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From the last decades of the nineteenth century onwards, photomechanical images assumed a central role in print production processes. With the development of new typographic techniques, technologies, and ad hoc materials, photography transformed into an ink image, circulating across a wide range of printed media, including newspapers, books, magazines, and postcards. Photomechanical images enabled the mass dissemination of cultural, political, and news events, the public reception of works of art, the transmission of scientific research, as well as the circulation of photography itself as an artistic language. In this way, the ink image became a modern instrument for understanding the world.

Over the past two decades, with seminal publications such as Forme e modelli del rotocalco italiano tra fascismo e guerra (De Berti, Piazzoni 2009) and Arte moltiplicata. L'immagine del ’900 italiano nello specchio dei rotocalchi (Cinelli et al. 2013), the circulation of photographic images—particularly in periodicals and illustrated magazines—has received increasing scholarly attention in Italy. The strongly transdisciplinary approach that has characterised recent conferences such as Periodicals: S.T.E.A.M. AHEAD! (Urbino, 2024), Testi, Immagini, Formati, Strutture. I linguaggi del giornalismo tra Otto e Novecento (Milan, 2025), and Testo e immagine nei periodici illustrati dell’Italia del boom (Milan, 2025) has encouraged new analytical perspectives on illustrated printed sources, although the focus has largely remained on their textual and visual content. Consequently, the material culture of photomechanical images and processes has so far been addressed only in a fragmentary and marginal manner. This differs from the international context, where the topic has been placed more centrally within ongoing research. Among the most significant initiatives in this field are the conferences De/Reconstructing Photomechanical Reproduction. Don’t Press Print (Bristol, 2021) and Photomechanical Prints: History, Technology, Aesthetics and Use (Washington, DC, 2023), as well as the Prague-based research group The Matrix of Photomechanical Reproductions: Histories of Remote Access to Art (2022–2027).

The Urbino study day aims to present a series of contributions situated within a transdisciplinary framework, addressing the use of photography in printed materials—including books, specialised journals, newspapers, illustrated magazines, postcards, etc.—as well as the objects connected to their production, such as clichés, proof prints, working materials and tools, and ephemera. Particular attention will be devoted to the Italian context, while remaining open to international comparison, within a chronological framework encompassing both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The study day aims to examine and give visibility to objects, processes, and dynamics that have thus far been overlooked by historiography, thereby opening new perspectives for the analysis and study of these materials.

Possible research topics include, but are not limited to:

• The study of technical aspects related to the production of photomechanical images;
• An investigation of the complex network of professionals involved in the processes mediating between the chemical image and the ink image;
• The analysis of the circulation and migration of photographic images in printed materials;
• A comparison between printed materials produced in Italy and in international contexts;
• The use of photomechanical material in artistic practices such as photocollage and photomontage;
• The relationship between the photographic image and textual, graphic, and typographic elements in editorial mise en page projects.

Among the objectives of the study day are:

• Highlight how photomechanical processes emerged in response to specific demands of the publishing industry and to the growing cultural need to illustrate printed products;
• Redefine existing hierarchies within the history of photography and the publishing industry;
• Investigate printed sources as material sites of re-semantisation that shape different contexts of sedimentation, reception, and use of photographic images;
• Shed light on how international models were reworked through Italian case studies;
• Analyse the processes through which the photographic image is transformed across different editorial, graphic, and typographic contexts.

Scholars, curators, museum professionals, and practitioners interested in participating are invited to submit a proposal for a 20-minute presentation by 22 May 2026 to both the following addresses: cristiana.sorrentino@unifi.it and francesca.strobino@labafirenze.com.

Proposals must be submitted in English and should include: an abstract specifying the methodological approach (approximately 3,000 characters / 400 words including spaces), a short biographical note (approximately 1,000 characters / 150 words including spaces), and an exemplifying image. The proposal should be sent as a single PDF file named Surname_Urbino_2026. Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by 30 June 2026.

A peer-reviewed volume collecting the contributions presented during the study day is planned for publication in early 2027 within the series Novecento e oltre, published by Urbino University Press. Participants will therefore be invited to submit a draft version of their paper at the time of the conference itself (1 October 2026).

The study day will take place in person in Urbino and will be conducted entirely in English.

Beyond the Image: Towards a Redefinition of the Photographic Object in Printed Materials in Italy
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
1 October 2026
cfp deadline: 22 May 2026
Details by emailing:  cristiana.sorrentino@unifi.it and francesca.strobino@labafirenze.com.

