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Scott Archer commemorative plaque / © Michael Pritchard 2010In a ceremony at Kensal Green cemetery today, Saturday, 1 May 2010, Frederick Scott Archer was honoured with the unveiling of a plaque on his grave. In addition, those present were able to see for the first time a surviving link to Archer with the re-erection of the original head stone recording his death that had long been lost. Also, John Brewer announced that photo-historians had incorrectly recorded Archer's death as 2 May 1857 when, in fact, he had died on 1 May 1857.

The event was organised by a group of artists called The Collodion Collective who started work on a plan to honour Archer and to put a headstone on his grave. Money was raised through the publication of a book World Wet Plate Collodion Day 2009. The group arranged a demonstration of the collodion process after the plaque unveiling and organised an exhibition of modern wet-collodion images on glass and on paper.

12200891668?profile=originalBrewer while researching Archer went back to his original death certificate to discover the correct date of his death. A number of historians including Helmut Gernsheim had relied on incorrect contemporary reports of his death was they incorrect ascribed to 2 May. The newly located headstone also correctly records Archer's date of death.

Archer by all accounts was buried in an unmarked grave but his death was subsequently recorded on the headstone of his sister, Sarah and brother, James who were all buried in the same plot. The headstone was hidden by vegetation and removed and was only discovered close by the plot as plans for the commemoration were made. It confirms Archer's correct date of death and his siblings.

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The headstone reads: The Sacred to the Memory of Sarah Archer who died 3rd Decr 1839 aged 24 years. Also of James Archer and brother of the above and third surviving son of Thos. Archer, formerly of Hertford, who died March 17th 1819 aged 36 years. Also Fredk. Scott Archer, brother of the above, 105 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, who died May 1st 1857 in his 44th year.

Finally, as I walked through the cemetary I spotted memorials to another photographic notable, the society portrait photographer Alexander Bassano (10 May 1829–21 October 1913)...
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Michael Pritchard

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Hills & Saunders Photographers

I have recently acquired an extensive collection of glass plates (80,000 items) along with a substantial volume of original documents and day ledgers. The collection was created by Hills & Saunders 'Harrow' studio.

I would be interested to learn more about any of the actual photographers who worked for Hills & Saunders. I believe the company operated a number of studios around the country, including Harrow, Eton, Oxford & Cambridge. If anyone could provide me with any information or suggestions on where I may find a source of information I would be most grateful.

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In passing: Stephen Herbert (1951-2023)

12231263101?profile=RESIZE_400xBPH has just learnt of the passing of Stephen Herbert, an important historian of the motion picture, pre-cinema and photographic technology. Through his position at the BFI and Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI), and with his own imprint The Projection Box which he and his parner Mo Heard set up in 1994 Stephen undertook significant work in presenting new research and making moving picture technology accessible.

For many years he was the Magic Lantern Society's Research Officer and the driving force behind a series of publications, in collaboration with others, and usually published alongside the Society's convention. They remain important reference books. His Who's Who of Victorian Cinema (print (1996) and online, with Luke McKernan) similarly was well-researched and filled a significant gap in knowledge. 

Stephen was a consultant to the Dubai museum of the moving image, and worked for the Qatar Museums Authority when it was considering setting up a media museum. He was also an advisor to Kingston Museums for its Eadweard Muybridge collections.  

His online websites, publications and articles and papers will remain an enduring legacy. he also worked closes with the late Gordon Trewinnard and the milestones in cinema history project was created replicas of key milestone cinemographic cameras from the first years of cinema. 

See a BPH note on The Projection Box
Stephen's personal website is here
An obituary written Luke McKernan appeared in The Guardian on 22 September. 
The Optilogue

A short bibliography and biographical details are here: https://lucerna.exeter.ac.uk/person/index.php?language=EN&id=6002387

Photo: Mo Heard, from The Optilogue

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Mathew Brady's camera up for auction

12200924275?profile=originalJames Garfinkle advises...After 31 years of being the custodian of Mathew Brady's Studio Wet-Plate Camera, I have decided to let another person or institution have the pleasure of owning 'the most iconic piece of photographic Americana.' The camera was used to take portraits of Lincoln and other notables in the Civil War period.

