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A new home for British photography will open in London in late January 2023. The Centre for British Photography will build on the world-renowned Hyman Collection of British photography and the work of the Hyman Foundation. Three floors of exhibitions will present the diverse landscape of British photography today, as well as an historical overview. The 8000 sq. ft. Centre will be free to visit year-round and will offer exhibitions, events and talks, a shop and an archive and library. 

The Centre will feature photographs from 1900 to the present, work by photographers living and working in the UK today, and images taken by those who emigrated to the UK. It will present self-generated exhibitions and those led by independent curators and organisations, as well as monographic displays. The Centre plans to stage numerous exhibitions throughout the year and also bring together the photographic community – professional and amateur - through its talks and events programme.

The Hyman Collection includes over 3,000 significant works by more than 100 artists including Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy, Daniel Meadows, Jo Spence, Karen Knorr, Anna Fox and Heather Agyepong. It is currently available as a global online resource, and it also has a history of lending to exhibitions outside London. Now, with this new home, regional museums, galleries and photography collectives will also be invited to use the central London space to present exhibitions and collaborate on talks and events. 

James Hyman, Founding Director, said: “The Centre for British Photography is for anyone with an interest in photography. Photography in Britain is some of the best in the world and we want to give it more exposure and support. With this new physical space, alive with exhibitions and events, we hope to create a hub that increases British photography’s national and international status. We hope that through this initial work to make a home for British photography we can, in the long run, develop an independent centre that is self-sustaining with a dedicated National Collection and public programme.”

Tracy Marshall-Grant, the Centre for British Photography’s newly-appointed Deputy Director, said: “The Hyman Collection is the pre-eminent British photography collection and that will be at the heart of our programming. Inclusivity and diversity have always been key to the Foundation and to the development of the Hyman Collection - for example, the collection is balanced in the numbers of works it holds by men and women. We will reflect this in the programming of the exhibition spaces and those we invite to show, talk and take part in events at the Centre. We also want to support British photographers through commissions, grants, exhibitions, acquisitions and sales.”

Opening exhibitions

The opening events will include two major, new exhibitions: a self-portrait show co-curated by the campaign group Fast Forward: Women in Photography; and The English at Home - over 150 photographs which provide an overview of British photography focused on the domestic interior drawn from some of the major bodies of work in the Hyman Collection. Taking its title from Bill Brandt’s first book, The English at Home will range from Bill Brandt, Kurt Hutton and Bert Hardy to Martin Parr, Daniel Meadows, Karen Knorr, Anna Fox and Richard Billingham.

There will also be four In Focus displays that will spotlight specific bodies of work. These will include Jo Spence: Cinderella in collaboration with the Jo Spence Memorial Library at Birkbeck, University of London; and the series Fairytale for Sale by Natasha Caruana that was recently acquired by the Hyman Collection.

Also on display will be two bodies of work that were commissioned by the Hyman Collection: Spitting by Andrew Bruce and Anna Fox is a response to the original Spitting Image puppets in the Hyman Collection, and Wish You Were Here, a recent series commissioned from Heather Agyepong.

The gallery shop will also present a selling show Paul Hill. Prenonations. Large format platinum prints. 

Print sale

A print sale will go live on 17 November with funds raised going towards the Centre and the Hyman Foundation’s support of photographers in Britain, through commissions, grants, acquisitions and sales. Featuring the work of Martin Parr, Anna Fox, Julia Fullerton-Batten and David Hurn among others and priced at £70, the prints will be available to purchase from 17 November – 19 December 2022 on the Centre for British Photography website: www.britishphotography.org.    

The Centre for British Photography
49 Jermyn Street
London
SW1Y 6LX
www.britishphotography.org

Opens late January 2023

Instagram: @centre_for_british_photography

At the Crossroads: Qandahar in Images and Empires features the earliest known photographs of Qandahar, Afghanistan, taken between 1880 and 1881 at the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Today, they offer insights into the region, its local populations, and its rich cultural traditions.

