Blogs

We are very excited to announce the creation of a new conservation studio - Lux and Livre (www.luxandlivre.com) which is offering a free consultation for potential funding bids. 

Lux & Livre are specialists in the conservation of photographic materials, books and paper. From conserving a single object to carrying out condition surveys of entire collections, we help you care for your collections so they reach their full potential as well as being preserved for future generations. With over 25 years’ combined experience, we also work with trusted associates who are experts in digitisation, exhibition design and preparation, conservation science and film conservation, to bring you a range of services which complement our core specialisms.

We know that it is a tough time for collections across the sector, which is why we are currently offering a free consultation for any organisation considering a funding bid involving photographs, books or archives.

Please do get in touch at info@luxandlivre.com

Britain's photographic heritage is likely to be adversely impacted if proposals in a leaked National Trust discussion document come to pass. Written by the Trust's visitor experience director Tony Berry, it sets out a ten-year vision that will directly impact historic properties, curatorial and conservation posts and put collections in to storage. The Times newspaper (21 August 2020, p.5) reported on the paper and art historian Bendor Grosvenor, who also had sight of the document, flagged it on his Twitter account @arthistorynews

National Trust Director-General Hilary McGrady responded to the claims (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/blogs/directors-blog/our-vision-for-places-and-experiences) as partial, but as Grosvenor noted she failed to deny a number of the claims, including that the Trust will 'dial down' its status as a 'major national cultural institution', make specialist curatorial staff redundant and take objects off display.

The Trust has been significantly impacted by COVID-19 not least a loss of £200 million in income caused by the closure of many of its 550 houses, parks and gardens and has already announced significant redundancies affecting some 13 per cent of its workforce, putting 1,200 employees at risk. The Trust has £1.3 billion in financial reserves, although much of these are designated and cannot be used for general purposes. 

So, what does this mean for photography? The short answer at the moment is that it is unclear. The Trust has significant collections of historic and important photography - at least 50,000 images, although more is yet to be documented, across its historic properties. This includes material that is significant in its own right, along with photographs collected and made by individuals associated with its many properties.

The following are areas that the wider photographic community should be aware of, and be prepared to support, should the need arise:

• The Trust appointed its first National Photography Curator in July 2019, providing oversight of photography across the Trust's properties. As a specialist curator this new role, which was a two-year appointment, appears to be under threat. 
• Roger Watson, curator of the Fox Talbot Museum is a specialist curator and, again, this role may also be under threat.  
• The Trust employs specialist photographic conservators. Photographic materials are fragile and susceptible to environmental deterioration, more so than many other objects, and it is important that light sensitive materials continue to properly assessed, conserved and stored. The National Photography Curator's role was - and remains - key in surveying the Trust's collections and identifying important material and that which needs urgent conservation. It also has a key part in opening up the Hardman House collections (see below).
• The possible closure of Trust properties (see below) and the move of photographs and photographic equipment into storage will limit access to material that is of national importance, beyond the Trust's own interests. 
• Although photography is in many of the Trust's properties two are particularly important:
  • The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, was opened in 1975 to show and interpret objects relating to William Henry Fox Talbot, his life and the development of photography,  and to exhibit photography.  In recent years the museum has broadened its remit to contextualise Talbot within a broader history of photography and the acquisition of the Fenton Collection in 2016 has allowed it to show a history from the 1830s to the 1990s.
  • Adjacent is the Grade 1 listed Lacock Abbey, Talbot's home, where many of his experiments were undertaken and the location of many of his early photographs. It is the birthplace of negative-positive photography. The house and the surrounding village of Lacock were given to the National Trust in 1944.
  • E. Chambré Hardman House, Liverpool. Opened by Burrelll and Hardman in 1923 the company remained in business until c1965/6. The building and negatives were acquired by a charitable trust and later transferred to the National Trust. 
  • in addition, many of the National Trust's other properties contain significant smaller groups of photographs. 

UPDATES >>

This piece by Grosvenor is worth reading and does not bode well for Lacock Abbey https://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/5685_Inside_the_National_Trusts_Beeching_Plan In the absence of anything from the National Trust one fears the worst. 

See also: https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2020/08/national-trust-defends-restructure-plans/

See also: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/national-trust-restructuring-plan-job-cuts   

Images: © Michael Pritchard. Top: the entrance to the Fox Talbot Museum; lower: entrance to Hardman House.

