Blogs

The impact of refugee artists in shaping British visual culture between the wars and in the post-war period is relatively well documented. Far less well-known is the fact that among the refugees fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe for Britain there were many women photographers. The work of these women, some well-known, many unrecognised, brought a fresh approach to British photography in the decades that followed.

The conference will consider the contribution of these women émigré photographers to British visual culture. In so doing, it will analyse the nature of the European cultural practices they brought with them and investigate their work across portraiture, social-reportage, architectural and still-life photography; it will also look at their work for magazines such as Picture Post, Lilliput, The Radio Times, The Listener and Vogue, and for book jackets, record sleeves and the documentation of artworks at the Warburg institute. Many set up their own studios, producing portraits of the British cultural elite; others observed the more socially diverse world of the city. In the 1940s they played a significant role in representing British national life anew as part of the post-war social democratic reconstruction. A primary aim of the conference is to consider how their experience as both (mostly Jewish) outsiders and women shaped their practice.

The conference, organised by the History & Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck and Four Corners in association with the Insiders/Outsiders Festival (https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/), accompanies Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s, a major exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, London, which runs from 28 February to 2 May 2020 (https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye).

Proposals for papers, which will be 20 minutes in length, are invited from postgraduate students, academics and independent scholars on topics including, but not limited to:

Individual Photographers

New research being done on relatively well-known figures such as Dorothy Bohm, Gerti Deutsch, Elsbeth Juda, Lotte Meitner-Graf, Lucia Moholy, and Edith Tudor-Hart. Papers focussing on those who only stayed in England for a relatively short time (such as Grete Stern, Ellen Auerbach, Trude Fleischmann, Lore Kruger, Margarete Michaelis and Erika Anderson née Kellner) will also be considered.

However, priority will be given to lesser-known figures such as Inge Ader, Alice Anson, Anneli Bunyard, Elizabeth Chat, Bertl Gaye (née Sachsel), Laelia Goehr, Lisel Haas, Adelheid (Heidi) Heimann and Hella Katz, Germaine Kanova, Erika Koch, Erna Mandowsky, Betti Mautner, Ursula Pariser, Gerty Simon, Lore Lizbeth Waller (née Back) and Gisele Zinner.

Disrupted career paths

The Exile Photographer’s Career – a collective look at the paths into exile and in and out of photography.

Critical evaluation of work in different genres

Portraiture, photo-essays, photojournalism, photography of art objects, fashion, and advertising. 

The convergence of British documentary with European photojournalism

As seen in the work of Gerti Deutsch, Edith Tudor-Hart and Elisabeth Chat among others.

Networks of support (or not), both personal and institutional, including publication outlets

These might include Picture Post, Lilliput, Weekly Illustrated, Georg Fayer studio, Report photographic agency (Simon Guttmann), the Warburg Institute, the Reimann School, The Ambassador, The Radio Times, The Listener, Tatler, Vogue, The Diplomat, Queen, Women’s Journal, The National Geographic, The Geographical Magazine, The Royal Photographic Society.

The intersection of Jewishness, class and gender

Legacies and influence:

To include the nature of these photographers’ influence on later women photographers, the process of their rediscovery and the role of archives, both institutional and personal, both in the UK and abroad.

Another Eye: Women Refugee Photographers in Britain 1930s-60s
Conference, Birkbeck, University of London, 1 May 2020

Abstracts of no more than 300 words, and a short biography of no more than 100 words should be sent to Carla Mitchell (carla@fourcornersfilm.co.uk) by 2 March 2020. 

More than 2,300 photobooks from the Charles Chadwyck-Healey collection including publications from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray and Diane Arbus are included in this vast gift of photobooks to the Bodleian Library. The collection adds considerably to the photography holdings that includes William Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature (1844–46) – one of the earliest examples of a printed photobook.

According to the Bodleian's librarian Richard Ovenden an exhibition is planned but the collection is still being catalogued and that is the immediate priority.

How have women photographers in Scotland taken control of their own image? This 2nd Morton symposium will reveal neglected stories of Scottish women in photography, including feminist social documentary photographer Franki Raffles, folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw and more.