Its provenance is unmatched: Meserve / Kunhardt collection, then at auction at Christie's in 1980, to me.  Two owners in about 100 years.  The serial number on lens matches that in Brady's bankruptcy filing, included with the lot. The camera has a reserve of $25,000. 

It was most recently displayed at the 'Lincoln in New York' exhibition at the New-York Historical Society.

The sale is Wednesday, November 30th in Dallas. James Garfinkel can be reached at: jamesgarfinkel@gmail.com. The sale is part of a Heritage Auctions Americana sale. More details here: http://historical.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=6066&lotNo=38365

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12200908058?profile=originaldaguerreotype sold on eBay on 13 May for £3300. Under its cover glass was a typewritten label stating ‘Charles L. Dodgson / Christ Church 1858 (see illustration right)’. The case was gilt stamped with Claudet’s Adelaide Gallery address and had been previously opened and the image unsealed.  Unsurprisingly the lot attracted 960 views and had received 21 bids by the time the auction ended. Peter, the UK-based seller of the lot trading on eBay under the name of ‘virtually-cameras’, must have been very pleased. The price would not have been remarkable if the image was indeed that of Dodgson – better known, of course, as Lewis Carroll – but it clearly was not. For an example of a of a nice Claudet daguerreotype of an anonymous man the real value was at best closer to £300.

There is a back story to this item. The daguerreotype had been taken into Tennants, a large regional auction house in the north of England, for valuation and authentication. The auction house, properly recognising the daguerreotype’s potential wider interest and possible high value, did some research and made contact with one of the UK’s leading Carroll experts who consulted a second. Both pronounced the subject of the daguerreotype as someone other than Carroll. They made four key points: firstly, Claudet’s Adelaide Gallery was only operating between 1841 and 1847, secondly, by 1858 the daguerreotype process in Britain had been largely superseded by the wet collodion process in commercial photographic studios such as Claudets, and, thirdly, Carroll was a diligent and noted diarist and made no mention of a visit to Claudet’s studio, and finally, the gentlemen shown in the daguerreotype was not Dodgson which was immediately apparent to the experts - as a simple comparison with other known portraits (including a well-known 1857 portrait - see right, below) of Dodgson would reveal. The auction house rightly decided that they were not able to offer the daguerreotype at auction and it was returned to the owner.

12200908093?profile=originalIt resurfaced on eBay on 3 March 2011 offered by virtually-cameras. As has now been confirmed to me by someone with direct knowledge of the daguerreotype and the authentication (not the expert) the eBay seller was the same person who took it to the auction house for authentication. But Peter described the daguerreotype only as he saw it, albeit misspelling Dodgson as Dodson, Claudet as Claude and Adelaide as Adelade, and quoting the typewritten label in full. He was careful to say only that the daguerreotype was ‘labelled’ and he made no reference to Lewis Carroll. Peter made no mention of the fact that the daguerreotype had been examined by an expert who had discounted any possibility that it showed Dodgson. On 5 May Peter corrected the Claudet misspelling and added some biographical details about Claudet, presumably found on the internet.

As one might imagine an image of Carroll would attract considerable interest and the description contained plenty in it to allow it to be picked up by buyers’ search terms. Almost as soon as the lot was listed ‘Matthew’ asked Peter if he could buy it straight away for £300. Peter, quite properly declined. Ending an auction early to sell it would breach eBay’s terms of business. But Peter was also expressed surprised by the reaction the lot was attracting and said he wanted to let the auction run its course. A couple of further questions followed which he answered including confirmation of the size: ‘the frame size is 7.5 x 8.5 cm. The visible image is 6 x 5.5 cm’.

I was tipped off about the lot by a friend on 12 March. Looking at the description and image something didn’t ring true and I did some checking. I compared the image with others properly identified as Dodgson and I checked material I had on Claudet which confirmed his business addresses. I also knew that by 1857 it was more likely that the image should be a collodion positive or ambrotype.  I emailed Peter via eBay asking one question: ‘what did he know about the provenance of the image?’ pointing out that the label might allow people to make a link to Carroll which could be unfortunate. Peter responded promptly not really answering my question: ‘I'm sure you will realise after giving some serious thought that it's certainly not possible that I could know how the typed label was placed with the photograph,when the typed label clearly appears to be as old as the photograph! Perhaps you are unaware that a Daguerreotype is a negative image unlike the positive images with which you are making comparison.

