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At a public meeting held at Oxford’s Bodleian Library today, Head Librarian Richard Ovenden (right) made the first announcement of three initiatives that will support William Henry Fox Talbot studies in the United Kingdom and internationally. At the same time they will make the Bodleian central to Talbot studies and the lead of the world’s three principal Talbot archives held at the National Media Museum, Bradford, the British Library, London, and the Bodleian, Oxford.

Ovenden was able to announce, firstly, the completion of the acquisition of the Talbot family archive for the Bodleian which completes the £2.2 million purchase, saving the archive for the nation. (Click here for the previous BPH report on the archive appeal).  

Secondly, he introduced Dr Mirjam Brusius (left) as an Andrew Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Bodleian. Brusius will lead a renewed focus on the history of photography in Oxford, centred on the Bodleian and will lead work on cataloguing, digitising and interpreting the Talbot archive.

Thirdly, he announced that Professor Larry Schaaf’s long mooted project of preparing a catalogue raisonné of Talbot’s photography had secured funding and would be housed at the University of Oxford and Bodleian Library. He described this as a ‘major scholarly venture’. Schaaf, who is the world’s foremost Talbot scholar, had long had hopes of preparing such a catalogue.

The catalogue raisonné, along with the recent cataloguing of the British Library, Bodleian and National Media Museum Talbot holdings, and the availability of Talbot’s online letters, has the potential to radically inform and revise Talbot’s role in the development of negative/positive photography and will help support a new chronology of his work.

Schaaf, speaking to the audience, (right) said the catalogue raisonné would allow researchers to ‘associate things we’ve never seen before…[and] reveal variations  never studied before’. Schaaf, who has been researching Talbot for more than forty years, has produced a series of landmark books, catalogues essays and papers on Talbot, his circle and his photography. He is project director for the Talbot letters project at now hosted by De Montfort University. He paid tribute to past Talbot historians including Harold White who’s work had prepared the ground for his own and to Matilda Talbot, who did much to ensure his legacy was preserved.

Schaaf currently has some 25,000 Talbot negatives and positives recorded in a DOS-based database and one of the new project’s tasks will be to migrate this data to a new platform that can also support images.

He concluded his presentation by saying, partly tongue-in-cheek, that ‘Digital photography is Talbot’s invention’.

More information will be made available by the Bodleian Library shortly. 

Well, that's what one contemporary critic called  Pierre Yves-Petit (1886-1969), who went by the name of Yvon.

This is because no other images of Paris are better captured than those by him. Petit came of age with the picture postcard, which was introduced in 1870 and flourished in the final decades of the 19th century with the completion of the Eiffel Tower. Although his images are instantly recognisable, it was only this year that Petit began to gain recognition as more than a producer of souvenir images.

Robert Stevens, who spend years researching the history behind Petit's work, has compiled a collection of his images in a book entitled 'Yvon's Paris' which can be found on the Amazon link on the right. Alternatively, you can have a quick glance on the inside of this hardcover here.

Details of an exhibition showcasing come of Yvon's images can be found here, as well as a selection of the prints here. 

Photo: Yvon, Notre Dame, c 1920s, vintage gelatin silver print; 3 1/2 x 5 1/8 inches

I have done a lot of work on the Burton Bros of Dunedin, New Zealand over the years with many starts and stops, and to my surprise the results of my visits to Leicester and Nottingham were relatively disappointing, regarding tracking down the lives and seminal influences (and pictures of and by) Alfred Henry Burton (1834-1914) and Walter John Burton (1836-1880). I was expecting to find more local information on the family and was saddened to hear that their negatives, including significant large format pictures of Leicester etc, had been defaced to recycle the glass during World War I.  There are many other British colonial photographers I could mention but the Burton's are still a major interest. Consequently I would appreciate hearing from anybody with a shared interest in the Burton's (printers, stationers, photographers) of Leicester and the English Midlands.

