Blogs

The National Portrait Gallery began acquiring photographs shortly after its foundation in 1856, although the first photograph did not officially enter the Collection until 1932. Since then, the Gallery’s Photographs Collection has expanded to include approximately 250,000 examples of the medium. Dating from photography’s earliest days following its discovery in 1839, to the present day, it represents a comprehensive collection of techniques and movements in British photographic portrait history.

This display celebrates recently acquired portraits by contemporary artists whose work joins the recent revival of early photographic processes. Through their use of pinhole cameras, photograms and tintypes, unique pieces are favoured over mass production, highlighting the moment of creation. Shown alongside historical examples, aesthetic, technical and conceptual connections between the art of the past and the present are revealed. Distilling portraiture and photography to their basic qualities of shape and the processing of light, these works both challenge and create a dialogue with conventional approaches to portraiture.

See more here: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2018/photography-a-living-art-then-and-now

Image: Roger Mansfield; Leon Mansfield by Joni Sternbach, 3 September 2014
NPG x199073

From the early innovations of Anna Atkins and Queen Alexandra, through to Dorothy Bohm’s depiction of 1960s London and the self-portraiture of Sarah Lucas in the 2000s, the exhibition will, for the first time, present an in depth historical survey showcasing the achievements of female photographers working in Britain. In collaboration with Fast Forward Women in Photography at University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. The exhibition is part of an ongoing international campaign to bring pioneering women photographers to a wider audience and expose the discrimination of working in a male dominated world.

The exhibition is supported by a Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Research Grant from Art Fund.

Women in Photography: A History of British Trailblazers
30 January-2 June 2019
The Lightbox, Woking
www.thelightbox.org.uk

Image: Urania from the series Zabat, 1989, Maud Sulter © The Estate of Maud Sulter / courtesy of National Galleries of Scotland

The David Collection’s new special exhibition provides a hitherto unknown first-hand impression of 19th-century India, primarily — but not exclusively — seen with the eyes of western photographers. Through original vintage photographs, the viewer is taken back to photography’s birth and earliest childhood and up to around 1900.

Photography had made a breakthrough in British-dominated India in the early 1850s. With its magnificent architecture, exotic landscapes, and many different peoples and cultures, India offered fantastic motifs: splendid Islamic palaces, mosques, and sepulchral monuments. Princes, maharajas, ministers, and warriors in all their glory. But also an abundance of life among the common people, with everyone from stonemasons to snake charmers as well as elephants bathing in the Ganges. 

Motifs of a completely different type that can be seen in the exhibition are those of the shattered palaces and dead warriors that spoke admonishingly of the rebellion against British rule in 1857-1858. The rebellion broke out after Muslim and Hindu soldiers had been forced by the British to use cartridges supposedly greased with fat from pigs and cows. These are some of history’s earliest war photographs, which in Europe served as the basis for newspaper illustrations.

The photographs were often taken under difficult working conditions. The heavy photo equipment had to be transported to distant regions along impassible roads, and its chemicals dried out in the tropical heat. The exposure time could be very long, and processing the negatives and the positives was often arduous.

Experiments were made with the new media by both visiting and local photo pioneers. The exhibition bears witness to the exchanges and competition between amateurs and the professional photographers whose studios popped up in innumerable places in India in the years up to 1900. The photographs also show how the new medium developed in the tension field between documentation and creative art form. 

The over 80 works in the exhibition comprise photographs and photo albums, all of which were lent by the same private collection. The exhibition catalogue was written by the British photo historian John Falconer, who for many years was responsible for the photograph collections in the British Library’s Indian and Oriental departments. The author is one of the world’s leading specialists in this field and his catalogue provides a detailed and lively account of the photographers’ India in the 19th century and their photographic techniques.

The catalogue is available in both Danish and English editions and can be purchased in the museum shop for DKK 200. Read the press release from Strandberg Publishing for the publication here.

