John Ward who has died aged 82 years, was a Science Museum curator and a key figure at the centre of a network of British photography collections and collectors between the 1970s and 1990s.
John was born in 1940 and attended Manchester Grammar School between 1952 and 1960. He joined the Science Museum in November 1968 as part of a new generation brought in to modernise the institution, by supplementing a post second world war group of curators. He remained there until 2000, just one month short of 30 years’ service.
John initially worked under Dr David B Thomas (1928-2010), Keeper in the department of physics, as his research assistant. Both men had a strong interest in photography and Dr Thomas had published a small booklet on the camera collection in 1966 and in 1973 a booklet on the origins of the motion picture.[1],[2] In 1969 The Science Museum Photography Collection was published under Thomas’s name, incorporating research work from John.[3] John would later produce an updated edition The Science Museum Camera Collection (1981) when the Arthur Frank collection was acquired although he expressed disappointment noting that it had largely been produced to satisfy the donor.[4]
The period from 1968 until the move of the photography collections from London was significant with John’s own role growing into a curatorial one from 1974. The Science Museum through Dr Thomas and John was part of a close network of photography collections which included the Kodak Museum under Brian Coe, the Royal Photographic Society with Arthur Gill and Margaret Harker, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fox Talbot Museum led by Bob Lassam; private collections such as the Barnes Museum of Cinematography and Fenton Museum of Photography, and individual collectors such as Bernard Howarth-Loomes, Cyril Permutt, and others. Those inter-institution and personal connections led to acquisitions and loans, at a time when collections’ management was less formalised than now.[5] That with Howarth-Loomes (1931-2003) was particularly strong.
The connection with the Kodak Museum and Brian Coe (1930-2007) was especially productive with Coe producing salted paper prints from over 600 negatives in the Science Museum’s Talbot collection for an exhibition Sun Pictures marking the centenary of Talbot’s death in 1977. The exhibition showed at the Science Museum and toured internationally. In the catalogue John wrote of the value of the association between a national museum collection and a private museum with laboratory and research facilities.[6] By the early 1980s the Science Museum was showing Kodak Ltd exhibitions.
John was responsible for the design and installation of the Science Museum’s new photography and cinematography galleries which opened on 10 April 1979. These told the technical history of both through the museum’s significant collections, supplemented by a significant loan of early case photographs, photographic jewellery and stereographs from Howarth-Loomes. The opening of an adjacent new Optics gallery complimented them. The new galleries had short life and were dismantled soon after the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT) was fully established.
John’s time at the museum marked the setting up of the NMPFT, now the National Science and Media Museum, in Bradford, in 1983. This included the transfer of the Science Museum’s photography and cinematography collections from London. Although John was offered a move to Bradford he declined and remained a sceptic of the project, although he remained supportive of colleagues and remained professionally engaged with its activities. He wrote a chapter for the museum’s book commemorating the transfer and opening of the Kodak Museum collection at the NMPFT in 1989.[7]
The launch and expansion of the NMPFT meant that John’s role as London photography curator disappeared and he had a temporary role researching and cataloguing the museum’s Talbot collection.[8] He later took on a new role responsible for training, in particular for new graduates, within the museum. He retired in 2000.
During the latter changes, John remained professionally engaged with photography especially early British photography. The resulted in perhaps his most significant achievement, with Sara Stevenson, the exhibition and book Printed Light: the scientific art of William Henry Fox Talbot (1984) which opened at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1984 and brought together 100 of the Science Museum’s Talbot prints and objects.[9]
Outside of his professional roles at the Science Museum John was actively involved with the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists trade union at the Science Museum which took a lot of his time. As his wife Sue noted he was a man of principles and integrity and never hesitated to ‘speak truth to power’.
After retirement he continued to be consulted on early photography and wrote entries for the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography (Routledge, 2007) and for the Encyclopedia of 20th Century Technology (Routledge, 2004).
