Blogs

Photographica 2022 is fast approaching after a two year break, it is a camera collectors and users fair, it will take place at the regular venue The Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Hall, 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PB on the 22 May 2022. Public entry is from 10am-4.00pm and admission is £8 on the door from 10am to 12 noon and £5 noon to the close. This year there will be up to 120 stalls selling user and collectable cameras, consumables, lenses, literature and images. It is not a trade show for new equipment. If you fancy a table to clear that build up of photographic equipment phone 01684 594526 . Early buyers tickets can be obtained from the same phone number.

 Any late updates and more information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/photographicafair ; 

Thanks

 Nigel

In September 2022, we are launching a fully online distance learning Photographic History MA Programme at De Montfort University; anyone can apply no matter where you are in the world.

Our Photographic History MA will allow you to investigate societal and cultural photographic practices alongside the cultural and social significance of the medium throughout its history. As well as engaging you with digital and analogue photographic image-objects, histories, and theories, it will equip you with key research and professional skills to prepare you for further study and for a wide range of possible careers in the culture sector.

The flexible module choice of the Programme is one of its main features:

• Both full-time and part-time students will be able to focus their studies on the subjects they are most interested in, while the Programme’s asynchronous model of delivery will allow you to pursue your studies at your own pace.
• Part-time students will be able to complete their studies in two years or more, making it easier for you to study around your job, family, and other commitments.
• Archivists, librarians, curators, and other field professionals are welcome to take only a few modules as a part of your professional development.

We will run one mandatory module that has been designed to provide you with the knowledge and skills needed to fully benefit from the online learning mode.

All Module Leaders on the Programme are members of the internationally renowned Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University. Through their modules you will gain knowledge about a wide scope of subjects. Some of the modules on offer include Photographic Historiography; Photography, Science and Technology; Photography, Ethics and Emotions; Material Histories; and Photography and Digital Politics.

Visit the Programme webpage over here for more information, and follow the Programme Twitter account @PhotoHistoryMA for news and updates.

If you have any questions, feel equally free to get in touch with me directly via my email address which you can find by following this link.

James Hyman has announced the opening of its two new galleries at 48 and 50 Maddox Street in Mayfair, London.  At 48 Maddox Street, it is staging the exhibition Telling Stories. Picture Post and its Legacy. The exhibition presents some of the key photographers of Picture Post magazine as well as a curated selection of some later British photographers who built on this storytelling or documentary tradition.

The exhibition features work by Shirley Baker, Bill Brandt, Anna Fox, Ken Grant, Brian Griffin, Bert Hardy, Nigel Henderson, Paul Hill, Thurston Hopkins, David Hurn, Kurt Hutton, Colin Jones, Dafydd Jones, Chris Killip, Karen Knorr, Marketa Luskacova, Roger Mayne, Daniel Meadows, Jim Mortram, Martin Parr, Charlie Phillips, Tony Ray-Jones, Paul Reas, Grace Robertson, Jo Spence, Wolfgang Suschitzky, Homer Sykes, Jon Tonks.

See: https://www.jameshymangallery.com/

I have a long-standing research interest in the material lives and cultural meaning of glass artifacts in the history of science and the history of photography, from vacuum tubes and chemical glassware to lenses and glass plate negatives. Glass is one of the dominant materials of experimental science.  Its optical and physical properties mediate scientists’ interaction with the natural world. Embodied, artisanal practices around glass-making shape the hardware of experimental science, particularly in chemistry and physics, where test tubes, vacuum tubes, and other laboratory glassware have become iconic symbols of the scientific endeavor. As a photographic material, glass has had a powerful role in both forging and endangering the rhetorical “transparency” of the photographic medium–especially the fragile but powerful glass plate, the primary material for photographic negatives from around 1850 to 1925 (and in the practice of astronomy, until the 1990s). My presentation will range across these various ways that glass artifacts and glass surfaces have been implicated in debates over how we know what we know about the natural world.

GEEX talk
Dr Chitra Ramalingam
4 April 2022, 6:15pm CDT | 0015 5 April (BST) 
Public access: 4 Apri- 2 May 2022
Details: https://geex.glass/programming/geextalks/dr-chitra-ramalingam/

The next Counter Image International Conference taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 13--15 July. The event will focus on ways of decolonizing visuality but a range of topics on photographic culture relating to colonial and postcolonial contexts are possible. The conference will be in persona and will also accepts online participants.

