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In the mid-1920s, a transatlantic team of physicians, surgeons, psychologists, and physicists gathered in the Boston séance room of the medium Mina ’Margery’ Crandon to study the extraordinary phenomena she produced in a trance state, especially the visceral, quasi-biological ‘ectoplasm’ that seemed to ooze from her body. Anxious to defend the scientific status of their research into this strange phenomena situated somewhere between the medical and mental, tangible and intangible, the all-male team of investigators produced a vast set of materials documenting and validating their research (many housed today in the Harry Price Archives at Senate House Library).

This talk centres on the stereoscopic photographs of Crandon taken by the researchers to index the ‘spiritualist’ phenomena witnessed and to supplement the poor observational conditions of the pitch-black séance room. It also considers the researchers’ use of their other senses — touch, hearing, smell — and the photographs’ material qualities to explore the complex relationships embedded in these photographs and practices between apparent polarities like trust and deception, vision and blindness, truth and illusion, proof and faith, and science and supernatural belief. The gendered dynamics of this investigation, related to issues of ‘control’ (scientific and otherwise), are also explored. What role did the photographs, and other forms of observation and control, play in the scientists’ efforts to validate, document, and (dis)prove the seemingly supernormal, yet peculiarly bodily, phenomena they witnessed? What of trust and deception? And what can the application of art-historical methods to such cases offer to the study of the relationship between science and extraordinary belief?

Dr Emma Merkling is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art as Principal Investigator on the grant project ‘Biomedicine and Belief:  Spiritualism, Observation, and Margery Crandon’s Extraordinary Body c. 1920–35′, funded by the International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society. Her research focuses on the relationships between art history, history of science, and history of heterodox belief in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the Courtauld’s Centre for American Art, the Science Museum, and the University of Stirling.

Science in the Séance Room: Stereographs, Medical Men, and the Testing of ‘Margery’ Crandon’s Extraordinary Body, c. 1925
Dr Emma Merkling
Monday, 14th November 2022
5:00pm - 6.00pm
London: Courtauld, Vernon Square campus, Lecture Theatre 2 and online via Zoom
Booking: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/science-in-the-seance-room-stereographs-medical-men-and-the-testing-of-margery-crandons-extraordinary-body-c-1925/?dm_i=AHZ,838NK,ML3WGR,X469A,1

The V&A has announced today further details on the second and final phase of the V&A’s Photography Centre, which opens in spring 2023. The Photography Centre will become the largest space in the UK for a permanent photography collection, and the seven galleries – four of which will be new additions – will showcase the museum’s world-leading holdings and enable visitors to experience photography and its diverse histories in new ways.

The V&A has collected and exhibited photography since the founding of the museum in the 1850s, and today its collection is one of the largest and most varied in the world. Phase One of the museum’s Photography Centre opened in 2018, with three galleries designed by David Kohn. 2023 sees the completion of the second and final phase of the Photography Centre with an additional four galleries, with base-build designed by Purcell, and fit-out designed by Gibson Thornley Architects.

Two of the new rooms will showcase global contemporary photography and cutting-edge commissions in rotating displays. The other new spaces - a room dedicated to photography and the book, and an interactive gallery about the history and use of the camera – will shine a light on the processes involved in photography, as well as the study and presentation of the medium. These new rooms join the three existing galleries, with two galleries for changing displays from the collection and a space dedicated to digital media, which will also present new content.

Marta Weiss, V&A Senior Curator of Photography and Lead Curator of Phase Two of the Photography Centre, said: “Photography lies at the heart of the V&A. The museum has collected photography since 1852 and continues to acquire the best of contemporary practice. As photography plays an ever-increasing role in all our lives, the expanded Photography Centre will be more relevant than ever. We look forward to welcoming visitors to explore the medium’s diverse histories and enjoy our world-leading collection.”

Highlights of the opening displays will include recent acquisitions exhibited at the museum for the first time, including works by Liz Johnson Artur, Sammy Baloji, Vera Lutter, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Tarrah Krajnak and Vasantha Yogananthan, as well as a monumental photographic sculpture by Noémie Goudal. Two major new commissions supported by the Manitou Fund will also be unveiled, with a photographic series by leading Indian artist Gauri Gill, and a digital commission by British media artist Jake Elwes. The Manitou Fund has committed to funding six commissions for the Photography Centre, which will see a new print and digital commission in 2023, 2025 and 2027. On completion, the Photography Centre will also feature new, themed displays, presenting works from the 1840s to the present day, beginning with Energy: Sparks from the Collection, exploring how all photographs need some form of energy to exist, and a smaller display, How Not to Photograph a Bulldog, featuring dog photography manuals from the Royal Photographic Society Library.

