Blogs

What: Exhibition of Anna May Wong Lobby Cards from the Dwight M. Cleveland Collection

When: March 1 – 10, 2024

Where: San Diego Chinese Historical Museum

This excellent, well-illustrated monograph examines in detail the career of Francois (a.k.a. Philibert) Perraud, a French daguerreotypist who travelled through Italy and Greece in the 1840s, leaving behind a still-to-be-uncovered wealth of material which still occasionally surfaces. His best known images of Greek monuments now reside with the J. P. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, but this fine monograph reveals the scope of his career and marks him out as a genuine pioneer. The original research of exceptional interest is by the author, Roberto Caccialanza. There is an excellent 15-page English abstract, though the text is in Italian. Publisher: photography:k | series (ISBN 979-12-21422-05-4).  

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is holding two photography exhibitions in Spring 2024. Owing to the fragility and light sensitivity neither will be travelling to Europe. 

A Persistent Pioneer: Hippolyte Bayard
April 9–July 7, 2024
Hippolyte Bayard—Parisian bureaucrat by day and persistent inventor and artist after hours—is one of the lesser-known pioneers of photography. This exhibition presents an extraordinarily rare opportunity to view some of Bayard’s highly fragile photographs dating from the 1840s—the first decade of the new medium—and to explore his early processes, subjects, and strategies to achieve recognition. It highlights Getty’s treasured Bayard album, one of the first photographic albums ever created.

Nineteenth-Century Photography Now
April 9–July 7, 2024
Given the ubiquity of photography in our lives, the small, sepia-toned images made in the 19th century may appear remote and unconnected to the present. Yet many of the conventions established when photographic technology was new and cutting-edge are still in use and relevant today. This exhibition provides fresh perspectives on Getty’s collection of 19th-century photography via the work of contemporary artists who respond directly to its historical themes and subject matter.

See: https://www.getty.edu/visit/exhibitions/future.html

Image: Hippolyte Bayard, Self-Portrait in the Garden, 1845-49, salted paper print, J. Paul Getty Museum, 84.XO.968.20

Bodleian Visiting Fellowships in Special Collections are awarded to promote research based on archival, manuscript, and printed books collections of the Bodleian Libraries. Approximately 25 awards are made each year to researchers external to the University of Oxford whose projects require use of these collections. Scholarship pursued within the fellowship research projects generates publications and may also be formally and informally disseminated through talks and presentations.

Of particular interest to BPH readers  is the Sloan Fellowship in Photography. This fellowship encourages researchers to come to Oxford and use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance their research in the history of photography and photographic books. The fellowship is offered in association with Trinity College, Oxford.

Previous Sloan recipients were: 

• Donna Brett, Associate Professor, University of Sydney. Topic: Modernist Photobooks, Propaganda and the Everyday
• Elizabeth Watkins, Visiting Research Fellow, University of Leeds. Topic: Tutankhamun: Colourisation and the Photographic Archive
• Tomáš Dvořák, Assistant Professor, Academy of Performing Arts In Prague. Topic: Czech Edition of William Henry Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature 

Details: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowships/bodleian-visiting-fellowships

This year’s AHFAP conference will take place on the 2-3 of November at the iconic Barbican in East London. The keynote will be given by Catherine Croft, director of The Twentieth Century Society and editor of the C20 magazine. Prior to joining The Twentieth Century Society, she worked for English Heritage as a buildings inspector. She is also the author of a book on Concrete Architecture and regularly writes about contemporary as well as historic buildings.

The other speakers are: 

Jonathon Vines & Eugenio Falcioni: Endangered Archive Programme 
Supporting the work of the Endangered Archive Programme run by the British Library (EAP) in Lesotho and other countries: rewards, lessons and challenges from delivering digitisation workshops around the world.

Børre Høstland: New Museum. New location. New possibilities.
This presentation will focus on the newly opened National Museum of Norway and the motorized easel we have developed to enable us to work more accurately and create new possibilities of digitising artworks.

Tony Richards: Watermark Imaging - Why didn't I think of this before?
This talk will focus on a simplified method of watermark imaging. 

David Rowan: Photographing Japanese Scrolls at Birmingham Museums Trust
How we photographed multiple 15m long Japanese Scrolls at the Birmingham Museums Trust during Covid and while the museum was closed. 

