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The V&A has announced today further details on the second and final phase of the V&A’s Photography Centre, which opens in spring 2023. The Photography Centre will become the largest space in the UK for a permanent photography collection, and the seven galleries – four of which will be new additions – will showcase the museum’s world-leading holdings and enable visitors to experience photography and its diverse histories in new ways.

The V&A has collected and exhibited photography since the founding of the museum in the 1850s, and today its collection is one of the largest and most varied in the world. Phase One of the museum’s Photography Centre opened in 2018, with three galleries designed by David Kohn. 2023 sees the completion of the second and final phase of the Photography Centre with an additional four galleries, with base-build designed by Purcell, and fit-out designed by Gibson Thornley Architects.

Two of the new rooms will showcase global contemporary photography and cutting-edge commissions in rotating displays. The other new spaces - a room dedicated to photography and the book, and an interactive gallery about the history and use of the camera – will shine a light on the processes involved in photography, as well as the study and presentation of the medium. These new rooms join the three existing galleries, with two galleries for changing displays from the collection and a space dedicated to digital media, which will also present new content.

Marta Weiss, V&A Senior Curator of Photography and Lead Curator of Phase Two of the Photography Centre, said: “Photography lies at the heart of the V&A. The museum has collected photography since 1852 and continues to acquire the best of contemporary practice. As photography plays an ever-increasing role in all our lives, the expanded Photography Centre will be more relevant than ever. We look forward to welcoming visitors to explore the medium’s diverse histories and enjoy our world-leading collection.”

Highlights of the opening displays will include recent acquisitions exhibited at the museum for the first time, including works by Liz Johnson Artur, Sammy Baloji, Vera Lutter, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Tarrah Krajnak and Vasantha Yogananthan, as well as a monumental photographic sculpture by Noémie Goudal. Two major new commissions supported by the Manitou Fund will also be unveiled, with a photographic series by leading Indian artist Gauri Gill, and a digital commission by British media artist Jake Elwes. The Manitou Fund has committed to funding six commissions for the Photography Centre, which will see a new print and digital commission in 2023, 2025 and 2027. On completion, the Photography Centre will also feature new, themed displays, presenting works from the 1840s to the present day, beginning with Energy: Sparks from the Collection, exploring how all photographs need some form of energy to exist, and a smaller display, How Not to Photograph a Bulldog, featuring dog photography manuals from the Royal Photographic Society Library.

About the Photography Centre:

Phase 2 - Room 95 - Inside the Camera
Room 95 will be an interactive gallery exploring how cameras work and how they are used, from the Victorian view camera to the first iPhone. The highlight will be a walk-in camera obscura, demonstrating the optical phenomenon that is the basis of how all cameras work. A timeline of cameras will show their evolution, with accompanying animations explaining the inner workings of these iconic devices.

Phase 2 - Room 96, Room 97, The Parasol Foundation Gallery Photography Now
Two new galleries will be dedicated to showcasing recent acquisitions of global contemporary photography, including special commissions. Highlights in the inaugural display will include works by Liz Johnson Artur, Sammy Baloji, Vera Lutter, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Vasantha Yogananthan, all acquired with the support of the V&A Photographs Acquisition Group. A series of self-portraits by Tarrah Krajnak, acquired with the support of the Parasol Foundation Trust, will also feature. A spectacular anamorphic sculpture by Noémie Goudal will bring photography off the wall to explore both geological time and the nature of perception.

A new commission, supported by the Manitou Fund, from leading Indian photographer Gauri Gill will also be unveiled. This new body of work depicts temporary architecture on the outskirts of Delhi, ingenuously constructed by farmers from repurposed materials. The makeshift dwellings housed farmers bringing their concerns from the village to the capital, in response to new laws that threatened their economic security.

Room 98, The Kusuma Gallery - Photography and the Book
A flexible space dedicated to Photography and the Book will reflect how books have been a fundamental way of presenting photography since the 1840s. The Kusuma Gallery, which has been funded by The Kusuma Trust, will visibly house the extensive Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Library, following the transfer of the RPS Collection to the V&A in 2017. The RPS Library contains journals, books, pamphlets and manuals from all over the world, spanning topics from aerial photography to X-rays. More than 20,000 books, published over nearly 200 years, will be available to visitors by request, with a selection of browsing books on open shelves.

