Blogs

Anne Lyden is to give a talk at 1400 on 12 April 2014 at the National Media Museum, Bradford. She will be talking about Frederick Evans.

Lyden is the newly appointed International Photography Curator of the National Galleries of Scotland (see: http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/annie-lyden-appointed-international-photography-curator-at-the-na) and is responsible for some 34,000 images She is also the author of books on Evans, Strand and Hill and Adamson plus “Photography, Travel and Perception” (2003) and “A Royal Passion.  Queen Victoria and Photography” (2014), an exhibition on which opens at the Getty, Los Angeles this year.

To book a place click here. 

The National Media Museum in Bradford is hosting a two-day conference on the challenges and opportunities around the acquisition and management of archives by cultural institutions. Such archives may be still, moving or mixed-format; analogue or digital or both; they may be from a company, private, practitioner, virtual, community-based or regional; complete or partial; contained or continually developing.

This is a Call for Papers asking for perspectives on the strategic issues, opportunities and challenges presented by organisations which actively acquire and curate bodies of work.  The conference seeks to examine emergent digital technologies and their impact on archival practice and acquisition.

Contributions which evidence new approaches and/or creative and innovative ways of thinking which challenge conventional understanding are particularly welcome.

Four sessions will consider different types of archives encompassing perspectives from:

• Practitioners & Photographers
• Curators and Institutions
• Mixed Media & Technology Environment
• Commercial & Galleries World

Suggested themes and questions include:

1. The Archive

• What is considered to be `the asset’?
• What constitutes an archive and what challenges do these present to collecting institutions?
• At what point is it useful or helpful to call a `collection’ an `archive’?
• What is the difference between them, if any?
• What is the rationale for acquiring archives?

2. Mixed Curatorship

• Curatorial perspectives and models of mixed curatorship
• Does it need to be comprehensive or representative?
• What are the challenges around the acquisition of analogue/digital/mixed archives?

3. Ownership, Role and the Value of Attendant Data

• What is the impact of removing an archive from its locale?
• To what extent is it valuable for a practitioner to continue to be involved with their archive?

4. The Challenges of Copyright

• What is the role of commercial galleries and organisations?
• The challenges of acquiring multi-media or mixed format collections.
• What are the copyright issues around the acquisition of digital archives, and how can these be addressed?

5. The Future of the Archive: The Role of New Technologies

• What are the positive and negative impacts of `new technologies’?
• Digitisation against retention of the original
• Preservation and dissemination
• Public access, engagement and creative exploitation

For further information, please contact paul.goodman@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk directly.

UPDATE: The conference web pages can be found here: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/Collection/ArchivesConference 

TIMETABLE

Deadline for abstracts [c.250 words for a 20 minute paper]

9 May 2014

Acceptance of abstracts

30 June 2014

Deadline for texts submission (web)

30 September 2014

A fascinating new photographic exhibition at Perth Museum & Art Gallery, Perth & Kinross Council, tells the story of three Perth photographic businesses at a time when the demand for newspaper photography grew hugely.

The exhibition was put together by Paul Adair Photographic Officer at the museum who sent me over the full details - good job!

View details and more images

...and Please let me know if you have seen this exhibition and any comments - looks good

David Burder FRPS, FBIPP, BSc, has one place left on his very special, hands-on, workshop on 6 April in his North London studio. David will take participants through the many aspects (some safe, some dangerous), of Daguerreotype imaging, the cameras and actual hands-on production of an actual Daguerreotype image. It will be a very interactive experience with course members taking away up to three Daguerreotypes made on the day. Stereo Dags will also be demonstrated. This is a rare opportunity to work with a Daguerreotypist.

The cost for the day will be £350. The workshop will take place at David’s studio in North London. Contact David@3Dimages.co.uk for further information and for Workshop booking.

David is Director of 3D Images Ltd in London, and holder of a dozen 3D imaging patents. He is a Fellow Of The Royal Photographic Society, and a previous recipient of several RPS awards, including The RPS Saxby award for 3D imaging.
David is one of only a handful of practising Daguerreoptypists/ lecturers and has appeared on BBC TV, as well as in in The Guinness book of records, for creating the Worlds largest Daguerreotype. (having first had to build a 2 metre tall camera to house the 24x48 inch plate holder.)

He also created the worlds first 3D Lenticular “Dag”, as well as re-discovering the fabled true colour Daguerreotype process, which basically re-writes the early history of colour imaging. David has given several “live, hands-on” demonstrations of this  procedure at several RPS events.

As he wrote in The Daguerrian Annual, “in making Daguerreotypes, I have created many smells and met many new friends”.