This edition of Counter Image International Conference (CIIC22) proceeds the work of unveiling the ways in which images operate within the power and knowledge structures and systems of truth which tend to constitute hegemonic historical narratives and marginalize or erase those that are conflicting or minoritarian. This originates not only “centres” and “margins” but also tends to silence voices and invisible people, making certain ideias unpronounced. Being a historical process, it demands continuous criticism in line with the many scholars and artists working in Visual Culture, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies traditions in the various disciplines. Establishing counter narratives, counter archives and counter images is then a challenge to hegemonic social, cultural and political systems and a contribution to a much needed dialogue around themes that are difficult and complex, in view of a pluralist, diverse and balanced society.

In a world still deeply marked by colonial images and worldviews, in which the production and mass distribution of visual technologies has contributed to the naturalization of oppressive systems, making the underlying visual codes almost unnoticed, this edition wishes to debate colonial visual heritage and how it impacts the world today.

Photography historian and visual anthropologist, Professor Elizabeth Edwards, will present a keynote. 

at the next Counter Image International Conference taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 13th to 15th July. The event will focus on ways of decolonizing visuality but a range of topics on photographic culture relating to colonial and postcolonial contexts are possible. The conference also accepts online participants.

Deadline for proposals 20 April 2022. See: https://counter-image.netlify.app/#call-link

See more : https://counter-image.netlify.app/

As the British Institute of Radiology marks 125 years join BIR Honorary Historian Dr Adrian Thomas to explore the early days of the society, and how it has developed to match the needs of a changing world. Be transported back to 1897 when seeing inside the body was becoming a possibility for the very first time and the potential of the 'new photography' was slowly being recognised as a diagnostic tool.

Imagine the excitement and anticipation of what the future could hold for the medical profession as these brave pioneers took part in their first meeting. Find out about the characters and personalities involved and discover how the BIR influenced the development of this brand new specialty, through its journal and Annual Congress.

Learn how scientists and doctors worked together, involved radiographers and physiotherapists and how those early values of multi-disciplinary working still continue today.

BIR at 125 Years: A Celebration
1 April 2022 at 1300-1400 (GMT)
Register here

Photography, both in the form of contemporary practice and that of historical material, now occupies a significant place in the citadels of Western art culture. It has an institutional network of its own, embedded within the broader art world, with its own specialists including academics, critics, curators, collectors, dealers and conservators. All of this cultural activity consolidates an artistic practice and critical discourse of photography that distinguishes what is increasingly termed 'art photography' from its commercial, scientific and amateur guises. But this long-awaited recognition of photography as high art brings new challenges. How will photography's newly privileged place in the art world affect how the history of creative photography is written?

Modernist claims for the medium as having an aesthetic often turned on precedents from painting. Postmodernism challenged a cultural hierarchy organized around painting. Nineteenth-century photographs move between the symbolic spaces of the gallery wall and the archive: de-contextualised for art and re-contextualised for history. But what of the contemporary writings, images, and practices that negotiated an aesthetic status for 'the photographic'?

Photography and the Arts revisits practices both celebrated and elided by the modernist and postmodernist grand narratives of art and photographic history in order to open up new critical spaces. Written by leading scholars in the fields of photography, art and literature, the essays examine the metaphorical as well as the material exchanges between photography and the fine, graphic, reproductive and sculptural arts.

Photography and the Arts Essays on 19th Century Practices and Debates
Juliet Hacking and Joanne Lukitsh
Bloomsbury, 2021
now in paperback at £21.49
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/photography-and-the-arts-9781350048553/

Applications are invited for an AHRC funded CDP studentship offered by the University of Liverpool and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), to start in October 2022.

The studentship will be based in the V&A in London (in the Photography Section) and also in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, and attached to the Centre for Culture and Everyday Life at the University. The successful applicant will work on a collaborative PhD led by Prof. Michelle Henning with co-supervision from Dr. Duncan Forbes at the V&A. Second supervisors are Professor Peter Buse (UoL) and Martin Barnes (V&A).

Applicants are asked to propose a project investigating the colour photography collections at the V&A, focussing on the period 1890 to 1935, a crucial period in the development of early colour photography in Britain. Focusing on the collections of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in particular, it will address innovation in the technology and aesthetics of colour photography in the context of changing cultural understandings and experiences of colour in the wider environment and culture of the period. We would encourage you to consider questions about the nature of the photographic industry in Britain, and wider social and economic developments. You are invited to narrow the focus to particular contexts, specific research questions, and possibly a shorter historical period within the timeframe. You should also specify your research methods, which should involve empirical research within the archive as well as developing a conceptual framework. It is intended that the student’s research has a direct impact on display and interpretation strategies at the V&A, and there will be opportunities to engage with the public, especially in relation to displays in the Photography Centre.