Organised by:

Marta Binazzi (University of Florence; Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Carlotta Castellani (Università of Urbino Carlo Bo)
Cristiana Sorrentino (University of Florence)
Francesca Strobino (LABA. Libera Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence)

Scientific Committee:

Geoffrey Belknap (National Museums Scotland)
Vincent Fröhlich (University of Marburg)
Mary Ikoniadou (Leeds School of Arts)
Nicoletta Leonardi (Brera Academy)
Irene Piazzoni (University of Milan)
Paolo Rusconi (University of Milan)
Tiziana Serena (University of Florence)
Petra Trnková (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Kelley Wilder (Professor Emerita De Montfort University, Leicester)

This fifth Museum Dialogues workshop explores how contemporary and historical photographers’ archives are accommodated both within museums and beyond public institutions. Contributors will share collection building and accessioning practices, examining remit and objectives, public access and the practical concerns involved in the custodianship of photographic archives. The discussion will offer strategies to enhance capacity and bring resources and visibility to photographer archive projects, including through research and public engagement initiatives. We will consider approaches to addressing issues of representation and concerns around equality, diversity and inclusion, as well as barriers to artists from diverse backgrounds and identities when entering the archive.

The workshop will also reflect on what is archived and the challenges of presenting ‘authentic’ photographer histories based on partial or incomplete records, and on opportunities of offering audiences alternative narratives.

Speakers confirmed so far: Weronika Kobylińska, President, Archeology of Photography Foundation, Poland; Hyunjung Son, Curator, Photography Seoul Museum of Art (Photo SeMA), South Korea.

Acquiring and Making Accessible Photographer Archives
Online via Zom, 6 May 2026 at 1300-1600 (BST)
Attendance is free but booking is essential.
Please find Speaker Biographies and Registration HERE

The BT Group Archives (BTGA) and University College London (UCL) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded doctoral studentship from 1st October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme. The student will critically investigate, develop and make use of new research methods, based on advances in machine learning and knowledge organisation, for exploring the significant moving image collection at BT Group Archives. This project will be jointly supervised by James Elder and Elspeth Millar (BTGA), and Professor Andrew Flinn and Dr Daniel Wilson, in the Department of Information Studies (DIS) at UCL. The student will be expected to spend time at both BT Group and UCL, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP-funded students across the UK.

Project Overview

BT Group Archives is engaged in a decade-long effort to digitise eighty years of moving image material held on vulnerable film and videotape formats. ‘Lossless’ digital copies are being created, linked to metadata, and made available. This throws up timely questions in relation to knowledge organisation and access that this PhD project will address in theory and practice.

The collection begins in the 1930s with the work of the GPO Film Unit (part of the UNESCO Memory of the World register) and continues without interruption to the present. The overriding theme of the collection is the transformation of communications and the creation of an ‘Information Society’, as recorded in the archive of this unique organisation, whose development charts key changes in twentieth-century British history. As the Post Office and then British Telecom, this changed from being a Government Department to a nationalised industry and then a private company. The archive therefore records the activities of a very significant organisation: employer of thousands, providing communications services to millions of customers.

Despite the collection being an important historical source, it would be prohibitively labour-intensive to make it available to potential users by cataloguing and organising it manually. Recent developments in audio recognition and computer vision, could potentially help create new catalogue metadata automatically, which could be structured and linked in flexible ways. The student will explore and develop the potential of these new methods, and themselves conduct a substantive piece of research showcasing new insights into the collection and new forms of enquiry more generally.

Outcomes of the doctoral project could include: comprehensive new metadata for the moving image collection; publishable code and documentation and a substantive research paper. The student may also develop workshops and teaching material to widen engagement with this new material, as well as a proof-of-concept – practical and theoretical – for the creation of re-usable methods for BTGA as well as other archives facing similar challenges. Such methods should aim to aid discoverability while addressing the complex challenges facing the uses of ‘AI’ in the sector as a whole. The written component of the thesis will be adjusted to reflect these other forms of output.

Moving the Frame: New Computational Practices for the Description and Organisation of the BT Film Collection
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) Studentship
Closes: 24 April 2026
Details: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanities/news/ahrc-collaborative-doctoral-partnership-cdp-studentship-0

Frank Watson examines the relationship between photography and sound. This week: Frank's guests are Ian Walker and Hazel Donkin. They speak about their latest book about the American photographic artist Frederick Sommer, his life and work, entitled Frederick Sommer - A World Of Bonds (Routledge 2026). For more information visit thesoundofphotography.com. 