Below is an item that accompanies a small set of Burton Bros NZ images on www.photoforum-nz.org for those that are interested:

Burton Bros. A Portfolio of 11 South Island, New Zealand Views from the 1870s and 1880s                                            

1. Burton Bros. 517: Rere Lake. (‘Rere Lake  Greenstones  reflexion’) c.1875.
2. Burton Bros 1931 Glen Dhu, Lake Wanaka. (‘Glen Dhu, Lake Wanaka Aspiring centre: flax L: reflexions’) 1883.
3. Burton Bros. 3075. ‘Muir & Moodie, late Burton Bros. Dunedin, N.Z.’: Hall’s Arm. (‘Hall’s Arm near Mouth looking up: framed ferns below. Sounds Jan: 85') Printed some time after 1898 by Muir & Moodie, this photograph was made in January 1885, most likely by Alfred H. Burton himself.
4. Burton Bros. 4431: Mt. Earnslaw from Pigeon Island, Lake Wakatipu. (‘Mt. Earnslaw from Pigeon I. small cabbage trees frot.[front?]’ From the Lake Wakatipu series, 1886.
5. Burton Bros. 4488: Pembroke Peak from Head of Milford Sound (‘Pembroke Peak from head of sou’ [sound].  March 1887. [It is interesting that the catalogue entry does not identify the man with the camera case in the photograph, but it appears to be Fred Muir, rather than Harold Burton (1869‑1901, Alfred’s only son, who lost an arm due to a gunshot wound in 1890, and died from complications after a fall from his horse in 1901. See Hardwicke Knight, Burton Brothers Photographers (1980), pp. 43, for caption to illustration of BB4787, 1888, for which JM Forrester identifies FMB Muir and Harold Burton.]
6. Burton Bros. 4728: Mitre Peak, Milford Sound. (‘Sounds trip Jan.’88.... Milford: Mitre Peak Heavy tree over branch across’.) January 1888.
7. Burton Bros. 5325: Bowen Falls, 340 ft., Milford Sound  is actually a Burton Bros. albumen print from a Hart Campbell & Co. wet plate negative. This photograph is from one of over 100 Hart Campbell negatives purchased by Burton Bros. and subsequently published as their own - a fairly common practice in the 19th Century. William P. Hart, a Queenstown photographer, was likely the first to photograph the Sutherland Falls (in 1883).
8. Burton Bros. 5764: Preservation Inlet N.Z. (‘Preservation Inlet’). [It is not absolutely clear from Burton’s catalogue, but because they noted that BB Nos. 5701 to at least BB5715 were ‘Selected from Coxhead’s Negatives’ it is possible that this photograph was actually made by Frank A. Coxhead, or H. Coxhead, his brother. Of further interest is that Burton Bros., reissued it as a combination print which has had a separate sky printed in.]
9. Burton Bros. 5767: Cuttle Cove Preservation Inlet N.Z.  is an earlier version (judging from lichen stripped from the large tree in BB5768), "similarly framed" but taken at a different date and season.]
10. Burton Bros. 5768: Preservation Inlet. (‘Preservation Inlet [Upright’) [Please note that this might also turn out to be a photograph made by Frank A. Coxhead (or his brother). It is an albumen print made by Burton Bros., and the photograph appears to date from the mid‑1880s.
11. Burton Bros. 5804: Sutherland Falls Milford Sd. N.Z. (`Sutherland Falls’) [This is most likely to be a photograph by Frank A. Coxhead. Tell tale signs include the difference between the writing of Burton’s number (5804) on the negative and the actual caption which is more like Coxhead’s, and the apparent partial erasing of a name under the ‘Burton Bros.’ signature. If so, and this seems very likely, it suggests that all Burton Bros. negatives from BB5701 to BB5804 were made by FA Coxhead and printed by Burton Bros. (The original Burton Bros. catalogue indicates that negatives BB5804 to BB5833, of the `South Seas (Henderson)’, so it appears that they were adding this run of other photographer’s negatives to their catalogue, some time around 1897.]

- John B. Turner, 24 February 2002.

This item was written to accompany ten Burton Bros., and one Muir & Moodie photograph, chosen by Dr Paul McNamara for the exhibition ‘Nicholas Twist / Burton Brothers’ at the McNamara Gallery Photography, 190 Wicksteed Street, Wanganui. The exhibition opened on Friday 1 March 2002 and closed a month later. BB5764 above was not exhibited.

Art curators will be able to recover images on daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography that used silver plates, after a team of scientists led by Western University learned how to use light to see through degradation that has occurred over time.

Research published in Scientific Reports – Nature includes two images from the National Gallery of Canada’s photography research unit that show photographs that were taken, perhaps as early as 1850, but were no longer visible because of tarnish and other damage. The retrieved images, one of a woman and the other of a man, were beyond recognition.