The resource offers a free publication, an online preview of images, and stories which were developed by Getty in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

See: https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/qandahar/index.html

Photographic representations of landscapes have been long used to promote the association between national identity and physical geography. This presentation considers a range of case studies drawn from the artistic practices of Yto Barrada, Bruno Boudjelal, Bouchra Khalili, and Laura Henno that complicate the narratives of national belonging, migration, displacement and homecoming in contemporary France. This presentation is based on material in Contemporary Photography in France: Between Theory and Practice (Leuven University Press, 2022). 

Olga Smith is a historian of contemporary art, writer and curator. As a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Vienna, Austria, she is developing a research project with a focus on ‘landscape’ as a form of picturing nature in the Anthropocene. She writes about photography and new imaging technologies, interchanges between art and intellectual ideas, cultural memory, exhibitions and environmental issues. Her research has been published in French, German and English in journals such as Art History, Moving Image Review, Art Journal, Photographies and Fotogeschichte. She is co-editor of Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture (Peter Lang, 2009) and sole editor of Photography and Landscape (Photographies, 2019). Her first monograph, Contemporary Photography in France: Between Theory and Practice (Leuven University Press, 2022), received praise as groundbreaking in “opening new perspectives in global media historiographies” and winning grants from the Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft and Association for Art History. 

OLGA SMITH AT THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY RESEARCH CENTRE 
A Sense of Belonging: Territory, Borders, Identity in Contemporary Photography in France 
21 November 2022, 18:00 — 19:30
Online 
Book your place 

Larry Schaaf has emailed to let BPH know of the passing of Elizabeth Schaaf, his partner, aged 81 years. Although not a photohistorian per se Elizabeth will have been well-known to many readers and was supportive of Larry's own research in to Talbot and early British photography. She was for many years at the John Hopkins Peabody Institute in Baltimore where she was archivist 

See: https://localtoday.news/md/elizabeth-mary-schaaf-who-archived-baltimores-music-history-at-the-peabody-institute-dies-capital-gazette-34833.html

and 

https://youtu.be/0GQOBPrK3UY

This ground-breaking exhibition presents the work of fourteen pioneering women photographers and filmmakers working in Scotland during the early 20th century. The women are Violet Banks (1886-1985), Helen Biggar (1909-1953), Christina Broom (1862-1939), M.E.M. Donaldson (1876-1958), Dr Beatrice Garvie (1872-1959), Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990), Isobel F Grant (1887–1983), Ruby Grierson (1904-1940), Marion Grierson (1907-1998), Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889-1982), Johanna Kissling (1875-1961), Isabell Burton-MacKenzie (1872-1958), Margaret Fay Shaw (1903-2004) and Margaret Watkins (1884-1969).

These women present different accounts of Scotland, covering both rural and city places and communities. The exhibition will show the breadth of their photography and filmmaking, offering a critical analysis of their work and how these informed the work they made, and the different narratives we see emerging from their work in Scotland. It is the first time their work will have been seen together, and it uncovers a previously untold story within the history of Scottish photography. Exhibits will be drawn from a broad selection of private and public collections.

The exhibition is a partnership project with Jenny Brownrigg, Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art.

Glean: Early 20th Century women filmmakers and photographers in Scotland
12 November 2022-12 March 2023
Edinburgh, City Art Centre
Details: https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/glean-early-20th-century-women-filmmakers-and-photographers-scotland

In general photography and the visual arts fared reasonably well with today's announcement from Arts Council England of those organisations it will fund annually from 2023 to 2026.

Autograph ABP fared best with a 30 per cent increase from £712,880 to £1,012,880 and Photofusion and Photoworks saw their funding increase to £145,524 and £273,252 respectively.  Most organisations saw their funding maintained including Impressions Gallery (£206,003), Open Eye (£246,759), and The Photographers' Gallery (£918,867). 