The V&A is arguably the richest archival resource in the UK for early colour photography. Source materials include the Colin Axon colour photography collection (acquired in 2022), the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) archive, a vast selection of photographic journals and books from the RPS library, and an array of early colour processes themselves. There is extensive source material relating to the 1931 exhibition ‘Colour Photography in the Service of Man’, the RPS Colour Group, as well as correspondence relating to key figures such as Friedrich Paneth, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alvin Langdon Coburn.The collections include a wide range of colour processes (such as Autochrome, Lippman, Vivex, Dufaycolor, Agfacolor and Kodachrome). Important colour photographers (not already mentioned) held in the RPS collection include Madame Yevonde, Agnes Warburg, Helen Messinger Murdoch, Otto Pfenninger, and D. A. Spencer.

Furthermore, there is a broader context for the study of colour at the V&A, with objects and expertise held in the textiles, prints, and conservation sections. Cross-referencing with collections outside the V&A (in the Science Museum Group, city and national archives and in smaller or private collections) is also possible.

The team supervising this project provides a unique combination of expertise in photography, including knowledge of photographic history and photographic curatorship, specialisms in periodicals, and broader cultural histories. With their support, the student will develop their own research questions and trajectory. They will identify their own case studies and work with supervisors at the V&A to find ways to maximise the public impact of their research, perhaps contributing to cataloguing, displays, interpretation or online content. The student will also bring a prior interest and engagement with photography history and theory. We particularly welcome applications from Black and POC candidates.

See more and apply here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/news/stories/title,1311134,en.html

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. The V&A’s Collections Division comprises six curatorial, research, and conservation and collections care & access teams. The curatorial departments are arranged as Decorative Art and Sculpture; Performance, Furniture, Textiles & Fashion; Art, Architecture, Photography & Design; and Asia. The staff in these teams are at the heart of the founding purpose of the museum: to care for, research and develop the collections, to exhibit them to the public, to make them available for study and research, and to broaden access to the collections.

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. 

See details and apply here.

Today, Historic England launches its new Aerial Photography Explorer - which for the first time allows users to search and explore an online map showing aerial photographs of England over the past 100 years. Aerial imagery provides a fascinating insight into the development and expansion of the nation’s urban centres and changes to the rural landscape. It can also reveal striking discoveries - such as ‘cropmarks’ showing hidden, archaeology beneath the surface. New imagery available online includes: 

• The remains of ancient archaeology such as a Neolithic long barrow near Broughton, Hampshire, as well as remains of Iron Age forts such as Pilsdon Pen in Dorset and medieval villages such as Old Sulby in Northamptonshire.
• Second World War anti-invasion measures such as anti-aircraft obstructions (ditches and earthworks) at Hampton Court Palace in 1941, and images from the same year of RAF Kenley showing camouflaged runways.
• War-time adaptations to sites, for example, images of Greenwich Park in 1946 show it covered in a patchwork of allotments to grow food and aid the war effort. A modern photograph from August 2006 shows the outlines of the allotments appearing through the grass in hot weather.
• Bomb damage such as images of central Liverpool and the Albert Dock from 1941, 1946 and 1948 with flattened areas and buildings with roofs blown off. By contrast, aerial images from 2017 show the development of the area since.
• 20^th century industrial sites such as the construction of Tilbury power station in 1955, and its demolition in 2017.
• Famous buildings such as views of St James’ Park football stadium, Newcastle from the 1920s and St Paul’s Cathedral after the war.

Over 400,000 images from 1919 to the present day have been added to the tool, covering nearly 30% (c.15,000 square miles) of England, allowing people immediate digital access to Historic England’s nationally important collection of aerial photographs.

Around 300,000 of these are the work of Historic England’s Aerial Investigation and Mapping team. Established in 1967, the team takes photographs of England from the air to discover new archaeological sites, create archaeological maps and monitor the condition of historic sites across the country.

The remaining 100,000 images come from the Historic England Archive aerial photography collection, which numbers over two million images in total, and includes important historic photography, including interwar and post-war images from Aerofilms Ltd and The Royal Air Force.

By opening up these images to the public through this accessible online tool, Historic England hopes that people will use it to research their local areas, offering an insight into a century of changes and development. This will allow them potentially to make their own discoveries about their local areas. It will also provide industry professionals and local authorities with a useful resource to help planning, heritage projects and archaeological investigation.