“It’s somewhat haunting because they are anonymous and yet it is striking at the same time,” said Madalena Kozachuk, a PhD student in Western’s Department of Chemistry and lead author of the scientific paper. The image is totally unexpected because you don’t see it on the plate at all. It’s hidden behind time,” continues Kozachuk. “But then we see it and we can see such fine details: the eyes, the folds of the clothing, the detailed embroidered patterns of the table cloth.”

The identities of the woman and the man are not known. It’s possible that the plates were produced in the United States, but they could be from Europe.

For the past three years, Kozachuk and an interdisciplinary team of scientists have been exploring how to use synchrotron technology to learn more about chemical changes that damage daguerreotypes.

Invented in 1839, daguerreotype images were created using a highly polished silver-coated copper plate that was sensitive to light when exposed to an iodine vapour. Subjects had to pose without moving for two to three minutes for the image to imprint on the plate, which was then developed as a photograph using a mercury vapour that was heated.

Kozachuk conducts much of her research at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) and previously published results in scientific journals in 2017 and earlier this year. In those articles, the team members identified the chemical composition of the tarnish and how it changed from one point to another on a daguerreotype.

“We compared degradation that looked like corrosion versus a cloudiness from the residue from products used during the rinsing of the photographs during production versus degradation from the cover glass. When you look at these degraded photographs, you don’t see one type of degradation,” said Ian Coulthard, a senior scientist at the CLS and one of Kozachuk’s co-supervisors. He is also a co- author on the research papers.

This preliminary research at the CLS led to today’s paper and the images Kozachuk collected at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source where she was able to analyze the daguerreotypes in their entirety.

Kozachuk used rapid-scanning micro-X-ray fluorescence imaging to analyze the plates, which are about 7.5 cm wide, and identified where mercury was distributed on the plates. With an X-ray beam as small as 10×10 microns (a human scalp hair averages 75 microns across) and at an energy most sensitive to mercury absorption, the scan of each daguerreotype took about eight hours.

“Mercury is the major element that contributes to the imagery captured in these photographs. Even though the surface is tarnished, those image particles remain intact. By looking at the mercury, we can retrieve the image in great detail,” said Tsun-Kong (T.K.) Sham, Western’s Canada Research Chair in Materials and Synchrotron Radiation. He also is a co-author of the research and Kozachuk’s supervisor.

This research will contribute to improving how daguerreotype images are recovered when cleaning is possible and will provide a way to seeing what’s below the tarnish if cleaning is not possible. The prospect of improved conservation methods intrigues John P. McElhone, recently retired as the chief of Conservation and Technical Research branch at the Canadian Photography Institute of National Gallery of Canada. He provided the daguerreotypes from the Institute’s research collection.

“There are a lot of interesting questions that at this stage of our knowledge can only be answered by a sophisticated scientific approach,” said McElhone, another of the co-authors of today’s paper. “A conservator’s first step is to have a full and complete understanding of what the material is and how it is assembled on a microscopic and even nanoscale level. We want to find out how the chemicals are arranged on the surface and that understanding gives us access to theories about how degradation happens and how that degradation can possibly or possibly not be reversed.”

As the first commercialized photographic process, the daguerreotype is thought to be the first “true” visual representation of history. Unlike painters who could use “poetic licence” in their work, the daguerreotype reflected precisely what was photographed.

Thousands and perhaps millions of daguerreotypes were created over 20 years in the 19th century before the process was replaced. The Canadian Photography Institute collection numbers more than 2,700, not including the daguerreotypes in the institute’s research collection.

By improving the process of restoring these centuries-old images, the scientists are contributing to the historical record. What was thought to be lost that showed the life and times of people from the 19th century can now be found.

Image (top right): National Gallery of Canada//Western University.  An image of a woman is recovered from a 19th-century daguerreotype that had tarnished almost beyond recognition. A novel process, developed at Western University and Canadian Light Source Inc, mapped its mercury content and brought the 'ghost' back to life.

(Below): Left:  An image of a man is hidden in this tarnished 19th-century daguerreotype. A novel process, developed at Western University and Canadian Light Source Inc, mapped its mercury content and brought the 'ghost' back to life. Right:  An image of a man is recovered from a 19th-century daguerreotype that had tarnished beyond recognition. A novel process, developed at Western University and Canadian Light Source Inc, mapped its mercury content and brought the 'ghost' back to life.

With thanks to Joan M. Schwartz. 

The landmark British photo-magazine, Picture Post (1938-57), was launched in the era of the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front. Conceived for Hulton Press by Stefan Lorant (a Hungarian editor exiled from Nazi Germany), Picture Post had a transnational staff and a global outlook. It was the leading British example of an international phenomenon – the birth of photojournalism and the photo-essay. The equivalent of Life in the US and Paris-Match in France, the magazine achieved circulation figures of 1.7 million.

