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Applications are invited for a PhD studentship on historical photographs, Indigenous knowledge and heritage in Guyana at Royal Holloway University of London, in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Kew Gardens. This award is made by the Science Museums & Archives Consortium under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. The project, due to begin in September 2020, will be supervised by Prof Jay Mistry and Prof Felix Driver at Royal Holloway and Dr Catherine Souch at the RGS-IBG, with further support from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

This project aims to reconnect historical photographs documenting Indigenous peoples and practices to contemporary initiatives concerning Indigenous knowledge and heritage development. Working in the Rupununi region of Guyana, the project will explore the use of significant photographic archives as a resource to enrich the understanding of Indigenous knowledge and practices, Indigenous heritage, identity and rights in contemporary Guyana. It will link work on Indigenous knowledge and memory with collections-based research, using methods of visual elicitation and digital repatriation in collaboration with the relevant Indigenous communities. The project combines (a) archival research in UK collections with (b) field-based photo-elicitation in the Rupununi. A participatory action research framework will allow research questions to be refined and addressed with participants in an iterative way to produce tangible benefits. The student will be encouraged to use participatory video as a way of creating new interpretative narratives. The possibility of a small-scale exhibition will also be considered in order to engage with wider audiences in Guyana.

Rupununi re-collections: historical photographs, Indigenous knowledge and heritage in Guyana
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, with Royal Geographical Society & Kew Gardens

A full project description is available here

Further information on eligibility, funds and how to apply is available here  

The application deadline is 31 March 2020

Interviews will be held at the RGS-IBG, provisionally on 16 April 2020.

Further Information

Details of the project and how to apply:

https://royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/geography/news/gg_ahrc-phd-studentship_2020/

PhD research in Geography at Royal Holloway:

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/geography/studying-here/postgraduate/

RGS-IBG collaborative doctoral research:

https://www.rgs.org/about/our-collections/collaborative-research-on-the-collections/

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships:

https://www.ahrc-cdp.org/

The inaugural Kraszna-Krausz Lecture will be given by internationally renowned writer, public speaker and curator David Campany. Titled Photography and Cinema, from A to Z, the lecture will take the form of twenty-six short reflections on still and moving images. It will consider the relations between Photography and Cinema: stillness and movement, cinema's changing attitude to the depiction of photographers on screen, the freeze frame and the art of the film publicity still.

The lecture series, newly established by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, will provide a platform and space for fresh voices and perspectives on photography and the moving image.

Presented in partnership with the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, the lecture will take place on Monday 30 March 2020 at Birkbeck’s Clore Lecture Theatre, in central London.

The lecture is free to attend but spaces are limited. Tickets must be booked: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=11229

Kraszna-Krausz Lecture 2020: 'Photography and Cinema, from A to Z' presented by David Campany

Monday 30 March 2020
Registration from 1800, lecture at 1830. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception
Clore Lecture Theatre (CLO B01), Birkbeck, University of London,
Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London, WC1E 7JL

Image: © Chris Marker, frame from La Jetée, 1962 courtesy Argos Films

A notable collection spanning photography's first 100 years will be auctioned by PBA Galleries in Berkeley, California on Thursday, March 5, 2020, commencing at 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time..

The collection was amassed by Dr. Robert Enteen while living in Paris and other major European cities.  It includes an estimated 10,000 photographs, photo-books, and ephemera.

The earliest items date from 1839, the dawn of photography, to 1939, spanning the medium’s first century.  Photography originated in France and England, but the technology spread quickly throughout the globe.  The collection includes original works by numerous luminaries, including:  Fox Talbot, Charles Negré, Charles Marville, Edouard Baldus, Matthew Brady, Timothy O´Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Curtis, Félix Nadar, Félix Bonfils, Francis Frith, Fratelli Alinari, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Eugene Atget, Man Ray, André Kertesz, Kimbei Kusakabe, Lewis Hine, Karl Blossfeldt, and others.

The Journal of the French Academy of Sciences announced the new medium in 1839.  This announcement is among the many high points in the collection, which also includes paper negatives; one of only four known examples of the earliest paper photograph of Charles Darwin (1854); an album of over 100 photographs of a tsarist estate in Russia c. 1895; an extremely rare first edition, first issue of Man Ray´s first book of photos; and the only known complete set of Yellowstone Albertypes taken by William Henry Jackson, which influenced the US Congress to designate Yellowstone the first national park in the world.