George Eksts: Reverses
Between 2007 and 2021 I photographed nearly 200,000 works on paper. This is the story of their 'verso' sides, where accidental marks, damage, fragments of unfinished sketches, notes etc. were found.

Kevin Percival & Laura Humphreys: Memory Bank: Documenting Blythe House
Memory Bank aims to capture and record the current state of Blythe House, the home of the Science Museum, British Museum and V&A's archives.

Brittany Brighouse and Eelco Roelsma: From Home Scanner to DigiLab
Digitising the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning

Andrew Tunnard: Large Object Photography at the National Collections Centre
The SMG's National Collections Centre is currently undertaking a project photographing nearly 200 large objects, from the extra-large through fire engines and submarines, down to vans and cars. 

Jason Candlin: AI - Jobs for Robots or People?
A discussion paper looking at a number of areas where AI is having an effect on workload for scientific, technical and commercial photographers. 

The conference is open to non-members. Details: https://ahfap.org.uk/ahfap-conference-2023

Digital artist in residence Marie Smith presents work from their six month residency at the Horniman Museum and Gardens. Extraction: In conversation with Anna Atkins is Marie’s visual response to their residency which saw them research and explore two elements – people and worming. Marie utilised worming as a tool to aerate and find new paths of inquiry on the Horniman’s Nature Trail, and in its Gardens and collections. 

The online exhibition responds to the Horniman’s collection of cyanotypes of botanical specimens made by pioneering Victorian scientist and photographer Anna Atkins, and is inspired by photographs of the Horniman Nature Trail and Gardens, alongside leaves and flowers collected from the Nature Trail. During their visit to the Horniman archive, Marie spent three hours ‘in conversation’ with the Horniman’s historic copy of Atkins’ book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, made as cyanotype plates in 1848, one of four volumes of Atkins’ important books in the Horniman collection.

Noting that the word ‘extraction’ kept coming to mind, Marie took this as a prompt to reflect on Atkins’ legacy – not just as a botanist and photographer but as someone who married into a family that owned plantations and slaves in Jamaica - as well as the history of photography, and its past and present detriment to the environment. 

Cyanotypes of photos from the Nature Trail, alongside leaves and flowers collected there, are overlaid with a transcript of this conversation, addressing Marie’s thoughts and questions on Atkins’ legacy and work.

The exhibition is hosted online at horniman.ac.uk, with an accompanying video of Marie’s process of making cyanotypes, using plant or food-based developers instead of chemicals, filmed in the Horniman Gardens. 

Marie Smith says: ‘During my visit to the Horniman archive, I recorded my thoughts as I looked through Anna Atkins’ books on British Algae. This prompted a myriad of personal and theoretical thoughts that explored her working methodology, the life of the algae, the aesthetics of the cyanotypes as well as her explorations as a female artist in the 19th century. The word ‘extraction’ kept appearing and repeating itself in my mind. I took this as a way of commenting on Atkins’ legacy as well as reflecting on the history of photography which continues to have a detrimental effect on the environment.’

A digital trail marking Marie’s points of interest on the Nature Trail is available on the Bloomberg Connects app.

A reading list which informed Marie’s research and the outcomes of their residency at the Horniman can also be found online.

Marie’s six-month residency at the Horniman runs concurrently with artist, researcher and designer Adira Thekkuveettil’s digital residence at the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bangalore, as part of a joint project in partnership with curator and expert in photography Zelda Cheatle.

Adira’s project, Nimbus, plays with ideas of ‘suggestions’ and ‘edits’ as tools of engagement with the MAP collection. Looking closely through Cumulus, the Museum’s Collection Viewing System, Adira looks at details in the entries of artworks and collections beyond the stated information. Drawing connections with other objects and artworks in the Museum’s collection, and proposing playful edits, adding both subjective, as well as objective information, Adira examines what forms ‘enrichment’ can take within a Museum’s collection, and in what ways close viewing can actually open up an archive to scrutiny.

Hear Marie and Adira in conversation with Zelda talking about their respective residencies via this link.

Marie has also been documenting their residency and sharing their experiences on their website.

The just published online Science Museum Journal contains many papers of interest to photographic historians. This is an open issue that is especially strong in demonstrating the power of museum collections in research – the ‘material turn’ about which so much has been written.

