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A rare carte de visite of Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) by Julia Margaret Cameron (Cox & Ford no. 674). Photographed 4-7 April 1867.

Herschel was a famous astronomer and the inventor of the cyanotype.
With the copyright of Cameron under the print. Also written in fountain pen in an unknown hand 'Sir John Herschel, Célèbre astronome Anglais'
The albumen print is in overall good condition. Some discoloration and spots typical for the gilt border.

CdV: 8,2 x 5,5 cm
ca. 1867

More info online at Bazar Nadar. 

UPDATE: Our gallery is online for one year now! 

To celebrate this, we offer you a discount of 15% on your purchase. This from now on until 31/05/19. Please enter the code '0852' in the checkout. Or contact us. 

We hope you find some vintage photography now or in the future. 

A chance meeting in 1936 gave Lisa and Jimmy Sheridan the opportunity of a lifetime. Keen amateur photographers, their company Studio Lisa was engaged by the then Duke and Duchess of York to take casual photographs of their family, including the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, at their homes Royal Lodge and at 145 Piccadilly, London.

At a time of traditional formality, when it was unheard of for mere unknowns to be given such an opportunity, the hiring of Studio Lisa proved to be a revolutionary and popular move on the part of the royals as it humanised them in the eyes of their subjects. They soon struck up an unlikely friendship with Lisa and Jimmy – a friendship that would span over 30 years and yield 13 separate photographic sessions, the last of which included Queen Elizabeth’s young children.
This volume charts the story of Studio Lisa, from its humble beginnings right through to the granting of two Royal Warrants.

For the first time Studio Lisa’s cache of remarkable royal photographs is brought together, producing a marvellous collector’s item and a treasure thankfully preserved for posterity.

Photo London prides itself on being the best place to discover the future directions of photography; many of which can be found in its acclaimed Discovery section which showcases the very best in emerging talent. However as its venue Somerset House was the place that Sir John Herschel first coined the term ‘photography’ in 1838, it is determined to showcase the rich history of the medium. This year Photo London hosts The Essential Fenton a major exhibition of work by the great pioneering photographer Roger Fenton curated by Robert Hershkowitz and supported by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wilson Centre for Photography (see image, right). The show will coincide with a panel discussion on Fenton with Sophie Gordon, Hope Kingsley, Martin Barnes & Francis Hodgson. Alongside this a many of our galleries will be bringing exciting historic works. 

See more about the exhibitors, public programme and Buy Tickets

On 18-19 May, the Special Edition of The London Photograph Fair returns to The Great Hall at King's College, adjacent to Somerset House. The fair, which coincides with Photo London, is the only established fair devoted to vintage photography in the UK.

There are twenty exhibitors this year, from the UK, Continental Europe and the USA, including Photos Discovery, Christophe Lunn, Richard Meara, Daniella Dangoor and Linus Carr. Prices range from the lower hundreds to five figures, with photographs including everything from the quirky and the bizarre to masterpieces by leading photographers such as Baldus, Louis De Clercq, Gustave Le Gray, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Bill Brandt, Martin Munkasci, Erwin Blumenfeld to name a few.

The fair attracts not only experienced collectors but has over the last few years seen an upsurge in interest from a younger generation of collectors, in many cases first time buyers. The dealers, keen to encourage the interest in classic photography, have responded. In addition to displaying their individual stock of vintage images on the walls of their stands, this year, a number of the exhibitors have pooled their resources and have put together thematic collections such as Out of The Blue - The Cyanotype Collection, Death, Murder and Mayhem, Travel and Exploration, and Masters of Photography. The collections will be posted on Instagram alongside a selection of other offerings leading up to the fair.

And the fair begins before you have entered the building. The English photographer Jonathan Keys will, in the manner itinerant Victorian photographers, set up a photographic studio outside The Great Hall and make portraits on glass, using the wet Collodion process invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851.

And last but not least, a new magazine called The Classic, a free magazine about classic photography, will have its UK launch at the fair.

