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The stereoscopic craze that swept over France and Britain from the mid-1850s to the 1862 Exhibition led to the production of millions of binocular photographs that are an invaluable help for anyone who wishes to study and understand the Victorian era. Among those images, so precious for the historian of the period, are hundreds of portraits of famous and totally anonymous Victorians. Projected on a large screen and visible in 3-D through special glasses, they bring to life in a very vivid way those ghosts of the past and let us step, for a while, straight into the very heart of photographs that were all taken when Queen Victoria was ruling over Britain. Even the “carte-o-mania” which succeeded this stereoscopic frenzy yields, at times, some surprising full length and full 3-D portraits in a way that will be explained by photo historian Denis Pellerin with chosen examples from Brian May’s and the NPG’s collections.

Book a place here: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/friday-lates/lecture-11102019

National Portrait Gallery
11 October 2019, 19:00
Ondaatje Wing Theatre
Tickets: £10 (£8 concessions and Gallery Supporters)

Photography has been entangled with education processes for nearly two centuries. For much of that time, photography has been used to communicate information, cement knowledge, and train individuals, groups, and machines alike in visual literacy and the meaning of cultural customs. In the late twentieth century, photography became absorbed into academia as a subject of study. In more recent years, photographic historians and scholars have also begun to consider photography, photographs, and photographic practices as a means to tap into diverse historical processes at large. This paradigm shift has also resulted in various instances in which photography studies has been incorporated into the academic curriculum as a prism through which historical, social, cultural, and political phenomena can be studied.

In its 8th Annual Conference, the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) invites applicants to consider the role of photography in education as well as particular histories of intersections between the two. Themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Photography in schooling programmes
• Photography and visual literacy
• The development of photographic education
• Photographs in the classroom
• Photography as an auxiliary to art, archaeological and historical education
• Education and the photographic industry
• Photographic technologies in education systems
• Photographs as participants in familial/domestic education processes
• Photography in social and political propaganda
• Photography-based teaching/learning/training
• Uses of photographic technologies in artificial intelligence
• Digital humanities and photographic history
• The influence of photographic vision on memory, remembering and the imagination
• Educational uses of photographs on New Media platforms.
• Photography and “how-to” guides.
• The material culture of photography education.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to phrc@dmu.ac.uk by 7 January 2020. Include your name, affiliation and contact details in the same document but please do not send a cv.

Camera Education: Photographic Histories of Visual Literacy, Schooling, and the Imagination
Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
15-16 June 2020
De Montfort University, Leicester UK

Confirmed keynote speakers to date:
Professor Jane Lydon, Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History (the University of Western Australia)
Professor Andrés Zervigón, Professor of the History of Photography (Rutgers University, USA)

Follow on Twitter @PHRC_DeMontfort

Conference hashtag #PHRC20

For any queries please email: phrc@dmu.ac.uk

The Icon Photographic Materials Group is delighted to announce the third photo conservation round table, taking place on Friday 29th November at the Science Museum in London. The event will consist of five-minute presentations and discussion, and aims to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing among conservators, as well as other professionals interested in the care and preservation of photographic materials.

We invite speakers from public institutions, private practice and education to talk about their work, and the issues and challenges involved in caring for historic and modern photographic materials. Subjects could include (but are not limited to) treatment practices, preventive conservation, scientific research, education, outreach and funding. Our aim is to build a comfortable space for discussion and to broaden our network by learning about others’ work.

If you’d like to give a five-minute presentation, please send a titled proposal (c.100 words) with your name and affiliation to phmg@icon.org.uk by 3rd November. Presentations should include around five PowerPoint slides, which should be illustrative rather than textual. Please get in touch as soon as possible for further details or to discuss your idea. We look forward to hearing from you!

The event will take place between 13:00 and 17:00. Different ticket prices will apply to presenters, Icon members and non-Icon members. Tea, coffee, and biscuits will be provided. The round table event will be followed by the Icon PhMG annual general meeting, which is free to attend.

A final version of the programme will be available by mid-November, but you can check our Eventbrite page for updates before then.  Please follow this eventbrite link for more information and to book your tickets.

For the first time since 1860 Diableries will exhibited in London, just in time for Halloween. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a new edition of Brian May, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming's Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell which now includes all of the original stereocards, the missing cards having been found.

For one day only Soho's Century Club will be transformed in to a gothic Victorian crypt of temptation and seduction. Whilst surrounded by fantastic imagery depicting demonic scenes with carousing skeletons, devils and satyrs you will have the opportunity to see the Diableries stories come to life in 3D. Dr May will display a selection of his original stereocards alongside some of his  most treasured stereoscopes and Victorian stereoscopic cameras. 

There will be a 3D screening of the spelling animated 3D short film One Night in Hell.  The original iconic skull guitar from Queen's It's a Hard Life video - that makes an appearance in the film with a skeleton rocking the underworld - will also be on display for the first time. 

Find out more at: www.diableries.co.uk

Diableries. The exhibit
Monday, 28 October 2019 from 1100-1600
at The Century Club, 61-63 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1
Entry is free.