A case in point is the mini-collection Revealing Observatory Networks Through Object Stories in which Rebekah Higgitt approaches the study of observatories across the world by gathering nine ‘object biographies’ into three thematic papers in each of which three authors discuss objects illustrating the main theme. Archival objects are also studied here: Lucy Slater delves into the National Railway Museum’s civil defence archive to explore the railway’s response to nuclear threat, and Max Long analyses two data notebooks (A and B) in which pioneer natural history film-maker F Percy Smith recorded his craft. Graeme Gooday et al revisit the ‘Special Loan Collection’ of 1876, suggesting that it should be seen as an exercise in crowd-sourcing loans (mostly returned) rather than the basis of the permanent collections of the Science Museum. And Jo Gane adds a practice-based dimension to her research on the impact of experiments by a group of nineteenth-century Birmingham-based chemists on new photographic silver-plating techniques by reconstructing those techniques herself. The issue also includes obituaries of key contributors to science museum research and practice – Trevor Pinch and John Ward – and three book reviews.

Read it here: https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/issue/autumn-2023-2/

Image: Daguerreotype portraits of Francis Marrian, by George Shaw c. 1843 (Private collection). From Jo Gane's paper. 

I'm delighted to announce that Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870-1915 is now back online, thanks to the hard work of our tech team. This website was originally launched in 2008 by Professors Stephen Brown and Roger Taylor, with research by Siobhan Davies, and funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as part of DeMontfort's support of open access research in photographic history. 

I hope to soon be able to announce the re-launch of Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865. Please stay tuned!

Wishing you all happy researching!

The Bromoil Circle of Great Britain was formed in 1931 by Sam Weller FRPS and brought together leading practitioners of the Bromoil process, many of whom were - and are - members of the RPS. The Circle has recently deposited its archive of more than 600 Bromoil prints from former members and contemporary practitioners with the RPS In Bristol. This event celebrates the transfer with a display of examples from the archive, a demonstration of the process and workshop led by Circle President Ken Hill.

The events are free, but places on the workshop and demonstration are limited. The timings for the day are:

10.00am. RPS House opens

10.30am. Display from the Bromoil Circle Archive on view all day in the auditorium (no booking required)

11.00am. Demonstration of the Bromoil process by Ken Hill FRPS. Limited to 40 people

14.00pm. Bromoil workshop with Ken Hill FRPS. Numbers limited to 8 participants.

17.00pm. RPS House closes

The Bromoil Circle of Great Britain continues to operate as a postal portfolio and can reached via its website: https://www.thebromoilcircleofgreatbritain.com/

Details of the event are here: https://events.rps.org/4LrdQ66/4a2N4Lhk0L

Image: Ken Hill FRPS, Welsh Moor, Bromoil print, c.1980s.

The contribution of women to the first century of photography has been overlooked across the world, including in New Zealand. With few exceptions, photographic histories have tended to focus on the male maker.

This important book tilts the balance, unearthing a large and hitherto unknown number of women photographers, both professional and amateur, who operated in New Zealand from the 1860s to 1960, either as assistants in the early studios or later running studios in their own right.

It takes the reader on a journey through the backrooms of nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographic studios, into private homes, out onto the street and up into the mountains, and looks at the range of photographic practices in which women were involved. Through superb images and fascinating individual stories, it brings an important group of photographers into the light.

Through Shaded Glass: Women and photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860–1960
Lissa Mitchell
Hardback, 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9951384-9-0
NZ$75 (approx £36)

See: https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/about/te-papa-press/contact-te-papa-press/dall-books-z/art-books/through-shaded-glass-women-an
and read a review by Professor Geoff Batchen here: https://www.artmonthly.org.au/

The RIBA Photo Festival celebrates the photography of architecture and the built environment in its many forms, through discussion and debate on the medium and its future in the digital age.

RIBA’s photographic collection comprises around 1.5 million images from the earliest days of photography to the present day. Used by students, scholars, architects, planners and heritage campaigners, as well as the wider public, RIBA's Collections continue to play a role in shaping many of our future buildings, towns and cities.