See more: http://www.photofair.co.uk/

The DCMS and Arts Council have published the 2017-18 Export of Objects of Cultural Interest report. Of note for the photography community is the report detailing the loss of the Norman Album by Julia Margaret Cameron which is quoted in full below, with additional information in square brackets: 

Case 10 Images from the Life (The Norman Album) by Julia Margaret Cameron

An album containing 75 photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79), taken between 1864 and 1869, selected by the photographer and presented by her to her daughter, Julia, and son-in-law, Charles Norman, in September 1869.The album measured 45.9cm by 31.4cm. It was bound in red Morocco and was embossed on the cover with the title ‘Mrs Cameron’s Photographs from the Life’. Given to Julia Norman (Cameron’s daughter) in 1869, it had remained in the
possession of the Norman family since that time.

The applicant had applied to export the album to the United States. The value shown on the export licence application was £4,098,361, which represented an estimate. The Senior Curator, Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum [Martin Barnes], acting as expert adviser, had objected to the export of the album under the first, second and third Waverley criteria on the grounds that its departure from the UK would be a misfortune because it was so closely connected with our history and national life, it was of outstanding aesthetic importance and it was of outstanding significance for the study of the history of photography and, through her selection of subjects, the broader history of 19th-century art and literature.

The expert adviser had provided a written submission stating that the album was particularly significant since it was made as a gift for Julia, Cameron’s daughter, whose gift of a camera introduced Cameron to photography. Arranged
in a single sequence from front to back it includes some of her finest and best-known portraits, including Julia Jackson, John Herschel, Alfred Tennyson and Charles Darwin.

Between 1864 and 1869 Cameron assembled a number of albums for her family, friends and close acquaintances. Cameron embraced the album format, seeing it as an expressive medium which allowed her to present herself and her work as artistic. Each album represented hundreds of hours of work and were assembled with enormous care and considerable thought as to how the images were to be viewed. It was impossible to ascertain exactly how many albums she made but 10 were known to have survived and each was different and designed to be meaningful to the individual recipient.

However, the significance of this album lied not only in its individual photographs but in the album as a whole, representing, as it did, a very personal selection of work chosen and sequenced by the artist herself and intended as a gift for her beloved daughter. Of all the albums compiled by Cameron which were known, this album was arguably
the most personal and most important and the individual prints were particularly fine examples.

Of all 19th-century photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron was probably the most widely represented in public and private collections throughout the world. It was noted that 12 prints in the album were not replicated in UK public collections. The subjects appeared to be predominately family members.

The expert adviser was asked how significant it was that these individuals were not prominent 19th-century figures. The expert adviser indicated that Julia Margaret Cameron was unconcerned with portraying social standing in the context of
her art and was even-handed in the treatment of her subjects.

The applicant did not disagree that the album met the Waverley criteria. They stated in a written submission that there was no doubt that the Norman Album was an item of significance in Julia Margaret Cameron’s body of work. The applicant noted that most of the images and all of the major images in the album were already represented in UK public collections. Furthermore, in addition to the Norman Album, there was another major Cameron presentation album in
a private UK collection (the Lindsay Album), so the UK was well supplied with her work in both individual plates and albums.

We heard this case in July 2017 when the album was shown to us. We found that it met the second and third Waverley criteria on the grounds that its departure from the UK would be a misfortune because it was of outstanding aesthetic importance and it was of outstanding significance for the study of the history of photography and, in particular, the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the most significant photographers of the 19th century.

We were, however, unable to recommend a fair matching price and recommended that the Secretary of State should obtain an independent valuation of the album. The applicant was given the option to agree to be bound by the valuer appointed by the Secretary of State once their identity was known or to appoint their own independent valuer with a
view to the two independent valuers agreeing a valuation. In the event that they were unable to agree, the Secretary of State would appoint a third person to act as an arbitrator (not as an expert) by whose decision the parties would be bound.  The applicant agreed to this procedure.

The Secretary of State agreed the Committee’s recommendation and having been given the identity of the valuer appointed by the Secretary of State the applicant agreed to be bound by their valuation which was £3.7 million and the Secretary of State recommended that as the fair matching price. Having regard to the fair matching price the
Committee agreed to recommend to the Secretary of State that the decision on the export licence should be deferred for an initial period of three months to allow an offer to purchase to be made at the fair matching price of £3.7 million. We further recommended that if, by the end of the initial deferral period, a potential purchaser had shown a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase the album, the deferral should be extended by a further four months.

