Blogs

Heard today the sad news that old friend, photographer and camera maker, John Nesbitt has died suddenly. He made his superb wooden cameras in Mid Wales and ran large format workshops with Pete Davis before moving to France in the 1990s. His wife,. Michelle was French, so the relocation to Vendee was probably inevitable. He conducted one of our last workshops at The Photographers Place before leaving Wales. Some may remember his wonderful landscape work from 'Image & Exploration' exhibition at The Photographers Gallery in 1985.

The Guardian published an obituary here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/feb/15/john-nesbitt-obituary

Left: the Nesbitt camera from 1989. 

Photographs by renowned British photographer John Bulmer capturing the fortitude of Hartlepool people during the hardship of the 1960s will receive their first-ever showing in the town in a major exhibition of his work.

Born in 1938, John Bulmer is best-known for his pioneering colour photojournalism in the Sixties, when he worked for, among others, the Sunday Times magazine and famously shared the cover of the very first issue of the ‘Colour Section’ with David Bailey. Over the next ten years, he would travel to over 100 countries around the world to document historic moments ranging from Queen Elizabeth II visiting Ethiopia to life under the regime in North Korea. In 1960 he had been assigned by Town magazine to document the bleak industrial centre of Nelson, Lancashire, and contrast it with the up-and-coming town of Watford, and his talent in capturing the gentleness and humanity in an otherwise grim situation elevated his images beyond any typical reportage-style photography.

He continued to return to the north of England, and in the winter of 1962-63 he visited Hartlepool for Image magazine, taking more than 40 photographs. It is those images which will feature in the new exhibition called Northern Light which opens in Hartlepool Art Gallery on Saturday, 27 January and runs until Saturday, 4 May.

At the time of Bulmer’s visit, during a bitterly cold winter, Hartlepool was suffering from mass unemployment. Gray’s shipyard had just closed with the loss of 1,400 jobs and the future looked bleak. His images record the town before it changed, but also the daily life of men and women who were out of work and gathering sea coal from the beach, waiting in the dole queue or visiting the labour exchange. The article the photographs were used for tried to make the case for more targeted Government intervention in places like Hartlepool where poor infrastructure and low investment meant businesses were more likely to set up in the already prosperous south-east. Despite the hardships people were facing, Bulmer’s photographs convey a sense of resilience, humour and even optimism, and although the landscape appears bleak and hard he remembers the warmth of the people he met.

By the end of the 1960s the landscape of the town had changed immeasurably as a result of slum clearance and the closure of shipyards and steelworks, and new employers moved in and grew in place of the old.

John Bulmer said: "It’s sixty years since the ‘big freeze’, when Hartlepool had a record cold winter which corresponded to having the highest unemployment in the country. The shipyard had just closed, and I made my first trip to Hartlepool. The faces of the people showed an extraordinary fortitude, which is a reminder sixty years on of the strength of the people of the North East. It is wonderful to show this now in a new Hartlepool!”

Complementing the exhibition will be images by photography students from the Northern School of Art, capturing what Hartlepool means to them, and reminiscences of the 1960s contributed by local people.

Councillor Bob Buchan, Chair of Hartlepool Borough Council’s Adult and Community-Based Services Committee, said: “We are privileged and delighted to be able to showcase this exceptional series of photographs by John Bulmer for the first time in Hartlepool. The people of Hartlepool are renowned for both their strength and their friendliness and these images capture both. The photographs provide a remarkable and very poignant snapshot in time of a town which in the intervening years has changed massively and is currently undergoing further major regeneration.”

John Bulmer: Northern Light
Hartlepool Art Gallery
27 January - 4 May 2024.
Hartlepool Art Gallery is located in Church Square and is open Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am – 5pm
Entry is free.
See: https://www.culturehartlepool.com/art-gallery/

Images: Hartlepool 1963, John Bulmer. © Popperfoto

Following its World Premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest, EMU Pictures is proud to present MY FRIEND LANRE, a new feature documentary from filmmaker Leo Regan. It will open in select
UK cinemas on 29 January, including a special screening and director Q&A at Curzon Soho, before being available to watch on demand via Curzon Home Cinema from 2 February.

In MY FRIEND LANRE, acclaimed filmmaker Leo Regan draws on decades of footage to create a moving portrait of the complex life of friend and photographer, Lanre Fehintola. Regan first documented his friend’s life in the 1998 film DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY. Fehintola became hooked on heroin while working on a book about a group of drug addicts in Bradford. Regan caught up with him again in the 2001 film COLD TURKEY, as Fehintola attempted to break his addiction by locking himself in his flat without medication. MY FRIEND LANRE jumps two decades, to a moment when Fehintola has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Drawing from over 25 years of footage, the filmmaker presents an intensely intimate portrayal of his friend during his final months and weeks, as Lanre faces his ultimate adventure, his own terminal illness.