In the meantime I did some research on typewriter history and I concluded that the label was post-1870 and probably c1890-1910. I responded to Peter saying that the provenance would have been useful as ‘I was hoping that the image might have come from a source that would have supported the identification of the subject’. I pointed out that the typewritten label was almost certainly post 1870. Peter again replied promptly: ‘The image was purchased some time ago along with another of a girl, an ambrotype, after being sold at auction in Darlington County Durham’. He also asserted that typewriters dated back to the ‘late 1700s’ and that daguerreotypes ‘show a positive image when tilted against the light however the sitters image is reversed onto backing silvered material during exposure making it a true negative image and only by changing the angle of lighting does the Daguerreotype give the impression of being a positive’. Peter decided not to publish my questions and his responses alongside the description (eBay automates this if it is wanted) – unlike those of his other questioners. I decided to leave it at that.

As I stated at the beginning the daguerreotype sold for £3300.

I think there are a couple of lessons here. For the seller, some simple research should have thrown up some concerns about the image's subject. Peter has been on eBay since 2008. Looking at his past sales he appears to mainly sell modern photographic equipment on eBay, for which he has received good feedback, so the daguerreotype was clearly out of his main area of expertise. Some simple checking would have flagged up that the image was unlikely to be Carroll. He was clearly surprised at the interest the lot was generating and this might have acted as a warning. Since originally writing the piece I have been advised by someone who had discussed the matter with Peter was Peter had been the person who took the daguerreotype to the auction house. As such he clearly had a duty to flag the opinion that the experts had raised in his eBay description.  

Buyers also have a responsibility – caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). Peter carefully made no link to Dodgson and simply described the daguerreotype as he saw it - allowing buyers to draw their own conclusions. It might be possible that two buyers liked a possible Claudet daguerreotype and were prepared to pay well over the normal price for such an image. That is unlikely. What is more likely is that bidders thought that they were about to get a bargain which they could resell at a profit; or they bid having jumped to their own conclusion that the subject was Carroll and failed to carry out any further research. It would not have been difficult to do and for the eventual buyer it might have prevented an expensive mistake.

A cautionary tale, indeed.

Dr Michael Pritchard

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12201024087?profile=originalThe British Journal of Photography has been digitised up to 2005 with the remainder to be completed early in 2016, BPH first reported on the project here back in 2013. The digital archive is currently only available to colleges, universities and institutional subscribers via Proquest.

The publisher of the BJP, Apptitude Media, is intending to make the digitised BJP from 1854 to the present day accessible to the wider public in 2016, although BPH understands that the charging model has yet to be determined. 

See the Proquest Art and Architecture catalogue here.

BPH will report when the BJP becomes publicly available but in the meantime from its January 2016 issue the BJP is delving in to its digital archive for a regular back page feature. 

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The Art Fund has welcomed Michael G Wilson, as a new trustee. Wilson, is chairman of the trustees of the National Media Museum and a collector of photography. He is a film producer and has lectured on photography and film at universities worldwide.

Michael G. Wilson said: "I am delighted to become a trustee of the Art Fund. The organisation does a tremendous job engaging national and regional interest in the arts and ensuring public access to great art collections through its tireless campaigning and funding."

Wilson opened the Wilson Centre for Photography in 1998. The Centre is one of the largest private collections of photography today, spanning works from some of the earliest extant photographs to the most current contemporary productions. The centre hosts seminars, study sessions, runs an annual bursary project with the National Media Museum and loans to international museums and galleries.

He is also Managing Director of EON Productions Ltd and responsible for box office successes, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, through the James Bond franchise, with his producing partner and sister, Barbara Broccoli. Wilson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California and a Doctor Juris from Stanford Law School. He was awarded anOBE in 2008 for Services to the Film Industry.