At the end of the initial deferral period, no offer to purchase the album had been made and we were not aware of any serious intention to raise funds. An export licence was therefore issued.

See the full Reviewing Committee report here. 

The IWM's photographic collection will now be housed at IWM Duxford in a new, state-of-the-art storage facility. As a result researchers will need to order material at least five full working days in advance of a planned visit. Moving the photographic collection to the new facility at IWM Duxford aims to guarantee its long-term preservation and ensure that it  can continue to be made available to future generations of researchers.

Lindsey Stewart and Joanna Skeels are a new specialist dealership in early photographs and related printed and manuscript material, focusing on British material from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Stewart & Skeels also represent Mike Seaborne and the Roger Mayne Archive. As well as buying and selling photographs and photographically illustrated books, it acts as agents for the sale of photographic collections, with an emphasis on placing significant historical work in public institutions. Our other services include auction commissions (viewing, advising and bidding at auction on your behalf) and valuations for insurance, probate and sale.

Before forming Stewart & Skeels, Joanna and Lindsey worked together at the London antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch Ltd, where Joanna began her experience in the book trade in 2010 after graduating from Oxford University. She soon began working with Lindsey, who had established a department there specialising in photography after more than two decades running the photograph department at Christie’s in London. During this period they collaborated with colleagues to promote photography through catalogues and a book publishing programme, and completed sales of major collections, notably the Terry Bennett collection of early Chinese photographs and the Mackinnon collection of early Scottish photography. As an independent consultant since 1986 Lindsey has also advised national and international museums, archives and universities as well as corporate and private collectors. She is an associate member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association.

Stewart & Skeels will be exhibiting at Photo London in May.

See more here: https://www.stewartandskeels.co.uk/about-us

Image: GEORGE WASHINGTON WILSON, St Pauls, 1870s, printed 1880s, Extra-large carbon print, 16¼ x 23⅝ inches (41.3 x 60 cm) including a narrow margin, titled, initialled 'G.W.W.' and numbered '1152' in the negative

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) announces a new Curatorial Fellowship in Photography. Generously supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, the fellowship will run for the next four years. The Curatorial Fellowship follows the Foundation’s ongoing support of the V&A and its significant donation towards the museum’s recently-opened Photography Centre, for which gallery 100 was renamed ‘The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery’ after the businessman and portrait photographer and his wife.

The first fellowship of its kind in photography at the V&A, the scheme will see two fellows join the museum over consecutive two-year periods. The initiative arises from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation’s desire to give early scholars of photography the opportunity to acquire invaluable museum experience and specialist knowledge working alongside the Photography Section’s accomplished curatorial team. Fellows will gain expertise in the history of photography and contribute substantially to the museum’s knowledge of its world-renowned collection that includes over 800,000 photographs.

A focus for each fellow will be an independent research project based on the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection, which was transferred to the V&A in 2017. Exploring areas of strength such as portraiture, colour photography and photographic process, all themes of interest to Bern Schwartz and the Foundation, each fellow will spend three months in the V&A Research Institute (VARI). Using an accompanying travel fund also provided by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, the fellows will also travel nationally and internationally to share their expertise and further their study of the photographic medium.

Applications will open via the V&A website on 25 April and close on 27 May with the first fellow commencing in autumn 2019. Details can be found here. 

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “We are enormously grateful to The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation for their generosity in supporting our Photography Centre and mission to make photography available to the widest possible audience. The V&A is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of creative thinkers. This Curatorial Fellowship in Photography will give emerging curators the chance to deepen their own knowledge and expertise while furthering scholarship around the museum’s world-class photography collections.”

Michael Schwartz, Chairman of The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, and Anne Varick Lauder, Senior Advisor, said: “We are delighted to continue supporting the V&A’s Photography Section and its talented team of curators. By directly working with them and the objects in their care, the fellows will gain invaluable on-hands experience essential for furthering their careers in photography. Bern Schwartz was passionate about education and the mentoring experience. His career as a portrait photographer was immeasurably advanced by learning directly from the legendary photographer, Philippe Halsman.”

