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This new V&A photography exhibition will feature over eighty photographs celebrating the diversity of photography in the UK since 1945. It is one strand supporting the V&A's major exhibition British Design 1945-2012. Island Stories will look at the narratives told through individual bodies of work by photographers held in the V&A's permanent collections. Featured photographers include Elspeth Juda and Maurice Broomfield, each of whom promoted the image of Britain 'on the up' during the immediate post-war years, photographing manufacturing and fashion industries with an artistic eye. Juda turned 100 this year and her work for Ambassador magazine is celebrated in a new V&A publication. Broomfield donated his extensive archive to the V&A shortly before his death at the age of 94 in 2010.

BPH will publish more details as they become available. 

Local Bygones is a new website featuring thousands of photographs from North and Mid Wales, Cheshire and Shropshire. Created by NWN Media, the interactive site displays pictures from its vast photographic archive, some of which date back to the 19th century.

It lets users browse, share via sites such as Facebook and comment on pictures, as well as download high quality copies. Most images have never been posted online and some have not been published anywhere before. Thousands more pictures will be added to the site in the months ahead.

You can check out the website yourself here.

Sean O'Hagan in The Observer newspaper interviews four of Britain's leading photography curators. Martin Barnes of the V&A, Brett Rogers of the Photographers' Gallery, Simon Baker of Tate Modern and Charlotte Cotton of Media Space [the National Media Museum] discuss the place of photography in their respective organisations and more widely. The wide-ranging interviews look at recent developments and, in the case of Media Space, looks ahead to a Spring 2013 opening.

The article can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/30/v-a-photographs-gallery-tate?newsfeed=true    

The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, seeks a curator of photography.

Photography is one of five focused collecting areas of the Harn, each of which is headed by a senior staff curator with a devoted permanent collection exhibition space. The curator of photography position is supported by an endowment that provides generous annual support for travel, research and special projects. In addition a dedicated endowment for photography acquisitions is available to the curator for development of the collection. The museum currently houses a collection of over 1000 photographs ranging from daguerreotypes and mid-19th century images to large-scale contemporary works. The museum has an established record of major photography exhibitions ranging from shows of modernist photography to the presentation of contemporary work.

The School of Art and Art History, with studio and art history programs in photography, provides opportunities for interaction with professional colleagues and collaborative educational programming, and at the Harn the five curators often collaborate on acquisitions, exhibitions and programs. The curator of photography will manage and develop the collection and related programs. Other responsibilities include preparation of installations from the permanent collection, conception and implementation of exhibitions and related publications, original research for publication, lectures for academic audiences and the general public, cultivation of donor relationships, and conception and development of grant projects in collaboration with the development office and others. 

A PhD in art history with specialization in the history of photography is strongly preferred.  The successful candidate will have a distinguished record of scholarship and at least three years of curatorial experience dealing with research, acquisitions, exhibitions, best practices for care of photographic materials and collaborative programming. 

The ideal candidate may be a specialist in any area of photography, but should have curatorial interests that embrace the broad history of the medium and should be engaged with the intellectual concerns of the fields of photography and with creative practices in museum exhibitions. To view application instructions and complete an online resume, visit http://jobs.ufl.edu. Reference number for this vacancy is 0809612 and the deadline date to apply is December 15, 2011. Application must be made on-line to be considered for this position.

The post is full-time, with an expected starting salary of $55,000 - $70,000, commensurate with education and experience.

Full job description etc can be found here. Good luck!

Just as when you thought it was safe to head to V&A's new Photograph's Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland today announced upcoming exhibitions for 2012, including the first exhibition in the newly revamped National Portrait Gallery which opens to the public on 1st December.

The opening ‘masterpiece’ exhibition of the new Photography Gallery highlights some of the greatest works in the National Galleries of Scotland photography collection. Entitled Romantic Camera, it is the first exhibition within the new Photography Gallery in the refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It explores questions of identity, specifically the close relationship between romanticism and photography in Scotland. Over 60 works are included, ranging from iconic images by Adamson and Hill to new acquisitions being shown for the first time.