The Sound of Photography is a radio programme hosted by Frank Watson on Resonance 104.4fm and is also available online at www.resonancefm.com You will find an archive of the weekly programmes that revolve around a guest photographer, curator, writer and others associated with photography. There is also a mix of music associated with themes of each show.  Frank Watson is also a practising photographer. For further information visit www.frankwatsonphotography.com

The Sound of Photography
10 April 2026 at 1430 [Repeats Saturday 0700.]
See: https://www.resonancefm.com/schedule/2026-04-10

A handful of prints of Egyptian subjects, both ancient and 'modern', surfaced in Bolton Museum's Chadwick archive recently. Three were easily attibuted to a photographer or a studio but the photographers of the other prints are unknown. The prints have been pasted onto board with annotation by hand or including press cuttings, possibly prepared for exhibition display.  [BPH: please be aware some of the images below show human remains]

We would like to know of anyone can identify the photographers who are not already attributed.

First, the photographs from known sources:

And the images by other photographers:

This convening at Dimbola, Cameron's former home on the Isle of Wight, offers visits and talks reflecting on the poetry, theatricals, bohemian lifestyle, Christianity and myriad connections through Anglo-Indian society that inspired her photographs. Images have been selected from the several collections of Cameron’s work and in particular from the extensive RPS Collection at the V&A, together with others given to the V&A by Cameron herself or purchased from her.

Two recent developments have influenced the content of this event, Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters currently showing at Watts Galley (closing 4 May 2026) with an accompanying publication and also new research by Aneela de Soysa into Julia Margaret Cameron’s final years of photography in Sri Lanka.

The programme includes a series of themed talks over two days - 5 and 6 June, plus optional visits and workshops. 

Friday, 5th June – This day focuses on CAMERON + FRESHWATER, with a guided tour by Chairman Brian Hinton, a walk on Tennyson’s Trail, and talks on her life before she began her career in photography.

Saturday, 6th June – The morning focuses on CAMERON + THEATRICS, with talks on G.F. Watts, the Pattle Sisters, and Cameron’s second studio and theatre. In the afternoon, we turn to another significant chapter of her life—CAMERON + CEYLON (current day Sri Lanka) —through a series of talks and a panel discussion.

Sunday, 7th June – The convening concludes with a hands-on cyanotype workshop and a final curated walk through Freshwater.

Pre-Convening Day – Thursday, 4th June - A guided tour of Farringford, home of the Tennysons from 1853 to 1892; Queen Victoria’s Osborne House; and All Saints Church in Freshwater, the final resting place of several members of Cameron’s Freshwater circle. Contact the co-organiser directly to take part.

See the full programme and book here.

Image (detail): Julia Margaret Cameron, 'A Group of Kalutara Peasants', albumen print, 1878. RPS Collection at the V&A Museum, London.

On BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life award-winning photographer Sir Don McCullin talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences and formative experiences. He started out in the late 1950s documenting the working-class lives in the north London neighbourhood in which he had grown up. Employed by the Observer newspaper, and later the Sunday Times, McCullin photographs captured scenes of struggle, despair and violence. Travelling to the front lines of conflict zones in Cyprus, Beirut, Vietnam, Cambodia, Biafra, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, McCullin earned a hard-won reputation as one of the greatest war photographers of all time. In recent years he has focused his lens on the beauty of the natural world, particularly the landscape around his home in Somerset. His work is held in permanent collections around the world including the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A. He was knighted in 2017 for services to photography.

Listen here on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002tbzn Those outside of the UK may need to use a VPN to access. 

Past episodes include Annie Leibovitz, Sebastião Salgado, and Martin Parr.

In this talk from her forthcoming book, Leigh Raiford examines how Black people use photography to make home in the world. She focuses on a selection of Black American activists and artists, (Marcus Garvey, James Van Der Zee, Eslanda Goode Robeson, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Dawoud Bey, Sadie Barnette) to explore the complex relationship between racialized subjects and the medium of photography. As they traveled the world for study, for work, for pleasure, or for survival, these artists and activists took and collected photographs to express their political platforms and personal sense of self.

