Blogs

Americas through a lens are images from The National Archive's Colonial Office's Photographic Collection and include some of the earliest known photographic depictions of Canada dating back to the 1850s. Some of the images have accompanying background information to give them context. The photographs have been uploaded to the photo-sharing website Flickr so that they can be tagged and comments and suggestions added to help improve the descriptions.

The latest online release of pictures from the Colonial Office collection follows the successful launch last year of Africa through a lens - an online showcase for the African images in the collection. The project was inspired by Project Naming, a Library and Archives Canada (LAC) initiative to help identify Inuit portrayed in its own photographic collection.

Hello, I am interested in the Irish born New Zealand photographer John Robert Hanna (c1850-1915). The “Photogram,” of May, 1894, devoted three pages to Mr. Hanna, his studio and his work, I wonder if anyone has a copy of this edition? 

I understand his photographs "were so beautiful that they were shown to the Photographic Club, and to the London and Provincial Photographic Association. The verdict was that no man in Britain was doing better all round portraiture, and Mr. Thomas Fall, the president of the Association, wrote to say that he had never seen such lovely work."

There is more information on John Robert Hanna on my website -

http://canterburyphotography.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/hanna.html

John Robert Hanna 

Observer (NZ), Volume XV, Issue 828, 6 October 1894, Page 3

Inspired by the Albert Beaney collection of 40,000 photographs of Swindon residents in the 40s, 50s and 60s, 130 young people aged between 11-16 will be using these images to create their own exhibition about Swindon’s community history. 

Funded by a £25,000 award from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Back to Black and White project is a partnership between Swindon Borough Council’s Create Studios & Swindon Museum and Art Gallery and Swindon Youth Forum. The Youth Forum members– all completing their Arts Award – are working alongside professional artist Dani Landau to create their exhibition and gain a range of new skills including photography, digital media, photograph handling and curatorial skills. Their exhibition will take place at Artsite’s Post Modern gallery on 1-7 August.

The full news report can be found here.

To get into the swing of things, Kingston Museum will be showcasing the work of their local boy, Eadweard Muybridge, who was a pioneer in capturing motion in sequence photography. The exhibition will include not only a display of his motion experiments of humans and animals carried out in 1887, but also contemporary artist David Michalek’s own take in HD. 

The Museum will also be focussing on 21st century techniques, including the use of sport biomechanics to measure and correct technique and injury rehabilitation, as well as screening a video inspired by Muybridge’s iconic motion sequence and features 300 gymnasts, dancers and athletes creating a chain of human cartwheels. It is created by Charlie Murphy and called the Kingston Big Wheel (courtesy of the Stanley Picker Gallery).

Details of the exhibition can be found here.  Go Team EM! (yes, it does sound corny ...)

Brian May will be presenting his 3D documentary 'Brief History of 3D' at the National Stereoscopic Association's 38th annual convention this weekend in California.

His talk will be based on a historical look at the attempts to make 3D mainstream, from the Victorian era up to the present day. The documentary first aired on Sky 3D in July last year and included a look at the process of authoring his book, 'A Village Lost and Found.'

Details of the event can be found here.

Photo: Copyright 3D Focus.

Hello, this Woodhorn Museum http://www.experiencewoodhorn.com/ introducing our new Facebook page about Canon Roderick Charles MacLeod, an amateur photographer who lived in Northumberland at the turn of the 20th Century.

The MacLeod collection is housed within the Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn, and this facebook page is a new way of sharing our digitised photographic collections. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Canon-R-C-MacLeod/241832632582028?ref=hl

Several hundred of Canon MacLeod’s lantern slides were rescued and deposited in Northumberland Archives by George Brown of Mitford when the old vicarage was being demolished. Countless others have been lost, although some have turned up over the years in other collections. They provide a fascinating glimpse into a corner of rural Northumberland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This Facebook page will be updated throughout 2012/13 by Woodhorn Museum & Northumberland Archives. We will be posting on a different theme each month, as well as including the occasional 'wildcard' photo to keep you entertained.

If you would like to share relevant information about the photography, the MacLeod family & Mitford in general, please do so, we welcome your insights and opinions!

Halfway to Paradise will explore the exceptional work of Harry Hammond, the music photographer who documented the emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll music in post-war Britain. From Roy Orbison and Ella Fitzgerald to Cliff Richard and Shirley Bassey, the display will feature more than 60 portraits, behind the scenes and performance shots of leading musicians in the 1950s and 1960s.