This exhibition suggests that rather than vanishing during the 1840s, the romantic impulse has been vital to the development of the medium, up to and including the present day. Romanticism emerged as a literary form in the 1790s and had a powerful impact on Scottish culture, particularly through the influence of the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott. Photography in Scotland was born in Scott’s shadow and was profoundly shaped by his creative imagination. Characterised by nostalgic longing, nineteenth-century photographers hunted out traces of Scotland’s turbulent history or ranged across the landscape in search of poetic subjects.

Details of this exciting, new Gallery can be found here, and exhibition details here. This space will display a rolling programme of shows and exhibitions throughout the year. Looks like a great year for photographic history in the UK!

For all you Beato fans out there, there is a forthcoming exhibition opening end of the month that might be of interest (Stateside, unfortunately!).

A British subject of Italian ancestry, Felice Beato (1832-1909) was one of the most successful early photographers in Japan, which was newly opened to Westerners in the 1850s. Arriving in Yokohama in 1863, Beato quickly established the model for commercial photography in terms of subjects, style, and marketing to a Western audience. The first in the United States devoted exclusively to Beato’s photographs of feudal Japan, this special exhibition features nearly 100 albumen photographs, many of which were hand painted by Japanese artists. Beato’s subjects include geisha, samurai, landscape views, and historic sites.

The exhibition features photographs from the private collection of Tom Burnett, New York City, details of which can be found here. If you are heading there and want to learn more about the Burnett collection which consists of several thousand images, contained in albums, stereoviews, cdv's, and single photographs, from 1859 until 1900, then do try and attend the accompany Collectors Series talk: In Conversation with Tom Burnett found here.

A 64-page catalogue will also be available for purchase in the Museum of Art shop.

Here's your chance to own the iconic Julia Jackson (1867) portrait taken by her aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron. Cameron made at least two negatives from the Spring 1867 sitting showing Jackson full-face with hair down.

One depicts Jackson with her head tilted downwards in a display of intimacy and tenderness. The other shows her confronting the viewer directly with a gaze that is altogether more defiant and powerful. Cameron was keen to show that the Victorian woman was not inward with a stony reserve but rather that she could exhibit myriad feelings that went against the stereotype of the period. The photographer employed a reversal technique to produce several variations from each negative - these are believed to be the only examples in her work of this technique, which she later abandoned in favour of soft focus to achieve the same ethereal results.
The other recorded versions of this image are in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Henry Taylor Album), and a private collection in the UK (Norman Album).

Acquired by the present owner with full provenance (Sotheby's Belgravia, 26 June 1975, lot 55), Lot 4 (pre-sale estimate of £25,000 – 35,000) is up for graps at the next Bonhams Photographs sale, details of which can be found here.
Or a cheaper option is to head to the new V&A Photography Gallery, and view some JMC work up-close, and free-of-charge!

Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879), Julia Jackson, 1867; Albumen print. 26.4 x 20.7cm (10 3/8 x 8 1/8in).

Following from the stunning Reports by the Juries (1852) sold at Bonhams in June this year (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/reports-by-the-juries-brings) another Commissioners' set in being offered by  the same auction house on 22 November 2011. This new set was presented to Philip Pusey. Pusey was a politician and agriculturalist and served as a juror for the class of Agricultural and Horticultural Implements. Details of the lot which is estimated at £80,000-100,000 can be found here: http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/WService=wslive_pub/pubweb/publicSite.r?screen=LotDetailsNoFlash&iSaleNo=18992&iSaleItemNo=5157017

As mentioned in an earlier blog here, dates of this new exhibition to be held at the Natural History Museum has now been released. "Scott's Last Expedition" will explore the captivating story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition to Antarctica in 1910-1913, the Terra Nova. This groundbreaking exhibition will also be commemorating the centenary of the expedition and celebrates its achievements. It reunites for the first time real artefacts used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected on the 1910–1913 expedition. Visitors can also walk around a life-size stylised representation of Scott’s base-camp hut that still survives in Antarctica.

To accompany the exhibition, a new book entitled "The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott" has just been published. Most of the photographs taken by Scott during the Terra Nova expedition in the book have not been seen before. A handful were published shortly after Scott’s death, but most of the 120 surviving images have never been published. The once-lost images are accompanied by text from Polar historian Dr David M Wilson, great-nephew of Dr Edward Wilson, who died with Scott and his fellow explorers in 1912.