According to the collection´s owner, Robert Enteen, “The photographs in this museum-quality collection are notable not only because there are many exquisite images, but also because they have historical significance.  One can see transitions in photographic technology, materials, and styles, as well as the medium’s enormous influence in medicine and science, the arts, politics, education, travel and ethnology, history, architecture, religion, and other fields of human endeavor.

Dr. Enteen, originally from NewYork City, has been collecting antiques, rare books and prints for over 50 years.  His photography collection began at a flea market in Paris in 2013, when he acquired a large group of early photographs by Adolphe Braun.  Subsequently, he added to his growing collection in Italy, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.  He has intensively studied the field of early photography, which helped him curate this comprehensive collection.

Bruce MacMakin, Executive Vice President of PBA Galleries,  notes that, “The Enteen Collection is among the largest private collections of early photography ever placed in auction.  It includes European, American, Asian and African works by most of the great photographers.  In my experience, it comes closest to an American version of Sotheby’s celebrated Paris auction of the Thérèse and André Jammes collection.”

PBA Galleries, which has been a leading San Francisco auctioneer and appraiser, has been in business for over 60 years.  They are currently located in Berkeley, CA.  The auction catalogue can be viewed at:

https://www.pbagalleries.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/513/

The photographer Martin Parr and actor Michael Sheen will be discussing Martin’s work and his long-standing relationship to Wales, which is reflected in his current exhibition, Martin Parr in Wales, on display at National Museum Cardiff until 4 May 2020.  

To book a ticket: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10999/In-Conversation-Martin-Parr-and-Michael-Sheen/

Image: 
Snowdonia, Wales, 1989
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos / Rocket Gallery

The Martin Parr collection of photobooks comprises of over 12,000 items. The collection’s strengths lie in its extensiveness of photobooks from around the world, with a focus on documentary photography and propaganda materials. It includes key works by renowned photographers, alongside self-published amateur work and mass-produced commercial books. The collection is now available to search online and in person in the Tate's reading rooms. 

Accessing the Martin Parr Collection

Appointments must be booked in advance; please email the Reading Rooms: reading.rooms@tate.org.uk

To search the collection online see: http://library.tate.org.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/0/0/0/60/28/X/BLASTOFF?user_id=WEBSERVER

Social media platform. Billion-dollar company. Home of fitspiration, avocado brunches, and over-filtered sunsets. Instagram is the place where we share our lives and peek into the lives of others—friends, family, influencers, celebrities. But what does it mean to encounter photographs as part of Instagram’s endless feed? How does this platform shape how we think about contemporary photography as a daily practice and an art form?

Join us as we discuss Instagram as a key context for contemporary art and culture. This half-day public symposium will feature a host of expert speakers, including art historians and media scholars, in conversation with visual artists from South Wales and beyond. Through a series of roundtables and panel discussions, we’ll consider selfies as a new genre of portrait photography, delve into innovative historical or artistic projects developed on Instagram, and explore how practicing artists make use of the platform.

Confirmed speakers include Cadence Kinsey (University College London), Alexandra Kingston-Reese (University of York), Alexandra Georgakopoulou (University College London) Celia Jackson (University of South Wales), Federica Chiochetti (Photocaptionist), Huw Alden Davies (artist), Michal Iwanowski (artist), Dr. Alix Beeston (Cardiff University) and Dr. Bronwen Colquhoun (National Museum Wales)

This symposium coincides with the National Museum Cardiff’s Photography Season and the final weekend of Artist Rooms: August Sander, an exhibition of some of the most important photographic portraiture in the medium’s history. A guided tour of the exhibition is included in the ticket price, allowing participants to reflect on how digital culture connects to the history of photography—inside and outside of the museum.

Presented in partnership with Image Works: Research and Practice in Visual Culture and sponsored by Cardiff University.