Under Indian Skies - 19th-Century Photographs from a Private Collection
23 November, 2018 - 28 April, 2019
The David Collection, Kronprinsessegade 30, 1306 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Tel. +45 33 73 49 49
www.davidmus.dk

Images: Top: Robert and Harriet Tytler. Negative. View at the Taj Mahal, Agra, 1858; Below: Donald Horne Macfarlane. Elephants bathing, 1862.

The legendary Marilyn Monroe is captured in full splendor by society- and appointed court photographer of the British Royal Family Baron (Stirling Henry Nahum) - whose career started in photographing ballets at Sadlers Wells Theatre in London and whose real breakthrough came in 1947 photographing the wedding of Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth.

The photograph bares the stamp of Baron stating his legendary studio address Park Lane in London - where for example Anthony Armstrong-Jones was assistant before having a very prominent career of his own. The entire collection of Barons photographs was donated to the National Portrait Gallery after his early death at 50 years old.

The auction lot on eBay can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/yc2gculu

Arclight is a data mining and visualization tool for film and media history that allow users to analyze millions of pages of digitally scanned magazines and newspapers for trends related to a chosen subject.

Also, available is The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities free download. Across seventeen chapters, contributing authors discuss the ways in which they are using or building digital technologies, assessing strengths and weaknesses, and responding to successes and failures. Topics explored include search, maps, big data, text mining, video analytics, databases, networks, and new forms of publication. All authors attempt to be reflexive about how the media of the twenty-first century shape our engagement with the past.

By aggregating these perspectives, and including an index and a glossary of key terms, this collection seeks to be a “guidebook” that surveys what media historians are doing with digital tools and charts a course for how the field of media history might move forward in an ongoing dialogue with the digital humanities.

See: http://projectarclight.org/

The New York Times carries a review of the New York Public Library's exhibition about Anna Atkins and her seminal work of cyanotypes British Algae. The exhibition is open until 17 February 2019. 

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/arts/design/she-needed-no-camera-to-make-the-first-book-of-photographs.html

The National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, has appointed Dr Geoff Belknap as its Head Curator, effective from 1 November. Belknapp joined the museum in June 2017 as Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology and the new role gives him wider curatorial responsibilities across photography, television, film and sound within the museum. A similar role was previously held by Michael Terwey. 

The History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck has announced two seminars. Admission is free and open to all. 

Wednesday 21 November 2018, 6-7:30pm

Room TBC

Anna Dahlgren, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University

i-D and Artforum: the printed magazine and the merging of art and fashion.

The worlds of art and fashion merged in the 1980s on the pages of illustrated magazines. Since the early 1990s, fashion photographs have migrated effortlessly between the art field and the commercial field, between being considered personal works or assignments limited by the ideas and wants of designers, brands and fashion publications. An important material basis for this development was the emergence of new fora in the 1980s. This presentation traces the beginnings of these transgressions through a close examination of the two magazines i-D and Artforum, which from different positions and with different strategies served as an active interface between art and fashion photography in the 1980s.

Tuesday 26 March,

Jennifer Tucker, History Department and Science in Society Program, Wesleyan University

Load, Point and Shoot:  Cameras, Gun cartridges, and the ‘Black Boxes’ of History

This paper explores what it might mean for historians to take seriously the shared history of firearms and cameras, two technologies that co-evolved in the 19th century and that have had a profound impact on society ever since. As David Campbell writes, “the technologies of the gun and camera…evolved in lockstep.” (Campbell 2012; Landau 2002; Virilio 1984). My paper extends this notion by analyzing further the many different and often unexpected aspects of the historical relationship between cameras and guns. Drawing on new archival research on 19th and early 20th century camera and firearm production and consumption in Britain and the U.S., my paper documents their complementarity at several levels (of structure, chemistry, industrial organization, research, and marketing), aiming to address how and why the technologies function, why they are interoperable, and how their study highlights new ways of thinking about technoscience and the ‘black boxes’ of history. Technologies such as cameras and guns, I suggest, pose certain shared methodological problems for historians and raise broader questions about the writing of history and the role of the historian in ethical discussions about their production and use.