The series of breathtaking photos capture panoramas of the continent, superb depictions of mountains and formations of ice and snow, and portraits of the explorers on the polar trail. Scott was trained by Herbert Ponting, the official expedition photographer, who had his own dark room in Scott's hut. Some of Scott's photographs will feature in this forthcoming exhibition.

Details of the exhibition can be found here, and you can purchase the book through the Amazon link on the right. Looks like another one for the diary!

On a different note: A case of whisky buried beneath a hut used by the explorer Ernest Shackleton during his unsuccessful 1907 to 1909 expedition to reach the South Pole has been returned to Scotland. The Scotch spent more than 100 years buried in the Antarctic before 5 cases were dug up and carefully thawed by museum officials in New Zealand. One of these cases - of Mackinlay whisky - has been flown to Scotland by the billionaire owner of the Glasgow-based Distillers Whyte and Mackay, on his private jet. It will spend up to six weeks in full laboratory conditions and subjected to analysis before reporting back to the Antarctic Heritage Trust. The bottles are to be eventually returned to Shackleton's hut, unlikely to ever leave the ice again.

That's what I call vintage!

Photo: Taken by Captain Scott of the Terra Nova team with their ponies. This is one of many unseen photos revealed in David M Wilson's new book, The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott. Some of the photos will also be on display at Scott's Last Expedition at the Natural History Museum, Jan 2012. © Richard Kossow

A highlight of a forthcoming Paris sale early next month is a handwritten document from 1829, signed Niépce, titled Notice sur l’Héliographie. Lot 53 can be yours for an estimated €35,000-50,000. The eight highly legible pages, written in an elegant yet precise style, are of major interest for the history of photography and, in fact, are said to constitute the ‘birth certificate’ of photography.

Or how about a cheaper Lot 23 of Daguerre's document on the history and description of the daguerreotype 1839 for an estimated €1,500-2,000.

With Christmas just round the corner, you can pick both up at this auction link here.

Image: Niepce's 1829 signed, handwritten document.

The V&A Photography Gallery opened this evening. The display and room was every bit as good as the exclusive BPH photographs showed (see:http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exclusive-the-new-v-a-photography-gallery-opening-tuesday-25th-oc. Shown here is the V&A Director opening the gallery with Curators Martin Barnes and Marta Weiss to his side. 

The gallery opens to the public Tuesday morning. Make a date and visit - you won't be disappointed.

The Projection Box was set up by Mo Heard and Stephen Herbert in 1994, to publish books about pre-cinema and early film, and we gradually included further subjects such as fairgrounds and photography.  The Projection Box has been slumbering for a while as we pursued other projects, but is now awake again with new publications and fresh editions of old favourites that have long been out of print.

To celebrate the 2012 Charles Dickens Bicentenary, this month sees publication of The Dickens Daguerreotype Portraits by Stephen Herbert - a new colour monograph. The Kinora, moving pictures for the home 1896-1914 by Barry Anthony returns in a new edition, combined with an original Kinora catalogue reprint. The True History of The Ghost by Professor Pepper, has also been republished.

Other new titles are in the works, so be sure to check the website every month. Some of our new books are being made available by the wonders of Print-on-Demand, made possible by Blurb.com - and may be ordered direct from the printer. Details on our website: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~s-herbert/ProjectionBox.htm

The National Media Museum is about to make several important additions to its Collection and  will be rearranging Insight: Collections & Research Centre to make space for them. As a result, access to the Museum’s collections will be disrupted. Insight will be closed to researchers from Monday 27 October 2011, and there will be no tours from 14 November onwards. Insight will reopen on 16 January 2012.  Requests for information and future access can be lodged via email: research@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk.

A photo exhibition depicting Victorian life including rare images of Custs path, the predecessor to the Marine Drive, Llandudno's first pier which was badly damaged in the great storm of 1859, North Shore pre-Grand hotel, and many more has been organised by the Llandudno and Colwyn Bay History Society.

