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I recently came across an interesting postcard in the belongings of a deceased 92 year old relative. It is of an array of corpses laid out for a photograph with an inscription in Spanish. It is printed in sepia monochrome.
Wondering if it is Mexican revolution c1910. Anyone any idea how this would be in the possession of a Northern England working class family?

Photography has shaped the ways we imagine the recent past and how we experience life in the present day. The Photographic History MA will provide you with the skills needed to explore photographic materials, practices, processes, and critical field scholarship. Along the way, it will also equip you with real-world professional expertise through remote fieldwork experience at well-known photography organisations.

The internationally renowned teaching staff are based at the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC), bringing with them outstanding links with major photographic collections, archives, galleries, and museums worldwide. Networking through vibrant research seminars, workshops, and conferences, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the relationship between photography, history, and culture, while enhancing your research skills and employability in the field.

Aimed at anyone with deep interest in photographic practice, communication media, visual history, or archival collections, the Photographic History MA will prepare you for further study and careers in the culture sector. We equally welcome per-module applications, an option especially suitable for field professionals and employers looking for Continuing Professional Development—CPD opportunities.

As this course is delivered online by distance learning, you will need access to the internet and a computer with software capable of reading and writing Rich Text Format documents, such as Microsoft Word.

Key features

• Flexible mode of delivery allows you to study around your job, family, and other commitments.
• Full-time, part-time, and per-module study options enable you to develop your studies at your own pace with ongoing support from our expert academic staff.
• Completing an independent project for an external photography organisation equips you with real-world professional skills and expertise.
• Focus on social and cultural photographic practices expands your knowledge of the cultural and social significance of photography throughout its history.
• Consideration of digital and analogue photography provides you with deep understanding about the changing socio-political role of photography and its cultural conception.
• Work alongside a renowned team of expert scholars from the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) and beyond.

Details: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/courses/postgraduate-courses/photographic-history-ma-degree/photographic-history-ma-degree.aspx

The recently published proposal for the British Institute of Professional Photography (formed in 1901 as the Professional Photographers' Association) to join the Royal Photographic Society (formed in 1853 as the Photographic Society of London) has the potential to fully bring both the amateur and professional sides of photography together.

Although the RPS has always had a professional membership, despite occasional abortive attempts to restrict it to amateurs, its membership remained mainly amateur. The PPA deliberately restricted its membership to working photographers. 

The attached chart (PhotoSocs%201840-2023.pdf) for download provides some historical context, showing principal British photography organisations from 1840-2023. 

Details of the proposal are here: https://rps.org/BIPP

The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford has secured £100,000 for its forthcoming Sound & Vision galleries. The award has come from the DCMS/Wolfson fund which aims to help museums and galleries make their collections as accessible to the public as possible, whether that be through building accessible ramps and facilities, improving collection storage to protect them for the future or getting more of their collections out on display.

Renée Mussai writes to let BPH know that after more than two rewarding decades at Autograph, she is resigning as the organisation’s Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial & Collection. 

Rather than simply moving on, she intends to be moving with … and will continue to support Autograph’s mission as a critical friend and associate, staying involved with select projects such as editing the forthcoming ‘Black Chronicles’ book (release date tbc). 

She says..."As one chapter ends, another begins … I will step down as Senior Curator here at Autograph in December, and in early 2023 begin my new role as Artistic Director and Chief Curator at The Walther Collection, a charitable arts foundation based in New York, USA and Neu-Ulm, Germany, with a renowned international exhibition and publishing programme. 

Image: Renée Mussai, London, 2020 © Maliq Mitchell 2020.

This collaborative practice-based project between the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries and the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens will use the Museum’s rich collections of industrial photographs and related material in local/regional/national collections to map, reframe, and create innovative visual interpretations that capture the changing socio-economic characteristics and conditions of women’s work in Sunderland. In doing so, it seeks to produce novel inclusive narratives for the Museum by juxtaposing historical and new photographic imagery depicting women’s work and enhance public engagement by empowering local women, those identifying as women and non-binary to share their stories and photographs.

Research questions

How can historical photographs and narratives of Sunderland’s industry illuminate the changing meaning and nature of women’s work?

What roles can lens-based media play in representing women at work and their labour beyond established documentary practices and against a changing landscape of work in the regional industries?

How can different types of photographic imagery depicting women’s work and oral histories be synthesised and preserved in inclusive museum narratives?

Expressions of interest are invited for a practice-based PhD offered by University of Sunderland in partnership with Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens through the Northern Bridge Consortium: Collaborative Doctoral Awards Competition.
Deadline for EOI: 28 January 2023
Towards an Inclusive Re/visualisation of Women’s Work‌
More information: http://www.northernbridge.ac.uk/media/sites/teaching/northernbridge/MoschoviAlexandra_Sunderland_WinterGardens.pdf

I am currently working on a major research project concerning Modfot and am looking to make contact with these photographers if possible. If anyone has any contacts please pass them on or let the person know that I am looking to make contact. I am aware that some may longer be with us.

