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Visit The Forgotten Showman and discover the man who invented British cinema.

National Science+Media Museum
Bradford
Curated by Toni Booth
22 November 2019 - 29 March 2020
See more here.

This exhibition celebrates an unparalleled collection of Scottish photography recently acquired and shared by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. The photographs were amassed by collector Murray MacKinnon and represent Scottish life and identity from the 1840s through the 1940s – a century of dramatic transformation and innovation.

The chronicle of Scotland’s culture during the mid-19th to early 20th centuries is inseparable from its leading role in the early history of photography itself. Many of the first practitioners and visionaries who impelled the medium forward were based in Scotland or were inspired by Scottish subjects. The exhibition includes 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 during the 19th century and established precedents for photographers worldwide.

The photographer Bill Brandt (1904-1983) and sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) first crossed paths during the Second World War, when they both created images of civilians sheltering in the London Underground during the Blitz. Taking these acclaimed ‘shelter pictures’ as a starting point, this major exhibition will trace for the first time the parallel and intersecting careers of these two important artists of the 20^th century.

Organised in partnership with the Yale Center for British Art, the exhibition will bring together over 200 works including major sculptures, iconic photographs, drawings, little-known photo collages, unprinted negatives and rare original colour transparencies. Bill Brandt | Henry Moore will reveal the interdisciplinary range of these two artists, exploring how they both responded creatively to the British landscape and communities during the turbulent times in which they lived.

The exhibition will open with the moment the artists met in 1942 when Brandt photographed Moore in his studio to accompany a 10-page spread in Lilliput magazine juxtaposing the two artists’ shelter pictures. Brandt was a regular contributor as a photojournalist to Lilliput, a magazine known for its innovative photographic features, and this issue was the first time the two artists’ work was shown side-by-side.

Both artists were often drawn to similar subjects - leading up to and during the Second Word War, there was a focus on ordinary people, the home and labour. Brandt’s bleakly evocative photographs of impoverished mining communities and families in the North of England taken in the late 1930s reflect social deprivation. Moore’s later sketches documenting the civilian war effort at his father’s colliery in his home-town of Castleford, although similar in theme, present a more optimistic view.

Sculptures such as the 1944 bronze Family Group show a connection between Moore’s shelter drawings and his depictions of family groups, a subject he often returned to in both sculptures and drawings. In the 1950s Moore made a series of works which used similar groupings of figures, poses and drapery as those seen in the shelter drawings, presenting the familial members as one body, melded together in bronze or in the grey wash of a drawing.

In contrast with the densely populated, often claustrophobic, urban subjects explored during the war, Brandt and Moore both later turned to nature and the light-filled open landscape as a primary source of inspiration. A significant section of the exhibition will look at both artists’ enduring interest in rock formations, geological artefacts, and megalithic sites, such as Stonehenge. Brandt’s photographs of Stonehenge will be presented alongside Moore’s lithographs of the same subject, examining how each artist chose to capture the enigmatic nature of the site.

This section of the exhibition will also explore the importance of found natural objects to the development of both artists’ later works, including a little-known relief sculpture by Brandt, made from pieces of flotsam he collected on the beach. Objects from Moore’s extensive collection of shells, pebbles and bones, which he kept in his studio as source materials will also be on display. These he sometimes collaged together with plasticine into small figurative sculptures, sometimes scaling them up into full-sized standing and reclining figures, such as Reclining Figure (Bone) 1975.

The exhibition will reveal the important relationship for both artists between 2D images and 3D objects. Moore will be presented as a sculptor and draftsman who made a serious commitment to photography both as a creative medium and a means of presenting his work. On display will be little-known photographs of his sculptures, drawn on and collaged together to develop new ideas for future sculpture. Brandt will be revealed as a photographer who looked to sculpture as a subject and as a way of considering nature, landscape, and the human body, as exemplified by a series of rare colour transparencies of sculptural rock formations on the beach.

Bill Brandt | Henry Moore will also examine the complicated relationship between pictures and objects, between ‘primary’ works of art and ‘secondary’ published images used as an important means of disseminating their work to a wide public, and the material nature of the printed photograph.

Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield said: ‘We are delighted to be working with the Yale Center for British Art on this major exhibition that presents side-by-side for the first time, the work of Bill Brandt and Henry Moore. These two important artists, born only 10 years apart, were both commissioned by the UK government in the 1930s – Brandt as a photojournalist and Moore as a war artist – and subsequently supported by the British Council, developing significant reputations internationally. Both artists had a fascination and poetic sensibility for capturing the spirit of place and it is particularly poignant to be presenting this exhibition in West Yorkshire, where Henry Moore was born and grew up.’

The exhibition is organised by the Yale Center for British Art in partnership with The Hepworth Wakefield. It is accompanied by a major new book published by the Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press. The exhibition will be shown at The Hepworth Wakefield: 7 February – 31 May 2020; and at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven: 25 June – 13 September 2020; it will then tour to the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich: 22 November 2020 – 28 February 2021.

Bill Brandt | Henry Moore is supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Hiscox and The Hepworth Wakefield Contemporary Circle.

See: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/bill-brandt-henry-moore/

Image: Bill Brandt, Nude, East Sussex Coast. Gelatin silver print, 1960 Bill Brandt Archive, London, © Bill Brandt / Bill Brandt Archive Ltd. / Photograph by Richard Caspole

Bristol Vintage Photograph Fair is a new event; offering for the first time in the West of England, an opportunity for collectors of early photography to meet the leading specialist vintage photograph dealers from the UK & Europe, and browse through an exceptional display of rare original photographs, documenting the first 150 years of Photography, from 1840 to 1990.

A wide ranging selection of fine prints, from Britain, Europe, Asia, the Americas, and around the world:

Portraiture, Social documentary, Military & Naval campaigns, Architectural studies, Travel, Topography & Landscape, Natural History and wildlife, and much more.

• Daguerreotypes & Ambrotypes,
• Calotypes, (Salt Prints)
• Albumen and Gelatine prints,
• Lantern slides,
• Cartes-de-visite & Cabinet print portraiture,
• Stereographs, Photographic Postcards etc.
• New, Secondhand, and Antiquarian Books on Photographers & the History of Photography.

Photographs offered for sale will be original vintage prints & images (no modern copies, facsimiles or reproductions allowed!)

Prices range from a few pounds, up to examples of some of the rarest and most valuable prints, produced by some of the greatest names in 19th and early 20th century photography.

See: http://www.bristolphotofair.uk/

The Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) and the International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC), de Montfort University, in collaboration with the National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT) are currently offering a PhD position on the photographic history of the Paralympic community in Britain.

Description of the project:

This project will examine the formation of the Paralympic community through the study of the NHPT photographic collections. This archive follows a community-centred approach. It reflects the daily life of disabled athletes, and not just the elite or mega-events, and aims to bring the photographs back to their regional communities through itinerant exhibitions, currently planned for Norfolk, Bradford, Manchester, Bath and London. By closely analysing the growing NHPT photographic collection, the student will identify how athletes, coaches, medical staff and families have used photography to define themselves as a ‘community’ and how they have used sport to frame and represent their disabilities. Understanding how the Paralympic community has appropriated medical images or the stories that Paralympians tell when seeing the NHPT photographs will challenge public perceptions about individuals with disabilities and will present new critical insights into the formation of sports communities, representations and disability.

The proposed CDA project will 1) determine the key role photographic representations have played in building the Paralympic community; 2) demonstrate the public impact and academic value of incorporating photographic collections into sport heritage projects and activities; 3) will consolidate the reputation of DMU as a leading institution in interdisciplinary arts and humanities research based on knowledge co-production with heritage institutions such as NHPT at regional and national levels.

The outcomes of this project will be the result of the co-creation of knowledge between the student, the academics at DMU and the NPHT. The PhD student will be key to maintain and enhance the NPHT Paralympic heritage by means of 1) contextualising the existing photographic collection, 2) compiling oral histories related to the Paralympic movement in the Midlands and 3) contributing to a Midlands version of the itinerant NPHT exhibition, which will take place in 2024. Unlike other NPHT exhibitions, the Midlands exhibit will be specifically designed for the region and will be the product of the M4C CDA, as the NPHT is not currently planning to tour the exhibition anywhere in the Midlands.

