Blogs

As part of Photography Scotland’s Season of Photography which runs until the end of November Roddy Simpson, on the eve of the 2019 Robert Louis Stevenson Day, will be talking about the work of American-born twentieth century photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, who helped illustrate a 1954 edition of Stevenson’s book Edinburgh Picturesque Notes with a series of photographs. Taken in 1905, Coburn regarded these photographs as some of his 'very best' work though he always regretted that he never got to meet Stevenson himself, who had died in 1894.

“I consider Edinburgh one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and Robert Louis Stevenson appreciated it as few have done. For over fifty years I have followed lovingly in his footsteps, endeavouring to see it as I thought he saw it, and I hope that he would have approved of what I have done in illustrating his Edinburgh Picturesque Notes.”

Coburn also said: "I never met Stevenson in the flesh. It is one of my great regrets that I came just a little too late to make his portrait, but I have all his books and have read them many times, so that I seem to know him better than some of my other friends. Through his Edinburgh and in his Edinburgh I seem to know him best of all".

This talk will explore Coburn’s admiration for Stevenson through the photographs he produced for the edition of Edinburgh Picturesque Notes and will look at the images and discuss the affinity they have with Stevenson’s prose.

Alvin Langdon Coburn in the Footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson
Roddy Simpson
Patrick Geddes Centre, Edinburgh
Admission: £10 
12 Nov 2019, 19:00 – 21:00

See: http://photo-networks.scot/listing/alvin-langdon-coburn-the-footsteps-robert-louis-stevenson/

Image: © Alvin Langdon Coburn: 'A passage between tall lands', also known as 'Weir's Close, Edinburgh', 1905.
Image courtesy Library of Congress

Bookings are now open for the academic conference -  Light | Sensitive | Media  - which takes place on 1-2 November at the University of West London, St Mary's Road, Ealing, London. 

The fields of photography theory and history have in recent years moved away from the assumption of a break between the analogue and digital image to a more nuanced understanding of both past and contemporary photographic practices, images, and technologies.

Increasingly photography is discussed in relation to other media, to industry and markets and to climate and the environment. At the same time questions of aesthetics and interpretation are recast and understood in terms of sensual, haptic, embodied and everyday encounters with material images.

This conference will examine photography as simultaneously material and immaterial, addressing not only the tangible properties of photographic objects, but also the ecosystems in which they circulate.

We live in and through the photographic, in its physical presence in the world, and in our thought. The conference thus also invites considerations of the ways in which a mode of philosophical thinking can be conceived as photographic or vice versa.

The conference is convened by Professor Michelle Henning (University of Liverpool) and Dr Junko Theresa Mikuriya (University of West London).

Places are limited but affordable (£20 for 2 days) and details including a full list of speakers are at the following link: https://www.uwl.ac.uk/light-sensitive-material

As a follow-on to my last post, members might be interested in seeing how the two different 'Valleys of the Shadow of Death', one taken by Roger Fenton in April 1855 and the other by James Robertson/Felice Beato later in the same year, look today (at least in 2012 when I last visited the Crimea!).

The first colour photograph below shows the site where Fenton took his well known evocative war image of a dirt road covered with expended round shot (see right).  Fenton took two photographs here. Another shows the road empty of round shot. Investigations have revealed that the empty road picture was undoubtedly taken first. This strongly suggests that Fenton and/or his assistant Marcus Sparling arranged the round shot on the road for dramatic effect. I personally have no problem with this as Fenton was first and foremost an artist and had artistic licence. Spent Russian round shot fired from the Redan Bastion and overshooting gun batteries on the British Left Attack before Sevastopol used to gather here.

The second colour photograph below was the location of the photograph taken by Robertson/Beato that was shown in my last post. It is of the Vorontsov (Woronzoff) Ravine and some of its caves, which were used to store ammunition and accommodate a telegraph station. At the time of the Crimean War, the Vorontsov Road from Yalta entered Sebastopol through this ravine and spent Russian round shot fired from the Malakhov Bastion at the British Right Attack before Sevastopol used to collect here. 

.

