Blogs

To what extent does the meaning of a photograph depend on social experience, industrial contingencies, the professional environment or the culture of its producers? This special issue of Photographica - from the Société française de photographie - aims to explore this question and thus extend the discussions initiated during a seminar at the EHESS in 2018–2020.

The issue attempts to contribute to the growing number of studies into the professions or companies related to photography (previously unknown or underestimated by historiography), as well as recent research on the influence of cooperation networks on the “‘public’ life of photographs”. Its purpose is to bring together texts devoted to trajectories and collaborations of the multiple players who participate in the production of photographs and, at the same time, contribute to shape their modalities of existence in social space. Instead of questioning the photographer’s gaze, the meaning or the intrinsic power of his or her images, the question will be to examine skills, trades or professions involved in the conception, the financing and/or making of photographic images intended for distribution in multiple copies to a wide audience. How, by whom, and according to which cultural, social, and economic models, has the expertise of these producers been structured and, possibly, hierarchized within a field whose contours remain to be questioned over the course of the history of photography? At the same time, what were the repercussions of the interactions between these producers both on their operating models and on their photographs?

The full call is in the PDF here:  Photographica_4_call_EN-FR.pdf. 

The Stanley B Burns, MD Medical Photography Collection was sold to Yale University Medical Library in anticipation of Dr Burns developing a specialized medical photography museum. The Washington Post among other papers carried the story. The collection of over 15,000 images (1840-1950) includes numerous British medical photographs including a rare 1874 women's medical school album depicting early women graduates and noted practitioners. The gilt inscribed cover title,  "Mrs. Dr. Fulton, Women’s Medical College London 1874". Among the WWI albums are unusual presentation albums of British wounded soldiers at Russian Grand Duchess George's London hospital's these albums are among the most detailed inscribed albums of identified wounded soldiers in the war. Many photographs of significant British physician images are also in the collection which will be available to the public by Yale University as thery are digitized. Some digitized copies of the images and albums remain available at the Burns Archive.www.burnsarchive.com

Here are two websites announcing the acquisition

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/medical-history-photos-yale/2020/12/18/6330a9f2-3fda-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html

Yale News Release

https://news.yale.edu/2020/12/02/newly-acquired-trove-historic-photos-captures-evolution-medicine

As many collectors know finding a proper home for ones collection is very difficult and often a life long search. Yale Medical School Library is the perfect place for my collection as they already have the Harvey Cushing Medical Museum dedicated to neurosurgery, and are well staffed to handle another medical museum. The Yale Medical Library has had a significant collection of medical photography and my collection complements and draws attention to their own holdings. Most importantly the library staff's appreciation of the Burns Collection significance is evident and their dedication to preservation and access is exemplary.

Stanley B Burns,MD,FACS

What can picture postcards tell us about the history of nursing, and images and stereotypes of nursing over the years? Join historian Julia Hallam to find out more.

Pictures of Nursing is a travelling exhibition and digital resource curated by Julia Hallam for the National Library of Medicine, NIH, Washington, DC based on a collection of 2,500 postcards donated to the Library by Michael Zwerdling, a former hospice nurse. The cards date between the late 1890s and the 1980s and depict nurses and nursing from twenty countries worldwide. Hallam's talk will focus primarily on the years 1890 - 1910, a period known as the golden age of the postcard, and trace the dominant trends in the public image of nurses and nursing that emerge at this time.

To book: register to attend and a link will be circulated in advance with instructions on how to join the event.

Brent has a rich history of multiculturalism. Roy Mehta’s exquisite black and white photographs capture the daily rituals of its various communities, most notably the Afro-Carribean and Irish, engaged in seemingly simple activities at home, in the street and at church. Shot from 1989-1993, the images move from profound moments of faith to quiet family moments and to the noisy streets outside, and remind us that every moment is an opportunity for connection and reflection.

'Mehta doesn’t shy away from the sadness and difficulties of this foundational story, but his multiracial faces – taken in Brent, northwest London – remain coloured with British dreams, and they exude a vitality which suggests that, although things are never going to be easy, all will eventually be well.’ Caryl Phillips from the introduction

Revival: London 1989–1993. Photography by Roy Mehta
Foreword by Dr Mark Sealy, introduction by Caryl Phillips
Published 14 January 2021
Hoxton Mini Press
£25 Hardback, 96pp. 

Order: https://www.hoxtonminipress.com/products/revival

This series of three seminars considers the evolving importance of photograph archives.  Moderated by Paul Lowe, curators Alison Nordström and Hilary Roberts will draw on their vast professional experience to consider how archives are created, what is involved in maintaining them for future generations and issues associated with their exploitation.