The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation were the first major funder to support the V&A’s new Photography Centre, which was opened by HRH The Duchess of Cambridge in October 2018. The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery, a refurbished 19th-century picture gallery, is currently host to a major display entitled Collecting Photography: From Daguerreotype to Digital, which explores photography as a way of ‘collecting the world’. An extension to the Photography Centre is scheduled to open in 2022 and will expand the V&A’s photography offer further with new and exciting ways for visitors to encounter this diverse and dynamic art form.

The fields of photography theory and history have in recent years moved away from the assumption of a break between analogue and digital image to a more nuanced understanding of both past and contemporary photographic practices, images, and technologies. Increasingly photography is discussed in relation to other media, to industry and markets and to climate and environment. At the same time questions of aesthetics and interpretation are recast, understood in terms of sensual, haptic, embodied and everyday encounters with material images. This conference will examine photography as simultaneously material and immaterial addressing not only the tangible properties of photographic objects, but also the ecosystems in which they circulate. We live in and through the photographic, in its physical presence in the world, and in our thought. The conference thus also invites considerations of  the ways in which a mode of philosophical thinking can be conceived as photographic or vice versa.

We welcome abstracts from colleagues in film or cinema studies working on the physical and chemical aspects of film (celluloid and light for example) and questions of aesthetic / sensual experience; and from colleagues in media, literature, history and philosophy whose work addresses the photographic in its various manifestations and forms. Artists whose work engage with the conference themes are welcome to submit a proposal.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Ecologies of photography: atmospherics (clouds, fogging, aerialism, climate), energetics 
• Photography and the ineffable: material/immaterial, apparitions, image/imagination
• Science and technology: maintenance, glitches, wet and dry photography, chemistry, apparatus
• Visibility and illumination: enlightenment and luminescence, flash, phosphorescence
• Transience: ephemerality, obsolescence, wear and tear
• Materiality: from celluloid to coltan, gelatine and silver, tactility, gesture, embodiment and thingliness

Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts (300 words max.) with your name, title, affiliation (where appropriate) and a short bio (up to 200 words).

Please prepare for a 20 minute presentation by 5th of June 2019 to the conference organizers:

Dr. Michelle Henning — Professor of Photography and Cultural History, University of West London michelle.henning@uwl.ac.uk

and

Dr. Junko Theresa Mikuriya — Senior Lecturer in Photography, University of West London junkotheresa.mikuriya@uwl.ac.uk

Doreen Spooner (1928–21 April 2019), the first woman to work as a staff photographer on a Fleet Street newspaper, has died aged 91 years. She had a forty-year career, mostly on the Daily Mirror newspaper. She photographed Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler in a London pub and captured Neil Kinnock falling in to the sea in Bright. She was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a former chair of its Visual Journalism Panel. 

See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Spooner She was interviewed for the RPS Journal here: https://archive.rps.org/archive/volume-130/749556?q=spooner

Image: Doreen Spooner FRPS by Brendan Monks

In the Yarmouth columns of the Norfolk Chronicle dated Saturday 31st October 1863, the Great Yarmouth letterpress printer and stationer George Nall was advertising “NALL'S SIXPENNY ALBUM VIEWS OF YARMOUTH. PHOTOGRAPHED BY SEDGFIELD. Nearly 40 sorts. To be had only at Nall's Library. Great Yarmouth.”  This advertisement seems to imply that George Nall had commissioned Sedgfield to take a selection of views of Great Yarmouth for him that were marketed as “Nall’s Sixpenny Album Views.” It is assumed that Sedgfield was William Russell Sedgfield 1826-1902 who was a member of Norwich Photographic Society and was known to have visited Great Yarmouth to take photographs. 

In the later part of 2018 a small number of collodion negatives on glass taken in the 1860s of Great Yarmouth scenes have been rediscovered. These plates are quite small, measuring three and a half inches square. One of the negatives shows Ramp Row and this negative is known to be number 100 in the Nall’s Series of Carte de Visite views. Another negative of the then newly built home for Shipwrecked Sailors has been identified as being one half of a stereoscopic pair. It is believed all the negatives were once a part of stereoscopic pairs.

