Blogs

The archive of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain which contains  photographs and documents has been lodged with Birmingham Central Library and David Moore is working with the staff there to catalogue it. The PAGB archive has recently been joined by the donation by the Surrey Photographic Association of the collections of the defunct Central Association of Photographic Societies which includes the F J Mortimer Collection of prints. This will now form part of the PAGB Archive although it will be catalogued separately. Mortimer's personal archive is in private hands. 

Once the catalogue has been prepared the PAGB will establish procedures for accessing and adding to the Archive.

Just a reminder that on Tuesday, 25 October 2011, the V&A’s new Photographs Gallery will open to the public. The gallery will have an inaugural display of works by key figures of photographic history including Victorian portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and significant works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Afred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn.

The Photographs Gallery will draw upon the V&A’s internationally renowned collection of photographs, and will chronicle the history of photography from 1839 up to the 1960s. In 1858, the V&A became the first museum to exhibit photographs, and the new Photographs Gallery is able to showcase some of the most technically brilliant and artistically accomplished photographs in its collection. Temporary displays, primarily showcasing contemporary photography, will be shown in the V&A’s existing photographs gallery.

Other highlights include the oldest photograph in the V&A collection, a daguerreotype from 1839 of Parliament Street from Trafalgar Square, a seascape from 1856 by Gustave Le Gray, and a portrait by Robert Howlett of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, taken in 1857. Displays will change every 18 months.

And it's free entry!

Photo: Robert Howlett (1830-58), 'Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Launching Chains of 'The Great Eastern'', 1857. Museum no. PH.246-1979

The Royal Photographic Society reports that John Chittock OBE FRPS has died.  John was a long-standing member of The Society joining in 1955 and gaining his Associateship in 1961 and Fellowship in 1966, remaining a member until his death. 

Born on 29 May 1928, John Dudley Chittock's career started as an editor at Focal Press, the leading imprint on books devoted to photography, film and television. Subsequently he became a producer, writer and director of sponsored documentary films with over 30 productions to his credit. His work as industrial columnist on the Financial Times from 1963 to 1987 gradually took over.

With his late wife Joy he founded the international trade publication Screen Digest which he edited from 1971 to 1996. John's association with Focal Pressled to him later to become the founding trustee of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation.

Joy Chittock died in 2001 and John is survived by his second wife Margaret.

A funeral Service and burial at St Mary’s Church Cavendish, Suffolk, CO10 8BP will take place on Friday 21st October 2011 at 1pm. All welcome afterwards at The George, donations in lieu of flowers gladly received by St Nicholas Hospice, BSE, IP33 2QY.

More biographical information is available: http://homepages.which.net/~john.chittock/biog.htm

Fictionalising the bio of 19th-century photographic innovator Julia Margaret Cameron, David Rocklin creates, in Catherine Colebrook, a woman fascinated by the dawning of scientific photography. The novel opens in 1836 in South Africa, where Catherine is preparing to depart for Ceylon, a British colony off the coast of India (present-day Sri Lanka). Colebrook is fascinated by the process of capturing images on tin or copper; she has heard about the technique from Sir John Holland, a visiting lecturer, and so the story goes ....

Over the course of February and March, Catherine and Sir John experimented with various chemical combinations. They used guncotton to bathe the plates in silver salt. They lacquered skins of collodion onto them and potassium mixed with oil of lavender to lend flexibility. They conversed in drams and durations. Light and shadow became their accomplices. … Sir John taught her and Eligius how to grind and polish glass for lenses. They reconfigured the camera’s plate holder with a spring-loaded trap of imported rosewood. For the collodion and silver salt, Eligius constructed vertical baths so the plates might be coated evenly. On his own he experimented with mirrors and angles. By spring he’d created his own topography of the light’s possibilities in Holland House. (p. 219).

One reviewer went all the way to say "This fascinating story made me want to run to the library and learn everything about the 19th century British photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron". 

You can be the judge of this yourself as you can read more reviews of the book here, or get a copy yourself using the Amazon link on the right.

I attended a photo event at the Royal Geographical Society (London) a few weeks ago, and had a sneak glimpse of a new exhibition that the RGS was setting up.

Entitled "Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya", it provided a worrying insight into the impact of climate change in the Himalayan mountains. US photographer, filmmaker and mountaineer David Breashears has put together a collection of works to compare his contemporary images with historical photographs taken over the past century, to show changes in the landscape and the dramatic glacial loss that has taken place in this region.

