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I came across this and thought it could interest some of you. An original large glass plate negative, the glass plate with blue tint, edged in tape, a small label lower right dated `13 Oct 1915 H. Scott Orr`, in tissue wraps and original fitted card box, 258mm x 303mm; together with a postcard of the same view, stamped `H.Scott Orr Copyright`, the reverse inscribed `Published by Permission of the Official Press Bureau, Whitehall S.W.`, 

H. Scott Orr (1881-1972):
The Theatreland Raid, 13th October 1915
Unframed (ref: 6374)

https://www.lissllewellyn.com/show-6374-s_478.htm

Can anyone help me identify these anonymous (but eminently identifiable) albumen prints each approx 4-3/4 x 6-3/8 in? Tempting to read as Pre-Raphaelite, but surely not. Tableaux after Arthurian legend, presumably, but who are the participants, who is the maker, and what is the occasion?

Although this blog (see here) has had over 200 hits the main mystery remains . That is how did the most prominent London photographer of the day with his double royal warrants pitch up at a remote country house near Wrexham and produce three dags. evidence by his embossed double warrant on the leather cases. You would have to re read the blog but I remain hopeful that someone will offer a suggestion.

Chiswick Auction's auction of photographs 1840-2020 contains a number of lots of daguerreotypes and early photography. Two lots in particular are of special note, including a portrait of John Goddard and one that it is suggested may be a portrait of Frederick Scott Archer.

Lot 17. A portrait of John Frederick Goddard, the scientist and photographer, taken by Jabez Hogg. The image is reproduced in John Werge's Evolution of Photography. The description reads: AN IMPORTANT PORTRAIT OF PROFESSOR JOHN FREDERICK GODDARD (1795-1866), c.1841-1850, Sixth plate daguerreotype, in French bevelled gilt mount, inscribed with a caption on the cover glass; "Dr. John Goddard dis. Bromine Inventor of Polariscope" (sic) with taped edges, and later manuscript label in ink, on verso reading; "Professor Jon Goddard, discoverer of the quickening effect of Bromine in the production of the Daguerreotype picture. Jabez Hogg 1. Bedford Square. It is estimated at £35,000-40,000. 

Lot 18. Contains a series of thirteen experimental collodion studies including what the auction house suggests is a previously unknown portrait of Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857). The lot description notes: Ambrotypes, (13), a collection of experimental outdoor portrait studies of Children (11), one image of an elderly Gentleman (1), and a previously unknown portrait, most likely of Frederick Scott Archer himself, the inventor of the wet plate collodion photographic process. Plate sizes approx. 90 x 90mm or slightly smaller, with contemporary paperbacks and taped edges, three examples with notes regarding exposure and process in an unknown hand, pencil verso; "Effect of oblique .... light, Eleven O'clock A.M", "Effect of direct sunlight Midday", "Effect of Evening light". Estimate: £5000-6000. 

See the full catalogue here: https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/details/28%20May%202021%20C-photographs-1840---2020/?au=669

Don’t Press Print is an annual conference organised by the University of West of England's Centre for Fine Print Research and the Royal Photographic Society. In 2020 the conference looked at the collodion process and its contemporary practice through the eyes of twenty artist-printmakers and photographic historians.

In 2021 Don't Press Print will take as its theme the history of photographic and photomechanical print reproduction and processes from both an historical and contemporary perspective. A call for papers has been made. Some of the potential areas for papers are, but not limited to are:

Reconstruction:

• Approaches to the photomechanical transfer of images to the printed page from Talbot onwards
• Specific processes, in particular the Woodburytype, Photogravure, Photolithography and Collotype
• The impact of new methods of photomechanical reproduction on printed publications

Deconstruction:

• Contemporary artistic practice of historical analogue photomechanical printmaking processes
• The application of historic photomechanical processes to innovative modern use
• Hybrid digital /analogue approaches that open up the potential of photomechanical print processes in a virtual world

The organizers welcome proposals from practicing printmakers and photographers, historians and process specialists, visual artists as well as image and print scientists, to present their theoretical and/or practical research and working methods and artworks.