Does any member of this forum have in their collection any stereoscopic or Carte de Visite views taken at Great Yarmouth that can be attributed to Nall or Sedgefield that may have been printed from these plates? 

Scans of all these plates are on the my photos section on this website.

The V&A has announced a new, long-term collaboration with Sir Elton John and David Furnish to revolutionise public access to photography. Comprising a significant donation towards the museum’s recently opened Photography Centre, for which gallery 101 will be renamed ‘The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery’, the partnership will also include a major co-curated temporary exhibition, to be announced in due course.

With a focus on the contemporary, the collaboration will offer opportunities to bring together highlights from the V&A’s world-leading photography collection of over 800,000 photographs, alongside The Sir Elton John Photography Collection – one of the greatest private photography collections in the world.

Since 1991, Sir Elton John has developed his love and passion for the photographic medium to amass a collection of over 7,000 photographs. Spanning the early 20th century to the present day, the collection encompasses iconic images by modern masters including Man Ray, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange and Edward Steichen. It also includes photographs by the most exciting contemporary artists working today, from Cindy Sherman to Alec Soth and Alex Prager. Throughout their collecting, Sir Elton John and David Furnish have been keen to share their photography collection with the widest possible audience – a mission shared by the V&A. Their continuous philanthropic support of public institutions, and loan of key works to national and international exhibitions, has created new insights, dialogues and connections to further the study, enjoyment and appreciation of the medium.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “We are immensely grateful to Sir Elton John and David Furnish for their generosity in supporting our Photography Centre and mission to make historic and contemporary photography available to the widest possible audience. We are united by a deep commitment to the medium, and there are huge synergies between our collections, particularly around 20th century modernist and contemporary colour photography. The Sir Elton John Photography Collection was a major lender to our 2014 exhibition, Horst: Photographer of Style. I very much look forward strengthening our collaboration with Sir Elton, David and their team and seeing our collections in dialogue in a new and revelatory photography exhibition.”

Sir Elton John said: “The V&A is known for its dedication to teaching, public research facilities and learning-based exhibitions focused on the mechanics and history of the photographic arts. For David and I, this commitment to education and mission to celebrate the medium, presents a perfect partnership. The new Photography Centre, along with the 2022 extension, will not only elevate photography but it will help foster new artists, patrons and collectors, like myself. We are delighted to be part of this exciting moment and we hope that audiences will walk away with the same excitement and appreciation for photography, as I did when I first started collecting.”

Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s generous donation enables the V&A to realise its ambitions of showcasing highlights from its extensive photography holdings, with a series of temporary displays, new acquisitions and annual contemporary commissions. Opened to the public in October 2018, the V&A’s new Photography Centre is situated in the museum’s North East Quarter, reclaiming a series of beautiful original 19th-century picture galleries. Designed to revolutionise the way in which visitors engage with photography, it displays vintage prints, negatives and contact sheets, alongside photographic equipment and archive material to tell broader stories around the history of photography. A new extension scheduled to open in 2022 will expand the V&A’s Photography Centre further to include a teaching and research space, a browsing library, an historic darkroom, and a studio for photographers’ residencies, offering new and exciting ways for visitors to encounter this diverse and dynamic art form.

Images:

Sir Elton John and David Furnish at home in their art gallery. © Dave Benett Getty Images for the V&A

The Sir Elton John and David Furnish Gallery, V&A. Photography Centre. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of humanity’s first footsteps on another world, Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) will host a major exhibition exploring our evolving relationship with the Moon across times and cultures. The Moon (19 July 2019 – 5 January 2020) will present a scientific and cultural history of our nearest celestial neighbour, exploring its role as a mirror for humanity’s dreams, obsessions and endeavours.

This conference considers cross cultural relationships with the Moon and invites various responses to our cosmic companion.  In keeping with RMG’s interest in interrogating the collision of science, history and art, The Art and Science of the Moon will explore how the Moon’s motions and phases have influenced human activities, beliefs and behaviours; how sustained scrutiny and mapping of the lunar surface have enabled us to understand more about ourselves and our place in the universe; how attempts, imaginary and real, to reach this other world have fostered creativity and technological progress; and how in the 21st century we are reflecting on the past and rethinking our relationship with the Moon for the future.