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12201167499?profile=originalThe first ever retrospective exhibition of US photographer, Marilyn Stafford (b.1925), launches this year, encompassing the most comprehensive display of the photographer’s work to date. Works come from an international archive spanning four decades, and include celebrity portraits, fashion shoots, street photography, humanitarian stories and newspaper reportage. 

This exhibition, A Life in Photography, will tour institutions in the UK between August 2021 and November 2022, providing a reflective and engaging look at a period of 20th century history through the photographer’s unique gaze. It will feature many of the stories from her career, which remain untold, with images never seen before by the public. 

An accompanying retrospective book of her work Marilyn Stafford: A Life in Photography will be available from www.bluecoatpress.co.uk from October 2021, including an essay by Jennifer Higgie. 

Marilyn Stafford’s photography career got off to a remarkable start when she was invited, as a young woman, to take stills of Albert Einstein. Since then, she has accumulated an eclectic body of work, spanning from 1948-1980, including further portraits of famous and influential figures such as Edith Piaf, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mulk Raj Anand, Indira Gandhi, Albert Finney, Twiggy and Joanna Lumley. She has also photographed many ordinary people like the illiterate Sicilian peasant woman, Francesca Serio, who took the Mafia to trial for murdering her son. 

More information : https://www.marilynstaffordphotography.com 

LISTINGS 

Farleys House and Galleries: 12 August - 31 October 2021.

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery: 26 Feb - 8 May 2022 

Dimbola Museum and Galleries: 15 June - 17 September 2022 

 

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Girl with milk bottle, Cité Lesage-Bullourde, Paris, c1950

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Twiggy, press call, London, 1960

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Marilyn Stafford, Lebanon, 1960 (photographer unknown) 

 

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Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellowships

12200915473?profile=originalThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is offering (2) Ralph M. Parsons Curatorial Fellowships in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department. The Parsons Fellows will provide general assistance to the Curator and the Department Head, as well as the Associate Curator, while also conducting scholarly research in connection with the permanent collection and related projects in the Photography Department, which includes over 13,000 works. The Parsons Fellowships support professional development, with opportunities to gain significant curatorial experience specific to photography, and to acquire a broad understanding of museum practices through cross-departmental activity. Within the context of departmental priorities, the Fellows will conduct scholarly research on areas of the permanent collection in his/her area of specialization and will equally be encouraged to develop familiarity with works outside of his/her field of expertise. Areas of potential focus include, but are not limited to: California photography, Japanese photography, and Contemporary photography. In addition to permanent collection activities, each Fellow will also be engaged in a variety of duties relating to the internal organization of special exhibitions. Both Fellows will be fully integrated into the curatorial department, and will participate in projects pertaining to collection care and conservation, cataloguing, on-line access, acquisitions, programming, outreach and publications.

The qualified candidate will have a Master’s degree in art history, though a Ph.D. is preferred. Prior museum experience, ideally involving photography, is preferred.  Excellent writing and public speaking skills, together with a strong interest in the acquisition, interpretation, care and display of works of art are essential, as is the ability to work collaboratively. The goal of the Fellowships is to provide opportunities for talented scholars committed to the museum profession.
The period of each Fellowship is one year, both are salaried with benefits; one position will be 5 days per week and is open for immediate hiring,  the other 4 days per week and commences July 1. Applicants should submit a cover letter that addresses interest in either Fellowship, a curriculum vitae, references, and a statement (3 page maximum) of the applicant’s past and future research interests. Submissions will be accepted through June 1, 2011.

Application details can be found on this link here. Good luck!

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David Wise

12201183077?profile=originalYou may be interested in an article I have just published in Litro on the Hartlepool photographer David Wise - he is a figure who deserves greater recognition.

I first came across the photographs of David Wise in the Independent Magazine (24 March 1990) where they illustrated an article about drinking in Hartlepool pubs. The black and white pictures were raw and honest – brutally so – but they also depicted moments of great tenderness: a man looking at his crying girlfriend unable to comfort her, a drunken kiss, a last desperate hug before kicking out time...