Raiford considers the everyday image-making practices that these Black Americans employed to improve the condition of Black lives globally by imagining, identifying, inhabiting, leaving, defending, and destroying “home.” Raiford shows how these figures did not merely utilize photography to emplace themselves in the world—they demonstrated how the use of photography is itself a way to mediate one’s relationship to the world.

Leigh Raiford is Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, curates and writes about Black visuality and world-making.  Raiford is the author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (2011), When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World (forthcoming, 2026) and, co-author with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas and Laura Wexler of Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography (2024). Most recently, Raiford is Series Editor with Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Deborah Willis of Vision and Justice, an imprint of Aperture Books.

Organised by By/For: Photography & Democracy, a new collaborative partnership between three photographic historians, Dr. Tom Allbeson, Dr. Colleen O’Reilly, and Helen Trompeteler. 

When Home is a Photograph: Blackness and Belonging in the World
Leigh Raiford
Online, Friday, April 10, 2026 1300-1400 (EST) | 1800-1900 (BST)
Register here: https://www.byforcollective.com/programs/z57zhmwpucxi72twa12sxkqvzd52g5

The Arts Organisations at Trongate103 in Glasgow's city centre are facing closure due to their leases being terminated by City Property, following a massive and unsustainable rent increase. Seven organisations occupy the Trongate 103 building - including Transmission Gallery, Street Level Photography and Glasgow Print Studio which are facing demands for approximately £700,000 in extra yearly expenditure, representing increases of quadruple previous rent levels.

Street Level Photoworks has been supporting photography since 1989 and is led by Malcolm Dickson. 

A pettition has been launched to save the venue. The organisers state:

'Trongate103 is one of the last visual arts venues remaining in the city, especially after the recent closure of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). Losing it would be a devastating blow to Glasgow's vibrant cultural scene'

Glasgow has long been celebrated for its rich cultural and artistic heritage. The city is home to dozens of creatives, artists, and communities. Trongate103 has been at the heart of this, offering a space for art, creativity, and expression that has enlivened the city centre and contributed enormously to the local economy. With its closure, we risk obliterating Glasgow's creative cultural legacy.

The decision by City Property to terminate the leases, citing a rent increase that places the arts organisations in an impossible financial situation, undermines Glasgow's identity as a city that supports and cherishes culture. These organisations, which have tirelessly worked to sustain the arts despite financial hardships, deserve our support and our actions to stand with them.

We call upon the Glasgow City Council and City Property to reconsider their decision, revoking the unsustainable rent increase and ensuring that Trongate103 and its associated arts organisations can continue to thrive.

By preserving spaces like Trongate103, we uphold the city's reputation as a leader in the arts and cultural innovation. With your support, we can urge the council to find a sustainable solution that allows these vital arts venues to remain open.

Sign this petition to protect Glasgow's cultural legacy, safeguard the arts community, and ensure that creativity continues to flourish in our city.'

At the time of writing some 22,496 people had signed the petition. 

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/save-trongate103-from-closure  and read about Street Level Photoworks: https://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/

This 43-minute documentary film combines ethnography with history and heritage to narrate the story of African movement eastwards through the Indian Ocean World and beyond to the Pacific Ocean. The film highlights African music as a vibrant legacy through the genres of manja, kaffrinha and baila in Sri Lanka. Ancient migrations less known than the transAtlantic African movement to the Americas are brought to the fore.  Moreover, the achievements of some enslaved Africans in the East, albeit freed, within the sociocultural worlds that they entered into, are unparalleled in the Atlantic World.

The film will be of interest to those concerned with lost African diasporas globally.  Film producer, Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, will be present at the event and there will an opportunity for Q&A and discussion after the screening.

Indian Ocean African Migrants Film Screening
with producer Professor Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya
Saturday, 11 April 2026, 1100-1215, free, no booking required
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
See: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/indian-ocean-african-migrants-film-screening

In this ‘Conversation’ piece, Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards discuss the relationship between photography and history as it manifests itself through the photographic legacies of Southern Africa. The specific historical experience of the Southern Africa has given rise to a realisation of the potential of photographs as drivers for historical thinking and analysis, the way photographs ‘move history forward’. The Conversation addresses major questions that resonate through the discourse and politics of global photographies—about the conditions of visibility, the problematics of Western photo-theory and of the language of photographic and historiographical analysis as viewed from the Global South.