Inspired by and featuring collections from The National Trust for Scotland and Glasgow Women's Library, this event explores photographic portrayals of women through time and will challenge institutions to better use photographic collections to tell women’s stories.

The NTS photographic holdings feature many women as takers, collectors, preservers and subjects. These include the collections of folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw, aristocrat Violet Brodie and Glaswegian typist Agnes Toward, all of which frequently depict women.

‘Ways of Seeing’: Exhibition

At the library for one day only before it’s showing at Tenement House, Shutter Hub brings together an exhibition of women’s photography in response to the ‘Ways of Seeing’ symposium with an informal reception between 5pm and 7pm, open to all.

Booking

This event is for open to all and is free to attend. Please book below (you will be taken through the shopping cart but no charge will be made) or you can call us on 0141 550 2267. If you have booked a place and are no longer able to attend please let us know so that we can make your place available to someone else.

‘Ways of Seeing’: Women and Photography in Scotland
Thursday 2nd April, 9am to 5pm, followed by a drinks reception
Glasgow Women's Library
Details and booking here: https://womenslibrary.org.uk/event/ways-of-seeing-symposium/

Please consider joining SSHoP, The Scottish Society for the History of Photography. We publish Studies in Photography twice a year - a high quality A4 journal of 104 pages - dedicated to historical and contemporary photography, with quality illustration and authoritative, critical writing.

SSHoP is a not-for-profit charity run by volunteers.  Our funding comes through a small amount of advertising, sales of the journal, and most importantly, membership subscriptions, which pay for publishing the journal and the events and lectures that we organise.

Besides receiving the journal, membership ensures that you are informed of, and have free admission to, our events and lectures. Please check out our website at: www.sshop.org.uk

At present, Membership is £25.00 for individual UK membership and £15.00 for UK students.

Please consider joining us. Sign up is easy though the membership pages on the site - and for any queries please contact membership@sshop.org.uk

***It is with very heavy hearts that we announce the cancellation of the Photography Beyond the Image symposium. Due to the current public health emergency, we feel compelled to make this difficult decision. The event will be rescheduled for the autumn and we will be in touch with new details once the current crisis alleviates.***

Recent years have seen photographic studies move beyond the analysis of the visual product. From a focus on photographs as the privileged points of access for studying photography, thus supporting a predominant understanding of the medium as a representational tool, the field is today embracing a more holistic approach. This has brought photography into a much needed interdisciplinary and intermedial analytical environment, and alerted us to the social, cultural and commercial entanglements that shape and are shaped by photographic practices. This one-day symposium hosted by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture seeks to examine these intellectual trends by reflecting on their postulates, methodologies and future directions.

SPEAKERS:

Professor Geoffrey Batchen (Oxford)
Dr Geoffrey Belknap (National Science and Media Museum)
Professor Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck)
Professor Elizabeth Edwards (Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute and De Montfort University)
Professor Steve Edwards (Birkbeck)
Professor Michelle Henning (University of Liverpool)
Dr Nicoletta Leonardi (Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan)
Dr Gil Pasternak (De Montfort University)
Dr Annebella Pollen (University of Brighton)
Convened by Dr Sara Dominici (IMCC, University of Westminster)

Photography Beyond the Image symposium
Saturday 25 April 2020, 9.45am – 4.45pm
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW
Full programme available here.

The event is free and open to all, but spaces are limited and booking essential. Tickets here.

Colleagues and researchers interested in correspondence relating to Brunel’s commissioning of photographs of the S.S. Great Eastern, may enjoy a blog by Emma Howgill: Photographing Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s S.S. Great Eastern. Images of the correspondence between I K Brunel and Joseph Cundall are also available on the University of Bristol Library Special Collections online archive catalogue (see Emma Howgill’s blog for links).

To whet your appetite part of Emma's blog says: 'Seven months later there is another set of correspondence about these photographs, beginning with a letter from Isambard Kingdom Brunel asking to see the photographs of the Great Eastern under construction (DM1306/11/1/2/folio 72). This set of correspondence ends with two pages of Instructions for Photographs listing exactly how Brunel wants any future photographs to be taken (DM1306/11/1/2/folio 85-86).  And just over a year and a half later, on 9 December 1856, there is a letter from Joseph Cundall of the Photographic Institute in New Bond Street, requesting payment for taking these photographs. Brunel’s letter-books, carefully showing the sequence of all the correspondence that he both sent and received about the Great Eastern allows us to trace the development of Brunel’s idea to illustrate the process of constructing his great ship, from its conception to payment.'