Moving, funny, devastating and bravely personal, MY FRIEND LANRE is a living testament to one person’s incredible life and work; a celebration of living and dying that becomes a hymn to the soul.

My Friend Lanre was supported by the BFI Doc Society Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.

My Friend Lanre
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/836503455
https://www.instagram.com/myfriendlanre
https://www.twitter.com/myfriendlanre
There will be a special screening with Director Q&A at Curzon Soho on 29 January at 6.20pm. Tickets and more information available here
Following its cinematic release, it will be available to watch on Curzon Home Cinema from 2 February to 31 March 2024..

Image © Lanre Fehintola

Stephen Herbert makes a rare guest appearence in a CBS video posted on my site today. Stephen comments on the 'Le Prince incident'. 

See Here : https://www.flickr.com/photos/david-kastoryano/53470564237/

TownsWeb Archiving has just issued a blog about a digitisation project of 1115 glass plates it was involved in for Sherborne Museum. The plates had been gifted to the museum by a local resident with around 300 believed to be the works of Adam Gosney. Gosney was an influential figure within the town during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and left his mark on Sherborne as an established and skilled photographer. 

The glass plates shine a light on an unprecedented and poignant visual narrative of the servicemen and women, including Red Cross nurses and wounded soldiers from the first wolrd war. Further glass plate negatives have unearthed glimpses into the everyday life of Sherborne residents, showcasing Sherborne's iconic buildings, past carnival festivals, and the traditional idyllic countryside surrounding the town.

Read the blog here.

This well loved Camera Collectors' and Users'  Fair will soon be taking place and this year we are in a new Central London venue The Royal National Hotel near Russell Square on the 19th May 2024. Organised by The Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain there will be up to 100 sales tables selling user and collectable cameras, consumables, lenses, literature and images. It is not a trade show for new equipment.  If you fancy a table to clear that build up of photographic equipment phone 01920 821 831. Early buyers tickets can be obtained from the same phone number.

The Royal National Hotel, 38-51 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0DG

Public entry is from 10am-4.00pm and admission is £8 on the door from 10am to 12 noon and £5 noon to the close, for PCCGB members the entry is free.

Any late updates, the flyer and booking form can be found at https://www.facebook.com/photographicafair

Thanks

Nigel 

A fascinating look at the history of London's iconic Vogue House, from the swinging sixties to the present day, Inside Vogue House is a behind-the-scenes guide by ex-Tatler art director Grant Scott to the world-famous magazines produced there and the stories of the people who made them great. The book also documents the famous Vogue Photographic Studios and the photographers and models who worked there.

 For sixty years, Vogue House has been a building where the great and the good started (or ended) their careers. A place where contemporary artists rubbed shoulders with royalty, and culture was shaped. From the mailroom to the boardroom, work experience to well-known names and everyone in between, this captivating book lays bare the creativity and chaos of popular magazine publishing through the decades.

After fifteen years as an art director for books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Dr Grant Scott began to work solely as a photographer for a number of commercial and editorial clients in 2000. Today he is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes, and a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC radio contributor and the author of several books.

His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 and he is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts.

Published by Orphans Publishing in April 2024 it is now on pre-sale.

For the first time in the history of the London Blue Plaques Scheme, which has been running for more than 150 years, more plaques will be unveiled to individual women in 2024 than in any previous year, English Heritage has announced. The charity launched its ‘plaques for women’ campaign in 2016, encouraging the public to nominate more remarkable female figures from the past and this initiative is now bearing fruit on the streets and buildings of London. The pioneering women who will be celebrated by English Heritage with blue plaques in 2024 include Christina Broom, who is believed to have been Britain’s first female press photographer; Diana Beck, celebrated as the UK’s first female neurosurgeon; the jazz singer, Adelaide Hall, one of the first Black women to secure a long-term contract at the BBC; and Irene Barclay, the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor. English Heritage will be announcing further blue plaque recipients throughout the year.

