Blogs

Photo London 2021 has been rescheduled from May to 9–12 September 2021, with a preview day on 8 September. The fair will be held at Somerset House as programmed.

Since the start of the year, the Founders of Photo London have engaged in detailed discussions with expert advisers from various fields, including science and government, regarding the timing of the Fair. Their unanimous view is that it would be best advised to wait a little longer for the global vaccination programmes to take effect, allowing for the easing of lockdowns and travel restrictions and for as strong an economic rebound as possible.

The new early September dates give the best chance to deliver the strongest possible edition of Photo London in a safe environment. The second edition of Photo London Digital will run alongside the Fair providing an opportunity for exhibitors unable to come to London to gain exposure to Photo London’s outstanding network of collectors.

Since the UK locked down in March last year, Photo London has responded to the global crisis by developing online platforms to connect, learn and talk about photography. In the months leading up to the fair in September, it will continue to do so by presenting a year-round programme of events and new initiatives involving experts from across the industry. 

See: https://photolondon.org/

Dear all, It is a pleasure and an honour to announce the opening of the exhibition Retratadas. Estudios de mujeres (Portrayed. Women in the Studio), which I had the joy of curating. The show is hosted by the National Museum of Romanticism in Madrid, under the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and will remain on view until 25 January 2026.

Bringing together 152 photographs and objects that reflect Spanish visual and material culture from the 1850s to the 1870s, the exhibition offers a new reading of the photographic studio as a space for women’s artistic expression and self-creation. Most of the works come from public and private Spanish collections—including my own, presented here for the first time—and are arranged around the idea of the boudoir, a kind of room of one’s own that once formed part of many nineteenth-century studios, conceived as an intimate space for women before the sitting area.

Developed in parallel with the book Retratadas. Fotografía, género y modernidad en el siglo XIX español (Cátedra, 2025), the exhibition invites us to reconsider the place of women in the history of photography, a field long focused on the figure of the photographer rather than that of the sitter. It seeks to reveal how women—whether as photographers, sitters, creators, collectors, or viewers—played an active role in the technical, commercial, and artistic evolution of the medium.

The V&A Touring Exhibition Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron explores the path-breaking career of photography’s first widely recognized artist. Cameron (1815–1879) was born in Calcutta (modern day Kolkata) to a French mother and an English father; in 1848, with her husband and children, she moved to England, where her sisters introduced her to the elite cultural circles in which they traveled. Residing on the Isle of Wight, where she was close neighbors with the poet Alfred Tennyson, Cameron acquired her first camera at age 48. In only eleven years she would create thousands of exposures and leave an enduring image of the Victorian era as an age of intellectual and spiritual ambition.

Cameron’s prodigious drive helped her become a probing portraitist of leading writers, artists, and scientists, such as Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, G.F. Watts, and Charles Darwin, while her absorption with fine art, notably Renaissance painting, led her to create staged tableaux in a mode that has been perpetually rediscovered by photographers down to the present. Most distinct of all was Cameron’s wholly personal handling of her medium. Heedless of  contemporary conventions of technique, alert to the happy effects of accident, and indifferent to critical scorn, she embraced a style of spontaneous intimacy that distanced her from the photographic establishment of her time and class. Motion blur, highly selective focus, and even fingerprints on the glass negatives (which required developing before their emulsions dried) are among the idiosyncrasies of her singular oeuvre.

Cameron was quick to exploit publishing and promotional opportunities: at London’s South Kensington Museum (today the Victoria and Albert Museum) she secured not only an exhibition in 1865 but, a few years later, studio space, and she was the first photographic artist to be collected by the institution. Arresting Beauty features prints from its initial purchase and from subsequent additions to its holdings, which have grown to number nearly one thousand. The exhibition includes Cameron’s large camera lens (all that survives of her apparatus), pages from her unfinished memoir manuscript Annals of My Glass House, and portraits she made in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) after Cameron and her husband moved there in 1875.

The exhibition was developed by the V&A's Lisa Springer, International Programmes Curator, and Curator Marta Weiss who acted as curatorial advisor; and for the Morgan Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, and Allison Pappas, Jane P. Watkins Assistant Curator of Photography.   

Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron
Until 14 September 2025
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
See more and selected images here: https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/arresting-beauty

Image: Julia Margaret Cameron, A Group of Kalutara Peasants, 1878, albumen print. The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund. Museum no. RPS.1093-2017

This display explores how visual representations of Italy developed. These range from 15th-century woodcuts to 19th-century photography.

Books, travel guides and diaries from the Library's collections document the rise in visitors to Italy. You will see how book illustrators and photographers saw Italy, and how their work provided an impression of the country for British and European audiences. Early book illustrators usually presented a highly idealised, almost mythical, view of the country. They focussed on magnificent Roman ruins, imposing Renaissance buildings, and beautiful rural scenes.

The invention of photography in the 19th century provided a new way to record Italy. Early photographers continued the picturesque tradition of book illustrators. You can explore this in Robert Macpherson's photographs of Rome and examples from John Ruskin's collection of daguerreotypes (on loan from The Ruskin, Lancaster University).

See recently acquired 1840s calotype negatives, probably by James Calder MacPhail and James Dunlop. These are the earliest surviving photographs of Italy by Scots.

You can also enjoy James Craig Annan's 1890s photogravures of Venice and Lombardy. These showed how handheld cameras could record street scenes and everyday life in Italy.

Images of Italy (1480 to 1900)
until 2 November 2024
National Library of Scotland
See: https://www.nls.uk/whats-on/images-of-italy-1480-to-1900/

National Science and Media Museum conservator Vanessa Torres is the subject of a blog post where she discusses how the museum uses cold storage to preserve materials held within the collection. 

Read the blog here: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/blog-from-the-basement-cold-storage/

Delve into the lives, loves and labour of the world’s most prominent portrait galleries in this international conversation series. From curatorial decisions to art handling, exhibition design to major events, favourite portraits to the creative copy they command – this is your chance to go behind the scenes for insights into global gallery goings-on.

The second event in this 15 Minutes of Frame international series will focus on the power that photographic portraiture has to change and enhance collections. It features Magdalene Keaney, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London and Louise Pearson Curator (Photography) at the National Galleries of Scotland, in conversation with our very own Penny Grist, Curator Exhibitions from the Australian NPG.

Free event
Thursday, 28 January 2021 at 0900-0945
Booking link: https://www.portrait.gov.au/calendar/15-minutes-npg-lnd-sct-aus

Finebooksmagazine has reported on the first display of a previously unseen photograph of the last lot on the final day at the sale of Charles Dickens' effects in 1870. The photograph by Edward Banes of Brompton, London, shows the auctioneer Franklin Homan selling the last last, a table which he had used as a rostrum during the sale. The lot was purchased by a Mr Ball who had requested the photograph. The taking of the photograph was described in the Photographic News on 19 August 1870. 

The photograph was purchased by the Museum in December 2024 from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, for £2,800, thanks to funding from The Dickens Fellowship. It is now on display one hundred years after the Charles Dickens Museum opened. 

BPH has also discovered that the photograph The Last Lot at Charles Dickens's Sale was registered by Edward Banes, Brompton, for copyright (See: British Journal of Photography, 26 August 1870, 406, and the registration should be available at the National Archives under COPY1 although does not appear online)

Read the original article here: https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/previouly-unseen-photograph-sale-charles-dickenss-belongings-display

The Dickens Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 1000 to 1700 at 48 Doughty Street, London. See: https://dickensmuseum.com/

Thanks to Steven Joseph for the Finebooksmagazine link.

A free new online picture archive from Reach plc, the owners of The Mirror and The Express newspapers, has been launched as the nation goes into lockdown. Despite events being cancelled nationwide the new tool allows people to celebrate and share historical moments like fireworks night, Remembrance Sunday. Memory Lane is backed by broadcaster, author and historian Professor Kate Williams.

The launch of Memory Lane follows a YouGov survey carried out for Memory Lane suggesting that the past is in danger of being lost because 80% of Brits haven’t digitised all their photos.

According to the newly commissioned nostalgia survey for Memory Lane almost a third of the population (31%) are looking at old photographs to get themselves through these times. So Memory Lane is asking the public to preserve, discover, celebrate and share images which matter to them as we enter another challenging time during the pandemic.

However, BPH would highlight the T&Cs of the site and warn potential users to be mindful of this if choosing to upload images:

If you post or upload content to the Site, you grant us a perpetual, royalty free, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and licence to use, reproduce, publish, communicate to the public, translate, create derivative works from and distribute such content into any form, medium or technology now known or hereafter developed. In addition, you waive any and all moral rights in such content.