Entitled "Victorian Photographs and Souvenirs of Llandudno”, it includes images by Thomas Edge (1829-1900) who settled in the town after being employed by the London Stereoscopic Company to picture parts of Britain. There is also a photo taken in 1860 of William Lot (1841-1919), one of Llandudno’s first postmen, who erected a periscope on a hill above the Happy Valley. He entertained paying guests in his "magic" shed with living panoramas of the town and bay below. A moving image of Llandudno life was cast on to a circular screen in the building via a lens and mirror mounted on the roof.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

Photo: The Mostyn family were the main landowners and chief architects behind the resort's development and also feature in the exhibition created from a collection by John Lawson-Reay, vice chair of Llandudno and Colwyn Bay History Society.

BPH has secured photographs of the new V&A Photography Gallery which opens to the public on Tuesday, 25 October 2011. A private view takes place on Monday evening. The Gallery has been installed in a former textile room and the building has been returned to its nineteenth century glory - with wall paintings uncovered and restored.

Installation images of the V&A’s Photographs Gallery © Peter Kelleher, V&A Images.

Charlotte Cotton is creative director of Media Space (a partnership between the National Media Museum and the Science Museum). Previously, she was curator of photographs at the V&A, head of programming at The Photographers’ Gallery, and head of the Wallis Annenburg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is the author ofThe Photograph as Contemporary Art and founder of Words Without Pictures.

She will be talking as part of the ICA's Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence. Join curators, artists, critics and other cultural practitioners on a tour through work in the exhibition, each tour offers a unique perspective on emergent art practice and the state of cultural production in the UK today.

See: http://www.ica.org.uk/?lid=30943 to book.

In Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, a man covered from head to toe in straw – the ‘straw bear’ – is paraded through the streets, accompanied by 250 dancers, musicians and performers, while in Ottery St Mary, Devon, a crowd gathers as townspeople hoist barrels of flaming tar on to their shoulders and carry them until they are too hot to handle. Photographer Sara Hannant has travelled the length and breadth of the country, capturing the seemingly bizarre regional rituals – costumed processions, symbolic dramatizations, traditional dances and fire ceremonies – that mark the changing seasons and celebrate nature’s bounty. Many of these customs claim an ancient origin, and are kept alive today by local communities. Hannant’s vibrant images reflect her keen eye for the unexpected, offering a captivating and surprising glimpse of contemporary ‘Merrie England’.

Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey through the English Ritual Year will be showing at the Horniman Museum,100 London Road, Forest Hill, London, SE23 3PQ from 22 October 2011 – 5 September 2012. An accompanying book published by Merrell is available at £19.95.

To pay the ultimate tribute to a photographer, lecturer and judge, friends at Oxford Photographic Society has produced a book of 140 stunning photographs including stills, portraits and manipulated images (using filters and materials including orange peel, tissue paper, glass and sandpaper!). All the images in the book were taken from slides made by Peter Upton before the advent of digital cameras and computer software.

Mr Upton was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and a member of its national council and the executive committee of its creative photography group who sadly passed away last year, aged 75. He was recognised for his work, including an award from the Federation of International Artistic Photographers, and his work has been shown worldwide and he often spoke at UK camera clubs and judged competitions. 

The full news article can be found here, and to order a copy of the book, which costs £28, call Mrs Upton on 01869 242491.

Photo: Mr Peter Upton

If you found this blog regarding Birmingham and it's role in the history of photography of interest, then you might be keen to attend a talk given by Pete James, Head of Photographs, in a forthcoming evening seminar. He will be speaking on some of the more obscure and less well-known photographs from the internationally acclaimed photographic collection of the Birmingham Central Library.

Birmingham Central Library holds one of the UK’s national collections of photography.  Totalling some 3.5 million images, these internationally significant collections include work by some of the UK's greatest photographers: Francis Frith, Francis Bedford, Roger Fenton, Edward Muybridge, Sir Benjamin Stone, Bill Brandt, Tony Ray Jones, Paul Hill, John Blakemore, Brian Griffin Peter Marlow and Chris Steele Perkins amongst others.  The collection also includes a vast number images ranging from the less well-known to the downright bizarre. 

In 2013 the photography collections will move into the Library of Birmingham where new facilities, including state-of-the-art gallery space, will open up full public access to these collections for the first time - something to look forward to!

Details of this seminar can be found here.