Blogs

Any new book from Elizabeth Edwards is significant. Her most recent book has just been published. Photographs and the Practice of History asks what is it to practice history in an age in which photographs exist? What is the impact of photographs on the core historiographical practices which define the discipline and shape its enquiry and methods? In Photographs and the Practice of History, Elizabeth Edwards proposes a new approach to historical thinking which explores these questions and redefines the practices at the heart of this discipline.

Structured around key concepts in historical methodology which are recognisable to all undergraduates, the book shows that from the mid-19th century onward, photographs have influenced historical enquiry. Exposure to these mass-distributed cultural artefacts is enough to change our historical frameworks even when research is textually-based.

Conceptualised as a series of 'sensibilities' rather than a methodology as such, it is intended as a companion to 'how to' approaches to visual research and visual sources. Photographs and the Practice of History not only builds on existing literature by leading scholars: it also offers a highly original approach to historiographical thinking that gives readers a foundation on which to build their own historical practices.

Photographs and the Practice of History: A Short Primer
Elizabeth Edwards
Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/photographs-and-the-practice-of-history-9781350120655/

As part of its on-going series of talks looking at collections of photography the RPS Historical Group is  hosting Anne Gleave, Curator of Photographic Collections, Archives Centre, Maritime Museum, National Museums Liverpool, who will give an introduction to the Stewart Bale Ltd photographic collection held at National Museums Liverpool. 

The collection consists of most of the surviving Bale negatives, around 200,000, principally large format glass and film, along with approximately 4,000 prints and original documentation i.e. order books or negative registers and client registers.  The date span and diverse range of Bale’s commissions has left a unique visual legacy of Liverpool’s built environment and industrial, shipping and commercial history during a major period of social change and development.  Although principally from the North West, commissions extended nationally.  The range of subject matter is particularly well represented in shipping; docks and cargo handling; engineering; architecture; industry; commerce; transport and World War II bomb damage in and around Liverpool.  The talk will aim to show a cross section of image content, some details of the firm’s history, the collection and the work that has been undertaken to date to preserve and catalogue it.

Presenting the... Stewart Bale Ltd Collection
8 February 2022
Free, online
Register here: https://rps.org/bale

Past talks are available https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpBS9KWcBfCfeWAJNybBw15Ps_L3w6gQ

The Archivist post sits within the Programming department at The Photographers' Gallery which includes the Exhibitions, Digital and Education teams. Programming staff are responsible for the planning, development, delivery, evaluation and archiving of: exhibitions, events, projects and related activities. 

The Archivist post will oversee the acquisitions, management, preservation and dissemination of the collections within Archive, alongside participating in the wider work of the organisation. The successful candidate will be a qualified professional with knowledge and experience of archiving practice within a visual arts organisation, with an interest in photography. 

Details: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/about-us/job-vacancies-tpg

This informal illustrated talk will explore the photographic practice of Augusta Crofton Dillon (1839 - 1928) of Mote Park House, Roscommon and Clonbrock House, Ahascragh, Galway. Crofton was a talented amateur photographer. Her work is included in one of Ireland's finest photographic collections - the Clonbrock Collection at the National Library of Ireland - and is highly sought-after by private collectors worldwide.

Orla Fitzpatrick has an extensive knowledge of historical photographic practices in Ireland. In her research into Augusta Crofton's work she has examined a wide range of previously neglected source materials. In this talk, Fitzpatrick will draw on her close examination of Crofton's diaries and personal account books. They span a thirty-year period from 1865 to 1895 and reveal new insights into Crofton's experiments with the wet plate collodion process in the 1860s through to her adoption of later technologies and hand-held instant cameras.

This talk is presented as part of In Our Own Image: Photography in Ireland 1839 to the Present - the first comprehensive historical and critical survey of photography in Ireland. The launch exhibition in this year-long programme is on display at the Printworks, Dublin Castle until February 5th.

See more and book: https://app.squarespacescheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=20183240&calendarID=6459355

Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/c/GalleryOfPhotographyDublin/featured

Photography, femininity and leisure: Augusta Crofton Dillon's photographic practice, 1865 to 1895
Dr Orla Fitzpatrick
Live and streamed
Monday, 31 January at 1.15pm
Poddle Room, Printworks, Dublin Castle, Dublin, Ireland

Impressions Gallery is a charity that helps people understand the world through photography. Established in 1972, we have grown to become one of the UK’s leading centres for photography.