The Kusuma Gallery will also feature changing displays of photographic books, periodicals and archival material. The first display will be How Not to Photograph a Bulldog, a light-hearted foray into one of the many topics covered by the photographic manuals in the RPS Library.

Films about the RPS Library and photographic processes will be shown on digital terminals for visitors to enjoy. This flexible space will also be used for teaching and other programming.

Phase 1 - Room 99, The Modern Media Gallery Digital Gallery

The Modern Media Gallery continues to be dedicated to digital media, challenging definitions of what photography is and generating questions around the use of photography today. The gallery will showcase a new digital commission by Jake Elwes, supported by the Manitou Fund.

Phase 1 - Room 100, The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery Room 101, The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery - Photography 1840s-Now

Developed during Phase One of the Photography Centre, these galleries will be entirely rehung for the 2023 opening. A new display, Energy: Sparks from the Collection, will shine a light on the diverse kinds of energy in photography – both the hidden processes intrinsic to creating a picture, and the subjects in front of a camera. Featuring works from the 1840s through to the present day, it will explore how, from the advent of photography, power in all its diverse forms has sparked the imaginations of photographers.

Situated in the V&A’s Northeast Quarter, the Photography Centre reclaims the beauty of seven original 19th-century picture galleries, restoring them to their original glory and purpose. Planned in two phases, the Centre is part of the V&A’s FuturePlan development programme to revitalise the museum’s public spaces through contemporary design and the restoration of original features.

Beyond the physical gallery spaces, a key focus for photography at the V&A is research and the development of new sector-leading initiatives. A major strand is The Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project, established in 2021 to support women in photography. Led by the inaugural Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography, Fiona Rogers, and funded by Ms. Ruth Monicka Parasol and The Parasol Foundation Trust, the Project encompasses a curatorial post alongside acquisitions, research, education and public displays. The Project’s first acquisition by Tarrah Krajnak will be included in the opening display, and an exhibition presenting the work of Laia Abril will open at the Copeland Gallery in Peckham, 10-27 November 2022, in collaboration with the V&A and Photoworks.

The V&A is also delighted to announce additional support from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. Alongside significant funding of Phase Two of the Photography Centre, the Foundation has generously extended their commitment to a series of two-year Fellowships in photography for early-career curators until 2028. The V&A is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Phan as the second Curatorial Fellow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, who will be in post until 2024.

The Photography Centre is being made possible by Sir Elton John and David Furnish, The Kusuma Trust, The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, The Parasol Foundation Trust, Modern Media, Shao Zhong Art Foundation and many other generous supporters.

The V&A will be releasing visuals of the new spaces closer to the opening.  

Bloomsbury has announced the development of a field-defining book series on photography and history which will create a platform for new visual historiographies and methodologies.

Photographs have been formative in political movements, commercial and industrial development, colonial and imperial expansion, geo-politics and international relations, legal practice, the formation of modern national and personal identities and in public narratives of the past. Volumes in this radical and original series will bring photographic practices into the centre of historical analysis and explore their integral role in global histories from the mid-19th century to the current day.

Call for book proposals:

The editors are currently seeking proposals for single-authored volumes of 80,000–90,000 words based on innovative case studies. Titles might cover a wide range of subject matters and photographic practices, but the emphasis must be on the integration and demonstration of empirical, theoretical, methodological and historiographical significance so that the volumes have the widest impact in history more generally.

Studies must demonstrate the ways in which photographs both shape and reflect historical experience and might focus on a range of processes – production, dissemination, remediation, collecting -  of the photographic within history. Exceptional PhD theses will be considered but the proposal must clearly demonstrate how the author intends to develop the work into a book.

The series will be interdisciplinary and welcomes scholars from all disciplines and backgrounds, whether historical, art historical, anthropological, sociological, history of science, archival or curatorial studies.

Series editors:

Professor Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK; Professor Patricia  Hayes, University of Western Cape, South Africa; Professor Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University, USA

Contact:

Please email new proposals to Davida Forbes, Photography Editor, davida.forbes@bloomsbury.com. For more information about Bloomsbury Publishing see www.bloomsbury.com. 