See: https://www.memorylane.co.uk/

BBC Radio 4's Front Row arts programme carried an interview with Bradford's National Science and Media Museum's director Jo Quinton-Tulloch about the new galleries. The interview was conducted by Nick Ahad, a colleague of fellow presenter Samira Ahmed who had acted as MC for the re-opening event at the start of July. 

Listen to the interview on the Front Row podcast here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gfxp (from 23m 14s)

Right: Jo Quinton-Tulloch at the opening of the NSMM.

Photo Museum Ireland, baded in Dublin, is seeking a Collection Manager & Digital Archivist which is both a strategic and hands-on position. The postholder will manage the development of our collection, overseeing acquisition, cataloguing, digitisation, and public access, including registrar duties for temporary exhibitions. This role will also take the lead on our artist-focused archival initiatives and digitisation projects. These include collaborative archival residencies and projects building on our recent archival digitisation projects.

The role also involves managing major collaborative projects, working closely with institutional and international partners. At the intersection of archival practice, digital innovation, and artist collaboration, this role supports one of the museum’s core strategic priorities of developing the Museum’s Collection.

This is a unique opportunity to shape Ireland’s most ambitious contemporary photography archive, to work directly with artists and estates, and to contribute meaningfully to a dynamic cultural institution that values creativity, inclusivity, and innovation.

Photo Museum Ireland is the national centre for contemporary photography, dedicated to advancing the development, appreciation and understanding of photography and visual culture across Ireland. We connect diverse audiences with inspirational and exciting photography and visual culture. 

Our mission is to support, curate and promote great photography while supporting both established and emerging artists to develop their practices. 

See: https://photomuseumireland.ie/collection-manager-digital-archivist/
To apply, submit your CV and a cover letter detailing your suitability for the role to recruitment@photomuseumireland.ie by 18th July 2025.

The recently published book  Genève en photographies anciennes (Geneva in old photographs) is both a tribute to Geneva's pioneering photographers and a history of the city's urban development. Through some 200 photographs, most of them previously unpublished, drawn from their rich collection, Viviane and Christophe Blatt document the changing face of the city, from the walled city to the city of wide thoroughfares. The 210 photographs presented here show a face of Geneva that has now almost entirely disappeared. Most have never been published before, and the oldest photo in the book dates from 1850.  At that time, the city had changed very little since the eighteenth century. We can see the Place du Molard, still closed off from the lake, or the Île and its lower streets surrounded by a network of small houses and alleyways. As soon as the fortifications were demolished in 1849, the face of the city began to change: Latin-sailed barges unloaded the stones brought from Meillerie at the port of Eaux-Vives, to be used in the construction of ‘modern’ buildings. On the plateau des Tranchées, the Russian church stands out in the middle of a vast wasteland.

The beautiful preface by prof. Olivier Fatio underlines the contrast between Geneva's long medieval appearance and the dynamism of the Fazist revolution.

Geneva was home to a large number of photographers, pioneers of a nascent art form whose names are rarely known to the general public. These craftsmen were often painters or draughtsmen; there were also chemists, opticians and watchmakers. To succeed in their new profession, they had to have a sound knowledge of mechanics, optics and chemistry. This book is a tribute to our predecessors,’ explain Viviane and Christophe Blatt. Their work was long and complicated at the time, and 150 years on, their photographs still inspire us.

The book includes an introduction by Nicolas Crispini, photographer, photography historian and exhibition curator, who paints a vivid portrait of the history of photography and its great Genevan names. A detailed index also provides at-a-glance details of all the photographs on display: author, location, date, process and dimensions.

About the authors, Viviane and Christophe Blatt : Brought together by a shared passion for photography - they met at the Société Genevoise de Photographie over fifty years ago - Viviane and Christophe Blatt founded their company, Lightmotif, in 1977. Over the years, the photography workshop has been joined by an image bank representing 17 Swiss photographers, an iconography service, and a postcard and book publishing business. Passionate image seekers, their collection totals some 20,000 images, including around 3,000 from Geneva. The collection is marketed through the lightmotif-vintage.com website.