The three parts are: 

Session 1. Creating the Archive (7 January)

Potential topics:  What is an Archive (including the difference between a collection and an archive)? Who creates an archive? What is its purpose? What should be included (proactive vs passive collecting)?  How should it be organized? What is the cost of creating an archive?  What is its value? What are the essential decisions when creating an archive? Differences between an individual artist’s archive and institutional archives. Case studies: different kinds of archives. What happens when your photographs become part of an institutional collection?

Session 2. Preserving the Archive (21 January)

Potential topics:  Preserving images and preserving objects. Stages of archive preservation and management (short, medium, long term);  Past versus Present Practice (format issues, accountability, ethics, due diligence) The importance of collaborative relationships; Roles of the Photographer, the Photographer’s Representatives, Museum, Libraries and Archives; The Acquisition Process; Collections Management & Interpretation;  How the archiving process supports the evolution of interpretation and understanding; What are the essential decisions when preserving an archive? 

Session 3. Accessing the Archive (4 February)

Potential topics:  How will your photographs outlive you? How will they be seen? Who uses archives, why and how?  What are the potential benefits?  How do you balance access and preservation needs?  How do you fund archives?  Are they viable sources of revenue?  What is the future of archives in the internet age?

Each are online and run from 1000-1115 (Eastern Time) / 1500-1615 (GMT) and are free. 

To register click here.

Image (cropped): Hilary Roberts. The Tim Hetherington Archive in storage, New York 2015.

I’m proud to inform you that a new biographic study has been published: "Stefano Lecchi pupil of Daguerre: the latest revelations" (texts in English, French and Italian).

Following detailed research in an international context, the author of this study would like scholars and enthusiasts to be aware – for the very first time – of Stefano Lecchi’s complete biography, full of information so far unpublished, starting with his date and place of birth (a brain teaser that called for years of intense investigation, countless attempts and a bit of good luck before finding a solution) until the story of his stay in Naples and Pompei which includes some really surprising news, as well as findings about the time he came and then left Rome, probably for good.

His journeys through various European countries (UK, Malta, France, Italy) are punctually narrated thanks to the announcements published in newspapers, and through the documents that testify the presence of Lecchi in some cities, his marriage in Malta and the birth of his children in France and Rome.

As a pupil of Daguerre, Lecchi had exhibitions in Cosmorama and in Diorama before dedicating himself to the daguerreotype: he worked at this art with passion and tenacity, culminating with the invention and patenting in France of a particular process for coloring daguerreotypes, a «photographic apparatus» with an innovative mirror that reversed the images framed by the lens, and a chemical method for printing photogenic images on paper, the results of which left stunned the Anglo-Saxon amateurs photographers George Wilson Bridges and Richard Calvert Jones, both trusted correspondents of the famous William Henry Fox Talbot.

BIOGRAPHY: http://www.robertocaccialanza.com/biography.html

PUBLISHED BOOKS: http://www.robertocaccialanza.com/books.html

Roberto Caccialanza

Knight of the Order “To the merit of the Italian Republic”

Independent researcher and historian of Photography

Member of the European Society for the History of Photography

_________________________________________________________

A new BBC ALBA documentary to be transmitted on New Year’s Eve reveals newly discovered photos taken during the construction of the railway line between Fort William and Mallaig from the late 1890s. Arguably one of the most spectacular railway lines in the world, this collection of over one hundred plates were unearthed in a sale in Cornwall in 2019. 

Local musician Ingrid Henderson follows the story of these photographs, what they reveal about lives and people in Lochaber, and attempts to discover the artist behind the lens.  At the same time she creates new music to pay tribute to the railway and the people who built it. For Ingrid, born in Mallaig, brought up in Fort William and now living and working in Glenfinnan, the railway has always been present in her life. 

In this programme, which is called Song of the Track/Ceol na Loidhne, Ingrid travels the line stopping at stations along the route to find the places in the photographs, and looks for inspiration to compose a new album. Producer Annie Cheape, said: “This previously unpublished original source material features over 100 images of the build project led by contractors Robert McAlpine and Sons, and includes the renowned Glenfinnan Viaduct.  Along with construction they document the people working on the railway, and the dangerous conditions they encountered.

“These images reveal the faces of the nurses who tended the injured in the make-shift field hospitals. Hundreds of men died to drive this section of the railway through one of the roughest terrains in Britain.  Many hundreds were injured while blasting through the rocks, most of them navies from Ireland or the Scottish islands.

