Blogs

Below are details of the Courtauld spring term programme for the Research Seminars which relate to photography Seminars are free and open to all. They will be held at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN – unless stated otherwise.

• Monday 9 January – Sylwia Serafinowicz (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Photography and Temporality at the First Biennale of Spatial Forms in the Polish People’s Republic (Elblag, 1965). 6.00pm, Research Forum South Room
• Monday 6 February – David Low (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Moments of Crisis: Photographs of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-16. 6.00pm, Research Forum South Room
• Tuesday 10 January – Professor Christopher Pinney (University College London): Gandhi, Camera, Action: Popular Visual Culture and the Graphic of Iterability. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room
• Wednesday, 22 February – Jan Banning (photographer): Bureaucratics and Other Unorderly Subjects. 5.30pm, Research Forum South Room
   
• All seminars are free and open to all

Further information : http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/calendar.shtml

Research Forum

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

.... no, I meant, wrong!

That's what one might encounter when trying to research one's family tree, especially names, as most of us only change our surnames on marrying, say, or by reverting to a maiden name on divorce. For example, in the cabinet photo on the right, it’s assumed that the elderly couple belonged to Jarrow, as that was the address of the photographer, called Whinfield. For the younger pair in the photo below, it's assume, were Shields folk, as behind the camera in this instance was Robert Carling, whose studio was in King Street.

In Victorian times, changing your name was very difficult as the strict marriage laws made it almost impossible to get a divorce. According to an expert in family history research, “One of the easiest options to get out of marriage was to desert your partner, so don’t just assume that if a person appeared on the 1881 census and not on the 1891 census that they had died, especially if you can’t find a death between those years.

If you find all this rather confusing, but might help with your photographic research, then do attend a fascinating series of talks coming up in South Shields, sponsored by the South Tyneside branch of the Northumberland and Durham Family History Society (NDFHS), in partnership with the Local History Library. The first, next Wednesday, January 18, is on William Dring, who was born in South Shields and who was one of the first convicts to be transported to Australia. The talk, by the NDFHS’s John Stobbs, also promises to be useful in that it will provide information on how to access online information, other than parish records, before state registration, and will give a short overview of the criminal justice system in the 18th century. 

William Dring and Other Australian Convicts takes place at South Shields Library Theatre next Wednesday, from 2.30pm to 3.45pm. Admission is free. For further information contact the Local Studies Library on 0191 424 7860. 

You can read the rest of the article here.

Similar in concept to HistoryPin, a local San Francisco resident, Dan Vanderkam, has overlaid photos taken from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection onto a Google map of San Francisco to create a searchable, historic database.  The San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, located in the San Francisco History Center, contains photographs and works on paper of San Francisco and California views from 1850 to the present.

To start using Old S.F., just pull the sliders along the top to adjust the date the photos were taken (starting at 1850 and ending at 2000) and then click on one of the red dots to see images from that location. It's a fascinating journey through some of San Francisco's most famous (as well as its most intimate) landmarks - witness the chaos and destruction that followed the 1906 earthquake, or watch the elegant Golden Gate Bridge as its construction slowly creeps across the Bay. It's your own personal time machine to San Francisco - and you're holding the controls.

Congratulations to Smethwick Photographic Society (the home of Midland Photography) which is celebrating its 90th year. It is currently holding its 37th International Exhibition of Photography at the Old School House in Churchbridge, Oldbury which they bought 12 years ago. The Society began in 1921 when an advert was placed in a local newspaper, inviting people who were interested in photography to attend a meeting at the Technical School. The Victorian Old School House was repaired and restored, and now includes a dark room, a studio, a lecture theatre and other facilities for their own and visiting exhibitions.

You can view some of the entries on the website link here.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the British Journal of Photography have uncovered that the 3 largest UK museums are using more of their resources to acquire photographic works. You can read the facts and figures in their exclusive online article here.

The National Media Museum in Bradford has started work on the world's first gallery to explore the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet and the web. Set to open on 30 March 2012 the gallery will be the first in the world to link the history of the internet with its impact on how we live our lives.

The gallery will bring together historically significant content, multimedia displays, and a programme of special exhibitions exploring contemporary trends and issues related to how the internet and the web are changing society.

The £2 million project will explore various themes, including the origins of the internet, global communications, issues of online identity and the nature of digital communities and businesses.

Life Online will be made up of two spaces in the Museum. The permanent gallery on the ground floor will reflect and interact with the story of the internet and the web, from the very first email, to the rise of home computing and the non-stop evolution of social and technological communication. It will also explore the future of the internet.

