The National Media Museum in Bradford has shown an increase of 4 per cent in visitors. The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions survey showed 745,857 people visited the museum in 2008 compared with 2007. The museum, which has had free admission since it first opened in 1983, has seen a gradual increase in visitor numbers over recent years as new galleries have been opened and existing ones refurbished, reversing a previous decline.
A remarkable collection of autochromes, photographs and diascopes by Mary Olive Edis Balsworth (1876-1955), whose self-portrait is shown right, is being offered at auction on 5 March 2009. All of the items have been at Edis's studio and house in Sheringham since her death under the ownership of Cyril Nunn and, until now, rarely seen. The autochomes include a number of rare Canadian scenes.
Nunn died last year and recently Olive's collection of Sheringham and Norfolk photographs and autochromes was acquired by Cromer Museum where they are due to be put on public display later this year. Many of these images were reproduced in Face to Face – Sheringham, Norfolk: The Remarkable Story of Photographers Olive Edis & Cyril Nunn, by Alan Childs, Cyril Nunn and Ashley Sampson (Halsgrove, 2005). A few of the Canadian images are reproduced in black and white and some were reproduced in colour in the e-newsletter for The Photographic Historical Society of Canada (March 2006).
The same auction features material from the estate of Robert 'Bob' Lassam, the former curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock. The material from Lassam's estate includes photographs from the Kodak exhibitions he helped arrange as well as cameras.
The catalogue is available on line at http://www.dominic-winter.co.uk/. The sale takes place at 5 March at 11am.
Edis was born in 1876, her father was Dr. Arthur Wellesley Edis, professor of gynaecology at UCH and her mother was Mary Edis (neé Murray, the sister of John Murray.) They lived at 22 Wimpole Street, London, where Arthur had a medical practice. Olive had twin sisters, four years younger than her, Katherine and Emmeline. Olive's great uncle was Dr. John Murray (1809-1898), a surgeon with the Bengal Medical Service. He photographed Mughal architecture in India, making some 600 images, often 18 x 14 inches (salted paper prints from paper & collodion negs.), many of which are now in the BL collection. He retired to Sheringham in 1871. His descendents sold their collection at Sotheby's in 1999.
Olive photographed John Murray's daughter Caroline (said to have been her first photograph) in 1900. In 1893, when Olive was 17, her father died and in 1905, Olive & Katherine, as partners, opened a studio at 39 Church Street, Sheringham. Olive used only natural light when making photographs. Her printing, first done by her sister Katherine and later by Lilian Page, included platinotype, sepia platinotype or autochrome. In 1910, Olive's photographs were regularly appearing in the Illustrated London News and in 1912 she started making autochrome images. She became an RPS member in 1913 and in that year won a medal for her autochrome portraits in the RPS exhibition. In 1914 she was elected FRPS and designed an autochrome viewer, known as a diascope, which she patented (GB17132).
Although her income came from her work as a studio portraitist in March 1919 she was commissioned by the National (later Imperial) War Museum to photograph the work of British women in France & Flanders and, at the same time, made deeply moving images of the desolation of war. In 1920 she was asked to undertake a commission to make advertising photographs for the Canadian Pacific Railway and did the work during July to November. The plates were exhibited at the 1921 Toronto Fair, and at the Canadian Pacific Offices in London in 1922, but apart from a few 'seconds' offered here there is no trace of the main body of work. These are probably the earliest known colour images of Western Canada.
In 1928, when she was 52, Olive married Edwin Galsworthy a solicitor and director of Barclays bank. This family connection opened doors into society and she photographed many people of national importance. Olive and Edwin had a residence in 32 Ladbroke Square, London and in Sheringham they moved to a new house in South Street. Olive extended her business to include the printing and sale of real photographic postcards. In 1951 Olive exhibited photographs of fisherman at Sheringham. She died in 1955.
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Since the practical invention of photography in the 1840s, Scotland has been at the centre of the history and development of the medium. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery – which houses the Scottish National Photography Collection – and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, hold outstanding collections of photographic art spanning three centuries. Included are figures such as D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Annan, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Annie Leibovitz and Andreas Gursky. This book offers a detailed guide to the collections as well as an accessible and informative introduction to photography. This revised edition includes recently commissioned photography and significant new acquisitions, with works by Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe.
The book will be available in March 2009, 224pp, 200 colour illustrations, £9.99.
National Galleries of Scotland
ISBN: 978 1 906270 20 9
The authors:
Dr Sara Stevenson is Chief Curator of the Scottish National Photography Collection, National Galleries of Scotland
Dr Duncan Forbes is Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland. A nineteenth-century specialist, he also writes on aspects of contemporary photography, with recent articles and reviews appearing in the Oxford Art Journal, History Workshop Journal, Portfolio, History of Photography and Third Text. Recent curatorial projects include Joanna Kane’s ‘Somnambulists’ and Dieter Appelt’s ‘Forth Bridge – Cinema/Metric Space’. He is currently finishing a book on the early Scottish photographer John Muir Wood, titled Holding the World Together Within.
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This is the title of a new publication from the long-established photography dealer and collector Robert Hershkowitz. 2008. The book begins with an introducution to Hershkowitz's relationship with British calotype and salt print photography before illustrating full-page fifty photographs. These range from Roger Fenton, Thomas Sutton, Calvert Jones, Linneaus Tripe, Thomas Keith, Clifford and others. The illustrations do the original prints full justice.