“Many men were injured during the rock blasting, but alcohol was a huge problem too.  Men died of hypothermia after drinking too much, or had accidents on Monday morning while still under the influence.  As a result, McAlpine set up an innovative scheme of licensed drinking huts with safe whisky.    

“These images also reveal the faces of the nurses who tended the injured in the make-shift field hospitals. They are smiling, look relaxed, happy and enjoying themselves.  It’s unusual to see women of this period photographed in this informal way.”  

With the help of the Lochaber Archive Centre, Ingrid attempts to find the names of some of these women. She also visits Hege Hernes who lives at Glenfinnan Station, who reveals evidence to suggest that the photos were taken by Tom Malcolm McAlpine, one of Robert MacAlpine’s sons. He was a manager of a section of the line where one of the men was badly injured during concrete blasting, and some of the photographs document his recuperation.  

Sgeul Media made Song of the Track/Ceol na Loidhne for BBC ALBA and it airs on Thursday, December 31 at 9pm. It will also be available on the BBC iPlayer for 30 days afterwards.

BBC ALBA is available on the following platforms: Sky 141 (Scotland) / Sky 169 (rest of UK)· Freeview / You View 7 (Scotland only)· Virgin Media 161· Freesat 109 · BBC iPlayer.

The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford is undertaking the digitisation of the Daily Herald Archive to greatly improve the public accessibility of this nationally important collection. We are therefore recruiting two Junior Photographers to start on the 1^st February 2021 in order to undertake large scale, rapid, professional imaging of this collection.

You will be working with Collections Care Assistants and an Archivist to provide high quality images of the archive based in “Insight”, the collections research centre at NSMM. Using your meticulous attention to detail you will ensure accurate handling and photographing of photographic prints within a fast-paced project environment, using innovative workflows and professional technology.

The role offers a unique opportunity to work with one of the world’s greatest photographic collections. You will play a crucial role in making this collection available digitally through the Collections Online portal. As a result, you will be self-motivated and able to work effectively as part of a team.

See more and apply by 10 January 2021: https://bit.ly/3mUD1oE

There's a delightful accessible online 1974 short BBC documentary of elderly Gandolfi brothers of Gandolfi & Sons camera makers of Peckham, London which company had operated in the area for over 100 years. The artisan nature of the skilled brothers at the end of their camera crafting working lives has one of the brothers in distinctive 'artisan accent' poetically and poignantly ending the clip with "For soon my fingers will fumble, and in my hands lie my life" resigned he will not be making his cameras anymore of their world renowned precision handmade crafting.

See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJq04wKCKSY

And while we're at it here's another 1981 clip of the Gandolfi brothers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mos6-cvehys ;

The Hyman Collection has published its 2020 annual update which can be read on its website. Of particular note is the availability of bespoke loans and exhibitions from the extensive collection and the establishment of the Hyman Foundation, a new charitable foundation to support photography in Britain.

The Hyman Foundation aims to facilitate the work of contemporary artists, fund research and scholarship, and address issues of legacy and the preservation of archives. To serve these objectives, we plan to create a series of funded grants and projects. It aims to: 

• Provide grants with a focus on young artists and women working in photography as well as research grants for art historical scholarship
• Mentor young and mid-career artists to advise on their careers, consider legacy issues, and encourage best practice for archiving their work.
• Work with artists in later stages of their career to help preserve, archive and digitize photographic work for future heritage.
• Establish and maintain an archive, collection and library of historical and contemporary photographs.
• Form partnerships with other arts organizations, including Universities, to provide a hub for British photography past, present and future.

The Foundation trustees are: Claire and James Hyman, Christiane Monarchi (who edits Photomonitor) and Gary Blaker QC. 

Read the newsletter here: http://www.britishphotography.org/news/2404/moredetails/annual-newsletter-2020

The University of St Andrews is pleased to offer a full scholarship funded by St Leonard’s Postgraduate College, to support an exceptional student undertaking doctoral research in the following project: Feminist Documentary Photography and Activist Networks.

The past two decades have witnessed a surge of scholarly and curatorial interest in feminist art production in the UK, building on the foundational feminist art histories of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet feminist contributions to – and reformulations of – documentary photography remain under-studied, particularly practices and networks beyond London. Equally, despite significant growth in interest, the work of women and non-binary photographers in wider histories of photography remains marginalised. This doctoral project builds on the University of St Andrews’s world-leading photographic collections to offer a vital opportunity to expand existing knowledge of feminist documentary in Scotland and beyond, fostering cultural understandings of transnational feminist engagements with gender, race, class and sexuality, and the extensive artist-activist networks that ensued.   