On the Royal Collection Trust’s website concerning Robertson/Beato's Crimean War image entitled The Valley of the Shadow of Death (https://www.rct.uk/the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death) (see right), there is the following description: -

Neither Robertson’s photograph nor Simpson’s lithograph show the same location as Fenton’s image, despite all three works having the same title. The full phrase from Psalm 23 from which the title comes is ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’. It is reported that the British soldiers gave the ravine its name. The emotive pull of Fenton’s composition is all the more apparent when compared with Robertson’s photograph and Simpson’s lithograph, although the round shot in Simpson’s work links it visually to Fenton’s photograph.

Unfortunately, the RCT showed William Simpson’s watercolour entitled Charge of the Light Cavalry Brigade, 25^th October 1854, which took place in Tennyson’s ‘Valley of Death’, to illustrate the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ and not Simpson’s watercolour entitled Valley of the Shadow of Death - Caves in the Woronzoff Road, behind the Twenty-one Gun Battery, which shows round shot on the road. I hope that the webmaster at RCT can correct this error.

While on the subject and perhaps to add to the confusion, Robertson/Beato also took another photograph entitled, as far as I can tell, The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Woronzoff Road. This is the same ravine as the one shown on the left in The Valley of the Shadow of Death (see above right). It is reproduced below and is remarkable similar in aspect to Simpson’s watercolour entitled Valley of the Shadow of Death - Caves in the Woronzoff Road, behind the Twenty-one Gun Battery. Perhaps this photograph can also be brought into a new RCT discussion.

For those interested, I devoted a chapter in The Crimean War: Then and Now to the differences in location of Fenton’s and Robertson/Beato’s ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ images. All the above art works mentioned above are discussed and illustrated in the book.

Hello fellow BPH members. I am the co-founder of an archival project called The Family Museum, which is focused on the history and practice of amateur 'family' photography.

We are launching an exhibition at Swindon Museum & Art Gallery  next week, with a Preview taking place on the afternoon Wednesday 23 October. If any members are local to the area, we would welcome you to join us. One element of the show previously discussed with some members of the BPH network is a set of Edwardian 'Stickyback' portraits taken in a Swindon studio, likely between 1906 and 1915. 

More here: http://www.swindonmuseumandartgallery.org.uk/events/7/exhibitions

Auto Memento: Stickyback Photography in Swindon, 1900-1919
23 October 2019 - 4 January 2020
Every day, 11:00 - 16:00
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Bath Road, Swindon, SN1 4BA

London's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck has announced its autumn seminar programme. All events are free and open to all. 

Wednesday, 20 November 2019, 6-7:30pm. Room 106, 46 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD.

Andrés Mario Zervigón (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)

Fully Visible and Transparent: Zeiss Anastigmat

In 1890, the famous Jena Glass Works of Carl Zeiss released the Anastigmat photographic lens. The innovative device advanced a chapter in optical technology that seemed to have progressed automatically in a predetermined manner since the medium’s origins. The new lens offered a consistent field of focus across the photographic plate and corrected for a number of additional aberrations at lower and higher f-stops. But why exactly had Zeiss developed its expensive mechanism and what drove photographers to buy it? This paper suggests that the consistent focus and varied depth of field that the Anastigmat provided were not in and of themselves the desired goals of the improvements, but that they were instead visible signals of a pictorial model that makers and consumers had been seeking since the public introduction of photography in 1839. The goal was a transparent realism that remained stubbornly external to the medium, an illusionistic standard that had largely been mediated by painting since the renaissance and was now apparently possible in photography as well.

Andrés Mario Zervigón is Professor of the History of Photography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His scholarship concentrates on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art, generally focusing on moments in history when these media prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual. Zervigón is author of John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and Photography and Germany (Reaktion Books, 2017). With Tanya Sheehan he edited Photography and Its Origins (Routledge, 2014), with Sabine Kriebel Photography and Doubt (Routledge 2017), and with Donna Gustafson Subjective-Objective: A Century of Social Photography (Zimmerli Musuem/Hirmer Verlag, 2017). His current book project is Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung - The Worker's Illustrated Magazine, 1921-1938: A History of Germany's Other Avant-Garde, for which he received a CASVA Senior Fellowship (2013-14). At Rutgers Zervigón leads The Developing Room, an academic working group that promotes interdisciplinary dialogue on photography’s history, theory and practice.