The exhibition space will showcase experimental temporary exhibitions dedicated to exploring the ever-changing relationship between society and the internet. The first Life Online exhibition, called [open source], will focus on the open source online culture of sharing and collaboration, whilst examining current threats to net neutrality which could signify the end of online culture as we know it.

Visitors will be able to actively participate with the Life Online gallery, exhibition space and online presence - through a series of interactive elements. This will enable Life Online to be powered by the ideas, thoughts and opinions of both physical and virtual visitors. This model of engagement will ultimately create an invaluable public archive of society's relationship with the internet and the web in the 21st century.

An additional purpose-built learning space will house an exciting programme of workshops and events investigating the processes of producing online content and issues surrounding our relationships with the web as we explore our online world.

Tom Woolley, curator of new media at the National Media Museum said: "We have been planning for this gallery for a long time and it is fantastic to see the building work commence for our new permanent gallery Life Online. Although other galleries tell the story of the internet, no other links that ever-evolving history with the impact the internet has on our lives and we are very excited to house the world’s first gallery of its kind here in Bradford. There are many exciting milestones ahead as we build towards the gallery opening in March 2012 and we look forward to sharing the finished gallery with visitors."

The content of the gallery has been informed by a variety of web experts and pioneers including Ben Hammersley, the UK Prime Minister’s Ambassador to TechCity and editor at large of Wired Magazine; representatives from Google and Microsoft; Freeserve co-founders Rob Wilmot and Ajaz Ahmed and Helen Milner, the managing director of UK Online Centres. A senior member of the Virgin Media broadband team is the most recent addition to the gallery advisory panel. A variety of Universities have also advised including Oxford, Bradford, Nottingham Trent, Southampton, Brunel, Manchester Metropolitan and Lancaster.

Life Online is funded by the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and the DCMS Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund. The project also has a number of corporate supporters such as Virgin Media; Brass, one of the UK’s foremost creative and digital marketing agencies; and by leading environment, brand and interaction agency Start JudgeGill who are assisting with the creation of the Life Online Exhibition space.

Image: Joe Brook, Life Online Gallery Development Manager holding a scale model of the National Media Museum foyer and Life Online gallery

This exhibition offers a chance to discover the evolution of photography. What are the optical and chemical principals that brought us photography? Why are there pairs of the same photographs? And what has this got to do with 3-D films today?

The photographs in this exhibition document an important feature of Irish rural life – ‘the Big House’ – or the homes of local landlords. These photographs are interesting because they are rare and give us an insight into daily life at a relatively prosperous and peaceful time. All seemed prosperous but in only a few years after these photographs were taken the landlord system was torn down ending the era of the ‘Big House’.

In this exhibition, one can step back in time into the homes and lives of the first photographers. Put faces to the names of those that lived in the ‘Big Houses’ of the 19th century. See what they wore, their carriages and motor cars, how they spent their leisure time. Meet those ‘downstairs’ - the house servants, farm workers and tenants that kept the gardens and houses. Stand where Castlebar photographer, Thomas J. Wynne stood around 1880 and took a photograph of workmen by the lakeshore of Turlough Park, which is now home to the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life.

Power and privilege is a selection of photographs drawn from the National Photographic Archive’s collection of over a million photographs. This is the first time these photographs will be exhibited in the West of Ireland.

Prints for Power & Privilege were created from four of the National Library glass plate collections and from selected photographic albums. The glass plate collections are from the Commerical firms of William Mervyn Lawrence Collection (1865-1914), and A.H. Poole Collection (1884-1954). The 19th century Stereo pairs collection are by two Dublin photographers, James Simonton and Frederick Holland Mares. The Clonbrock collection (1860-1930) was taken by members of the Dillon family from Ahascragh, east Galway.

The framed copy prints on display were produced by scanning the original glass plate negatives or photographing the original prints. The final images were printed using a pigment ink set onto Hahnemühle fibre based archival paper.

If this exhibition sounds interesting to you and you'd like to view it, details can be found here.

Workington is an ancient market and industrial town at the mouth of the River Derwent. Some parts of the town north of the River Derwent date back to Roman times. It was in the eighteenth century, with the exploitation of the local iron ore and coal pits, that Workington expanded to become a major industrial town and port.