We are seeking to appoint a Curator to work as part of our small and dedicated team.

The Curator will be responsible for the delivery of exhibitions, commissions, and other curatorial projects in line with Impressions Gallery’s vision and mission. They will contribute ideas to the artistic programme, with opportunities to curate and lead on exhibitions that champion high-quality and risk-taking photography that is accessible to all.

See more and apply here: https://www.impressions-gallery.com/opportunity/curator/

The London Transport Museum, Covent Garden is opening a new exhibition Legacies: London Transport’s Caribbean Workforce from 11 February.  The exhibition celebrates the contribution Caribbean people have made to transport in London since the 1950s to the present day, while also documenting the struggles these individuals and their families endured, especially at the start of their new lives in the Capital.

Striking archive photography, oral recordings of family history, new films, some never-before-displayed objects and advertising posters explore how generations of Caribbean workers have shaped London and its transport.

After the Second World War, the UK’s need for workers to help re-build the country coincided with the Caribbean population’s need for jobs. Britain benefited greatly from those making the difficult 7,000km journey to London.

From 1956 to 1970, LT ran a direct recruitment campaign from Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica, looking for employees to come and work for the organisation. Arriving with high hopes about starting a new life in Britain, many were shocked with the difficulties they faced including racism, poverty, homesickness and damp, cold British weather.

New recruits worked as bus conductors, station staff, canteen assistants and in track maintenance. Though many employees were skilled and well-educated, they had to take basic, low-paid work and often found promotion difficult due to informal but pervasive discrimination. 

Yet, despite these challenges, many employees have fond memories of enjoying their work, helping to create new social and sports clubs such as the London Transport Caribbean Association and joining LT’s many sports teams.

Visitors will be able to uncover stories and memories from first, second and third generation Caribbean people who worked for LT in the past and now work for its successor, Transport for London (TfL).

See: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visit/museum-guide/legacies-london-transports-caribbean-workforce

Ffotogallery has announced Siân Addicott as its new Director. Siân will join Ffotogallery at the beginning of April from her current role as Head of Undergraduate Photography at University of Wales Trinity St David’s (UWTSD).Siân joined UWTSD in 2013, before becoming Programme Director of the BA Photojournalism & Documentary programme in 2016. In 2019, she took on the leadership of the wider undergraduate photography programme, covering Documentary Photography & Visual Activism and Photography in the Arts. Prior to joining the University in 2013, Siân spent eight years working as International Editor at Camera Press, one of the UK’s largest independent photographic agencies.

Siân said “I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead the team at Ffotogallery and build upon its success as the home for contemporary photography in Wales. I’m really looking forward to exploring exciting and new collaborative partnerships with photographers, artists and organisations, and with communities across Wales and beyond, and helping to develop Ffotogallery’s potential following its recent relocation. At a time when photography’s legacy and on-going role in shaping cultural identities is rightly being challenged and re-examined, there has never been a more timely opportunity to ensure Ffotogallery is a welcoming and inclusive space for progressive photography in Wales. “

Mathew Talfan, Chair at Ffotogallery said, “We are delighted with the appointment of our new Director, and believe that Siân will bring a wealth of experience to the role. Her deep knowledge of photographic practice, her combined background in commercial and education settings as well as real understanding of cultural identities in Wales and her commitment to social justice make for a really strong platform on which to lead Ffotogallery.”

https://www.ffotogallery.org/

This session of Addressing Images is based on the work of Singapore photographer Yip Cheong Fun (1903-1989) in the 1960s and 1970s. We will discuss how Yip achieved 美感 (mei gan), or a feeling of beauty, that he along with other “amateur” practitioners in the local photographic community were seeking in the vignettes they composed, sometimes on group field trips across the island city.

Anchoring the discussion is Beauty on Top, made up of concentric rectangles in partial shadow that draws our attention to the female protagonist standing off-centre, her wavy hair and what we can see of her floral qipao contrasting with the angular environment. This photograph by Yip was accepted and hung at the Bournemouth Camera Club International Exhibition in 1964. His participation in photography contests serves as a form of documentation of his work, which he treated more as a hobby than a profession, even after winning multiple awards.