Proposals and final papers will be peer reviewed. 

Presentations will be 25 minutes, if you are reading your paper this equates to approximately 3000 words, but please adjust for your own style and take account of your visual materials.

Read more here: https://rps.org/photomech

De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre's annual conference is now open for registration.The programme, including keynotes from Kim Timby and Emily Mark-Fitzgerald is now available.

Recent scholarship surrounding the development, use, and reuse of colour photography has highlighted the need for more research and debate about photographic colour, in terms of histories, technologies and the emotions they have affected. Long told as merely a triumphalist history of technological achievement, colour photography is steeped as well in controversy, in the re-telling of history, in activism, in politics of individuals, communities and countries. Colour photography, while a boon to some, has been developed and deployed at the expense of others. As well as seeking to delve to broader issues and concerns, Photography and Its Many Colours wishes to create a platform for the voices of such individuals and communities to be heard.

The 9th annual conference organized by the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK) will thus address contemporary debates in and around colour photography through discussion of themes such as:

• Historical and contemporary uses of colourisation
• Emotional and affective responses to colour photography
• Industrial histories
• Activist and political uses of colour in photography
• Colour photography in race and identity politics

Full details and registration can be found here: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2021/

Colin Ford explores the surprisingly large number of world-famous and influential photographers who were originally Hungarian, many of them Jewish.

Colin Ford CBE was Deputy Curator of the National Film & Television Archive (1965-72) before becoming the first senior curator of photography in any British national museum or gallery (National  Portrait Gallery, London, 1972-82). He then became founding Head of The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (now The National Science and Media Museum), Bradford. A decade later, he became Director of the The National Museums & Galleries of Wales (1993-98). 

Colin was first involved with Hungarian photography when he curated the first exhibition in Britain of André Kertész (Serpentine Gallery, 1979). This was followed by The Hungarian Connection (NMPFT 1987). The most recent of his Hungarian exhibitions, Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century, was the first photography show ever originated by London’s Royal Academy.

Photography: Hungary’s Greatest Export?
with Colin Ford
60 minutes
Thu 20 May 20217:30pm 
£10
Details, booking etc. on https://www.jw3.org.uk/whats-on/festivals/yivo-series.

I worked for Kodak in the Research Labs for 30+ years during which I was involved with a variety of projects.  I decided to write down some memories and some descriptions of the technologies I worked on.  Along the way I had come across a number of novel imaging products from other manufacturers so my article although it has an autobiographical flavour grew into a review of what I thought were technically interesting imaging systems.  Some of these were explored in Kodak R&D both at Harrow and in Kodak's main lab in Rochester New York and as far as I know have not been described in any detail elsewhere. 

Interesting%20Imaging%20Systems.pdf

Join former V&A Museum ciurator Susanna Brown for a journey back in time to the elegant world of photographer George Hoyningen-Huene (1900–1968).  A pioneer in the fields of portraiture and fashion photography, Hoyningen-Huene worked during the golden age of Vogue and Vanity Fair, and his images define the glamorous aesthetic of that era. He collaborated with the stars of the artistic milieu in Paris, including Man Ray and Salvador Dalí, before embarking on a new career as a colour consultant for Hollywood movies.

He was also an avid traveller, publishing illustrated books of his journeys through Africa, Greece, and Mexico. His stylish photographs remain an enduring source of inspiration for today’s photographers and artists and his work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the RPS Collection at the V&A, MoMA, and the Pompidou Centre.  