These are the photographers I would like to speak with:

Malcolm Aird, Fill Bullock, George Bunzl, Geoffrey Franglen, H S Fry, Peter Keverne, Tony MOrris, Dunstan Pereira, Doreen Pollock, Alan Richards, John Stonex, Michael Taylor, Peter Wilkinson, D Baxter, Edward Pritchard, Ron Chapman

Big thanks

Grant

I have around 100 large format colour black and white negatives circa late 1950s. I couldn't tell, but they looked like they were in some plastic sleeves that had deteriorated or some plastic coating (that seemed to have a blue tint). The chemicals in the film or the coating could have reacted with each other. Has anyone come across this before? Is there some way the negatives can be salvaged? Some solution or something to remove the outer plastic?

I've attached some photos. Any suggestions?

Grant Scott has put out a call for information on the 1967 exhibition Modfot One and the promotion of contemporary photography in the UK in the 1960s. Please get in touch if you think you have anything to contribute in the way of memories, facts and stuff. 

Contact: Dr Grant Scott e: gscott@brookes.ac.uk

For information on Modfot see: https://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/modfot-one/

The Burlington Magazine is seeking submissions of articles for a special issue devoted to photography scheduled for 2023. The Burlington Magazine is the world's leading art periodical and seeks to publish articles on original research, new works and discoveries.

Details on submissions: https://www.burlington.org.uk/about-us/about-the-magazine/submit-an-article

What are photographs ‘doing’ in museums? Why are some photographs valued and others not? Why are some photographic practices visible and not others? What value systems and hierarchies do they reflect?

What Photographs Do explores how museums are defined through their photographic practices. It focuses not on formal collections of photographs as accessioned objects, be they ‘fine art’ or ‘archival’, but on what might be termed ‘non-collections’: the huge number of photographs that are integral to the workings of museums yet ‘invisible’, existing outside the structures of ‘the collection’. These photographs, however, raise complex and ambiguous questions about the ways in which such accumulations of photographs create the values, hierarchies, histories and knowledge-systems, through multiple, folded and overlapping layers that might be described as the museum’s ecosystem.

These photographic dynamics are studied through the prism of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, an institution with over 150 years' engagement with photography’s multifaceted uses and existences in the museum. The book differs from more usual approaches to museum studies in that it presents not only formal essays but short ‘auto-ethnographic’ interventions from museum practitioners, from studio photographers and image managers to conservators and non-photographic curators, who address the significance of both historical and contemporary practices of photography in their work. As such this book offers an extensive and unique range of accounts of what photographs ‘do’ in museums, expanding the critical discourse of both photography and museums.

What Photographs Do
Elizabeth Edward and Ella Ravilious
UCL Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781800082984
Free download: https://bit.ly/3OntzJw

Or buy in softcovers (£30) or hardback (£50) at  https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/192312

The book is a developed history of the radiological sciences – covering the back-story to Röntgen’s discovery, the discovery itself and immediate reception the early days of radiology leading to classical radiology (the pre-digital world). The 1970s as the ‘golden decade’ of radiology will be covered in detail, with the development of CT, MRI and modern interventional radiology. It will appeal to interested members of the public, to those working in the field, and to historians of medicine and science. 

Invisible Light. The Remarkable Story of Radiology
Adrian Thomas
Routledge, 2022
Hb: 978-0-367-34426-9 | £31.19
20% Discount Available - enter the code FLE22 at checkout
Details: http://www.routledge.com/9780367344269

This is one of nine Assistant Curator posts that sit in the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design Department. As such, the main purpose of the job is to provide curatorial support in the development, care of, documentation and research, presentation and interpretation of a part of V&A’s Collection, in this case the Photography Section. Assistant Curators spend a significant portion of their time working on object-related activity that pertains to the care and display of collections, maintaining documentation and developing interpretation to allow for their presentation to wide audiences.

As a member of the Department, the postholder will also play a role in the wider work of the V&A, contributing to policy, projects and public programmes and supporting fundraising and income generation. Assistant Curators also play a role in their relevant department and will be part of the community supporting the museum’s scholarship in the Photography Section. In short, this is a wide-ranging role in which the postholder will be able to develop their skills in all aspects of museum curation.

Open to internal applicants only. 

Details here

This photobook collection was brought together over the past 30 years with the intention of representing a broad range of titles dating from the late 19th century to the modern day. There are many rare and beautiful books in outstanding condition which sit alongside a diverse range of titles which have been historically overlooked but have now become an important part of the contemporary photobook ‘canon’.

There is no single photobook history, thus the title of this collection which is intended to form the foundation of further discoveries from both the past and the future.

It was a labour of love gathering these books together and the intention is now for them to find a new home. For more details on pricing and information about The Photobook Histories collection please contact: Nick Higbee at the Pallant Gallery Bookshop shop@pallantbookshop.com

Details: https://www.photobookhistories.com/

In 1946, shortly after his retirement from the Department of Geography at Sheffield University, Dr R N Rudmose Brown donated a small collection of photographs taken in British Columbia in the late 1860s to the Royal Geographical Society.