BBC Radio 3's The Essay is running a series of five programmes each evening between 16-20 February 2015 at 2245, under the banner of 'The Five Photographs that (you didn't know) changed Everything'. The photographs being discussed are not generally found in the history books; they are not generally art; and the photographers who made them are not generally known beyond a small coterie of photographic historians.

The five photographs discussed in this series of essays changed the way we see ourselves and our place in the world. They had an enormous impact in the fields of medicine, architecture, astronomy, law and cultural history. The series has been supported and developed in association with De Montfort University's Photographic History Research Centre and The Royal Photographic Society. 

The programmes, with their provisional transmission dates are:

Monday 16^th February.

1. A woman’s left hand.  Kelley Wilder on the x-ray that changed medicine.

The photograph of Anna Bertha Ludwig Rontgens left hand taken in 1896 astounded the scientific world and alarmed the public. For the scientists it signalled the beginning of medical radiography. For the public it gave rise to fears about intrusion and privacy in much the same way as  the introduction of the TSA  body scanner did in 2007. From medical imaging to airport security, Kelley Wilder shows how  x-ray photography changed the world.

Kelley Wilder is Reader in Photographic History,  De Montfort University, Leicester

Tuesday 17^th February.

2.  . Draper’s Nebula. Omar Nassim on  how a photo of space changed our view of the universe and our place within it.

Today high-resolution  photographs of nebulae or galaxies saturate our culture to such an extent that they are almost kitsch. But  when Henry Draper took the very first pictures  of a nebula in 1880 it was one of the greatest achievements of photography.  Omar Nasim tells the story of how this photograph defied the imagination and raised questions not just about the size of the universe but about the very origins of humanity.

Omar Nasim is lecturer in the School of History at the University of Kent.

Wednesday 18^th February.

3. . The Dogon.  Jeanne Haffner on how aerial photography changed the spaces we live in. The  birds-eye photograph of the Dogon tribe working their fields in Mali was taken by the French Africanist Marcel Griaule.   He’d trained in aerial photography during the first world war and he argued that the Dogon landscape, seen from the air, revealed the patterns and  secrets of the lives of its inhabitants, patterns which could teach Western city planners and architects how to build  a happier society. 

Jeanne Haffner is lecturer in the Department of History and Science at Harvard University.

Thursday 19^th February.

4. The Broom cottages. Elizabeth Edwards on the photo that changed the way we see ourselves.

The man who took the photo, W. Jerome Harrison, launched a scheme for recording the country’s past in which amateur photographers up and down the land took pictures of the buildings which were important  them. Wiki-buildings and English Heritage do this now on a much grander scale. But Elizabeth Edwards argues that the mass participation of people  in defining what matters  about the past began  with Harrison, and changed the way in which a nation viewed  itself. 

Elizabeth Edwards is Research Professor of Photographic History and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester

Friday 20^th February.

5. The Tichbourne Claimant. Jennifer Tucker on the photo that changed the law.

In 1863 a butcher sat for his photograph in the remote town of Wagga Wagga, Australia. Three years later this likeness had Britain transfixed.   Jennifer tucker tells the story of  how it was central to the longest legal battle in 19th century England,  and  sparked  a debate about evidence, the law, ethics and facial recognition that has continued ever since. 

Jennifer Tucker is Associate Professor of History and Science in Society at Wesleyan University, USA

The programmes will be available on the BBC iPlayer after transmission.

Just received the sad news that my old friend and teaching colleague, the legendary John Blakemore died last night after a short illness. He had been taken into hospital in Derby over Christmas.

Born in Coventry in 1936, he was probably best known for his landscape work, but he had worked in many areas of the medium and was an inspirational teacher, mostly at Derby University. His work has been exhibited all over the world and he has had several acclaimed books published. He has been the recipient of Arts Council awards, a British Council Travelling Exhibition and in 1992 won the Fox Talbot Award for Photography. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.

There is so so much more I could say about JB, but that will come later. For now, our thoughts are with Rosalind, his stalwart partner, and his extended family and close friends.

Barry Lategan who has died after a long illness aged 89 years was one of Britain’s leading fashion, portrait and advertising photographers from the 1960s to the 2000s. He was best known for his portrait of Twiggy, for his Vogue covers, and his advertising work. Many of his photographs are immediately recognisable. He was awarded an RPS Honorary Fellowship in 2007.