Information on past events at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/photography

Images: 

Nick Knight for i-D magazine
Laurie Simmons, Walking Gun (1991), gelatine silver print, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Face of Suffrage is a new large scale art installation created to celebrate 100 years of Votes for Women by Helen Marshall The ‘Face of Suffrage’ artwork is a floor-based, 200 metre square photo mosaic consisting of more than 3,500 images of females from across the West Midlands.   

It will be located on the concourse of Birmingham New Street Station.  The artwork will be made up of a combination of historical images, women involved in the Suffrage movement from the early 1900s, and from photographs made today by people that have photographed the women in their lives and wish to join in to commemorate and celebrate their stories.

It will be exhibited from the 15th November to the 14th December.

In association with The Face of Suffrage there are a series of free public talks.

Wed 21 November at 6pm,  The Face of Suffrage artist Helen Marshall
Lloyds Room at Birmingham Hippodrome.  Lead artist of The Face of Suffrage Helen Marshall speaks about the project in Birmingham and her other collaborative projects nationally and internationally.
www.thepeoplespicture.com 

Wed 12 December at 6pm, Historian Dr Nicola Gauld
Lloyds Room, Birmingham Hippodrome.  Historian, writer and academic expert on the Suffragette movement Dr Nicola Gauld provides an overview of the Suffragist Campaign and a specific look at Birmingham and women's stories.
www.nicolagauld.wordpress.com

Thurs 10 January at 6pm, Artists and Community Archivists Anand Chhabra and Geoff Broadway
Gowling Room, Birmingham Hippodrome.  Artists, Photographers and Archivists Anand Chhabra and Geoff Broadway talk about the community archives Apna Heritage and Living Memory and the role of women in archive histories and community photography archives.
www.bcva.info  www.livingmemory.live

*These are free & unticketed events, please arrive 15 minutes before the scheduled start time to secure a seat. Information: http://grainphotographyhub.co.uk/portfolio-type/the-face-of-suffrage-talks-programme/

The Martin Parr Foundation (MPF) which runs a gallery and archive in Bristol, based on Parr's own work but extending to British documentary photography, has launched its new membership scheme. The aim of the scheme is to open up access to the Foundation’s library and huge archive collection, as well as giving members discounts on talks, screenings, workshops and in the Foundation's bookshop.

Membership contributions will help the Foundation keep entry to the gallery free, grow its archive collection and champion overlooked and emerging photographers. The scheme offers a tiered membership: 

Foundation Members paying £35 a year will receive:

•      Invitations to Private Views with a +1 (incl. complimentary drinks)
•      Access to Martin’s library of over 2000 photobooks
•      A behind-the-scenes tour of the archive and studio
•      10% off all items in their bookshop… and much more

Supporter Membership and is priced at £125 a year. This includes:

•      All of the benefits of the base-level membership, plus:
•      A Foundation tour led by Martin Parr himself
•      Discounts on tickets to talks, screenings and workshops
•      And a signed 10x8” Martin Parr print, shown below. 

Patron level is £750 which provides all of the benefits of the first two tiers, plus:

•      Your portrait taken by Martin Parr
•      An annual Patrons dinner with Martin
•      Priority booking for exclusive events

Full details of the membership scheme can be found online at: www.martinparrfoundation.org/membership

Jon McCall | Head of Membership & Fundraising | Martin Parr Foundation | T. (+44) 0117 329 3270 | martinparrfoundation.org

This print has been personally selected by Martin Parr to celebrate the first year of the membership scheme. It was taken in Margate, 1986, (the same year as his seminal collection The Last Resort was published). The image has rarely been exhibited and did not appear in print until Life's a Beach was published in 2012.

Images: © Martin Parr

I am looking to find the photographer of this image, a British cdv labeled 'The Widow's Mite'. It reminds me of Rejlander's genre scenes, but I have been unsuccessful in finding anything about it. No back mark. I have blurred out the seller's watermark here.