The display will be drawn from the V&A’s collection and will provide an insight into the change in musical tastes over the two decades following the war. Hammond’s photographs will chronicle the jazz and big band musicians of the early 1950s such as Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday, American Rock ‘n’ Roll stars visiting Britain including Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, through to the early breakthroughs of British rock such as the Animals and the Beatles in the 1960s.

Hammond also documented the development of music television in the 1950s and his behind the scenes coverage of the entertainment shows Sunday Night at the (London) Palladium, Oh Boy! and Juke Box Jury will be on show. The display will also be accompanied by a soundtrack of hit songs by the musicians featured in Hammond’s portraits.

Born in the East End of London, Harry Hammond began his career as a society portrait photographer and on joining the RAF during the Second World War, served as a reconnaissance photographer. On his return to London he resumed his interest in photographing people concentrating primarily on the music industry.

By the end of the 1940s, he was providing images for the music press, photographing recording sessions, live performances and capturing the energy of Denmark Street - the home of London’s music industry. In 1952, the music magazine New Musical Express (NME) launched and Hammond became one of its primary photographers, taking some of the most famous images of the era and setting the standard of pop photography for following generations.

• Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock, Photographs by Harry Hammond will be on display at the V&A in the Theatre & Performance Galleries, Room 104.

• FREE ADMISSION

• Open from 13 October 2012 – 3 March 2013 

• The Museum is open daily 10:00 – 17:45 and until 22:00 every Friday

A book of the same title, Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock, by Alwyn W Turner will be re-launched in September 2012 by V&A Publishing (£20 hardback). 

Photo: Cliff Richard, 1954, Harry Hammond Archive

This exhibition which was held in Hong Kong, and mentioned in a BPH post here, has been honored with the prestigious Bronze A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design Category. The Bronze A' Design Award is a prestigious award given to top 10% percentile designs that has achieved an exemplary level of in design. The designs are judged by a panel of three different jury which is composed of Academic, Professional and Focus Group Members.

The exhibition showcased treasured photo collections of Hong Kong in the 19th Century loaned from museums in Paris and London, including the first published stereo photograph of Hong Kong landscape by P. Rossier and a series of exceptional panoramic views of Hong Kong and its harbor, including two beautiful ones dated March 1860 by the famous war photographer, F. Beato.

INSPIRATION:
In the old days, the Central District of Hong Kong was called “Victoria City” governed by the British government and thus full of Victorian colonial architectures, among which the exhibition site is a typical representative. Therefore, the theme of the design, developed upon the compound of ‘camera’ and ‘colonial structures’, intends to deliver a closely-intertwined retrospection of both Hong Kong photography and architecture.

UNIQUE PROPERTIES:
The focal point of the exhibition was the earliest photo of Hong Kong dated 1858 according to authentic records. It was arranged on a display stage which is designed as an indoor rotunda, whereas the other exhibits were showcased on many white, house-shaped display stands that imitate Victorian colonial structures in the past. With all these design details, the exhibition hall displayed historical photos of Hong Kong as well as presented an epitome of “Victoria City”.

OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION:
Outside the exhibition hall, a series of flashlight indicator models were set as signage guiding to the entrance where a giant white camera model awaits. Standing in front of it, visitors can see the superimposing views of the black and white photo of early Hong Kong shown on the camera and the present exterior of the Compound buildings. Such setting carries the implied connection between the concepts that visitors view the old Hong Kong through the giant camera and that they discover the history of Hong Kong photography through this exhibition.

More details of the award, including images, can be found here.

De Montfort University is pleased to announce the availability of one Wilson Fellowship for its MA in Photographic History and Practice. The Fellowship offers £5,000 toward the defrayal of tuition and other costs related to the MA, and is open to all students UK, EU and International.

To apply for the Wilson Fellowship, please submit your CV and a piece of recent writing on photographic history no longer than 10,000 words, in English, to the Programme Leader by August 15. For applications to the MA, please contact Student Recruitment at the Faculty of Art and Design at artanddesign@dmu.ac.uk or apply online at ukpass.ac.uk. For questions about the MA programme or the Wilson Fellowship please contact Programme Leader, Dr Kelley Wilder at kwilder@dmu.ac.uk.

The MA in Photographic History and Practice is the first course of its kind in the UK. It lays the foundations for understanding the social and cultural scope of photographic history and provides the tools to carry out the independent research in this larger context, working in particular from primary source material. We work with the collections of the National Media Museum, Bradford, the Central Library, Birmingham, the British Library and private collections throughout Britain. Students handle photographic material, learn analogue photographic processes, write history from objects in collections, compare historical photographic movements, and debate the canon of photographic history. They also learn about digital preservation and access issues through practical design projects involving Website and database design.