Note: none of the individuals mentioned above have spoken to BPH in connection with this blog piece.   

This three-day course will investigate and highlight the role of women photographers from the 19th century to today and their influence in the field of photographic portraiture. Beginning by exploring the use of the camera by women during the birth of the medium, the course will go on to examine how 20th century women photographers embraced and challenged the documentary traditions of portraiture. We will end by looking at how staging, costumes and props became the recurring tools of photographic self-portraiture. The course will introduce a wide range of artists, covering works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Annie Lebovitz, Sally Man, Nan Golding, Carrie Mae Weens and Zenele Muholi.

This course will be delivered online via Zoom. All participants will receive information in advance about how to access the course before it commences.

What you will learn:

• Growing confidence in looking at and interpreting photographic portraiture

• Thorough knowledge of key women and non-binary artists working in photography

• Understanding portraiture as a core application and technique of photography

Christie's Education
17-19 November 2020
1330-1430, daily
£210

See more and sign up here

Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY, is hosting process historian Mark Osterman who will share techniques from the history of photography and demonstrating some of the methods.used. 

The talks are being held over four months and are free to attend, although pre-booking is required. They will take place via Zoom.  

The four demonstrations are: 

• Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 1300 (1800 BST). Clouds and combination printing. Many nineteenth-century landscape photographs are cloudless. Early photographic negatives documented light blue and white as the same value, resulting in blank skies. In this live online program, Process Historian Mark Osterman will discuss the reasons for these cloudless skies and demonstrate the nineteenth-century technique of combination printing from two separate negatives.
• Tuesday, 13 October 2020 at 1300 (1800 BST). Early optics in photography. Before there was photography, there was the study of light and lenses. In this presentation, Process Historian Mark Osterman will demonstrate how light can be manipulated and used for photography and share the basics of optics that were foundational in the invention of photography: from classifying simple lenses to using a camera obscura for gazing, drawing, or photographic experiments. 
• Tuesday, 3 November 2020 at 1300 (1700 GMT). Early silver processes. The first successful process used for photography was based on the light sensitivity of silver chloride. Experiments in silver chloride date to the eighteenth century, but the chemistry was not fully understood until William Henry Fox Talbot conducted and documented his exhaustive tests in the 1830s. In this virtual talk, Process Historian Mark Osterman will share what Talbot built upon and then perfected.
• Tuesday, 3 December 2020 at 1300 (1700 GMT). Nineteenth century retouching techniques. The limited sensitivity of nineteenth-century photographic materials gave rise to a number of curious but effective techniques to make photographs appear more natural. In this live presentation, Process Historian Mark Osterman will show examples of early negative retouching and then demonstrate some of these rare techniques. 

The talks are free, but must be pre-booked. Click the link here.

They are supported by Art Bridges and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

The E. Chambré Hardman House in Liverpool is a photographic time-capsule and has been looked after by the National Trust since 2003. Currently closed due to COVID-19 the Trust has released a guided-tour film showing what is inside and how the collection of negatives and prints is being conserved.

Take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsIEwC5OJOc&feature=youtu.be

With thanks to John Marriage for flagging it up. 

Amber Film & Photography Collective which includes Side Gallery, Newcastle-on-Tyne is recruiting for a series of part-time positions. 

• Audience Development Coordinator - https://www.amber-online.com/job-opportunity-audience-development-co-ordinator/
• Fundraising Manager - https://www.amber-online.com/job-opportunity-fundraising-manager/

Alexander Bassano established "one of the most important photographic studios of the Victorian era. His sitters included royalty, aristocracy, politicians, and leading names from the military, sciences and arts". Over 2,000 glass negative plates from the Bassano studio are housed at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Yet so little is known about the man, and the development of his studios. Bassano: The Making of a Court Photographer chronicles Alexander's life: his childhood in a musical, creative family; theatrical and artistic connections that shaped his early days; his previously unknown career on the pantomime stage; the influences that drew him towards photography, and the consequent establishment of the studios that bore his name.

BASSANO The making of a court photographer
Richard Peroni
80-pages, £12.91
Privately published, July 2020
ISBN-13: 979-8660004827
Available on Amazon. 

Displaced Visions: Émigré Photographers of the 20th Century was the title of a talk and conversation between Dr Nissan Perez, former Curator of Photography at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and photographic historian and curator Colin Ford CBE. 

