Blogs

HSBC have just launched their new History Website, documenting and sharing its heritage journey and story. The archive, which has amassed a diverse range of material and content over the decades, reaches right back to their early foundation in 1865. As one of the largest financial organisations in the world, HSBC has survived the Great Depression and the Second World War, going on to grow exponentially in scale and reputation, recognised as pioneers in technology.

The unique HSBC History Website contains over 150 years of heritage and was launched on 6 July 2021. This site will act as a single point of reference for internal and external stakeholders, such as employees and customers, facilitating access and research, and exploration and discovery.

We are thrilled that this vast digital collection is managed and shared via our PastView platform and that visitors will be able to uncover a wealth of born-digital and digitised HSBC assets in a host of new and digitally immerse ways.  

Photographs feature with the earliest from c1863. 

You can access the HSBC History Website here: https://history.hsbc.com

Image: Photograph of Wardley House, the first head office of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in Hong Kong, c.1870s. HK 0117-0001

Scottish Transport & Industry Collections Knowledge Network (STICK) is inviting submissions for papers for its 2021 conference – 'Snapshot in Time' – to discuss the importance of photography as a documentation and advocacy tool for industrial and transport heritage. The conference is scheduled for Wednesday 17 November 2021.

Photography is an invaluable tool for recording industrial and transport history – it is ideally suited for rapid documentation in a world where dramatic or catastrophic change can occur to the fabric of industry, almost overnight, and revolutionised the documentation of historic sites. 

Papers for presentation will be accepted on a broad range of subjects, including:

• Case studies in photographic survey
• The use of photographs for education, outreach and advocacy
• The research utility of existing archives of photographic material
• Developments in photographic survey techniques and their future (e.g. photogrammetry)

STICK anticipates the conference to be hosted online via zoom. 

STICK would welcome 200-word submissions from academics, enthusiasts and heritage professionals for talks of 45 minutes. Proposals may be submitted to Matthew Bellhouse Moran at matthew@hmsunicorn.org.uk with “STICK Conference Proposal” as the email title.

See: https://stickssn.org/call-for-papers-snapshot-in-time/

Image: Hillbank Works, Dundee. A flax mill and jute mill on Alexander Road/Dens Road in Dundee.

Sekai Machache (she/her) is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self. She is interested in the relationship between spirituality, imagination and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing. Sekai works with a wide range of media including photography. Her photographic practice is formulated through digital studio based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting conditions to create images that appear to emerge from darkness.

The Divine Sky utilises allegory and performance to tell a complicated history through poesis, immersive storytelling and photography. This series has taken form during the Covid-19 lockdown period when restrictions to our movements has called for establishing new ways of working and structuring artistic output.This work denotes a process of inscribing and re-inscribing thought through automatic drawing with ink on paper, indigo pigment on fabric, performance to camera, layering and overlaying.

The V&A Museum, London, has announced its 2022-2023 programme. Of particular interest to the photography world are new photography displays although photography will feature in exhibition highlights including Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature, Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, and Africa Fashion. 

In November 2021 the Photography Centre will be entirely rehung with two new displays: 

• Maurice Broomfield: Industrial Sublime in The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery. The exhibition will showcase the late photographer’s spectacular photographs of mid-century British industry,
• Known and Strange: Photographs from the Collection in The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery 6 November 2021-6 November 2022 will focus on the contemporary – highlighting photography’s power to transform the familiar into the unfamiliar, and the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Phase 2 of the Photography Centre is due to open in 2023. 

Image: Maurice Broomfield, Tapping a Furnace, Ford, Dagenham, Essex, 1954. © Estate of Maurice Broomfield

The Royal Society has digitised books and archival material held in its collection. These include Anna Atkins' Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843). The volume was given to the Royal Society by Anna Atkins. Other material of photographic interest are travel and photography notes from John Herschel (c.1838-); and the visitors book for Birr Castle (1850-2-14).

See: https://royalsociety.org/collections/turning-pages/

George Shaw was one of Birmingham's first photographers and a key member of the emerging professional classes in Victorian Birmingham with a wide ranging network which encompassed his work as a patent agent, chemistry professor and his involvement in the arts. In this talk, artist Jo Gane will discuss Shaw's life and work, alongside presenting new photographs she has made which expound upon his story.