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/events/lecture-sebastian-dobson-once-you-have-decided-to-have-your

Sebastian Dobson will give a lecture at UMass Amherst on a “Singular Man” from Cape Cod who embarked on an arduous journey to Japan in the early 1860s, the tumultuous last years of the Tokugawa shogunate. John Wilson (1816-1868) was a trader and a photographer, whose impact on the birth of Japanese photography was enormous. Dobson will also discuss the transposition into other artistic forms that early photography inspired.

This lecture is free and open to the public.

https://www.honors.umass.edu/event/glass-paper-and-canvas-john-wilson-cape-cod

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/events/lecture-glass-paper-and-canvas-john-wilson-of-cape-cod-and-the

The Bradford Telegraph and Argus reports that the future of the National Media Museum is once again under threat - only eight months after government ministers declared it had been 'saved'. According to the newspaper the museum faces a potentially devastating £900,000 budget shortfall, an inquiry by MPs has been told, after fresh Government funding cuts.

Now the renewed threat to the museum has triggered an appeal for help to the Treasury from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is alarmed by the second crisis.

The T&A has also been told independently that the museum is seriously concerned about a 'big chunk of money' to be found, although closure is not being discussed.

Read the T&A's full report here and the T&S's editorial demanding that government minister Ed Vaizey government backs up its support from last summer with real leadership.

The intersection of photography and war encompasses a broad and complex field. Yet conceptually, “war photography” is often restricted to the activities of photojournalists producing aesthetically compelling images used to humanitarian ends. Scholars have primarily focused on issues of veracity, iconicity, memory, affect and ethics. Insightful though this work is, we lack crucial information and critical reflection on fundamental questions regarding how commercial, tactical and personal factors have shaped the diverse terrain of images arising from all contexts of armed conflict.

The aim of this conference is to examine war photography in this expanded sense - that is, as the result of a nexus of pragmatic and strategic transactions and interactions concerning business, militarism and consumption.

We seek papers that address the ways in which issues of supply and demand have shaped the field of war photography, and how this field has articulated with other forms of industrialised and commercial activity. We invite scholars in a range of disciplines to reflect upon the relevance to war photography of commerce, industry, the military and marketing, as well as the role of workers, publishers, politicians, strategists, purchasers and consumers. Together, we endeavour to develop alternative methodological frameworks for approaching images of armed conflict, and to shift and expand thinking on the concept of war photography.

A range of historical periods, geographical regions and modes of conflict is# encouraged. Participants are invited to propose 20-minute papers on topics related to the theme The Business of War Photography, including but not limited to the following:
 The photographic companies, entrepreneurs and workers serving markets created as a result of war
 The requirements of military agencies and their involvement in photographic innovation through funding the development of military imaging technology
 The role of the state in commissioning, shaping and circulating photographic images, and their relationship with foreign and domestic policy and military strategy
 The marketing of photographic products and services to servicemen/women and civilians during wartime
 The production and consumption of photographic merchandise (e.g. souvenirs, postcards)
 The publication and dissemination of war images in the media, and the role of consumers, editors and advertisers in shaping content
 The market for art photography deploying military imaging techniques or which critiques the role of photography in modern armed conflict 

Submission details
We invite proposals of 300 words with a brief biographical note or 1-page CV by 1 March 2014. Applicants will be notified by Friday 14 March. Drafts of papers are due for circulation with co-panellists and chairs by Friday 27 June 2014.

It is envisaged that a selection of papers from the conference will be developed for publication as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. The conference organisers are currently discussing this possibility with the Editorial Board of the Journal of War & Culture Studies. Although this will not preclude selection to present at the conference, please state if your proposal has been previously published in any form.

The Business of War Photography
Producing and Consuming Images of Conflict
Durham University and Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery, UK
31 July to 1 August 2014

Organisers and partners
The Business of War Photography is co-convened by Dr. Tom Allbeson and Pippa Oldfield, Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery and Doctoral Fellow at Durham University. The conference is presented in association with the Centre for Arts and Visual Culture at Durham University, in partnership with Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery and Impressions Gallery, Bradford.
www.dur.ac.uk/cvac
www.durham.gov.uk/dli
www.impressions-gallery.com

Location
The conference will be held at Durham University, with opening papers and an evening reception at Durham Light Infantry Museum and Art Gallery, with the opportunity to view the photographic exhibition The Home Front by Melanie Friend, an Impressions Gallery Touring Exhibition curated by Pippa Oldfield.
www.melaniefriend.com

Information for delegates and speakers
Details of delegate fees, venues, and accommodation will be announced by 28 February 2014. Please note that we are unfortunately unable to meet participants’ and speakers’ costs. A limited number of delegate places will be offered to postgraduate attendees at concessionary rates.