You can find more information about the project here: https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/From-Stoke-Mandeville-1944-to-London-2012-DMU.pdf

Funding is available for 4 years (or 8 for part-time study), which includes fees for both UK and EU applicants and maintenance grant for UK applicants (where institutional funds allow, M4C may be able to offer a maintenance grant to EU applicants), plus opportunities for additional funding. You can find more information through the Midlands 4 cities portal: https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/our-offer/

To apply, please consult the Midlands 4 Cities portal, where you can find all the information about the application process: https://www.midlands4cities.ac.uk/apply/

Supervisors: Dr Beatriz Pichel (PHRC), Heather L Dichter (ICSHC) and Vicky Hope Walker (NPHT)

Deadline: 14 January 2020

For more information about the project, please contact Dr Beatriz Pichel: beatriz.pichel@dmu.ac.uk

As part of Scotland's Season of Photography the University of Glasgow has published a blog which explores the photographs contained within its business collections, and considers their unique value in archival research. The blog uses the Scottish Business Archive, part of the University's Archives & Special Collections, which is packed with unique and interesting pictures.  From shipbuilders to carpet and textile manufacturers, iron foundries to optical instrument manufacturers, photographs found in our collections span the breadth and depth of Scotland’s industrial heritage.

Read the blog here: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2019/11/13/season-of-photography-exploring-industrial-photography/

Image: Steel behemoths: a worker dwarfed by their industry, c. 1910s (Source: UGD100/1/11/1/23)

Daniel Meadows, who's archive is now housed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, is the subject of a short BBC film which was made at the launch of his Bodleian exhibition last month. In it Daniel and John Payne - the young boy holding the pigeon - are reunited after 45 years, John was one of Daniel's sitters at his photography bus in the 1970s.

The film is scheduled to be broadcast on BBC One, during The One Show on Wednesday, 20 November, between 1900-1930.  It will also be available for 28 days on the iPlayer.

Stills gallery is to present a selection of photographs from The AmberSide Collection, a unique archive that continues to grow out of the documentary production, commissioning, exhibition and touring work of Newcastle-based Amber Film & Photography Collective. The group established itself in North East England in 1969 and opened Side Gallery in 1977.

The display at Stills highlights a selection of AmberSide’s holdings of photographs by women photographers. Key documentary works by founder Amber member Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, by Tish Murtha and Izabela Jedrzejczyk, both of whom worked at Side Gallery, share the walls with those of celebrated international photographers, such as Graciela Iturbide, who toured Konttinen's Byker in Mexico, and Susan Meiselas, whose Central American work was toured by Side in the early 1980s.

The exhibition illustrates AmberSide’s historic and ongoing commitment to the best in documentary, showcasing photography that tells stories of marginalized and threatened people and communities, whether they are from the North East of England or anywhere else in the world.

This exhibition is part of an annual series of displays at Stills aimed at celebrating the diversity and richness of photographic objects held within archives and collections in the UK.

Women Photographers from The AmberSide Collection
15 Nov 2019 - 8 Mar 2020
See: http://stills.org/exhibition/future-exhibition/women-photographers-ambersidecollection

Image: Girl on a Spacehopper, Byker 1971 © Sirkka Liisa Konttinen, courtesy Amber/ L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

Famous for his portrait of Queen Victoria on her horse ‘Fyvie’, accompanied by her servant John Brown, George Washington Wilson was at the time among the best known of royal photographers. His picturesque images helped popularise a romantic view of the Scottish landscape. These were sold to the Victorian middle classes holidaying in Scotland, a pursuit popularised by the royal family’s love of the country. The display includes royal portraits made for Queen Victoria’s personal photograph collection and Wilson’s beautiful views of Scotland.

University of Aberdeen library: 8 March-5 July 2020
Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh: 17 July-4 October 2020

See: https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/george-washington-wilson-queen-victorias-photographer-in-scotland/the

Image: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.

Experts discuss the massive contribution to British photography by two Hungarians in the 1930s and after: Stefan Lorant and Andor Kraszna-Krausz. British photography in print owes a huge debt to two Hungarian immigrants. The founding editor of the influential photojournalist magazine Picture Post (1938-57) was Stefan (István) Lorant. The founding owner of Focal Press, the world's largest publisher of film and photography books (1938-today), was Andor Kraszna-Krausz.

The panel discussing these influential pioneers will include Jane Dorner, author of the definitive chapter about Kraszna-Krausz in Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expatriate Publishers in Britain and America in the 20th Century (Routledge, 2009); Amanda Hopkinson, daughter of Sir Tom Hopkinson – Lorant's deputy and later editor of Picture Post; Sir Brian Pomeroy, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation; Colin Ford, ex-chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and curator of the Royal Academy's 2011 exhibition of Hungarian photography in the 20th century, ‘Eyewitness' (in the chair).