Lategan was born in South Africa and came to Britain in 1955 to study at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school. National service with the RAF intervened and it was during a tour in Germany that he joined the camp photographic society and photography took over his life. Lategan retuned to South Africa in 1959 and assisted Ginger Odes.

He returned to London in 1961, working in some of the leading studios, and photographing fashion. In 1966 he was introduced to Twiggy, then 16 years old, and created what became the face of the 60s. This helped propel Lategan’s career and he had his first Vogue cover in 1968 of a fur-clad Lesley Jones. He worked regularly for Vogue until 1981. He set up his own studio in 1967 in Chelsea. His photography was included in Bailey and Litchfield’s Ritz magazine, and he was the subject of a BBC2 Arena programme broadcast in 1975.

In 1977 he moved to New York to focus on commercial and advertising work, including directing television commercials, and personal projects. 

On his return to London in 1989 he continued with his advertising work and TV commercials for companies such as Jaeger, Pirelli, Vodafone and Gordons, winning numerous awards in both mediums. During his career he photographed many well-known models, celebrities from fashion, film and music, and royalty.

In 2006 Lategan suffered a serious fall which caused a serious brain injury and affected his behaviour. He was diagnosed in 2016 with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) which he and his family discussed publicly to raise awareness of the condition.

Lategan was involved with AFAEP, now the Association of Photographers, and helped select the inaugural AFAEP Awards in 1984. He held his first exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, in 1975, and was widely exhibited during his career (including by the RPS). Along with many of his contemporaries he enjoyed a long association with Olympus Cameras.

His work is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and V&A Museum, London, and elsewhere.

The Barry Lategan Archive is now being managed by his son, Dylan.

https://www.barrylategan.com/

Text: © Michael Pritchard
Image: Barry Lategan, c1950s. © Estate of Barry Lategan / Barry Lategan Archive

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) announces a new Curatorial Fellowship in Photography. Generously supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, the fellowship will run for the next four years. The Curatorial Fellowship follows the Foundation’s ongoing support of the V&A and its significant donation towards the museum’s recently-opened Photography Centre, for which gallery 100 was renamed ‘The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery’ after the businessman and portrait photographer and his wife.

The first fellowship of its kind in photography at the V&A, the scheme will see two fellows join the museum over consecutive two-year periods. The initiative arises from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation’s desire to give early scholars of photography the opportunity to acquire invaluable museum experience and specialist knowledge working alongside the Photography Section’s accomplished curatorial team. Fellows will gain expertise in the history of photography and contribute substantially to the museum’s knowledge of its world-renowned collection that includes over 800,000 photographs.

A focus for each fellow will be an independent research project based on the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection, which was transferred to the V&A in 2017. Exploring areas of strength such as portraiture, colour photography and photographic process, all themes of interest to Bern Schwartz and the Foundation, each fellow will spend three months in the V&A Research Institute (VARI). Using an accompanying travel fund also provided by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, the fellows will also travel nationally and internationally to share their expertise and further their study of the photographic medium.

Applications will open via the V&A website on 25 April and close on 27 May with the first fellow commencing in autumn 2019. Details can be found here. 

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “We are enormously grateful to The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation for their generosity in supporting our Photography Centre and mission to make photography available to the widest possible audience. The V&A is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of creative thinkers. This Curatorial Fellowship in Photography will give emerging curators the chance to deepen their own knowledge and expertise while furthering scholarship around the museum’s world-class photography collections.”

Michael Schwartz, Chairman of The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, and Anne Varick Lauder, Senior Advisor, said: “We are delighted to continue supporting the V&A’s Photography Section and its talented team of curators. By directly working with them and the objects in their care, the fellows will gain invaluable on-hands experience essential for furthering their careers in photography. Bern Schwartz was passionate about education and the mentoring experience. His career as a portrait photographer was immeasurably advanced by learning directly from the legendary photographer, Philippe Halsman.”

The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation were the first major funder to support the V&A’s new Photography Centre, which was opened by HRH The Duchess of Cambridge in October 2018. The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery, a refurbished 19th-century picture gallery, is currently host to a major display entitled Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital, which explores photography as a way of ‘collecting the world’. An extension to the Photography Centre is scheduled to open in 2022 and will expand the V&A’s photography offer further with new and exciting ways for visitors to encounter this diverse and dynamic art form.

