Blogs

Confirmation of date of birth of Frederick Scott Archer. The website for him notes that he was baptised together with his siblings the same day in 1822. This website seems to be updated to 2013.

In case it hasn’t been recorded since, the true date of birth of FSA can be revealed by reference to the actual baptism register not a transcript. I have found that often when a family group are baptised on the same day a note of the dates of birth are recorded. The baptism register for All Saints & St John with the liberties of Brickendon & Amwell Hertford record that on 21st April 1822 3 children of Thomas (a butcher of Bull Plain) & Elizabeth Archer were baptised; James born Dec 12 1812, Frederick Scott Aug 30 1814 and Sarah 1816. Perhaps a new plaque on his grave is required to replace the one that states 1813.

I have just heard that ALAN BARNES, a former friend and colleague from the University of Derby died last week. He was an original thinker and researcher in the history of art and was particularly interested in the history of photography. The funeral is at 12.30 on 10 June at Trent Valley Crematorium near Derby. Can you please pass on this sad news to those you think should know. Thanks.

Pauline Heathcote's Archive of her research notes and letters for her publications is temporarily unavailable. The archive was stored in the attics at Bromley House and has had to be removed and stored off site while the library roof is repaired and the floors strengthened. We expect to reopen early in 2020.  

Until then some of Pauline's published works are available including 'A Faithful Likeness' and its 5 volumes of appendices. for more information contact Eric Butler by email- photo@bromleyhouse.org

It is hoped that much of Pauline's published work will be made available on line during the closure.

Phillip Roberts, previously a researcher at Birmingham Museums and a researcher working with the National Science and Media Museum, has been appointed Associate Curator of Photography and Photographic Technology at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. Phillip completed his PhD at the University of York which was titled The Emergence of the Magic Lantern Trade in Nineteenth-Century England. He has published work in Film History, Cultural Politics, The Magic Lantern and Early Popular Visual Culture and is the editor of three special issues on media culture.

Photo historian Rose Teanby discusses how engineering giants Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson have been represented in visual media, both photography and art. How does their visual legacy reflect both individual achievement and resilient professional friendship throughout their eventful but prematurely curtailed lives?

Rose Teanby is an Associate member of the Royal Photographic Society and biographer of Victorian photographer Robert Howlett. In 2017 she presented a lunchtime lecture looking at the iconic portrait of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by the launching chains of the SS Great Eastern. Last year Rose completed a tour in support of the Institution of Civil Engineers entitled Brunel Through a Lens, followed by a presentation at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne. Here she broadened her study to include Robert Stephenson and his civil engineering relationship with Brunel.

National Portrait Gallery, London
4 July 2019. Doors open at 12.45.
Lectures begin at 13.15 and last approximately one hour.

Book here: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/event-root/july/lunchtime-lecture-04072019

Image: Robert Stevenson, by Horace Harral, after a photograph by Robert Howlett, wood engraving, 1858. NPG D6865

The Niépce Museum has made available online a selection of about 300 Amateur Photographer covers and plates that were presented on a screen in Julien Faure-Conorton's exhibition on French pictorialism at the same venue in 2018. The selection is made up of representative examples of European pictorialism published between 1908 and 1914.

It is available here: http://www.museeniepce.com/index.php?/collections/enjeux-de-la-photographie/The-Amateur-Photographer with all the covers as thumbails here: http://collections.museeniepce.com/fr/app/collection/16/view

Cecil Beaton’s portraits from a golden age will be brought together the first time in a major new exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in March 2020. Featuring around 150 works, many of which are rarely exhibited, Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things will explore the extravagant world of the glamorous and stylish ‘Bright Young Things’ of the twenties and thirties, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton.