Writings on the oeuvres of Yip and his contemporaries, such as Lim Kwong Ling (1932-), Tan Lip Seng (1942-) and Wu Peng Seng (1915-2006), have thus far focused on the choices they made with general composition and the use of light, and not yet their depictions of the human figure. In this Research Forum event, we will examine how this band of photographers framed the body through their camera lenses. We will also consider how the visual portraits they created can collectively enrich what we know about life in a rapidly urbanising Singapore at the time.

Nadya Wang is a PhD candidate at The Courtauld Institute of Art where she is completing her thesis, titled “Accidental Career Girl to Working Mother of the Year: Her World, Women and the Fashion Industry in Singapore, 1974-1990”. She is Founder and Editor of Art & Market and Fashion & Market, which present specialist content on practices within the Southeast Asian art and fashion communities respectively. Nadya is also a lecturer in the School of Fashion at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.

Framing the Body: Yip Cheong Fun and Singapore Photography in the 1960s and 1970s
Nadya Wang
Courtauld Research Forum
Online,  Friday 28 January 2022
12.30pm to 1.30pm
See more and book here.

My great grandfather, André François Bulot (1810-1873) is part of the beginning history of photography.  I have found some history about him in British photography history.  I’m thankful for this. I would love more about him.  

He came to the USA in 1856, made his home in Nashville, Tennessee. There he did miniature portraits in watercolor.  I own one of them.  He died there in 1873.  I don’t have his likeness in any form. I’m hope full that I might find this or more information with the work he did in England and France. 

Dr Sara Dominici writes... I am writing to introduce the new website for my project on amateur darkroom practices. I am keen to connect with researchers and practitioners interested in the histories of the darkroom, and its conceptualisation and theorisation.: https://sites.google.com/my.westminster.ac.uk/amateurdarkroompractices/home  

​Dr Sara Dominici (she/her)
Senior Lecturer and Course Leader MA Art and Visual Culture
School of Humanities I University of Westminster I 309 Regent Street I London I W1B 2HW

As part of International Women's Day the Royal Photographic Society will be presenting Rose Teanby who will talk about early women photographers in the Photographic Society. 

Queen Victoria became joint patron of the Photographic Society of London (later the Royal Photographic Society) in May 1853 and continued her support until her death in 1901. From its beginnings women were encouraged to join the Society at a time of widespread exclusion from many aspects of Victorian life, and this talk features women members of the society demonstrating their skill and enthusiasm for the new photographic art.

‘Ladies shall be eligible’ Women in the Photographic Society
Tuesday, 8 March 2022 at 1900 (GMT) | 2000-2100 (CET) | 1400-1500 (EST)
Free, register here: https://rps.org/IWDtalk

Image: Charles Clifford, Queen Victoria, 1861, J Paul Getty Museum, 84.XA.876.2.27

What is the shape and size of a photographic history that is written from the point of view of having no photographs? When photographs are destroyed, lost, repressed, or never intended to be permanent, it leaves a gap in what we usually refer to as our main research material.

By chance or by design, photographs disappear every day. They might be destroyed, or lost, or designed to fade. They might be rendered undiscoverable through complicated bureaucracy, secrecy, or algorithms. Contemplating the space left without photographs, a veritable foil to the enormity of the image archive, can enrich our understanding of photographic history and methodology. The PHRC seeks contributions interrogating the photographic histories that are not image led, that excavate imageless histories.

In this 10th annual conference of the PHRC we invite papers of 15 minutes addressing contemporary debates in and around the absence of photographs. We invite short abstracts of about 200 words on topics that address themes like (but not limited to):

• Disappearing or fading photographs by design or by accident
• Histories of archival findings and losses
• Suppression of photographs
• Photography as auxiliary to other things
• Historiographical considerations of a photography without images
• Methodological innovations to reconstruct photographic cultures when images are not available, or never were
• Photographs rendered as data

If possible, we will be offering a hybrid conference this year, or entirely online if not. All speakers will be offered the opportunity to present remotely.

Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
When: 13-14 June 2022
Where: ONLINE via Microsoft Teams / hybrid (COVID-19 permiting)
Deadline for abstracts: 21 February 2022

Follow us on Twitter @PHRC_DeMontfort
Conference hashtag #PHRC22

Please send abstracts to phrc@dmu.ac.uk by 21 February 2022, embedding in the document your name, contact details, up to 5 keywords and institutional affiliation (when applicable).

Following the success of last year's guest exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, 'My name is Sara', this online panel event curated by the artist Sara Davidmann explores how academic research, art and exhibitions addressing issues of antisemitism and the Holocaust can generate new ways of raising public awareness about the past and present, including highlighting the rise of xenophobia and populism today.