Other experts in the audience will include Monica Bohm-Duchen, director of the year-long Insiders/Outsiders Festival celebrating the contribution to British culture of refugees from Nazi Europe, and Andrea Livingstone, one-time administrator of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and current board member.

Lens & Press: Photographs in Print 
18 November at 7pm, 
Hungarian Cultural Centre. 10 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7NA
The event is free, but registration on Eventbrite is essential.

The second year of membership of the Martin Parr Foundation begins on 12 November and includes a signed print of a Martin Parr photograph - the new print will be unveiled on the 12th.⁣ These change each year and are only available to members.

Membership benefits also include guided tours of the Martin Parr Foundation, access to the MPF library and archive, priority booking, discount in the MPF shop and more.⁣ ⁣

Membership helps keep MPF exhibitions free to all, supports overlooked and emerging photographers, and preserves the Foundation's extraordinary collection.⁣

See more here: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/membership/

Founded in 2017 British Culture Archive is a registered non-profit resource set up to document, highlight and preserve the changes in British society and culture through social and documentary photography.

Our mission is to educate, inspire and engage people by curating online galleries, events and exhibitions – highlighting the changes of everyday life and society prior to the rapid rise of technology, smart phones and social media.

BCA work with established and upcoming photographers, showcasing their work on our blog and online galleries as well as in exhibitions across the UK. Our ongoing project The People’s Archive documents and preserves the hundreds of images submitted to us by the public.

Our online galleries and archive include images ranging from from the 1960’s Mod Scene, Northern Soul and Punk. Through to Thatcher’s Britain, Social Housing, Industrial decline, Regeneration, Acid House, Protests and more.

It was featured on the BBC online here

Abstract: The article looks at the relationship between two very popular middle-class activities in Late Victorian Britain, photographing and cycling, and explores the influence that the new technology of physical mobility had on visual experiences and related photographic practices. It focuses, in particular, on the significance that new practices of mobility and visuality had for a growing body of amateur photographers as they negotiated these experiences as a temporality of late nineteenth century modernity. Drawing on the everyday historical experiences of cycle and photography users as these were articulated at the time, the article offers new insight into the role that such body-machine interactions had on the development of what was, effectively, a modern, moving, gaze. My argument is that the sense of control over the new ways of moving and seeing enabled by cycling contributed to shape a new visual self and that, in turn, this fuelled the desire for a new visual language and means of representation that could challenge dominant photographic practices, in a manner that foresees the emergence of snapshot photography.

Dominici, S. (2019). ‘New Mobile Experiences of Vision and Modern Subjectivities in Late Victorian Britain’, Science Museum Group Journal. 12, Autumn (online open-access)

To read the article: http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-12/new-mobile-experiences-of-vision/

Engraving by John Gilbert (1817–1897) of Coventry Rotary Tricycle with bellows camera fixed to the lateral bar 

Images: © National Science and Media Museum / Science and Society Picture Library

Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to be exhibiting a selection of vintage carbon prints by Minna Keene (b. 5 April 1861, Arolsen, Germany; d. November 1943, Oakville, Canada) at Paris Photo in booth A5.

Minna Keene, née Bergman, lived in Great Britain, South Africa, and Canada. She emigrated to the United Kingdom in approximately 1880 to become a Governess in Scarborough. While in Scarborough, she met Caleb Keene (b. 1862) a “decorator's apprentice”, who she married in Chelsea, London, in 1887. Caleb Keene was a noted painter and brother of the landscape painter cum “photographic artist” Elmer Ezra Keene (1853–1929). Minna decided to experiment with photography while recovering from a toothache, and eventually became a member of the London Salon of Photography, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (1908), and a nominee for membership in the Linked Ring (1909), although the society disbanded before it could conduct a vote to admit her.

Minna’s first photographic work was of plant life, for which she made exposures during different stages of growth. Later, she made a successful series of ornithological photographs that were illustrated in English textbooks which remained in use over several decades. Her first mention in photographic literature occurred in the late 1890s while living in Bristol, UK, by submitting to exhibitions and earning recognition in the art journal the Studio.