Read the full article here:

https://www.litromagazine.com/every-saturday-litro-magazine-publishes-essays-that-reach-far-beneath-the-surface/hard-beauty-the-photographs-of-david-wise/

David

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12201229701?profile=originalCarolyn Peter started a new role as Assistant Curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum on 12 June. Carolyn joined the Getty Museum as a part-time curatorial assistant in 2018 after a varied career as a museum director at the Laband Art Gallery (2006 - 2016), and curatorial positions in photography and graphic arts at the Hammer Museum, LACMA, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

12201231266?profile=originalShe has her M.A. from London's Courtauld Institute of Art, where she wrote her thesis on the status of photography at the 1855 Exposition Universelle. Carolyn will be the presenting curator for 19th-Century Photography Now (curated by Karen Hellman) and the co-curator (with Karen Hellman) for Hippolyte Bayard: A Persistent Pioneer, both opening here on April 9, 2024. 

See: https://www.getty.edu/author/peter-carolyn/

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12201119290?profile=originalLondon's History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck has announced its autumn seminar programme. All events are free and open to all. 

Wednesday, 20 November 2019, 6-7:30pm. Room 106, 46 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD.

Andrés Mario Zervigón (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)

Fully Visible and Transparent: Zeiss Anastigmat

In 1890, the famous Jena Glass Works of Carl Zeiss released the Anastigmat photographic lens. The innovative device advanced a chapter in optical technology that seemed to have progressed automatically in a predetermined manner since the medium’s origins. The new lens offered a consistent field of focus across the photographic plate and corrected for a number of additional aberrations at lower and higher f-stops. But why exactly had Zeiss developed its expensive mechanism and what drove photographers to buy it? This paper suggests that the consistent focus and varied depth of field that the Anastigmat provided were not in and of themselves the desired goals of the improvements, but that they were instead visible signals of a pictorial model that makers and consumers had been seeking since the public introduction of photography in 1839. The goal was a transparent realism that remained stubbornly external to the medium, an illusionistic standard that had largely been mediated by painting since the renaissance and was now apparently possible in photography as well.

Andrés Mario Zervigón is Professor of the History of Photography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. His scholarship concentrates on the interaction between photographs, film, and fine art, generally focusing on moments in history when these media prove inadequate to their presumed task of representing the visual. Zervigón is author of John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and Photography and Germany (Reaktion Books, 2017). With Tanya Sheehan he edited Photography and Its Origins (Routledge, 2014), with Sabine Kriebel Photography and Doubt (Routledge 2017), and with Donna Gustafson Subjective-Objective: A Century of Social Photography (Zimmerli Musuem/Hirmer Verlag, 2017). His current book project is Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung - The Worker's Illustrated Magazine, 1921-1938: A History of Germany's Other Avant-Garde, for which he received a CASVA Senior Fellowship (2013-14). At Rutgers Zervigón leads The Developing Room, an academic working group that promotes interdisciplinary dialogue on photography’s history, theory and practice.

Monday 9 December 2019, 6-7:30pm. Room 106, 46 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD

Charlene Heath (Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada)

To Circulate and Disperse: Jo Spence, Terry Dennett and a Still Moving Archive.

Image: Justine Varga, Overlay, 2016-18.

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Hello all

A new website was launched last year but it is still being refined that contains probably the largest database in existence of British and Irish photographers http://www.cartedevisite.co.uk/.

Although specific content requires payment to help cover the costs of setting up and maintaining the site (and collection used to produce it) there is an increasing amount of free content such as the biographies of British photographers http://www.cartedevisite.co.uk/photographers-category/biographies. Most of these have been produced in collaboration with actual descendants of the photographers and there are many more to be added. The database is maintained by Ron Cosens of Yorkshire and is based on details obtained from his massive photographic collection which he has been merged with extensive trade directory and other research by Sandy Barrie of Ipswich, Australia. Many others have contributed to the site and my role has been to contribute data from photos, censuses, newspapers etc. and to do biographical research. I am also interested in looking at British photographers that worked in Australia (and New Zealand) in connection with my research into biographies of Australian daguerreotypists and also I am writing a book on the history of the carte de visite in Australia.

Please feel free to visit the site. Should you have material you wish to submit such as a photographer's biography or if you are researching a particular photographer please feel free to make contact through the site. Ron, Sandy and I are all subscribers to this site http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profile/RonCosens; http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profile/SandyBarrie and http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profile/MarcelSafier.