Derek Woodruff, 79, a historian from Salterbeck, has complied a new book entitled Workington Through Time, a collection of photographs from the 19th century and early 20th century of people and places of Workington. He has been collecting old photographs of the town since the 1980s. The book compares how the town has changed with photographs of the town as it is now. He has also written earlier books on the history of the town called Workington in Old Picture Postcards Volumes One and Two, Weird Workington, Workington Wheels and Curious Tales of Workington.

You can obtain the book through the Amazon link on the right.

Although in the same style and format as the previous publication, this, the fourth volume in the series varies from the first three volumes. Malta & Gozo Volume IV covers a broad area of the islands instead of a specific locality. It depicts the island on the threshold of modernism but still an agriculture-based society especially in the regions away from the central harbour area.
A number of well-known experts have analysed the glass plate photographs selected from the vast archives of the Richard Ellis collection. Their insights, comments, and conclusions turn simple photographs into individual studies of different aspects of Malta and Gozo.
The photographs are supplemented by the contributions from Katya Stroud, curator of the National Museum of Archaeology: she looks at Malta's rich archaeological history. Joseph Attard Tabone, a prominent member of Malta's Heritage Committee and Paul P.Borg a distinguished scholar of Maltese folklore, analyses the rural development of Malta and Gozo. Kenneth Zammit Tabona, writer artist and music critic comments on some of Malta's fine palaces, gardens and their residents.
The complete archive contains some 36,000 images, most of which are glass-plate negatives, the oldest coinciding with Richard Ellis's arrival in Malta in 1862. The photographs, mostly taken on a large-format studio camera, have been carefully reproduced from the original glass plates using the latest digital technology.
Richard Ellis has given the Maltese nation a treasure of timeless images placing Malta in the forefront in the development of photography from its infancy.

Book editor Ian Ellis, the photographer’s great grandson, along with picture researcher and photo editor, Patrick J. Fenech, have once again pieced together an extraordinary volume with this 4th sequel which will dwell on the influence of modernism captured by this master of photography. The Richard Ellis Collection is an invaluable source of reference for photographic and historical research.

If this is of interest, you can try picking a copy (80 Euros) through the Amazon link on the right. If not, try here.

The Ransom Center is now accepting applications for its 2012-2013 Research Fellowships to support projects that require substantial on-site use of its collections. The fellowships support research in all areas of the humanities, including literature, photography, film, art, the performing arts, music, and cultural history. 

Application deadline is 1st February 2012, and details can be found here.

Good luck!

A number of full-time University of Westminster Studentships are available to candidates with either Home or Overseas fee status in any area of Arts, Film, Photography and Cultural Criticism starting in September 2012. The Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) is a leading centre for research across the disciplines of visual arts, photography, film and digital media. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise CREAM was rated 20% 4*, 55% 3*, 25% 2*. The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked CREAM in the top six art and design departments in the UK and the number one department in this field in London.

With 30 research active staff, and 35 doctoral students, CREAM is a leading provider of both practice-based and theoretical PhD research in photography, film, digital media, ceramics, visual art and moving image work. The research practices of its members also cover a broad field including arts-science, music, Asian cinema, and theoretical and critical writing.

The Studentship consists of a fee waiver and a stipend of £16,000 per annum for three years full-time. Successful candidates will be expected to undertake some teaching duties.

Prospective candidates wishing to informally discuss an application should contact Prof. Joram ten Brink, J.tenbrink@wmin.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is 5pm Friday 3 February 2012. 

For further information, including how to apply, please visit

http://www.westminster.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/research-areas/media,-arts-and-design/research-studentships

A new exhibition, which opened recently, displays some of the rarest, earliest and most important photographs in America. The materials are highlights from a magnificent set of more than 16,000 19th-century American photographs from the Beth and Stephan Loewentheil Family Photographic Collection.

Through photographs, ephemera, and original publications, Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections explores photography during its first fifty years in America, featuring examples of the earliest photographic processes and multiple stages of its technological evolution. From this look at photography’s early technical development, another story emerges: that of the dynamic and complex relationship between the new photographic medium and the turbulent historic currents that shaped the American nation.

Highlights of the exhibition include multiple photographs by Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, including a large 1861 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, warmly inscribed to the wife of Lincoln's oldest and closest friend; images documenting the Civil War, including a photograph of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton sitting with soldiers; a personal photograph album compiled by Mark Twain; and photographs documenting African American life, westward expansion and the rise of celebrity culture.

Details of the exhibition can be found here. But don't worry if you can't get to Stateside, as they have a great online version which you can view here.