About the Photography Centre:

Phase 2 - Room 95 - Inside the Camera
Room 95 will be an interactive gallery exploring how cameras work and how they are used, from the Victorian view camera to the first iPhone. The highlight will be a walk-in camera obscura, demonstrating the optical phenomenon that is the basis of how all cameras work. A timeline of cameras will show their evolution, with accompanying animations explaining the inner workings of these iconic devices.

Phase 2 - Room 96, Room 97, The Parasol Foundation Gallery Photography Now
Two new galleries will be dedicated to showcasing recent acquisitions of global contemporary photography, including special commissions. Highlights in the inaugural display will include works by Liz Johnson Artur, Sammy Baloji, Vera Lutter, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Vasantha Yogananthan, all acquired with the support of the V&A Photographs Acquisition Group. A series of self-portraits by Tarrah Krajnak, acquired with the support of the Parasol Foundation Trust, will also feature. A spectacular anamorphic sculpture by Noémie Goudal will bring photography off the wall to explore both geological time and the nature of perception.

A new commission, supported by the Manitou Fund, from leading Indian photographer Gauri Gill will also be unveiled. This new body of work depicts temporary architecture on the outskirts of Delhi, ingenuously constructed by farmers from repurposed materials. The makeshift dwellings housed farmers bringing their concerns from the village to the capital, in response to new laws that threatened their economic security.

Room 98, The Kusuma Gallery - Photography and the Book
A flexible space dedicated to Photography and the Book will reflect how books have been a fundamental way of presenting photography since the 1840s. The Kusuma Gallery, which has been funded by The Kusuma Trust, will visibly house the extensive Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Library, following the transfer of the RPS Collection to the V&A in 2017. The RPS Library contains journals, books, pamphlets and manuals from all over the world, spanning topics from aerial photography to X-rays. More than 20,000 books, published over nearly 200 years, will be available to visitors by request, with a selection of browsing books on open shelves.

The Kusuma Gallery will also feature changing displays of photographic books, periodicals and archival material. The first display will be How Not to Photograph a Bulldog, a light-hearted foray into one of the many topics covered by the photographic manuals in the RPS Library.

Films about the RPS Library and photographic processes will be shown on digital terminals for visitors to enjoy. This flexible space will also be used for teaching and other programming.

Phase 1 - Room 99, The Modern Media Gallery Digital Gallery

The Modern Media Gallery continues to be dedicated to digital media, challenging definitions of what photography is and generating questions around the use of photography today. The gallery will showcase a new digital commission by Jake Elwes, supported by the Manitou Fund.

Phase 1 - Room 100, The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery Room 101, The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery - Photography 1840s-Now

Developed during Phase One of the Photography Centre, these galleries will be entirely rehung for the 2023 opening. A new display, Energy: Sparks from the Collection, will shine a light on the diverse kinds of energy in photography – both the hidden processes intrinsic to creating a picture, and the subjects in front of a camera. Featuring works from the 1840s through to the present day, it will explore how, from the advent of photography, power in all its diverse forms has sparked the imaginations of photographers.

Situated in the V&A’s Northeast Quarter, the Photography Centre reclaims the beauty of seven original 19th-century picture galleries, restoring them to their original glory and purpose. Planned in two phases, the Centre is part of the V&A’s FuturePlan development programme to revitalise the museum’s public spaces through contemporary design and the restoration of original features.

Beyond the physical gallery spaces, a key focus for photography at the V&A is research and the development of new sector-leading initiatives. A major strand is The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project, established in 2021 to support women in photography. Led by the inaugural Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography, Fiona Rogers, and funded by Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol and The Parasol Foundation Trust, the Project encompasses a curatorial post alongside acquisitions, research, education and public displays. The Project’s first acquisition by Tarrah Krajnak will be included in the opening display, and an exhibition presenting the work of Laia Abril will open at the Copeland Gallery in Peckham, 10-27 November 2022, in collaboration with the V&A and Photoworks.

The V&A is also delighted to announce additional support from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. Alongside significant funding of Phase Two of the Photography Centre, the Foundation has generously extended their commitment to a series of two-year Fellowships in photography for early-career curators until 2028. The V&A is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Phan as the second Curatorial Fellow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, who will be in post until 2024.

The Photography Centre is being made possible by Sir Elton John and David Furnish, The Kusuma Trust, The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, The Parasol Foundation Trust, Modern Media, Shao Zhong Art Foundation and many other generous supporters.

The V&A will be releasing visuals of the new spaces closer to the opening.  

International photographic societies and camera clubs burgeoned in the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The mutual support and collaboration amongst individual members along with the practical and educational undertakings of these self-reliant photographies is a fitting focus for the recognition of photographers who could assert themselves and see themselves as a community of practice of their own making.