Dr Susan Skedd, Blue Plaques Historian at English Heritage, said: “Every year, English Heritage’s blue plaques celebrate the very best of human endeavour. This year we are particularly pleased to be able to honour so many pioneering women who not only became female ‘firsts’ but who were also at the very pinnacle of achievement in their chosen fields"

Christina Broom (1862–1939): Despite only making her first experiments in photography at the age of 40, with a borrowed quarter-plate box camera, Christina Broom went on to become “the most prolific female publisher of picture postcards in Britain” and is widely considered to be the first female press photographer. She was a prominent suffrage photographer; the only woman photographer allowed into London barracks; and the only photographer permitted regularly into the Royal Mews. From 1916 onwards her pictures of the armed forces and royalty were published regularly, with the credit ‘Mrs Albert Broom’. Her plaque will be the very first blue plaque in Munster Road, Fulham where she lived and worked for 26 years.

At the time of writing English Heritage does not have a date confirmed for the unveiling. 

See: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/pr-record-number-of-women-to-be-celebrated-with-english-heritage-blue-plaques-in-2024/

With thanks to Roger Mead for advising of this announcement. 

More than 160 rare vintage prints will be exhibited as part of Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In, as the two photographers – who worked 100 years apart – are presented in parallel for the first time. The exhibition will present a thematic exploration of the photographic work produced throughout both artists’ entire careers, including their best known and less familiar work. Artist’s books by Francesca Woodman, which have never been exhibited in the UK, will be on display.

From 21 March to 16 June 2024, the National Portrait Gallery will display a major retrospective exhibition of work by two of the most significant photographers in the history of the medium – Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981). Bringing their work together for the first time in an exhibition of this scale, it will showcase more than 160 rare vintage prints from galleries, museums and private collections, including 96 works by Woodman and 71 by Cameron, spanning the entire careers of both photographers – who worked 100 years apart.

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In will offer a new way to consider these two artists, by moving away from the biographical emphasis that has often been the focus of how their work is understood. The exhibition challenges this approach in its insistence on experiencing the physical print, taking the picture making of Woodman and Cameron as a starting point for consideration of their work. While neither artist aimed for technical perfection in their printing, for each it was a dynamic and essential aspect of their creative process used to explore and extend the possibilities of photographic image making.

After an extensive curatorial research period, works by Julia Margaret Cameron have been selected for loan from major museums internationally including the Getty, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum, New York City; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and the National Portrait Gallery’s own Collection. Prints made by Francesca Woodman in her lifetime, nearly 20 of which have not been previously published or exhibited, have been loaned primarily from the Woodman Family Foundation in New York, who have collaborated closely on the making of the exhibition and accompanying publication, with further loans from Tate and the Rhode Island School of Design

The exhibition’s title, Portraits to Dream In, suggests that when seen side by side, both artists conjure a dream state within their work as part of their shared exploration of appearance, identity, the muse, gender and archetypes. The title of the exhibition comes from an observation made by Woodman that photographs could be ‘places for the viewer to dream in’. Both Woodman and Cameron produced work that was deeply rooted in mythology and storytelling and each made portraits of those close to them to represent these narratives. Further, both women explored portraiture beyond its ability to record appearance.

Following a thematic approach, visitors will experience the work of Woodman and Cameron moving forward and back in time between the nineteenth and twentieth century; and also within the relatively short span of years that each artist was active - neither worked for more than fifteen years. Themes on display will comprise: Declaring intentions & claiming space; Angels & Otherworldly Beings; Mythology; Doubling; Nature & femininity; Caryatids & the classical form; Men and Models & Muses.

Key works on display will include the first forays both artists made into the medium of photography, as they began to portray their unique perspectives and carve out distinctive styles. These include Cameron’s self-declared ‘first success’, a portrait of Annie Wilhemina Philpot in 1864, accompanied by Woodman’s ‘Self-portrait at thirteen’, taken during a summer holiday in Antella, Italy in 1972. Photographs depicting angelic and otherworldly figures will be presented in a dense constellation with pieces from Woodman’s evocative and often abstracted Angel series contrasted against Cameron’s more direct representations of cherubic beings and winged cupids. Not to be missed images by Francesca Woodman will include Polka Dots #5 and House #3 both made in 1976, seen alongside ethereal portraits of the British actress Ellen Terry made by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1864.

Other defining works by Woodman include Caryatid pieces from a major photographic project developed in the last year of her life in which she experimented with large scale diazotype prints, including depictions of herself and other models as caryatids – carved female figures which take the place of columns in ancient Greek temples. The exhibition will be the first to draw significant attention to Woodman’s portraits of men as well as exploring the importance of her ongoing photographs of friends. Providing additional insight into her practice, contact sheets and examples of Woodman’s artist’s books will be on display, exhibited in the UK for the first timThe exhibition will include many of Julia Margaret Cameron’s most famous and much loved portraits, including those of her niece and favorite model, Julia Jackson, who would later be the mother to Bloomsbury artists Virginia Wolf and Vanessa Bell; her striking depiction of Alice Liddell as the goddess Pomona; her portraits of prominent Victorian men including John Frederick William Herschel who she captured as he posed dramatically in The Astronomer (1867); and her frequent muses, May Prinsep and Mary Ann Hillier.

