Blogs

For the last year or so a group of volunteers have been doing a stock-take of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science (PSNS) library held in Perth Museum. This is prior to the closure of the museum and removal of its contents to a new collection store to be built as part of Perth and Kinross Council’s proposed cultural programme with the redevelopment of the City Hall. 

Among the library’s collections volunteer David Perry has discovered a copy of Ackermann's Photogenic Drawing Apparatus: Directions for Use. This 8-page pamphlet was published in April 1839 and it was the first photographic instruction book to be printed. It accompanied a box of paper, a printing frame and chemicals for making ‘photogenic drawings’. The pamphlet explained how to use the apparatus to produce photographs according to Henry Talbot’s pioneering paper negative process. Talbot had been experimenting since 1834 and publicised his experiments in January 1839 to the Royal Society in London after hearing about Louis Daguerre’s parallel experiments in photography in France.

The discovery of the pamphlet in the library doubles the number of known copies in existence from one to two. The only other known copy is in the library of the Royal Photographic Society, now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from which a reprint was produced by the Society's Historical Group in 1977.

The pamphlet was unknown because it was bound together with another photographic pamphlet Photographic Printing, in Carbon and other Pigments, by Perth photographer, William Blair, published in 1869. The title in the binding referring only to Blair’s pamphlet. Both pamphlets and the bound book were presented by Thomas Bourke, a Perth photographer, to the Photographic Section of the PSNS shortly after its formation in 1889, although Ackermann’s pamphlet has the inscription that it was presented to the Photographic Section by James Jackson, presumably a relative of Magnus Jackson, the Perth photographer who was a member of the PSNS and its Vice-President.

A report of the discovery was in the PSNS newsletter for June 2018 which can be read here which is panning to exhibit the find in the  near future. 

With thanks to Paul Adair, Collections Officer, Culture Perth and Kinross, Perth Museum & Art Gallery for alerting BPH to this find and for the images.

With the support of Arts Council England and the Artist Information Company, a-n, Almudena Romero has made a step by step film explaining the chlorophyll printing process.

The process also features in the Photofusion exhibition Growing Concerns. This unique body of work focuses on the subject of migration, making the link between the deregulation of goods and capital and the increasing barriers for movement of people. The images in this series are printed directly onto plants from Asia and the Caribbean Islands by means of the organic process of chlorophyll printing.

See more about the exhibition here: https://www.photofusion.org/exhibitions/almudena-romero-growing-concerns/

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/277634133

The Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg and the Hasselblad Foundation have a long-term partnership for the purpose of supporting the development of critical study and research on photography. As part of this shared programme of work, we are now seeking applications from photo-based artists, photo historians, art historians and practioners in cognate disciplines, with doctoral degrees, to apply for a 2-year postdoctoral scholarship starting from January 2019.

This position is attached to a new joint project between the Hasselblad Foundation and the Academy Valand which seeks to create an experimental photo history centered on photographic practitioners in the interwar period (WWI-WWII), starting from (but not limited to) Sweden, in both art and vernacular photography, as well as advertising and scientific photography. The applications for this post may be focused on, for example: new perspectives on archival material; local and social history and photography as alternative historical source and mediation; and cultural parallels between the 20s and 30s and today.

More information about the Academy Valand is available at www.akademinvaland.gu.se. More information about the Hasselblads Foundation can be found at www.hasselbladfoundation.se.

Applications by 17 August 2018. 

See more here: https://www.gu.se/english/about_the_university/job-opportunities/vacancies-details/?id=2445

With support from Art Fund, the Victoria and Albert Museum runs a programme to help the development of curatorial expertise in the art and culture of photography, working with regional museum partners. The programme has been in place since 2014, and has resulted in collaborations with Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery and Museums Sheffield. The curatorial training post provides practical training in photographs curatorship and equips a Curator with specialist knowledge of photography and the ability to care for and develop photography collections. 

This is a 12 month fixed term contract. You will spend six months in the Photographs Section of the Word and Image Department at the V&A with a V&A Curator as mentor. This will be followed by a six months’ placement at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter working on an agreed project. The post-holder will report to the Curator, Photographs at the V&A.

Interviews will be held on 13 September 2018

More details here.

Over the last 4 years the National Library of Wales has worked with Wikimedia to provide open access to more than 10,000 public domain images. These include the Welsh Landscape Collection, photographs, maps and manuscripts. This partnership has led to more than 455 million views of Wikipedia articles containing National Library images to date.

Images Now the Library is pleased to announce that nearly 5000 portrait prints, photographs and paintings have been placed in the public domain on Wikimedia Commons. Along with the images, the Library’s National Wikimedian has also shared rich metedata for every image as linked open data on Wikidata.

The Library’s main goal in releasing such content is to increase access to our collections and to contribute to the creation and sharing of knowledge about Wales and its people. It is now hopped that the Wikimedia community will begin to use these images to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

The National Library also plans to run a project to increase engagement with this collection, and hopes that volunteers will be encouraged to create Wikipedia articles about the Welsh sitters, artists, printers and photographers involved in the collection. Because all these images are freely downloadable and in the public domain, we also encourage others to reuse them for any purpose they see fit, from education to the creative industries this is a free resource for everybody.

Read the full blog post here which also shows examples of data visualisation: https://blog.library.wales/?p=17811