See: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/11083/Instagram-A-Symposium/

Image:

August Sander, Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne, Sekretärin beim Westdeutschen Rundfunk in Köln 1931
ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Anthony d'Offay 2010
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur - August Sander Archiv, Cologne / DACS 2019
Photo © National Galleries of Scotland

John Thomson’s photographic vision marks him out as one of history’s most important travel photographers. Featuring dramatic images developed from negatives preserved in London’s Wellcome Library, this exhibition introduces the sights and people of nineteenth-century Thailand as witnessed by Thomson’s camera.

Born in Edinburgh in 1837, the photographer and writer John Thomson travelled to Asia in 1862. Over the next ten years he undertook numerous journeys across the region, spending almost a year in the kingdom of Siam (modern Thailand).

During this time, Thomson was granted unique access to the court of King Mongkut (r. 1851-68). Also known as Rama IV, Mongkut was a progressive monarch. Sincerely interested in Western ideas and sciences, he was keen to exploit the relatively new technology of photography.

The photographs Thomson took in Siam include portraits and palace scenes, religious ceremonies, architecture and cityscapes. Thomson also received special permission to visit Angkor Wat (then under Siam’s control), becoming the first to photograph its famous ruins.

On his return to Britain in 1872, Thomson brought with him more than 600 glass plate negatives. This unique archive reveals the range, depth and aesthetic quality of Thomson’s photographic vision.

Siam through the lens of John Thomson, 1865–66 is part of a travelling exhibition curated by Betty Yao MBE and Narisa Chakrabongse. For more information on John Thomson and this project see the website here.

Siam Through the lens of John Thomson 1865–66
Chester Beatty
Dublin Castle
Dublin 2
D02 AD92
Admission is free
21 Feb 2020 – 17 May 2020

https://chesterbeatty.ie/exhibitions/siam/

Now in its 35th year, The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have a long history of profiling talent, celebrating outstanding new publications alongside their authors and creators. At the heart of each edition of awards is a team of judges who select the Best Photography Book and the Best Moving Image Book from the past year.

The 2020 judging panel brings together a broad spectrum of expertise and authority on the subjects and is comprised of writers, industry leaders, academics, and creatives.

Previous winners of the Kraszna-Krausz Awards have gone on to be recognised with prizes such as the Deutsche Börse photography prize (Susan Meiselas, 2019 Kraszna-Krausz Fellowship Award) and Photo London Master of Photography (Edward Burtynsky, Kraszna-Krausz Best Photography Book, 2010), whilst last year’s edition of the awards highlighted such exceptional works as Jane Giles : Scala Cinema 1978 – 1993 (FAB Press) and Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (Aperture).

The 2020 Photography Book Award will be judged by:
● Elizabeth Edwards, visual and historical anthropologist and independent scholar
● Peter Fraser, contemporary British photographer at the forefront of colour photography
● Shoair Mavlian, Director of Photoworks.
The Moving Image Book Award will be judged by:
● Melanie Hoyes, Industry Inclusion Executive, Film Fund at the British Film Institute (BFI)
● Geoffrey Macnab, author, and contributor to Screen International and The Independent
● Dr Andrew Moor, Reader in Cinema History, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Books are judged on their content, presentation, texture, quality and design and the panel will be looking for the best original works published in 2019.

The long and shortlists for both awards will be announced in March. The winners will be revealed at a ceremony hosted at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) on 14th May 2020.

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of these prestigious awards, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation will be hosting a public lecture presented by internationally renowned writer, public speaker and curator, David Campany : Photography and Cinema, from A to Z. The lecture will take the form of twenty-six short reflections on still and moving images and is hosted by Birkbeck, University of London, 30 March 2020.

See more: www.kraszna-krausz.org.uk

Scotland’s Photograph Album: The MacKinnon Collection, the exhibition showcasing highlights of an exceptional collection of historic photographs which capture over a century of Scottish life, will see its opening time extended for another two months, due to its remarkable reception with the public.

The display, which features more than 250 photographs from the treasure trove of over 14,000 images that the BBC recently described as, “one of the most significant photography collections in decades”, has proved popular with visitors, it will now run at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until Monday 13 April, extending well beyond its original end date of 16 February. Admission for visitors remains free throughout.

The National Library of Scotland’s concurrent MacKinnon display, At the Water’s Edge, will close as scheduled on 15 February 2020.

Further to this, the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the National Library of Scotland are delighted to announce today that visitors from all across Scotland will get the chance to enjoy the MacKinnon Collection, with a national tour set to take place in three Scottish locations across the country from later this year.