To book a place visit: https://rps.org/events/bristol/2021/may/george-hoyningen-huene-1900-1968/

Two events took place last week to commemorate William Friese-Greene. In Bristol a short ceremony was held at the commemorative plaque to WFG in the city and John Winstone talks about it below. The other was an online discussion arranged by the Kennington Bioscope and the Cinema Museum with Ian Christie, Stephen Herbert and Peter Domankiewicz The event was recorded and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62OiHjLlAl4

John Winstone of the Reece Winstone Archive writes the day after the centenary of F-G's death: The last time I stood under the plaque was in 1955, in a schoolboy's striped blazer, when Reece Winstone FRPS had arranged for Lord Mayor Harry Crook (Mr Kleen-eze) to unveil the plaque to F-G on his birthplace behind Bristol Council House and had made a plea that the house be saved from the Council's agenda to demolish. The family thought it prudent to describe Willie as the Pioneer of Cinematography on this more public plaque in the face of a then very recent publication by a photo-historian with ulterior motives denouncing F-G's reputation. Yesterday, at a somewhat poorly attended gathering without any press present, and with representatives of just two of the original seven organisations who had paid for the plaque, but now more optimistic for F-G's place in history I said a few words, looking at the site of the grade II Georgian house, still a car park. My wife and I left a few flowers. F-G's eldest surviving son in 1955, Graham, an artist in architectural metalwork, had made the bronze plaque. Now bereft of its green patina,  doubtless a result of Bristol's polluted air, the plaque is in need of conservation (if only the HLF would consider more carefully when awarding grant related to cinematography!).

The two of us moved up to St George's church, Brandon Hill, now a music venue. Here beneath the gallery F-G's second 1955 plaque by Graham is affixed, funded by the Old Boys of F-G's charity school, QEH. We left a posy from the rest of the flowers. This plaque, which speaks in the privacy of F-G's church and where he married Helene Friese, makes the assertion the Inventor of Cinematography, just as Reece had dared to describe him in his speech at the unveiling of the birthplace plaque,

A short film of the 1955 unveiling is now on our website to view at www.reecewinstone.co.uk.

Join Angie McCarthy and Tony Richards from our Imaging Team as they explore how portrait photographic jewellery has always been a sentimental favourite, a place to hold memories of loved ones, kept close to the heart or simply held in the palm of a hand.

They will discuss items from the newly created Photographic Jewellery Manchester Digital Collection (MDC)  and consider the life cycle of the object and ask how a face from the past can still intrigue and connect with us today. 

This event will include a 30 minute talk followed by 15minute Q&A . The talk will take place on Zoom, the link will be sent to you on the morning of the event.

You can also find our Photographic Jewellery Manchester Digital Collection at the following link.

Lunchtime online talk: Manchester Digital Collections: Tokens of Affection

Check out "Re-Scheduled Lunchtime Online Talk: MDC : Tokens of Affection" on Eventbrite

Date: Thu, May 6 • 12:00 BST

Book here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/re-scheduled-lunchtime-online-talk-m...

This review in the current issue of Race & Class (62:4), published by Sage on behalf of the Institute of Race Relations draws a straight line from social and political PROTEST in the 1970s, to today:

'Stacey has written a rare and important book which integrates word, image, artistry and activism in the real lives of working people and those who documented their lives and struggles, and although it records events and initiatives nearly half a century ago, its relevance to now-times is total.'

Read the review here

It’s a strange fact, but British inventor William Friese-Greene is as well-known among serious film buffs for not having invented cinema as he is for inventing it. Now, on the centenary of his sudden death at 65, mid-flow at a meeting of film distributors, admirers of this controversial pioneer from Bristol are at the centre of a new drive to establish his international legacy once again.

Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and George Méliès, the Frenchman whose story was told by Martin Scorsese in the hit 2011 film Hugo.

Read the full report in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/02/historian-fights-to-establish-william-friese-greene-as-true-father-of-cinema

Would you be interested in attending a two to three-day workshop on fine art digital prints for approximately £550-£650 per person in September 2021? If so, we’d love to hear from you via our group email (phmgicon@gmail.com), we hope to gauge interest for this event by Saturday 15 May.