Research Methods are a core component, providing students with essential handling, writing, critical thinking, digitizing and presentation skills needed for MA and Research level work. Modules encourage independent critical thinking in history writing, introduce students to methodologies commonly encountered in photographic history, and set the students on a course for finding their own MA dissertation topic. Students receive expert advice on the thesis topic of their choosing, which is written in the summer months and submitted in September, one year after the course begins, in the case of full time study, or two years in the case of part‐time.

For further details on the course and application process, please download a course brochure from the web site.

Mark Haworth-Booth, the former curator of photography at the V&A Museum was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Arts on 19 July. The award was made in recognition of his scholarship in photography over a sustained period. 

See: http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/lcc/ and http://newsevents.arts.ac.uk/category/audience/

A special exhibition of photographs of the 1948 London Olympic Games is on showat City Hall, on the lower ground floor and the Chamber lobby (2nd floor). Entrance is free!

There are 40 photographs in the exhibition, selected from nearly 500 images in The Times Archive Collection. Most of the photographs are unpublished and unseen and almost all have been preserved in a perfect state, providing a wonderful visual record of the last time the Olympics came to Great Britain.

The photographs cover historic moments such as King George VI’s speech at the Opening Ceremony in Wembley Arena, the torch relay and many Olympic events including: cycling, rowing, fencing and athletics. The everyday side of the ‘Austerity Games’ is also covered: behind-the-scenes preparation, close-up shots of spectators and large crowd scenes. The black and white images are striking in themselves but also capture a moment in London’s history and illustrate the contrast between the 1948 and the 2012 Olympics: home-made kits, uneven grass tracks and sponsorship by cigarette brands.

Sue Connolly, Picture Editor of The Times said: 'These rarely-seen photographs are a treasure trove for anyone interested in the contrast between the 1948 and 2012 London Olympics. It has been a privilege but a difficult task to select just 40 for the exhibition but the final collection encapsulates the spirit of those post-war Games and will inspire any enthusiasts viewing them on the eve of this year’s Games.'

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

David Bailey is one of east London’s most famous sons. Over the past 50 years, he has regularly returned to the stomping ground of his youth to photograph the streets and their inhabitants. This personal collection, set in an historic industrial building in London’s Royal Docks, sees him return to Newham at a time when the world’s focus is on east London. These photographs document the changing physical and social landscapes of the area from the early 1960s to the present day, with streetscapes, characters and scenes of east London life. Some famous faces appear, but they are nestled amongst the wider backdrop and characters of the area. David Bailey’s East End features many previously unseen photographs and provides a rare opportunity to witness London’s transformation through the lens of a local icon.

The exhibition focuses on three periods: the 1960s, the ’80s and recent years. An exhibition catalogue is available, whilst three monographs depicting these eras in greater detail will be published by Steidl http://www.steidlville.com in October.

Details of the exhibition can be found here.

One of modern photography’s great names - largely unknown by the wider public - will be giving a public lecture on behalf of The Royal Photographic Society in September. The Royal Photographic Society in partnership with the National Media Museum, will present Steve Sasson: Disruptive Innovation: The Story of the First Digital Camera at London’s Science Museum on 10 September 2012.

Steve Sasson is credited with inventing the digital camera creating the first digital camera prototype in 1975 for the Eastman Kodak Company. In an illustrated and entertaining lecture Steve will be discussing how the concept was demonstrated within Kodak,  subsequent technical innovations with megapixel imagers, image compression products in the mid-1980s, and the early commercialization of professional and consumer digital still cameras in the early 1990s. The internal reaction to these developments will be highlighted.

It is the first time that Sasson has spoken in public in the United Kingdom.

The event is co-hosted by The Royal Photographic Society's Historical Group and the lecture continues The Society’s Hurter & Driffield Memorial Lecture series which began in 1918.

It will take place on Monday, 10 September 2012, at 7pm at the Science Museum,  Fellows Room, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2DD. Cost £8. See: www.rps.org/sasson    Early booking is advised as places are limited.

Iamge: Steve Sasson with his prototype digital camera. Photo: Steve Kelly. 

In conjunction with an exhibition at the British Library on Collecting the Olympic Games Bob Wilcock is giving a talk on 1908 Marathon, the greatest race of the twentieth century, with an overview of the London 1908 games. It is illustrated with press cuttings, postcards, and private photos. Many of the images have rarely been seen since they were first taken.

The free exhibition, organised by the British Library and the International Olympic Committee, with members from the Society of Olympic Collectors, also contains some photographic images. It runs from 25 July until 9 September at the British Library.