Even if you're not a green or eco-person, the exhibition is still well worth a visit as it shows some stunning mountain images taken by pioneering alpine photographers and explorers from the 1920s such as Major E.O. Wheeler, George Mallory, and Vittorio Sella.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.
 

Photos: Top: This striking image taken by David Breashears' team of mountaineers shows snow peaks like cake icing leading to the base of the Rongbuk Glacier in the Himalayan mountains. It was inspired by archived photographs taken 80 years ago; Bottom: This photograph shows the main Rongbuk Glacier in the Himalayan mountains, Tibet as it was in 1921, covered in snow and ice and in sharp contrast to the landscape today.

Photos: Top: Snow but mostly rock: The team's image shows the Kyetrak Glacier in the Himalayan mountain range in Tibet and clearly illustrates the different conditions at altitude compared with the area more than 80 years ago. Bottom: A black and white photograph of the same region in Tibet and dated from 1921 reveals just how much the region has changed and what the impact has been of global warming on the area.

I have recently acquired a few photographs from photographers such as Henri Cartier, Capa, Stichen, Avedon, Kertesz etc. They had been acquired from an individual who had himself acquired it over a decade ago from another individual and so it difficult to trace ownership.  However, behind most photos is a label which say "Art Collection - Arthur Saltzmann - Great Britain".

Given that the term used is Great Britain versus UK, would suggest this might be a pre-war to post-war collector.  Anyone with information about an Arthur Saltzmann would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

The Latest E-Photo Newsletter is up online. It's nearly complete and will go out to our email readers tomorrow.  You can see it here: http://www.iphotocentral.com/news/issue_view.php/194/184 .

Here are some of the articles that you'll find there:

--George Eastman House Charity Auction results

--Daguerreian Society holds 23rd symposium on October 27-30 in St. Petersburg, FL

--Tokyo Photo 2011: a work still in process

--Photo Gallery Shows: Julia M. Cameron at Hans P. Kraus, Jr. and a preview of Paris Photo at Lawrence Miller Gallery, plus two more gallery shows on Madison

--Russell Lord appointed curator at New Orleans Museum of Art

--Photo book review: a Smithsonian survey of portraiture's changing face

--Ruscha archive and photos goes to Getty

--Persian album by Pesce sells for £39,000

--Penelope Dixon & Assoc. moves back to NYC

--Searching for oldest dated wedding photo

China in Revolution assembles a remarkable survey of historical photographs from leading collections around the world. The images stretch from the Second Opium War to the Boxer Rebellion and wars with Russia and Japan, the outbreak of revolution, through the rise and fall of Yuan Shikai and the ensuing warlord era.

The 1911 Revolution ended dynastic rule in China and paved the way for the founding of Asia's first republic. Triggered by an accidental bomb explosion in Wuchang (modern-day Wuhan), the revolution marked the culminating point of decades of internal rebellion, foreign aggression and political decline; its leaders drew on a ferment of reformist and revolutionary ideas produced by some of China's greatest modern thinkers. Although 1911 did not resolve China's problems, it changed the country for ever, clearing a path for modernisation, and making possible the more decisive revolution of 1949. 

For this book, Liu Heung Shing set off on a year-long journey searching for original copies of photographs that suited the theme, often travelling to museums, libraries and visiting owners of private collections across many continents.  

Using advanced restoration technology, Liu chose 900 plus photos out of 10,000. It include 300 images that have never been published before, such as American Homer Lea training the New Army in 1904 in California. 

There are a large number of photos showing ordinary people in their daily lives in scenes from1850 to 1928, mostly taken by foreign priests, businessmen, diplomats and travellers.

The book is available in two English versions, by both the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, and Hong Kong University Press in cooperation with Columbia UniversityPress, on this link here. Or try the Amazon link on the right.

A talk on the book given by Liu himself has also been scheduled, details of which can be found here.

Photos: An old woman in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in 1869; A woman missionary in sedan chair in Quanzhou, Fuijian province, 1894.

George Eastman is known for three major things in the course of his development of Eastman Kodak Company as the leader in the world of photography. One was mass production for which he introduced with his production of the Eastman – Walker roll holder in 1894. Second was his attention to research and chemistry, demonstrated by his millions of dollars donated to the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Third was his attention to marketing and specifically to advertising. In 1892 he hired Lewis Bunnell Jones as his first marketing person and began advertising his products in the major magazines of the day.  