This talk is free but places are limited. The talk will take place via zoom and ticket holders will be sent a link to join on the day of the event.

21 July 2021
1830-1930 (BST)
Free 
Book here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-talk-george-shaw-a-photographic-pioneer-tickets-161213141847

Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. In her new book Picturing the Western Front: Photography, Practices and Experiences in First World War France (Manchester University Press, 2021) Dr Beatriz Pichel argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians' war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through.

Picturing the Western Front
28 July 2021 at 1800 (BST)
Free
Register here:https://rps.org/WW1

India will have its first memorial to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce on 5 July, the 188th anniversary of his death.  Renowned painter and sculptor Mr. Sunil Kumar from Trivandrum is the creator of the statue. The memorial is being built by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce Foundation, Mavelikkara, and will be located in Mavelikkara, Kerala. 

Foundation bearers are the following: Patron – A P Joy (Managing Editor, Fotowide Photography Magazine), Chairman - Saji Ennakkad (writer, photographer and photography historian), Vice Chairperson - Dr. Bindu D Sanil (writer and professor), Secretary – T L John (painter and photographer), and Treasurer - Anil Ananthapuri (professor). The memorial is set to be dedicated on his next birth anniversary.

This is the first memorial dedicated for the inventor of photography in India.

The photographic art reproduction came into being simultaneously with the invention of the medium: Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce captured engravings in his earliest heliographs, while William Henry Fox Talbot praised the reproductive capacities of the calotype in The Pencil of Nature (1844). As much as art has affected photographic reproduction (for instance, Louis Daguerre who arranged sculptural pieces into elaborate still lives recalling those by Dutch Golden Age masters or, perhaps, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin), the reproduction has affected art. As Walter Benjamin has influentially argued, it put the ‘aura’ of the original into question. Together with Paul Valery and Erwin Panofsky, Benjamin sparked a century-long debate on the interrelationship between the original and the copy, which is still far from any decisive conclusion with Peter Walsh, Michelle Henning, Georges Didi-Huberman, and Bruno Latour readdressing the problem in the last decade.

What is more, the other aspects of the photographic reproduction have received much less scholarly attention. Despite the valuable efforts of Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Stephen Bann, and Patrizia Di Bello, there is still much to be discovered with regards to its materiality, function, and reception: What technical challenges has photographic reproduction faced since the appearance of the medium and how has it resolved them? How have new technologies changed the relationship between the original and the copy? What were the multiple uses of photographic reproductions? What do they tell us about the aesthetic taste of their day? What impact has the photographic reproduction had on the fine arts since the nineteenth century? Does it itself have any artistic value?

This conference is free and does not require registration. See the full programme and get the link here: https://events.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/photographic-art-reproductions-from-1839-to-the-present/

Lynn Wray, Research Fellow at the National Science and Media Museum, introduces a new research initiative, ‘Communities and Crowds’. She writes...We have recently launched an exciting new research project called ‘Communities and Crowds’ that builds upon the participatory work the museum has been developing with local communities in Bradford as part of the Bradford’s National Museum project, and seeks to understand how this could be enhanced by citizen science methods.

Using the Daily Herald Photographic Archive as a case study, we will together examine how the benefits of local knowledge, in-person and in-depth material engagement with our collection objects and participatory, face-to-face collaborative working methods can be combined with the breadth and collective intelligence of remote, online citizen research to achieve a common goal. We will do this in order to make previously hidden objects visible, searchable and discoverable, bring to light hidden histories, and tell untold stories within our collection. We hope, in particular, to address questions of inequality in the collection by interrogating together how we might better document, categorise and interpret these photographs.

Read the full blog post here: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/opening-up-the-daily-herald-archive-to-citizen-led-research/

Thomas Sharp was Somerset’s first professional photographer, setting up a studio at the Royal Victoria Park, Bath in November 1841. My colleague Allan Collier has previously commented (February 2014) on his career, or as much as we knew at the time, and this update records our efforts to have Thomas Sharp recognised as the photographer responsible for a portrait which until now has been credited to Roger Fenton.