Before the establishment of large television audiences, the photographs published in this general readership magazine offered audiences a shared perspective on the UK and its place in the world. Picture Post reported extensively on the Second World War as it unfolded across the globe, as well as documenting both the Cold War and the wars of decolonization after 1945. It helped popularise a progressive attitude to society and politics, shaping the debate about postwar reconstruction and the establishment of the welfare state. Yet, its coverage also reflected sexist and racist ideas of the era, as well as patronizing or critical perspectives on disadvantaged communities and young adults.

To mark the opening of a major exhibition about Picture Post at Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, we will be hosting a one-day public workshop that aims to bring together an international cohort of researchers, curators, archivists and librarians to discuss the development and impact of Picture Post.

We invite proposals for 15-minute papers or panels of 3 to 4 contributors. Please send a title, abstract (250 words) and short biography (150 words) to Tom Allbeson e: allbesont@cardiff.ac.uk.

We encourage contributors to engage with the multifaceted histories relating to the genesis, development and legacy of Picture Post. We are interested in a broad range of methodological approaches to the emergence of photojournalism and the photo-essay format pioneered by mid-century, general readership photo-magazines.

Picture Post (1938-57): Genesis, History & Legacy of a Photo-Magazine
One-day workshop, Cardiff, Friday, 13 June 2025

Deadline for CFP: Friday 14 March 2025
Programme announced: Friday 14 April 2025

Read the full call here (CFP - Picture Post Workshop, June 2025.pdf)

Organisers:
Dr Tom Allbeson, Reader in Media & Photographic History, Cardiff University, allbesont@cardiff.ac.uk
Dr Bronwen Colquhoun, Senior Curator of Photography, Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, bronwen.colquhoun@museumwales.ac.uk 
The event is co-hosted by the Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media History (School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University) and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales. 

BPH 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. 

From 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. 

This long-awaited book from Ken and Jenny Jacobson will be published on 19 March. The inspiration for the book was a remarkable discovery made by the authors at a small country auction in 2006 (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514218/Mystery-photographs-...)  One lightly regarded lot was a distressed mahogany box crammed with long-lost early photographs. These daguerreotypes were later confirmed as once belonging to John Ruskin, the great 19th-century art critic, writer, artist and social reformer. Moreover, the many scenes of Italy, France and Switzerland included the largest collection of daguerreotypes of Venice in the world and probably the earliest surviving photographs of the Alps.

Despite his sometimes vehemently negative sentiments regarding the camera, John Ruskin never stopped using photography. He assiduously collected, commissioned and produced daguerreotypes and paper photographs; he pioneered the use of the collotype and platinotype processes for book illustration. Many of the recovered daguerreotypes reveal surprising compositions and have enabled insights into how Ruskin’s use of them influenced the style of his watercolours.

Core to this book is a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné of the 325 known John Ruskin daguerreotypes. The overwhelming majority of the newly-discovered plates are published here for the first time. There are an additional 276 illustrations in the text and an essay describing the technical procedures used in conserving Ruskin’s photographs. Ten chapters extensively study Ruskin’s photographic endeavours. A chronology, glossary, twenty-page bibliography and comprehensive index complete this handsome hardback book.

Carrying Off the Palaces: John Ruskin's Lost Daguerreotypes
Ken Jacobson & Jenny Jacobson

Publication date: 19 March 2015 – ISBN 9780956301277 – Price: £85
432 pages (including 601 illustrations)

To reserve a copy at the special price of £75, available until 31 March 2015, please contact: Alice Ford-Smith (a.ford-smith@quaritch.com)

Many of us will be familiar with Roger Fenton’s much reproduced photograph of his photographic van, which features Marcus Sparling, his chief assistant the Crimea, sitting on the box seat (see right). The left side of the van also appears in Fenton’s group portrait of cavalry personnel in the image entitled Cooking House, 8^th Hussars. Recently, the van has been discovered in another three of his images, which like Cooking House, 8^th Hussars, were taken in the spring of 1855 in the cavalry camp located in a valley just to the west of the settlement of Kadikoi about a mile north of the British supply port of Balaklava.