Chaired by Prof David Feldman, Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, University of London

Speakers:
James Bulgin, Head of Content, Holocaust Galleries, Imperial War Museum
Alex Maws, Head of Educational Grants and Projects, Association of Jewish Refugees
Dr Simone Gigliotti, Deputy Director, Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London
This project is sponsored by The Association of Jewish Refugees.

Hosted by Four Corners
Pay what you can. Book here.

During the opening decades of the 20th century, William Hope was a well-respected medium among the spiritualist community in Britain, with positive endorsements from major scientific figures such as the chemist William Crookes and the author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. He was often seen as one of the few mediums to be able to produce authentic spirit photographs.

However, all that changed in late February 1922 when a team of investigators led by the famous British psychical researcher Harry Price claimed to have caught Hope cheating during one of his sittings and discovered that he was swapping blank photographic plates with ones containing existing images that appeared to be depictions of spirit entities. Hope was publicly exposed as a fraud, and what ensued was a major debate between believers and sceptics over the legitimacy of the medium’s alleged spirit photography.

Using surviving materials from the Senate House Library and Science Museum Group collections, including photographs, private correspondence, published sources and camera technologies, this talk will explore this story, and reflect on what makes for trustworthy evidence in investigations of extraordinary phenomena.

The talk will be given by Dr Efram Sera-Shriar and will be hosted by the National Science and Media Museum, both live and online. It is free but registration is needed.

See: https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/whats-on/cafe-scientifique

Icon Photographic Materials Group committee is looking for a new chair. After six years as chair on the PhMG committee, Jacqueline Moon is stepping down and the committee is looking for a replacement. You don’t need to be a specialist in photograph conservation to apply, just a keen interest in photographs who’d like to gain experience running events and sourcing content for our social media channels.

Please send your expression of interest (max 300 words) with your details to phmgicon@gmail.com by the Friday 21 January 2022

An online 3D event celebrating the anniversaries of the births of Robert Burns and Charles Wheatstone, will be held on Saturday, 29 January 2022 at 1730 GMT. It is free but registration is required. The programme will feature: 

The next two editions of the Bloomsbury Photograph Fair, London, will take place on 13 March and 9 October 2022 running from 0930-1500 at the Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury. It will be on at the same time as the Bloomsbury Book Fair.

See: https://etcfairs.com/events/bloomsbury-photograph-fair/

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh is currently showing a collaboration, Perdendosi, between the photographer and printmaker Norman McBeath and artist, master potter and author Edmund de Waal.

The title, Perdendosi, is a musical term meaning to gradually die away. The photographs are a study of leaves at the held, drawn-out stage of their metamorphosis, where they are poised on the cusp of decay and eventual disintegration. During this time, they take on extraordinary shapes as they slowly dry, giving each leaf a unique identity and character. They are at a stage when they are leached of all colour, more like parchment than plant, on the edge of crumbling into the ground and vanishing for good. This study takes them up and gives them an attention, so that they are seen in their own right – like a final Act. In this way Perdendosi offers familiar subjects of study, freighted with associations and symbolism, giving each viewer the opportunity to make their own interpretations. 

 Edmund de Waal offers his own train of thought and associations in his accompanying text Twelve Leaves, which he describes as both autobiography and a journal of reading. This is a uniquely personal, oblique and moving text, in which he draws from poets including Proust, Goethe and Celan in exploring his own emotional response, stimulated by living with these extraordinary images. 

‘leaves hold the idea of holding on …

I think that as I get older I realise that this is hard, that

leaves segue into the act of leaving.’

Edmund de Waal, Twelve Leaves, 2021

Perdendosi is produced in a limited edition of twenty-five and presented in a solander box with silver gilt title, signed by both artists.

The photographs in the exhibition can be seen here: https://www.thefineartsociety.com/exhibitions/169-norman-mcbeath-and-edmund-de-waal-perdendosi/

The exhibition runs from 14th January - 18th February, 2022.

The exhibition Rommi Smith: Changing The Story: Photographs Of British Life In Black And White (1917-1962) is showing at the North Wall gallery in Summertown, Oxford. It’s a selection of 34 images from major British photo library TopFoto, curated by writer-in-residence at the archive, Rommi Smith. These photographs show a radial diversity that ‘disrupts ideas of Britishness as solely white’.