Contact
Please submit proposals and enquiries to bwp.2014@durham.ac.uk.

Many years ago (1981), as director of Yr Oriel Ffotograffeg in Cardiff, I was organizing a survey exhibition of contemporary Yugoslavian photography (never presented due to blinkered Xenophobia) and found myself at a small symposium in a Slovene town called Kranj at which there was considerable excitement around informing me and others that glass plate photography had been invented there in 1841 or '42 by a priest named Janez Puhar (who may also have invented a photographic process on metal plates a couple years earlier). It reminded me of attending similar gatherings in other western and eastern European countries in which I had been curating exhibitions (for a program in Cardiff called "Continental Enquiries") at which other significant historical revelations were being excitedly announced. I was pretty excited myself, and loved the enthusiasm and devotion displayed and the idea that the history of the medium (a history I had read and studied, but which often had been written either by Americans or from that perspective) was being born and reborn before my eyes in country after country. As my focus was contemporary European photography, I did not adequately follow many of these historical developments, the revelations of which I'd been privy. Can some of the BPH folks tell me what is the current status of verification and acceptance of the Puhar discoveries.

I've recently been busy preparing a souvenir book of my WordPress blog: Muy Blog : it's now available from Amazon.There’s more to Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) than a strange name and the fact that he shot dead his wife’s lover.

Best known for his sequence photographs of humans and animals in motion, the ‘galloping horse photographer’ has left a legacy of scientific and artistic work that continues to influence visual media today. A spinoff from the website The Compleat Muybridge, is Muy Blog on Wordpress, keeping Muybridge enthusiasts up to date with what’s happening in the wide world of Muybridge and his images. This souvenir selection is from the first four years of news, research and comment. Read about the modern Profilograph bronze sculpture technique that morphs a galloping horse into a four-dimensional artwork, illustrating time as well as space. Follow the 1895 commotion about the hugely expensive folio Animal Locomotion: “not one in twenty thousand would understand it...” Enjoy the evocative lyrics of “Good Evening, Major” – almost the last words that Flora Muybridge’s lover would ever hear – from the engaging video by the band Accordions. Find out what connects Ronald Reagan, Muybridge, and Death Valley. Enjoy the zoöpraxographer’s influence on the cartoonists of the late 19th century. Follow the author as he goes “In search of Helios”. Was Eadweard Muybridge really ‘The Father of the Motion Picture’? Read about the exhibitions, the controversy, and The Smartest Kid on Earth. Catch up with Muy Blog in this handy printed form.

The next London Photograph Fair takes place this Sunday March 9th. We've moved the opening time to 11am, so please bear this in mind if you are coming. We're sorry - but we will not let anyone in early! Dealer access is from 9am and not 8am.

We've got a good level of bookings, and with no fair since November we're hoping to see an interesting selection of fresh stock, along with a number of first-time exhibitors.

For more details please see our website www.photofair.co.uk.

Entry is still £3 or you can email us for a voucher for free entry after 2pm on info@photofair.co.uk

See more: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/sir-ranulph-fiennes-steps-in-to-help-save-captain-scotts-polar-negatives-for-the-nation

Image: Pony camp, Camp 15. Ponies (left to right) Snippetts, Nobby, Michael and Jimmy Pigg, Great Ice Barrier, 19 November 1911; "Ponies tethered on the ice beside a man-made ice wall. Sledges in background." / Scott Polar Research Institute. 

Photobook Bristol is a a weekend of events, talks and the opportunity to buy photobooks. It will kick off with a talk by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, Not in Parr & Badger, and end with a panel discussion on the future of the photobook. In between there will be sessions on documentary photobooks, the Iberian photobook, self-publishing, and many individual talks. 

Find out more here: http://www.photobookbristol.com/

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has revealed the shortlist for the 2014 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards for photography and moving image books. BPH's two favourite titles from each short-list are in bold. 

The KKF Book Awards are the UK’s leading prizes for books published in the field of photography and the moving image. The shortlisted books, which range from stunningly executed personal photography projects to academic books tackling previously unexplored topics, will now compete for a share of the £10,000 prize. The winners will be announced on 30 April at the Sony World Photography Awards gala ceremony held in London.

Along with 14 highly commended titles across the two categories, the shortlisted books will be displayed at Somerset House, London from 1-18 May as part of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition.