Download the full dataset here: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/investment23

The Icon Photographic Materials Group is delighted to announce its upcoming online event: Lightning-talks (following on from the group’s Round Table events) accompanied by the group’s 2022 Annual General Meeting. The event will consist of a series of five-minute presentations followed by questions and discussion. As always the event is welcome to anyone with an interest in the care and preservation of photographic materials.

We invite abstract submissions from conservators and non-conservators, whether you work in public institutions, private practice or education. Subjects could include sustainability, education, career development, preventive conservation and storage, scientific and analytical research, documentation, treatment practices, theory, history and ethics, outreach and funding (among others!). 

If you’d like to give a five-minute presentation, please send a titled abstract (c.100 words) with your name and affiliation to phmgicon@gmail.com by Monday 14th November. Presentations should include around five PowerPoint slides, which should be illustrative rather than textual. Please get in touch as soon as possible for further details or to discuss your idea.

The Lightning-Talks event will be followed by a brief update from the group committee.

Lightning Talks and AGM
Thursday, 8 December 2022, 10 am - 1 pm
Online

Nineteen carte-de-visite portraits of Charles Darwin are estimated to fetch £50,000-100,000 when they are offered at auction next week. The cartes are contained in an album was compiled by  Henrietta Emma Litchfield, the daughter of Darwin and is inscribed with her husbands name, R. B. Litchfield. 

The cartes include portraits by Maull & Polyblank, circa 1855, Elliott & Fry, O. G. Rejlander, circa 1871;and Julia Margaret Cameron, circa 1874,

Charles Darwin's profound interest in photography is well documented, he not only used photographs in his research, but also freely exchanged carte de visite portraits to friends and colleagues through letters. His friend the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker termed Darwin’s exchange of photographic images as his 'carte correspondence'. This was an important tool for Darwin to cement his international scientific network, photographic portraiture was also fundamental to establishing Charles Darwin as a celebrity. He is believed to have sat for photographs on 18 separate occasions resulting in 32 different poses.

Two proceedings lots also containing albums of photographs of Darwin interest. 

Royalty, Fine Art & Antiques
9 November 2022
Reeman Dansie, lot 1072
See details here

What role has the photographic darkroom played in the histories of photography and visual culture? How has this space, at times known as the camera obscura, developing room, laboratory, operating room, operating box, darkened chamber, photographic tent, dark tent, and developing tent, shaped ways of living and knowing?

Historical accounts of the wet darkroom are sparse, and critical discussions largely limited to this space as the site of photographic manipulation. Yet, the darkroom is not a neutral container for photographic production, but a space with its own materiality, rhythm, and choreography that has been central to experiences of, for example, scientific experimentation, research, learning, commerce, colonial encounters, political and cultural agency, sociability, and individual and artistic expression.

This hybrid two-day event initiates a critical conversation about the largely overlooked space of the darkroom, and outlines new ways to research, theorise, and interpret the roles that it has played in our modern world. In the Photographic Darkroom will seek to do so by shifting the focus from the visual product (e.g., negatives and prints) to the setting itself within which these objects were produced, positing that the material, socio-cultural, and corporeal dimensions of the darkroom had an influence on how people conceptualised and, consequently, understood photography. This will enable us to rethink the role of photography in the development of modern visual culture, and its wider historical relations, from fresh viewpoints.

To this end, we invite papers for 15 minute presentations from academics, practitioners, and museums and archives professionals at all career stages working in research areas such as photographic history, visual culture, media and communications studies, social, cultural and media history, cultural studies, history of art, archives and records management, and any other related fields of research.

