. In a period of unprecedented advances in science, exploration, travel, tourism and industry, photography provided an exciting, innovative alternative to conventional methods of book illustrations. You can find this online exhibition entitled "Victorian Britain in 1,500 original prints" by clicking here.

Or, perhaps, if you have missed last year's 'Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs", you can still have a virtual visit, by clicking here. Enjoy them!

Published by Helion & Co, and written by  Fred McGlade, the book can be found by using the Amazon link on the right.

The Irish Times reported today that IMMA has built its collection very successfully on the basis of loans, gifts and bequests, and an exciting initiative this year is inaugurated by an exhibition in July.

Out of the Dark Room features 140 photographs from the very fine David Kronn Collection in New York, which extends back to 19th century daguerreotypes right up to contemporary works. Kronn intends to gift his entire collection to IMMA, with an annual bequest of a number of works each year, starting with Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

The project is a huge boost for IMMA's holding of photography.

Now, now. Don't get overly excited.

That was the price paid by a shrewd Helmut Gernsheim back in 1950 for the complete set of Crimean War photographs after tracking down a desendent of Roger Fenton in a Farnborough garage. After closing the deal, he loaded the prints into the trunk of his car and referred to the purchase as quite a haul!. Four years later, Gernsheim published a book based on these 360 mounted salt prints.

This was one of Gernsheim's greatest coups of his career. Do I sound jealous?

You can read the rest of the article here.

Photo:  Roger Fenton. 'Camp of the 4th Dragoon Guards,' 1855.

The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, seeks a curator of photography. Photography is one of five focused collecting areas of the Harn, each of which is headed by a senior staff curator with a devoted permanent collection exhibition space. The museum currently houses a collection of over 1000 photographs ranging from daguerreotypes and mid-19th century images to large-scale contemporary works. One focus of the collection is landscape photography from the 19th to 21st centuries, but its greatest strength is a body of works from 1950 to the present. Included are a comprehensive collection of photographs by Jerry Uelsmann, who established the University of Florida as a center of photographic studies, and monographic collections of works by several other leading photographers, some of whom are closely associated with UF. A dedicated endowment for photography acquisitions will be available to the curator for development of the collection. The museum has an established record of major photography exhibitions ranging from shows from a local private collection of modernist photography to the presentation of contemporary work, most recently that of Dawoud Bey. The School of Art and Art History, with studio and art history programs in photography, provides opportunities for interaction with professional colleagues and collaborative educational programming. The curator of photography will manage and develop the collection and related programs. Other responsibilities include preparation of installations from the permanent collection, conception and implementation of exhibitions and related publications, original research for publication, lectures for academic audiences and the general public, cultivation of donor relationships, and conception and development of grant projects in collaboration with the development office and others. 

Master's degree in an appropriate area of specialization; or a bachelor's degree in an appropriate area of specialization and two years of appropriate experience. 

PhD in art history with specialization in the history of photography is strongly preferred. 
The successful candidate will have a distinguished record of scholarship and at least three years of curatorial experience dealing with research, acquisitions, exhibitions, and collaborative programming. 

Closing date is 28th Feb 2011, and details of the full job description/application can be found here.

CHINA: Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868-1872 is an historic photographic exhibition including 150 images taken in China between 1868 and 1872. The exhibition includes a wide variety of images, themes and locations in China from Beijing to Fujian to Guangdong including landscapes, people, architecture, domestic and street scenes.  The show in Beijing is accompanied by several displays of original clothes from the era.

John Thomson (1837–1921) was born in Edinburgh two years before the invention of the daguerreotype was announced to the world in 1839. This discovery was the beginning of photography. That same year Fox Talbot introduced the calotype process, and with this new medium David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, two remarkable Scottish photographers living in Edinburgh, produced nearly 3,000 images, including city views, landscapes and scenes of everyday life. Their work undoubtedly had a profound influence on Thomson. In the years leading up to Thomson becoming a professional photographer, the technology of photography also developed at an incredible speed. The invention of the wet-collodian process in 1850 is regarded as the watershed: it reduced the exposure time and the cost of making photographs; it also produced sharper images. The wet-collodian process quickly replaced daguerreotype and calotype. As Thomson remarked: ‘the detail in wet-collodian negatives was of microscopic minuteness whilst presenting the finest gradation and printing quality which had never indeed been surpassed by any known method’. But this in itself added to his difficulties: it was necessary to make the negatives on glass plates that had to be coated with wet-collodian emulsion before the exposure was made, thus there was a large amount of cumbersome equipment that had to be carried from place to place.

Yet what marked Thomson’s work out was not simply the massive amount of visual information he offered. His uniqueness was his zeal to present a faithful and precise, though not always agreeable, account of China and Chinese people. He wanted his audiences to witness China’s floods, famines, pestilences and civil wars; but even more so, he wanted share them the human aspect of life in China. He wanted his work to transcend that of the casual illustration of idiosyncratic types, to portray human beings as individuals full of peculiarities.

In 1920, Thomson decided to sell his 650 glass negatives, including those of China, to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, but died before the transaction could be completed. Eventually Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936), the American-born pharmacist and philanthropist, bought the negatives from Thomson’s heirs.

The 150 images included in this exhibition are all from the Wellcome Library’s collection. While a few images were reproduced in Thomson’s published works and shown in exhibitions, the great majority of his photographs have never been exhibited.

First shown in Beijing, the exhibit made its way to Liverpool last year before heading to Thomson's native Scotland next month. Details of the exhibition can be found here, and a BPH blog here.

Photo:  A Manchu lady after having her face painted, Beijing 1871-2. © The Wellcome Library, London

An exhibition of photographs by Roger Fenton and Julia Margaret Cameron from the Royal Collection will go on display from 31 January until 27 April 2011 at Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House, in the Lake District.

31 January - 27 April 2011

Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House
Bowness-on-Windermere
Cumbria
LA23 3JT

More details are at: www.blackwell.org.uk

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!