Monday 9 December 2019, 6-7:30pm. Room 106, 46 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Charlene Heath (Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada)

To Circulate and Disperse: Jo Spence, Terry Dennett and a Still Moving Archive.

Image: Justine Varga, Overlay, 2016-18.

Join us for an afternoon of discussion and a film screening to mark the opening of the exhibition Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions.

A distinguished panel of experts, chaired by Dr Russell Roberts (co-curator of Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions) and including Max Becher (photographer and son of Bernd and Hilla Becher), Gabriele Conrath-Scholl (Director of Die Photographische Sammlung /SK Stiftung Kultur der Sparkasse KölnBonn) and Marianne Kapfer (director of The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher) will discuss the Bechers' work in more detail, and how their time in Wales influenced their practice.

Followed be a special screening of The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher (2012) by Marianne Kapfer.

National Museum Cardiff
25 October, 1300-1600
£5-7

https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10896/Panel-Discussion-and-Film-Screening-of-The-Photographers-Bernd-and-Hilla-Becher/

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

From the late 1880s there was a marked increase in the number of British women becoming professional photographers. Drawing on archival documents and photographs in the National Portrait Gallery collection.

This talk examines the dynamics of women photographers’ studios to better understand how they became competitors in a male-dominated industry.

George Mind: 'The fair abode of femininity'
University of Westminster, Harrow Campus
Wednesday, 9 October 2019 from 1330-1400
See: https://westminster.ac.uk/events/westminster-photography-forum-george-mind-the-fair-abode-of-femininity

Image: Lallie Charles, Bea Martin, Rita Martin, circa 1899, copyright National Portrait Gallery

As a follow-on from yesterday’s post, blog readers may be interested in another James Robertson/Felice Beato (see Beato’s portrait right) Crimean War photograph that was taken in the same vicinity as 8 Gun Battery and most likely on the same day. The image in the Royal Collection is entitled The Trenches before the Redan (see below) and its description is: -

Photograph of the trenches in front of the Redan after the fall of Sevastopol. In the foreground there is a grassy hill with several large piles of stones. Trenches can faintly be seen in the valley behind. The British made two unsuccessful attacks on the Redan fortification, a Russian stronghold, during the Siege of Sevastopol. The siege eventually ended on 8th September 1855 when the French captured the nearby Malakoff redoubt, forcing the Russians to abandon the city.

The Trenches before the Redan shows the view north-northwest along the west-facing slope of the Vorontsov Ridge on the British Right Attack. It looks towards the Sevastopol district of Karabelnaya where the military barracks seen in 8-Gun Battery were located. These barracks are visible in the distance on the far left with Sevastopol’s roadstead and the north shore beyond. As in 8 Gun Battery, the Black Sea is on the skyline. The Redan itself is not in view. However, the curtain wall that climbs up the slope to the bastion from the Middle/Karabelnaya Ravine is on the far left to the immediate left of the barracks. The Malahkov bastion is in view in the distance on the far right with its dark-coloured earth walls protecting batteries stretching along its relatively flat summit.

Closer to the camera, the line of the British 3^rd Parallel trench line runs along the brow of a ridge on the left as it did in 8 Gun Battery. This trench continues further to the right where it disappears behind a much closer earth wall with embrasures that shows it is a gun battery. Military maps tell us that this is the seven-gun ‘Battery No 14’ on the British 2^nd Parallel. This battery merged with the eight-gun ‘Battery No. 9’ to its northeast. Lower down the slope from ‘Battery No 14’ in the centre of the picture is the four-gun ‘Battery No. 13’, the subject of the 8 Gun Battery. Lower down still on the far left is ‘Battery No. 12’, which carried mortars. Between ‘Battery No. 12’ and ‘Battery No.13’, the communication trench also seen in 8 Gun Battery connects the 2^nd Parallel with the 3^rd Parallel. Even closer to the camera at centre, military maps show us that this trench divides after passing through the 2^nd Parallel with the two sections re-joining after a short distance. The course of the divided trench is revealed by the lines of earth walls. The large mound of earth on the right beyond the long pile of stones that stretches up the slope from Robertson’s signature at lower left is associated with ‘Battery No. 7’ which contained two mortars. It was here that Robertson/Beato most likely took 8 Gun Battery.

