Blogs

This month, Photoworks begins a year of activities marking twenty-five years of Photoworks. To mark its anniversary year it commissioned Ibrahim Azab to create (PW)_H3RE N0W)//_SINCE TH3N, 2020, re-imagining the Photoworks archive by (re)using copies of its magazines. 

Photoworks says: "These are difficult times, and a time to rethink the world around us. Our programme for 2020 - Alternative Narratives - reflects this. We look forward to you joining us as we journey into our next 25 years. We'll be back this time next month with another Check In. Keep your eyes peeled for other updates from us in the meantime, including new digital content and news of opportunities for you, our community."

See: https://photoworks.org.uk/

This is another post to the blog concerning mistakes I have found in the titles and descriptions of Crimean War photographs in collections that I hope will come to the attention of curators.

While in the Crimea, Roger Fenton took a portrait of Frederick Augustus Maxse. In the picture, Commander Maxse, who at the time held the rank of commander in the Royal Navy, sits on a rock wearing in his navy frock coat with two stripes on his lower sleeve (see right). The image appeared in an exhibition of Fenton’s work held in London after he returned from the Crimea as catalogue number 167.

I recently noticed that the portrait of Commander Maxse held by the Royal Collection Trust (RCT) as accession RCIN 2500288 has the title Commander Henry Berkeley Fitzhardinge Maxse (1832-1883). However Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley Maxse (note the correct order of his middle names) was in the army and not the navy. He was the elder brother of Frederick Augustus Maxse.

The RCT on its website has the following description of the image:

Commander Maxse served during the Crimean War as Aide-de-Camp to Lord Cardigan. He was injured in the Charge of the Light Brigade. After his return to Britain, he was presented with his Crimean medal by Queen Victoria on Horse Guards Parade on 18 May 1855. He later became Governor of Newfoundland where he died.

This description is true for Henry Maxse, but not for Commander Fredrick Maxse, who is the person in the picture. The RCT records April 1855 as the month and year the image was taken. Henry Maxse was not in the Crimea in 1855 as he was in England on medical leave for a wound he received during the Charge of the Light Brigade. However, his brother Frederick was in the Crimea in 1855 serving as naval aide-de-camp to Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief of the British army. He appears on another of Fenton’s photographs of the staff at headquarters.

The Library of Congress in Washington also names the subject of the person in their Commander Maxse image as Henry Maxse, as does Getty Images. I also note that Amazon are selling the picture of Frederick Maxse under the name Henry Maxse and Wikipedia have published the same photograph under its entry for Henry Maxse.

I trust that changes will be made to the title and description by those collections naming the wrong man in the portrait.

The Association of Photographers (AOP) launch a series of breakfast talks with the most influential figures from the photographic community. A number of the talks will be of particular interest to BPH readers.

Talk 2 – Tuesday 9 June 09:00-10:00 - Commissioning Editors
With the COVID-19 dominating the headlines, how are the commissioning editors of the press looking at imagery?
Fiona Shields, commissioning editor of The Guardian Newspaper, Emma Bowkett commissioning editor FT Magazine.

Talk 3 – Tuesday 16 June 09:00-10:00 - Fine Art photography
How have you meshed your fine art brand of photography to create the images and planned work during this COVID-19 lockdown?
Julia Fullerton Batten, Othello De’Souza Hartley, Lottie Davis

Talk 4 – Tuesday 23 June 09:00-10:00 - Photojournalism
How has Covid-19 impacted your assignments and personal projects as a photojournalist, visual storyteller?
Gideon Mendel, Simon Roberts, Jillian Edelstein, Liz Hingley

Talk 5 – Tuesday 30 June 09:00-10:00 - Photography Festivals
What have been your greatest challenges managing the cancellation and delay of your eponymous Photography Festivals?
Michael Benson, Photo London, Shoair Malian, Photoworks, Scott Gray, CEO World Photography Organisation & Sony Awards