Another device used extensively by Eastman were product catalogues. Beginning in 1885, Eastman listed the products of his companies with details of the items and their prices. As useful as the Kodak catalogs were to buyers of photographic supplies in the early days of photography, they are essential to modern day collectors to understanding the details of the products themselves and to understanding the marketing strategies of George Eastman.

From 1885 through 1941, more than 70 catalogues were published. Almost every amateur camera made by Kodak was illustrated in these booklets, which serve as guides and checklists for collectors today. Add some of the “Professional Catalogues” which began in 1895 and virtually all the Kodak photographic materials are available for study. Since the early 1970s, researchers and collectors of Kodak cameras and ephemera haunted antique shops, bookstores and photographica flea markets seeking catalogues for their own libraries and collections.

The idea of making the catalogues widely available to modern collectors has been discussed for years, especially by those who were fortunate enough to have collected large sets. In 2008, Charlie Kamerman published an almost complete set of catalogue covers on his website, kodakcollector.com. In 2010, Steve Shohet and others began to discuss, seriously, gathering a complete set of the catalogues, scanning them, and providing them to collectors. But it was Charlie, who owned virtually a complete set, and Milan Zahorcak who had a scanner and the available time, who said, “let’s do it - start scanning.” Within weeks all the catalogues, in their entireties, were published on Charlie’s website.

Later, as word of the project got around, the earliest catalogues were made available from the collections at George Eastman House and Ryerson University in Toronto. Private collectors added a few more. Mike Kessler contributed scans of his gorgeous, leather bound 1891 catalog featuring tipped in photographs of Kodak Girls taken by the earliest stringset Kodak cameras. Finally, the scans were placed on a DVD. With an introduction by Kodak historian Dr. George Layne, Charlie Kamerman produced copies of the DVD with plans to distribute them to registrants of PhotoHistory XV in Rochester on October 22, 2011. Dr. Layne will be delivering an illustrated lecture about Eastman’s catalogues as part of the symposium.

Details of the symposium can be found here or here.

The Daguerreian Society's 23rd annual meeting will be held in St. Petersburg, FL, Oct. 27-30.  Attendees from around the world will attend lectures, daguerreotype viewings, an auction and a trade fair that is open to the general public.  The events will be held in the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront (333 First Street South, the symposium headquarters) and the city's Museum of Fine Arts at 255 Beach Dr. N.E.  The symposium registration costs $129 for members and $149 for non-members.

The Symposium will open on Thursday, Oct. 27.  Rebecca Sexton Larson, a Tampa-based studio artist working with historic photographic processes, will speak on "Dry Plate Tintypes: History and Process," starting at 10 am. in the Bayview Room, Museum of Fine Arts.  She will discuss both the wet- and dry-plate photographic processes.  Her work is featured in the book "Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique," and in private and museum collections.

Also on Thursday, Daguerreian Society member Ken Nelson will speak about the daguerreotype process at a meeting of the museum's Stuart Society.  A practicing daguerreotypist and historian for 35 years, he has taught the art of making daguerreotypes in Hawaii and New York.  That separate talk begins at 10 am.

Another behind-the-scenes event will have members going on a local private tour of collectors Dr. & Mrs. Robert Drapkin's home.  The additional cost of this special tour is $25 per person and is available to the first 25 people who sign up for it.  The van will leave from the front of the hotel at 1 pm and the tour will end at 4 pm.

A gala reception officially launches the symposium at 7-9 pm on Thursday in the Marly Room of the Museum of Fine Arts.  Attendees will tour the museum's exhibition, "Sitter and Subject in Nineteenth-Century Photography," admiring some of the 14,000 images in the museum collection.

The Trade Fair will be held on Friday, Oct. 28, at the Hilton-St. Petersburg Bayfront, with thousands of antique photographs of all descriptions offered for sale.  Dealers from the U.S. and Canada will offer the world's largest display of daguerreotypes for sale in one location.  Other photography work and ephemera will also be offered.  The general public will be admitted starting 11 am.  The trade fair will run until 5 pm.  Cost for symposium registrants is free, and $8 for the general public.  A reduced student entrance fee of $5 is available upon presentation of a student ID.  Dealer tables are still available at $100.  Contact the society.