Exhibitions showcasing these remarkable photographic documents of Scotland’s social and cultural history will commence in Kirkcudbright at Kirkcudbright Galleries before heading to Museum nan Eilean in Lews Castle in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, before culminating in Duff Hose in Banff in 2021. The nationwide tour starts in September 2020 and further information will be released in due course.

The MacKinnon Collection was jointly acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and the National Library of Scotland in 2018, with assistance from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Scottish Government and Art Fund. The collection was slowly acquired by photography enthusiast Murray MacKinnon and began when he ran a successful chain of film-processing stores in the 1980s, starting from his pharmacy in Dyce, near Aberdeen. The images celebrate Scottish life and identity from the 1840s through to the 1940s and feature some of the earliest and most significant photographs not only in Scottish photography history, but in the history of photography itself.

Many of the first practitioners and visionaries who pushed the medium forward were based in Scotland or were inspired by Scottish subjects, and their works are on display in the exhibition. These include photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Roger Fenton, George Washington Wilson, and others who created stunning images of Scotland’s people and places and established precedents for photographers worldwide.

In a recent review, The Scotsman’s art critic Duncan MacMillan hailed the MacKinnon Collection as, “an extraordinary record of Scotland’s past, from the beginnings of photography until around 1940s” and awarded five stars to both the National Galleries and National Library’s displays.

The MacKinnon Collection has begun to be digitised by both the Galleries and Library and digitisation of the entire trove of photographs will be completed in 2021.

The Royal Institute of British Architects is looking for a Photographs Curator for a 12 month maternity cover.

This role contributes to the planning and delivery of an accessible and dynamic public outreach programme in order to ensure discovery of our collections by our members, the profession and the general public. It identifies and acquires new material by purchase, gift or bequest; documents the collection, creating cataloguing and other records and oversees volunteers contributing to the documentation programmes to facilitate access to the collections; provides informed and welcoming information services for specialist and lay audiences and RIBA staff and facilitates public consultation of the collection; and contributes to the management and conservation of the collection in order ensure its continuing preservation and ease of access. There is a close working relationship with colleagues who maintain and add to the RIBAPix Image Library.

Please see: https://jobs.architecture.com/job/16842/photographs-curator/

The landmark exhibition, 黎芳 Lai Fong (c.1839–1890): Photographer of China presents nearly 50 Lai Fong photographs made in the 1870s and 1880s of China. The photographs have been selected from more than 400 Lai Fong photographs in the renowned Loewentheil Collection, which includes more than 21,000 early photographs of China. These photographs include magnificent views of a rapidly growing Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou, and Xiamen, and important early portraits of the diverse people of late Qing Dynasty China.

The leading Chinese photographer of the nineteenth century, Lai Fong began his photographic career in Hong Kong in 1859. His professional studio, Afong operated for nearly a century. Lai Fong established and ran his studio for three decades until his death when he passed the studio on to his son and daughter in-law. Its artistic legacy, grounded in traditional Chinese art, influenced generations of photographers including contemporary Chinese image-makers.

黎芳 Lai Fong (c.1839–1890): Photographer of China presents a unique glimpse of China’s rich past through these early photographic masterpieces depicting the people, landscapes, cities, architecture, monuments and culture of China.  This unprecedented exhibition provides a rare opportunity to see China and its people through the lens of the Chinese master photographer at the historical moment before the epochal transformations of the 20th century.

黎芳 Lai Fong (1839–1890): Photographer of China
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York, 6 February 2020–14 Jun 2020

https://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/lai-fong-photographer-china

The exhibition was curated by Kate Addleman-Frankel and Stacey Lambrow. Rare early photographs of China by the Chinese photographer Lai Fong, from the Stephan Loewentheil China Photography Collection

It is supported in part by the Helen and Robert J. Appel Exhibition Endowment.

This exhibition will reveal for the first time an extraordinary group of women who helped reshape Britain's photographic culture.  A unique group of photographers, encompassing established figures such as Dorothy Bohm, Gerti Deutsch, Elsbeth Juda, Lotte Meitner-Graf and  Edith Tudor Hart, as well as lesser-known photographers such as Elisabeth Chat, Laelia Goehr and Erika Koch. Ranging from portraiture and social reportage to advertising and architectural photography, the exhibition covers work which appeared in magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput and the Geographical, plus book design and illustration.

