More details of the requirements the Natuonal Media Museum require for its London presence have emerged which start to add shape to the project...

• Temporary exhibitions that centre on pivotal moments and themes within the histories of photography and film
• A programme of screenings, courses, discussions, performances, and recording sessions that map the creative potency of the media we encompass
• A focus upon the production and dissemination of printed media manifested through an open shelf library, the creation of publications, and debates about the future of publishing.

The founding principles of the London Galleries project revolve around providing the spaces and the levels of welcome for visitors to step over the traditional dividing line between the ‘institution’ and the ‘public’ and, instead, create a space within which our collective points of view, practices and experiences are synergised into the programme of debates, screenings, book launches, courses, conversations, exhibitions and the very life of this media-oriented space.

The National Media Museum, Bradford, and Getty Conservation Institute, have announced a major international conference on recent advancements in scientific, art historical, and conservation research relating to the photographs which Joseph Nicéphore Niépce brought to England in 1827. The conference will take place in Bradford from 13-14 October 2010 and additionally will provide a unique opportunity to examine three Niépce plates out of their frames.

This two-day conference will present the results of new, unpublished research and scientific investigations, which have been undertaken during the NMeM and GCI Collaborative Research Project. In the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum are three plates by Niépce and the conference will address the research and conservation of these photographic treasures, and will discuss future conservation measures that would provide for their long-term protection and preservation. The reason why Niépce brought these plates to England, and their subsequent history, will also be outlined more fully than previously published.

A copy of the announcement brochure is available here: Niépce First Announcement.pdf

Aims and objectives

The conference will examine:

• Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and his work

• The first six photographs brought to England by Niépce in context

• Scientific investigation into the three Niépce photographs in the NMeM collection

• Dating and conservation of the original frames

• Conservation and preservation issues related to the Niépce plates

The speakers have yet to be formally announced.

Registration

Attendance to the conference is limited. All registrations will be handled on a first-come, first served basis.

Formal registration for the Niépce in England conference will take place in May 2010. To register initial interest, contact the NmeM at rsvp.nmem@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk. The museum will hold your details on file and email you registration information in May 2010.

The cost is:

• Regular registration (does not include dinner) £90

• Student registration at reduced rate £70

• Wednesday evening dinner £22

Information

For more information, contact the museum via email at rsvp.nmem@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk and it museum will respond to your query accordingly. If you would like to make contact by post, please send correspondence to:

Niépce Conference

c/o Cultural Events Organiser

National Media Museum

Pictureville, Bradford

West Yorkshire BD1 1NQ United Kingdom

For those BPH-bloggers interested in the technological developments in photographic processes from the origins of the medium until the advent of digital photography, there is an interesting book just published in Jan 2010. Written by Sarah Kennel with Diane Waggoner and Alice Carver-Kubik, the book is a compilation of essential information about the predominant negative, positive, and photomechanical processes in use since 1839.

The National Media Museum has six floors of free galleries, including two temporary spaces. You’ll help us fill them with inspiring exhibitions by leading project teams, liaising with stakeholders and managing budgets of up to £50,000. You will plan and oversee installations, and complete all relevant admin duties, from contracts and insurance to transportation, ensuring all exhibitions are delivered on time and to the highest standard.

Coming from a similar role in a museum or gallery, you’ll already have a good understanding of exhibition administration and delivery procedures, as well as sound knowledge of display techniques, including video and new media display technologies. You should have experience of managing projects, coordinating internal and external stakeholders and developing interpretation strategies too. If you can combine this with good communication, organisational and IT skills, you’ll help us show some wonderful work to visitors!

Award winning, visionary and truly unique, the National Media Museum embraces photography, film, television, radio and the web. Part of the NMSI family of museums, we aim to engage, inspire and educate through comprehensive collections, innovative education programmes and a powerful yet sensitive approach to contemporary issues.

Contract:

• Hours: Full Time
• Salary: £21,900

Contract Type: fixed term until 31st March 2011

Closing date: 21 March 2010

More details here: http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/job/974202/exhibitions-organiser/?CMP=EMCJOBEML281&email=jobsbyemail&lijbeid=9948200

The life and work of a pioneering the nineteenth-century photographer and journal editor was commemorated at the end of February with a blue heritage plaque. George Shadbolt (1819-1901) is thought to be one of the first people to take a photograph through a microscope and recorded some of the earliest pictures of the Crouch End area, around his old home Cecile House, in
Crouch Hill. His home has since been turned into Kestrel House School which provides education for young people with autism.