In the course of researching Sharp’s life and career, we came across a portrait of Major-General Charles Ashe Windham, the ‘hero of the Redan’. An engraving made from the photograph was published in the Illustrated London News on 6 October 1855, four weeks after Windham led the charge on the Great Redan at Sebastopol. The acknowledgements stated that the engraving was “from a photograph taken by Messrs Sharp and Melville at their establishment in Old Bond Street, the day before Colonel Windham [as he was then] left England for the Crimea” – Windham’s diary and letters show that he embarked at Southampton on 9 August 1854 https://archive.org/details/crimeandiaryand00windgoog/page/n33/mode/2up?view=theater

Windham’s bravery was mentioned in a despatch of 9 September 1855 by General James Simpson, commander of the British forces, and was swiftly recognised by the British press. So, the photograph taken a year earlier by Thomas Sharp, and engraved by his colleague Alexander Melville (1823-1892), became more prominent than they might have expected. The Illustrated London News followed up the publication of the engraving with a further article on 3 November 1855 : “since its publication, the artists have completed a life size portrait of the original in oils …. The talent bestowed on all the works of portraiture at this establishment is of a superior nature; Mr Sharp being a photographist of many years’ reputation, and Mr Melville an artist of considerable merit, and whose abilities have obtained for him the patronage of her Majesty on several occasions …. This fine portrait of General Windham has been purchased by Mr Agnew of Manchester, with a view to publication …”

Agnew’s purchase, combined with his sponsorship of Roger Fenton’s Crimea photographs, is what we now believe led to the credit for the photograph being given to Fenton, rather than to Sharp and Melville.  The copies of the matching photograph, clearly the basis for the engraving, in several major photographic collections were credited to Fenton – those in the National Gallery, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Following our representation, all three have now amended their records for this photograph and changed the attribution to Sharp & Melville. We now feel that the reputation of Somerset’s first photographer has been somewhat restored, although we appreciate that the attribution to Fenton continues in many other sources. Notes : the copies shown here are the engraving as published in 1855, and the photograph of 1854, the latter courtesy of the Look & Learn History Picture Archive, which now has a corrected attribution.

Our book, published in 2018, is “Secure the shadow : Somerset photographers, 1839-1939” https://sdfhs.org/shop/publications/somerset-books/secure-the-shadow-somerset-photographers-1839-1939/

This short discussion, convened on Zoom, will examine the shifts affecting the programming, commissioning and collection of photography by art and photography museums, in the UK and internationally. On the occasion of the publication of Alexandra Moschovi’s monograph A Gust of Photo-Philia: Photography in the Art Museum and in the context of NEPN’s SHIFTS project, invited curators will explore how their institutions address current developments in photographic and curatorial practice and the ways museums can engage diverse publics and support photographers.

Confirmed contributors:

Matteo Balduzzi, Curator, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo, Italy.

Alexandra Moschovi, Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media, University of Sunderland, UK.

Thomas Seelig, Head Curator and Director of Photography, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.

Marta Weiss, Senior Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.

SHIFTS: Photography in the 21st Century Museum
Wednesday, 7 July 2021, 13:00 GMT
Supported by the University of Sunderland and Arts Council England.
This is a free event but please register via Eventbrite as places are limited.
See: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shifts-photography-in-the-21st-century-museum-tickets-161160636803?aff=ebdssbonlinesearched.

A Gust of Photo-Philia
Photography in the Art Museum
by Alexandra Moschovi

https://lup.be/products/125125 ;

Leuven University Press kindly offers attendees 25% discount on both the print and e-book publication until 31 July.