The women photographers were amongst the 80,000 refugees fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for Britain and the majority of these photographers were from Jewish backgrounds, escaping from anti-Semitic and sometimes political persecution. Often established practitioners, they brought fresh, modernist perspectives that opened up British photography in the decades that followed. 

Highly enterprising despite the  traumas of their exile, war-time privation and frequent lack of male support -they overcame their personal struggles to build new lives in Britain with many setting up their own studios, producing portraits capturing elite and cultural society of the time; some documented architecture to promote national visual education; others worked in social-reportage, political documentary, fashion, advertising and publishing. Their work played a significant role in representing British national life anew as part of the post-war social democratic reconstruction.  

The exhibition provides a unique insight into a range of photographic work, and explores how the experience of these female, mostly Jewish outsiders shaped their practice.

Another Eye: Women refugee photographers in Britain, after 1933
28 February-2 May 2020
Four Corners Gallery
121 Roman Road, London, E2 0QN
http://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye 

Image: Portrait of Lore Lisbeth Waller in her studio in Leamington Spa, circa 1945. Courtesy of Anne Zahalka.

Another Eye is part of Insiders/Outsiders Festival - this year-long nationwide arts festival runs until March 2020 and pays tribute to the indelible contribution that refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe have made to British culture. insidersoutsidersfestival.org

The impact of refugee artists in shaping British visual culture between the wars and in the post-war period is relatively well documented. Far less well-known is the fact that among the refugees fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for Britain there were many women photographers. The work of these women, some well-known, many unrecognised, brought a fresh approach to British photography in the decades that followed.

The conference will consider the contribution of these women émigré photographers to British visual culture. In so doing, it will analyse the nature of the European cultural practices they brought with them and investigate their work across portraiture, social-reportage, architectural and still-life photography; it will also look at their work for magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput, The Radio Times, The Listener and Vogue, and for book jackets, record sleeves and the documentation of artworks at the Warburg institute. Many set up their own studios, producing portraits of the British cultural elite; others observed the more socially diverse world of the city. In the 1940s they played a significant role in representing British national life anew as part of the post-war social democratic reconstruction. A primary aim of the conference is to consider how their experience as both (mostly Jewish) outsiders and women shaped their practice.

The conference, organised by the History & Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck and Four Corners in association with the Insiders/Outsiders Festival (https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/), accompanies Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s, a major exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, London, which runs from 28 February to 2 May 2020 (https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye).

Proposals for papers, which will be 20 minutes in length, are invited from postgraduate students, academics and independent scholars on topics including, but not limited to:

Individual Photographers

New research being done on relatively well-known figures such as Dorothy Bohm, Gerti Deutsch, Elsbeth Juda, Lotte Meitner-Graf, Lucia Moholy, and Edith Tudor-Hart. Papers focussing on those who only stayed in England for a relatively short time (such as Grete Stern, Ellen Auerbach, Trude Fleischmann, Lore Kruger, Margarete Michaelis and Erika Anderson née Kellner) will also be considered.

However, priority will be given to lesser-known figures such as Inge Ader, Alice Anson, Anneli Bunyard, Elizabeth Chat, Bertl Gaye (née Sachsel), Laelia Goehr, Lisel Haas, Adelheid (Heidi) Heimann and Hella Katz, Germaine Kanova, Erika Koch, Erna Mandowsky, Betti Mautner, Ursula Pariser, Gerty Simon, Lore Lizbeth Waller (née Back) and Gisele Zinner.

Disrupted career paths

The Exile Photographer’s Career – a collective look at the paths into exile and in and out of photography.

Critical evaluation of work in different genres

Portraiture, photo-essays, photojournalism, photography of art objects, fashion, and advertising. 

The convergence of British documentary with European photojournalism

As seen in the work of Gerti Deutsch, Edith Tudor-Hart and Elisabeth Chat among others.