Grant Scott and Tim Pellatt the team behind the documentary Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay are making the film available to view for FREE from 7.00pm BST Sunday 21 April 2019.

Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCej50am1kZr0VSAN20TQLAg … to receive a reminder! 

Find out more about the film here. http://www.donotbendfilm.com/

You will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the Historic Photographs collection, raising understanding, awareness and use of the collection, providing physical and intellectual access, producing online and other content, and contributing to the development of the new Museum of London at West Smithfield. In particular, you will contribute to the delivery of the Collections Information Upgrade Project.

You will have experience of curatorial work with a photography, art or visual culture collection within a museum or art gallery, and the use of collections documentation systems. You will be educated to degree level, or equivalent, in history of photography, history of art, fine art or a related subject.

Further details can be found at https://jobs.museumoflondon.org.uk/vacancy/1104/ArtsJobs/detail and applications can be made by completing our online application form.  The closing date for applications is Monday 6 May 2019. Interviews will be held on Thursday 16 May 2019.

The Museum of London is committed to equal opportunities and diversity.  We particularly welcome applications from disabled and BAME candidates, who are currently under-represented in our organisation.

'Views of an Antique Land: Imaging Egypt and Palestine In the First World War' is a Heritage Lottery Funded project which has collected more than 2000 images of Egypt and Palestine taken during the First World War. The project is hosted at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University and directed by Dr. Steve Mills and Paul T. Nicholson.

Donors have generously allowed us to digitise their private archives of photographs and to make them publicly available at: https://ww1imagesegypt.mukurtu.net/ where the images are searchable and, where possible, have been identified.  We are always happy to receive additional information on the collection, be that historical or photographic and we can most easily be contacted via nicholsonpt@cardiff.ac.uk or via our Twitter @ww1imagesegypt or Facebook accounts, just search on Images of Egypt.

The History of Art Department of Birkbeck, University of London and the National Portrait Gallery, London, invite applications for a fully-funded doctoral studentship under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. The project will examine the politics of photographic portraiture in Britain during the 1970s and 80s, when, informed by activism and critical theory, photographers challenged preconceptions of gender, class, and race, seeking new ways to portray marginalised people.

The PhD will be supervised jointly by Professor Patrizia Di Bello, lecturer on the history of photography at Birkbeck and co-director of the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, and Dr Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery.

FACT FILE

• Qualification type: PhD
• Location: London
• Funding for: UK students / EU students
• Length: up to four years full time/seven years part time
• Funding amount: subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the funding covers tuition fees and an annual stipend towards living expenses for three years, with the option to apply for an additional six months of funding from the Student Development Fund. The 2019/20 annual stipend is likely to be £17,009 with London weighting, with an additional CDP stipend of £550 a year. Additional support of up to £1000 a year is available for three years from the National Portrait Gallery to contribute to research-related expenses. 
• Hours: full or part-time
• Closing date: Friday 10 May 2019, 12 noon
• Interview date: Wednesday 22 May 2019
• Enquiries: for informal enquiries, please contact Patrizia Di Bello at Birkbeck, University of London (p.dibello@bbk.ac.uk) or Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery (sjaskotgill@npg.org.uk)

THE PROJECT

In the 1970s and 1980s, emerging grassroots photography organisations engaged in a cultural and political struggle over the politics of representation. Informed by, and in turn contributing to, debates around issues of personal and collective identity, photographers experimented with collaborative ways of making, understanding and disseminating portraits as sites of social action. One such collective was the Half Moon Photography Workshop, established in 1972 by a cooperative of photographers as a gallery, workshop and education project; members included Ed Barber, Shirley Read, Peter Kennard and the photographer, writer, and self-defined ‘cultural sniper’, Jo Spence. While the work produced during this period is attracting critical and curatorial interest, less scholarly attention has been paid to this moment in British photography, and on how it opened areas of debate that continue to influence photographic culture and portrait making today.  