In 1903 Minna emigrated to Cape Town, South Africa, where her husband opened a showroom. During this period she made studies of Boer life in South Africa while operating an active photography studio and raising two children. She exhibited her photographs of Boer life at the Lyceum Club, London, in April 1907, which was favourably reviewed by the British Journal of Photography and Amateur Photographer. In 1909 this work was included in the “Pictorial Photographs by Colonial Workers” exhibition at the Amateur Photographer’s Little Gallery in London. In 1910 Minna exhibited in the Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and in each year until 1929. In 1911 her photograph of her daughter Violet, entitled Pomegranates, was awarded Picture of the Year at the London Photographic Salon.

In 1913 the Keene family moved to Canada, first settling in Montréal, Québec, with Minna practising as a professional photographic portraitist. She was commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to photograph the Rockies in 1914 and spent several months in Western Canada. In 1919 the family moved to Toronto, Ontario, and opened a studio, and in 1921 moved to Oakville, Ontario.

In 1926, Minna was featured in a Maclean’s magazine article that mentions the highlights of her career and enthuses about her being a “home lover!”. In the 1930s she continued to exhibit internationally and was assisted in the studio by her daughter Violet, who eventually succeeded her and became a photographer in demand at the Eaton’s photography studio in Toronto.

As part of the National Museum Cardiff's Photography Season 2019-20 three new exhibitions have opened presenting work by four of the most influential artists/photographers in the history of the medium: August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Martin Parr. The exhibitions predominantly comprise loaned photographs, a number of which have never been exhibited before, and all of which will be displayed for the first time in Wales. They continue to 1 March 2020.

• ARTIST ROOMS: August Sander presents over eighty photographs by August Sander (1876-1964), one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. The photographs are drawn from Sander’s monumental project People of the Twentieth Century, which classifies individuals and groups of people according to profession and social class. The exhibition is drawn from a major collection of over 170 modern prints, produced from the original plates by August Sander’s grandson, Gerd Sander and placed on long loan to ARTIST ROOMS.

• Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions brings together 225 photographs by two of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. For over 50 years the Becher’s collaborated on a project to document industrial structures across Europe and the USA. Their photographic inventory included winding towers, blast furnaces, cooling towers, gasometers, grain elevators, water towers and lime kilns. In 1965 the Becher’s made their first visit to Wales and returned in 1966 after receiving a British Council Fellowship. Based at a campsite in Glynneath, they explored the south Wales valleys and made an extensive series of photographs that now stand as monuments to a lost world of labour that were once central to the social fabric of industrial communities.

• Martin Parr in Wales. Martin Parr is one of the most influential and prolific photographers working today. He has always been drawn to Wales, having lived just over the border in nearby Bristol for thirty years. Throughout that time, he has undertaken several editorial and cultural commissions, covering subjects from working men’s clubs to coal mining. This exhibition brings together, for the first time, works that explore different aspects of Welsh life and culture, from male voice choirs and national sports to food, festivals and the seaside.

See more here: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10826/Photography-Season/

Image: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Blaenserchan Colliery, Pontypool, South Wales, GB, 1966
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher, courtesy Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – Bernd und Hilla Becher Archive, Cologne, 2019

A major exhibition of prints by the renowned photomontage artist John Heartfield opens at Four Corners Gallery this Autumn. 33 of Heartfield’s scathingly satirical artworks against war and fascism will be on display, bringing his inspiring imagery to a new generation.

This set of anti-Nazi photomontage posters was recently rediscovered in its original crumbling box in the Special Collections & Archives at Liverpool John Moores University. The exhibition will also display material produced by Heartfield during his time as a refugee in England between 1938 and 1950, alongside work by contemporary artists inspired by his legacy.

A pioneer of German agitprop and an early member of the Berlin Dada group, Heartfield is known as the inventor of political photomontage. Armed with scissors, paste and acerbic wit, he used art as a political weapon. Risking his life under Hitler’s Third Reich, Heartfield subverted Nazi imagery to reveal the hypocrisy, greed and political threats of 1930s Germany.

80 years after the outbreak of World War Two, Heartfield’s work foregrounds the need for artistic agitation in challenging times. His striking photomontages offer inspiration in our own era of rising far-right politics, racism and the blurring of fact and fake news.

HEARTFIELD: ONE MAN’S WAR is a highlight of Insiders/Outsiders Festival, which celebrates the contribution of refugees from Nazi Europe to British culture. The exhibition is curated by Four Corners and Professor John Hyatt, Director of The Institute of Art and Technology, Liverpool John Moores University. Monica Bohm-Duchen, Creative Director, Insiders/Outsiders Festival said: ‘I am absolutely delighted that the Insiders/Outsiders Festival includes this important exhibition. While Heartfield is a significant international figure of continuing relevance, few people realise that he came to the UK as a refugee, intent on continuing his fight against fascism on these shores.’