The talk is available to view:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9swElGoYS4&feature=youtu.be

The Another Eye conference, celebrating the contribution of women refugee photographers who came to Britain after 1933. will be held online after its postponement earlier this year.  

Presentations will cover photographers’ work across portraiture, reportage, social documentary and architectural photography, and how the European cultural approaches that they brought with them informed British visual culture. In particular we will consider how their experiences both as outsiders and as women shaped their practice.

Speakers include:

• Valeria Carullo, Architectural Photography by émigré women
• Colin Ford, Lotte Meitner-Graf
• Michele Henning, A Hundred Years: Lucia Moholy and German Photography History in Britain
• Amanda Hopkinson, Woman to Woman: Photographic Friends Gerti Deutsch & Inge Morath
• John March, Disrupted and Changing Careers of Women Refugee Photographers
• Clara Masnatta, Photographer Grete Stern in London Transit
• Roberta McGrath, Edith Tudor-Hart
• Rolf Sachsse, Lucia Moholy: Science and Design in Exile
• Kylie Thomas, Anne Fischer’s Itinerant Vision: A German Jewish photographer between England and South Africa
• Barbara Warnock, The Rediscovery of Gerty Simon’s Work, Archive, Life and Career
• Anthea Kennedy and Tom Heinersdorff, Memories of Erika Koch and Elisabeth Chat

This free event will run over three afternoons from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 September.

Details and registration here: https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/whats-on/another-eye-online-conference

The Four Corners exhibition Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain after 1933, runs until 3 October 2020. 

Folks, I need some feedback, and not necessarily some attaboys. It’s called Fifty Prints but at this point is only 23. Maybe 25 is enough? This is in 2nd draft mode, and somewhat formatted. At first I thought of self publishing it, but now thinking maybe finding a publisher, or an agent if I can find one. Any help along that line would be appreciated.

Every print except one of my photographs is before 1924, so is in the public domain in the U.S. The UK is a bit iffy as their copyright law is a bigger mess than ours. Add to the issue of public domain is the educational exemption which, yes I know is often not really that but here I think it is real critique and educational, but more on that if you have information.

The audience here on the British Photo History site is relatively sophisticated, no kidding! So this seems a proper venue for advice.

I plan on running it through Prowriteaid and then Grammarly, then off to a friend who edits books for a living. So skip over missing comas, etc. I’ve opted for a chatty informality. Is it too informal?

Though the comments are about a specific print, a platinum print, the critical scope is much broader and I want to cover areas of discussion that are unique. I built my first darkroom in 1960, so I have had 60 years of serious photography and 40 running Bostick & Sullivan. I am both a FRPS and a HonFRPS, I am hoping those might establish some credibility.

Comments please.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xy9e7tbgdxsgfwi/Fifty%20Prints%2C%20seecond%20draft%20for%20review.%207d.pdf?dl=0

Dick Sullivan HonFRPS

Grasping the complexity of photohistory is dependent upon research, analysis and the creation of visual examples and texts that clarify the issues. Luminous-Lint seeks to delve deep to spot the trends but always using the photographs as the research base. 

Since 2005 Luminous-Lint has been working from the images towards the arguments and explanatory texts. By bringing together over 100,000 hand-picked images from over 3,600 public and private collections one can start to see patterns. For the last seven years the major concentration of effort has been on how to construct increasingly meaningful histories of photography. These started out as naive pages on different genres and regions of the world but they are now evolving into well-structured pieces and some have grown into book-sized topics illustrated with thousands of examples. 
  
This illustrated talk will provide an overview to Luminous-Lint, how it all comes together and why. It will be a light-hearted romp but will give you meaningful insights into the history, present situation and future plans for Luminous-Lint. 
  
Many of you subscribe to Luminous-Lint and provide photographs and information to enhance it. This is a rare opportunity to see what is going on at a very personal level. 

Luminous-Lint: An introduction - Challenges and Opportunities
Speaker: Alan Griffiths
Sunday 9 August 2020 - 13:30 EDT / 18:30- BST (Make sure you check your own time zone)
A donation of $25 is required for each talk and the proceeds go to improving Luminous-Lint. 
Book your place now

Talks will be given using ZOOM and you will be emailed the Meeting Id and password on the day of the presentation.