Details of the programme: https://www.architecture.com/whats-on/riba-photo-festival-2023#

Image: Basento bridge, Musmeci, Italy © Hélène Binet

For the second year running, anthotype and alternative photographic process artists from all over the world came together. On Saturday the 19 August 2023, anthotypes were created and photographic prints were made from plants and pigments. The second World Anthotype Day was celebrated by 139 artists creating vibrant and colourful photographs from homemade emulsions made from over 100 different plants, powders or dyes, and then exposing the prints in the sun.

World Anthotype Day was facilitated by a small team at AlternativePhotography.com and this book is a collection of the artists' research, process and notes to learn and draw inspiration from. Whether you are a beginner at the anthotype process or an experienced anthotype artist, this book is an invaluable reference that will save time, or provide inspiration.

Malin Fabbri has over her 23 years as an editor of AlternativePhotography.com combined her academic and practical experience to run the website. The website still maintains its origins as a source of information and research for alternative photographic processes and artists. Malin actively manages the expansion of the site as editor, researches alternative photographic processes, makes prints and runs workshops. She is the coauthor of Blueprint to cyanotypes and From pinhole to print, the editor of Alternative Photography: Art and Artists, Edition I, Anthotype Emulsions, Volume 1 and 2, and the author of Anthotypes – Explore the darkroom in your garden and make photographs using plants.

Anthotype Emulsions, Volume 2 – The collective research from photographers on World Anthotype Day 2023
Amazon Kindle
Paperback, 100 pages, full colour
ISBN: 979-8857428597
Details: https://www.alternativephotography.com/anthotype-emulsions-2/

This autumn, a new auction house, Canada Book Auctions, Neil D. MacDonald at the helm, is presenting two auctions of fine 19th and 20th century photography, featuring rare and exceptional material and photographers from three different estate collections. The Photographic History sale will be held on Wednesday, 1 November at 1 PM EST on LiveAuctioneers.com.

Their first auction will comprise 19th century photo work by D.F. Barry, Antonio Beato, Bonfils, Samuel Bourne, Étienne Carjat, Désiré Charnay, E.S. Curtis, Francis Frith, Alexander Gardner, Charles Marville, Julio Michaud, Nadar, Timothy O’Sullivan, William Henry Fox Talbot, among others. Materials will include stereoviews, lantern slides, daguerreotypes, tintypes, life and travel albums, and more from the collections of the late Robert Wilson (Toronto) and Harve Sherman (Toronto).

The sale will feature fine early 19th century travel photographs documenting China, India, Egypt and the Near East, Africa, Australia, and South East Asia. Some notable views of India will include work by Bourne & Shepherd, Francis Frith, Lala Deen Day, and others, featuring prints of the Golden Temples at Benares and Armritsar and Qutab Minar in Delhi, among others.

The following day Canada Book Auctions will be presenting an exceptional sale, Important Fine Photographs (2 November, 1 PM EST) on LiveAuctioneers.com. Featuring exquisite work by Ansel Adams, Thomas Annan, Richard Avedon, Brassaï, Wynn Bullock, Bruce Davidson, Eugene Durieux, Walker Evans, Arnold Genthe, Philippe Halsman, Fritz Henle, Lewis Hine, Yousuf Karsh, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, Wendell MacRae, Joel Meyerowitz, Nadar, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, George Tice, Edward Weston, Clarence White, Max Yvano, and George Zimbel. Materials will include photographs from the collection of the late Miljenko Horvat (Montreal) and Harve Sherman.

Highlights will include Avedon’s signed portrait of Igor Stravinsky (1969; 25.5 x 20 cm); Adams’ signed silver print of “San Francisco from San Bruno” (1953; 37 x 47 cm); Steichen’s portrait of Mrs. A. G. Bowman in her superb wedding dress designed by Hattie Carnegie, published by Condé Nast (1933; 25 x 20 cm); Charnay’s print of “Île de la Réunion (Jardin Botanique)” (26.5 x 20 cm), taken during his Madagascar expedition; and Child’s albumen views of Peking (1875-80, 18.5 x 24 cm).

The sale will also include a selection of portraits by Cecil Beaton, most notably Beaton’s iconic portrait of Wallis Simpson posed by a masked statue covered in black tulle (24.5 x 29.5 cm), as well as his portraits of Graham Sutherland and John Augustus.