Over the coming years, Historic England aims to expand the platform, as more of the six million aerial images in Historic England Archive are digitised.

The Aerial Photography Explorer joins Historic England’s recently launched Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer to offer an unparalleled insight into England’s archaeology and the nation’s development.

The new tool can be found here: Aerial Photograph Explorer tool

Images: 

 East Hecla steelworks and Meadowhall in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

Multivallate Hillfort, West Hills -

BPH has been contacted by a representative of Ana Briongos. In 1967 Prince Emmanuel travelled to Spain with his wife where he enrolled in the Escuala Massana art school. Three years later the married couple left Spain and moved to London. They never returned to Spain or reclaimed the precious suitcase, full of photographs and artworks from his time in Barcelona. 

Today, Emmanuel Adele Oyenuga must be in his eighties, and his wife Elisabeth Olayemi Oyenuga a little younger, and their children, son Adedoyin ‘Doyin’ Oyenuga, born ca. 1964 and daughter Oyinade “Oyin” Oyenuga, born 1968.

The materials found in the suitcase point to different social and cultural moments in the history of Nigeria and beyond: the Nigerian Civil War, the cultural ties between two countries, Nigeria and Spain, the legacy of the artist, the story of emigration, Nigerian studio photography of the 1970s and first and foremost, to restitution

The suitcase is in the safe keeping of Luisa Guadayol’s daughter – Ana Briongos and together with the African Artists’ Foundation they have begun the quest to find relatives of Prince Emmanuel Adewale Oyenuga or indeed the Prince himself.

If you can assist in finding, or have any knowledge of the Nigerian photographer please email: michael@mpritchard.com so information can be passed on.

• An exhibition of Oyenuga's work is on view at FORMAT, Derby. See: https://formatfestival.com/event/unpacking-the-suitcase/

the recent unprecedented floods in the Eastern side of Australia, have had a deviating effect of the Sandy Barrie historical photographic Collection and his research into early Photographers.. there was no warning, and the river just kept rising. until it entered my shed and house, destroying years of restoration work on negative collections and cameras etc. hampering my attempts to rescue what I could, just as the water started to enter my house, I fell in the slippery conditions an breaking my Toxic tail bone, something I repeated a week later... 50 years of collecting and some of the most historic negs and cameras from Queensland history now damaged beyond repair. I did manager to get my computer (androids of hard drives) to higher safety, but on plugging it back in after the clean up, it seems wet cables may have shorted the computers ending that also. Sandy Barrie, Hon LM AIPP.

In researching their Madame Yevonde holdings, the National Portrait Gallery is on the hunt for a Vivex System / Taylor-Hobson three colour camera. A ‘One-shot’ camera used for exposing three plates at once. It is the camera Yevonde is shown with in a celebrated self-portrait, and the camera is reproduced here.

Please contact Clare Freestone cfreestone@npg.org.uk with any leads.

University College Cork wishes to appoint an experienced Photographic Collections Curator. The Photographic Collections Curator  is vital to the achievement of the library’s strategic objectives, and plays a significant part in setting scholarly and professional standards of work for Photographic Collections and Collections team, and the development of photographic collections in support of research, learning and teaching.

UCC Library, uniquely amongst University libraries in Ireland, has been developing collections and an expertise in Irish photography.  The University has made three very significant international acquisitions in this area in recent years: the John Minihan Collection, the Alen MacWeeney Collection, and the Irish Press Archive.

This role will work across all sections of Collections which are involved in collection development and interpretation. The Photographic Curator will bring together information on the photographic collections and advise on their description, storage, digitisation and access.  They will lead and take responsibility for the development, curation and promotion of photographic collections.

For further details please access information via UCC Vacancies https://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/vacancies/ under Administrative/Technical. 

Applications must be submitted online via the University College Cork vacancy portal (https://ore.ucc.ie/ ).  Queries relating to the online application process should be referred to recruitment@ucc.ie, quoting the job-title.

Informal enquiries can be made in confidence to Crónán O'Doibhlin, Head of Research Collections email: c.odoibhlin@ucc.ie

The Prints & Photographs Division's National Stereoscopic Photography Research Fellowship is made possible by a gift from the National Stereoscopic Association (NSA) for fellowship and lecture funding. The purpose of the award is to support research within the Prints & Photographs holdings of stereoscopic photography and the unparalleled photographic history collections at the Library of Congress--including over 15 million photographs, rare publications, manuscript materials, historic newspapers, and extensive subscription database access.