Proposals may explore, but are not limited to:
• Commercial photographic laboratories
• Bodily and sensory experiences in the darkroom
• Darkroom diseases
• Darkroom networks and related communities of practice
• Darkroom practices vis-à-vis visual epistemologies
• The darkroom technician
• The darkroom in visual and popular culture
• Global histories of the darkroom (from any historical period)
• Historic darkrooms
• The material culture of the darkroom
• Performative and tacit forms of knowledge in the darkroom
• Portable darkrooms
• Power relations in the darkroom
• The relationship between the darkroom and the natural environment
• The relationship between the space of the darkroom and its place within urban and
not-urban contexts
• Researching the darkroom in archives and special collections

Paper proposals should be submitted as ONE Word or PDF document to Dr Sara Dominici s.dominici1@westminster.ac.uk by Monday 9th January 2023. The document should include:
• Your full name
• Email address
• Institutional affiliation (when applicable)
• Paper title
• Proposal of no longer than 300 words for presentations of 15 minutes
• Indication of whether you would be presenting in person or online
• Short biographical note (100-140 words)

Event format: The event will take place at the University of Westminster in London (UK) in hybrid form and we will be able to accommodate a number of online presentations. The language of the event will be English.

Importantly: Selected speakers will be invited to contribute extended versions of their papers to a journal special issue or edited volume on the same theme. Please could all the applicants consider their paper proposals for research not yet published elsewhere as expressions of interest to contribute to the edited publication as well, or specify in the document itself if their paper proposal is based on research that has already been published elsewhere and/or if they would not want to be considered for the edited publication.

cfp: In the Photographic Darkroom
Thursday 8th and Friday 9th June 2023
University of Westminster, London (UK) & hybrid
Deadline for paper proposals: by Monday, 9th January 2023

Download this call here: https://t.co/JWbiV0puNV

Images: photographic trade catalogue covers / Michael Pritchard

Photography has become an essential part of how we communicate and understand the world around us. This introductory course hosted by The Photographers' Gallery, will look at movements and ideas that have shaped the development of photographic practice, through engaging with artworks, critical texts and photographs as visual culture.

Sessions will discuss photography and photobooks that explore themes including identity, power, history, as well as artistic movements of 19th and 20th century. Sessions will range across time periods and topics to show how they relate to contemporary issues. 

Course format

Taking place weekly on Zoom, sessions include a blend of lectures, group discussions and presentations. Participants are provided with lecture slides and a list of resources for further study.

Who is this for? 

Open to all who are interested in the many histories of photography and art. No prior knowledge necessary. 

This course is led by Dr Briony Carlin. 

Briony Anne Carlin is an academic and curator based between London and Newcastle upon Tyne. She is a Doctoral Candidate at Newcastle University, where she also teaches Art Histories in the department of Fine Art. She has a PhD in Media Culture Studies from Newcastle University, awarded for her thesis ‘Bindings, Boundaries and Cuts: Relating Agency and Ontology in Photobook Encounters’.

Briony is currently an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and worked formerly as assistant curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where she contributed to exhibitions including Into the Woods: Trees in Photography (2017) and the inaugural Photography Centre (2018), and conducted research with the Royal Photographic Society Collection and the Maurice Broomfield Archive. She continues to work on independent curatorial projects.

Introduction to Photographic Histories
Weekly, Tue 01 Nov 2022 - 8:30pm, Tue 06 Dec 2022 at 1900 (BST)
Price: £185, £165 members & concession
Location: Zoom
Full details and booking are here: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/course-introduction-photographic-histories-online-0?mc_cid=7413f3ecf6&mc_eid=UNIQID

The Bodleian Libraries is offering a series of Fellowships. Of particular note is the Sloan Fellowship in Photography which is offered in conjunction with Trinity College, Oxford. It encourages researchers to come to Oxford and use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance their research in the history of photography and photographic books. 

The current Fellow is Tomáš Dvořák (see: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/tomas-dvorak-visiting-scholar-and-sloan-fellow)

To see more and apply visit: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowships/bodleian-visiting-fellowships

Google Arts and Culture has pulled together a series of photographs showing photographs from the recent Daily Herald Archive digitisation which look behind the scenes at the British branch of Kodak, and of Ilford photography manufacturing in the 1930s.