The Franki Raffles Photography Collection in the University of St Andrews Special Collections forms an exceptional resource from which to base a project on this topic. Franki Raffles (1955–1994) was a Scotland-based socialist feminist documentary photographer whose collection contains over 40,000 photographs, together with extensive archival papers, which are only just beginning to be fully historicised and contextualised. The collection comprises multiple projects engaging with gendered divisions of labour in countries spanning China, Israel and Russia. It provides a unique springboard for studying how feminist photographers consciously shaped their individual practices through collaboration, both with other artists and with activist groups such as the Zero Tolerance domestic violence awareness campaign.   

From this base, the candidate will be well-positioned to expand outwards to consider other related collections in Scotland and the UK. These include the wider Franki Raffles Archive Project led by Edinburgh Napier, and the significant array of holdings on feminist organisations at the Glasgow Women’s Library, together with resources held by the National Trust for Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, and the National Galleries of Scotland. The successful candidate will be supported in identifying further archival and photographic collections in the UK and internationally, in order to map the fundamentally relational way in which many feminist practitioners have worked. Excavating these alternative forms of image production entails considering photography’s institutional contexts, from sites of display to printing and publications, looking to unorthodox modes of exchange outside the official art world. This will deliver new insight into the role of feminist documentary in shaping, challenging and re-making cultural understandings of gender, race, class and sexuality, and illuminating how photography has been deployed as an activist tool as much as a repressive representational mechanism.   

The student will be supervised by Dr Catherine Spencer and Dr Natalie Adamson. 

The award covers full tuition fees for up to three years as well as an annual stipend payable at the standard UK Research Council rate (the 2021-22 annual rate is £15,560). The start date for taking up this award is September 2021. Applicants must not already hold a doctoral degree; or be matriculated for a doctoral degree at the University of St Andrews or another institution. 

Informal enquiries regarding this scholarship may be addressed to Dr Catherine Spencer – email catherine.spencer@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Further information is available here.

The University of Liverpool is offering a PhD studentship entitled 'The Migrant Eye: Reactivating the Photographic Past through Archives and Exhibitions in Liverpool and North West England'. It is supervised by Professor Michelle Henning and Dr Jordana Blejmar, both in the Department of Communication and Media.

This collaborative doctoral project between the University of Liverpool and Tate will investigate photography archives and the work of named photographers to address the experience of exiles, migrants, stateless, and marginalised people. The partnership will benefit from Tate Liverpool’s strong interest, under its new director, Helen Legg, in addressing the Liverpool region’s migration history and its multiculturalism, particularly in relation to its vibrant contribution to the arts and photography. Together, we are interested in the photographer as a marginalised or migrant figure, how marginalisation and the experience of migration might inform their gaze, how such photographers have come to contest and to shape a cultural and collective memory, and how that can inform contemporary curatorial, learning and interpretation practices. 

Full details are here and the deadline for applications is 5 February 2021. 

To find out more please contact Professor Henning directly by email at Michelle.Henning@liverpool.ac.uk or call: 0151 795 8694.  

The School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC) has a long-standing reputation as a world-leading centre for innovative teaching and research. The following studentship is available: Amnesty, Archives, Activism: Photojournalism and the Development of Human Rights Media Campaigns in Britain since the 1960s. Supervisor and contact information to obtain further details: Dr Tom Allbeson

See more here.

The Network for Developing Photographic Research is inviting researchers to participate in an upcoming monthly event series, 1000 Words, which will start at the start of 2021. The idea is very simple: each speaker selects one photograph, uses it to write roughly 1,000 words reflecting on a key aspect of their research and presents it in the form of a ten-minute talk.  Each presentation will take the form of a live-streamed event and a voiceover video clip that we will feature on our website. We will be pairing together speakers whose research interests are overlapping or offer interesting perspectives on a given theme. This is a fantastic opportunity for budding researchers to share their work informally in a way that is snappy (if you’ll excuse the pun), engaging and, we hope, will lead to lots of fascinating photo research-related discussion!  

Email a short bio, proposal or any questions to photo.research.network@gmail.com

Visit the NDP website here: https://developingphotoresearch.wordpress.com/

The 100th anniversary of the Cottingley Fairies, one of the most famous hoaxes of the twentieth century, is being marked by a new exhibition curated by an academic from the University of Huddersfield. It will open in January 2021 at the University of Leeds Brotherton Library, subject to COVDI restrictions being lifted. It is curated by Dr Merrick Burrow, Head of English & Creative Writing, and will form part of the Treasures of the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds.  

It is the first time that many of the artefacts from the hoax, which fooled many including Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have been put on public display. The Brotherton Library holds many of the photographs and artefacts relating to the Fairies, although the National Science+Media Museum holds the cameras used by the two girls, after a public appeal saved them from a Christie's auction. 