Talk 6 – Tuesday 7 July 09:00-10:00 - On-line Exhibitions
'What are the challenges and benefits creating an on-line exhibition?
Tracey Marshall, (Northern Narrative/Trace Art Collective), Karen McQuaid (the Photographer’s Gallery) Anne Braybon, (National Portrait Gallery), Del Barrett, 100Heroines

Talk 7 – Tuesday 14 July 09:00-10:00 - Virtual Galleries and Auction Houses
How does exhibiting and selling fine art photography perform on-line during the COVID-19 crisis and what will the challenges in the future for ‘real’ versus ‘virtual’ galleries and auction houses.
Ben Burdett, Director, Atlas Gallery, Brandei Estes, Head of Photography, Sotheby’s, Brett Rogers OBE, Director, Photographers Gallery

Talk 8 – Tuesday 21 July 09:00-10:00 - Reinventing On-line events
What have been your most popular on-line events hosted since the COVID 19 pandemic closed down your traditional modes of presenting?
Pranvera Smith, Founder Frontline Club, Melanie Phillips, British Journal of Photography, Shoair Mavlian, PhotoWorks

Talk 9 – Tuesday 28 July 09:00 – 10:00 – Photographic Agents
The role of the agent during and post Covid-19
Fiona Rogers, Webber Represent, Skye Trayler, Trayler & Trayler, Photographers Agent, Sophie Wright, Magnum, Rosie Wadey, East Photographic

Talk 10 – Tuesday 4 August 09:00-10:00 - Advertising Photography
As a specialist in advertising photography, what has been the impact on your
commissions?
Ed Robinson, Adam Hinton, Kelvin Murray, James Gerrad-Jones, Wyatt Clarke Agency

Talk 11 – Tuesday 11 August 09:00-10:00 Book Publishing
What impact has this COVID-19 lock-down had on the fine art photographic book publishing industry?
Stu Smith, Gost Books, Hannah Watson, Trolley Books

Talk 12 – Tuesday 18 August 09:00-10:00 - Photographic Awards
What are your challenges raising funds and creating events for your grants and photographic contests since the Corona virus pandemic has impacted daily lives on the global stage?
Harriet Logan, the Ian Parry Awards, Tristan Lund, curator, Marc Hartog, CEO 1854 Media/British Journal of Photography, Seamus McGibbon, AOP Executive Director

Book here: http://www.the-aop.org

PhD student, Rachel Maloney, the University of Brighton’s V&A Research Exchange Fellow, discusses how her research has had to adapt during lockdown. Rachel is an artist and researcher whose work focuses on memory and personal narrative within family photographs and archival collections. Her project outlined a practice-led research project that would investigate and re-frame the female narrative of materials held in the V&A’s photographic collections. She also planned to carry out research workshops that invited participants to share and discuss their personal family archives.

The V&A began acquiring photographs from as early as 1852 and it now houses one of the largest collections of photographic material in the world. This includes the recent acquisition of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which in 2018 was migrated from the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford to the V&A.

Read her blog and how lockdown forced her to look inward to her own family's photography archives here: http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/centrefordesignhistory/2020/05/27/research-in-lockdown-a-research-fellowship-in-lockdown/ 

The Royal Society played an important role in recording the introduction and progress of photography from the 1830s onwards. A new resources from Google Arts and Culture brings some of the Society's archives relating to photography to the fore.

See: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/the-invention-of-photography/fAJij3PkQZd1Lw 

Asahi Shimbum, the publishers of the Japans oldest photography magazine Asahi Camera which started publication in 1926 have announced that it will cease with the July 2020 issue. A reduction in advertising caused by COVID-19 and economic factors are cited as the reasons for the closure.  

Since its launch in April 1926 the monthly Asahi Camera has been Japan's most important camera magazine. In addition to introducing information on cameras and the works of leading photographers active in Japan and overseas. It has also held photography contests and other public events.

The magazine has provided an important insight in to Japanese photography and its demise marks a sad day for Japanese photographers.