The annual Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards celebrate excellence in photography and moving image publishing. They recognise individuals who have made an outstanding or original contribution to the literature, art or practice of photography or the moving image. Two winning titles are selected: one in the field of photography and one in the field of the moving image. 

• Submissions are welcome from publishers, authors, collectives and individuals self-publishing their work
• Books must be published between 1 January and 31 December 2024
• Books must be published, distributed or available to buy (including online) in the UK

Winners receive a £5000 prize. Winning, short and longlisted books are featured in public displays and may be included in special events. There is no entry fee, and the submission process is easy and quick

Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 2025 – Final Call For Entries
The deadline for entry of the submission form and digital files is 11.59pm on Friday 31 January 2025
Further details, terms and conditions, and the entry form for the 2025 Awards can be found here:
https://kraszna-krausz.org.uk/book-awards/

Shining Lights is the first critical anthology to bring together the groundbreaking work of Black women photographers active in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, providing a richly illustrated overview of a significant and overlooked chapter of photographic history. Seen through the lens of Britain’s sociopolitical and cultural contexts, the publication draws on both lived experience and historical investigation to explore the communities, experiments, collaborations and complexities that defined the decades.

This symposium, hosted by Shining Lights’ editor and artist Joy Gregory, provides an opportunity to further examine and debate the issues raised in the book, through the voices of the publication’s contributors and leading intergenerational thinkers.

Join us to celebrate this timely and important publication and foreground the contribution of Black women photographers to the history of the artistic medium.

Confirmed participants: Christine Checinska, Poulomi Desai, Bernardine Evaristo, Lola Flash, Mumtaz Karimjee (virtually), Roshi Naidoo, Symrath Patti, Eileen Perrier, Lola Olufemi.

Full programme to be announced soon.

Produced in partnership with the V&A Parasol Foundation Women in Photography Project, Fast Forward: Women in Photography at University for the Creative Arts and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

The publication is co-published by MACK & Autograph ABP. With thanks to Joy Gregory Studio.

Details: https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/shining-lights-photography-conference

well I did my bit in Brisbane in 1989 to celebrate photography... and only had a dozen people show up at the studio.  Sandy Barrie

This short talk presents research on a rare early photograph album from mid-1860s Natal, South Africa, which contains around 50 portraits of African subjects, with inscriptions by its owner, representing the first few years of studio output in Natal in the new affordable format of cartes-de-visite. The talk will explore the album's contents and present some of the tantalising research findings that have emerged so far.

Monday 30 January, 14.30 
With Dr Christopher Morton
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
Details: https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/event/research-on-an-early-photograph-album-from-natal-south-africa

This is the first book dedicated to Cornelia Bentley Sage Quinton (1876-1936). The text retraces the visionary career of the first woman director of a major art museum in the United States. From her appointment as director of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1910, Cornelia Sage left her mark on American institutional history, as well as on the history of photography, notably by organizing the International Exhibition of Pictorialist Photography with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession group. A pioneer, through her original approach and bold choices, she paved the way for women aspiring to key positions in American museums.

The author, Camille Mona Paysant, is an art historian specializing in photography. Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2018, focused on the international relations and diverse practices of artists associated with the Photo-Secession movement. In 2016, she published The Travel Photographs of Baron Adolph de Meyer: The Eye at Rest: A Break with the Tradition of Studio Photography (Éditions Hermann), followed in 2019 by Japan: Adolphe de Meyer (Éditions Louis Vuitton). She also contributes as a specialist to exhibition catalogues, including Picasso: Masterpieces! (Musée national Picasso – Paris, Gallimard, 2018), André Ostier: Portraits of Artists (Musée Matisse, Nice, 2019), and Whistler: The Butterfly Effect (Silvana, 2024).

Cornelia B. Sage Quinton – Une pionnière de l’art américain
Camille Mona Paysant
Editions Naima, 2025
238 pages, PDF, EPUB 
€24 (printed edition) or €4,99 (subscription download)
See: https://www.naimaeditions.com/biblio/cornelia-b-sage-quinton-une-pionniere-de-lart-americain-numerique/?referer=l58du4

This hybrid event, organised by the Historical Archives of the European Union with Photoconsortium and the EUreka3D-XR project, brings together professionals from renowned photographic institutions, research centres, and private image banks to explore the evolving landscape of photographic archives. What common challenges do photographic archives face, and what makes each case unique? How can new technologies support archival expertise? And how do we ensure that photographic heritage remains relevant, legible, and enriching for future generations?