Again, it is significant what historical information can be gleaned from Crimean War photographs with the aid of military maps and a knowledge of the topography. The section of a French map (see below) shows the location of all the batteries and trenches mentioned above with the red line indicating the probable location of the camera and the direction it was pointing when taking 8 Gun Battery.

One of James Robertson (see portrait right)/Felice Beato’s Crimean War images that has fascinated me is entitled 8 Gun Battery (see below). The description accompanying this photograph on the Royal Collection Trust (RTC) website states:

Photograph of an eight gun battery in front of Sevastopol. A wall created from earth and sandbags runs the breadth of the middle ground. Canons are spaced at intervals behind the wall, some with neat piles of cannonballs beside them. Sevastopol can be seen in the distance, the Russian military barracks at the forefront and the harbour to the right.

The first question I asked myself was ‘why was the image described as an eight gun battery when only four guns behind four embrasures were visible in the battery in the picture’? Surely the image would have been better entitled the 4 Gun Battery?

Checking contemporary military maps, it quickly became apparent from the background detail in 8 Gun Battery that it was taken looking roughly north-northwest from the British Right Attack on the western slope of the Vorontsov Ridge. When the layout of the trenches in the photograph was compared to maps of the Right Attack, it was discovered that the four guns were in a 4-gun battery known as ‘Battery No. 13’ on the 2^nd Parallel trench line. Furthermore, the trench line stretching from right to left in the middle distance was the 3^rd Parallel on the British Right Attack. The communication trench joining the 2^nd Parallel to the 3^rd Parallel is seen on the left of the image. Also, in the left foreground of 8 Gun Battery is a ‘triangle’ of trenches depicted as just 25 metres south-southeast of ‘Battery No. 13’ on maps. This strongly suggested from maps that the photograph was most likely taken from the nearby ‘Battery No. 7’, which carried two 10-inch mortars.

Of great interest is that the position of disturbed earth bank known as ‘the Quarries’ can be clearly seen in 8 Gun Battery above the 3^rd Parallel on the far left with a wide and deep trench leading up its slope. This strong point was captured from the Russians by the British on 6 June 1855. Beyond ‘the Quarries’ is the Russian bastion known as the Redan with is curtain wall running down the slope to the right. This is where the four guns in the battery in the foreground of 8 Gun Battery were pointed and was obviously their main target. The Redan was unsuccessfully assaulted twice by the British with great loss of life. The open ground where troops had to charge, some carrying scaling ladders, lies in front of the bastion.

Photographic views of these historically important military positions showing their relationship to each other are not found elsewhere and 8 Gun Battery is therefore a significant image. Also of interest in the photograph is the Central Hill in the city of Sevastopol visible over the Redan. The Church of St Peter and St Paul, which was the subject of my last post to this blog, lies immediately above the curved apex of the salient of the Redan when viewed under high magnification. The Russian military barracks are in the distance on the right of the image with Fort Nicholas to the west of the entrance to the South Harbour directly above the left wing of the first barrack building. Ships are on the roadstead on the far right with the north shore beyond. The Black Sea is on the skyline.

It’s remarkable what can be gleaned from old Crimean War photographs if it is known where they were taken and in which direction. It was also discovered that 8 Gun Battery is the right half of an overlapping panorama with another Robertson/Beato image entitled Valley of the Shadow of Death. The left of the combined panorama picture (below) shows the continuation of the 2nd Parallel to the west-southwest with 'Battery No 12', which carried two 13-inch mortars. The Vorontsov Ravine leading into the flat land at the head of the South Harbour is on the far left.Why 8 Gun Battery is incorrectly named is not known. British ‘Battery No 9’, which contained eight guns and was called the ‘8-Gun Battery’ in the historical literature also lay like ‘Battery No. 13’ on the Vornotsov Ridge on the 2^nd Parallel of the British Right Attack before Sevastopol. However, its 8-inch guns were aimed at the Malakhov bastion. This battery was about 220 metres to the northeast of ‘Battery No. 13’. It was out of view of 8 Gun Battery on top of the slope to the right.