Contemporary daguerreotypes will be on display in the hotel's hospitality suite beginning at 9 pm.  Christopher Mahoney, vice president of photography at the Sotheby's auction house in New York City, will participate in the informal discussion about newly-produced daguerreotypes, one of his passions.  Modern daguerreians will showcase their art and discuss their techniques.

The Symposium lectures continue on Saturday, Oct. 29 in the Marly Room of the Museum of Fine Arts on topics ranging from daguerreotypes of the California gold rush to the first form of photography predating even daguerreotypes.

The morning sessions run from 9:30 am-1 pm.

Gary Ewer, a collector and expert from Denver, will speak on "A Complete Picture of California: The Three Hundred Daguerreotypes by Robert H. Vance." Vance, an American daguerreotypist, arrived in San Francisco in 1850, during the height of the gold rush.  Having already spent a few years in Valparaiso, Chile, making portrait daguerreotypes, Vance undertook a project to document the cities, towns and landscapes of the new El Dorado.  At the time, photography was only 11 years old.  Vance's monumental effort was unprecedented in America.

Walter Johnson, collector of antique photography, will speak on "November 1968," the conference that started his interest in collecting photographica.  His presentation details events that helped launch efforts to collect and preserve photographic history.

The topic of Dusan Stulik, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, is "Niépce and Daguerre, Daguerre and Niépce: The First Scientific Investigation of all Niépce's Images from UK and US Collections."  Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French aristocrat, was the world's first photographer, producing images from nature in the 1820s; however, the crude images on pewter plates required hours of exposure.  He and Daguerre entered into a partnership that resulted in Daguerre's inventing the daguerreotype, which was the first practical form of photography.  Stulik will report on the first scientific investigation of all the Heliographic and Heliogravure plates created by Niépce in France that he brought with him to England in 1827.

The afternoon sessions run from 2:30-4:30 pm.

"Brady's Calhoun: The Recovery of an American Masterpiece" will be covered by Christopher Mahoney, vice president of photography at the Sotheby's.  The subject is a daguerreotype of Southern politician John C. Calhoun, taken by Mathew Brady.  A dramatic portrait that was the basis for Calhoun's image in Brady's publication "Gallery of Illustrious Americans," the daguerreotype inspired a monumental painting now owned by the U.S. Senate.  The daguerreotype was lost for over a century, and then rediscovered.  It was sold at auction for $338,500.  Mahoney will tell the fascinating story.

A lively roundtable discussion will also be held, titled "The Daguerreotype Image: Who Owns It? Who Controls It?"  Ownership and reproduction rights will be examined from the standpoint of the collector, the author, the publisher and the photographic artists.  Who owns the rights to use a photograph?  What are the copyright restrictions and challenges for photographic researchers?  What are the dos and don'ts involving licensing?  What are the legal versus practical issues on controlling the digital reproduction of images?  Leonard Walle, longtime collector and a past president of The Daguerreian Society, is moderator for the panel, which includes: Wm. B. Becker, collector, photo historian, author, television producer and director of the American Museum of Photography; Carl Mautz, owner of Carl Mautz Publishing, an author, photo historian and collector with degrees in history and law; Rob McElroy, a full-time daguerreian artist and photo historian who earlier spent 25 years as a commercial, editorial, and advertising photographer; and Jeremy Rowe, EdD, author, photo historian, collector, and  recently retired as Associate Director of the School of Computing and Informatics at Arizona State University, who has written a white paper on "Copyrights and Other Rights in Photographic Images" and a book chapter "Legal Issues Using Photographs for Research."

Following the talks, the day's activities conclude with a cocktail party and silent auction, a buffet banquet and a live benefit auction.  Craig James, Esq. will be the auctioneer for the evening.

For more details and how to register, go to http://www.daguerre.org/ ; or call 1-412-221-0306.