The book, text plus fifty colour plates plus text is available from Robert Hershkowitz Ltd, Cockhaise, Monteswood Lane, Lindfield, Sussex RH16 2QP, England; Phone: +44 (0) 1444 482240; email: prhfoto@btconnect.com; ISBN No. 978-0-9560594-0-6.
Working with elementary school students in Detroit, Michigan as a volunteer for the past 5 years has been and still is an exciting way for me to share my research on Anna Atkins and her book , Photographs of British Algae; Cyanotype Impressions. My middle school students in Birmingham, Michigan have marveled at the images of their photograms as they appeared and then washed them in the school bathroom. I have been working on a biography about Anna Atkins to share with young adults. Larry Schaaf's writing has been so inspiring. It is exciting to read in his 1992 Out of the Shadow's Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography and The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot about her ties with Sir John Herschel and W. H. F. Talbot. Mike Ware's work on cyanotypes is so informative and helpful. Thank you so much to both! I am trying to find out more about Anna Atkins' early life or any photographs of her home or the surroundings where she worked and grew up. I would greatly appreciate any direction the group might offer to further my independent research. Thank you! Judith
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Birmingham Central Library has been awarded £11,750 by The Art Fund, the UK’s leading independent art charity, to purchase prints by two of the leading British documentary photographers of the 1970s, who were inspired by amateur Victorian photographer Sir Benjamin Stone.The acquisition includes a total of twenty-four photographs by Daniel Meadows and Homer Sykes, who documented the lives, customs and festivals of British people some eighty years after Stone toured the country recording similar subjects.Images from Sykes’s book Once a Year – Some Traditional British Customs and prints from Meadows’s Free Photographic Omnibus project will form the basis of a new collection demonstrating Stone’s influence on subsequent generations of British photographers. The Library already holds other signifcant work from this period including a portfolio of images by Tony Ray-Jones (printed after his death by John Benton-Harris), and The Paul Hill / Photographer's Place Archive.Meadows, Sykes and Ray-Jones were featured in the legacy section of the Library’s exhibition Knight of the Camera: the Photographs of Sir Benjamin Stone MP in Centenary Square in 2008. The purchase was supported by Anthony Collins Solicitors, major sponsors for last year’s exhibition.The Library has an immense archive of over 22,000 photographs colleted and taken by Stone which were gifted to Birmingham Free Libraries after his death in 1914. It now forms the cornerstone of the Library’s collection which was awarded Designated status in 2006 by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.David Barrie, Director of The Art Fund, said: “This is an immensely rich and diverse collection of works from two very important photographers, who have dedicated their careers to capturing the social zeitgeist in Britain. The Art Fund’s core purpose is to make great works of art available for everyone to enjoy, as this work now will be for generations to come.”The prints will be on view alongside other material at the forthcoming RPS Historical Grroup event at the Library on 14th March. Collections like this and Birmingham's extensive archives will be opened up further to the public as part of the Library of Birmingham, set to open in Centenary Square in 2013. This will include a gallery space as well as facilities to improve the acess to and standards of care and conservation of the collections.
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The location of Bradford for the National Museum of Photgraphy, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum) was always a bit problematic for Britain's London-centric visitors and arts community - notwithstanding the fact that there are almost as many potential visitors within an hour travel time of Bradford as there are to London. Overseas tourists unless they are persistent are reluctant to take a three hour train ride; scholars wishing to access the museum's collections have no choice. In the early days the museum would ship journalists and guest to exhibition openings by train in dedicated coaches. So it probably wasn't too many years after the museum's 1983 opening that thoughts turned to bringing the collections physically to a London audience in some way. The NMeM's much vaunted 'London presence' which has been discussed formally since at least 2003 still remains on the table in 2009 although a venue has still to be confirmed. Past rumours have centred on Somerset House and even a standalone space.
It seems likely that a space at the Science Museum in Exhibition Road, SW7, has been found which will open by 2011-12. Both museums are part of the National Museum of Science and Industry grouping and there would be benefits in making space available. What is known is that the NMeM is currently working with Event Communications Ltd and Thompson Brand Partners, a Leeds consultancy which undertook the museum's recent rebranding, to produce a masterplan for a London presence.The space under consideration consists of two temporary exhibition galleries totalling 1,000 sq.m. where world-class exhibitions in photography and other media could be staged. A separate entrance would allow the space to operate independently of the Science Museum's opening hours.
Funding remains problematic although the chair of the museum trustees, the James Bond producer Michael G. Wilson, has committed himself to the project and fundraising for it. Larger questions remain about what will be shown. The Science Museum closed its Photography, Cinematography and Optics galleries some years ago and the new space would allow the NMeM to showcase a changing selection objects from these subjects areas in the space. To simply showcase highlights from the collections in London would almost be an admission of defeat about Bradford as a location. What seems more likely is that the space will be used to launch exhibitions of photography in the capital before they transfer to Bradford. There is a considerable market for photography in London that the Science Museum's near neighbour, the Victoria and Album museum is unable to meet and a coordinated programme with the V&A might ensure that photography enjoys a better representation than hitherto.
The NMeM remains tightlipped about precise timings, plans and funding.
Keep watching this space.
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