To coincide with the 150th anniversary of Thomas Annan's Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, photographer Frank McElhinney re-traces Annan's footsteps with a photo trail along the same streets where Annan made the original photographs. Annan's famous street studies of this historic area of Glasgow are shown in the windows of modern businesses along High Street and Saltmarket, taking the viewer on a journey through history.

One hundred and fifty years ago Thomas Annan published a series of thirty-one photographs of the old streets and closes of Glasgow. They are recognised as perhaps the world’s first attempt at what we now call social documentary photography. An 1866 act of parliament had approved the clearance of Glasgow’s overcrowded and epidemic prone slums. With the exception of one photograph made in the Gorbals, all of the rest were made in and around the High Street and Saltmarket. It was once assumed the photographs were commissioned by the City Improvement Trust, but there is no real evidence of this. It is more likely that Annan began the series on his own initiative motivated not just by a speculative commercial imperative but by a desire to highlight the slowly improving condition of Glasgow’s poorest residents. The title of the work suggests architecture was the principal subject but the photographs are teaming with life, full of men, women and children. Annan’s photographs give us a privileged insight into the living conditions of our forebears as no other city, with the possible exception of Paris, has a comparable archive from such an early period in the history of photography. - Frank McElhinney

Find out more and associated events here: https://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/event/thomas-annan-photo-trail

Autograph, is recruiting a Exhibitions Manager to manage delivery of its contemporary exhibition, loans and touring activity, which have a strong focus on photographic practice. Autograph works with a wide range of institutions in the UK and internationally to lend work and tour exhibitions originating in London. We appeal to very diverse visitors who are attracted to the issues addressed by artists we show and appreciate the quality of our offer.

Based at Rivington Place, in Shoreditch, London which houses our two public galleries, small scale screening facilities, a learning studio and our specialist photographic collection, you will:

• Provide logistical support necessary to deliver Autograph’s artistic programme to a high standard, facilitating the curatorial vision agreed with artists for each project.
• Ensure that the highest standards of museum practice are delivered in design, build, procurement, risk management, health & safety (H&S), insurance and care of art works, working closely with curatorial and external stakeholders.
• Coordinate the installation and demounting of temporary exhibitions and collection displays on site with technical contractors and other suppliers.
• Manage, UK and international touring packages, loans and occasional artists’ projects off site.
• Contribute logistical insights to our programme development strategy which takes a team based approach to developing our public offer.
• Contribute to the team’s environmental sustainability work, feeding into and helping to shape the wider organisation’s environmental strategy.

Details here: https://autograph.org.uk/blog/news/exhibitions-manager/?mc_cid=ab2fed7cd8&mc_eid=b331f6dd6d

The Museum of Gloucester is celebrating the two hundred and twenty-first anniversary of the birth of polymath Charles Wheatstone in Barnwood, near Gloucester. Although his name is still remembered all over the world, Wheatstone never got the credit he really deserves. This prolific inventor, musical instrument maker and professor of experimental philosophy was a shy person and, unlike some of his contemporaries and their modern equivalents, never blew his own trumpet.

Whilst some inventions which he helped promote have been wrongly attributed to him, others have been credited to somebody else and history has not been kind in honouring him. There are no monuments to him, no statues to remember his achievements by, and even his grave in Bethnal Green is so undistinctive that it is difficult to find.

Photo historian Denis Pellerin, from the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy, will take you on a three dimensional journey to discover the inventor of Stereoscopy (which we now call 3D) and show how this invention, which, strangely enough, Wheatstone never considered as his most important, changed the way the Victorians perceived the world around them. Stereoscopy gave birth to a craze which may not have lasted very long but produced millions of amazing images and has been through several revivals since it first started back in the 1850s.

Nearly two hundred years after its discovery, Stereoscopy is not only the magic carpet it was for Wheatstone’s contemporaries, taking them to far away places without leaving their fireside; it has also become a wonderful time machine, showing us the Victorians, famous or anonymous, as they really were, in a way no traditional photographs can.

Details and booking: https://www.museumofgloucester.co.uk/events/celebrating-charles-wheatstone-in-glorious-3d