• Work with Curator, Manager of Works on Paper and Photography Collections, Conservation, and Registrar departments to implement guidelines for TMS to bring level of cataloguing photographs up to highest standards

• Continue to review policies and procedures for cataloguing the photography collection to be included in the MFAH-TMS Style Manual; and update photography collection records in TMS to consistently reflect guidelines

• Work with conservation to assure processes are researched and correctly entered in TMS

• Gather primary data through questionnaires, research and examining objects to ensure the photography collection is adequately and carefully documented

• Consult registrar and curatorial files regarding invoices and correspondence from artists for essential information detailing the materials and techniques used in the creation of photographic works and their history; when necessary, cataloguer may contact photographers or photographers´ estates for further clarification

• Review and research photographs that have been received for potential acquisition

• Review and approve records for newly accessioned photographs catalogued by Registrar staff

• Coordinate reproduction photographs of the permanent collection

• Manage the photography collection book project: coordinate and prepare for photo review sessions with Curator, Assistant Curator, and authors; record notes at all project related meetings; data entry and maintenance of project database; coordinate and manage requests for Photographic and Imaging Services department and Conservation department; research caption information for each object included in final draft

• Manage all incoming records (digital and paper), and maintain collection filing system

• As needed, cataloguer will work with photography curator to accomplish other functions within the department

• Supervise or work with interns and volunteers

• Coordinate incoming shipment requests with lender and Assistant Registrar, Incoming Loans

Photography Collection Assistant (reports to Manager, Works on Paper and Photography Collections and Study Center):

• Oversee Study Storage Room 3: Coordinate with Manager of Works on Paper and Photography Collections the movement of select photography collection materials from SSR7, SSR 8, and SSR 9 to SSR 3, complete inventory and reorganize storage, record location changes in TMS (The Museum System), and assist Conservation and Manager, Works on Paper and Photography Collections and Study Center with the development of proper storage conditions for all works stored in this area

• Pulling from SSR3 and re-shelving collection materials used for exhibition, loans, material to be photographed, examined by conservation, etc., also works with the preparations staff for the internal movement of collection material from SSR3

• Work with Curatorial staff and Registrar staff to complete active TR´s (temporary receipts) in the photography collection 

• Respond to inquires regarding objects in the collection

Further details, including applications etc, for the job (Code: 12-059CUR) can be found here.

The Executive Director, ICP’s Chief Executive Officer, reports to the Board of Trustees and must be an inspiring, bold, and collaborative leader with a passion for photography and digital media. The Director oversees all professional staff and programs, and provides strategic leadership, management expertise, and financial oversight for ICP. In carrying out these responsibilities, the Director is supported by and manages directly the Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Collections/Chief Curator; Deputy Director for Programs/Director of Education; Deputy Director for Finance and Administration; and Deputy Director for External Affairs. 
The Director will work in partnership with this senior management team and the Board to develop a strategic approach to achieving ICP’s goals. Along with the Board and senior staff, the Director will serve as the organization’s key fundraiser, and secure the resources needed to support both ongoing operations and new initiatives—in particular, charting a course to a new, permanent home for the institution. The Director will also serve as ICP’s primary advocate in the international cultural network, as well as in the arts community of New York City. He or she will raise ICP’s profile by articulating its vision more strongly, evolving and integrating academic and exhibition programming, and building partnerships with other relevant global institutions. 

Candidate Profile 
The Director of ICP will evince decisive leadership, intellectual curiosity, and a dedication to learning, along with a passion for the arts and, in particular, photography. He or she will have significant and proven strategic leadership and management experience in a multi-faceted for-profit or nonprofit organization with multiple internal and external constituencies. He or she will be digitally conversant, with considerable savvy operating in this realm. 
This person will have demonstrated success developing a compelling strategy for an organization, building the financial and ideological support for its implementation, and skillfully balancing and aligning the needs of multiple interests. He or she will have earned a reputation for effectiveness in partnering with a Board or a senior management team, and will be able to guide and lead through others. He or she will be able to engage the commitment of others to deliver on strategic initiatives, and will have demonstrated experience as a successful resource-builder for a significant venture. 
The successful candidate will be a vibrant leader and manager, with the ability to motivate, inspire, and unite staff around a shared vision. He or she will have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, able to cultivate relationships with, and build bridges across, diverse constituencies. In particular, he or she must have experience managing significant institutional transition, and will be energized by advancing the institution’s stature and recognition. In order to support ICP’s evolution and safeguard the institution’s health, this person must bring a developed understanding of organizational dynamics and processes. 
Ideally, the Director will exhibit a thorough knowledge of and passion for photography and the history of the medium, as well as demonstrate an understanding of the future of the industry and the impact of digitization on the medium. In addition, this person will have a record of well-respected intellectual achievement in his or her field, with demonstrable success conceptualizing, designing, and implementing attractive constituent experiences. 
While a Bachelor’s degree is required, a graduate-level degree is preferred. While the successful candidate is likely to have studied art history or arts management, ICP is open to any area of education which, when combined with relevant work experience, has prepared the candidate for this important leadership role. 