Cheers!

Marcel Safier
Brisbane, Australia
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Obituary: Chris Killip (1946-2020)

12201144872?profile=originalBPH heard late yesterday afternoon that the British documentary photographer Chris Killip had died at his home in the United States. Killip was born in the Isle of Man, and started his career by assisting Adrian Flowers in London. From 1969 he began concentrating on his own photography. In 1977 he became a founder, exhibition curator, and advisor at the Side Gallery Newcastle, and worked as its first director. His work was championed and purchased by the V&A Museum, London. 

He documented many aspects of 1980s Britain and is best known for In Flagrante (1988). His work has been widely exhibited and collected and his body of work The Station is currently on view at the Martin Parr Foundation. 

12201145263?profile=originalFrom 1991-2017 he was Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, in Massachusetts.

Killip received the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award for In Flagrante.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/14/chris-killip-hard-hitting-photographer-of-britains-working-class-dies-aged-74

and: 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/16/chris-killip-recognition-for-a-great-photographer

Images  © Michael Pritchard. Above: Killip at the launch symposium for the Martin Parr Foundation in 2017. Read more here.  Left: The Station at Martin Parr Foundation, on view until 20 December 2020. 

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12201092071?profile=originalMy name is Matthew Broadhead, an artist and photographer based in southwest England. At present, I am enrolled on the new MA Photography program at UWE Bristol with course leaders Aaron Schuman and Angus Fraser, due to graduate in 2019. 

The project I am working on investigates the life and practice of my third-great grandfather, Frederick William Broadhead, commonly abbreviated as F. W. Broadhead. In the context of my studies I am primarily working with the Belvoir Castle estate to record the interior and exterior of the building as my ancestor did, and explore the area photographically. This will culminate in an exhibition next season in 2019 and the same results will also been seen in my final MA exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. 

Whilst I am looking for any photographs and information connecting F. W. Broadhead and the Belvoir Castle estate, I am also interested in the same about any area of his life's occupation. 

In my own collection and archive, I have around 200 examples of photographs from his studio, along with comprehensive newspaper records such as stories and advertisements in connection with his business. Original advertisements featured in business directories are also present along with reproductions from the Wigston Record Office and former clients of F. W. Broadhead.

One purpose of this request is to establish whether there are any F. W. Broadhead examples in the private collections of the membership on this site, and to possibly collaborate on aspects of my long-term project. As a practitioner in the field myself, it is of great personal interest and investment to learn more about my own heritage but share my findings back into the field of photo-history in the form of exhibitions, talks, and publications. 

My website is www.matthewbroadhead.com and I can be contacted on my mobile at 07554 879388 or info@matthewbroadhead.com

Please see below a close up of a money order with his studio address at 55 Welford Road, Leicester

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12200954656?profile=originalThe  Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums have recently published on-line what is thought to be the last surviving album of Victorian criminal photographs from the Newcastle area, ranging from ragamuffin children to the elderly and infirm, of all ages.

These sepia images, to help with the identification of criminal classes and to support theories about criminal physiology, were taken at the Newcastle City Gaol and House of Correction Collection between December 1871 and December 1873. The youngest of the criminals was 11 year old, Ellen Woodman, who was caught stealing iron and given 7 days hard labour.

You can view them on their flickr account here, or there is a book published a few years ago entitled Victorian Villains, by Barry Redfern, which gives further information on the individuals who were convicted. If interested, you can purchase the book using the Amazon link on the right. 

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13627038889?profile=RESIZE_400xWith a on-going renewal of interest in pictorialism this new book is a timely - and welcome - addition to the literature. It brings new insights in to one of the key photographic styles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pictorialism is a complex and multi-faceted movement. Initiated around 1890 in England, with antecendents back to the late 1850s, it rapidly spread across Europe and in the United States before reaching other parts of the globe. Its creators were mainly amateur photographers who wished to demonstrate the creative potential of photography and to liberate it from its simple function of copying or documenting by producing 'artistic' photographs able to convey the photographer's emotion. In order to do so, these photographers focused on what they called 'interpretation' and theorised the freedom to intervene in the making of an image, whether it be while taking the picture (soft focus lenses), on the negative (etching of the gelatine layer) or on the positive (use of specific printing processes such as platinum, carbon or gum bichromate, transforming deeply the image as recorded on the negative).