A new publication continues Terry Bennet's fascination with east Asian photography, mostly recently his three-volume History of Photography in China. Just published is Early Photography in Vietnam which is a fascinating and outstanding pictorial record of photography in Vietnam during the century of French rule. As with Terry's previous volumes the  book is carefully researched and referenced.  In more than 500 photographs, many published here for the first time, the volume records Vietnam’s capture and occupation by the French, the wide-ranging ethnicities and cultures of Vietnam, the country’s fierce resistance to foreign rule, leading to the reassertion of its own identity and subsequent independence.

This benchmark volume also includes a chronology of photography (1845–1954), an index of more than 240 photographers and studios in the same period, appendixes focusing on postcards, royal photographic portraits, Cartes de Visite and Cabinet Cards, as well as a select bibliography and list of illustrations.

Thoroughly researched and illustrated the book will be the definitive volume on Vietnamese photography up to 1954 for many years, as well as providing a structure for other researchers to build upon.

Early Photography in Vietnam
Terry Bennett
Renaissance Books, 2020
ISBN 978-1-912961-04-7
£70.00, 404 pages. 

See: https://www.renaissancebooks.co.uk/Forthcoming-Titles/171-/Early-Photography-in-Vietnam

The Science Museum has announced its research seminar series for winter and spring 2020. They are free to attend and open to science museum staff, students, museum professionals and academics with a research interest in the history of science, technology, medicine and  museums as well as material and visual culture more broadly. Admission is free. 

Of particular note is Merrick Burrow discussing the Cottingley Fairies and Conan Doyle. 

In the December 1920 issue of the Strand Magazine Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, published what he considered to be conclusive photographic proof of the existence of  fairies. He followed up this article with another one the following March, which featured three more photographs by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, the same young women who had taken  the two original pictures. As a result of Doyle's patronage these five photographs of ‘the  Cottingley fairies’ became a global cause célèbre.

Doyle, though widely mocked, maintained his view that the photographs were genuine. Frances and Elsie refused for decades to bow to pressure to confess to faking the pictures. Eventually  they admitted the hoax in the 1980s, though Frances maintained to the end that one of the photographs was genuine.

In this talk Dr Merrick Burrow will explore the background to the Cottingley fairies photographs  and the peculiar circumstances that turned them into the world’s greatest photographic hoax.

Dr Merrick Burrow is Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield. He is curator of a major exhibition on the Cottingley fairies at the Brotherton Library, Leeds, running from September 2020.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Cottingley Fairies: Merrick Burrow (University of Huddersfield)
Date: Tuesday 31 March 2020, 13.00–14.00

Dana Research Centre & Library
165 Queen’s Gate, London, SW7 5HD.
Feel free to bring a packed lunch to eat during the seminar.

See: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/research-seminar-series

The Art Newspaper has reported that the Alinari photographic archive which was under threat of dispersal has been acquired by the regional government of Tuscany.  It will create a new foundation in Florence to preserve its more than five million items.

The world’s oldest photographic firm, Alinari put its historic Florentine headquarters up for sale last May after years of financial difficulty. The collection—ranging from daguerreotypes to 200,000 digital images, as well as photographic equipment and thousands of books—was moved to a private storage facility while politicians brokered a deal to save it for the Italian nation. The Tuscan Soprintendenza for archives, part of the Italian culture ministry, had placed the holdings under export ban in December 2018 for its “primary importance” to the history of photography.

Besides “guaranteeing the care and correct conservation” of the archive, the region plans to renovate Villa Fabbricotti, an 1860s estate in the hills north of Florence currently used as government offices, as its permanent home and exhibition space. A new foundation dedicated to managing the archive will be created by May, with a committee of photo­graphy experts—including former Alinari employees—and the possible involvement of the culture ministry.

The project is estimated to cost around €15m, with at least €2.4m due to Fratelli Alinari. The figure is, however, a fraction of the €138m valuation placed on the collection by the Italian photographer and historian Italo Zannier in 2008. 