To apply please send a cover letter and resume to directoricp@russellreynolds.com

Deadline for applications: 7 Nov 11

Good luck!

Now entering its 21st year, UK’s longest running photography festival will be returning next month with 40 exhibitions featuring more than 75 artists from across the globe. One of the highlights for this year will be an exhibition at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, co-curated by Simon Bainbridge, editor of the British Journal of Photography. The exhibition Time and Motion Studies features documentary work from six leading artists – Donald Weber, George Georgio, Manuel Vasquez, Robbie Cooper, Tim Hetherington and Vanessa Winship. They demonstrate the process between seeing a potential photo and making the conscious decision to take it. The exhibition will open with a panel discussion and Q&A with the artists.

Well, apart from being pioneering Victorian photographers, they both seem to be on a lucky streak! After the report of Llewelyn's £2 million grant here, there is now news of the Heritage Lottery Fund awarding £40,000 to the community interest company, The Share Initiative (TSI), which is backing the display of Winterbourn's work.

Only around half of Winterbourn's 8,000 glass plates have been scanned to-date. The project, VIEW+, will chart the work of these images taken by him of Leominster and its surrounding villages. Schools, community groups and history societies could also benefit, while workshops will include help on how to interpret the images.

It is hoped the three-year project, leading up to the 100th anniversary of the First World War being declared, will give all ages the chance to learn what life in the county was like in previous generations.

The full news article can be found here.

Photo: Thomas Henry Winterbourn’s photograph of the construction of Dinmore tunnel.

I am an art historian, currently completing an article on an illustrated book - Jim Dine's photographic illustrations for Apollinaire's 'Le Poète assassiné', published in 1968. In one of the photographs included in the book, there is what I thought initially might be an acrylic paint tube - it is rather crumpled and it is hard to read the label properly. However some conservation experts agree that it is not any paint that they recognise and have suggested that it may in fact be a photographic product, perhaps a tube of retouching paint or something. It apparently seems larger than standard tubes of retouching paint, but just in case this is a photographic product, I wondered if there might be a member of this community who might be able to help me identify it! I include the photo here, and would be grateful for any light anyone can shed on it:

Jim Dine illustration

I have been involved in two projects recently which might be interesting to some of the members of this community. Over the past few years I have been compiling a bibliography, with excerpts and annotations, of articles about photography published in America and in England from 1839 to 1869; describing its practitioners and practices, and displaying the impacts of those activities and events upon the general culture of that time. I have reviewed more than 800 magazines and newspapers published in the United States and in Great Britain from January 1839 through December 1869 and indexed more than 300 of these titles which contained articles in which photography was featured, discussed or mentioned in some illuminating manner, or which acknowledged the use of the medium in the creation of at least some of their illustrations.

Although not completely finished I hope to complete this project within a year. For reasons too arcane to explain at this time this work is contained in a Microsoft Word file that is very close to 9000 pages in length when set in single-spaced 10 pt Arial typeface. I have not settled on the most effective way to publish the work. – as a self-published on-demand set of 3 or 4 volumes, or in a database on a cd disk, or as a subscription service electronic file, or with a traditional publisher, or in some manner I don’t even know about. Anyone in the community who is willing to offer advice or suggestions about the most useful formats for their purposes would be gratefully received.

The second project consists of my wife and I setting up an ETSY “store” named “vintagephotosjohnson” to sell off the collection of photographs we have gathered during the past forty years. That long ago many of these photographs were not considered to have any value and were often in danger of immediate destruction when we obtained them, on more than one occasion, one day ahead of the dumpster. Beyond the motive of preservation, as teachers of photographic history, one of our aims was to find examples that trace the history of photography from 1845 to the 1990s rather than specifically collect “rare and valuable” artwork. For us, it has always been “all about the image” and interesting images have always taken precedence over other factors that professional “collectors” display when considering their choices. Nevertheless we are posting literally hundreds of British photographs by Bedford, Frith, Valentine, Wilson and many others at the “vintagephotosjohnson” store site (As well as the works of other photographers.) To me, at least, many of these images seem “fresher” than others by similar photographers being offered by other dealers on-line, and we are trying to offer the items at prices that are reasonable for both the buyer and for us; so some good stuff is going pretty cheaply by today's standards. I am also attempting to set up a corresponding “blog” which would feature “exhibitions” from these images, excerpts from the bibliography, and discussions about photography in general. I am posting new stuff every week, so please feel free to look in on the site. I would appreciate any amplifications or comments or corrections that anyone might bring to these posted images.