To defend their ideals and promote their vision of photography, the Pictorialists gathered in societies, clubs or brotherhoods, such as the Linked Ring in England, the Photo-Club de Paris in France, L’Effort in Belgium, or the Photo-Secession in the United States. They also organized countless international exhibitions dedicated to pictorial photography and published hundreds of illustrated books, magazines and portfolios, sumptuously printed in photogravure, the most famous example being Camera Work, founded by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903.

Popular at the turn of the twentieth century, the movement attracted numerous photographers and its leaders were known all over the world: Frederick H. Evans and James Craig Annan for Great-Britain, Robert Demachy and Constant Puyo for France, Heinrich Kühn and Hugo Henneberg for Austria, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Clarence H. White or Gertrude Käsebier for the United States. 

Eventually challenged by a new generation of photographers who wanted to develop an aesthetic based upon the 'inner qualities' of photography (objectivity, clarity, sharpness), Pictorialism was gradually replaced by New Vision after the First World War. Nevertheless, its ideals and resources did not disappear and its supporters were active during the interwar period and after both in Europe and the United States. As a proof of the vitality of this late – or second generation – pictorialist schools appeared at the time in countries that had previously had little or no involvement in the 1900s movement: Japan, the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, etc. Although the approach of the photographers from that time evolved taking into account the graphic revolutions of the New Vision, they remained faithful in their endeavour to the aesthetic principles defined originally.

13627003285?profile=RESIZE_400xAnchored in the most up-to-date research, this new book – in French – aims at giving a clear and accessible overview of Pictorialism. It deals with the movement in its different aspects to convey a complete and detailed vision to the reader. It considers:

  • The main photographers who associated their names with this movement;
  • The different countries that took part in this collective adventure;
  • The multiple printing processes specific to Pictorialism and that made its aesthetics famous (pigment prints, of course, but also other printing techniques, together with the autochrome and photogravure);
  • A time-span longer than the one usually examined in order to include interwar Pictorialism, long forgotten in photographic studies.

Representative and emblematic photographs have been chosen for each selected photographer. Alongside the key figures are less prominent artists to emphasise the fact that Pictorialism was not only adopted by a few men and women whose names remain well-known today, but seduced numerous amateurs with various ambitions and careers, some of whom still wait to be rediscovered and studied.

Features of the book

Reflecting the broadness of the subject, this Photo Poche volume - the 181st in the series - is a double issue (248 pages) gathering 125 photographs by 77 photographers from 15 countries. Photographers are represented by either one, three or five photographs.

The text gathers:

  • An introductory essay presenting Pictorialism, its history, characteristics and stakes;
  • A record for each photographer, giving key information to understand their work;
  • Appendices consisting of:
    • a glossary of technical processes;
    • a bibliography of the most important pictorialist publications;
    • a bibliography of modern studies on the subject.

Moreover, all the works reproduced are precisely captioned, dated and identified, as to their technical process.

List of photographers

Germany: Rudolf Dührkoop, Georg Einbeck, Hugo Erfurth, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Theodor et Oscar Hofmeister, Baron A. de Meyer, Nicola Perscheid, Otto Scharf ; Australia: John Kauffmann ; Austria: Hugo Henneberg, Heinrich Kühn, Hans Watzek ; Belgium: Émile Chavepeyer, Gustave Marissiaux, Léonard Misonne, Émile Rombaut ; Canada: Harold Mortimer-Lamb ; Spain: Antoni Arissa, Antoni Campañà Bandranas, José Ortiz Echagüe ; United-States: Paul L. Anderson, Zaida Ben-Yusuf, Anne Brigman, Alvin L. Coburn, William E. Dassonville, F. Holland Day, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Frank Eugene, Adolf Fassbender, Paul B. Haviland, Gertrude Käsebier, George H. Seeley, Edward J. Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Karl F. Struss, Clarence H. White ; France: George Besson, Fernand Bignon, Maurice Bucquet, Mme A. Deglane, Robert Demachy, Pierre Dubreuil, Alfred Fauvarque-Omez, Alphonse Gibory, André Hachette, Céline Laguarde, René Le Bègue, Charles Lhermitte, René Michau, Antonin Personnaz, Constant Puyo ; Great-Britain: James Craig Annan, Malcolm Arbuthnot, Mme G. A. Barton, Walter Benington, Will et Carine Cadby, George Davison, Frederick H. Evans, Alfred Horsley Hinton, Charles Job, J. Dudley Johnston, Alex Keighley, James McKissack, F. J. Mortimer, J. C. Warburg ; Italy: Mario Caffaratti, Domenico Riccardo Peretti-Griva, Guido Rey ; Japan: Ōri Umesaka ; Netherlands: Henri Berssenbrugge, Bernard F. Eilers, John Vanderpant ; Czech Republic: František Drtikol, Drahomír Josef Růžička, Anton Josef Trčka ; Russia: Alexis Mazourine ; Switzerland: Fred Boissonnas