The Ihei Kimura Photo Award will continue to be co-sponsored by Asahi Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun Publishing.

Read more about the magazine here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asahi_Camera

The curators of the Lee Miller archives, Lee Miller's and Sir Roland Penrose's son Antony Penrose and his daughter Ami Bouhassane will narrate a short film about Lee's work and life. 

The narrated film is called 'The Indestructible Lee Miller' and lasts approx 45 minutes. A question and answer session will follow. 

See more details: https://rps.org/events/regions/south-wales/2020/june/the-indestructible-lee-miller/

The Charles Dickens Museum is releasing the first of a new collection of colourised photographs of the great author, ahead of the 150th anniversary of his death on 9th June. The image shows Charles Dickens in 1859, aged forty-seven, with a warm expression, looking directly at the camera and sporting a bright yellow, green and blue Clan Gordon tartan waistcoat, over a brilliant white shirt, with light-coloured trousers, a textured navy jacket and a bow tie.

The original black-and-white collodion print chosen for today’s first image was made by photographer Herbert Watkins. The new photography and colourisation has been conducted by London-based portrait and still life photographer, Oliver Clyde.

Being There is a new publication from Michael Hallett. It consists of fragments of biographies that collectively follow the progress of picture journalism from the advent of the miniature camera through to the arrival and impact of the digital age. It covers a ninety-year period from c1923 to 2012 and provides a critical compilation of encounters with influential photographers and their visual icons.

It introduces snatches of life; the individual photographer’s biographies, the biography of the subject of the photographer’s gaze and to some extent the biography of the observer who intercepts the photographer and extends the story. This is not a history of modern photojournalism but a meander through the media’s past, just stopping at strategic points to mark in the detail and paint in the colour.

The predominant narrative to this book relates to the photographic documentary in Europe and America and the individual interviews reflect this. Many of these interviews have been published in the photographic press and are reproduced here in edited or expanded form, while others have been interviewed specifically for this book.They cover five periods:

• 1923-1940 with the emergence of the picture magazine;
• 1940-1975 the golden age of photojournalism and the arrival of the ‘colour supplements’;
• 1975-2000 which provides new thinking and looking;
• 2000-2010 that sees the arrival of the democracy of photography; while
• 2011-2012 reviews concerns and queries, outcomes and polarities of Armageddon and renewal.

Mike Hallett’s publication has evolved over a thirty year period and is now presented from a 2019 perspective. His conversations with such photographers as Tim Gidal, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, Sebastiāo Salgado as well as more recent practitioners all reflect the time of their particular interview.

Further information from hallettpic@gmail.com

Published by CrabApple Publications, Worcester, UK
Softback Economy Edition available via Amazon
ISBN 9781714312023
260 pages, 96,000 words with pictures

The book is available from Amazon for £27.40 with free delivery. 

The latest issue of the free, online, Science Museum Journal (Spring 2020, issue 13) includes two articles of particular interest to British photography. Jeffrey Sturchio writes about Kenneth Mees, Eastman Kodak and the challenges of diversification and Jason Bate writes about Projecting soldiers’ repair: the ‘Great War’ lantern and the Royal Society of Medicine. 

The rest of the issue and past volumes are worth checking out too. 

See: http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-13/festschrift-experimenting-with-research/#0

Huxley-Parlour has launched an exhibition of over 40 vintage and early Cecil Beaton photographs in its dedicated online viewing room. The site is populated with in-depth essays and a range of detailed imagery, bringing context and information to each work. The photographs survey Beaton's career, ranging from portraits of the 'Bright Young Things' in the 1920s, to his innovative fashion work and portraiture in the 1930s and 1950s.

See: http://viewingroom.huxleyparlour.com/cecil-beaton/

Image: Cecil Beaton, Lady Loughborough Under a Bell Jar, 1927

James Hyman Gallery presents an online exhibition of largely unseen photographs by Shirley Baker selected from the British photographer’s estate. The exhibition, which goes live from 22 June to 24 July via the Gallery’s website , includes her rare colour work as well as a selection of iconic black and white images.