Of special import is a selection of rare and extraordinary 19th century Persian photographs by Antoin Sevruguin (1851-1933), an Iranian photographer working during the Qajar Dynasty (1785-1952). Sevruguin’s work was especially well-received by the reigning Shah at the time, and Sevruguin was made court photographer, photographing the royal court, harems, mosques, and other scenes of cultural significance. The prints in this collection feature many portraits of Kurdish, Persian, and Chaldean women, street scenes, cultural dress and customs. Prints from this collection include: water pipes (Hookahs); grinding wheat; portrait of Persian butcher; "Juive" (Jewish) wife of Kurdish chief; studio portrait of group of 4 women in veiled. The collection represents an exceptional selection of rare 19th century Persian material, impressive in both quantity and quality.

The sale will include a special collection of post-war British photography by Jane Bown, John Blakemore, Mark Edwards, Bert Hady, Thurston Hopkins, Martin Parr, and George Rodger, featuring portraits of Mick Jagger, James Baldwin, Jean Cocteau, Henry Moore, Samuel Beckett, and other superb subjects. These photographs are from the collection of Miljenko Horvat (1935-2012), Croatian-born artist and architect who immigrated to Canada in 1966 and spent much of his career here. Horvat was also an active curator, and the photographs of this section were featured in his 1987 exhibition “Realities Revisited: 15 British Photographers” (Montreal, Centre Saidye Bronfman). These photographs represent an exceptional collection away from the light for decades and is fresh to the market.

You can join Canada Book Auction’s mailing list via their website and subscribe to receive notifications and updates about these exciting upcoming sales.

Canada Book Auctions
1-41 Spadina Road
Toronto, ON
M5R 2S9
E: canadabookauctions@gmail.com
www.CanadaBookAuctions.com
Facebook: Canada Book Auctions
Instagram: @canadabookauctions

Auction: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/auctioneer/8124/canada-book-auctions/

Images: Top: A lot of 3 prints sold together. Thomas Child. TEMPLE PEKING. Albumen print photograph. Circa 1875, with others.  $800/$1,200
Left: Sevruguin, Antoin[e]. A large and important lot of exquisite 19th century photographs of PERSIA. 104 Albumen print photographs.  $20,000/$30,000

Community darkroom and photographic studio based in Bristol, Negative Thinking has launched a crowdfunder to support its move to new premises. Negative Thinking offers expert tuition and guidance in all things analogue. It says:  Our mission is to share the joy of handmade photography with as many people as possible and to encourage everyone that comes through our door to experiment with the infinite creative potential of picture making.

 A huge part of our ethos is accessibility; we want everyone to be able to experience handmade photography without barriers. This artform is for everyone, and Negative Thinking aims to create inclusive opportunities for people to experience these wonderful techniques for themselves, no matter where they come from. Photography is part of our shared heritage, and as such, belongs to us all.

 At Negative Thinking, we have been running workshops, artist residencies, talks, exhibitions and social events from our studio space in Totterdown for the last two years. Over this time we have built a wonderful community of photographers, artists, printmakers, thinkers, and friends.

We have loved being a part of the community in Totterdown, but sadly, our time there will soon have to come to an end.

Due to rent rises, we are being forced to look for a new home. This means we need to find new premises by January 2024. 

This is where you come in - we need your help to raise enough money to move our community to a new space where we'll continue our mission of spreading the joys of handmade, alternative photography. 

We knew this day would come, as the current studio has its limitations, and now we have a firm deadline for taking our next steps. 

Just wait and see what we have in store for you!

 We'll need to start from scratch all over again; building everything we need to continue to offer our low cost workshops and courses, and to keep our community alive. 

Our new space will be accessible, welcoming, and open to all those that wish to learn, to experience, to grow, and to find their own creative potential. 

The rewards we're offering for your support reflect our commitment to community building - we want you to use our space for your creative projects long into the future. 

 How do we plan on spending the money? Well, firstly, we need to secure a new building into which we can move; deposits, up-front rental costs, legal costs. Then we must make the space fit for purpose. We'll need to build walls, plumb in the darkroom, and wire the place up for electricity. 

After the work is done, we'll also need funds to move the studio and darkroom equipment into the new space, which in itself is no mean feat!

Negative Thinking was set up as a response to the need for a community for analogue photographers and artists in Bristol. It is a place for sharing ideas, for learning about the history of photography, and for dreaming about where it can take us. 