Photo: Alfred Brisbois. William F. Cody "Buffalo Bill,” late 1880s, albumen print, 6½ by 4½ inches.

Of all the sciences it is arguable that images have played the greatest role in astronomy, both for the professional and for the interested public. This discussion meeting will consider both the history and technology of imaging in the era of the telescope, and the implication of representing physical phenomena by images created by visualisation techniques, particularly where the radiation is invisible to the eye. Capability and limitations will be traced from drawing and painting, through photography and image intensifiers, to the digital era at all wavelengths. Discussion will be encouraged about the role imaging has played in constructing the astronomical object, and in shaping the public’s view, delivered by astronomers, of the nature of the sky and its contents. We hope to reinforce interaction between practising astronomers and historians of science by reflection from philosophers and historians of art.Royal Astronomical Society

Specialist Discussion Meeting

'The History of Astronomical Imaging'

13 January 2012

10:30–15:30 in the Geological Society Lecture Theatre, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG

The day includes: 

Peter Hingley (Royal Astronomical Society) on The Reception of Photography in the Royal Astronomical Society

The programme is at:

http://www.ras.org.uk/images/stories/ras_pdfs/meetings201112/January%202012%20Geological%20Society%20Meeting.pdf

There is no prior registration but a charge of £15 to non-members (£5 to

students) for all or part of the day, cash or cheque only, will be collected at the door. Admission to the subsequent Open (Monthly A&G) Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society is open to all, at no charge.

A new exhibition which includes two daguerreotypes from the 1840’s-1850’s from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum, the Museum of the Russian Literature Institute of the Russian Academy of Science and the Library of the Russian Academy of Arts is currently on display in Saint Petersburg.

Among the first examples of daguerreotype in Russia, sent from Paris by Daguerre, were exhibited at the Academy of Arts in autumn of 1839. After Daguerre announced his discovery that year, crowds of people gathered in front of display cases of art stores in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the hope of seeing pictures created with the light of the sun. The devotees of this new technological achievement, busily occupying themselves by experimenting with daguerreotype plates, were not deterred by the expensive materials, or by their rarity in Russia. The sales of cameras and plates were sold by intermediaries, usually optometrists; Schedel in Saint Petersburg and the Beckers brothers in Moscow. In October of 1839, Beckers placed daguerreotype views of Moscow in his store’s display case, having put their production on firm commercial basis.

A Davinion’s studio enjoyed great popularity in Petersburg, where portraits of the Decembrists S.G. Volkonskiy, I.V. Podzhio, N.A. Panov and P.A. Muhanov were made, among others. The peak of daguerreotype portraiture also includes the work of I. Veninger, who aspired to express certain spiritual conditions in his art; melancholy reflection and dreaminess. In 1850, daguerreotype portraiture was still in higher demand than paper printouts, but it fell into neglect soon after. Sergey Levitzkiy, the last significant master of daguerreotype, is represented at the exhibit by complementary portraits, diverse in their composition and plastic solution.

You can view these and more at this exhibition entitled The Age of Daguerreotype. Early Russian Photography - the first exhibit ever at the Hermitage to explore such an interesting and ultimately vanished phenomenon as daguerreotype, as well as the stages of its development, so widely and deeply. The curator of this exhibit is Natalya Yurievna Avetyan, academic associate and custodian of the photography collection of the Photography Fund of the Department of Russian Culture of the State Hermitage. Details can be found here.

Photo: Self-portrait by Aleksey A Bobrinskiy, 1842

To help shed some light into this minefield, a PhD student in communications at Columbia University, Lynn Berger, recently presented a paper at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Cleveland (USA). Entitled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Photography: Privacy, Copyright and the Camera in the US, 1883-1905," her paper traces the movement & meaning of early photography into the courtroom and the beginning of two, somewhat contradictory legal models: copyright and privacy.

Such was the case of the unauthorized copies of Napoleon Sarony's iconic photograph of a pensive Oscar Wilde. By posing the writer in a certain position Sarony had changed nature enough to make the photograph a piece of art, and therefore the Supreme Court in 1884 decided that copyright protection should be extended to photographs.

For this early period of photography, Berger argued that there were two opposing concepts of photographs that coexisted uncomfortably. For copyright purposes, the photographer "made a picture" -- they were the author of the photograph. For privacy purposes, the photographer "took a picture" -- the picture was the property of its subject, the photographer a "mere mechanic."

You can read the rest of the news article here.

Photo: National Media Museum