Much obliged for any information.

David

This talk presents new research looking at the relation between camera and cycle technologies in late Victorian Britain. Despite the challenges of carrying heavy and fragile glass-plate cameras on likewise heavy and laborious to ride machines, in this period combining cycling and photography was felt so close that contemporary commentators could write of ‘cyclo-photographers’.

A reason for this popularity was the confluence of new ways of moving and seeing that the engagement with these two modern cultural technologies had made possible, and that photographers embraced as a condition of being modern. This influenced profoundly the development of camera technology and its uses from the late nineteenth century.

As the talk shows, this was because cycling enabled a new experience of visualisation as individual expression that, in turn, shaped how cyclo-photographers thought of camera practices and what they expected of camera technology.

A Cultural History of Combined Technologies: Photographing and Cycling in Late Victorian Britain
Dr Sara Dominici
School of Humanities, University of Westminster

14 November 2018, 2:00 - 3:30pm

Royal College of Art, Battersea, Gorvy Lecture Theatre

https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/cultural-history-combined-technologies-photographing-and-cycling-late-victorian-britain/

Image: Cover of The Cyclist’s special annual issue for 1887

© From the Cycling Photographica Collection of Lorne Shields, Toronto (ON) Canada

BPH member Ben Lewis is trying to find more details about this photograph and the London photographer William E Gray who worked independently and was also associated with the company of Henry Dixon and Son Ltd which absorbed his business in 1931.

The photograph was taken for the Cook Collection around 1902-7. It has a number "Photo Gray 28992"

Four years ago Ellen Nolan inherited a suitcase. Inside was an archive of hundreds of images and documents belonging to her Great Aunt, Nita Harvey, an English actress on the brink of Hollywood success in the 1930s. In 1933 Nita was discovered through a beauty contest, summoned to Hollywood and signed to Paramount studios. She was prepared for performing by her mother, who constantly photographed her. Ellen has been working with the archive to create a dialogue between the performativity of the domestic portraits of Nita taken by her mother and family, and the professional industry images taken by Paramount Studio photographers. This paper will discuss the role of clothes in Nita’s life and career, and their function in the archive.

Ellen Nolan is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography and Fashion Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Rochester. She was previously a photography lecturer at the London College of Fashion. Her research focuses on aspects of representation and performativity in commercial and domestic family photography. It considers the use of photography as a means of exploring the act of representation as a meditation on photography and image performance. Ellen worked as a successful fashion and portrait photographer and regular contributor over a 15-year period to magazines, including British Vogue, i-D, Purple and The Sunday Telegraph. She has shot major fashion advertising campaigns for Dries Van Noten, Levis, Nike and Eley Kishimoto. She also directed pop videos and shot album covers for Beth Orton, amongst other international artists. She continues to work for and collaborate with British fashion designer Margaret Howell. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Photographers Gallery, Arles Festival and The National Portrait Gallery in London, where her work is part of their National Collection.

Courtauld Institute of Art
Friday, 9 November // 12.30-13.30

NITA HARVEY'S ARCHIVE
The Role of Clothes in the Life and Career of an English Actress (c.1930)

Organised by Dr Rebecca Arnold (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Free and open to all

RESEARCH FORUM SEMINAR ROOM

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

Newly qualified PhDs in photographic history may be interested in two Early Career Academic Fellow (ECAF) positions at De Montfort University. The position will ultimately lead to tenure in 2020. DMU is home to the Photographic History Research Centre and runs a MA history of photography programme. 

See more here.

I returned to my one local antique store this week and traded some images I had for scores of English stereoviews. One is easy to identify  in terms of place as its written on the back in copperplate "Royal York Crescent, Clifton. Bristol." I wonder if this view attached could be by William Harvey Barton, who was active in the 1860s.

The other view I attached is of a group of women and children with cows.  It was in a box of cards marked USA but there is no evidence at all on the card to indicate that it is in fact North American or English.