Fotografiska London, the Museum of Photography, which was originally due to open in 2018 has been cancelled as the investment group behind it, Fotografiska London Ltd / AB, has ended its efforts to open at the Whitechapel High Street location. Originally scheduled to open in 2018, and then postponed, uncertainty around Brexit, coupled with current COVID-19 concerns, have now made it untenable for the London-based licensee to successfully establish a franchise.  The earlier delays suggest that issues around the financing predate COVID-19.

Fotografiska International sees London as a leading cultural city, and will evaluate other opportunities in London directly in conjunction with real estate partners.

Footgrafiska's other locations in Stockholm, Tallinn, and most recently in New York, continue as before. Fotografiska in Stockholm, which was founded in 2010, stages between 20 and 25 large-scale exhibitions per year and attracts some 500,000 visitors per year. Part of its mission is “inspiring a more conscious world” through its photography exhibitions and programming.

See: https://www.fotografiska.com/london/

Carte-de-visite :The transformation
Pictures from the 1870s used by Barnardo's homes to attract funds,
ostensibly showing children "before" and "after" being rescued from the
streets. Barnardo was later accused of setting up the pictures in a
court case in 1877.

A treasure trove of more than 3,000 World War I glass plate negatives of  British, Indian, French, Australians, and Americans, and even some of the Chinese Labour Corps and other allied troops have been found, sitting almost undisturbed for nearly a century, in three large chests in a dusty attic of a dilapidated farmhouse in Vignacourt in the Somme valley, some two hours north of Paris. Named after the photographers, local farmer Louis Thuillier and his wife Antoinette, "The Thuillier Collection" was almost lost to history because the farmhouse where they were stored is likely to be sold in coming months and their descendants had no idea of the historical significance of the plates.

Throughout much of the war they photographed the fighting men who came to their humble outdoor studio in the courtyard of their house. Thousands of their photographs must have found their way to homes around the world, including Australia. Remarkably the Thuilliers’ glass plate negatives still exist, sitting almost undisturbed for nearly a century.  They have recently been located by investigators from Australia’s Channel 7.  The TV program has secured almost 500 of the plates from a Thuillier family relative, Henriette Crognier. When she heard of the great interest in the plates, she insisted on donating them to Australia.

Research at the Australian War Memorial indicates that the Australian photographs were mostly taken in November 1916 and during November-December 1918.  Among the latter are scenes of celebration on the day the war ended, 11 November 1918.  As Australian War Memorial head of military history, Ashley Ekins, said the ‘Thuillier Collection’ is an extremely valuable collection of images of Australian and other allied soldiers just behind the frontlines, one of the “most important discoveries from the First World War”.

You can catch a preview of the programme "The Lost Diggers" and a gallery of the photos here, as well as an article from the Australian War Memorial here.

Photo:  On leave ... a message to the folks at home (Copyright: The Thuillier Collection)

The curator, academic and writer David Mellor (he added 'Alan' to avoid confusion with the politician of the same name) has died aged 75 years at his home in  Machynlleth, Wales. He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's J Dudley Johnston (2005) and Education (2015) awards.

Mellor studied art at Sussex University from 1967 under Quentin Bell. During this time Asa Briggs, then Vice-Chancellor of the University, received the archive of Mass-Observation from Tom Harrisson. Mellor published and curated exhibitions about the substantial collection of pre-war photographs of working-class life contained in the archive. He stayed at Sussex until his retirement in 2018. In the words of Maurice Howard he was one of the country’s leading scholars in the fields of twentieth century painting, film and photography.' Mellor had an extensive list of publications to his name and curated significant exhibitions on Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, and on Robin Denny, Cecil Beaton and Bill Brandt. He curated major exhibitions at the Barbican and Tate, most memorably Paradise Lost: The New Romantic Imagination in Britain (1987) and The Sixties (1993), at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. 

Mellor was also a director of Brighton's Photoworks and the Brighton Photo Biennial, and Edinburgh's cooperative Photography Workshop from 1996 to 2011. 

