Blogs

During the Covid-19 lockdown we’ve all become acutely aware of one of the most essential values of digital preservation: remote access. Most physical collections, libraries, and archives have been closed down for several weeks. Working from home is problematic, especially when we keep in mind that rather than working from home by design or choice, we are actually at home during a crisis trying to work. In any case, primary access to collections is now digital more than ever. This brings the need for better understanding in digital preservation and the development of skills for digital curation to the fore more than ever before.

Making the case for, and delivering, a programme of digital preservation is still a tough (and expensive) challenge, but perhaps lockdown will help everyone understand its importance.

This two day event explores how we can best preserve and give access to our digital archives and collections. It includes:

• Practical workshops giving the basics of best practice in looking after digital material
• Talks and provocations outlining the strategic and curatorial challenges of digital preservation
• World café-style sessions in subject areas that attendees can propose
• Informal networking sessions in breakout spaces

The event is organised by: 

• The Photographic Collections Network
• Redeye
• The Digital Preservation Coalition

Find out more, see the provisional programme and book here: https://www.photocollections.org.uk/events/rethinking-digital-preservation-time-crisis 

I've been lurking for a while but this is my first post. I acquired a pair of painted salt prints stamped 'Mr. Kilburn 222 Regent Street'. I assume these are by William Edward Kilburn but I cannot find other examples of painted salt prints by him.

Can anyone point me in the direction of other examples or tell me more about the ones I have (date etc.)?

I attach a few images. In the last image I deliberately left a tiny part of the mount window in the image to show the placement of the stamps. Please excuse the reflections.

Glasgow's Street Level Photoworks has released a series of online photographer/artist talks from recently events. They comprise: 

• Recording of an artist talk by Peter Kennard at the book launch of 'Visual Dissent', Street Level Photoworks 2nd October 2019. See: https://youtu.be/rrQE2boay0g
• the launch of Roger Palmer's latest photobook SPOOR in September last year. SPOOR comprises groups of colour photographs made by Roger Palmer while following rail routes between towns and settlements of South Africa. The photographs were accumulated between 2014 and 2018 as Palmer drove along mostly minor roads through the country's nine provinces.https://youtu.be/VHnl18uaiC8
• Close Up artist talks, joined by Colin Gray as he reflected on his diverse career as a photographer and told us how he is adapting his practice during lockdown. https://youtu.be/kRrnEduwwUg

In the first third of the twentieth century, two French publications -- VU, and Art et Médecine-- introduced a 'New Vision' in the use of photographs to tell stories... an emphasis on sharply-focused 'documentary' uses of the medium.

VU Magazine

​VU magazine, which was launched in Paris in 1928 and continued through 1940, was a new kind of periodical -- the photo-illustrated magazine reporting world affairs.  Although the practice of combining photos and text began in the 19th century, in VU photographs became the dominant element, no longer merely illustrative of the text.

Perhaps most importantly, VU recruited and financially 'enabled' some of the most talented young freelance photographers of the era --André Kertesz, Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Brassaï, Alfred Eisenstein, and others -- each of whom was destined to change the face of photography.

Art et Médicine

During roughly the same period -- from 1929 to 1939 -- Dr. François Debat, owner of the Debat Pharmaceutical Company, published Art et Médecine, a high-quality monthly cultural journal available only to French Physicians.

Art et Médicine is most notable for richly illustrating each issue with photos by many of the same young photographers as VU... especially André Kertesz and Germaine Krull.  It also contained original articles by some of the most important French writers of the period -- including André Maurois, Jean Cocteau, Francois Mauriac, Jules Romains, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Collette.  The quality of the paper and printing of the journal is extremely high.

Those readers who have an interest in Photojournalism can view approximately 500 otherwise 'lost works' by André Kertesz, Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Brassai and others by clicking on the "Early Photojournalism" tab at my website: antiqphotos.com.

Bob Enteen

​Image: 462. SERGEI EISENSTEIN, 1929,
15 X 11.5 cm., taille douce photogravure, photo on back

I bought this framed photograph (print 283 x 232 mm) a week or so before Covid-19 locked us down and it has been propped against a wall in my study waiting for me to decide what to do with it.

I was initially drawn to its 1950s-ish B&W compositional style of abstract lines and blocks of light and shade but I found the subject matter somewhat enigmatic ... what's happening here? I describe it as "woman sitting silhouetted in a large prison-like window with ranks of low buildings in the middle distance".

Having now removed it from its frame (scanned and lightly cleaned the minor scratches and blotches of time) the pencilled inscriptions on the back are as follows:-

117 Stephenson Way
Corby
Northants

Pictorial
[Boots Picture Framing Department Ref. No.:-1/4640/650]
(1) Photo Great Window

I would like to be able to identify (1) the photographer, (2) the location and then that might lead me to (3) information about "what's happening here?". Any suggestions?

Stafford Photographic Society was formed in 1895. It is one of the oldest photographic societies in the  Midlands. A young man named Charles Fowke was primarily responsible for its formation, he gathered together other photographic enthusiasts and started the YMCA Amateur Photographic Society, so called because they met at the YMCA in Gaol Road. In 1898 the name was changed to Stafford Photographic Society.

The picture here of Society members was taken in 1907 on their summer outing to Alton which included lady guests. Tripods and box cameras are much in evidence.

Early meetings tended to be of a technical nature with members giving talks and demonstrations on such things as bromide and gaslight prints, lantern slide making and portrait lighting using magnesium ribbon.

The First World War put a temporary halt on activities. The club restarted in 1921 with 24 members enrolling at 5 shillings a year and ladies being invited to join for the first time. Flashlight photography was demonstrated in 1923 and the post-war programme included invited speakers, picnics and cycle outings which were very popular in the 1920s.

During the Second World War meetings were fortnightly, in spite of blackouts and other problems. After the war a cine group was formed and membership increased to 124 members by 1959

The 1970s brought competitions in prints and slides and in the 1980s audio visual presentations became popular, the first woman President, Mrs P. Hill being elected in 1988.

For many years the club logo was the Broad Eye Windmill and this changed only in 1968 to the film strip logo.The current club logo illustrates the digital changes of the new century.

With thanks to Peter Storey

www.staffordphotosociety.org.uk

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/#/!