Details of the exhibition and events, including the talk by Bob Wilcock amongst others, can be found here: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/olympex2012/index.html

This Thursday sees the closing party for the 2012 London Festival of Photography. As part of the event there will be a fundraising auction of prints from some very well known names. The money raised will be used to support the 2013 festival. Details of the event can be found here: http://www.lfph.org/diary/best-of-the-festival-fundraising-auction and the auction catalogue is available here: http://www.lfph.org/downloads/Auction_list_2012.pdf

Photo: Ed Burtynsky from his oil series and included in the auction. 

Hands On Pictures has recently updated its list of 2012 workshops. Of particular interest is the 21 and 22 September workshop on the development of photography from Niepce's first ideas to the daguerreotype process. This will be a practical demonstration workshop leading on to a hands-on workshop. It will be given by David Burder who is one of the world's leading daguerreotypists.

See: www.hands-on-pictures.com. The workshops are summarised below:

WORKSHOPS 2012

Workshops at Hands-On Pictures in Richmond & Photofusion in Brixton

Perhaps the widest Choice of Alternative Photography Workshops in the world...

Bromoil 28 & 29 June & 27 and 28 October,  Terry King

Salt, Albumen and Van Dyke (brown prints) on 20,21 & 22 July, Terry King

Platinum Printing using film negatives on 7 & 8 July, Terry King

Cyanotype and Cyanotype Rex 12 & 13 July and 16 & 17 October and Terry King

Platinum at Photofusion, one day, 22 July, Terry King

Gum Bichromate (multicolour) 25 & 26 July & 1 & 2 August, 26 & 27 September Terry King

Gum at Photofusion, one-day, 29 July .

Platinum using digital negatives 4 & 5 August  Peter Moseley and Terry king

Pinhole 14,15 & 16 August  Derek Reay

Photoscreen 21 & 22 August, Brian Whitehead

Carbon 3,4 & 5 September Peter Moseley

Retouching analogue prints 11 & 12 September,  Kevin O’Neill,

3D Photography  18 August  David Burder

Niepce to Daguerre 21 & 22 September, David Burder

Polymer Gravure 30/31 August and 14 & 15 September, Peter Moseley

Mezzotint 18 & 19 September, Brian Whitehead

Multicolour gum 26 & 27 September, Terry King

Copper Plate Gravure 1,2 & 3, October, Peter Moseley

Wedgwood and Asphaltum 9 & 10 October, Terry King

Demonstration materials are included in the cost. Due to the high cost of some materials (e.g. platinum), an extra material fee may be applicable.

Timeline of Historical Film Colors is a database  compiled by Barbara Flueckiger, professor of film studies at the University of Zurich, in partnership with the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film, Zurich University of the Arts. It is based on her research at Harvard University in the framework of her project Film History Re-mastered. It is a work in progress and during the Summer of 2012, Barbara Flueckiger will add detailed pages for individual processes, see a first version for the Handschiegl process. Please report errors or suggestions.

See: http://zauberklang.ch/colorsys.php

This exhibition using the juxtaposition of 140 old and new photographs of the Great Wall shows an authentic portrayal of one of the great wonders of the world. Using images taken by archaeologists, geographers, travellers and enthusiasts over the last 140 years - both Chinese and from the West - it shows the wall and watch towers then and now allowing the viewer to grasp the enormity of this feat of human architecture.

Between 2001 and 2011 volunteers led by Zhang Baotian began to research and collect old photographs of the Great Wall while taking modern images from the old locations. This labour of love, trekking the whole length of the wall on foot and literally feeling the greatness of this magnificent ancient structure, resulted in the material for this unique exhibition.

The Great Wall became of interest for photographers in the 1880’s with the use of the newly invented camera. The new technology attracted a succession of pioneering photographers including George Ernest Morrison from Britain, William Edgar Geil from the USA and Sha Fei from China recording for its history, charm and physical presence for later generations.

With a theme of remembrance of the Great Wall and displayed in three parts;  Tracing Back, Keeping the invaders off and Everlasting Project the exhibition juxtaposed the ‘then and now’ location photographs with a time difference of 100 years reminding us of the vivid history of one of the most impressive and historic human structures.

There is no doubt of the importance of the Great Wall to the soul of the Chinese nation and in bringing the exhibition the London Olympics PPMG not only highlights this magnificent structure but reminds us that we now need to be concerned for its preservation for future generations.

This concern has been taken up by Li Xue, Vice President of PPMG, who has curated this exhibition. It has therefore been the pleasure of the Phoenix Publishing and Media Group to support the establishment and research of the Great Wall Centre in China to spread the knowledge of this magnificent human achievement.