See the report here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/alinari-photographic-archive-saved-by-tuscan-government

and the Alinari website: https://www.alinari.it/en/about-us

The History and Theory of Photography Research Centre is announced it spring seminar programme. All are free and open to all to attend. 

Thursday 20 February 2020, 6-7:30pm
Room 106, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
Jason Bate (Falmouth University)
The Politics and Ethics of Emerging Medical Collections from the 'Great' War

This paper explores the archival afterlives of photographs of the facially injured and disfigured ex-servicemen of the 'Great' War, focusing on the prolific records of reconstructive surgery and aftercare in military hospitals. From the scientific quest to record and understand these wounds and their treatment, to soldiers’ post-war reintegration, the photographs have struggled to shed the conditions of their making as specimen and records of surgical technique. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, partly to safeguard them in the public’s interest, such collections were transferred from Army museums to better-resourced institutions. Their move away from closed holdings within a military-medical context, made them more widely accessible. This talk explores how these photographs have been repurposed in archival space, where they seldom serve as mere surgical documents. Over time, these remediated images have been reclaimed by descendants of patients into a kind of ‘redemptive power of domestic love’, in an effort to welcome loved ones back in a relationship with kin or friends and away from their dehumanised portrayal in clinical settings. Retooling surgical photographs of disfigured soldiers as ancestors, these remediations embrace an expanded range of collections whose family practices and archives will always confound the reduction of that person to only a medical subject, an institutional object.

Thursday 26 March 2020, 6-7:30pm, followed by drinks

Room 106, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Liz Wells, Derrick Price, and Nicola Brandt

SERIES AND BOOK LAUNCH: Photography, Place, Environment (Bloomsbury Academic Publishing) presents Coal Cultures by Derrick Price, and Landscapes Between Then and Now by Nicola Brandt.

 Photography, Place, Environment publishes original scholarship and critical thinking exploring ways in which photography contributes to, or challenges, narratives relating to geography, environment, landscape and place, historically and now. By critiquing relationships between land, aesthetics, culture and photography, and by placing imagery as both the object and the method of enquiry, the books in this series also foster debates on photographic methodologies, theory and practices.

Liz Wells, series editor for Photography, Place, Environment, Bloomsbury Academic, will discuss the genesis, context and visual cultural compass of the series. Derrick Price, author of Coal Cultures and Nicola Brandt, author of Landscapes Between Then and Now will introduce their respective publications, noting specific histories, geographies and contemporary critical issues relevant, respectively, to images of miners and mining communities, and to photography’s contribution within processes of reconciliation and memorialisation in Southern Africa.

See https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/photography-place-environment/

Dr. Nicola Brandt is an artist from Namibia. Her work engages innovative documentary practices in relationship to the role of memory, landscape and positionality. During 2019, she was a visiting professor at the Institute of African Studies and Iwalewahaus (The University of Bayreuth, Germany).

Dr. Derrick Price is a freelance writer and independent scholar who has published widely on photography and film. He worked for many years in higher education and was for more than a decade the Associate Dean of Art, Media and Design at the University of the West of England.

Professor Liz Wells’ publications on land and environment include Land Matters, Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (2011) along with many catalogue essays and exhibitions as curator. She is Professor in Photographic Culture, University of Plymouth, UK.

Monday 30 March 2020, registration 6pm, lecture 6:30, followed by drinks

Clore Lecture Theatre (CLO B01), Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London, WC1E 7JL

KRASZNA-KRAUSZ LECTURE 2020: ‘Photography and Cinema, from A to Z’ presented by David Campany

The inaugural Kraszna-Krausz Lecture will be given by internationally renowned writer, public speaker and curator David Campany. Titled Photography and Cinema, from A to Z, the lecture will take the form of twenty-six short reflections on still and moving images. The lecture series, newly established by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, will provide a platform and space for fresh voices and perspectives on photography and the moving image.

Presented in partnership with the The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, which was created by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the founder of Focal Press, an influential specialist publishing house for books on photography. Since 1985 the annual Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have been the UK’s leading prizes for books on photography and the moving image. More information on the work of the Foundation can be found online at www.kraszna-krausz.org.uk.