Any ideas pleas?.

I bought more Francis Bedford views, some by Stirling photographer Alexander Crow(e) , some by Ladmore and Son and others by William Spreat, and a couple by Way  & Sons (incredible labels!)

Mysteries also are a couple on yellow card stock with mauve backs and white label "The Thames. Nos. 44,60,63" No idea who the photographer may have been.. the labels remind me of George Washington Wilson..

This auction includes many photographs from the mid-19th century through to the mid-20th century, covering many parts of the globe. Of great rarity is a group of glass plate negatives of China by Thomas Child, which are the only known negatives by Child to survive and were made in Beijing in the 1870s and 1880s (lot 201).  We are also delighted to offer photographs from the collection of Sven Gahlin, including a number of important 19th century albums of Indian and Anglo-Indian subjects by Shepherd & Robertson, Samuel Bourne, Eugene Clutterbuck Impey and Sir Benjamin Simpson among others. The Gahlin collection also includes photographs by Thomas Annan (shown right), Herbert G. Ponting, Hill & Adamson, and early photographs of Canada by Frederick Dally (lot 168).

BRITISH ISLES
25. Annan. Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow. 1900

31. Hill & Adamson. Afghans or Circassian armour
32. James. Plans and photographs of Stonehenge, 1867

EUROPE
62. Constantinou.. Album of Athens, c.1860

73. Terris. Marseille, c.1862
74. Ponti. Venice, 1855

GENERAL
79. Dammann. Ethnological Photo gallery, c.1875

NEAR & MIDDLE EAST
96. Bonfils. Palestine album, 1870s

96. Album of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Athanes, 1870s-80s
97. Bonfils. Egypt, 1870s
98. Bonfils. Syria, 1870s
99. Egypt, late C19th
100. Frith. Sinai & Palestine, 1862
101. Beck. Views of Athens, c.1864
102. Holmes. North West Frontier photographs, 1920s-30s
103. American Colony. Mammoth photo of the Dome of the Rock, c.1900
104. Frith. Mammoth plate of Jerusalem, 1858
105. Lebanon. Collection of albums, c.1920s
106. Mecca & the Hajj
107. The Egyptian Mahmal
108. Mecca and the Mahmal
109. Bonfils & others. Palestine, Constantinople, Lebanon etc.
110. Persia. A collection of photographs, C19th and C20th
111. Persian Gulf album of Bushehr, c.1909
112. Portrait of Ibn Saud by Robert Richie c.1950
113. Arabia photographs, 1917-18
114. Album of Syria, c.1874
115. Abdullah Freres. Constantinople, c.1865
116. United Arab Emirates collection

AMERICAS

167. Hawaii, c. 1870s
168. Frederick Dally. Album of British Columbia, 1867-70
169. Bermuda collection, c.1870s
170. Mexico album, c. 1896-1900