The educational projects of photographic societies and camera clubs were shaped by an infrastructure that enabled collaborative forms of communication; products of socio-technical networks that fostered new relationships of learning between the individual and the collective. From the late 1870s, the number of clubs and societies began to soar: the fourteen groups recorded in the British Journal of Photography Almanac in 1877 had grown to 365 by 1910. Almost weekly the pages of the photographic press reported the foundation of new clubs and societies. At a time when the number of amateur photographers themselves was expanding, and club life was seen as a respectable social occupation, the cooperative ethos on which these ‘local schools’ were built was considered by contemporary commentators as a ‘culture of rational exchange’ and fostering an ‘ideal of sociability identified with liberal education, eloquence and good fellowship’ (Sawyer, Photographic News, 1883: 286). These organisations ranged from amateur groups that emulated learned societies to less socially exclusive and formal, and to camera clubs based in hospitals, workplaces or mechanics institutes. There were national societies, such as the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, the National Photographic Association of the United States, the Société Française de Photographie, the Japan Photographic Society, and a plethora of album clubs and postal camera clubs exchanging prints or lantern slides for aesthetic critique.

Historical accounts of clubs and societies are sparce, because many of these groups, considered to be minor, were not listed in the photographic annals and the greater numbers of their collections have been broken up, dispersed, and even lost. Yet, club life from an understanding of how people learnt (or should learn) photography, allowed its membership to receive by various ways a collaborative and efficient training and, through group participation, to escape some of the technical pitfalls which beset many photographers who proceeded to work alone.

This one-day workshop opens a critical conversation about the under-researched emergence and decline of these clubs and societies, outlines new ways to research, theorise, and interpret their educational projects, and asks what this reveals about the values and meanings that members attached to these practices and of how photography consolidated and strengthened the bonds amongst those groups.

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

What roles have the learning communities of photographic societies and camera clubs played in the histories of photography and visual culture? How did club life, at times recognised as popular and progressive, fraternal, instructive and sociable, cement cooperative strategies for growing bodies of amateur and professional photographers to learn from one another? Were these clubs and societies mostly ‘fraternal’ male groups? How did this space intersect with narratives of gender and subtexts of brotherhood in its educational and entertainment uses for female groups? Did any standout for their female or children’s membership?

Proposals may explore, but are not limited to:

• Global histories of the camera club and photographic society (from any historical period)
• Photographic societies and camera clubs as supplementary schooling
• Amateur groups emulating learned societies
• Launch of the Amateur Photographer in 1884 and the rise in popularity of Amateur Societies
• International, national and regional differences in the organisation of both photographic societies and camera clubs
• The role of periodicals in drawing together societies and clubs and consolidating communities of practice
• Education, sociability and instruction within the practices of clubland culture
• Society networks and intersecting communities of learning
• The RPS and female ‘Colour Group’ members
• The relationship between gender and clubland
• Camera clubs specifically for women or children
• Collaborative education to enhance members’ active participation
• Scientific, medical, colonial photographic committees, societies or clubs
• The material culture of clubrooms, exhibitions, soireés, meetings, lantern evenings
• The social and cultural roles of exhibitions of societies and clubs
• The relationship between the RPS and affiliated provincial camera clubs
• Power relations in the clubroom
• The legalities of club life and presidents, secretaries and officials, especially in small self-regulated clubs  
• The relationship between postal, microscopical, album or lantern slide clubs and modern communication technologies in urban and non-urban contexts
• Amateur photographers and the survey and record movement
• Links with other types of bodies that sponsored photographic societies such as field, naturalistic and archaeological societies, companies
• Photographic federations, unions, associations, and inter-society arrangements
• The rise and decline of clubs and societies   
• Researching societies and clubs in archives and special collections

Paper proposals should be submitted as one Word or PDF document to Dr Jason Bate j.bate@bbk.ac.uk by Monday 6th February 2023. The document should include:

• Your full name
• Email address
• Institutional affiliation (when applicable)
• Paper title
• Proposal of no longer than 250 words for presentations of 15 minutes
• Short biographical note (100-150 words)

Event format: The event will take place in the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck in London (UK) in person, and we will be able to accommodate fifteen presentations, and offer £50 towards travel expenses for up to four PhD students. 

Keynote speaker: Dr Michael Pritchard, photohistorian and Director of Programmes at the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.

CfP: Photographic Societies and Camera Clubs
Thursday 25^th May 2023
Birkbeck College, University of London, in person
Deadline for paper proposals: by Monday, 6 February 2023
Dr Jason Bate e: j.bate@bbk.ac.uk

Images: top: Group photograph of the Central Association of Photographic Societies at Kewes, 3 June 1939; lower: 1902 selectors of the RPS 1902 annual exhibition. 

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