Networks of support (or not), both personal and institutional, including publication outlets

These might include Picture Post, Lilliput, Weekly Illustrated, Georg Fayer studio, Report photographic agency (Simon Guttmann), the Warburg Institute, the Reimann School, The Ambassador, The Radio Times, The Listener, Tatler, Vogue, The Diplomat, Queen, Women’s Journal, The National Geographic, The Geographical Magazine, The Royal Photographic Society.

The intersection of Jewishness, class and gender

Legacies and influence:

To include the nature of these photographers’ influence on later women photographers, the process of their rediscovery and the role of archives, both institutional and personal, both in the UK and abroad.

Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s
Conference, Birkbeck, University of London, 1 May 2020

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, and a short biography of no more than 100 words should be sent to Carla Mitchell (carla@fourcornersfilm.co.uk) by 2 March 2020. 

More than 2,300 photobooks from the Charles Chadwyck-Healey collection including publications from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Diane Arbus are included in this vast gift of photobooks to the Bodleian Library. The collection adds considerably to the photography holdings that includes William Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature (1844–46) – one of the earliest examples of a printed photobook.

According to the Bodleian's librarian Richard Ovenden an exhibition is planned but the collection is still being catalogued and that is the immediate priority.

How have women photographers in Scotland taken control of their own image? This 2nd Morton symposium will reveal neglected stories of Scottish women in photography, including feminist social documentary photographer Franki Raffles, folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw and more.

Inspired by and featuring collections from The National Trust for Scotland and Glasgow Women's Library, this event explores photographic portrayals of women through time and will challenge institutions to better use photographic collections to tell women’s stories.

The NTS photographic holdings feature many women as takers, collectors, preservers and subjects. These include the collections of folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw, aristocrat Violet Brodie and Glaswegian typist Agnes Toward, all of which frequently depict women.

‘Ways of Seeing’: Exhibition

At the library for one day only before it’s showing at Tenement House, Shutter Hub brings together an exhibition of women’s photography in response to the ‘Ways of Seeing’ symposium with an informal reception between 5pm and 7pm, open to all.

Booking

This event is for open to all and is free to attend. Please book below (you will be taken through the shopping cart but no charge will be made) or you can call us on 0141 550 2267. If you have booked a place and are no longer able to attend please let us know so that we can make your place available to someone else.

‘Ways of Seeing’: Women and Photography in Scotland
Thursday 2nd April, 9am to 5pm, followed by a drinks reception
Glasgow Women's Library
Details and booking here: https://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/ways-of-seeing-symposium/

Please consider joining SSHoP, The Scottish Society for the History of Photography. We publish Studies in Photography twice a year - a high quality A4 journal of 104 pages - dedicated to historical and contemporary photography, with quality illustration and authoritative, critical writing.

SSHoP is a not-for-profit charity run by volunteers.  Our funding comes through a small amount of advertising, sales of the journal, and most importantly, membership subscriptions, which pay for publishing the journal and the events and lectures that we organise.

Besides receiving the journal, membership ensures that you are informed of, and have free admission to, our events and lectures. Please check out our website at: www.sshop.org.uk

At present, Membership is £25.00 for individual UK membership and £15.00 for UK students.

Please consider joining us. Sign up is easy though the membership pages on the site - and for any queries please contact membership@sshop.org.uk

***It is with very heavy hearts that we announce the cancellation of the Photography Beyond the Image symposium. Due to the current public health emergency, we feel compelled to make this difficult decision. The event will be rescheduled for the autumn and we will be in touch with new details once the current crisis alleviates.***

Recent years have seen photographic studies move beyond the analysis of the visual product. From a focus on photographs as the privileged points of access for studying photography, thus supporting a predominant understanding of the medium as a representational tool, the field is today embracing a more holistic approach. This has brought photography into a much needed interdisciplinary and intermedial analytical environment, and alerted us to the social, cultural and commercial entanglements that shape and are shaped by photographic practices. This one-day symposium hosted by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture seeks to examine these intellectual trends by reflecting on their postulates, methodologies and future directions.

SPEAKERS:

Professor Geoffrey Batchen (Oxford)
Dr Geoffrey Belknap (National Science and Media Museum)
Professor Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck)
Professor Elizabeth Edwards (Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute and De Montfort University)
Professor Steve Edwards (Birkbeck)
Professor Michelle Henning (University of Liverpool)
Dr Nicoletta Leonardi (Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan)
Dr Gil Pasternak (De Montfort University)
Dr Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton)
Convened by Dr Sara Dominici (IMCC, University of Westminster)

Photography Beyond the Image symposium
Saturday 25 April 2020, 9.45am – 4.45pm
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW
Full programme available here.