Their presence in the Society's Collection invites reflection on their donor, maker, origins, initial circulation, repurposing, preservation, significance, and meanings. Rudmose Brown, founder member of the Institute of British Geographers was the younger son of botanist Dr Robert Brown (of Camster), and had likely inherited the collection from his father, who had been a friend of photographer Frederick Dally (1838-1914), when the two lived in Victoria, BC, during the 1860s.  At that time, geography – not in the sense of a rigidly defined academic discipline, but rather more broadly as popular quest for knowledge about the world, its places, and its peoples – had a firm hold on the Victorian mind; photography was a way to foster, facilitate, and further its pursuit.

Employed as an aid to field work, an accessory of travel, and a form of visual documentation, photography, like geography, was a way of picturing place. More broadly and with the authority of on-the-spot observation, Brown's photographs speak to the entangled and mutually reinforcing connections between photo-graphos (light writing) and geo-graphos (earth writing). Through them, we can begin to understand how nineteenth-century photographs were embraced as agents of sight to extend the powers of human observation across space and time, and served as sites of agency where the subjective experience of space and time was expressed and shaped. 

Picturing place: reflections on a photograph collection from British Columbia
Joan M. Schwartz
London, Royal Geographical Society, and online
25 November 2022, from 1430-1545, £5 non-members
Register: https://www.rgs.org/events/autumn-2022/be-inspired-picturing-place/

An online print sale featuring the work of more than 50 of the best photographers working in Britain today runs until 19 December. It will raise funds for the new Centre for British Photography and the Hyman Foundation’s support of emerging photographers in Britain, through commissions, grants, exhibitions and acquisitions.

Featuring the work of Julia Fullerton-Batten, David Hurn, Karen Knorr and Martin Parr among others and priced at £70, the A4 prints will be available to purchase from 17 November – 19 December 2022 on the Centre for British Photography website: www.britishphotography.org.

The Centre, a new home for British photography, will open in London in late January 2023. It 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.

Created by Sampad in partnership with Birmingham Archives, Library of Birmingham and University of Birmingham, From City Of Empire To City Of Diversity: A Visual Journey is an exhibition which documents post-1945 migration and the huge contribution made by those who settled in Birmingham from the Commonwealth.

The exhibition has been created from The Dyche Collection, one of the most important photographic collections within Birmingham Archives and acquired by Birmingham Central Library in 1990.

The collection of photographs from The Dyche Studios gives a fascinating and personal insight into Birmingham’s transformation. People who had moved to the city visited the studio to have their portraits taken so they could send them home to their families, capturing key moments in their lives and often painting a more positive picture of life in Birmingham than they were experiencing.

The exhibition also draws upon other collections held by Birmingham Archives, notably Benjamin Stone, Helen Caddick, Paul Hill, Nick Hedges, Vanley Burke and George Hallet.

Together with personal memories and stories of migration, these have been transformed into an exhibition which shows the range of experiences that have shaped Birmingham into the city it is today.

From City Of Empire To City Of Diversity: A Visual Journey
Birmingham Back to Backs
55-63 Hurst Street/50-54 Inge Street, Birmingham, West Midlands, B5 4TE
until 6 March 2023.
There will be a series of curator’s talks on23 and 26 January 2023.
Details: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/birmingham-west-midlands/birmingham-back-to-backs/exhibition

Katherine Howells at The National Archives, Kew, has written a blog about the copyright records held at TNA and how the data can around them be analysed.  In the 1860s photography as a new medium was coming under scrutiny and issues of ownership and copyright were being debated. This culminated in the 1862 Fine Arts Copyright Act, which allowed people to register photographs, paintings, and drawings with the Stationers’ Company for copyright protection for the first time. These records are now held at The National Archives in record series COPY 1.

This blog explores how the rich catalogue data for this collection can be cleaned and analysed in order to reveal how photographers and publishers responded to the new legislation and uncover information about the nature of photographic industries in the early 1860s.

Read the full blog here: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/analysing-britains-earliest-copyrighted-photographs/

Thanks to Dick Weindling for flagging this up.

Beginning in the 1920s, news agencies started distributing photographs using devices that transmitted images along telephone wires and radio waves. For the first time, large publics beheld images that had been separated from their material supports, travelling as electrical signals through telecommunications infrastructure. Yet, for another twenty years, wire photography remained limited to the industrialized world. All this changed during World War Two, when the American Office of War Information (OWI) established a news photography service that operated in colonial periphery, where privately funded news services had never distributed photos, since there was no chance of recovering profits.

Modern Enchantments, Anachronistic Space: The American Office of War Information Overseas Radiophoto Section in Central Africa and the British Raj, 1942-1945
Jonathan Dentler
Cpourtauld Research Forum
Monday 21st November 2022, 5:30pm - 6.30pm
Free, booking essential.
Online via Zoom, book here