Photography and history: a view from Southern Africa
Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards in conversation
Journal of the British Academy, 14(1) - open access
See: https://journal.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/articles/14/1/a02

Museums etc has just published Behind the Screens. Mussel fishing in Norfolk featuring the photography of Ken Smith. Within a remote coastal landscape, generations-old skills and traditional beliefs flourish. All work is manual. The pace steady. Tools hand-made from the hedgerows. Boats rowed, not powered. The language poetic. And mussel beds are washed fresh by the tides. But this environment, which looks marginal, is in fact central. Pairing haunting documentary images with oral history and contemporary commentary, Behind The Screens shines a light on the economic processes that underlie every aspect of our lives. Even in the most unexpected places.

Behind the Screens. Mussel fishing in Norfolk
Ken Smith
Museums etc, 2026
£28, 96 pages
Read more and details: https://museumsetc.com/products/behind-the-screens

The latest issue of the free print and online publication The Classic is now available to view. The issue includes articles on photographers Fan Ho, Carlo Mollino, and Germany's first art director Willy Fleckhaus, and a feature on collecting beyond the print: copper photogravure plates, negatives, contact sheets and more. 

Download here: https://theclassicphotomag.com/the-classic-15/

In celebration of Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday and in association with the Marilyn Monroe estate, the National Portrait Gallery will present Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait (4 June – 6 September 2026). This major exhibition will celebrate the life and work of one of the most famous women of the 20^th century through portraits. It will explore the role she played in her own image making, and her inspiration on photographers and artists in her lifetime and long after.

Born on 1 June 1926, Monroe remains a defining presence in popular culture. From the earliest pin-up photographs made when she was a young model named Norma Jeane, to her last interview for Life Magazine and the poignant final images taken on Santa Monica beach in 1962, she was one of the most photographed people in the world, and fascinated and inspired some of its greatest artists. The exhibition will bring together works by Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler and Audrey Flack, alongside photographs by over 20 era-defining photographers including Cecil Beaton, Philippe Halsman, Bernard of Hollywood, André de Dienes, Eve Arnold, Inge Morath, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Milton Greene, Sam Shaw, Richard Avedon and George Barris.

The exhibition will also feature previously unseen photographs from Life magazine; intimate portraits taken by Allan Grant at Monroe's Brentwood residence just one day before her death in August 1962. Grant's exclusive session, which accompanied her final interview with Life associate editor Richard Meryman, captured 432 images of which only eight were originally published. These dynamic photographs show Monroe reading the transcript of her interview, performing a range of emotions from joy and contentment to quiet reflection.

Photographers who worked with Monroe described her as the best subject they had ever had. The exhibition will foreground Monroe's collaborative approach to image making and her creative agency; she not only performed, but also directed sessions and claimed the right to veto any images she did not like.

The shock of Monroe's death in 1962 was a catalyst for the production of numerous portraits by artists on both sides of the Atlantic. British Pop artist Pauline Boty, a devoted fan, worked through her grief in paintings including The Only Blonde in the World (1963) and Colour Her Gone (1962). In New York, Andy Warhol created his iconic screen prints. Based on a publicity still taken to promote the film Niagara (1953), Warhol isolated Monroe's face against a field of gold, enshrining her like a Byzantine saint. In Warhol's work, Monroe was no longer just a movie star, but the great American icon. James Francis Gill made his triptych Marilyn (1962), while Joseph Cornell assembled delicate memorial boxes dedicated to Monroe. Monroe continues to fascinate artists, drawn to her iconic presence and fascinating life.

The exhibition is curated by Rosie Broadley, Joint Head of Curatorial and Senior Curator of 20th Century Collections, and Georgia Atienza, Assistant Curator of Photography. 

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
4 June-6 September 2026
London, National Portrait Gallery
See: www.npg.org.uk 

Images: L-R: Marilyn Monroe, 1962, by Allan Grant, © 1962 MM LLC (Photographs by Allan Grant), www.marilynslostphotos.com; Marilyn Monroe, Mount Sinai, Long Island, 1952, by Eve Arnold, © Eve Arnold Estate; Marilyn Monroe, 1955, by Milton H. Greene, © 1962 MM LLC (Photograph by Allan Grant); Colour Her Gone, 1962, by Pauline Boty. © Pauline Boty Estate, Reproduction by permission of Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Purchased with the assistance of the Art Fund and the Friends of Wolverhampton Arts and Heritage.