Fenton's van can be identified from the positions of its windows, the words ‘Photographic Van’ painted on its sides and from the shape of what seems likely to have been a bent awning-frame over the roof at its front (see right). During a detailed study of Fenton’s Crimean photographs, the van was found in those entitled Military Camp, Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards, looking towards Kadikoi and Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards. The two latter images were taken at the same time and form an overlapping panorama with the van appearing just to the right of centre in Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards, looking towards Kadikoi and on the left in Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards. Both images were shown next to each other as Nos 62 and 63 in Fenton’s Crimean War exhibition in London in 1855. An error has been noticed in the title of Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards, looking towards Kadikoi. The view actually looks west up the valley and not east down the valley in the direction of Kadikoi. Military Camp was not exhibited in London most likely because a section of the plate left of centre was spoilt.

Magnifications of the parts of Military Camp and Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards, looking towards Kadikoi which show the van are reproduced below (see right and lower right respectively).

The location of the van in Military Camp is on the grass divide that separated the camps of regiments of the Light Brigade  from those of most regiments of the Heavy Brigade of Cavalry. The line of three tents belonging to the Light Brigade seen closer to the camera to the left of the van appears in the background of many of Fenton's portraits taken in the cavalry camp. Images made in the vicinity of the van at this location are entitled Brigadier-General Lord George Paget; Lieutenant-General The Honourable Sir James Yorke Scarlett, K.C.B; Cornet Wilkin, 11^th Hussars; Lieutenant King, 4^th Light Dragoons; Captain Portal, 4^th Light Dragoons, equipped for Balaklava; The Pocket Pistol; Chasseurs d’Afrique Officer and Major Morris, C.B., Royal Artillery.

In the Camp of the 5^th Dragoon Guards, looking towards Kadikoi and Camp of the 5th Dragoons, the van is partly obscured. Only the front of the van can be seen protruding from behind a dark coloured hut. In the area between the van and the camera, Fenton is believed to have taken his portraits entitled Major Burton, 5^th Dragoon Guards and Captain Bernand, 5^th Dragoon Guards. Another mistake in an image title was made here as the latter’s name was actual spelt ‘Burnand’.

The 5th Dragoon Guards were in the Heavy Brigade. The huts and tents in the background (see right), which lie across the grass divide that separated the camps of the Heavy and the Light Brigade, belong to the 8^th Hussars. The stretch of grass in view is lower down than the same slope seen behind the van in Military Camp. Fenton took portraits entitled Colonel Clarke, Scots’ Greys, with the Horse wounded at Balaklava; Mr Angel, Postmaster; Captain Seymour, 68^th Light Infantry; Captain Inglis, 5^th Dragoon Guards; Colonel Shewell, Light Cavalry; Colonel Doherty and the Officers of the 13^th Light Dragoons and others a little further up this slope to the left.

More information on Fenton's van can be found in an article entitled ‘Roger Fenton’s Photographic Van’ in The War Correspondent 36 (3), pp. 24-30 (March 2019).

As the 100th anniversary of the Armistice is looming I am asking for help to contact any living relatives of former Daily Mirror photographers who served in WW1 or worked for the paper in the UK during the conflict. 

I am particular interested in Bernard, Thomas and Horace Grant  who had all covered conflicts around the world before the outbreak of the Great War.

Other photographers of interest are David McLellan, Ivor Castle, Ernest Brooks and William Rider Rider official photographer with the Canadians. William after the war joined the Mirror and became our chief picture editor during WWII 

These men served the Paper and their Country by recording the horrors of war only armed with their camera's. I would like to encourage the paper to recognise the service these men gave by telling their stories in their words.

Belgian soldiers resting after being pushed back by the advancing German Army. August 1914 - Bernard Grant 

Registration is open for a 24-hour long conference-a-thon to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) on 8 March 2025. The event will feature the work of over sixty photography scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts in a free, online, global, 24-hour symposium dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to the medium of photography from photography’s announcement in 1839 to contemporary practitioners in 2024. This unique event aims to highlight the diverse and impactful work of women and female-identifying photographers, and those working with photography, across many different cultures and time zones.

The conference-a-thon had been put together by scholars Dr Rose Teanby from the UK and Dr Kris Belden-Adams of University of Mississippi. It features speakers from across the globe including New Zealand and Australia, Asia, Europe and the UK, Canada, North and South America, following IWD as it moves through the Earth's time zones. All time zones enter International Women’s Day, 8 March, from 0800-1100 (UTC).