BIOGRAPHICAL

STATEMENT

William Johnson began teaching the history of photography at Harvard University in 1970
while working as a professional librarian there; and since then has taught and
worked at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston College, the
Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, the International Museum of
Photography at George Eastman House, the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester,
NY, and elsewhere.

He wrote W. Eugene Smith: Master of the Photographic Essay (Aperture); eight of the sixteen chapters in Photography from 1839 to today George Eastman House, Rochester, NY (Taschen); The Pictures Are A Necessity:
Robert Frank in Rochester, NY November 1988 (Rochester Consortium, George Eastman House), and the self-published Horses, Sea Lions, and Other Creatures: Robert Frank, Dave Heath, Robert Heinecken and John Wood, with Susan E. Cohen.

He has organized more than thirty exhibitions and is the author or contributor to more than fifteen exhibition checklists or catalogs, including a half-dozen or so on W. Eugene Smith, as well as ... one thing just sort of led to another ...The Photography of Todd Walker; Lucien Aigner's Paris; More Than Meets the Eye: Landscape Photography 1850 – 1910 and John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning.

He has also

published extensive bibliographies on the photographers Lucien Aigner, Eugene
Atget, Carl Chiarenza, Walker Evans, Robert Heinecken, William H. Rau, W.
Eugene Smith, Southworth & Hawes, Edward Weston, Whipple & Black, John
Wood, and on the 1930s journal Photo Notes. He compiled and edited the annual International Photography Index (G. K.
Hall & Co.) from 1977 to 1980 and also published Nineteenth-Century Photography: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1879.
(G. K. Hall & Co.) Currently he is extending the range of
Nineteenth-Century Photography: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1879 by
compiling a large annotated bibliography of articles that indexes, annotates
and excerpts articles from more than 800 periodical and newspaper titles
published in America and Great Britain between 1835 and 1869.

A rare presentation album containing 42 sepia toned salt and albumen prints of Persia in 1860 by pioneering photographer Luigi Pesce fetched an impressive £39,000 (or £44,850 including premium) - more than double the estimate - at a Norfolk auction house last week. It drew bidders from afar, including France and the United States, before the hammer came down to a London dealer.

The images showed buildings such as mosques and palaces along with desert scenes, in a book inscribed to Sir Henry Rawlinson who was in Persia training the Shah’s troops. According to the Keys Aylsham sale room, only two similar books have ever come up for sale in the past - one given to William I of Prussia and the other to an Italian Count. Hence it was easy to see why bidding was tense with seven phone bidders and two in the room for this rare Middle Eastern album.

The Lot details can be found here.

Photo: LUIGI PESCE (1818-1891): ALBUM PHOTOGRAPHICO DELLA PERSIA, 1860.

The Arab Image Foundation's (AIF) photographic collection spans over a century (1880 to 1990) and includes 400,000 original images from across the Middle East, which range from amateur family portraits to professional studio shots. It's core collection (80 percent of their images) consists of photographs taken in Lebanon from 1920 through the 1960s, where photography was thriving in a cosmopolitan country. 

The Foundation recently opened its research center to the public. The center was created to encourage the study of Middle Eastern photography and contemporary practices. Its library holds approximately 1200 books about photography and photographic history, as well as documents related to preservation.
An ongoing AIF project is the Middle East Photograph Preservation Initiative (MEPPI), a program promoting the preservation of photographic heritage in the Arab world. The foundation selected 15 applicants from eight Arab countries to participate in the first series of workshops in Beirut this November. Three international experts are coming to Beirut to teach photographic preservation techniques. The goal is to create a large network of photographic collections in the Arab world. Next year, MEPPI will convene in Doha, then in Cairo in 2013. MEPPI will create a photographic directory, enabling everyone interested in preserving cultural heritage to unite.

If this is of interest, the AIF website can be found here.

Photo: General view of Beirut and Lebanon 1870-1885 by Felix Bonfils. (Copyright: AIF)