NEPN-SHIFTS-Eflyer-Event3-Jun21-Mono%20%282%29.pdf

We are living an ‘archival moment’ (Daston 2017). Applied to photography, this moment is characterised by limitless production and circulation and, at the same time, by deep concerns about the loss of information in both analogue and digital resources and the fragility of aggregated image clusters and fleeting collections. Given that digitisation and digital photography have been established practices for some thirty years, numerous methods and approaches to the storage and retrieval, indexing, interoperability and sustainability of digital image collections have been tested, debated, applied, expanded, questioned and discarded. This has led to unprecedented online access to visual material and a vast and uneven field of institutional, commercial and vernacular collections. Over the past ten years, in particular, with the emergence of the smartphone as an image-making device, image-centred social media platforms and increased processing and storage capacities, photography has gone ‘off-scale’ (Pollen 2015; Dvořák and Parikka 2021), producing more images than can ever be processed. These technological developments mean that more and more people all over the world are involved in creating, manipulating and collecting images. Scattered on phones, computers, servers and platforms, these new forms of semi-private or semi-public archives comprise sedimentations of applications as well as images that have been stocked for potential future use. Images and image data are copied, scraped, aggregated and rearranged in feeds, clusters and databases depending on their user’s intention, including image and data mining for commercial or scientific purposes. Moreover, when organised and classified in database infrastructures, big visual data serve as the basis for computing on images and developing computer vision techniques. These, in turn, structure and help navigate the abundance of simultaneously unfettered and networked images (Henning 2018; Sluis and Rubinstein 2008). While these multifaceted collections and accumulations evade canonical notions of the archive, and the term archiving is used excessively to the point of unravelling, archival structures and practices have not merely become pervasive but are a nexus of the post-digital condition (Cramer 2014; Lison et al. 2019)

Building on the Photo Archives conference series, this gathering seeks to bring together scholars from a wide range of fields (e.g. history of photography, media studies, art history, visual culture studies, information sciences, history of science and technology) to examine and reflect on the practices and ideologies of the digital photo archive. It seeks to address the tensions between different, or rather opposed, notions of the archive: as a locus of power according to postmodern discourses; as a simple, transparently manageable repository; as a technology that facilitates the sharing and socialisation of (image) data; as a structure that perpetuates discrimination and configures surveillance. The rhetoric of the archive, both analogue and digital, as a robust and authoritative body shall be discussed in relation to its ideological counterpart, the rhetoric of democratisation through digital practices, within the framework of the recent history of photography. Photography, here, is understood in its expanded sense as the ‘historical totality of photographic forms’ (Osborne 2010), which include digital photography and scanning technologies, mobilising the physical world and standardising objects and image resources. The conference thus seeks to challenge the idea of documentary values connected to photography and archives at a time when visual imagery is completely malleable; it aims at revisiting past narratives and speculating on future uses.

How can we describe the shifts and constellations in the redistribution of relevance and power in a productive way? How can we listen to the plurality of voices, including hidden or neglected actors? How can we grasp the noise of digital photo archives as a resource? In what forms does the utopian project of photography and the archival procedure of converting the infinite variety of the world into an order apply to contemporary practices? How can we learn from digital artistic and curatorial projects to imagine the archive without its institutional authority? Given that photography has become omnipresent and synonymous with the ‘image’, a critical discussion of the processes and imaginaries at play is important not simply to enhance the management of digital photo archives but also to help us gain a better understanding of the social, epistemological, cultural, political and aesthetic implications of contemporary practices.

Scholars at any stage of their career are welcome to submit their research. Please note that the conference will be in English. We encourage proposals from a broad range of subjects that reflect a diversity of geographies and may address one of the following themes and questions (though this list should not be taken as exhaustive):

1. Scale of the photo archive: Photo archives are, by nature, places of (often unruly) abundance, yet, with digital technologies, questions of scale and processability have become crucial. How do we conceptualise quantity as an asset, and not just in the sense of depth of information? How do the masses of digital photo archives challenge existing notions of what images are and do? How can our access to visual material go beyond ‘searching’ and become research?
2. Le goût de l’archive: What could the ‘taste’ or ‘allure’ (Farge 1997) of the digital photo archive be, when all the haptics and personal interaction with the material and its human intermediaries are absent, even though more ‘voices’ and ‘raw’ material from everyday life are stored than ever before? How do we establish a connection to the holdings contained in the digital archive?
3. Narratives and counter-narratives: How do the shifts that come with digital image archives allow for new narratives and counter-narratives? How can scholars, archivists, artists and curators work with these new forms given the plurality of scattered voices? If digital photo archives create new visibilities, what might condition new in-visibilities?
4. Politics of taxonomies and metadata: Taxonomisation is a cultural technique rooted in archival science in general and Western science in particular. Digital technologies seem to give classification systems greater flexibility, variety and combinability. To what extent are taxonomies, the digital grids that structure metadata, truly fluid and adaptable? To what extent are they an expression, instead, of the value and power systems that govern present-day societies? What can emerge from the messiness of taxonomies?
5. Economies and ecologies of the digital photo archive: Structured digital image collections have become assets in the logic of cultural heritage and science, and more importantly, in data capitalism, where data is the source of monetisation and the basis for the development of machine learning. This raises pressing questions about digital materiality, multifarious forms of labour and the environmental impact of maintaining and expanding archival infrastructures.