As Howard notes 'As a teacher, generations of students testify to his unique insights into British culture. David was teaching the inter-relations of media long before the subject became an academic discipline at the University and was sensitive to art and the environment from the beginning of his career'.

With thanks to Paul Hill (seen on the right, in the picture left) who notes: 'So sad to get the news of the the death of photo historian and teacher. David Mellor (left). We worked together quite a few times - up here in Derbyshire at The Photographers Place workshop in the 70s, Salford ‘80, and latterly talking about The Real Britain project at the 2014 Brighton Biennial. Great scholar and lovely guy….'

See:

• https://staff.sussex.ac.uk/news/article/62223-obituary-professor-david-alan-mellor
• https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/mar/01/academicexperts.highereducationprofile
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Alan_Mellor

Robert Leggat who researched and maintained one of the first useful photographic history resources on the internet died on 20 January 2011. His A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s (http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/index.html) was designed for school and college students and started in 1995. It is still available today and was being maintained by Leggat until shortly before his death. Put many historical photographic terms or personalities into a search engine and the chances are that Leggat’s website will be somewhere near the top of the results list.

Since its launch the site has had nearly 10 million visitors and the online guestbook from the early years (the guestbook was later discontinued as Leggat was unable to keep up with responding to questions and queries) was full of praise and thanks from students who had made use of it.

Leggat was involved in photographic education throughout his career and took an active role in the Royal Photographic Society as its Honorary Education Officer amongst other positions. A fuller obituary has been prepared but if anyone has any recollections or further knowledge of Robert's career and life please contact Michael Pritchard (email: michael@mpritchard.com)

Alex Schneideman writes... My friend Paddy Summerfield, who has died, was broadly considered Oxford’s greatest photographer since Henry Fox Talbot. Summerfield, a child imbued from infancy in Oxford’s history and art was raised in the same house in Summertown from the age of two until he died.

Having studied at Guildford School of Art (not without controversy) Summerfield became known as a photographer in the 1980s but it was not until the publication by Dewi Lewis in 2014 of his seminal work, Mother and Father that he came to the forefront of British documentary photography.

The photobook depicts Summerfield's parents in the garden of their north Oxford home as they tended to the lawn and plants and to each other. As the book progresses we watch as his father increasingly cares for his mother, her eventual disappearance and then the loss of his father too. In most of the photographs the parents’ faces are turned away from the
photographer-son. Summerfields images were typified by a certain spirituality and he maintained that his work had always been about “abandonment and loss” as his parents had turned their attention inward following the tragic early death of his older sister when Summerfield was two years old. However he insisted that ‘Mother and Father’ stood as a durational “love letter” to them both.

Summerfield’s first major publication was important because it established his groundbreaking use of a unique and emotional photographic ‘perspective’. His work would become representative of what became known as the ‘psychological perspective’ - in which Summerfield’s compositions place the viewer in the emotional apex of the scene, blurring the boundaries between the subject, the photographer and the viewer.

Several more books were to follow including The Oxford Pictures (2016), Empty Days (2018), The Holiday Pictures (2019) and Home Movie (2021). Each subsequent title added to Summerfield’s reputation as one of the most important contemporary British documentary photographers.

Summerfield’s photography was typically black and white but in his final years he worked mainly in colour using an old ‘flip phone’ to photograph the garden and the people who
surrounded him. Some of these were published in his final book, The Beginnings of Eternity (2023).

In 2019 Summerfield married his partner, Patricia Baker-Cassidy, who by this time had become his de-facto producer. Baker-Cassidy brought order to the chaos of Paddy’s now notorious bins of thousands of negatives that he had accumulated over decades. A visitor to the Summerfield home would often find Paddy ensconced in writing, reading or discussion with friends and photographers while Baker-Cassidy worked diligently with a film scanner, as together they put together numerous maquettes for planned new publications.

The well respected Oxford Photography Group was often hosted by Summerfield and Baker-Cassidy at his home. He supported the group and worked closely with individual photographers, many of whom went on to be published, exhibited and collected.

Almost ten years after the publication of Mother and Father a new body of work was made by a group of photographers (including Alex Schneideman, Vanessa Winship, Sian Davey, Matthew Finn, Alys Tomlinson, Nik Roche and Jem Southam) who wanted to preserve the garden where Mother and Father had taken form and and to pay homage to Summerfield’s work. The resulting images were published as ‘Pictures from the Garden’ (as ever by Dewi Lewis) and an exhibition was staged in Oxford supported by The Photographers Gallery.