See: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/a-new-home-for-negative-thinking

Techne is now welcoming applications for fully-funded studentships across the arts and humanities beginning in autumn 2024. The University of Westminster is one of nine universities that make up the AHRC-funded Techne Doctoral Training Partnership. Techne supports outstanding students pursuing the ‘craft’ of research through innovative, interdisciplinary and creative approaches across the arts and humanities. For more information on Techne and the types of projects it funds, please visit the Techne website. 

As well as financial support, Techne offers a developmental framework for doctoral researchers across the collaborating institutions, with research training, supportive community networks, professional and public engagement opportunities, and a space for both independent and collaborative scholarship.

At Westminster the following are involved: 

• MPhil/PhD Creative Media
• MPhil/PhD Film
• MPhil/PhD Photography
• MPhil/PhD Visual Arts
• MPhil/PhD Media Studies
• MPhil/PhD English Literature
• MPhil/PhD English Language
• MPhil/PhD Visual Culture
• MPhil/PhD Modern and Applied Languages

https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/techne-ahrc-doctoral-training-partnership-studentships-0

Writer and PhD researcher, Alice Mercier, reports on “In the Photographic Darkroom“, a conference organised by D Sara Dominici, scholar of photographic history and visual culture. Instead of viewing the darkroom as a neutral container for photographic production, this conference studied the darkroom as a space with its own materiality, rhythm and choreography.

Read the piece here: https://cream.ac.uk/features/darkroom-development/

New photographs asnd cuttings from the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, once part of Mercie Lack's personal collection and discovered in an attic, have been gifted to the National Trust by her great-nephew, Andrew Lack. The  material 'completes' a set of photographic albums gifted to it in 2018.

Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack, both members of the ROyal Photographic Society, photographed the unearthing of the Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Suffolk on the eve of World War Two.

Join the V&A for a day of talks dedicated to Korean photography. This symposium will highlight Korea's vibrant photographic scenes looking back at its histories from the colonial period to the present day. You will hear from curators, publishers and contemporary artists and explore Korean photographs and postcards from the V&A's permanent collection. There will also be a guided tour of the Photography Centre.

This event is organised in collaboration with the University of Arizona, and supported by the Korea Arts Management Service, with additional support from the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Tourism – Republic of Korea.

Details and free registration: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/24OYlYXm6G/korean-photography-history-and-practices-1-nov-2023

Image Credit: Nodeulseom (1958-63, Seoul), Han Youngsoo, © Han Youngsoo Foundation

Imperial War Museums (IWM) has announced that the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will open at IWM London on 10 November 2023, ahead of Remembrance Sunday. The new galleries will present a significant new venue in London for phootgraphy of conflict from 1914, based on the museum's holdings of 12 million photographs and 23,000 hours of moving image.   

Thanks to generous support from main funder, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will be the UK’s first to explore how artists, photographers and filmmakers bear witness to and tell the story of war and conflict. Works including John Singer Sargent’s monumental painting Gassed, Steve McQueen’s response to the 2003 war in Iraq, Queen and Country, and works by artists including Paul Nash, Laura Knight and Rosalind Nashashibi, demonstrate how artistic interpretation can uniquely shape our understanding of war. With diverse displays from filmmakers including Peter Jackson, Geoffrey Malins and Omer Fast, and photographers including Olive Edis, Cecil Beaton and Tim Hetherington, the new, permanent galleries will reflect global conflict from 1914 to the present day.

Caro Howell MBE, Director-General of Imperial War Museums, said: “Artists, filmmakers and photographers are eyewitnesses, participants and commentators on conflict. Their work provides critical insight and perspective, while also having the power to deeply move us. We are therefore extremely grateful to our supporters, particularly the Blavatnik Family Foundation, for their generous support in making these beautiful galleries a reality, for enabling us to shine a light on our exceptionally rich visual media collections and for bringing them to a wider audience. Within these Galleries visitors can explore the ways in which art, film and photography shape, challenge and deepen our understanding of war and conflict.” 

Sir Leonard Blavatnik, founder of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the predominant funder of the project, said: “I have long taken an interest in the history of conflict and the experience of those who suffer its impact. I am proud that my Family Foundation has supported this new initiative at the Museum, which confirms its pre-eminence in the field."