Rosemary Wilman, of the Royal Photographic Society, and Keith Fawkes, of the Hornsey Historical Society, unveiled a blue plaque at the building and paid tribute to his contribution to the art. Mr Fawkes told the Haringey Independent: “He was a pioneer – a very important person to publicise locally. All these local people are very important. Crouch End was an interesting area then and these people become more important as the years go by. He was one of the pioneers of photography in Victorian times and he was extremely innovative.”

Around 150 years before digital photography revolutionised the process of taking pictures, Shadbolt pioneered early techniques, including methods of enlarging images. He was an early exponent of combination printing, the practice of combining two separate negatives to create a single image.

During an influential career he spent seven years editing what would later become the British Journal of Photography and was an early member of the Photographic Society of London.

The plaque is one of eight installed in honour of influential local figures as part a community scheme led by John Hajdu, of the Muswell Hill and Fortis Green
Association.

The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The Committee recommended that the export decision be deferred on the grounds that the photograph is of outstanding aesthetic importance and of outstanding significance for the study of the history of photography.

Roger Fenton (1819-69) was a highly-regarded British photographer and one of the first- ever war photographers.

Best known for his images of the Crimean War, he also produced landscapes, portraits, still-lives and tableaux vivants during a career which only lasted just over a decade. Pasha and Bayadère was created in 1858 as part of a series of about fifty Orientalist photographs inspired by Fenton’s expedition to the Crimea. These were an expression of a general craze for all things oriental that can be seen in European art in the second half of the nineteenth century and reflected the Victorian fascination with the ‘exotic’ Middle East. In the photo, staged in his London studio, Fenton himself appears as the ‘Pasha’ (a Turkish military or civil official), watching a bayadère, or dancing girl, perform. The role of the musician is played by the English landscape painter Frank Dillon.

The photograph is one of only two examples of this image, the other being in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The Getty’s version is uncropped and believed to be a proof, making this version, cropped for exhibition, in a sense unique. It was not intended to be a documentary image of daily life in Turkey or Egypt, but a fantasy about what the Orient stood for. Fenton’s aim was to marry the Orientalist subject matter popular in painting of the period with the new medium of photography to create a work of high art. Regarded as one of the best in his Orientalist series, and one of Fenton’s best works overall, Pasha and Bayadère is technically highly accomplished, with a strong composition and beautiful lighting.

Lord Inglewood, Chairman of the Reviewing Committee, said: “Photography is sometimes undervalued in this country, but Pasha and Bayadère demonstrates how the best photographs can hold their own aesthetically against other art forms. As well as being a remarkable image, the work is also important for the study of the history of photography. The fact that the Getty Museum chose to make their own version of this image the subject of a scholarly monograph shows just how highly Fenton’s work is regarded outside the UK.”

The decision on the export licence application for the photograph will be deferred for a period ending on 1 May 2010 inclusive. This period may be extended until 1 August 2010 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase the photograph at the recommended price of £108,506 is expressed.

Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the photograph should contact the owner’s agent through:

The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
Wellcome Wolfson Building
165 Queen’s Gate
South Kensington
London
SW7 5HD
Telephone 020 7273 8270

The National Portrait Gallery is holding a symposium around its current Irving Penn Portraits exhibition. Join leading photographers and art historians discussing themes and ideas around the exhibition. Speakers include photographers Paolo Roversi and Bettina Von Zwehl, exhibition curator Magdalene Keaney, Edward Barber, Director of Fashion Photography London, College of Fashion, Virginia Heckert, curator of Irving Penn: Small Trades at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Philippe Garner, International Head of Photography, Christie's and Dr David Anfam, Art historian, critic and curator.

Friday 12 March, 10.30-17.00
Ondaatje Wing Theatre

Organised in partnership with London College of Fashion
Tickets: £25/£20 concessions and Gallery Supporters

More details: http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/irvingpenn/events.htm

The National Media Museum, Bradford, is currently looking for an Associate Curator of Cinematography, working 21.6 hours per week (fixed term for 23 months). The salary is £21,302 pro rata (£12,781 per annum). With three dedicated cinemas and an impressive collection of over 13,000 important cinematography artefacts, film is at the heart of the National Media Museum’s offering. Working closely with the Curator of Cinematography you’ll make sure it stays there by researching and creating insightful content for exhibitions, publications, the web and other aspects of our public programme. At the same time, you’ll help to manage the care of and access to our collection, ensuring items remain well-preserved and easily available to audiences for years to come.