John Hyatt, Liverpool John Moores University said: ‘Unforgettable juxtapositions, visual collisions, biting wit, and the subverted languages of advertising, propaganda and iconography create fissures in the construction of modernity through which Heartfield shines the light of truth to shrivel and shame the occult darkness of populism, fascism and lies. These posters are as vital today as they were when Heartfield’s glue was still wet.’

Sabine Unamun, Director, Visual Arts, London, Arts Council England said: ‘We have awarded funding to Four Corners for their Heartfield/One Man’s War exhibition, to showcase the recently rediscovered prints in London for the first time, and share Heartfield’s deep belief that art should effect social change’.

HEARTFIELD : ONE MAN’S WAR
1 November 2019 – 1 February 2020,
Tues-Sat: 11.00 - 18.00, Thurs 11.00 - 20.00
Admission free.
Four Corners Gallery
121 Roman Road, London E2 0QN. Nearest tube: Bethnal Green, Central Line
A programme of talks, tours and workshops accompanies the exhibition. 
www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk

Images
John Heartfield, The Hand Has 5 Fingers / With 5 You Seize the Enemy! / Vote List 5 /
Communist Party!, 1928
John Heartfield, The Old Slogan in the “new” Reich: Blood and Iron, 1934
© The Heartfield Community of Heirs/DACS 2019

The programme for this conference at the V&A Museum has been announced. How do photographs construct meanings in museums? Why are some photographs collected as ‘significant’ and others, of historical value, not Bringing together new work on institutional ‘photographic cultures’, this conference explores the dynamics and significance of such questions across analogue and digital media, and the formative role of photographic practices in articulating the values and assumptions of museums and galleries.

PROGRAMME (provisional)

Day 1: Friday 6^th December

10.00 Registration

Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture theatre

10.15. Brief welcome: Elizabeth Edwards

Public Lecture  Geoff Belknap (National Science and Media Museum). (Chair: Martin Barnes)

Redefining Photographic Collections: Institutional and Photographic Practices

***

11.45 Conference Welcome: Tristram Hunt (Director, V&A) and Elizabeth Edwards

12.00. Session 1. NON-COLLECTIONS – MUSEUM DISLAYS.  (Chair: Marta Weiss)

Christina Riggs (University of Durham), The Archive on Display: Photographs in the 1972 ‘Treasures of Tutankhamun’ Exhibition.

Angus Patterson (V&A) Two Dimensions Among Three: The Role of Photographs in the V&A's Refurbished Cast Courts.

13.00. Lunch break (not provided)

13.45. Session 2.   NON-COLLECTIONS – information Banks  (Chair: tbc)

Ella Ravilious (V&A/ De Montfort University). Studies from Life

Lucy Bayley (Tate Britain) Tricky Boundaries: collection, archive or gallery records?

14.45. Session 3.  COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT AND ITS DEPOSITS   (Chair: Joan Schwartz)

Kate Hay (V&A) Revitalising research: the fall and rise of the furniture image collection.  

Petra Trnkova (Art Institute, Prague) Familial Relationships of Photographic Doubles

Erika Lederman, (V&A/De Montfort University) Isabel Agnes Cowper, Official Museum Photographer:  Her Practice, Her Work, and Afterlives

16.15 Coffee Break

16.45   Session 4.  MATERIAL INSISTENCES Chair: tbc

Pip Laureston (Tate London / Maastricht University) Finding Photography: Networks of material, skill and technology in contemporary art photography

Simon Fleury, (V&A Conservation/Birmingham City University). Condition report: mapping the museum-object encounter.

17.45 Keynote.  David Odo (Harvard Art Museums):  The Shape of the Collection:  The case of ‘Art’ Photographs of Japan in an ‘Ethnographic’ Archive.   (Chair: Elizabeth Edwards)

18.45  End of day 1

Day 2 : Saturday 7^th December

10.00 Registration  and coffee

10.15 Keynote   Costanza Caraffa (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz) (Chair: Elizabeth Edwards)

 “The red dot. Archival transformations and the value of photographic objects.