The University of Salford and The Sustainable Darkroom are excited to announce a 2-day conference to coincide with the launch of The Sustainable Darkroom’s new book, Bury After Reading: The Afterlife of Images. For six years, The Sustainable Darkroom has fostered an international community dedicated to rethinking photography in an age of climate and ecological crisis. While many seek quick technical fixes for sustainability, our approach has aimed to look deeper—beyond material substitutions—towards more nuanced, critical, and imaginative understandings of what photography is and what it can become.

On the publication of the new book Bury After Reading: The Afterlife of Images this conference and exhibition celebrate the community of practice developed through the Sustainable Darkroom and asks how we create radical new visions for the future of photography.

Seeds of Change: exploring regenerative practices in analogue and digital photography
New Adelphi Building, University of Salford M5 4WT
Thursday 29 - Friday 30 October 2026

Deadline for submissions: Monday 27 April
Notification of Acceptance: Early June
Call for papers, art works and workshops here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kz1G79ueP1ilAfL15Df5swE2UrmFilgI/view
Submit proposals here: Open Call: Seeds of Change – Fill in form

Queries relating to the call or conference email:  artdes-sap@salford.ac.uk

De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre has published the programme for its 2026 conference. Keynotes will be given by Mirjam Brusius and Kelley Wilder. Registration for the hybrid event is also open. 

Since its inception, photography has relied upon diverse forms of knowledge (ranging from chemistry, physics, and mechanics to the arts) and in turn has produced knowledge across a wide array of fields. Yet, much of this knowledge remains tacit. Researchers attempting to recreate early photographic techniques know all too well that faithfully following historical manuals or recipes does not always yield successful results. These instructions often depend on implicit knowledge, unspoken assumptions, or experiential skills acquired only through practice and repetition. Similarly, photography’s epistemological contributions to areas such as medicine and industry, where cameras and photographs have functioned as instrumental tools, are frequently overlooked or under-acknowledged.

Even in efforts to recover these unspoken practices, scholars and historians may inadvertently reinforce their invisibility. While historiographical approaches may attempt to bridge these gaps, the absence of explicit methodological reflection often perpetuates reliance on assumed, unspoken knowledge.

At the 2026 PHRC Annual Conference, speakers will investigate the many ways in which photography has relied upon, generated, challenged, or perpetuated tacit knowledge. Particular attention will be given to the contemporary relevance and significance of the topic under discussion, the politics of photography’s tacit knowledge and to methodological and theoretical insight related direct;y to research in this area.

Join Photoworks, the University of Portsmouth and Pompey Darkroom at this one-day event reflecting on the role of archives in photographic practice. The day features keynote presentations from artists Sunil Gupta and Julian Germain (also leading workshops), talks from artists and curators including Portsmouth based Maya Brasington, Patti-Gaal Holmes, Evangelia Hagikalfa as well as Amin Yousefi (Photoworks), Dana Ariel and Vera Hadzhiyska (University of Portsmouth).

Drinks refreshments provided, lunch available to purchase on site/nearby.

The event includes workshops, a social gathering and Photobook space (hosted by Pompey Darkroom) presenting a range of photobooks that connect with archives, and access to the exhibition The Bears by Alejandra Carles-Tolra.

Details and programme: https://photoworks.org.uk/whats-on/photography-x-archives/

Image courtesy of the artist and Hales Gallery Materia Gallery-Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. © Sunil Gupta.

Birmingham Colmore is seeking to appoint an outstanding visual artist for a paid, two-dimensional commission to create a design for a new public artwork. The artwork will use visual storytelling to communicate the contribution of early photographer George Shaw (1818–1904) to the development of photography in Birmingham.

Commission Fees:

• A small number of shortlisted artists will be paid £500 to develop a design that will be shared with a panel of experts and a public vote.
• The final selected artist will receive £3,000 to work up their design to the production stage, collaborating with the project curator and expert glass manufacturers.

George Shaw was a patent agent, chemist, photographer, and artist who contributed to civic life in nineteenth-century Birmingham. He was an expert in electrometallurgy, worked closely with manufacturers and industrialists, and shared technological expertise through public lectures and publications.

Coming from a family background in glass manufacture, Shaw advised inventors, created artworks in the landscape, and produced early daguerreotype photographs. He served as a juror for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and International Exhibition of 1862, vice-president of the Mechanics Institution, and Professor of Chemistry at Queens College on Paradise Street, Birmingham.

See more about the George Shaw project here.

The Commission Brief

The successful artist will create a design that reflects elements of George Shaw’s story. The design should be sympathetic to the heritage environment in which it will be installed. Please see the enclosed inspiration document for guidance.