Summerfield’s work was supported by curators, academics and other photographers such as Richard Ovenden, Nicholas Serota and Martin Parr, Bill Jay and Peter Turner, then editor of Creative Camera. Summerfield’s own exhibition list is long and varied. He exhibited in solo group shows alongside such photographers as André Kertesz, Martin Parr, John Goto and Gerry Badger (who has written extensively about Summerfield’s work as well as providing texts for his publications). His work is held in national, international, private and institutional collections. It should be noted that Dewi Lewis’s sustained support of Paddy’s work brought it to the widest possible audience.

This year the Bodleian Library completed their acquisition of Summerfield’s extensive archive where plans are underway for a major exhibition in Autumn 2025.

It was a great honour for me to give Paddy what would sadly turn out to be his last solo show, The Holiday Pictures, at Flow Photographic Gallery in 2019. Sue Davis, the founder of The Photographers Gallery, then in failing health herself and accompanied by Zelda Cheatle made the trek from her home in Surrey to North West London to see the show - it was to be the last photography exhibition she would visit before her death some months later.

Paddy was the most photographic person I have ever known. It was as impossible to distinguish the man from the medium as it is sometimes to discern the sea from the sky on a blue day when both seem to merge into one.

Paddy leaves a daughter, Lucy and his wife Patricia.

Paddy Summerfield
18th February 1947 - 11th April 2024

Obituary by Alex Schneideman
London, April 2024

Image: (top) Alex Scheiderman, Paddy and Patricia; (lower two) Paddy Summerfield, from his Mother and Father series. 

BPH is saddened to report that Michael Schaaf, the photographer and teacher of collodion and other historic process, was found in his camper van in Lacock on 16 July. He had not been in contact with his family for several days and was discovered by a National Trust employee. Schaaf had conducted a five day intensive workshop at Lacock from 6-10 July.

Schaaf, 52, conducted regular process workshops at Lacock and elsewhere for the Fox Talbot Museum, the Royal Photographic Society and others. He was held in high regard for his own photography and for the quality of his teaching. He was a member and contributor to BPH. 

BPH offers its condolences to his wife and family. An inquest is to be held at a later date.

Michael's website remains active at: http://mics-foto.de/

See: http://www.yourvalleynews.co.uk/frontpage-news/tourist-found-hanged-in-beauty-spot/

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) champions better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture and our members.

The RIBA's British Architectural Library is the leading library in the United Kingdom for the study of architecture and architectural history. It provides a service to practicing architects, students, architectural historians, and the general public, and has extensive collections of drawings, manuscripts and photographs, as well as books and periodicals. 

A digital image cataloguer is required to assist in extending the Library's online digital image database which currently encompasses 60,000 images. Duties will include researching background information on, and cataloguing, a wide range of visual material thereby increasing its educational and financial potential.

Candidates should be highly organised and have experience of research either within a work or educational environment together with good writing skills and a keen visual awareness. An ability to work quickly and accurately both as part of a team and on your own initiative is essential. A degree in architectural history or a demonstrable in-depth knowledge of the subject is essential. Familiarity with computer systems such as Excel and Access is desirable, as is a basic knowledge of recognised library standards.

If you would like to apply for this position, please complete and send a covering letter and CV, Applicants Statement and Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form to Human Resources Department RIBA 66, Portland Place London W1B 1AD or to recruitment@riba.org. 

Interviews will be held in late October 2011.

Location: Central London
Salary: £21,173 FTE - 
Hours: Part-time, 28 hours per week
Closing date: 14 October 2011

Details including full job description and application can be found here.

Good luck!

A Leica digital camera custom-made by Jonathan (Jony) Ive the British-born Vice President of Design at Apple Inc and Marc Newson for the (RED) Auction 2013. The camera was an edition of 01/01 and sold for a record price of USD 1,805,000 - a world auction record price for a digital camera. A prototype UR Leica made US$2.8 million in 2012.

The sale shows the importance of a designer's name,the association with the world's most valuable brand, Apple; and the longevity of Leica as a collectible. 

See: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/null-n09014/lot.14.html