Required Skills:
Coming from a similar role within a museum, you’ll already have exactly what it takes to deliver enthralling presentations, engage with similar organisations and manage historic collections, including experience of handling objects and knowledge of documentation and cataloguing practice. A passion for film and cinema history, ideally with specialist knowledge of a particular area, is important too, as is relevant research experience. If you can also add effective interpersonal, communication and project management skills, you’ll play a key role in maintaining and developing cinematography at the Museum.

Award-winning, visionary and unique, the National Media Museum embraces photography, film, television, radio and the web. Part of the NMSI family of museums, we aim to engage, inspire and educate through comprehensive collections, innovative education programmes and a powerful yet sensitive approach to contemporary issues.

Application Instructions:
Please note: This is a part time role for 21.6 hours per week. Salary is £21,302 pro rata, so you’ll receive £12,781 per year. Interested? Please send your CV and covering letter to: recruitment@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk

The deadline for applications is 5 March 2010.

The galleries are set to open in September 2012, and will focus on photography, film, television, radio and the Internet. The gallery space will feature: flexible installation spaces; a screening and performance space; private study rooms; a large welcome lounge; and a café and bar.

The NMeM parent body the NMSI is seeking designers to provide: ‘a digital, audio and visual environment that befits a forward-thinking and media-based project’; ‘a suite of facilities that are truly flexible and respond to the day-and-night programming of the entire but also specific areas of the space’; and ‘a design identity that is coherent on both macro and micro levels, from the use of the space’s existing features to the materials used for gallery and library furniture’. NMSI adds that the project is not fully funded yet.

Expressions of interest are currently being sought, and suppliers will be invited to tender through the Official Journal of the European Union from 14 April. The contract will be awarded on 15 June 2010.

Mention was made here last year of a major project to revamp the National Media Museum's signage and foyer area. This work which cost around £350,000 is now complete. Click here for details of the original report:

(http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/national-media-museum-newof) The photographs below show the outcome of the project which comprises:

• The installation of a video game display, including working video games and an exhibition of game consoles
• The removal of the box office and shop to new locations within the foyer
• The installation of an information wall
• New signage throughout the museum
• Space invader graphics on the main window and inside the foyer area
• LED top lighting in the foyer

Some photographs here show the outcome...

Born in Kingston upon Thames in April 1830, Muybridge studied photography in Britain and built his career in America. Perhaps best known for his extensive photographic portrayal of animals and human subjects in motion, he was also a highly successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, inventor, and war correspondent. Muybridge’s revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers and artists, including Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Douglas Gordon.

This broadly chronological exhibition will focus on the period of rapid technological and cultural change from 1870 to 1904. It will include the celebrated early experimental series of motion-capture photographs such as Attitudes of Animals in Motion 1878-1882, and the later sequence Animal Locomotion 1887. It will also consider how Muybridge constructed, manipulated and presented these photographs and will feature his original zoopraxiscope, which projected his images of suspended motion to create the illusion of movement.

Muybridge’s carefully managed studio photographs contrast with his panoramic landscapes of America, in which he balanced professionalism with a truly artistic sensibility. He was fascinated by change and progress and his photographs caught both the natural beauty of this vast continent, and the rapid colonial modernisation of its towns and cities. The exhibition will include many of his series of images of the Yosemite Valley, including dramatic waterfalls from 1867 and 1872, along with views of Alaska, Guatemala, urban panoramas of San Francisco, and his 1869 survey of the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in California, Nevada and Utah. These photographs form a unique social document of this fascinating period of history, as well as representing a profound achievement of technological innovation and artistic originality.

Muybridge travelled between Britain, America and Europe throughout his career, studying photography in Britain, and later lecturing around the world. In 1874 while living in San Francisco he shot his wife’s lover dead and had her son placed in an orphanage, but was acquitted of the crime as a ‘justifiable homicide’, a story retold in Philip Glass’s opera The Photographer. He returned to England in 1894, and died at home in Kingston in 1904.