Focusing on Shirley Baker’s celebrated street scenes photographed around Manchester and Salford in the north of England, this exhibition explores her depiction of older people. Shirley Baker’s daughter, Nan Levy, who co-curated the show with James Hyman, explains: “We are now starting to see the easing of the lockdown and with that we can begin to step outside, enjoy the sunshine and play sport. Sadly our elderly folk are still advised to stay safe at home; unable to see their loved ones or enjoy simple pleasures such as going to the park. I have gathered together a collection of Shirley’s photographs taken from the mid 60s to the mid 80s; these show older people enjoying their daily lives in the community in a way that is not possible at the moment.”

Shirley Baker, once writing of her motivations, expressed a world of street life that seems like a distant memory: “I love the immediacy of unposed, spontaneous photographs and the ability of the camera to capture the serious, the funny, the sublime and the ridiculous. Despite the many wonderful pictures of the great and famous, I feel that less formal, quotidian images can often convey more of the life and spirit of the time.”

All works are for sale, subject to availability with prices starting at £1,800+VAT

See: http://www.jameshymangallery.com/ 

About Shirley Baker

Shirley Baker (1932, Kersal, Salford–2014, Wilmslow, Chesire) is today recognised as one of the preeminent British photographers of the post war period, and one of a very small number of women street photographers in post-war England. Beginning her work in the late 1950s her pictures reveal the legacy of Bill Brandt's pioneering study of The English at Home (1938) and the Picture Post magazine photo stories of Bert Hardy, Grace Robertson, Thurston Hopkins and others. Based in the streets of Manchester and Salford,

Baker's photographs also provide a northern counterpart for the type of street photography practised in London at the same period by Roger Mayne, which also saw a focus on children. However Baker's photography has a particular, individual quality that distinguishes her work and her sensitivity to her subjects.

Baker's humanist documentary work allows an intimate look on the daily life of working class communities during the 1960s and up to the late 1970s. The black and white images find their visual power in the layers of their composition. The juxtaposition between the half-demolished grim backgrounds and the subject matter, mostly children playing and women daily life, allow an emphatic engagement. Through her devotion to a rightful representation of her subjects, allowing a level of humour in her images, Baker's photography grants visibility to the resilience of human spirit at a time of radical change for working-class communities in Northern England.

Hampered by the denial of a role for women in a man-lead industry, Baker's contribution to photography was not recognised until recent years. Her work was exhibited in multiple group exhibitions such as the Observers: British Photography and the British Scene , at the Serviço Social da Ind(SESI), SPaulo in 2012; Looking Outwards at the Oldham Gallery in Manchester in 2013; and the major exhibition: Shirley Baker. Women, Children and Loitering Men, The Photographers' Gallery, London 2015 (and tour). In 2019, a monograph of her work was published by MACK.

Drawing: The Muse of Photography is a webinar from Drawing America and presents a conversation on the relationship between drawing and photography with Hans P. Kraus Jr., Malcolm Daniel, Curator of Photography at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and moderated by Allison Wucher, Director of Master Drawings New York. 

The talk will include a presentation on the early photographs and drawings by the pioneers of photography in Kraus’s current gallery exhibition, Drawing: The Muse of Photography. It will explore the techniques and innovations of early photographic artists, as well as how these new technologies were received by their contemporaries. Following the presentation, the panel will discuss the continued exchange and intersection between photography and drawing from the time William Henry Fox Talbot published The Pencil of Nature (1844-46) up to today.

To join this special free webinar via Zoom on Sunday May 31st at 1400 (EST) (1900 BST) please register here. 