David Campany’s books include On Photographs (forthcoming this year); So Present, So Invisible – Conversations on Photography (2018); Walker Evans: The Magazine Work (2014), Gasoline (2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2010), Art and Photography (2003) and Photography and Cinema, which received the 2009 Kraszna-Krausz Award. He has written over two hundred essays for, among others, Tate, MoMA New York, Centre Pompidou, The Photographers’ Gallery London, and the Stedelijk Museum. Many of his touring exhibitions have combined still and moving images, including A Handful of Dust (2015-2020),The Open Road: photography and the American road trip (2016-2019); The Still Point of the Turning World: Between Film and Photography (2017); Victor Burgin: A Sense of Place (2013); Anonymes: Unnamed America in Photography and Film (2010); and Hannah Collins: Current History (2010). He is the curator of the three-city Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, (Mannheim/Ludwigshafen/Heidelberg, Germany) opening in February 2020.

The lecture is free to attend but spaces are limited. Tickets must be booked: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/?tag=80

The second release of historic photographs of people, equipment and events, mostly from the early history of the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, up to about 1970, is now available on line. The combined PhotoArchive now contains 406 images, 367 in black and white and 39 in colour. The first release contained images of many famous pieces of equipment. 

In this second release, there are more images of experiments and equipment, but there are also letters and writings, more portraits of many of distinguished staff members and, in particular, many images of daily life in the Laboratory. 

See more here: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/cavendish/

Image: Rutherford's research room, c.1933. (P551)

Today, the V&A announces the appointment of renowned photography curator and scholar Duncan Forbes as Director of Photography. Forbes will take up the newly-created role in April 2020 to drive forward the V&A’s reputation as one of the world’s leading institutions for the research, exhibition and understanding of international photography.

Forbes will lead the V&A’s team of photography curators on its mission to bring new photographic narratives and histories to light through new acquisitions, artist collaborations, international partnerships, research projects and exhibitions. He will also spearhead a major cataloguing and digitisation programme to further enhance public access to the V&A’s photography collections – one of the largest and most important in the world.

In addition, Forbes will oversee the development of Phase Two of the V&A Photography Centre, opening in 2022 and led by Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photographs. The V&A Photography Centre is designed to showcase the museum’s expanded photography holdings following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection in 2017. The first phase, encompassing a suite of four galleries, was opened by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge in October 2018 with a display spanning a history of photography from the daguerreotype to digital, a digital wall for screen-based media, a screening room, newly-commissioned work by leading contemporary artists and space to showcase new acquisitions. Phase Two will add a further four rooms, including two climate-controlled galleries suited to the display of large-scale contemporary works, interactive features and a reading room dedicated to the enjoyment of photographic books.

Previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, Forbes has researched, exhibited and published prolifically on the medium. He returns to the UK from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “Photography is one of our most powerful forms of global communication, and a medium that we have been collecting and interpreting since our founding in 1852. We now care for one of the most important international photography collections in the world, and we’re on a mission to share it with audiences across the globe. With Duncan at the helm, we’ll drive forward our support of emerging and established practitioners and develop our contemporary collecting programme through the generosity of the V&A Photographs Acquisitions Group. Through the expansion of the V&A Photography Centre, ground-breaking UK and touring exhibitions, artist collaborations, pioneering research and international partnerships, we’ll open up photography to new perspectives and possibilities like never before.”

Duncan Forbes said: “I’m thrilled to be joining the V&A at such an exciting moment in the development of its photography holdings. The addition of the Royal Photographic Society collection in 2017 has lent further weight to what is already one of the world’s great photography collections. The challenge of bringing new histories to light in collaboration with partners around the world is a compelling one. I can’t wait to get started.”

