Blogs

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

Tony Richards has published details of this event for those interested in collodion and alternative processes...Once again, Guys Cliffe House and grounds has been booked for what has become an annual event for wet platers in the UK. After several years of various sites around the UK, this central location is easily accessible by the majority.

After a very successful event in 2021 it is hoped that 2022 will welcome back regulars and newcomers to the event.
The weekend starts on Friday 19th August and goes through till the Sunday 21st August. Both the grounds and the exterior of Guys Cliffe House are exclusively reserved for the use of participants.

Though this is primarily a gathering for wet plate collodion workers, I’m hoping that we can expand the creative potential. If you prefer to work on large format film, cyanotype, salt or pinhole then you are most welcome and encouraged. Basically we welcome any level of worker and even if you are a total beginner or more advanced, there is a great deal to be gained from the experience of other workers, and from my experience there is no shortage of sharing of friendly advice.

The UK Wet Plate and Alternative Processes weekend 2022
Guys Cliffe House, Warwick, 19-21 August 2022
Details and book here: 

The Guardian newspaper has reported that long-lost photographs of Birmingham's 1990s rave club scene have been rediscovered after being hidden away for twenty-five years. The photographs were taken by Terence Donovan at the request of his son who was studying at Birmingham University and show the dance and rave club culture at the Que Club in January 1996. Donovan died in November that year.

Ten of the 65 shots will be shown at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in April. 

Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jan/01/lost-shots-90s-rave-culture-terence-donovan-go-on-show-birmingham-swinging-london

Image: Club-goers at The Que in Birmingham in January 1996. Photograph: Terence Donovan Archive

This new book Belgian Photographers 1839-1939 - A Chronological Bibliography of Publications from 1945 to 2020' offers an overview of printed publications, published between 1945 and 2020, about Belgian photographers who were active from the invention of photography until the beginning of the WWII. It is a chronological bibliography, followed by an index of authors and photographers. The latter makes it possible to find all publications in which a particular photographer is mentioned. It includes both professional and amateur photographers and photographers of local, national or international renown.

There are some 7 700 entries, including a couple of hundred cross-references, covering professional and amateur photographers as well as firms and individuals active in connected trades (for instance, platemaking, photomechanical printing, postcard publishing). For further explanations on the content and structure, please consult the section Directory: structure of entries.

This database is a revised and expanded version of the Directory of Photographers in Belgium 1839-1905 by Steven F. Joseph, Tristan Schwilden and Marie-Christine Claes, published by the Museum of Photography, Antwerp in 1997. The same authors have been active in creating this online version, once again with the enthusiastic support of FOMU. English is used throughout, in order to make the database accessible to a broad audience of international scholars and researchers. An exception is made for locations and Place Names in Belgium, which have been faithfully transcribed from the original sources used by the photographers themselves.

Belgian Photographers 1839-1939 - A Chronological Bibliography of Publications from 1945 to 2020
Frank Driesen
Brepols, with the support of FOMU
ISBN 978-2-503-59779-9
Paperback: €30 incl. VAT (Belgium), € 28,31 / $ 37.00 / £ 24.00 excl. VAT and/or taxes

Read more here: https://fomu.atomis.be/index.php
Download the flyer and order form here:  BELGIAN%20PHOTOGRAPHERS.pdf

The Folly is a Grade I listed historic house from 1679 in the heart of historic Settle. It houses the Museum of North Craven Life, which tells which tells fascinating tales of the people and landscape of the local area. We have recently acquired the Horner Collection, comprising approximately one thousand glass plate negatives from the Horner Photographic Studio in Settle, which operated from around 1867 to 1960.

We have been awarded a Cultural Recovery Fund Grant, which includes £5,000 appoint a consultant technician to work on The Horner Collection. They will undertake research into the collection, investigate its history, create a preliminary inventory with dates and condition reports, and to provide advice preparatory to development of a detailed catalogue. The role-holder will also train a small group of volunteers to scan and repackage the negatives.