We encourage a diverse range of applicants and are actively seeking applications from a wide range of individuals to reflect the diversity of our city.

Expression of Interest Requirements

Expressions of interest should include:

• An outline of your approach to the brief and sources of inspiration (300 words or a 3–5 minute video or audio recording – please contact Felicity Blades if you wish to submit your EOI in a different format).
• Images of previous artworks or rough sketched drawings that are relevant to the commission.
• A brief CV / bio.
• Links to view previous works or an online portfolio (website, Instagram, or other social channel).

We will hold an in-person workshop as an opportunity to ask any questions in a face-to-face environment. This will run on Wednesday 29 April at the BMI on Margaret Street between 12.30 – 1.30pm. Entry is open to anyone wanting to submit for this open call and free to attend.

Resources

• Inspiration Document PDF – download here.
• FAQ PDF: A downloadable document with further information about the commission and submission process will be available here.

The project team is Matthew Bott - Project manager; Dr Jo Gane - Researcher and curator; and elicity Blades - Marketing

Details: https://colmorelife.co.uk/george-shaw-open-call/

Image: Daguerreotype photograph by George Shaw, Francis Marrian, Die Sinker and Electroplater. c. 1844. Private collection.

Step by Step (1982–1989), is a study of girls and their mothers at a dancing school in North Shields, in the North East of England, and their later lives after leaving the school. First published in 1989 and long out of print, this new edition of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's classic book has been extensively revised by Sirkka. It will be printed in tritone to ensure the highest quality of the images in comparison to the original book.

Sirkka followed the lives of the dancing daughters and their dancing mothers over a six-year period, seeing how their dreams and their dancing came to sustain them in their tougher personal realities. In Step by Step their urban environments, which accompany their insightful and witty narratives along with their growing awareness of the challenges they face as women, stalk them with their own messages.

The publisher Dewi Lewis is crowdfunding £10,000 to ensure the publication of the book. 

Born in Finland, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen came to study filmmaking in London and became a founder member of Amber Film & Photography Collective, based since 1969 in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. Sirkka’s seminal documentation of Byker, the close-knit community of Newcastle upon Tyne that was her home for seven years while destined for wholesale redevelopment led to national recognition as a key photographic and filmic account of a rich working class culture on the eve of its destruction. Her other long term projects, developed as exhibitions, books, and/or films, include Step by Step/Keeping Time, Writing in the Sand, My Finnish Roots/Letters to Katja, the Coal Coast/Song For Billy, Byker Revisited/Today I'm With You and Still Here; Byker and The Writing in the Sand winning numerous awards at international film festivals. Already widely exhibited nationally and internationally, in 1980 her Byker exhibition was the first photographic exhibition from the UK to be taken to China by The British Council after the Cultural Revolution. In 2011 Sirkka’s photography and Amber’s films were inscribed in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register as being of outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom. 

Details and background the publication here.

Following a call for new trustees made in November 2025 the Foundation has announced that Philip Prodger and David Tudor have been appointed effective from 7 March. The appointment process was delayed by Martin Parr's death on 6December.  The new trustees join Susie Parr, Ellen Parr, Fiona Parker, Song Tae Chong, Jenny Ricketts and Aaron Schuman. Susie Parr commented: '“We are confident that the Trustees will work closely with the MPF staff, who are so knowledgeable about Martin’s own work, his ambitions for the foundation and the day to day running of the organisation.” 

Philip Prodger is best known in the UK as the fomer head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery. He is a curator, author, and art historian, currently Executive Director of the non-profit Curatorial Exhibitions in Los Angeles.  David Tudor is a leading expert in ocean management with over three decades of global experience navigating the complex connections of society and the environment. While his professional career is focused on the sustainable future of the marine environment, his love of documentary photography has been an enduring and lifelong passion. He is also a trustee of Rewilding Britain. 

The mission of the Foundation remains unchanged. We will continue to support emerging, established and under-represented photographers, to maintain a lively programme of events and exhibitions - including BOP, the annual photobook festival - and to build its collection and library for the purposes of research. It will also continue to preserve and care for Martin’s own archive. The Foundation is currently showing Martin's exhibition The Last Resort - 40 years on. 

See: https://martinparrfoundation.org/ and https://martinparrfoundation.org/about/trustees-2/

Image: The Last Resort at Martin Parr Foundation. © Michael Pritchard