My interest in photographs taken during the Crimean War led me to spend a total of six weeks over two summers in 2011 and 2012 in Sevastopol and its environs. During this period, I endeavoured to find the positions where the landscape images of Roger Fenton, the Robertson/Beato team and Vladislav Klembovsky were taken and reproduce the scenes as they looked today. The photographic results of my visits were presented in a number of Lulu publications, but most notably in The Crimean War: Then and Now published by Frontline/Pen and Sword Books in 2017. Unfortunately, the slopes seen in 8 Gun Battery and Valley of the Shadow of Death are now completely built over with suburban dachas and a modern view looking towards the site of the Redan from ‘Battery No. 7’ is impossible to take at ground level.

Purchased yesterday from rural South Australia , a stereo view from a British Commonwealth neighbour, New Zealand.

Having quickly Googled with the information to hand, one of the subjects may well be Sophia Hinerangi https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2h37/hinerangi-sophia

It's a stereo-photograph, but I would love to know more about the photographer, whose signature I am reading as possibly Josiah Martin, from Auckland.

I have sent a reference request to the National Library of New Zealand today. IMG_2671.jpgIMG_2672.jpg

Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography is a conference within a conference, hosted by the National Stereoscopic Association at the 46th annual 3D-Con in Tacoma, Washington. 

In the last thirty years, scholarship on stereography has moved from the margins to a more central position in the history of photography and visual culture. A new wave of scholars has emerged with studies that range from stereo’s inception to contemporary virtual and augmented reality. These scholars are creating a language for stereo photography even as it is expanding into nascent vision. Potential topics for paper presentations include: historical and archival discoveries; studies on collecting, p/matronage, and the culture of stereo; the marketing and incorporation of 3D; domesticities and instruments; immersive media, interactivity and performance; 3D cinema and video; the politics of historiographical suppression or distortion; hyper-simulation to surveillance; representations of stereo in popular media; reading stereo perception, as well as others. Papers on topics from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century are invited. Stereoscopic projection is available at the conference.

Deadline for abstracts: March 2, 2020. Send an abstract of 500 words and a biography of 250 words including institutional affiliation. Independent scholars are welcome. Email to: Melody Davis, davism6@sage.edu

Notification of acceptance by May 1, 2020. Digital images will be expected by June 30, 2020.

Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography

14 August 14, 2020 at The National Stereoscopic Association’s 3D-Con

The Hotel Murano, Tacoma, Washington, 11-17 August, 2020

The stereoscopic craze that swept over France and Britain from the mid-1850s to the 1862 Exhibition led to the production of millions of binocular photographs that are an invaluable help for anyone who wishes to study and understand the Victorian era. Among those images, so precious for the historian of the period, are hundreds of portraits of famous and totally anonymous Victorians. Projected on a large screen and visible in 3-D through special glasses, they bring to life in a very vivid way those ghosts of the past and let us step, for a while, straight into the very heart of photographs that were all taken when Queen Victoria was ruling over Britain. Even the “carte-o-mania” which succeeded this stereoscopic frenzy yields, at times, some surprising full length and full 3-D portraits in a way that will be explained by photo historian Denis Pellerin with chosen examples from Brian May’s and the NPG’s collections.

Book a place here: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/friday-lates/lecture-11102019

National Portrait Gallery
11 October 2019, 19:00
Ondaatje Wing Theatre
Tickets: £10 (£8 concessions and Gallery Supporters)

Photography has been entangled with education processes for nearly two centuries. For much of that time, photography has been used to communicate information, cement knowledge, and train individuals, groups, and machines alike in visual literacy and the meaning of cultural customs. In the late twentieth century, photography became absorbed into academia as a subject of study. In more recent years, photographic historians and scholars have also begun to consider photography, photographs, and photographic practices as a means to tap into diverse historical processes at large. This paradigm shift has also resulted in various instances in which photography studies has been incorporated into the academic curriculum as a prism through which historical, social, cultural, and political phenomena can be studied.

In its 8th Annual Conference, the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) invites applicants to consider the role of photography in education as well as particular histories of intersections between the two. Themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Photography in schooling programmes
• Photography and visual literacy
• The development of photographic education
• Photographs in the classroom
• Photography as an auxiliary to art, archaeological and historical education
• Education and the photographic industry
• Photographic technologies in education systems
• Photographs as participants in familial/domestic education processes
• Photography in social and political propaganda
• Photography-based teaching/learning/training
• Uses of photographic technologies in artificial intelligence
• Digital humanities and photographic history
• The influence of photographic vision on memory, remembering and the imagination
• Educational uses of photographs on New Media platforms.
• Photography and “how-to” guides.
• The material culture of photography education.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to phrc@dmu.ac.uk by 7 January 2020. Include your name, affiliation and contact details in the same document but please do not send a cv.