Image: Oscar Gustave Rejlander, The First Negative, 1857, coated salt print. Musée d’Orsay, Paris

 

Bonhams is to auction a collection of material, including cameras, tripods, workbench and woodworking tools, and the sign from the Gandolfi camera makers workshop in Borland Road, London, in a single lot on 29 July 2020. The property was originally offered by Christie's by private treaty in 1994 and is offered by that buyer, a Swiss collector. The collection is estimated by Bonhams at £3000-5000. 

Read the full description here: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/26339/lot/342/#/! 

Lai Fong (c.1839-1890): Photographer of China is the first exhibition devoted to a nineteenth-century Chinese photographer. Unfortunately, the exhibition at Cornell University's Johnson Museum of Art is inaccessible due to current circumstances. To share a view of the exhibition, Stephan Loewentheil, one of the principal supporters of the exhibition, has put together this short video with a selection of important photographs by the early Chinese master. The video is best viewed in full screen by following this link: https://loewentheilcollection.com/news/

The official exhibition page can be found here: 

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

The exhibition was curated by Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson, and Stacey Lambrow, curator of the Loewentheil Photography of China Collection, with the assistance of Yuhua Ding, curatorial assistant for Asian art at the Johnson. It is supported in part by the Helen and Robert J. Appel Exhibition Endowment.

The Loewentheil Collection consists of more than 21,000 original photographs, most dating to the late Qing Dynasty. The Collection includes countless masterpieces, in superb condition, by the artistic giants of early photography of China. It presents a stunning visual record of China’s landscape, people, and culture. 

Hello, I am doing some research on UK photographic studios and am trying to find information on the studio of W (William ?) Lynden of 11 Union Street, Plymouth.  Is there a free centralised searchable site where I might be able to find details of all UK studios? Any advice or help is greatly appreciated. I am located in Melbourne, Australia.

Cheers,

John Campbell. 

Dr Richard Sadler FRPS, one of British photography's important post-war figures, has died aged 92 years after a short illness. Originally from Coventry, Sadler was in his home city during the Coventry Blitz of 1940 and later documented the reconstruction of the city and the iconic Coventry Cathedral, becoming its official photographer. He was also the heavily involved with the city's Belgrade Theatre from 1958 until 1994 and part of his work there has now been digitised. 

He began teaching photography at Derby College of Art (later University of Derby) and was appointed course leader of the BA course in the 1980s. Derby University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2006.

Sadler's best known image is of the famous American photographer, Arthur Fellig -  Weegee the Famous - photographed when he visited Coventry in 1963. His photographs are held in several international collections, including The Royal Photographic Society Collection,the Centre for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

He joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1960 and was a former chairman of its Contemporary Group, editing its journal for many years The RPS awarded him its Fenton Medal in 2005. He was profiled by Mike Hallett in the Society's publication Portfolio Two (2010). 

In 2007 he moved to Monmouthshire where he died on Saturday. BPH's condolences go to his partner, Sue, his daughters and family. 

See: https://photomining.org/projects/sadler-at-the-belgrade

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O212252/weegee-the-famous-photograph-sadler-richard-ma/

With thanks to John Blakemore and Paul Hill. 

More to follow.  

The John Rylands Library in Manchester has a wonderful collection of historic and contemporary photography. Tony Richards from its imaging team is using COVID-19 lockdown as an opportunity to experiment with very modern imaging techniques to visualise spaces and objects from its collection. One of the objects visualised is a daguerreotype which presents its own challenges in showing the surface and characteristic transition between the 'negative' and 'positive'. These techniques have the potential to open up spaces and the collection for those unable to visit in person.   

Read the full blog here: https://rylandscollections.com/2020/05/11/from-2d-to-3d-photogrammetry/  

Image: Tony Richards, Daguerreotype of Catherine Hannah Dunkerley. John Rylands Library, Manchester.

James Hyman Gallery presents a specially curated online exhibition that addresses physical and mental well-being entitled In Sickness and in Health: Heather Agyepong, Anna Fox and Jo Spence. Originally, conceived for the cancelled Paris Photo New York fair in New York in March, the themes of this three person exhibition have taken on a new resonance in the present global health crisis.