Split into three sections, the 15-minute papers, plus two longer keynotes, look at different themes and techniques through the lens of women from photography's announcement in 1839, others focus on individual women photographers from the C19th, C20th and C21st centuries, soem take a geographical approach, and other papers provide an opportunity to hear from contemporary women photographers, artists and practitioners. The keynotes are being delivered by South African/UK-based photographer Jillian Edelstein who will discuss her own practice and what photography means to her; and Dr. Katherine Manthorne who will discuss Civil War era New Yorkers. 

All the speakers will be recorded and the rceordings will be made available to registrants only, allowing them to catch up with any talks that they might miss. 

The programme, paper abstracts and speaker biographies are all available to review. 

Take a look at the full programme and register here: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/

Launched on World Stereoscopic Day, this lavishly illustrated book shows the unique skills of a gifted, amateur pioneer of 3D photographer, Reginald Grove. A country doctor in the early twentieth century. Grove was a gifted amateur stereographer.

In addition to being a member of the United Stereoscopic Society, Reginald was elected in 1925 as President of The Stereoscopic Society and served in this role for 23 years until his death in 1948. He was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society. He was a regular exhibitor at their annual exhibitions in the years up to the Second World War and became well known for the quality and composition of his work, particularly of his character studies of country folk, most of whom were his patients. Examples of his photography are now held in the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Peter Flower, is a grandson of Reginald Grove. He read modern history at King’s College, London University and was elected an Associate of Kings College (AKC). He has written a 3-volume biography on Reginald Grove.

Viewing the stereo images with a simple, hand held, modern 3D viewer will bring Reginald’s work to life; the Lite OWL is an inexpensive viewer which can be bought online from the London Stereoscopic Company Ltd: https://shop.londonstereo.com/lsc-owl-viewer.html

The Enduring Photographic Legacy of Reginald Grove. A gift amateur stereoscopic photographer
Peter Flower
Brown Dog Books, 2025
£24.99 (free P+P if ordered direct from the publisher)
See: https://www.browndogbooks.uk/products/the-enduring-photographic-legacy-of-reginald-grove-peter-flower

The  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. 

"Sleeping beauty"

When I am dead and in my grave
And all my bones are rotten.
When this you see remember me Lest I should be forgotten.”

This is the first posting on Art Blart on the phenomenon of postmortem photography for exhibitions on this subject are few and far between.

Any photograph is a “little death” which “refers to the concept of “la petite mort” or “the little death,” a French idiom and euphemism for the momentary loss of consciousness or breath, often associated with orgasm, but also used to describe the act of freezing a moment in time through photography. This concept suggests that photography, by capturing a specific moment, essentially stops time and thus, in a way, creates a small, contained death of that moment.” (Google AI Overview)

All photographs (and especially postmortem photography where the deceased are memorialised through images) can be seen as “memento mori”, a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die,” reminding us that of the impermanence of life – for photographs “capture a moment in time, forever preserving a fleeting instant and highlighting the passage of time and the inevitability of death.” (Google AI Overview)

As Susan Sontag observed, “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.” (On Photography)

Victorians were faced with the vicissitudes of fortune, and death at any age was a common occurrence due to illness with no antibiotics available to treat the many lethal diseases. They became stoic in the face of the impermanence of life, stoic in the face of death and through photography, sought to record into permanence the likenesses of the departed (the beloved), so that they could remember and honour them. Photographs thus became symbols of mortality which encouraged reflection on the meaning and fleetingness of life…

But unlike a photographic self-portrait, where a human looks at their image (in which they are dead) which reminds them about their physical death in the future, an anterior future of which death is the stake (and the prick of discovery of this equivalence)1 - in postmortem photography the little death and the actual death are as one for the anterior future can never be viewed by the subject of the photograph (they are dead), a separation only revived in the heart and mind of another.

Through postmortem photography the deceased live in an interstitial space, forever brought back to life in the eyes of the viewer as we reawaken and reactivate their spirit in the world. I was once here and I am again. Remember me.