Camera Education: Photographic Histories of Visual Literacy, Schooling, and the Imagination
Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
15-16 June 2020
De Montfort University, Leicester UK

Confirmed keynote speakers to date:
Professor Jane Lydon, Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History (the University of Western Australia)
Professor Andrés Zervigón, Professor of the History of Photography (Rutgers University, USA)

Follow on Twitter @PHRC_DeMontfort

Conference hashtag #PHRC20

For any queries please email: phrc@dmu.ac.uk

The Icon Photographic Materials Group is delighted to announce the third photo conservation round table, taking place on Friday 29th November at the Science Museum in London. The event will consist of five-minute presentations and discussion, and aims to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing among conservators, as well as other professionals interested in the care and preservation of photographic materials.

We invite speakers from public institutions, private practice and education to talk about their work, and the issues and challenges involved in caring for historic and modern photographic materials. Subjects could include (but are not limited to) treatment practices, preventive conservation, scientific research, education, outreach and funding. Our aim is to build a comfortable space for discussion and to broaden our network by learning about others’ work.

If you’d like to give a five-minute presentation, please send a titled proposal (c.100 words) with your name and affiliation to phmg@icon.org.uk by 3rd November. Presentations should include around five PowerPoint slides, which should be illustrative rather than textual. Please get in touch as soon as possible for further details or to discuss your idea. We look forward to hearing from you!

The event will take place between 13:00 and 17:00. Different ticket prices will apply to presenters, Icon members and non-Icon members. Tea, coffee, and biscuits will be provided. The round table event will be followed by the Icon PhMG annual general meeting, which is free to attend.

A final version of the programme will be available by mid-November, but you can check our Eventbrite page for updates before then.  Please follow this eventbrite link for more information and to book your tickets.

For the first time since 1860 Diableries will exhibited in London, just in time for Halloween. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a new edition of Brian May, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming's Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell which now includes all of the original stereocards, the missing cards having been found.

For one day only Soho's Century Club will be transformed in to a gothic Victorian crypt of temptation and seduction. Whilst surrounded by fantastic imagery depicting demonic scenes with carousing skeletons, devils and satyrs you will have the opportunity to see the Diableries stories come to life in 3D. Dr May will display a selection of his original stereocards alongside some of his  most treasured stereoscopes and Victorian stereoscopic cameras. 

There will be a 3D screening of the spelling animated 3D short film One Night in Hell.  The original iconic skull guitar from Queen's It's a Hard Life video - that makes an appearance in the film with a skeleton rocking the underworld - will also be on display for the first time. 

Find out more at: www.diableries.co.uk

Diableries. The exhibit
Monday, 28 October 2019 from 1100-1600
at The Century Club, 61-63 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1
Entry is free. 

When Sevastopol was abandoned by the Russians on the night of 8-9 September 1855 during the Crimean War, the city became accessible to the Allies and artists/photographers were able to document the destruction wrought by numerous bombardments by British and French siege batteries. The first to enter Sevastopol were the British war artist William Simpson, the professional photographic team of James Robertson and Felice Beato based in Constantinople and the war tourist/amateur photographer George Shaw-Lefevre. In mid-November 1855, Jean-Charles Langlois, a career soldier and historical painter, and Léon-Eugène Méhédin, a young photographer, also arrived from France. Langlois, who specialized in battle panoramas, was hoping to replace preliminary sketches for a new panorama with photographs.

The church of St Peter and St Paul built on Central Hill in Sevastopol in the early 1840s was a notable architectural structure styled on the ancient temple of Theseus in Athens and, like many other buildings in the city, suffered damage from gun fire. A photograph entitled Sébastopol: L’église de Saint Pierre et Saint Paul (above right) by the Langlois/Méhédin team shows the church roofless with missing columns and the collapse of part of the pediment at its southwest corner. Trees to the right of the church are leafless indicating that the picture was probably taken late in 1855 or early in 1856.