‘I open the album and am spellbound; immediately struck that what unites these temporally disparate photographs – these stories of people and places across time and space – is the racial diversity of the protagonists in them. These photos flip the script on Britishness: my history lessons did not look like this.’ Dr Rommi Smith

There is an associated event on the evening of 20 January.

https://www.thenorthwall.com/whats-on/rommi-smith-changing-the-story-photographs-of-british-life-in-black-and-white-1917-1962/

Although this is not strictly photography-related this may be of interest to the BPH readership... 2022 sees the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of William Herschel, a profoundly significant figure in the field of astronomy, but one who made his early living as a musician - as an oboist, violinist, harpsichordist, organist, composer, and impresario. After leaving a military band in his native Hanover for an unsuccessful two-year stint in London (1757-59), Herschel moved to the north of England (1760), where he composed his symphonies and many other works as an itinerant musician in Richmond, Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, Pontefract, Doncaster, Leeds, and Halifax. In 1766 he accepted an invitation as organist at the new Octagon Chapel in Bath, where he became a mainstay of the musical scene for over fifteen years. In Bath he was joined by other musical family members including his sister Caroline, who assisted William first in musical and then in astronomical duties, ultimately becoming a distinguished astronomer in her own right.

Herschel's astronomical interests and construction of very high-quality telescopes, beginning in 1773, brought him to international and lasting fame when he discovered the planet now called Uranus in 1781. He came to the attention of King George III, who summoned him to Windsor and effectively ended the musical portion of his career, at age 43. For the rest of his life Herschel made numerous groundbreaking contributions: designing large telescopes; mapping the Milky Way system of stars and the Sun's motion in it; cataloguing and classifying thousands of star clusters, nebulae, variable stars, and double stars; proving the effectiveness of gravity outside the solar system; discovering several moons around Saturn and Uranus; discovering infrared radiation (from the Sun); postulating an evolving universe with stars and nebulae that are born, age, and die; estimating the age of the Universe; and arguing that all stars and planets are populated with intelligent beings.

Contemporary academia's separation of music and astronomy across the arts and sciences is something Herschel and other eighteenth-century thinkers would have found hard to understand, given both endeavours proceeded for them on mathematical principles. This symposium takes the bicentenary of his death as a cue to explore new aspects of Herschel's work as composer, instrumentalist, impresario, and astronomer in the intellectual, creative, and cultural contexts of his time. Our symposium will take a wide perspective on astronomy, music, and natural philosophy, including the Herschels' legacy in connections between science and art today.

Papers of 20 minutes are invited on, but are by no means restricted to, the following themes in his musical and astronomical careers:

*       Herschel's aesthetics

*       Herschel and theology

*       Herschel and creativity

*       Eighteenth-century manufacture of scientific and musical devices

*       Herschel's musical and astronomical networks

*       Herschel's musical life (1757-82)

*       Herschel and Yorkshire, Bath, and Windsor (Slough)

*       Herschel and patronage

*       Herschel as a Hanoverian

*       Herschel, the Bath Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society

*       Herschel in the context of late eighteenth-century natural philosophy

*       Herschel's legacy in astronomy, music, and interdisciplinarity

Proposals of no more than 200 words should be sent to Rachel Cowgill (at rachel.cowgill@york.ac.uk<mailto:rachel.cowgill@york.ac.uk>) by 11 February 2022 with the title 'Herschel Bicentenary Symposium proposal', and should include the author's/co-authors' name, affiliation, and email address.

 The symposium will conclude with a public keynote lecture by Professor Tom McLeish FRS (University of York), a panel discussion on Herschel's legacies, and a concert of Herschel's music given as part of the York Festival of Ideas, 11-24 June 2022 (https://yorkfestivalofideas.com/). We are grateful for the support of the Festival in organising these bicentenary events. Further activities celebrating the ways science and music interconnect are planned for 2022, organised by the University of York's Sound, Voices, and Technology research network (SoVoT).

 Programme Committee:

Rachel Cowgill (Department of Music, University of York) Sarah Clemmens Waltz (Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific) Woodruff T. Sullivan III (University of Washington, Seattle)

'Cosmic Harmonies': A Symposium Celebrating the Life, Science, Music, and Legacy of William Herschel (1738-1822)
University of York (UK), 19 June 2022
Deadline for cfp: 11 February 2022