With access to the extensive primary sources and visual resources of the National Portrait Gallery and Birkbeck, University of London’s Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, the studentship offers an opportunity to examine the portrait projects initiated by these grassroots movements, shifting attention away from ideas of the single artist and art object towards collaborative ways of making and understanding portraits as sites of social and political action, and the important critical debates that animated this activism in the late 1970s and 1980s. 

The student will be encouraged to pursue their own original enquiries and to decide the scope of their chosen research, situating the project within research questions that include:

• how identity is constructed, undermined or challenged in this period through the practice of photographic portraiture and its changing iconography
• how the work from this period questioned and explored the relationship between photography, biography and identity
• how photography of the period makes visible marginalised communities and identities
• the relevance of this work to audiences today
• the engagement between photography and cultural theory
• new approaches to picturing the self and the community
• collaborative working practices in British photography
• approaches to producing, exhibiting and disseminating photographic portraiture
• mapping the network of community photographers in 1970s and 80s Britain
• the economic and sociological factors that affected the development of photography projects in this period

PROJECT RESOURCES

The studentship is intended to support the work of the National Portrait Gallery and offers unique access to the Gallery’s expertise and collections, including portraits by Jo Spence, Peter Kennard, Tish Murtha, Neil Kenlock, Helen Chadwick and Liz Rideal, supplemented by letters and correspondence, period magazines and journals held in the Gallery's Archive and Library. The student will also have privileged access to uncatalogued materials in the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, which as well as materials relevant to the life and work of Jo Spence and her collaborator Terry Dennett, includes holdings of Camera Work magazine, and a variety of other publications and ephemera - posters, leaflets, postcards and pamphlets. 

The student will be offered practical work-based training in collections and curatorial practice, suitable for a potential career in the cultural sector. There will also be opportunities to develop cataloguing experience and to propose curated displays at Birkbeck's exhibition space, the Peltz Gallery, which could be used to test ideas for experimental modes of display and innovative forms of audience engagement and interaction. Alongside training provided by Birkbeck, University of London, sector-specific training will be offered through the consortium of museums, galleries and heritage organisations affiliated with the AHRC CDP scheme. 

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Birkbeck and the National Portrait Gallery value the diversity of their staff and students, and welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

Essential skills/attributes:

• you will hold at least an upper second class BA in History of Art, Photography, Museum Studies, or some clearly related discipline
• you will hold either an MA in History of Art, Photography, Museum Studies or a clearly related discipline, or have equivalent professional experience that might include working in museums, galleries or archives  
• candidates should also demonstrate evidence of appropriate English language proficiency normally defined as 6.5 in IELTS. For entry requirements please visit http://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/admissions/entry-requirements

Desirable skills/attributes:

• advanced knowledge of twentieth-century British photographic history or British portraiture

The preferred start date is 1 October 2019

HOW TO APPLY

• There are two steps:
  • You need to apply for this studentship by downloading and completing the application form. You will need to send your completed application form and references to Anthony Shepherd, no later than 10 May 2019.

Please note the successful applicant will be required to complete an application for a place of study on the MPhil/PhD History of Art programme at Birkbeck, University of London.

Image: Courtesy of Dominic Mifsud, photograph of Cultural Sniping: Photographic Collaborations in the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, an exhibition at the Peltz Gallery, London, 9 March – 28 April 2018

Photographic 2019 will soon be here, as usual it will take place at the regular venue The Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Hall, 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PB on the 19 May 2019. Public entry is from 10am-4.00pm and admission is £8 on the door from 10am to 12 noon and £5 noon to the close. This year there will be up to 135 stalls selling user and collectable cameras, consumables, lenses, literature and images. It is not a trade show for new equipment. If you fancy a table to clear that build up of photographic equipment phone 01684 594526 . Early buyers tickets can be obtained from the same phone number.

 Any late updates and more information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/photographicafair ; 

Thanks

 Nigel

Special Auction Services is offering an auction of Fine Photographica on 30 April which comprises over 600 lots, including 67 lots from the John Hannavy Collection of photography.

On 26 April Flints is offering Fine Photographica in its auction.

The SAS online auction catalogue can be found here: http://www.sas-auctions.com/catalogues/2018/cm300419/index.html

The Flints auction catalogue can be found here: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/flintsauction/catalogue-id-flints10015

Image: lot 143 from the SAS auction.