The exhibition includes Jo Spence’s seminal “Phototherapy” work made in the 1980s when Spence used photography as a psychological tool to navigate her diagnosis with cancer. Anna Fox presents one of her most celebrated, powerful and intimate bodies of work, My Mother's Cupboards and my Father's Words, a recording of her ill father’s outbursts that were mainly directed at the female members of his family. It is the first time the series has been made commercially  available with the publication of a limited edition. The exhibition is also the premiere for Heather Agyepong's latest series, Wish You Were Here (2020), a new body of work focusing on the life of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer

The exhibition opening is timed to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week and 10% of sales will go to MIND, the mental health charity,

Heather Agyepong
The exhibition is the world premiere for Heather Agyepong's latest series, Wish You Were Here (2020). Following the success of her earlier series Too Many Blackamoors, Agyepong’s new body of work focuses on the life of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer. Known as the Queen of the Cake-Walk – in reference to a dance craze that swept America & Europe in the early 1900s – Walker challenged the rigid and problematic narratives of black performers. Originally performed by slaves who mocked and mimicked the slave owners and high society by the early twentieth century the dance had become so fashionable that postcards depicting Cake-Walk dancers were distributed around Europe. These postcards were often grotesque and offensive with the allure of spectacle where the performers lacked agency. Agyepong echoes these postcards but re-imagines the subject not as one of oppression but of self-care with a mandate for people of Afro-Caribbean descent to take up space. The images explore the concepts of ownership, entitlement and mental well-being. The series was commissioned by THE HYMAN COLLECTION and Agyepong has just been announced as one of the winners of a grant from Firecracker.

Anna Fox
Anna Fox presents one of her most celebrated, powerful and intimate bodies of work My Mother's Cupboards and my Father's Words. This is the first time the series has been made commercially available with the publication of a limited edition. Originally conceived as a miniature limited edition book that paired images and text. While her father was ill for many years, Fox kept a notebook recording his outbursts that were mainly directed at the female members of his family. Her father’s words are paired with a series of claustrophobic images of her mothers' neatly kept cupboards to reveal a couple struggling to keep an even keel in the wake of a rapidly debilitating disease. The series presently features in the provocative exhibition Masculinities. Liberation through Photography (Barbican Centre, London and tour to Rencontres Arles, and the Gropius Bau, Berlin) where the series has met with particular critical acclaim. The book has also long been out of print and this presentation coincides with the launch of a newly conceived publication of the work in a special edition of 500 copies.

Jo Spence
Jo Spence who died in 1992 remains one of the major influences on contemporary British photography in the way in which she placed herself at the centre of her work and in the performative nature of these images. The exhibition includes rare and unique examples of her seminal “Phototherapy” work made in the 1980s. In 1981 Spence was diagnosed with cancer and much of her subsequent work was a response to her treatment by the medical establishment and her attempt to navigate its authority through alternative therapies. Subsequently Spence used photo narrative, montage and performative re-staging of personal trauma, using photography as a psychological tool. In 'Phototherapy' sessions Spence and collaborators such as Rosy Martin adopted techniques from co-counselling. The considerable achievement of Photo-Therapy was to invert the traditional relationship between the photographer and the subject. Whereas previously the photographic subject had little control over their own representation, Phototherapy shifts this dynamic. The subject is able to act out personal narratives and claim agency for their own biography. Spence was recently the subject of a major exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

In Sickness and in Health

18 May - 19 June 2020
Heather Agyepong, Anna Fox and Jo Spence

See: http://www.jameshymangallery.com/exhibitions/2678/in-sickness-and-in-health-heather-agyepong-anna-fox-and-jo-spence

In a post to this blog on 18 April 2020, the author described differences in the titles of three Roger Fenton images in Crimean War photographic collections at the Library of Congress (LoC) and the Royal Collection Trust (RTC). This is still unresolved because of ‘lockdowns’ caused by the coronavirus, but Micah Messenheimer at LoC informs me that he is continuing to work on it because of its importance to him and the collection. He is waiting to hear back from the RCT at the moment.