11.15 Session 1.  DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS (Chair: Simon Fleury)

Kathy Clough  (University of Newcastle)  Digital lenses on analogue collections - the Maurice Broomfield Archive at the V&A 

Adam Koszary (former Programme Manager and Digital Lead at The MERL University of Reading).  Absolute units and virality: using photographic collections in the internet age

Catherine Troiano (National Trust/ De Montfort University).  Computations and Complications: Value systems of institutional photography

12.45. Lunch break (not provided)

13.30 Session 2. THE POLITICS OF EMERGING COLLECTIONS. 1   Chair: tbc

Chris Morton (University of Oxford). Objects, assets, surrogates: non-collections in cross-cultural curation at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Sigrid Lien (University of Bergen). The Institutional Afterlives of Photographs of Sámi Peoples

14.30 Session 3 THE POLITICS OF EMERGING COLLECTIONS. 2  (Chair: James Ryan)

Margaret Hillenbrand (University of Oxford). Don’t Look Now: The Nanjing Massacre and its Photographic Afterlives 

Naluwembe Binaise (University College London) – Framing the past in Nigeria: the visibility of the photographic archive.

15.50 Coffee Break

16.00   Session 4 ROUND TABLE.  EXPANDED CURATORSHIP: INSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS AND PHOTOGRAPHIC FUTURES. 

Elizabeth Edwards (Chair); Martin Barnes, Geoff Belknap; Costanza Caraffa; David Odo; Joan Schwartz.

16.45. Closing Remarks

17.00. End

The conference is organised by the V&A Research Institute (VARI) and generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in conjunction with research strands led by VARI  Mellon Visiting Professor Elizabeth Edwards.

Final version of the programme will be uploaded nearer the time of the conference itself.

The Institutional Lives of Photographs.
V&A; December 6-7 2019.
Registration: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/Vvq9oLvj/the-institutional-lives-of-photographs-dec-2019

The V&A has unveiled a major new photography commission by internationally-acclaimed artist Valérie Belin. Known for her monumental photographs exploring artifice, identify and representation, Belin has found inspiration in the V&A’s photographs collection for her new series Reflection. Ten of Belin’s resulting 173 x 130cm pigment prints are on display in the V&A Photography Centre.

Belin was drawn to the street photography of Eugène Atget (1857-1927), Walker Evans (1903-75) and Lee Friedlander (b. 1934), alongside commercial pictures of shopfront window displays by New York’s Worsinger Window Service and works by graphic designer, Robert Brownjohn (1920-70). Through this new series, Belin examines the visual vernacular of the street while emphasising illusionary effects created by layered reflections. Reflection continues her ongoing enquiries into the tension between the real and the imaginary, interrogating stereotypes, while furthering her interest in the visual language of commerce and typography.

As Belin delved further into the V&A’s collection of over 800,000 photographs, it was Brownjohn’s images of 1960s London, taken in the wake of post war-austerity, that resonated most. Brownjohn used his images as source material for his design process, and for Reflection, Belin took a similar approach. Revisiting the thousands of photographs she’d made of streets and shopfronts in American cities over the last three decades, Belin used her signature superimposition process to build up layers of imagery. Drawing on additional visual references from graphic novels, magazines and film noir, the resulting dream-like photographs comprise rich, textural layers, fragmented narratives and dynamic juxtapositions conjuring themes of reflection, depth, representation, artifice and identity – drivers behind Belin’s conceptual approach.

Valérie Belin said: “The V&A is a treasure trove filled with amazing art, graphic design, fashion and photography. I go there when I’m between series to stimulate my gaze and see where I go next. The motif of the window recurs throughout my work; as a place of representation, fantasy and glamour it speaks to the line between artifice and reality. To me, the V&A is a big window display, so the shop window motif felt fitting for this commission. We live in a world where superimposition is part of our basic human condition. We are constantly dealing with different types of information, fielding multiple things at once. These photographs are like a broken mirror - perhaps they reflect that it’s easy to lose ourselves in the atmosphere generated by mass consumption. When encountering my works, I want viewers to question what it is they are looking at, and maybe challenge their way of seeing the world too.”

Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs, V&A, said: “Valérie Belin has a unique vision. Through her experiments in digital post-production she injects her photographs with a sense of fantasy and eerie surrealism that challenges viewers to question their perspectives on the world. By applying her creative vision to the V&A’s photographs collection, Belin interrogates ideas of seeing and being seen, past and present, light and dark, and transparency and opacity. Her contemporary perspective reimagines pictures from the past, bringing new relevance and meaning to our collections. We’re thrilled to acquire a selection of these pictures from Belin’s evocative new series for our permanent collection, increasing our holdings of such an inventive and influential photographer." 