Some while ago I posted asking if anyone knew where John Spillers negatives went to. Just an update; no one has responded, but maybe some-one, some-where does!

See: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/forum/topics/john-spiller

I have just created a Wikipedia page for photo-crayotypes and chromatypes but the current focus is on Australian uses by photographers like Frederick Frith and Douglas Kilburn. If anyone has more research they can add from the UK that would be great. Happy to help if you are not using Wikipedia regularly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo-crayotype

The rare photographic images of Florence Nightingale are so famous and familiar – iconic even – that we tend to take them for granted. But what do we actually know about them, about the circumstances in which they were made, distributed and, more importantly maybe, about the photographers who took them? Come and discover the truth behind the iconic pictures of a British legend in a Zoom talk by historian, Denis Pellerin, from Dr. Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company.

Florence Nightingale apparently loathed having her photograph taken. Why then did she accept to sit for these images? And why did she repeatedly lie about being photographed only once, by command of the Queen?

This is the story of a quest, of a search that took Pellerin and his assistant, Rebecca, to dozens of different places and archives, both on location and online. The talk is being given for the benefit of the Florence Nightingale Museum 

The talk is £5.98. To read more and book click here: https://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/they-mystery-of-florences-photos/ 

My article on Grubb and Parsons and their optical and engineering achievements is here; A variation of this article has appeared in the Photographica magazine of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain (PCCGB). 

I have a collection of early Grubb lenses which were made in Dublin in the 1850s and 1860s and I will be publishing further material about the lenses and their impact from time to time. In the meantime I would be happy to hear from any members who have similar items or information relating to Grubb lenses.

I am also interested in hearing from other members who have an interest in or knowledge of Irish Photography from the 19th Century.

My presentation on Choosing and Using Old Leicas for the LHSA - The International Leica Society - will go out at 7.30 pm BST on Wednesday 19th August 2020.

Link here - https://lhsa.org/2020/06/free-webinar-aug-19-choosing-and-using-old-leicas-with-willian-fagan/

The Illustrated Collodion News started off as a bit of fun for a small group of wet plate collodion photographers to raise money at charitable events they attended.

This year we went a little further and produced 100 x twenty page Broadsheet newspapers for the European Collodion Weekend. Sadly cancelled, so we decided to go ahead with the printing and ship out to the attendees that had pre ordered.

I'd like to offer the remainder here as I think some of you might like the content created by contemporary wet plate collodion practitioners and artists.

Contributors:- Alex Timmermans, Joni Sternbach, John Coffer, Christian Klant, Tony Richards, Mark Osterman & France Scully Osterman, Melanie-Jane Frey, Anton Tintype, Jacqueline Roberts, Anabelle Schattens, Juri Tarkpea, Severine  Peiffer, Elizabeth Herman, Silvano Magnone, Ivory Flame, Paul Elter & Daniel Fazel,Gregg McNeill.

ALL profits go to the mental health charity MIND.

Contact me here for more info. Only 18 left.

£5 plus postage.

At an estimate of £60-100 a stereoscopic daguerreotype of Fox Talbot by Antoine Claudet could be yours. The lot is being offered by Kings Russell Auctioneers in London's Knightsbridge in an auction as lot 172 on 18 August 2020. 

The description is here: 

Antoine Claudet (French, 1797-1867), Portrait of William Fox Talbot, stereoscopic daguerreotype, mounted with photographer blindstamp to mount and label to verso No.4695 Mr.Claudet, Photographer to the Queen, 107 Regent Street, London, H.17cm W.12cm, full frame size H.25.5cm W.21.5cm

Estimate £60-100 / http://www.kingsrussell.com/index.php/component/catalogue/lots?auctionid=39&start=160

As most BPH readers will immediately see the lot is NOT a stereoscopic, NOT a daguerreotype and is NOT a portrait of William Henry Fox Talbot, but could be another William Fox Talbot. The auctioneer has been approached for more information about the attribution.

Fortunately, the auctioneer's terms of business state 'Should any Lot be sold other than specifically described in writing in terms of appearance or condition, authenticity or originality, the Buyer has 12 days from the date of sale to apply in writing for a refund of the purchase price'. 

As they say caveat emptor

The Black House was a hostel founded in the early 1970s by Herman Edwards, a charismatic Caribbean immigrant, better known to his community as Brother Herman. It aimed to provide accommodation and support for disillusioned black adolescents in Islington, London, many of whom had experienced prejudice, unemployment, and problems with the police.