Contact: Caitlin Greenwood hdo@ncbpt.org.uk 

Details of the Horner Collection here: https://thefolly.org.uk/blog-horner/

The National Science and Media Museum is implementing new programmes of research and interpretation of its world-leading collections relating to photography, film, television and sound technologies. The role of Curator of Television and Broadcast will take a leading role on championing our world class collections of Television and Broadcast in relation to the rest of our core collecting areas.

As Curator of Television and Broadcast you will work with colleagues across the Science Museum Group to explore the history and current practice of television and broadcasting technologies and create opportunities for engaging visitors with media, technology and engineering-related content across SMG public programming.

You will work closely with the exhibitions team at the National Science and Media Museum and digital content teams across the group to develop the content and interpretation for our new permanent galleries, Sound & Vision, as well as our temporary exhibition programme. This role will support our celebration in 2022 with the BBC of a 100 years of Broadcasting.

Working alongside other specialist archivists and curators in National Science and Media Museum, you will foster links with internal and external stakeholders in the television and broadcasting communities. As a curator you will feed into strategies for embedding television and broadcasting collections in SMG’s forward programmes of temporary exhibitions and permanent galleries and ensure a presence for them in SMG’s social and broadcast media outputs.

Joining us you will have a broad knowledge of the history and current practice of history of science and/or media alongside experience of working with museum collections. You will have excellent communication and interpersonal skills with experience communicating history or complex information to non-specialist audiences for example in exhibitions, articles, blogs, outreach or teaching.

Details here.

The Magic Lantern Society has announced preliminary details of its 11th international convention which will take place in Birmingham from 29 April-1 May 2022. It will take place at its regular venue, the Birmingham and Midland Institute. 

See more here: http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/convention2022/

Earlier this year, the School of Scottish Studies Archive and the Centre for Research Collections teamed up with renowned Scottish photographer, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, to add a landmark collection of photos to the School’s documentary collections. Sutton-Hibbert has worked as a freelance photographer and photojournalist for over 30 years and in 2012 co-founded Document Scotland – a collective of Scottish documentary photographers.

Sutton-Hibbert’s documentary work focusing on Scotland filled a natural gap in the Archive’s extensive photographic holdings, and the team worked with him to identify three series of photographs which would best suit the collection. Selections were made from his North Sea Fishing (1992-1995), the recently demolished Longannet Colliery (2001), and Paddy’s Market (2000) which echoed with coastal working life, Scottish industrial cultures, and urban living which can be found throughout the School’s archive.

Read a full account here: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/sssa/jeremy-sutton-hibbert/

Image: Tam Gay repairs torn nets aboard the Mairead, North Sea, February 1993 SSSA/JSH1/20

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has published a short film about Caroline Douglas’s research project which focuses on a series of calotype salt prints made by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in Edinburgh in the late nineteenth century. Hill and Adamson’s series of portraits of Newhaven fishwives are one of the world’s earliest examples of photographic portraiture. Through her research and her own photographic practice, Caroline makes an exciting discovery after uncovering a series of outtakes from the calotype portrait of Mrs Elizabeth Johnstone Hall.

This project was supported by an Andrew Wyld Research Support Grant.

See the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAknd5DDmJw&t=3s

The Guardian newspaper reported that Bonhams New York was to sell an albumen photograph of the Rossetti Family at home (detail, right), dated 1863. The catalogue entry noted ' No similar quality original Lewis Carroll photograph of the Rossetti family has sold on the open market in recent years. Of the three known complete images of this photograph, only this and one other exist in private hands.'  The photograph was offered in New York with an estimate of US$ 50,000 - 70,000 (£38,000 - 53,000). It failed to find a buyer. 