Through the prism of Beaton’s portraits the exhibition will present the leading cast, to many of whom he would become close, and who in these early years helped refine his remarkable photographic style - artists and friends Rex Whistler and Stephen Tennant, set and costume designer Oliver Messel, composer William Walton, modernist poets Iris Tree and Nancy Cunard, glamorous socialites Edwina Mountbatten and Diana Guinness (née Mitford), actresses and anglophiles Tallulah Bankhead and Anna May Wong, among many others. Brought to vivid life each of them has a story to tell. There are the slightly less well known too – style icons Paula Gellibrand, the Marquesa de CasaMaury and Baba, Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge, the eccentric composer and aesthete Lord Berners, modernist poet Brian Howard, part model for Brideshead Revisited’s mannered ‘Anthony Blanche’, ballet dancer Tilly Losch and Dolly Wilde Oscar’s equally flamboyant niece. Also featured are those of an older generation, who gave Beaton’s career early impetus: outspoken poet and critic Edith Sitwell, the famously witty social figure Lady Diana Cooper, artist and Irish patriot Hazel, Lady Lavery, and the extraordinary, bejewelled Lady Alexander, whose husband produced Oscar Wilde’s comedies and who became an early patron of Beaton’s.

Cecil Beaton’s own life and relationship with the ‘Bright Young Things’ will be woven into the exhibition, not least in self-portraits and those by his contemporaries. Socially avaricious, he was a much-photographed figure, a celebrity in his own right. Beaton’s transformation from middle-class suburban schoolboy to glittering society figure and the unrivalled star of Vogue, revealed a social mobility unthinkable before the Great War. He used his artistic skills, his ambition and his larger-than-life personality to become part of a world that he would not surely have joined as a right. Throughout the twenties and thirties his photographs place his friends and heroes under perceptive, colourful and sympathetic scrutiny. 

The exhibition will bring together loans from national and international collections and in particular an extensive loan from the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's. Highlights will include vintage prints of Beaton’s earliest subjects, his glamorous sisters Nancy and Baba; the Vogue portrait of his friend George Rylands as ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, published when he was a student, and which set him on the road to fame. There are glimpses from high-spirited revels at country house weekends, including a rare vintage print of the leading lights dressed as eighteenth-century shepherds and shepherdesses on the bridge at Wilsford Manor, regarded now as the quintessential depiction of the Bright Young Things. In town, parties, charity balls and pageants were enlivened by an almost maniacal zeal for the theatrical and the extravagant in costume and attitude.

In addition to Beaton’s own portraits, the exhibition will also feature paintings by friends and artists know to Beaton including Rex Whistler, Henry Lamb, Ambrose McEvoy, Christopher Wood and Augustus John; portraits of Beaton by Paul Tanqueray, Dorothy Wilding, and Curtis Moffat; as well as letters, magazines, invitations, scrapbooks, book jackets and other ephemera.

Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London said: “We are delighted to announce this major new exhibition for spring 2020 and to bring together for the first time so many of Beaton’s dazzling photographs, high on art and artifice, which beautifully capture the original and creative world of the Bright Young Things.”

Robin Muir, Curator of Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things said: “The exhibition will bring to life a deliriously eccentric, glamorous and creative era of British cultural life, combining High Society and the avant-garde, artists and writers, socialites and partygoers, all set against the rhythms of the Jazz Age.”

The exhibition will be curated by Robin Muir, Curator of the Vogue 100: A Century of Style exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2016 and a Contributing Editor to Vogue (to which Beaton himself contributed for over 50 years)

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated hardback catalogue, featuring around 150 beautifully reproduced works by Cecil Beaton and his contemporaries. In addition to the works illustrated there is an essay by Robin Muir, and biographies for each of the ‘Bright Young Things’. The catalogue will be available from 12 March 2020 via the Gallery shops and online npg.org.uk/shop

The exhibition will tour to the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield from 25 June – 18 October 2020 and The Wilson, Cheltenham’s art gallery and museum from 14 November 2020 – 28 February 2021.

Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things
12 March – 7 June 2020 at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Tickets without donation from £17 - £20
Tickets with donation from £19 - £22
Free for Members and Patrons

npg.org.uk

Spring Season 2020 sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills LLP

Photoworks is currently recruiting! We are looking for two people to join our team and help shape our changing organisation. I’d really appreciate if you could pass on to anyone who might be suitable, circulate to your networks or share on social channels. Deadline is next week, Tuesday 28th May. 