Almost half a century later the Michael Hoppen Gallery has an exclusive video interview with 83 year old Colin Jones and considers the lasting impact of his iconic series of work. The Gallery also has available vintage works from The Black House series (1973-76).

See more here: https://michaelhoppen.viewingroom.com/viewing-room/10-colin-jones-the-black-house-1973-76/

The 35th Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have announced the long and shortlisted titles. The books in the running for the 2020 Photography Book Award and Moving Image Book Award address diverse global issues related to race, justice, identity, and the construction of truth, history and memory.

Ranging from illuminating artist monographs and anthologies to in-depth critiques of photography or filmmaking, to photobooks reconstructing hidden stories, and much more, the lists reflect the Foundation’s enduring recognition of rigorous and original books that will likely have a lasting impact on their field.

Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Judge, Photography Book Award comments: “The significant themes that emerged from this year’s submissions clustered around identity, environment and the uses of history and memory. Overall the entries  demonstrate the centralityof photography as a major articulation of submerged, contested but vital histories.”

Dr Andrew Moor, Judge, Moving Image Book Award comments: “The longlist contains work that pushes at the  boundaries of the cinematic. It is a set of books that aims to reinterpret the past, reflecting how moving images mediate our lives, animate our memories and vitally record our presence.”

In lieu of an Awards Ceremony which usually takes place during Photo London, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has teamed up with The Photographers’ Gallery to announce the winners in September. A live stream event hosted by the Gallery will feature conversations about the two winning books. Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation said: “In this, our 35th anniversary year, the submissions have maintained an extremely high standard of image-making and authorship, carrying forward our mission to encourage and celebrate outstanding photo-books and books about the moving image. We are very pleased to be partnering with The Photographers’ Gallery in presenting the awards this year.”

Winners will receive prize money of £5,000 each. For both categories, the shortlist selected by the judging panel aims to showcase innovative and coherent bodies of work with a focus on cultural relevance for our current times and in the years to come. The judges also put precedence on each publication’s design, texture, and haptic qualities, aspects that are particularly poignant during this period of digital focus.

The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, first established in 1985, are open to all Moving Image and Photography books published in the previous year and available in the UK. Over 200 entries were considered this year.
The shortlisted titles are as follows:

2020 Photography Book Award (Shortlist):

La toya Ruby Frazier (Mousse Publishing & Mudam Luxembourg)
With its commentary on poverty, racial discrimination, post-industrial decline and its human costs, this work leaves a lasting historical legacy and forms a pertinent contemporary commentary about the American condition. The almost magazine-like production values add to this sense of historical ‘first draft’.
Photography, Truth and Reconciliation by Melissa Miles (Routledge)
Photography has been at the centre of the political, social and cultural processes of truth and reconciliation in response to oppressive regimes and dispossessing histories. Taking case studies from Argentina, Australia, Cambodia, Canada, and South Africa, Miles explores the dynamics through which artists have explored these compelling and difficult histories, raising questions of memory, identity and justice.
The Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows by Sophy Rickett (GOST Books)
Rickett’s book is a striking collection of 41 photographic works inspired by the life and work of 19th Century Welsh artist and astronomer Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn. Through photography and text, Rickett charts her journey towards making sense of the sprawling and complex Dillwyn Llewelyn family archive.

2020 Photography Book Award (Longlist):
● The Canary and The Hammer by Lisa Barnard (MACK)
● Women War Photographers: From Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus by Anne-Marie Beckmann & Felicity Kom, eds. (Prestel)
● Seeing the Unseen by Harold Edgerton (Steidl co-published with the MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
● LaToya Ruby Frazier (Mousse Publishing / Mudam Luxembourg)
● Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene by Corey Keller (Prestel)
● The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion by Antwaun Sargent (Aperture)
● Dr. Paul Wolff & Tritschler: Light and Shadow – Photographs 1920 bis 1950 by Hans-Michael Koetzle (Kehrer Verlag)
● Photography, Truth and Reconciliation by Melissa Miles (Routledge)
● The Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows by Sophy Rickett (GOST Books) 22 July 2020
● Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum, 1897–1922 by Margaret Sartor and Alex Harris, eds. (University of North Carolina Press)