Quiet and understated, John was not an easy or eloquent orator, but he more than made up for this in the fluency of his written words and he was supportive of others. Colin Harding who joined the Science Museum working with John noted “I have great affection for John. He set me on the road to becoming a photohistorian and was always very supportive - although he thought that I was making a big mistake when I decided to take a job in Bradford.” He continues, “[Dr] David Thomas kept a low profile and it was through John that I met such luminaries as Brian Coe, Bernard Howarth-Loomes and Larry Schaaf. My friendship with John meant that I was subsequently able to negotiate the sometimes difficult political landscape between Bradford and South Kensington. John actively encouraged me to research and write.”
Roger Taylor who was recruited to the NMPFT in 1985 to open the Kodak Museum to Bradford noted the later support of John who acted as his advocate with senior management. He says “I will always be grateful for his intervention.” For other such as Alison Morrison-Low, then curator at the National Museums of Scotland “it is thanks to him that the Howarth-Loomes collection came to the National Museums of Scotland. He introduced me to Bernard, and also to Brian Coe… I learned a lot.”
And for me, I was at Christie’s in South Kensington from 1986, as a photography specialist and met John when the museum would buy photography for the collection. I would meet John regularly for lunch at his favourite Italian restaurant just down from the museum, where he would offer news, advice and share his knowledge. Later, in 2007 when I started a PhD John acted as an advisor and after he had left the museum we continued to meet and discuss photographic history.
John was a sportsman who ran, particularly cross country, played football, badminton and cricket. He would keep an eye on Chelsea FC while reading a book and possibly dip in and out of an England cricket match, but would be equally happy to stop and watch a village cricket match. He learnt to play the violin at school and picked up the ability to play the piano both with music and by ear. He loved classical music and reading with particularly interests in the history of the World Wars, social history, politics and of course photography. John was also a great gardener, sowing seeds and growing plants on, particularly vegetables but also annual plants for the garden.
John’s contribution to British photographic history was largely curtailed with the opening of the NMPFT and later acquisition of the Kodak Museum collection. But the remains a significant figure through his work at the Science Museum, and through his wider role engaging with other institutions and individuals during a period of rapid growth in interest in photographic history. Look through many books on British photographic history published during the period 1974-1990s and John is often acknowledged. He was personally supportive of a generation of curators and researchers which has left an enduring legacy.
He leaves Sue, his wife of more than fifty years, and is survived by three sisters. His brother predeceased him.
© Dr Michael Pritchard
16 June 2023, updated 15 July 2023
With thanks to: Sue Ward, Tim Boon, Colin Harding, Hope Kingsley, Alison Morrison-Low, Roger Taylor.
Photo: Richard Morris FRPS. John Ward, 1978, a contemporary calotype made at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.
Notes
[1] David B. Thomas, Camera Photographs and Accessories. A Science Museum illustrated booklet, London: HMSO, 1966.
[2] David B. Thomas, The origins of the motion pictures. An introductory booklet on the pre-history of the cinema, London, HMSO, 1964.
[3] David B. Thomas, The Science Museum Photography Collection, London, HMSO, 1969.
[4] The Science Museum Camera Collection incorporating the Arthur Frank Collection, London, Science Museum, [1981].
[5] Michael Pritchard, ‘many interesting and valuable gifts of apparatus for preservation in the Museum’. The Royal Photographic Society and networks of collecting photographic technology’, paper presented at the V&A Museum conference, 16 & 17 November 2018.
[6] Michael Pritchard et. al., ‘In memoriam. Brian Walter Coe’, History of Photography, 32 (2), Summer 2008, p. 208-210.
[7] John Ward, ‘The beginnings of photography’, in Colin Ford (ed.), The story of popular photography, London, Century and NMPFT. 1989, pp. 10-41.
[8] ‘Photohistorical and club news’, Photographica World, no.48 (March 1989), p.2.
[9] John Ward and Sara Stevenson, Printed Light: the scientific art of William Henry Fox Talbot and David Octavius Hill with Robert Adamson. London, HMSO, 1986.