The V&A was the first museum in the world to collect photographs, beginning with its founding in 1852, and continues to collect and commission new work today. Comprising over 800,000 photographs, the collection charts the global history of photography from its invention to the present day. Spanning fine art, fashion, journalism, documentary, portraiture, sport, architecture, medical and landscape photography, alongside many other genres, highlights include:

•  A range of pioneering photographic media, including daguerreotypes, calotypes, and early colour photography
•  Work by key British innovators including William Henry Fox Talbot, Hill & Adamson, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron and Lady Clementina Hawarden
•  20th-century greats and international artists including Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Claude Cahun, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martine Franck, Horst P. Horst, Rinko Kawauchi, Dorothea Lange, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti, Curtis Moffatt, Helmut Newton, J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston
•  Work by the most exciting image-makers working today including William Eggleston, Sir Don McCullin, Zanele Muholi, Cornelia Parker, Martin Parr, Sebastião Salgado, Cindy Sherman, Juergen Teller and Wolfgang Tillmans
•  Photography books, journals and archival materials relating to the world’s most revolutionary artists and practitioners
•  Cameras and equipment associated with groundbreaking photographers from William Henry Fox Talbot to Madame Yevonde
•  Recent acquisitions of work by Valérie Belin, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Martin Kollár, Susan Meiselas, Abelardo Morell, Thomas Ruff, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Jem Southam and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Duncan Forbes was previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photograph at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. He has most recently been based in Los Angeles, working as a Researcher at the Getty Research Institute, where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography. Forbes has published widely in the history of photography and curated exhibitions across three centuries of photographic history, including with leading contemporary photographers. His most recent books and exhibitions include Provoke: Between Protest and Performance: Japanese Photography 1960–1975 (Steidl, 2016), Beastly / Tierisch (Spector Books, 2015), Manifeste! Eine andere Geschichte der Fotografie (Steidl, 2014), and Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny (Hatje Cantz, 2013). His latest essays have appeared in Camera Austria International (Graz, 2018 and 2019), Helen Levitt (Kehrer Verlag, 2018), Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (Prestel, 2018), ZUM (São Paulo, 2017), The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990 (Steidl, 2017), and History Workshop Journal (London, 2017).

Image: Duncan Forbes / V&A handout.

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged.

This new book by Christopher Morton is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard's theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard's anthropology.

The Anthropological Lens: Rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Christopher Morton
256 Pages | 89 black and white illustrations
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198812913
£30
Available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-anthropological-lens-9780198812913?cc=ro&lang=en&

Hyperallergic has reported that Paris Musées is now offering 100,000 digital reproductions of artworks in the city’s museums on open access — free of charge and without restrictions — via its Collections portal.

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image. 

Images are currently available of 2D artworks, such as paintings or photographs, and are being made available under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license, which allows creators and owners of copyrighted or database-protected content to place those works in or as close as possible to the public domain. Works still in copyright will be available as low definition files. 

Paris Musées has significant holdings of photographs, including the work of Atget, Nadar, and photographically illustrated books.

Image: Portrait de Bautain, Eug., (photographe), c.1870-90. Musée Carnavalet.

How do scholars use photography in their research? What can they learn from photographs? What can we understand from them about our relationship with the photographs that we make and those that we encounter almost everywhere we go?

Edited by Dr Gil Pasternak from the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University (UK), The Handbook of Photography Studies has now been published by Bloomsbury, featuring and discussing work by some of the most influential photography scholars of our generation in 28 chapters and 6 contextualizing essays.

A state-of-the-art overview of the field, The Handbook of Photography Studies examines the thematic interests, dynamic research methodologies and multiple scholarly directions of this exciting area. It is a source of well-informed, analytical and reflective discussions of all the main subjects that photography scholars have been concerned with, as well as a rigorous study of the field’s persistent expansion at a time when digital technology regularly boosts our exposure to new and historical photographs alike.

Featuring the work of international experts, and offering diverse examples, insights and discussions of the field’s rich historiography, the Handbook provides critical guidance to the most recent research in photography studies. Split into five core parts, each with an introductory text that gives historical contextualization and scholarly orientation, this volume:

• analyzes the field’s histories, theories and research strategies;
• discusses photography in academic disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts;
• draws out the main concerns of photographic scholarship;
• interrogates photography’s cultural and geopolitical influences; and
• examines photography’s multiple uses and continued changing faces.