The hoax began in 1917, when Elsie Wright took a photograph of her cousin Frances Griffiths with some dancing fairies she had drawn and attached to hat pins near their home in the village of Cottingley, between Bradford and Bingley in West Yorkshire. This, and subsequent photos, eventually found their way to Conan Doyle, who staked his reputation on their authenticity in The Strand magazine in 1920. 

Debate raged over the photos for decades, with Elsie and Frances only revealing how they faked the photographs in 1983, to Geoffrey Crawley, the editor of the British Journal of Photography. Such was the furore over the photographs at the time, that Dr Burrow sees parallels between the entrenched views about the hoax and the more recent phenomena of fake news: “Conan Doyle had converted to spiritualism in 1917 – around the time the photos were taken,” says Dr Burrows. Spiritualism was on the rise at the time, following enormous loss of life in the Great War. “But Conan Doyle also encountered many who thought spiritualism was a fraud, that it was exploiting the grief of people who lost loved ones. There was a lot of animosity towards him and he entered into many heated debates about it, so by the time the photos appeared he was primed to find something that would prove his beliefs. 

“He deliberately created a controversy, what he called in a letter a ‘time-delay mine’ - he published the photos, then went on a lecture tour of Australia! He amplified the whole thing. 

“There are similar elements to what we see in fake news and social media bubbles today.  There was Conan Doyle and those who believed without question in spiritualism in one corner, and their opponents in the Rationalist Press Association and the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the other. Neither would give ground to the other, which is what we see now.” 

The photographs stayed with the family until the girls’ mothers attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford in 1920. The photos soon came to the attention of the General Secretary of The Theosophical Society, Edward L. Gardner, who began to show them in his public lectures. Conan Doyle heard about them and got in touch to find out more. 

The times, the circumstances, and a willingness to believe combined to form a ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances and a story that endures even 100 years later.  

“My take on it is that it was an accidental conspiracy,” Dr Burrow adds. “There were a series of minor deceptions that in themselves would not really have amounted to anything. But these were blown up into a global cause celebre through the combination of Elsie’s skill with the camera, the ‘improvement’ of the photos by an expert working for Gardner, and the involvement of Conan Doyle – probably the world’s foremost popular author with an interest in spiritualism.”

The Cottingley Fairies: A Study in Deception, will be on display in the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery , Leeds, in early 2021.

Images: 

Frances and the Fairies, July 1917. Image credit: Special Collections, University of Leeds
Elsie and the Gnome, September 1917. Image credit: Special Collections, University of Leeds 
The Strand Magazine, December 1920. Image credit: Special Collections, University of Leeds

As a Conservator at the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford, you will work closely with the other members of the core Conservation & Collections Care (CCC) teams based at all SMG sites, and alongside project teams, this may also include supervising short term staff, students and volunteers.

You will undertake all aspects of interventive object and/or photographic conservation treatments on a wide range of materials, this includes condition checking and documentation. You will also advise on display conditions, object protection, object installation and decant, object storage and assist in preventive conservation including integrated pest management and environmental monitoring programmes on site.

Utilising your relevant conservation experience and knowledge, you will work both independently and as part of a team to plan and execute programmes of conservation of inventoried objects in the collections required for loans, exhibition and touring on time and to budget. Using your awareness of collections-based hazards you will ensure compliance with best professional practice and statutory requirements.

See the full specification and apply here.

From various sources I have collected hundreds of 35mm slides from the 1960s showing views of Devon, Cornwall and Wales. These are high quality family shots. I also have slides of Switzerland, Italy and Madeira taken by semi-profession photographers. I have not got space for them. Does anyone out there collect such images. Free to a good home.

This among an interesting bunch of late 1800s and early 1900s glass plate negatives that Harrow School has offloaded from their archive are now up for sale on Ebay. Is this lad in military uniform, or is he in some civilian gear that, for example, hotels dressed their minions up in? Maybe he's a 'Telegram Boy'. Anyone recognise his get-up?

Thank you

The Journal of Victorian Culture Online the blog and online platform of the Journal of Victorian Culture has published a short paper by Rose Teanby titled 'Wish You Were Here: Victorian women pioneers of travel photography'. In it Rose discusses several early British and European women photographers. The paper is free to access and read. 

See: http://jvc.oup.com/2020/12/11/victorian-women-pioneers-of-travel-photography/

Image: Ida Pfeiffer [cropped] by Franz Hanfstaengl, 1856. Print, Austrian National Library   ANL/Vienna Picture Archive NB 504188-B. http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/baa12992972