Thus the euphemism “sleeping” is appropriate (sleeping beauty awakened once more with a kiss), as the viewer transcends time bringing past dead back into living world – where past, present and future coalesce into single point in time – their death and our death connected through the gaze and the knowledge of our discontinuity. Eons contracted into an eternal moment.2

In this expanded-specific moment in time, through an awareness of our own dis/continuity, what we are doing is talking about something that is remarkable. We are moving towards a language that defines the human condition…

Dr Marcus Bunyan

‘Remember Me. Postmortems from the M. G. Jacob Collection’ and
‘Through Light. The First 20 Years of Photography in the Photo Library Collections’ at Biblioteca Panizzi, Reggio Emilia, Italy

24th April – 5th July, 2025

SEE THE FULL POSTING AT https://wp.me/pn2J2-v6N

1/ Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (La Chambre claire), Section 39, 1980
2/ Marcus Bunyan. "This is not my favourite photograph," part of What makes a great photograph? at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Wednesday 5th December 2012 [Online] Cited 27/06/2025

Many thankx to the Biblioteca Panizzi and Michael G. Jacob for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Main image:

Unknown photographer (American)
A sleeping man (detail)
c. 1846
Daguerreotype
Title given by the collector

Unknown photographer (American)
A sleeping girl
c. 1846
Daguerreotype
Title given by the collector

The 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 

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

Twiggy, press call, London, 1960

I absolutely adore these Peter Mitchell 1970s colour photographs made from Hasselblad two and a quarter square negatives. There is something so …. well, British about them.

The wit, the humour (pigeons sitting outside the racing pigeon shop), the stiff upper lip, the carry on regardless, the working class pantomime of life and death – the public commission flats where people formed caring communities that were destroyed through redevelopment – the integrity of an existence that has largely come and gone pictured with warmth and empathy.

The people, growing up during the Second World War the privations of which lasted well into the 1950s, now during a period of change in the 1970s standing behind the fish ‘n chip counter wondering where their lives had gone and how they had got there, but still with that British sense of spirit and grit.

Peter Mitchell, “a chaser of a disappearing world” pictures these “goners” – buildings, people (and a way of life) near the end of existence soon to be demolished – in an almost painterly manner.

His use of colour, perspective and form is very fine. Witness, the flow of the photograph ‘Edna, George & Pat, H.E. Greenwood Butcher, Waterloo Road, Leeds, 1977’ (below) as, in the shot, the camera allows the eye to pan from one vanishing point at left to the other at right, with the patchwork of colours and panels of the building creating an almost Mondrian-like texture – blue to black to beige to white sign to pale blue to yellow to green to pale green, surmounted by the dark blue of the threatening sky highlighting the jagged form of the building. Superb.

My favourite photograph in the posting is The Chair, Priestly House Interior, Quarry Hill Flats, Leeds, 1978 (below). This photograph is from what I believe to be Mitchell’s strongest body of work on the demolition of the Quarry Hill Flats in Leeds. ‘One of those doomed deserts was Quarry Hill flats, irresistible both as a symbol of the fate of all architecture and of the great clock in the heavens signalling everybody’s life span’ (Peter Mitchell quoted on The Guardian website)

A drab, beige, wallpapered room with double aspect window, an art deco chair with mirror reflecting nothing, an electrical socket, a ceiling light sprouting malignant plant and trapped in the window panes, little birds fluttering against their capture, trapped forever inside an abandoned flat, this abandoned life.

Yes, there’s a sense of nostalgia and melancholy in these photographs but their restrained, formal, representation of life does much to ennoble the people and buildings contained within them which, through osmosis, ennobles the mind of the viewer.

As I myself sense the great clock in the heavens signalling my life span, the pleasure and comfort I get from feeling the spirit of Peter Mitchell’s photographs is immeasurable.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 Main Image: 

Peter Mitchell (British, b. 1943)
Edna, George & Pat, H.E. Greenwood Butcher, Waterloo Road, Leeds, 1977
1977
C-print
© Peter Mitchell

Peter Mitchell (British, b. 1943)
The Chair, Priestly House Interior, Quarry Hill Flats, Leeds, 1978
1978
C-print
© Peter Mitchell

SEE THE FULL POSTING AT https://artblart.com/2025/06/13/exhibition-peter-mitchell-nothing-lasts-forever-at-the-photographers-gallery-london/

The world's two oldest photographic periodicals have announced their digitisation. The Royal Photographic Society's Photographic Journal, which dates from March 1853 and the British Journal of Photography which dates from January 1854 will be made available in digital forms to researchers and the public. Both publications have been published continuously since their first issue.

BPH understands that The RPS has already completed digitisation of its Journal from 1853 to 2012 and that it will be made available in a searchable form with the launch of The Society's new website in January 2014. The project has been funded through the generosity of a RPS member. The BJP has announced its own digitisation in its January 2014 issue (BJP, January 2014, p. 98) which stated that 'throughout 2014 and beyond, we will be digitising BJP's entire archive'. Its intent 'is to make [it] available to our readers, as well as historians, professors and researchers worldwide'. It is not reported whether access will be charged for. The RPS will make access available to the public without charge.