A systematic synopsis of the subject, this volume will be an invaluable resource for photography researchers and students from all disciplinary backgrounds in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

‘This book is a most useful contribution to the study of photography, with many excellent contributions. Chapters are much more substantial than is usual with works of this type, allowing authors to explore their topics in some depth and explore a range of approaches. Pasternak has done a wonderful job.’ Steve Edwards, Professor of History and Theory of Photography, Co-Director of the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

‘This is a book designed for twenty-first-century students, one that will prepare them to ask well-informed, timely questions about the medium’s histories and historiography.’ Tanya Sheehan, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, Colby College, USA

Gil Pasternak is Reader in Social and Political Photographic Cultures in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University (UK). A member of the advisory board for the journals Photography & Culture and Jewish Film & New Media, earlier in life he worked as photojournalist, photography archivist and fine art photographer, and in 2016 he was consultant for the BBC film Smile! The Nation’s Family Album (2017).

Chapter contributors:

Marta Braun, Douglas Nickel, Melissa Miles, Costanza Caraffa, Jae Emerling, Luc Pauwels, Ben Burbridge, Daniel Rubinstein, Elizabeth Edwards, Christina Riggs, Gil Pasternak, Jennifer Tucker, Paul Frosh, Sarah Parsons, Annebella Pollen, Martin Hand, Jane Lydon, Stephen Sheehi, Oliver Moore, Eva Pluhařová-Grigienė, Darren Newbury, Louis Kaplan, Margaret Denny, Thierry Gervais, Susan A. Crane, Joan M. Schwartz, Martha Langford, and David M. Frohlich.

Visit the Handbook’s webpage to find out more about its aims, aspirations, and content: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-handbook-of-photography-studies-9781474242219/

My last post to this blog concerned the two Valley of Inkerman photographs taken in 1856 by either James Robertson or Felice Beato, but more likely the latter. In this blog, the image entitled The Inkerman Ravine (see below) is discussed. Although Robertson’s signature is in the bottom right-hand corner, it also may have been the work of Beato. Whether this photograph was taken in 1855 or 1856 is unknown to the author.

The only description of this photograph comes from the Royal Collection Trust website that reads: -

Photograph of the Inkerman Ravine. The photograph shows a valley with steep rocky sides. Several rough roads run through the valley and there is a small group of tents on the hillside to the left. The Battle of Inkerman was fought in this ravine on the 5th November 1854.Photograph of the Inkerman Ravine. The photograph shows a valley with steep rocky sides. Several rough roads run through the valley and there is a small group of tents on the hillside to the left. The Battle of Inkerman was fought in this ravine on 5^th November 1854.

During the Crimean War, the valley in the picture was called the Careenage Ravine or Careenage Creek Ravine by the British and the Ravin du Carenage by the French. The side-ravine that leaves the Careenage Ravine in the centre of the picture was called the Mikriakov Glen. How the photograph came to be called The Inkerman Ravine is unknown, but it may have been deliberate ploy to associate the location with the famous battle in order to sell copies to the public in Britain. However, the Battle of Inkerman was not fought in this ravine on 5 November 1854 as the Royal Collection Trust suggests. It was largely fought on the Inkerman Ridge, a section of which is seen on the skyline of The Inkerman Ravine.

Nevertheless, the location in the image is significant because there was a famous action here during the Battle of Little Inkerman, which was also known as the Combat of the Lesser Inkerman, on 26 October 1854. As at the Battle of Inkerman just over a week later, the main Russian attack took place on the Inkerman Ridge with their troops first occupying the high ground known as Cossack or Shell Hill. This hill is just beyond the high point on the skyline of The Inkerman Ravine. In addition to their main thrust on the Inkerman Ridge, the Russians also directed a column of what was believed to have been marines or sailors up the Careenage Ravine. This column of 600-800 men was to advance up the Careenage Ravine and a side-ravine known as the Wellway before appearing at the rear of British lines on the Inkerman Ridge. However, sixty men of the Guards under the command of Captain Goodlake were posted across the Careenage Ravine. These men initially retreated a few yards, but then halted at a small trench across the floor of the ravine and fired on the Russian column. According to a map published by Alexander Kinglake in Volume 5 of his book entitled The Invasion of the Crimea, the trench was at the location seen in The Inkerman Ravine. The Russians hesitated and there was a stand-off for some time. After the arrival of British reinforcements, which consisted of Captain Markham and men of the 2^nd Rifle battalion, there was a sharp encounter and the Russians were forced to retreat back down the Careenage Ravine.