Ryan Boatright, Atelier Boba, former scientist at the Image Permanence Institute and leading expert in digital print technology will provide 10-15 participants with a rare 30-piece sample set, as well as lectures and hands on experience in this evolving field. The event will be held in person (with the option to host the workshop virtually, as each person will have their own sample set). 

In this exhibition, the next in the Projects 20 series to take place at Stills, Tajik presents two bodies of photographic works, including a new series of performative photographs, The Dreamers (2020), that are set in a rural Scottish landscape referencing the historic Highland Clearances and the contemporary disputes over land ownership. In this series, he explores the notion of the border and questions the value and role of nationality in a time of emergency. 

Alongside and in dialogue with The Dreamers, Tajik will present a selection of images from Calais, an installation of photographs & video produced as a result of a visit to the ‘The Jungle’ in Calais, France.

The Dreamers series was made during Tajik’s residency at Deveron Arts, Huntly as part of his Bordered Miles project. Bordered Miles will continue as a day-long group walk from the centre of Glasgow to Dungavel House immigration removal centre, approximately 26 miles south of the city in June 2021. The photographs on display at Stills and this event are both an extension of Iman Tajik’s ongoing interest in making work for the public realm, the walk draws attention to the movement of bodies as a natural right of any species.

For the second body of work on show, the artist spent time living with refugees in the makeshift campsite dubbed ‘The Jungle’, where migrants camped out in the hope of being able to cross the border and make their journey over to England.

Tajik’s encounters with refugees in ‘The Jungle’ dovetailed with his personal journey as a refugee, which propelled him to make work that shifted the way in which a wider audience is brought into proximity with the refugee experience. Tajik created this body of work not only as a means of expressing his own feelings, but also to introduce a ‘new’ and different portrait of the refugee to the one we are accustomed to seeing in mainstream media. The work explores the feeling of what life is like for refugees living day to day behind the borders in the UK.

The artist’s work addresses issues of contemporary conditions of life with a particular focus on migration and globalisation – thereby bridging the gap between art and activism, to create work as a form of socio-political currency, addressing power structures.

Listings Information

Projects 20 | Iman Tajik

Stills, Centre for Photography

23 Cockburn Street
Edinburgh

EH1 1BP

Tue-Sat, 12 pm-5pm

https://stills.org/

The exhibition will mark the gallery’s reopening following the global pandemic.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Tom Wedgwood on 14 May 1771, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and the Royal Photographic Society have organised a virtual meeting on the afternoons of 14 and 15 May 2021, starting at 2pm BST (3pm CEST, 9am EDT). 

Tom Wedgwood, fifth child of the midlands potter Josiah Wedgwood, is now best remembered for his 1802 paper in which he outlined a chemical method of creating an image. By the middle of the nineteenth century this had become widely recognised as major precursor to the development of photography in the 1830s. But Wedgwood’s short life (he died aged 34 in 1805) encompassed much more. A member of the loosely defined radical romantic movement, he associated with such major figures at William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Beddoes, Humphry Davy and many others.  

The speakers who will discuss these and other aspects of his life and work, as well as his enduring legacy as a founder of photography, are the current Tom Wedgwood, Geoffrey Batchen (keynote), Lucy Lead, Michael Gray, Brian Dolan, Tim Fulford, Catrin Jones, Michael Pritchard and Rose Teanby. 

The full programme and registration details can be found at https://rps.org/wedgwood250 

William Henry Fox Talbot’s gift of his photography and photo-illustrated books to his sister Horatia Gaisford has sold at Sotheby's New York for $1.6 million ($1.96m with charges). The lot was described here and has been estimated at $300,000-500,000. Efforts by  British institutions to secure this important group of early photography with such wonderful provenance came to nought.  Sotheby's have yet not released any information about the buyer.

Read more about the lot content here: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/50-masterworks-to-celebrate-50-years-of-sothebys-photographs-2/william-henry-fox-talbots-gifts-to-his-sister

UPDATE: Antiques and the Arts Online has reported than Hans P Kraus was the buyer of the lot. 