The exhibition is curated by Philip Brookman, Chief Curator, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington and at Tate Britain by Ian Warrell, curator of 18th and 19th century British Art, Tate, and Carolyn Kerr, curator, Tate Britain, and is organised with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. A fully illustrated catalogue, produced by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, will be available

The National Coal Mining Museum for England will be hosting a symposium, entitled ‘The Narrator’s Gaze, fifty years of documentary photography’, on Friday 26 March 2010, from 10.30am until 4.30pm. The event is being held in association with the new special exhibition, ‘Northern Soul, John Bulmer’s images of life and Times in the 1960s’.

A pioneer of colour photography during the 1960s, Bulmer’s work was included in the very first colour supplement launched by The Sunday Times. Inspired by The Times Special Issue entitled ‘The North’, the exhibition includes work specially reprinted from this influential story.

The conference celebrates fifty years since Bulmer first began recording England’s industrial heritage and will be chaired by Colin Harding, the Curator of Photographic Technology at the National Media Museum. The keynote speakers, whose work spans each of the last five decades, include John Bulmer, Homer Sykes, Martin Jenkinson, Ian Beesley, and Moira Lovell.

The event is being held in association with the University of Bolton and Gallery Oldham. A second symposium linked to Gallery Oldham’s forthcoming photography exhibition, ‘The North South Divide’, will be taking place at the Gallery Oldham on 15 May 2010.

Tickets for ‘The Narrator’s Gaze, fifty years of documentary photography’ are on sale now at £15.00 each; concessions are available on request. The tickets price includes refreshments as well as a tour of the exhibition. A reduced rate is available for delegates attending both events. For more information or to book tickets, please contact the Museum’s Booking Officer on 01924 848 806 or visit the Museum’s website www.ncm.org.uk

After more than 150 years the British Journal of Photography is to cease weekly publication and will return to being a monthly. Established in 1854 as a monthly, the BJ went fortnightly in 1857 and then weekly in 1864. The 3 March 2010 issue will be the first of a redsigned monthly magazine. The move leaves Amateur Photographer (established 1884) as the only weekly British photographic magazine.

Changing market conditions and the growth of the internet have precipitated the change. The BJ has a strong web and blog presence but for the last few years its influence within photography has declined as it has focused more on press, fashion and the image, moving away from a more general concern with photography. It's heyday was probably during the 1980s when a range of contributors under the editorship of Geoffrey Crawley kept readers informed about everything from holography and history, to interviews with business personalities as well as photographers. It's worth quoting one of the aims of the journal from issue no. 1 of January 14 1854: 'The admirers of the art naturally desire to have more particulars, and the practical operators more full and precise records of the suggestions, experiments, and successes in various parts of the world' by the end of 1854 it was able to be claim that it held 'the position of principal Provincial organ of Photography'.

The change is the end of an era for the British photographic press. For most of its history the BJP was always the most important journal of photography reporting news and features across the full spectrum of photography. It is sad that has now ended.

Read nore here: http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=873499

The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions has published its latest survey of UK museum and gallery visitor numbers. In 2009 the National Media Museum, Bradford, saw 613,923 visitors - a decline of 18 per cent on 2008. The 2008 figure was 745,857 which had been a 4 per cent rise on 2007. Many other museums and galleries - especially those with free admission like the NMeM - had seen a boost to their numbers with the public turning to free activities due to the recession.

Colin Philpott, the NMeM Director commented: "We are disappointed that our visitor numbers were down in 2009 but this comes on the back of a period of considerable growth in the previous three years.

A number of factors have had an impact on our visitor numbers. Our summer holiday programme did not prove as popular as in previous years. Along with some other West Yorkshire attractions the ‘staycation phenomenon’ (people holidaying in the UK rather than abroad) appears to have passed us by as “stay at home” holidaymakers chose traditional UK tourist destinations such as the coast and cities like York.

Maintaining growth in visitor numbers is a challenge for any attraction and we have not had a major new gallery opening since Experience TV in 2006. However during 2010 we have already invested in a £400,000 redevelopment of the foyer area including a new Games Lounge, an interactive exhibition examining the history of videogaming, which opened last week and which is already proving extremely popular. More improvements are planned and we are confident we can improve visitor numbers over the coming years.

As important as visitor figures are, the Museum is doing extremely well in terms of other measures of success. Survey results show that our visitor satisfaction rates remain consistently high. In addition, the National Media Museum, alongside its sister venues - the National Railway Museum and the Science Museum - were last year named as the first museums in the UK to be awarded World-class Customer Service status."/font>