Proposals of 300–500 words, accompanied by a short biographical notice, should be sent by 15 August 2021 to the following address: jael.steiner@unibas.ch

See more here: https://www.khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/call-for-papers-applications.php

Decisions will be announced no later than 31 August 2021.

The conference is a collaboration between the Department of Media Studies at the University of Basel (Estelle Blaschke) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (Costanza Caraffa) and will take place on January 13–14, 2021 at the University of Basel.

It is part of the Photo Archives open conference series, which was launched in 2009 and has seen previous meetings in Florence, London, New York, Los Angeles and Oxford (https://www.khi.fi.it/en/forschung/photothek​/photo-archives.php). Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the conference organisers. We are considering the possibility of publishing the contributions presented at the conference.

In 2020 the Don’t Press Print conference organized by the RPS and CFPR brought together nineteen speakers from across the world to discuss historical perspectives on the collodion photographic process and how contemporary artists use the collodion process in their practice. The process was the dominant through the nineteenth century and has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years. The published proceedings are now available. 

Two keynotes papers were given by Mark Osterman looking at collodion as a medium, and from France Scully Osterman looking at Sally Mann’s use of collodion.  Other papers looked at collodion in Japan, Australia and India, the work of George Washington Wilson, the American Civil War, Miklos Barabas, collodion for halftone, and individual artists’  use of collodion            

This book brings together papers from all the speakers plus one additional paper. Papers are from: Frank Menger, Mark Osterman, Adrienna Lundgren, Rachel Wetzel, Ashleigh Black Zsuszanna Szegedy-Maszak, Tony Richards, Ian Chamblerlain, Chihoko Ando, Shreya Mukherjee, Bill Nieberding, Alan Hodgson, France Scully Osterman, Erin Solomons, Rob Ball, Paul Elter, Christian Klant, Steve de Grys, Niamh Fahy, Wilson Yeung, Jo Gane and Alex Boyd.

Don’t Press Print: De/Re-Constructing the collodion process
183 pages, illustrated, paper covers
RPS/ CFPR, 2021
£40
Order here: https://rps.org/DPP01

Spiritualism, Photography, and the Search for Ectoplasm. In this talk, award-winning photographer Shannon Taggart discusses the history of spirit photography and its influence on her own documentary work with the Lily Dale Spiritualist Assembly, recently published in her Fulgur Press book Séance. An artist based in St. Paul, MN, Taggart’s photographs explore the intersection between photography, and the representation of belief. Her work has been exhibited and featured internationally, including within the publications TIME, New York Times Magazine, Discover, and Newsweek. It has been recognized by Nikon, Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, American Photography and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace. Taggart’s monograph, SÉANCE, was listed as one of TIME magazine’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019.

The Media of Mediumship: Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain’s Science, Technology, and Magic Collections is a one-year AHRC funded project which examines the relationship between science, technology, and occultism in modern Britain, using the unique collections of the Science Museum Group and Senate House Library to explore the entangled histories of human belief, perception, trust, and scientific evidence as experienced through sight and sound. The project is led by Prof Christine Ferguson at the University of Stirling and Dr Efram Sera-Shriar at the Science Museum, London. They are supported by team member Emma Merkling at University of Stirling and The Courtauld Institute of Art.

Over a series of talks, interactive activities, and creative performances, it tells the story of how unorthodox spiritual believers and sceptics alike have used new technologies and scientific instruments— photography, wireless transmission, telegraphy, tape recorders— to attest or debunk the existence of an unseen world. In so doing, the project will deliver original curatorial perspectives on collection materials whose occult histories of use have long been unknown or misunderstood.

All ‘Media of Mediumship’ events are free and open to the public. 