See the blog post here: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/pwUx3y8Gq3tr2Q

The digitisation project was first reported here: https://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/daily-herald-archive-google-collaboration-releases-100-000-new-im

Image: Film coating machine at Ilford. Daily Herald Archive. Copyright Mirrorpix, Hulton Archive/Getty Images, and TopFoto.

To accompany the exhibition To Be Read At Dusk: Dickens, Ghosts & the Supernatural on view at at the Charles Dickens Museum, photographic historian Denis Pellerin, from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy, will give an online 3-D talk, at 4.00 p.m. (GMT) on Wednesday 2 November 2022.

Join Denis on a journey through the London of Charles Dickens with over a hundred stereo photographs, most of them from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy. Discover some of Dickens’s immortal characters – including the ghost of Jacob Marley, Mr. Pickwick, Little Nell and others – meet some picturesque figures he could have included in his novels and see the great man himself, in glorious 3-D. Three never-seen-before stereoscopic portraits of Dickens will be shown during this forty-minute talk, which will be followed by Q&A. 

The event is free on Zoom, but you will need to register here: https://dickensmuseum.com/blogs/all-events/charles-dickens-and-his-world-in-the-stereoscope

Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture at the University of Brighton, and Jayne Knight, collaborative PhD candidate (University of Brighton / National Science and Media Museum), discuss their shared work on the Jean Straker (1913-1984) archive which was deposited at the National Science+ Media Museum in 2007. 

Read the full blog post here: https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/centrefordesignhistory/2022/10/21/a-thousand-negatives-and-many-positives-researchers-reflect-on-a-phd-student-support-scheme/

Photograph: Jayne Knight

Join MA Curating student Jocelyn Gale for an in-depth look at the Ten.8 magazines held at the Martin Parr Foundation, with special guest speaker Darryl Georgiou. Jocelyn has been working closely with the MPF collection for the past year and Darryl Georgiou is an artist and educator, and currently Professor of Media Arts at various UK and overseas universities. The Foundation is home to a complete set of Ten.8 magazines.

Ten.8 was a counter-cultural publication founded in 1979 and published quarterly up until 1992. It looked at the relationship between photography, knowledge, culture and power. Darryl has undertaken several important roles for Ten.8 including Picture Editor, exhibitions manager of Ten.8 Touring as well as Director of Ten.8 Ltd.

Jocelyn and Darryl will start the event with an informal talk about the history and future of Ten.8 magazine, followed by a look at material from the MPF library focusing on Ten.8. This will be followed by a group discussion.

MPF Collection in focus - Ten.8 Magazine
26 November 2022 at 1400 (GMT)
Bristol, Martin Parr Foundation
In person, limited to 15 places
£5 / £3 students
Book here: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/product/mpf-collection-in-focus/?mc_cid=4bf3a71b35&mc_eid=0560806400

As part of a forthcoming display at the V&A Museum, London, about the history and use of different cameras, the museum is seeking donations of a small selection of negatives. Ideally, the subjects depicted in the negatives will be visible (ie. landscapes are difficult to read at such a small scale) and global in geographic location - not just from the UK.

Please do get in contact if you have anything in your personal collection that you would consider donating or know of someone who might be interested.

• One half plate collodion negative (ideally a portrait or still life) (1880 – 1895)
• Strip of black and white 35mm negatives (dates about 1933-43)
• Strip of black and white 120 negatives (dates about 1928-38)
• About six Kodachrome slides (in mounts) (dates about 1959-69)
• Strip of Kodak 126 cartridge film negatives (dates about 1965-75)
• Strip of colour negatives (ideally Fuji) (dates 1990-2000)

 With very best wishes,

Hana

Hana Kaluznick | Assistant Curator, Photography
V&A South Kensington | Cromwell Road | London | SW7 2RL
Email: h.kaluznick@vam.ac.uk 

Join Joan Schwartz, Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, in this public lecture where she will discuss the challenges of photograph digitisation.