 

La photographie pictorialiste
Julien Faure-Conorton

Collection « Photo Poche », Actes Sud, 2025
248 pages, 19,50€
ISBN: 9782330120108
Order here

Images: top: Constant Puyo, Éventail, 1900, héliogravure (L’Art photographique, 1900), Collection Raphaël Debilly,Paris; left: F. Holland Day, Achille, 1903, platine, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-DIG-cns-00168]

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Yolande, wife of Lucien Clergue, dies at 95

Yolande Clergue passed away on 18 September at the age of 95. Alongside photographer Lucien Clergue, her husband of fifty years, she helped establish the Arles Festival in the 1970s when I took this photo of her with Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. 
 
But it was in 1983 that she alone created the wonderful foundation dedicated to the painter Vincent Van Gogh.
 
 
Photograph: © Paul Hill
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BPH has learnt that Dr John Lambert Wilson who was active in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s for his researches on the photographically illustrated book died on 1 March 2022, aged 79 years. John, who was then based in Oxford, built up a formidable collection of books on early photography and those illustrated with photographs.

His PhD was titled Publishers and Purchasers of the Photographically-Illustrated Book in the Nineteenth Century, (University of Reading, 1995). John also compiled in 1992 Catalogue of a collection relating to the literature of photography, 1639-1905 which is unpublished in two volumes.

John also helped arrange an exhibition of photographic books and associated conference in Oxford and supported the British Library's mid-1990s project to catalogue its photographically-illustrated books where it acknowledged 'the use of his two catalogues of The Literature of the History of Photography'. He was an independent scholar and he was also a volunteer assisting with cataloguing the RPS Collection, then in South Audley Street, London.

John's interests shifted to early agrarian history, particularly the history of sheep breeding.  He is described by one friend as "a fine bibliophile and sterling English eccentric". 

Details are of his funeral are not yet available. 

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Catherine Weed Barnes Ward and Henry Snowden Ward

 
I am a member of the Kent Archaeological Society and researching pioneer woman photographer Catherine Weed Barnes (or Catherine Weed Barnes Ward as she became when she married Henry Snowden Ward, photographic journalist and publisher). Mr Ward was a founder member of the Dickens Fellowship and died in 1911 in the USA while lecturing on Dickens and photography. Mrs Ward died in 1913. The lived at Golden Green in Kent.
 
In 1904 HSW wrote and published a book entitled "The Real Dickens Land with an Outline of Dickens's Life", illustrated with CWBW's photographs of places associated with Dickens' novels.
 
The KAS has a collection of glass plate negatives of such places, provenance unrecorded, but some of them match the images in the book, leaving little doubt that they are CWBW's original negatives or copies of same. One of the negatives is captioned:
 
2523 Cosmos Pictures Co New York 
Ball Room Bull Inn Rochester (see Dickens' Pickwick Papers)
Negative by Catherine Weed Barnes Ward
Copyrighted 1901 by Cosmos Pictures Co NY
 
By the last years of her life Catherine had a collection of 10,000 negatives and I'm trying to find out what became of them. I would be pleased to hear from anyone who knows of the whereabouts of any of the Wards' photographic materials, research documents, etc.  
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