Russian forces also advanced up the Careenage Ravine during the Battle of Inkerman, but this time they did not encounter any resistance and almost reached the end of the Wellway on the Inkerman Ridge. Here they were defeated and had to retreat the way they had come.

The Careenage Ravine at the location seen in The Inkerman Ravine was also photographed by Colonel Vladislav Klembovsky, who later became a leading figure in the Russian army. He died in a Soviet prison in 1921. His image, which was published in an album of images of Crimean War sites in 1904, is shown below. He states in his caption that the slopes in his picture were those of the Careenage and Mikriakov Ravines. The author’s own image taken in 2012, which is also presented below, shows that the junction of the two ravines as captured in The Inkerman Ravine is still recognisable today.

I am very proud that my latest book Scotland in 3D - A Victorian Virtual Reality Tour was selected by The Scotsman, Scotland's leading newspaper, as one of their photographic books of the year. They commented that the book magically brought the Victorians closer to life. The book is currently on sale for £3 off in January at www.scotlan3d.com 

The full text of The Scotsman review is here:

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/books/from-victorian-scotland-in-3d-to-pyongyang-in-pastel-shades-the-best-photography-books-of-2019-1-5064747

Dr Kelley Wilder, Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University has been awarded a Professorship in Photographic History at the same university. Details of her inaugural lecture will be announced in due course.

More to follow... 

A new photography fair which will be held during Photo London has been announced. The Classic Photograph Fair London will offer a wide range of images from early paper negatives and daguerreotypes to press photographs documenting the stormy 1960s.  

The fair will take place on 16 May 2020 from 0900-1800 at the Arcade, Bush House, 60 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG. It is being supported by Chiswick Auction. 

Find our more and to book a table here: https://www.classicphotofair.co.uk/

A new exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor’s Center, is celebrating the nation’s memories of visiting the prehistoric site. A 1875 snapshot of Isabel, Maud, and Robert Routh, who made the journey there by horse-drawn carriage was unearthed by descendants of the Rouths in response to English Heritage’s request for family photographs taken at Stonehenge over the years. The first known photo of the site itself is from 1853 than the Routh image.

“People have been visiting Stonehenge for centuries, and since the 19th century, people have felt compelled to take photos of themselves and their loved ones in front of the stones. But rather than lying forgotten in a dusty old photo album or on a memory card, we want people to share with us their photos of Stonehenge,” said Stonehenge director Kate Davies when putting out the call in 2018, during the centenary celebrations over Stonehenge’s donation to the nation by the site’s last private owners, Cecil and Mary Chubb.

English Heritage historian Susan Greaney and photographer Martin Parr, who co-curated the exhibition, whittled down the more than 1,400 photos submitted to just 144, covering a span of nearly 150 years. The newest image on view is by Parr himself, taken during the fall equinox this September. The photographer captured an unknown couple kissing in front of the stones while, in true 2019 fashion, holding a selfie stick aloft.

Parr hopes to identify the pair and to give them a print of the image. English Heritage is also encouraging anyone who might have an earlier photograph of their ancestors visiting Stonehenge to come forward. Martin Parr took this photograph at Stonehenge on the fall solstice in September 2019, and hopes to identify the couple.

These amateur snapshots amount to something of a social history of the UK. There are joys—honeymoon memories, family picnics back when sitting on the stones was still allowed—and also sorrows, as seen in a photograph of a 10-year-old girl and her 20-year-old brother, wearing his military uniform back in 1941. It was taken the last time they saw each other, shortly before he went missing in action during World War II.

“I loved looking at the images that people sent in,” Parr said, “They really show what the stones mean to people and how our relationship with a site like Stonehenge has changed and yet stayed the same through time.”

Image: Isabel, Maud, and Robert Routh in 1875, in what’s believed to be the oldest family photograph taken at Stonehenge. Courtesy of the Routh family / English Heritage.

Your Stonehenge 150 years of personal photos
Open daily at Stonehenge Visitor Centre,
Admission details https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/prices-and-opening-times/
until August 2020.