Since the advent of film in the late nineteenth century, moving images have been integral to making and communicating science. A rich interdisciplinary literature has examined such representations of science in the cinema and on television and investigated how scientists have used moving images to conduct research and communicate knowledge.

Responding to growing interest in science and the moving image, this online workshop uses the concept of ‘intermediality’ as a starting point to discuss new approaches and methodologies. Intermediality, coined by media scholars to describe the interplay between different media, magnifies their multiple meanings and heterogenous interrelations. Moving images especially invite intermedial analysis because they are often composed of interrelated visuals, speech, music, and text; film can also be cut into stills for reproduction in newspapers, advertisements, and journals.

Intermedial approaches thus allow scholars to assess not only the relationship between scientific practices and media forms, but also the afterlives, circulation, and reception of these media in a richer historical context. With its attention to relations and movement between media, intermediality also expands our understanding of the visual cultures of science, including in parts of the world and among groups that are underrepresented in current scholarship. We particularly invite submissions that use intermediality to engage critically with the scope and limits of science and the moving image.

Possible themes might include:

• Processes of translation between different media, including film, television, radio, and print
• Intermedial practices and histories of specific scientific disciplines
• Moving images in science education
• Transnational and comparative approaches to scientific image-making
• Time-lapse, frame-by-frame analysis, and other analytical methods as intermedial practices
• Representations of science in multimedia entertainment industries
• The relationship between moving images of science and the history of empire and colonization
• Amateur uses of moving image media, including citizen science
• The cultural reproduction through scientific images of gender, race, and class.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Tim Boon (Head of Research and Public History, Science Museum Group)

We welcome talks from postgraduate students, early-career researchers and established scholars. We are looking for abstracts (max. 250 words) for 15-20 minute talks, which will be arranged in thematic panels. Submissions should be sent to movingimagescience@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is June 28th, 2021 and we aim to respond to proposals within four weeks.

This workshop will take place online via Zoom and is hosted by postgraduate members of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.

Science and the Moving Image: Histories of Intermediality
Location: Online (Zoom)
Date: November 2nd and 3rd PM (UK time), 2021
Organised by: Miles Kempton, Max Long, Anin Luo

When Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1860s, delicately hand-tinted photographic prints of Japanese people and landscapes were among its earliest and most popular exports. Understood as both images and objects, the prints embody complex issues of history, culture, representation, and exchange. Hundreds of these photographs, collected by travellers from the Boston area, were eventually donated to Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Join visual anthropologist Dr David Odo, director of academic and public programs, division head, and research curator at the Harvard Art Museums, as he reveals how the images' shifting and contingent uses―from tourist souvenir to fine art print to anthropological “type” record―were framed by the desires and cultural preconceptions of makers and consumers alike.

The Journey of “A Good Type”: From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs
Tuesday, 20 April 2021
5:30pm (EDT) / 2130 (BST)
Tickets are free; donations are encouraged
Book here: https://my.historicnewengland.org/11338/japanese-photo

It is 15 years since the launch of Historical Photographs of China. In that decade and a half about 170 mostly privately-held collections of photographs have been copied, which has generated just over 62,000 unique images in our databank, and published over 22,000 of them on our platform (and its mirror site in China), under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial reuse (with attribution). While something like 7000 came to us digitally, in the main we have taken loose prints, photograph albums, negatives, magic lantern slides, real photo postcards and transparencies (35mm slides), ranging in date from the late 1850s to the late 1960s, and copied them here in Bristol, or on site.

From this month onwards, as our digital holdings are moved into the DAMS, which is hosted within the University Library’s Special Collections and Archives, ‘Historical Photographs of China’ has become one amongst other notable individual collections held within Special Collections. It will no longer have that separate identity as an active project, and will no longer be looking for new materials to digitize. The project has ended, but the collection will last.

Read the full blog here: https://visualisingchina.net/blog/2021/04/13/hpc-a-change-of-pace/