The Fellowship committee will award up to two Fellowships annually (with award amounts from $3000 to $6000) to be used to cover travel to and from Washington, D.C., accommodations, and other research expenses to assist fellows in their ongoing scholarly research and writing projects on stereoscopic photography, or more broadly within the field of photographic history to the extent that research is connected in some manner to the Library's holdings on the format.

Eligibility and Guidelines

Graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, independent scholars, creators, and other researchers with a need for Fellowship support are encouraged to apply. Individuals who are not U.S. residents but who otherwise meet the above qualifications may apply and be considered for a Fellowship, contingent upon visa eligibility. The Library of Congress is not able to assist with granting a visa.

In the interest of increasing awareness and extending documentation of Library of Congress collections, Fellows are required to make use of the Library's collections, be in residence for a minimum of two weeks during the award period, and share information derived from their research at the Library through publication in Stereo World or on the Library's Picture This blog, a public lecture, presentation at the following National Stereoscopic Association Convention, or other event, either during their residency or within six months of completing their research at the Library. Each Fellow must also notify the selection committee if their work results in formal publication and provide a hard-copy or online access to the work.

To Apply

Completed applications are due April 15, 2022, and notification will occur in August 2022. The Fellowship must be completed between January 1st and December 31st, 2023.

Information about applying for the fellowship is available at this link: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/national_stereoscopic.html

Questions should be addressed to:
Micah Messenheimer
Phone: (202) 707-0591
Email: stereofellow@loc.gov

***

The Library of Congress is the world's largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States - and extensive materials from around the world - both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

BPH has learnt that Dr John Lambert Wilson who was active in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s for his researches on the photographically illustrated book died on 1 March 2022, aged 79 years. John, who was then based in Oxford, built up a formidable collection of books on early photography and those illustrated with photographs.

His PhD was titled Publishers and Purchasers of the Photographically-Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century, (University of Reading, 1995). John also compiled in 1992 Catalogue of a collection relating to the literature of photography, 1639-1905 which is unpublished in two volumes.

John also helped arrange an exhibition of photographic books and associated conference in Oxford and supported the British Library's mid-1990s project to catalogue its photographically-illustrated books where it acknowledged 'the use of his two catalogues of The Literature of the History of Photography'. He was an independent scholar and he was also a volunteer assisting with cataloguing the RPS Collection, then in South Audley Street, London.

John's interests shifted to early agrarian history, particularly the history of sheep breeding.  He is described by one friend as "a fine bibliophile and sterling English eccentric". 

Details are of his funeral are not yet available. 

The Royal Photographic Society’s Historical Group was formed on 22 March 1972 at a time when photography in Britain was undergoing a significant transition. The RPS, itself, was in a process of modernisation as it sought to remain relevant to British photography. The way photography was taught in higher education reflected a move away from the technical to a focus on approach and the content of the picture. New galleries showing photography were established, national museums and galleries began to take photography seriously and the Arts Council appointed its first photography officer. The period also saw major upheavals for the industry and the profession with recessions, a move to digital, and new ways for commissioners to source content. The way photography was experienced, shared and disseminated changed dramatically later in the period with the advent of new digital technologies.

The conference will examine how these changes have impacted British photography and photographers over the fifty years from 1972-2022. Papers may also look at how particular photographers’ work has evolved over the period. Some of the possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• Museums, galleries and collections: broadly and within specific institutions; the independent gallery scene; how the art world embraced photography; curatorial practice and presentation; the RPS Collection
• Education: how photographic higher education has changed; how photographic history has been used across disciplines and taught; the independent photography sector; photography in schools
• The market for photography: auctions, commercial galleries, dealers, collecting by individuals; the loss of photographic heritage; fine art photography
• The law: Intellectual property: photographers’ rights; privacy and surveillance
• Community groups: collectives; camera clubs
• Geographical perspectives: specific changes in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England; Britain’s position in international photography
• The public and photography: the popularisation of photographic history on television, genealogy, and local history; experience through newspapers, publications, and online
• Photography as a profession and industry: the markets and changes to industrial, commercial and social photography; photojournalism and advertising and editorial; manufacturing and retailing; the photographic periodical press; publishing and the photobook
• Photographers and Photography: changes to individual practice; new approaches to genres of photography e.g. documentary, landscape, etc
• Digital: its impact; new ways of sharing and engaging with photography

Proposals should be focused on the period from 1972 to the present and the British experience.