The development of the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries is part of the third phase in the dynamic transformation of IWM London. They enable IWM to share works from its exceptional art collection, one of the world’s most important representations of twentieth-century British art. The Galleries will include around 500 works from IWM’s collection, showcasing some of the vast and era-defining film and photography collections, which include over 23,000 hours of footage and over 12 million photographs. This is the first time in IWM’s history that a permanent gallery space has been created to display the three collections together - visual art, film and photography.

Stepping into the Galleries, visitors will learn how the museum has been collecting and interpreting artistic responses to conflict since its inception during the First World War. Objects on display will include Peter Jackson’s award-winning 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old, which transformed original archive footage into colour for a reimagining of the First World War. Artworks from renowned artists from the First and Second World Wars will include works by Paul Nash, John Lavery and Laura Knight’s Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breec -ring, one of the most inspiring artworks to come from the period. More contemporary works include Paul Seawright’s Mounds, commissioned by IWM in 2002 to respond to the war in Afghanistan and photographs from John Keane who recorded the war in Iraq in 1991. Together, these objects reflect a century of seismic change culturally, socially and politically.

A series of spaces further explore how artists, filmmakers and photographers have been driven to respond to and record conflict. For the first time, these galleries will be presented thematically – a significant change from other major galleries at IWM London.

At the centre of the Galleries Practice and Process will include objects such as a wooden pencil box belonging to artist and Second World War prisoner of war Ronald Searle and paintbrushes carried by John Nash on the Western Front. On display for the first time will be documents and a press pass belonging to Paul Eedle, a war reporter and filmmaker who produced Channel 4 News’s award-winning coverage from Baghdad of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Images of filmmakers, artists and photographers at work in conflict zones will reveal their privileged viewpoint and special access on the ground, as well as the challenges and risks – including threat to life – that they face.

Mind and Body will explore how the scale, brutality and disruption of twentieth and twenty-first century conflict has changed the way the human body is seen and recorded. John Singer Sargent’s Gassed will take centre stage, returning to IWM London for the first time since 2016. The six metre-long painting has recently undergone extensive conservation work, including the removal of discoloured historical varnish, providing fresh insights and an opportunity for state-of-the-art imaging work. Other works include A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory by Anna Airy, who was one of the first female war artists, employed by the newly founded Imperial War Museum in 1918. Images including those from the portfolios of renowned photojournalists Cecil Beaton and Tim Hetherington, reveal how the artistic decisions of practitioners made on the ground have evolved from the First World War to the present.

Perspectives and Frontiers will show how artists, photographers and filmmakers have defined how we imagine and understand conflict spaces. Notable First World War artworks, including The Menin Road by Paul Nash, and the newly conserved A Battery Shelled by Wyndham Lewis and Oppy Wood by John Nash, will show how artists have captured the harsh realities and devastation of war on the ground. Second World War film footage from the RAF’s Bomber Command, paintings by Eric Ravilious and Mahwish Chishty’s By the Moonlight – a striking reimagining of the menace of drone warfare - will explore how practitioners have captured how conflict is fought in the air.

Power of the Image will explore the role of visual art as a form of propaganda and protest in twentieth and twenty-first conflict. It will include material from First World War Germany, posters from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, as well as film created by Britain’s Ministry of Information in the Second World War. This section also looks at how artists, photographers and filmmakers bear witness to the crimes and atrocities committed in conflict, and how their work is used as evidence. The official War Crimes Photography taken by Sergeant Alfred Edward Mcroy Pearce, and a new acquisition, Abu Ghraib, 2022, by artist Mohammed Sami, will be on display.

The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will also have a dedicated Screening Space, showcasing a rich and diverse programme of IWM’s historical film collection, including war epic The German Retreat and Battle of Arras, which has been recently restored by IWM in collaboration with the University of Udine. The space will also allow the public to see many of these films for the first time. The Art Box, the second of two dedicated screening spaces within the Galleries, will focus on contemporary moving image and will feature exceptional works by Coco Fusco, Omer Fast and Shona Illingworth.

As in previous developments at IWM London, the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will be free to enter, making more of IWM’s world-class collection available and accessible to all. The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will open at IWM London on 10 November 2023.

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