Magdalene Keaney, Curator, said: “Both Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron were utterly committed to the practice of photography and to their practice as artists without reservation. They both worked incredibly hard at times when women were marginal in the history of art and photography. I hope that visitors relish the physical experience of seeing such a large collection of prints that each artist made. They are beautiful, subtle, intricate, and beguiling. Then of course to come away knowing more about these two women artists who have defined the history of photography. I hope it poses questions about how we might think in new ways about relationships between 19th and 20th century photographic practice and what a portrait is and can be.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In by curator Magdalene Keaney, which will include essays and contributions from the collections curator of the Woodman Family Foundation, Katarina Jerinic, and leading photography historian, Helen Ennis.

Portraits to Dream In: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron
21 March – 16 June 2024
National Portrait Gallery, London
Tickets £8.50 with concessions from £4.25
Talks and events based on the ehibition are also available
See: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/francesca-woodman-and-julia-margaret-cameron-portraits-to-dream-in

Image: L-R: The Dream (Mary Hillier) by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1869. Wilson Centre for Photography; Untitled, 1979 by Francesca Woodman. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London; Annie (My very first success in Photography), by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Self Portrait at Thirteen by Francesca Woodman, 1972. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation © Woodman Family Foundation / DACS, London. 

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.

The innovative and diverse work created during this period spanned documentary and conceptual practices, including the experimental use of photomontage, self-portraiture, staged imagery, and photography in dialogue with other media. Shining Lights showcases the breadth of this work, illuminated by ephemera and archival material, historical essays, and roundtable conversations. First-hand experiences and critical reflections are provided by new writings by pioneers of the period, including Pratibha Parmar, Roshini Kempadoo, and Symrath Patti, alongside a foreword by Sonia Boyce. Taous Dahmani’s concluding essay provides a summary of key issues from an art historical perspective.

Amongst the fifty-seven photographers included are Maxine Walker, Ingrid Pollard, Claudette Holmes, Mohini Chandra, Carole Wright, Sutapa Biswas, Maud Sulter, Brenda Agard, Anita McKenzie, Mitra Tabrizian, Poulomi Desai, Virginia Nimarkoh, Nudrat Afza, Merle Van den Bosch, and Eileen Perrier.

Edited and researched by Joy Gregory, one of the period’s most influential photographic artists, alongside art historian Taous Dahmani, Shining Lights is an unparalleled contribution to the study of photography and the experiences of Black women artists.

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain
Joy Gregory (editor)
Autograph and Mack Books
£60.00
Order: https://autograph.org.uk/shop/shining-lights-black-women-photographers-in-1980s-90s-britain-1168

Photo London has announced that it will be celebrating French photography with an exhibition The Magic Art of French Calotype. Paper Negative Photography 1846–1860, curated by Robert Hershkowitz. Its title references Francis Wey’s pronouncement in 1851 that “Photography has attained a magic feeling that neither painting nor drawing could have reached.”

Hershkowitz explains the appeal of these early images: “When the pursuit and acquisition of fine photographs became the common passion of a very mixed group of art savvy individuals and American and Canadian museums in the late 1970s, early French paper negative photography was considered the most desirable, the images the most intriguing intellectually, the prints the most delectable. This exhibition introduces this body of photographic work to a British audience; it is almost non-existent in British institutions with perhaps a few dozen examples buried among hundreds of thousands of British ones, and these never exhibited.”

The exhibition will be on show duering Photo London which will show at Somerset House, London from 16-19 May 2024

Details: https://photolondon.org/photo-london-2024-details-revealed/

Image: Charles Nègre, Street Vendor, c.1852. Courtesy of Robert Hershkowitz Ltd. 

The work presented here is the result of a collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and Disruptive Print, then part of the Centre for Print Research at the University of the West of England. The National Portrait Gallery approached us when they were looking for someone who could help them to print colour images taken by Madame Yevonde in the 30s of the last century. Madame Yevonde was the most famous user of the VIVEX process, the photomechanical reproduction process for colour photographs before the second world war in the UK. The VIVEX process was a commercial method and therefore only ill documented. What we know is that the images were taken through red, green, and blue filters on black and white film and then printed by layering pigmented gelatine layers in cyan, magenta, and yellow in top of each other, but how exactly is lost. We will discuss the registration of the three negatives and possible printing methods.