Submission

The conference welcomes proposals from academics, early career researchers, postgraduate students;  those working within photography, education and heritage, and photographers.

Proposals of up to 300 words with a short biography should be sent to photohistorian@rps.org has been extended to 28 March 2022.Papers should be 25 minutes in length. Papers will be grouped by theme at the conference.

The conference will open for registrations on 14 April 2022. It takes place at RPS House, Bristol, on 1 and 2 July 2022. 

British Photography since 1972: Commemorating fifty years of the RPS Historical Group
Conference: 1-2 July 2022, Bristol, UK

See: https://rps.org/1972

#Britishphoto1972

Image: a cover of The Photographic Journal from 1972. 

In 1888 in Leeds, Louis Le Prince shot what many now consider to be the world’s first films. Film-maker and researcher Irfan Shah will be talking to writer Paul Fischer about his ground-breaking new biography of Le Prince and trying to discover the truth about the many myths surrounding the man behind the camera.

Complimentary drink on arrival

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures
Paul Fischer
Thursday, 28 April 2022 at 1900
Leeds Central Library, Local and Family History, Second Floor, Leeds, LS1 3AB
Book here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/leedslibraryevents/the-man-who-invented-motion-pictures/e-yvbvmq

Details of Paul Fischer's book are here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571348640-the-man-who-invented-motion-pictures/

The Muslim woman has been a consistent subject of representation across regimes of historical colonialism and Orientalism, in events such as the Arab Spring and post-9/11, and mediated widely via news and social media. These have included variegated representations from the odalisque to the ‘oppressed’ which have converged the identity of the Muslim woman to the single image and symbol of the hijab (veil).

Spanning across different bodies of work, this lecture will introduce and plot Nurul’s photographic, annotative, and participatory research that have engaged with representations of Muslim women from the daguerreotype to data. These projects will be discussed alongside the medium of photography and the data shift, which transforms the self into data, rendering those in the margins as ‘absent data’. Through self-reflexive means and methods, the context of ‘absent data’ will become site for artistic explorations and aspire towards a recalibration of Muslim women identifies via the role of the Muslim woman as ‘actor’ in rethinking processes of image-making.

Nurul Huda Rashid (she/her) is a researcher-writer currently pursuing her PhD in Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on images and narratives, visual and sentient bodies, feminisms, and the intersections between them. These have been articulated through projects such as Women in War (2016-ongoing), unknown woman/wanita kami (2021), Hijab/Her (2012-2014), and through collaborations such as Pulau Something (2021) and New Curriculum for Old Questions (2019). Nurul loves smelling old books, looking after plant babies, and hopes to adopt a cat someday.

Image, Data, Actor: Unpacking Images of Muslim Women 
moderated by T:>Works’ Artistic Director Dr. Ong Keng Sen
T:>Works, free with registration
Thursday, 31 March 2022, 200 (SGT) | 1300 (BST) | 1400 (CET) | 0800 (EST)
Online: register here: https://tworkssg.wordpress.com/digital-lecture-image-data-actor-unpacking-images-of-muslim-women-by-nurul-huda-rashid/

This looks like an interesting exhibition. To mark the centenary of Ernest Shackleton’s death, a new exhibition, Shackleton’s legacy and the power of early Antarctic photography, will be on display in the Royal Geographical Society’s Pavilion from 7 February.

Documenting the role of photography and literature throughout Shackleton’s career, the exhibition presents the influences and motivation which led him to a lifetime commitment to the polar region and building public awareness and understanding of the continent. At its heart lies the exceptional story of the Endurance expedition – a pivotal moment in Shackleton’s polar career, turning disaster to triumph, and where his focus on the power of photography to document the experience was paramount.

Drawing on original documents and photography – some previously unseen and newly digitised – guest curator Dr Jan Piggott, former Keeper of Archives and Rare Books at Dulwich College, has chronicled Shackleton’s early life, schooldays, career, his own writing and love of poetry, and achievements before and after the world famous Endurance expedition, complementing the Society’s 2015 Enduring eye exhibition curated by polar historian and writer Meredith Hooper.

The exhibition also includes images by contemporary photographer Enzo Barracco, whose Noise of the Ice project in Antarctica was inspired by Shackleton.

Shackleton’s legacy and the power of early Antarctic photography
Until 4 May 2022
Open Monday to Friday from 10.00am-5.00pm and on Saturdays from 10.00am-4.00pm
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2AR
Free Booking not required. The exhibition will be closed on bank holidays

https://www.rgs.org/events/spring-2022/shackletons-legacy-exhibition/