Best Photography Book Award 

The shortlist, chosen by curator and critic Kate Bush (chair), FT Weekend Magazine Photo Editor Emma Bowkett and landscape photographer/ Head of Department, Fine Art Photography, Glasgow School of Art Thomas Joshua Cooper, is:

• History of Photography in China: Chinese Photographers 1844-1879 by Terry Bennett (Bernard Quaritch Ltd)
• The Enclave, Photographs by Richard Mosse, by Anna O'Sullivan and Jason Stearns (Aperture)
• Sergio Larrain: Vagabond Photographer by Agnès Sire and Gonzalo Leiva Quijada (Thames & Hudson)

The judges also recognised and highly commended the following titles:

• Afghan Box Camera by Lukas Birk and Sean Foley (Dewi Lewis Publishing)
• Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris by Sarah Kennel (University of Chicago Press)
• Davide Monteleone: SPASIBO by Galia Ackermann and Masha Gessen (Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg)
• Henk Wildschut: Food by Henk Wildschut (Post Editions)
• Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Hustlers by Philip-Lorca diCorcia (SteidlDangin)
• The Canaries by Thilde Jensen (LENA Publications)
• Twentieth-Century Color Photographs: Identification and Care by Sylvia Penichon (Getty Publications/Thames & Hudson)

Chair Kate Bush commented: “This award is unique in honouring every dimension of a photography book: its cultural originality and its intellectual contribution - as well as its artistic and design value. Our long and short lists reflect a year of vibrant international photography publishing. Thrilling monographs by rising young stars sit alongside works of scrupulous scholarship. Fresh approaches to classic bodies of photography - rediscovered for new generations – take their place beside vernacular imagery found in unexpected places. Art photography, photojournalism, documentary: the wide repertoire of current photographic culture is reflected in our shortlist this year, and each book on the list has surprised and impressed the judges in different ways.”

Best Moving Image Book Award

The jury - Dave Calhoun (chair), Global Film Editor for the Time Out Group, along with Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths and Robert Rider, Head of Cinema at the Barbican – selected a shortlist comprising:

• Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-Fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897 - 1925 by Luke McKernan (University of Exeter Press)
• Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 by Thomas Doherty (Columbia University Press)
• Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation by Tom Sito (MIT Press)

The jury also recognised and highly commended the following titles:

• Cinematic Appeals: The Experience of New Movie Technologies by Ariel Rogers (Columbia University Press)
• Hollywood in the New Millennium by Tino Bailo (British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan Higher Education)
• Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader edited by Giorgio Bertellini (John Libbey Publishing Ltd., 2013)
• Seeing is Believing: The Politics of the Visual by Rod Stoneman (Black Dog Publishing)
• The Documentary Film Book by Brian Winston (British Film Institute/Palgrave Macmillan Higher Education)
• The Making of Return of the Jedi: The Definitive Story Behind the Film by J.W. Rinzler (Aurum Press Ltd)
• The World is Ever Changing by Nicolas Roeg (Faber & Faber)

On behalf of the judges, Chair Dave Calhoun commented: "The jury was impressed by the variety of submissions for the prize. The eligible books straddled a wide range of approaches to popular and academic writing and represented the pleasing breadth of current publishing on cinema, including memoirs, studies of individual films and filmmakers, explorations of national cinemas and insights into particular aspects of the filmmaking craft. Each of the three shortlisted books was superbly written and researched and offered new perspectives on cinema from very different angles.”

This in from PPHP reader Rebecca Warren:

'My father used to work for Carleton Artists in Portman Square in 1959. They used to photograph many different adverts for publications such as women's weekly .....details here on the PPHP - thanks !

Residents of the streets of East London are captured with startling clarity by the enigmatic C A Mathew. The purpose of the photographs remains unknown, but on the morning of Saturday 20th April, 1912, our photographer walked the short distance from Liverpool Street Station into the heart of Spitalfields, taking his camera with him.

In contrast to the more formal, posed photographs of the time viewers may be more familiar with, these photographs engage vividly with a modern audience, who see the people, the streets and the everyday details, just as C A Mathew himself would have seen them.

Mathew lived in Brightlingsea in Essex, having only begun taking photographs a year before these images were made, he passed away 4 short years later in 1916 leaving this series of images that in the words of the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life are ‘the most vivid evocation we have of Spitalfields at this time.’

The photographs were found a few years ago packed into a cardboard box in the archives of the Bishopsgate Institute where they had evidently been for at least 60 years, but there are no records of how they came to be there.

Details of the exhibition can be found here, and is open by appointment from Monday to Friday, and all day Saturday and Sunday, from 6 March -25 April.