See The Guardian news story https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/14/extremely-rare-photograph-of-the-rossettis-taken-by-lewis-carroll-up-for-auction

See the lot description: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/26898/lot/177/

Folklore recording in Poulaphouca, County Wicklow, 1939. This shows the recording of local folklore before the flooding of a large area in 1939 for a reservoir and hydroelectric scheme. Image courtesy of the National Folklore Collection at University College, Dublin. One item of many in a new feature from the Gallery of Photography, Ireland. 

The interactive digital timeline brings together for the first time a dazzling array of photos spanning more than 180 years. The goal is to situate the development of photography in Ireland within broader technical, historical and artistic movements.

https://timeline.galleryofphotography.ie

This is part of the project called 'In Our Own Image' which the Gallery of Photography, Ireland has launched to record the history of photography in Ireland since 1839 and its development as regards techniques and practice ever since. The project will include a major exhibition in Dublin Castle, already described on this blog, as well as talks and publications plus this new online feature.

Michael Pakenham Edgeworth who was an early Irish Calotypist. This image from about 1842 or 1843 may be a self portrait. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland

In the early 20th century, fashion and photography were indelibly wedded through the efforts of a number of photographers, fashion designers, and magazine publishers. Once these cultural power shapers created the form, fashion photography took on a life of its own and became—perhaps always was—art. This art form has since been elevated to heights such that being a fashion photographer can be seen as very important chapter in many well-known photographers’ career: designers rely on them; models request them; magazines use their work: celebrities choose them for shoots; and the power they have to represent others is beyond compare in today’s, 21st century image-driven world.

Following our first Fashion and Photography conference in Palermo in 2018, we are further broadening the interdisciplinary mix and range of potential discussions and activities. Whether dance, theatre, drama theory, directing or performance practice, the different aspects of the performing arts will be explored and developed alongside previous discussions, especially with the new challenges of technology along with the changes in audiences and performers in the 21st century.

Our Fashion and Photography: 2nd Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary event will examine the dynamics of all these (and related) fields. In a world which is experiencing the transforming realities of globalization, with people engaging at all levels and in diverse ways, the intersections and engagements created at the interface of all the modes of representation involved in these areas and activities are paramount. They involve cultural, social, commercial, artistic, financial, and political issues, and from the bottom to the top can determine power relations, careers, sexual norms and deviance, and more.

We live in a period of so-called hyper-consumption which encourages individuals to consume for their own personal pleasure. Fast fashion, trends in sustainable and recyclable fashion, the rise of performance fashion and fashion as performance art  denotes a society now defined by movement, fluidity, and flexibility. Performance from ballet to theatre, the catwalk to festivals, is increasingly oriented towards pleasure and satisfaction, a fleeting hedonism which quickly changes focus. The experience is mixed with tensions, conflicts, and even anxiety. The uncertainties and fears of 21st century living are reflected in fashion, performance and all forms of visual representations.

This conference aims to consider ways in which we can re-imagine our practices in relation to others, our history, and the environment with a view to forming a selective innovative interdisciplinary publication to engender further collaboration and discussion, whilst also continuing the evolution of the project.

Unlike other conferences or gatherings, our event proposes to step outside the traditional conference setting and offer opportunities for photographers, designers, practitioners, theorists, independent scholars, academics, performers, writers, and others to intermingle, providing platforms for interdisciplinary interactions that are fruitful and conducive to broadening horizons and sparking future projects, collaborations, and connections.

2nd Global Conference. Fashion and Photography. An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Project
Friday 8th July 2022 - Saturday 9th July 2022
Athens, Greece

See more here: https://www.progressiveconnexions.net/interdisciplinary-projects/global-transformations/fashion-and-photography/conferences/

For my current book project, I am looking for photographs of troops making craft objects to cope, heal or rehabilitate from injury or trauma associated with wars of the 20th and 21st centuries. I am also looking at civilians making craft to cope and to send items to troops in training or abroad. By craft, I mean objects made mainly by hand, using clay, fibers, metals, wood, and paper, and that tend to be valued for their hand-made properties in contrast to machine-made mass produced and distributed consumer goods. With thanks in advance for any suggestions.