The church also appears roofless on the far right skyline of a photograph by Robertson/Beato entitled Theatre, Sevastopol by the Royal Collection Trust (left). However, the front pediment that has partially collapsed in Langlois/Méhédin image appears intact in this view. Leafless trees suggests it was taken late in 1855 during the first visit of these photographers to the Crimea.

Another Crimean photograph attributed to Robertson/Beato entitled Church of St Peter and St Paul (right) by the Royal Collection Trust shows the same church, but with its roof and southwest corner intact. Only the top half of one of its front columns is missing. The image could not have been taken earlier than the fall of the city, as there was no access for British and French artists. The leaves on the trees suggest that it was taken either soon after the Russians left Sevastopol in the early autumn of 1855 or during the second visit of Robertson/Beato to the Crimea in the spring and summer of 1856.

As the camera does not lie, the author believes that there are two possible alternatives to the inconsistencies in damage to the church seen in the three photographs. The first is that Church of St Peter and St Paul was taken by Robertson/Beato immediately after the city was occupied by the Allies in September 1855 and then it collapsed because of structural weakness or deliberate human intervention for safety reasons to be photographed later by Langlois/Méhédin. Given that the roof is missing, but the front pediment appears in place, in the other Robertson/Beato image, this collapse may have been progressive. The second theory is that the Langlois/Méhédin image was taken before Robertson/Beato took Church of St Peter and St Paul and that the latter was photographed in the summer of 1856 after restoration work had started. The carts in the picture could have been associated with the reconstruction effort. However, the amount of structural work needed by the Russians to get from the condition of the church in the Langlois/Méhédin picture to its appearance in Church of St Peter and St Paul in just a few months after the armistice in March 1856 would have required a tremendous effort at a time when labour would have been at a premium and there were many other priorities. Therefore, the author thinks this sequence of events to have been highly unlikely. The first theory is also supported by a website that suggests that work to rebuild the church did not begin until 1888 when local merchants donated funds for the work. Perhaps someone else has another explanation?

Sotheby’s has announced that it will be offering a copy of John Thomson’s Views on the North River (Hong Kong, 1870) in its auction of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History on 12 November 2019.

This is the rarest of all of Thomson’s photobooks on China, of which fewer than 10 copies are known and only 3 copies are located in institutional libraries. The last copy sold at auction was 38 years ago at Sotheby’s Belgravia on 17 June 1981, lot 194 which realised £1,500. The estimate for this copy is £20,000-30,000 GBP.

This publication was the result of Thomson's sailing voyage in the summer of 1870 up the North Pearl River from Canton (Guangzhou), and was reviewed in the Hongkong Daily Press on 31st October 1870: 'Mr Thomson has just published a volume of admirable photographs of scenes on the North River, entered about 40 miles above Canton through the Fatshan creek. The views, which are beautifully executed, are accompanied by a short description of the places which they respectively represent ... Better praise cannot be given to them than stating that they are fully up to the standard of the previous views which have gained Mr Thomson the high reputation he enjoys.' (quoted in Bennett).
'Views on the North River would have been expensive to produce and the print run was probably small ... Later in 1870 Thomson was in Foochow (Fuzhou) to embark on a trip along the River Min where he produced some of his most powerful landscape work' (Bennett, T. History of Photography in China: Western Photographers 1861-1879 (Quaritch, 2010), p. 227

The Sotheby’s sale also includes an album of 37 albumen prints of Hong Kong by Thomson (c. 1868) and many other albums of 19th and early 20th century topographical photographs of the world. Enquiries: richard.fattorini@sothebys.com

sothebys.com/travel

Images from Thomson’s ‘Views on the North River’, Courtesy: Sotheby's. 

The National Trust has announced two new vacancies at The Hardmans’ House. The full time fixed-term Archivist and Digitisation Conservator roles will be based at Liverpool Central Library and Archives on a two year project that will focus on the cataloguing, digitising and rehousing of the Edward Chambré Hardman Photographic Collection.

Archivist - https://careers.nationaltrust.org.uk/OA_HTML/a/?_ga=2.64376492.2002886058.1568103503-1105403324.1568103503#/vacancy-detail/84276

Digitisation Conservator - https://careers.nationaltrust.org.uk/OA_HTML/a/?_ga=2.64376492.2002886058.1568103503-1105403324.1568103503#/vacancy-detail/84248