Register for this event here

See more about this, the project and upcoming events here: https://mediaofmediumship.stir.ac.uk/events/

The Photographic Historical Society of Canada is presenting a talk which examines doctor of medicine and anthropologist Richard Neuhauss' (1855-1915) use of a stuffed superb parrot as the test object of the Lippmann process; the photographic technology relying on standing waves for the rendition of colour, first disclosed in 1891 by Luxembourgian-French physicist Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921). My research maps the use of stuffed animals in various color processes for testing the color sensitivity of emulsions as well as the photographer's own commitment to the image's genesis, focusing on this parrot as a colonial animal-object par excellence. Having photographed the parrot 300 times, I highlight the implications of Neuhauss' iconic image for the shifting relationship between color and nature within the rivalry between him and Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's three-colour printing technique. In doing so, I connect the entanglements of color photography and taxidermy in the history of science, media, and Empire.

Guest Lecture by Dr. Hanin Hannouch, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin State Museums, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation / Max-Planck, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz.

Dr. Hanin Hannouch Guest Lecture on the Lippmann Process
Thursday, July 22, 2021
1:00 AM – 3:00 AM BST
Free but book here. 

A lecturer in history of photography, full-time fixed term, is sought by Birkbeck’s History of Art Department during Professor Steve Edward’s Paul Mellon fellowship, where he be working on British Daguerreotypes-Antoine Claudet. 

You will contribute classes in your specialism to a range of team-taught modules on our BA and MA programmes, design and teach a ten-weeks MA Module based on your research, and undertake administrative roles which will include module director under the guidance of the Head of Department. You will be part of a supportive Department with a reputation for teaching and research excellence.

You should have a good first degree and have completed or be near to completing a PhD or equivalent qualification in a relevant subject area. A proven track record of relevant teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level is highly desirable, as are administrative experience and evidence of published research.

See more and apply here: https://cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lecturer-in-history-of-photography-449372.html

This opportunity is for a curatorial / academic researcher to project-manage the first dedicated publication to explore the legacy of Black women in photography active in Britain between the 1980s – 90s. This publication is based on an illustrated gallery lecture the artist Joy Gregory presented in 2018 at Autograph.

The role will involve working closely with Gregory to edit the book, including: re-working / transcribing her 2018 lecture into a written text and producing an extended in-conversation with Gregory; assisting and shaping the research direction; collating ephemera, textual and visual materials; writing interpretation and other short texts, where appropriate, about the selected artists’ practices/biographies; liaising with the various collaborators and institutions; managing the project schedule and deadlines with the teams at Autograph and MACK. The role can be adapted to the work and life commitments of the successful candidate, but we anticipate that it will either involve an estimated 2 days a week commitment over a 6-month period, or a block of approximately 40-50 days within an agreed time frame. The post is co-supported by Autograph and MACK.

The successful applicant will receive a fee of £7000 all inclusive.

Details here: https://autograph.org.uk/blog/new-opportunity-publication-researcher-black-women-in-photography/

Christie's is to offer The Herschel family collection of 69 offprints, extracts and separate publications by Sir John F. Herschel, 1813-1850. It is estimated at £20,000-30,000.

The collection of 69 original works by Sir John Herschel, assembled by his son, William James Herschel (1833-1917) collection includes offprints of Herschel’s three most important publications on photography: ‘On the chemical action of the rays of the solar spectrum on preparations of silver and other substances.’ [With:] – ‘On the action of the rays of the solar spectrum on vegetable colours, and on some new photographic processes’. [And:] – ‘On certain improvements on photographic processes.’ Offprints from the Philosophical Transactions for 1840, 1842 & 1843, the first two with authorial annotations. 

See more: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6326125?COSID=40028000&cid=DM455843&bid=271566381

I'm looking for information on my biological father Hugh Scott. I have two pieces of information, from the British Journal of Photography, on his photographic career - see below:

10 Sept 1937.  In a report on the Professional Photographers’ Association exhibition of portraits in London:  ‘Hugh Scott has some good large heads, mostly of sitters in theatrical character, though the make-ups, and particularly the wigs, are in some cases not so successful as the photography’

7 Oct 1949. Hugh Scott is noted as joining the staff of the London School of Photography, Perry’s Place, Oxford Street, London W1

Has anyone come across either his name and/or his work and might be able to add further detail? Are there any other sources that I might check to get further information?

Russell Southwood