The event is free and open to all, but spaces are limited and booking essential. Tickets here.

Colleagues and researchers interested in correspondence relating to Brunel’s commissioning of photographs of the S.S. Great Eastern, may enjoy a blog by Emma Howgill: Photographing Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s S.S. Great Eastern. Images of the correspondence between I K Brunel and Joseph Cundall are also available on the University of Bristol Library Special Collections online archive catalogue (see Emma Howgill’s blog for links).

To whet your appetite part of Emma's blog says: 'Seven months later there is another set of correspondence about these photographs, beginning with a letter from Isambard Kingdom Brunel asking to see the photographs of the Great Eastern under construction (DM1306/11/1/2/folio 72). This set of correspondence ends with two pages of Instructions for Photographs listing exactly how Brunel wants any future photographs to be taken (DM1306/11/1/2/folio 85-86).  And just over a year and a half later, on 9 December 1856, there is a letter from Joseph Cundall of the Photographic Institute in New Bond Street, requesting payment for taking these photographs. Brunel’s letter-books, carefully showing the sequence of all the correspondence that he both sent and received about the Great Eastern allows us to trace the development of Brunel’s idea to illustrate the process of constructing his great ship, from its conception to payment.'

A new publication continues Terry Bennet's fascination with east Asian photography, mostly recently his three-volume History of Photography in China. Just published is Early Photography in Vietnam which is a fascinating and outstanding pictorial record of photography in Vietnam during the century of French rule. As with Terry's previous volumes the  book is carefully researched and referenced.  In more than 500 photographs, many published here for the first time, the volume records Vietnam’s capture and occupation by the French, the wide-ranging ethnicities and cultures of Vietnam, the country’s fierce resistance to foreign rule, leading to the reassertion of its own identity and subsequent independence.

This benchmark volume also includes a chronology of photography (1845–1954), an index of more than 240 photographers and studios in the same period, appendixes focusing on postcards, royal photographic portraits, Cartes de Visite and Cabinet Cards, as well as a select bibliography and list of illustrations.

Thoroughly researched and illustrated the book will be the definitive volume on Vietnamese photography up to 1954 for many years, as well as providing a structure for other researchers to build upon.

Early Photography in Vietnam
Terry Bennett
Renaissance Books, 2020
ISBN 978-1-912961-04-7
£70.00, 404 pages. 

See: https://www.renaissancebooks.co.uk/Forthcoming-Titles/171-/Early-Photography-in-Vietnam

The Science Museum has announced its research seminar series for winter and spring 2020. They are free to attend and open to science museum staff, students, museum professionals and academics with a research interest in the history of science, technology, medicine and  museums as well as material and visual culture more broadly. Admission is free. 

Of particular note is Merrick Burrow discussing the Cottingley Fairies and Conan Doyle. 

In the December 1920 issue of the Strand Magazine Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, published what he considered to be conclusive photographic proof of the existence of  fairies. He followed up this article with another one the following March, which featured three more photographs by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, the same young women who had taken  the two original pictures. As a result of Doyle's patronage these five photographs of ‘the  Cottingley fairies’ became a global cause célèbre.

Doyle, though widely mocked, maintained his view that the photographs were genuine. Frances and Elsie refused for decades to bow to pressure to confess to faking the pictures. Eventually  they admitted the hoax in the 1980s, though Frances maintained to the end that one of the photographs was genuine.

In this talk Dr Merrick Burrow will explore the background to the Cottingley fairies photographs  and the peculiar circumstances that turned them into the world’s greatest photographic hoax.

Dr Merrick Burrow is Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield. He is curator of a major exhibition on the Cottingley fairies at the Brotherton Library, Leeds, running from September 2020.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Cottingley Fairies: Merrick Burrow (University of Huddersfield)
Date: Tuesday 31 March 2020, 13.00–14.00

Dana Research Centre & Library
165 Queen’s Gate, London, SW7 5HD.
Feel free to bring a packed lunch to eat during the seminar.

See: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/research-seminar-series