Under pressure from institutions, funders and users, collections managers often make photographs available online as searchable single items. In the process, meaningful information about the physical and intellectual contexts of creation, circulation, and viewing is sacrificed at the altar of speed, quantity, convenience, and the almighty dollar. In this lecture, Prof Schwartz is concerned with troubling changes, subtle and otherwise, brought about by digitization, whereby in the name of searchability important information about materiality, context, and meaning are often lost. Drawing on professional experience as a photo-archivist and scholarly interests as a photographic historian, she critiques examples of digitization and description initiatives, with a view to highlighting their potential pitfalls and encouraging best practices grounded in a deeper understanding of the power of photography as a form of visual communication. The result, she argues, is a broader appreciation of the critical differences between search and research, content and meaning underpinning access to and use of online images by cultural and historical geographers.

The Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre,
V&A South Kensington
Thursday, 27 October 2022, 18.30 – 20.30
Free
Book here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/E3WAwmNNOmy/leverhulme-lecture-prof-joan-schwartz-27-oct-22

The CHSTM working group on Colour Photography in the 19th Century and Early 20th Century: Sciences, Technologies, Empires is hosting Catlin Langford who will be talking about Autochromes and Representation on Tuesday, 18 October 2022 from 1430 to 1600 BST. 

The talk is open to members of the Colour Photography in the 19th Century and Early 20th Century: Sciences, Technologies, Empires. Membership of the group is free.

For more information, see https://www.chstm.org/content/color-photography-19th-century-and-early-2...

Bonhams auction of Fine Books and Manuscripts on 9 November 2022 includes several lots of photographs. Three in particular stand out. Lot 32 is a portrait photograph of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, by Julia Margaret Cameron, given by Cameron to Mrs Tennyson in 1869. The print is estimated at £1500-2000. 

The second is lot 33 an album compiled by Lady Emily Ponsonby, née Bathurst (1798-1877), containing a collection of some 45 early photographs, the majority taken by her son Lt. Col. Arthur Edward Valette Ponsonby (1827-1868). Amongst several related items of ephemera are a Henry Ponsonby pen and ink sketch of Mrs Verschoyle taking a photograph in Eaton Square, July 19 1855, and a printed flyer for 'Photographic Sketches of People & Places in Corfu by Arthur Ponsonby', printed by Silver, Hypo & Son., Printers, 1859. Estimate £4000-6000. 

Lot 336 is a group of nine vintage photogravures by George Davison, including views of Harlech, 'The Onion Field', and southern France, seven are signed by the photographer, c.1890-1927. Estimate £1500-2500. 

Details of all lots are here: https://www.bonhams.com/auction/27375/fine-books-and-manuscripts/

Curated by Sabrina Meneghini, Curator and Archival Assistant at the Royal Commonwealth Society Department of Cambridge University Library, this exhibition presents reproductions of photographs and paintings by British artist Alfred Hugh Fisher (1867-1945).

The Fisher Collection, held in the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) Library at Cambridge University Library (CUL), is the subject of Sabrina Meneghini’s research and was the focus of her dissertation: ‘Classroom Photographic Journeys; Alfred Hugh Fisher and the British Empire’s Development of Colonial-era Visual Education’.

In 1907 the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee (COVIC) hired Fisher, a writer and newspaper illustrator, to document photographically the people and landscapes of the British empire in order to facilitate school education. Fisher toured the empire for three years, taking photographs and making paintings from which COVIC produced sets of lantern slides and textbooks. These were to be presented as a series of geography lessons to schoolchildren.

His journey started in South Asia where he visited Ceylon, India, and Burma; followed by Aden, Somaliland, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Malay Peninsula, the British possessions in the Mediterranean, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.

Furthermore, COVIC purchased images from places he was not able to visit such as the West Indies and South Africa.

The Fisher Collection has never been exhibited before. Its display in the Alison Richard Building (ARB) provides a unique opportunity to see Fisher and COVIC’s visual education project.

Details: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/29035/

Image: The English School, Nicosia: boys in the schoolroom include English, Turkish, Greek, Armenian. Photographer A. Hugh Fisher, 1908