In the UK, PPMG is also proud to acknowledge the support of The Hadrian’s Wall Trust in staging this exhibition and looks forward to collaborating with the Trust to further world interest in both structures and celebrate both their awards of World Heritage Sites.

Central Hall Westminster, London, SW1H 9NH. Until Friday 4^th August 2012   Free Entrance            

Sponsored by Phoenix Publishing & Media Group, CHINA

On 17^th Aug the exhibition moves to Charing Cross Library, London, WC2H 0HF until 17^th Sept

Upon request from several applicants worldwide, the deadline for submissions to the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography originally set to September 1, has been extended until September 15, 2012.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Shpilman Institute for Photography announce the opening of the 2012 edition of the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography and welcome nominations and submissions.

Awarded every second year, the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography aims to catalyze groundbreaking work in the field by providing scholars and photographers with financial support in the amount of $ 45,000.- in order to pursue original work and ideas in the medium. A first of its kind, the prize is awarded exclusively for the creation of new research rather than the recognition of previously completed projects. It is presented to an artist and/or scholar who aims to expand the boundaries of the medium and contribute to the understanding of photography.
As detailed in the regulations prospective candidates may include artists and scholars in photography with a rich and well established record of past achievements who intend to create new work or undertake new research in the field, ideally combining the theory and practice of photography.

Please visit our website http://www.imj.org.il/shpilmanprize for further information and make it known to anyone who might be interested. The new deadline for submissions now is September 15, 2012.

Faking It is divided into seven sections, each focusing on a different set of motivations for manipulating the camera image. “Picture Perfect” explores 19th-century photographers’ efforts to compensate for the new medium’s technical limitations—specifically, its inability to depict the world the way it looks to the naked eye. To augment photography’s monochrome palette, pigments were applied to portraits to make them more vivid and lifelike. Landscape photographers faced a different obstacle: the uneven sensitivity of early emulsions often resulted in blotchy, overexposed skies. To overcome this, many photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Carleton E. Watkins, created spectacular landscapes by printing two negatives on a single sheet of paper—one exposed for the land, the other for the sky. This section also explores the challenges involved in the creation of large group portraits, which were often cobbled together from dozens of photographs of individuals. 

For early art photographers, the ultimate creativity lay not in the act of taking a photograph but in the subsequent transformation of the camera image into a hand-crafted picture. “Artifice in the Name of Art” begins in the 1850s with elaborate combination prints of narrative and allegorical subjects by Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson. It continues with the revival of Pictorialism at the dawn of the twentieth century in the work of artist-photographers such as Edward Steichen, Anne W. Brigman, and F. Holland Day. 

“Politics and Persuasion” presents photographs that were manipulated for explicitly political or ideological ends. It begins with Ernest Eugene Appert’s faked photographs of the 1871 Paris Commune massacres, and continues with images used to foster patriotism, advance racial ideologies, and support or protest totalitarian regimes. Sequences of photographs published in Stalin-era Soviet Russia from which purged Party officials were erased demonstrate the chilling ease with which the historical record could be falsified. Also featured are composite portraits of criminals by Francis Galton and original paste-ups of John Heartfield’s anti-Nazi photomontages of the 1930s. 

“Novelties and Amusements” brings together a broad variety of amateur and commercial photographs intended to astonish, amuse, and entertain. Here, we find popular images of figures holding their own severed heads or appearing doubled or tripled. Also included in this light-hearted section are ghostly images by the spirit photographer William Mumler, “tall-tale” postcards produced in Midwestern farming communities in the 1910s, trick photographs by amateurs, and Weegee’s experimental distortions of the 1940s. 

“Pictures in Print” reveals the ways in which newspapers, magazines, and advertisers have altered, improved, and sometimes fabricated images in their entirety to depict events that never occurred—such as the docking of a zeppelin on the tip of the Empire State Building. Highlights include Erwin Blumenfeld’s famous “Doe Eye”Vogue cover from 1950 and Richard Avedon’s multiple portrait of Audrey Hepburn photograph from 1967. “Mind’s Eye” features works from the 1920s through 1940s by such artists as Herbert Bayer, Maurice Tabard, Dora Maar, Clarence John Laughlin, and Grete Stern, who have used photography to evoke subjective states of mind, conjuring dreamlike scenarios and surreal imaginary worlds. 

The final section, “Protoshop,” presents photographs from the second half of the 20th century by Yves Klein, John Baldessari, Duane Michals, Jerry Uelsmann, and other artists who have adapted earlier techniques of image manipulation—such as spirit photography or news photo retouching—to create works that self-consciously and often humorously question photography’s presumed objectivity.

Details of the exhibition can be foundhere.