AFRICA
181. East Africa, 1904-09

182. East Africa, c.1880s
183. Comoros islands, 1885
184. Morocco, 1910
185. South Africa, Zulu War, c.1879

ASIA

191. Borneo, Brunei and Malaysia album, 1924-26
192. Bourne. Album of India, c.1865-80
193. Bourne. Album of India, 1870s
194. Bourne. India photographs, c.1870s
195. Andaman islands, c.1919-21
196. Gastaldy. Cambodia, c.1930
197. ?Ponting. Ceylon
198. Thomas Child. Negatives of China, c.1870s-80s
199. China photographs, c.1920s
200. China photographs, c.1906
201. China Magazine, 1868
202. China Album, 1906
203. Gsell. Cambodia, 1860s-70s
204. Gsell. Indochina, 1860s-70s
205. Gsell. Cambodia & Vietnam, c.1860s-70s
206. Gsell. Vietnam, c.1870s80s
207. Hong Kong panoramas
208. Bourne & Shepherd etc. India & Ceylon
209. Frith series. India
210. Baudesson and others. India
211. India, views around Calcutta
212. Shepherd & Robertson. India
213. India & Nepal. Album of maharajahs etc., c.1880s
214. Clarke and others. Album of India, c.1859-60s
215. India. Album including Sikh and British military groups, c.1862-72
216. Impey. Album of photographs of India, c.1858-63
217. Gastaldy. Indochina, c.1930
218. Gastaldy. Indichina, c.1930
219. Japan album, c.1890s
220. Kashmir Album, c.1886-92
221. Korea. Photographs by Felice Beato, c. 1871
222. Korea stereoviews, 1904
223. Sikkim and Tibet, 1885
224. Panorama of Yekaterinburg, 1880s
225. Sumutra and Indonesia, c.1890s
226. Philippines, c.1890s
227. Pont. India, c.1860s-70s
228. Portuguese Timor. C.1902
229. Salzwedel. Indonesia, c.1870s-90s
230. Schulze. Indonesia and Thailand, c. 1870s-90s
231. Shanghai album, c.1900
232. Shanghai panorama
233. Siamese portraits, 1860s-70s
234. Skeen. Ceylon and Java, 1860s-80s
235. Skeen. Ceylon, 1880s
236. Simpson. India, 1860s
237. Thomson. China, 1873
238. Assmy. Yangtze River, 1906
239. Ponting. Polar photos, 1910-13
240. Ponting. Polar photos, 1910-13
241. Antarctic Expedition photo, 1901

269. Ponting. The Tenements, c. 1913

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2018/travel-atlases-maps-a-natural-history-l18405.html

Bonhams' auction of fine books and photographs includes, amongst other photography lots, a pair of albums 'Presented to the Rev. Robert Vaughan Pryce... by his father George Pryce, F.S.A. on his Birthday, December 15, 1866", containing

Also ncluded is a picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, flanked by his assistants Nicolas Tredwell and William Jacomb taken by Robert Howlett at  the launching of the Great Eastern in 1857. 

See: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24635/lot/42/

The photographs section at the V&A Museum have issued a newsletter following the launch of the Photography Centre.

We are delighted to be in touch with an update about the exciting activity that has been taking place at the V&A these past months.

 Phase One of the V&A Photography Centre is now open. To mark this occasion, HRH The Duchess of Cambridge undertook her first visit to the V&A as Royal Patron on 10 October, ahead of the Centre’s public opening on 12 October.

 More information about Phase One and the inaugural display in the Photography Centre, Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital, can be found here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news/our-new-photography-centre-is-now-open

More information about the ongoing Photography Centre FuturePlan project, including Phase Two, can be found here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/futureplan

The opening of the Photography Centre kick-started a month-long Photography Spotlight at the museum. Highlights include:

SNAP

Friday Late in collaboration with i-D

26 October, 18:30-22:00

More information can be found here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/friday-late

Collecting Photography/Photography as Collecting

V&A Conference

16-17 November, 10:30-17:00

More information, including a draft programme, can be found here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/BGnX1K7a/collecting-photography-photography-as-collecting-nov-2018

Further information about all the events taking place as part of the Photography Spotlight can be found here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/photography-spotlight:2018

We hope many of you will be able to visit the Photography Centre soon and look forward to hearing your thoughts as we work towards Phase Two.

With best wishes,

V&A Photographs Section

Martin Barnes, Susanna Brown, Marta Weiss, Catherine Troiano, Rachael Chambers, Erika Lederman, Dan Cox, Marie-Kathrin Blanck and Lydia Caston.

Image: the new photography galleries on their first public open day.  

Dr Juliet Hacking is speaking at two upcoming events: 

Saturday 3^rd November, afternoon

Workshop: An Insider’s Guide to Photography and the Art Market

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/workshop/insiders-guide-photography-and-art-market

Friday, 16 November 2018 – Saturday, 17 November 2018

Symposium: Collecting Photography/Photography as Collecting - V&A

Download the programme here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/BGnX1K7a/collecting-photography-photography-as-collecting-nov-2018