Commenting on the RPS digitisation to BPH The Society stated: "During a scoping exercise it became apparent how rare runs of the RPS Journal were and digitisation would both preserve the content and make it far more widely available to everyone from photographic historians, to family historians. The Royal Photographic Society was at the forefront of developments in the artistic and scientific development of photography and these were reported and discussed in the Journal. For much of its history the RPS Journal was read and had an influence far beyond its membership. The Society has always been an important body within British and international photography and the Society’s Journal is unique in its longevity". The ability to access the Journal which has never been previously made available in this way will allow The Society's role, that of its members and wider British photography over 160+ years to be studied as never before.

BPH will carry more on both projects as information becomes available. To contact The RPS about it's digitisation email: director@rps.org

With thanks to Bob Gates ARPS. 

The 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.

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

A rare - probably unique - British travelling photography studio, previously used by the photographers John and  Walter Pouncy of Dorchester from the 1860s is to be offered at auction on 4 and 5 August 2022. It is estimated at £8,000-12,000.

The studio was made for the Pouncy firm and travelled the county. Pulled by horses it offered a studio with glass roof, small waiting area, entry and exit doors and steps, and darkroom. It still retains original fittings for holding background rolls.

The studio is believed to be the only British example in existence. After it was sold by the Pouncy firm it was remained in use by a succession of photographers and was located in Swanage for many years. The current owner, also a photographer, purchased the studio and hoped to find a permanent home for it, while allowing it to travel and retaining its original and to continue to function as a studio. It is complete but needs some restoration and conservation work.  The studio is well documented with the original plans surviving.

John Pouncy is best known for his work uniting lithography with photography met which culminated in his publication in Dorsetshire Photographically Illustrated (1857) – the first English publication ever to feature photo lithographic illustrations.

Michael Pritchard writes: "I had the privilege of seeing the studio in the summer of 2021 and meeting its current owner. It is a remarkable survival. Entering felt like stepping back 130 years. Although the current owner's hope of restoring and retaining it as a travelling studio were not able to be realised, it has been lovingly looked after. It deserves a new home where it can be preserved and shown, ideally in Dorset, and be used as a studio, telling its remarkable story and that of the Pouncy business and nineteenth century photography."  

The auction is being held at Charterhouse, The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne Dorset although the studio remains onsite at Wareham from where it will need to be collected. Pending the oublication of the catalogue museums and prospective buyers should contact Charterhouse Auctions at The Long Street Salerooms, Sherborne. T:  01935 812277 or e:  info@charterhouse-auction.com 

More information on the Pouncy studio can be seen here: https://www.opcdorset.org/fordingtondorset/Files2/JohnPouncy1818-1894.html

See: https://charterhouse-antiques.com/as-pretty-as-a-picture and a short film here: https://youtu.be/qX8nHuxHmts

The lot can be seen here: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/charterhouse-auctions/catalogue-id-cav10357/lot-71d1acab-5e68-4010-87f2-aee0011a89e4

Main photographs: © Michael Pritchard, 2021.  Historic photograph courtesy of Charterhouse Auctions

After more than 150 years the British Journal of Photography is to cease weekly publication and will return to being a monthly. Established in 1854 as a monthly, the BJ went fortnightly in 1857 and then weekly in 1864. The 3 March 2010 issue will be the first of a redsigned monthly magazine. The move leaves Amateur Photographer (established 1884) as the only weekly British photographic magazine.

Changing market conditions and the growth of the internet have precipitated the change. The BJ has a strong web and blog presence but for the last few years its influence within photography has declined as it has focused more on press, fashion and the image, moving away from a more general concern with photography. It's heyday was probably during the 1980s when a range of contributors under the editorship of Geoffrey Crawley kept readers informed about everything from holography and history, to interviews with business personalities as well as photographers. It's worth quoting one of the aims of the journal from issue no. 1 of January 14 1854: 'The admirers of the art naturally desire to have more particulars, and the practical operators more full and precise records of the suggestions, experiments, and successes in various parts of the world' by the end of 1854 it was able to be claim that it held 'the position of principal Provincial organ of Photography'.

The change is the end of an era for the British photographic press. For most of its history the BJP was always the most important journal of photography reporting news and features across the full spectrum of photography. It is sad that has now ended.

Read nore here: http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=873499