In this post, mistakes in online information provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles for images in its collection taken by James Robertson/Felice Beato photographic team are detailed. The Getty Museum has a collection of 177 images taken by James Robertson/Beato. A photograph of Robertson is shown on the right. Of these 177 images, 76 are of the Crimea taken at the time of the Crimean conflict of 1854-56. Each has a title and a brief description of the image. Of the 76 Crimean images, 49 are not available to view. The actual images of only 27 are available to view and download.

Many of the titles given to the 27 visually available Robertson/Beato Crimean War images in the Getty Museum are not the same as those in the Royal Collection Trust. However, when analysing the titles, differences in wording was ignored by the author if the title was still appropriate for the visual image. Nevertheless, despite this being taken into consideration, the images associated with 13 of the 27 (48%) did not match their titles and descriptions.

Those accessions found with an image not matching the title and description follow: -

Image entitled French Works and Batteries (Acc. No. 84.XM.475.15) should have the more appropriate title View of the Malakoff Battery taken from the Mamelon Vert.

Image entitled Balaklava (Acc. No. 84.XA.619.77) should have the more appropriate title Village and Harbour of Sevastopol with the Huts of the Guards.

Image entitled The End of Balaklava Harbour (Acc. No. 84.XA.886.51) should have the more appropriate title Village and Harbour of Sevastopol with the Huts of the Guards.

Image entitled Interior of the Redan (Acc. No. 84.XA.886.57) should have the more appropriate title Breach in the Redan. Where the great struggle took place on 8^th September 1855.

Image entitled Interior of the Redan (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.24) should have the more appropriate title Bomb Proof Hut of the Russian General in the Redan.

Image entitled Bomb Proof Hut of the Russian General in the Redan (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.25) should have the more appropriate title View of Sebastopol from the Right of the Redan.

Image entitled Interior of the Mamelon Vert (Acc. No. 84.X0.1375.31) should have the more appropriate title Corner of the Malakoff Battery, Mamelon Vert in the distance.

Image entitled Corner of the Malakoff Battery, Mamelon Vert in the distance (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.34) should have the more appropriate title Bomb Proof Magazines in the Malakoff Battery.

Image entitled Panorama of Sebastopol from the Malakoff Tower (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.38) should have the more appropriate title View of Russian hospitals from Fort Paul.

Image entitled View of the Arsenal and Docks (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.39) should have the more appropriate title Chapman’s Battery, left Attack.

Image entitled View of the Russian Hospitals (Acc. No. 84.XO.1375.40) should have the more appropriate title Chapman’s Battery, Left Attack showing part of the Redan.

Image entitled Chapman’s Battery, Left Attack (Acc. No. 84.40.1375.42) should have the more appropriate title Creek Battery from the Garden Battery

Image entitled Sebastopol. From the Left Attack (Acc. No. 84.40.1375.49) should have the more appropriate title Headquarters at Sebastopol. The Getty Museum's website image of Sebastopol. From the Left attack is shown below. It has the description: - Elevated view of Pivdenna Bay, off Sevastopol Bay. Ruined buildings, from both the city of Sevastopol and Russian military fortifications, cover the hilly landscape around the bay. This is one that was clearly not correct.

In the above cases, a mix-up in images, possibly when they were transferred to the website, may be the cause of the errors. The titles suggested as being more appropriate above were found associated with other photographs in the Crimean War collection of Robertson/Beato in the Getty Museum. Some were those of images that were available for view and others from images that were not shown. This strongly suggests that some images not available to view also have the wrong titles. A thorough re-appraisal of all the 76 images and their titles/descriptions needs to be undertaken to resolve this issue.

The author refers those interested to the Getty Museum’s website: -https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1873/james-robertson-english-1813-1888/.