Valérie Belin / Reflection opens in the V&A Photography Centre on Saturday 19 October 2019 alongside pictures by Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Robert Brownjohn and the Worsinger Window Service that inspired Belin. The display is accompanied by an illustrated publication with texts by Belin and former V&A Curator of Photographs, Catherine Troiano. Valérie Belin / Reflection is the second in the series of V&A Photography Centre commissions, and follows Thomas Ruff’s Tripe/Ruff series created to celebrate the opening of the V&A Photography Centre in October 2018.

As part of the V&A’s commitment to supporting and spotlighting the work of contemporary practitioners, the museum has acquired a selection of pictures from Belin’s Reflection series through the generous support of the V&A Photographs Acquisition Group. The artist has also donated works from her Still Life (2014) series, which depicts consumer goods in ornate compositions echoing classical vanitas and memento mori paintings, for which she won the illustrious Prix Pictet in 2015.

Valérie Belin / Reflection
V&A Photography Centre, The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery
19 October 2019 – 31 August 2020
vam.ac.uk | @V_and_A | #vamPhotography

Image: Valérie Belin, Lights on Lexington 2019
Pigment print.  Purchase funded by the V&A Photographs Acquisition Group
© Valérie Belin

A highly significant collection of work by pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge is to be brought back to his home town thanks to a partnership between the Royal Borough of Kingston and Kingston University.

The unique material is part of the Victorian photographer’s own personal collection, which he bequeathed to Kingston Museum on his death. It includes 67 of Muybridge’s famous zoopraxiscope discs, which enabled him to create projected moving images, more than 2,000 glass lantern slides which he presented in his extensive international lectures, and 150 collotype prints, a type of printing that preserves fine detail. It forms part of Kingston Museum’s Muybridge Collection, one of the largest worldwide. A selection of the trailblazing photographer’s work is displayed at the museum, but much of the collection is currently stored out of borough. 

Following three years of work, the Council has signed a memorandum of understanding with the University which will see these pieces of Muybridge’s work returned to Kingston, to a specially designed home in the University’s flagship new Town House building. The document was signed by Council Leader Liz Green and Kingston University Vice-Chancellor Professor Steven Spier at the University’s civic showcase event at the town’s Guildhall on Monday night.

Councillor Green said Eadweard Muybridge’s contribution to motion pictures was immeasurable. “It’s wonderful to see one of Kingston’s most famous historical figures celebrated in his home town in this way – he sits at the heart of the borough’s cultural identity and I’m delighted to be able to sign the Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of the council,” she said.

Professor Spier said working with the Council to bring more of Kingston Museum’s Muybridge Collection back to the borough marked the latest milestone in a decade-long collaboration and was a tangible demonstration of the strong relationship between the University and town. “The collection is a jewel in the crown of the borough’s rich cultural heritage. Kingston University is delighted to play its part in helping embed Muybridge in the DNA of Kingston by reuniting the collection he bequeathed to the town, making it more accessible to researchers and residents alike. This collaboration with the Council epitomises exactly what we want our new Town House building to represent – a shared space where both the university and town are enriched,” he said.

The pieces will move to their new home in the University’s Town House next summer. They will sit on the second floor of the new building, in a tailor made archive area with specialist facilities and controlled conditions to preserve the fragile and important artefacts. Hosting the archive at the University would not only give it more visibility, but would also assist the museum’s curators to continue their work to make it more accessible, Professor Spier said. 

Eadweard Muybridge was born in Kingston in 1830, the internationally renowned technological and artistic innovator is best known for his ground breaking work on animal locomotion, in which he used multiple cameras to capture movement in stop-motion photographs. His work is credited as paving the way for cinema and CGI animation. On his death in 1904 he entrusted his personal collection of equipment and prints to Kingston Museum – leaving to the borough a body of work unlike any other in the world.

Chiswick Auctions next sale of Photographica includes a large selection of historic and collectable photographs and cameras. Of particular note is a group of lantern slides of East London Types by 'KY' from c.1900. 

The full auction can be seen online here: https://auctions.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auctions/7260/srchis10630?categoryCode=CCE&page=2&pageSize=60