Designed by the Société française de photographie and supported by the Ministry of Culture (Department of Photography/Delegation for Visual Arts/Directorate General for Artistic Creation), ICONOS PHOTO is a portal dedicated to research in French photographic collections and archives. Accessible to all free of charge, ICONOS PHOTO is designed as a work and exchange tool for researchers, photography professionals, curators, independent curators, restorers, students and any public interested in the medium. Through this sharing of data and knowledge, it aims to unite a community around the question of photographic heritage, to offer a showcase to the collections, and to stimulate research into the history of photography.

It was opened in December 2023 and the ICONOS PHOTO directory is a search engine for photographic collections, funds and archives preserved by French heritage institutions. Designed as a referral tool, its objective is to share data in a single tool that allows users to find their way through the funds and be directed to the right institutions for their research. It cross-references information generated by institutions in the form of descriptions of their funds.

The project gives access to the collections of the Société française de photographie, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, and Archives départementales de la Mayenne.

Details: https://iconos-photo.fr/

Spanning eight weeks, this course introduces and explores key themes concerning the photographic sector now. From topics such as curatorial strategies, working with young people and the impact of digital, each session goes behind the scenes at The Photographers’ Gallery to consider what it means to present and work with photography in the 21st century.

Together we will think through the opportunities and obstacles of engaging with diverse photographic practices to push the boundaries of how we interpret the image. Taking place weekly at the Gallery, sessions include a blend of lectures, visits to the Gallery, group discussions and presentations. Each week will feature guest contributions from TPG staff, photographers and artists.

Inside Out: The Workings of a Photographic Gallery (2024)
In person, 1 February-28 March 2024
London: The photographers' Gallery
Led by Dr Sara Dominici
Book: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/inside-out-workings-photographic-gallery-2024

There have always been unacknowledged or under-acknowledged forces that operate around photography. Some of them are human, like family members, camera assistants, darkroom personnel, curators, editors and the like. Others are non-human, like algorithms, chemicals, equipment of various sorts and transportation. The explosion of AI has pushed the field of photography studies to once again consider the practices surrounding photographs, but has at the same time neglected existing assistants like the skills force, the editors, image technicians, programmers, curators, and historians that enable and narrate photographic making. In the face of so many assistants, the primacy of the photographer as a central person through whom we understand photography recedes.

For this conference we would like speakers to consider the role and agency of human and non-human assistants in the making, collecting and dissemination of photographs. We look for papers from diverse methodological perspectives that not only enlarge the notion of the photographic assistant, but also consider the role of those assistants (or that assistance) in the formation of photographic practices, images, archives and histories.

We welcome 15-minute papers on topics that address themes like (but not limited to):

• Technological, physical or chemical photographic assistants
• Catalysts like War and Conflict, the Environment, and Race as assistants to photographic practices
• Non-human assistants and AI
• Senses as photographic assistants
• History of assistants and their changing roles
• Agency of the Assistant
• Issues of authorship
• Practice as a collaborative endeavour
• Supply lines and transportation

Please send paper proposals to phrc@dmu.ac.uk by Friday the 2^nd of February 2024, embedding in the document your name, contact details, up to 5 keywords and institutional affiliation (when applicable).

Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University
Conference: 17-18 June 2024
Hybrid event, Online and at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Details: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2024/

This new exhibition will explore the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day.

Examining the relationship between the sitter and the photographer, as well as the change in status of both the photographer and photography itself, the display will feature over 150 stunning portraits of the Royal Family.

More details to follow when available

Royal Portraits: A century of photography
17 May-6 October 2024
London: King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
See: https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/royal-portraits-a-century-of-photography/the-queens-gallery-buckingham

Sometime off, but worth making a diary note for is this forthcoming exhibition from Tate Britain. Travel back to the 1980s in the UK through an exhibition spotlighting photographers, collectives, and publications that responded boldly to the tumultuous Thatcher era. Amidst race uprisings, miners' strikes, section 28, the AIDS pandemic, and gentrification, witness the power of photography as a catalyst for social change and artistic experimentation.

The images capture the essence of protest and societal shifts, amplifying voices of marginalised communities such as the Black arts movement, queer experience, South Asian diaspora, and women. Delve into the influential photography journals like Ten 8 and Cameraworks and explore the impact of collectives like Autograph ABP, Half Moon Photography Workshop, and Hackney Flashers.

Photographing 80s Britain: A Critical Decade
Tate Britain, London
21 November 2024 - 5 May 2025
https://www.artfund.org/explore/exhibitions/2024/11/21/photographing-80s-britain

Image:  © Paul Trevor, Outside police station, Bethnal Green Road, London E2, 17 July 1978