Audience Development & Communications Manager (£27-£30k pro rata, 3 days/week) 

This post is an exciting opportunity to work with the Director and Deputy Director to develop and implement an organisation-wide communications strategy, raise brand awareness and grow the organisation’s audiences both on and offline. Key amongst the early projects for this role is to plan, develop and implement a successful rebrand of Photoworks to prepare for the organisation’s 25th anniversary in 2020. https://photoworks.org.uk/news/job-opportunity-audience-development-communications-manager-3-days-week/

Programme Administrator (£21k-£23k, f/t)

As Programme Administrator you will provide efficient and effective administrative, financial and programme support to the organisation. Alongside general administration and bookkeeping, you will play a key role in supporting exhibitions, events and Learning & Engagement projects, as well as supporting the Deputy Director with Board administration, stakeholder reporting and patron communications. https://photoworks.org.uk/news/35918/

The Science Museum Group - which includes the National Science+Media Museum, Bradford - is currently undertaking its most ambitious project in a generation, to move over 80% of its collections to the National Collections Centre to Wroughton, near Swindon, by 2023.

As part of this move, the SMG is re-evaluating the service it provides for researchers who consult our archives, objects, and libraries in the course of their work. If you have ever used the library, archives, or collections at: - Science Museum London (including Dana Centre Library and Blythe House) - Science and Industry Museum Manchester (formerly MOSI) - National Science and Media Museum Bradford (formerly the National Media Museum) - National Railway Museum in York - Locomotion in Shildon - National Collections Centre, Wiltshire (formerly Science Museum Wroughton) the SMG wants to hear about your research experience, and your suggestions for how it could improve in future.

The survey should take a few minutes to complete. You will be offered the chance to win a £50 amazon voucher for taking part in the survey – the draw will be made in June, and the winner notified by email.

BPH would ask that anyone who has used the photography collections in Bradford complete the survey to ensure that the photography, photographic technology and printed materials are not overlooked. 

Survey for Researchers who have used Science Museum Group collections https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/G276CBK

A one-day symposium on science and photography will take place on 23^rd October in St Andrews. The symposium is presented in conjunction with the 2019 St Andrews Photography Festival, ‘Science & Photography’ which runs throughout the month of October.

The symposium organisers welcome proposals from both a historical and contemporary perspective on themes including, but not limited to:

• Historic collections and contemporary projects
• The application of photography to scientific innovations
• Photographic documentation of science
• Scientific advancements in photography.

Panel proposals are also welcome and we particularly encourage early career scholars and PhD candidates to apply.

Please submit a proposal of no more than 200 words for your 18 minute presentation to Rachel Nordstrom at Rachel.Nordstrom@st-andrews.ac.uk no later than 17:00 on Friday 12 July 2019.  All proposals are subject to a review process.

Science and Photography Symposium
Hosted by: University of St Andrews Library’s Special Collections Division
Wednesday 23^rd October 2019
09:30 – 17:00
Lawrence Levy Studio, Byre Theatre, Abbey Street, St Andrews KY16 9LA

See: https://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/call-for-papers-science-and-photography-symposium/

Image: Back of Hand and Shrivelled Apple. To illustrate the origin of certain mountain ranges by shrinkage of the globe by James Nasymth ,1874 (Photo-QB581-N2C2-Plate-2)

The University of Bristol Library is seeking to recruit an enthusiastic and experienced archivist to work on an exciting Wildfilm History Archive.  This is a full-time, fixed term contract for 2 years. The two-year Wildfilm History Project will catalogue, conserve and make available a rich, diverse and important collection of wildlife filmmaking materials which document the changing cultural context of wildlife film making and how it has shaped our historical, social and cultural understanding of the natural world.

The Wildfilm History Archive is a mixed media archive of photographs, films and papers in a wide variety of formats with complex rights management issues.  As well as creating a detailed catalogue of the collection (using CALM), the project archivist will ensure that due diligence processes are followed to establish rights holders, ensuring that these are properly documented and that the archive complies with other legal obligations such as the DPA 2018 and GDPR.

The Archivist will work alongside an audiovisual digitisation officer and a wildfilm expert who has extensive knowledge of the area and materials.

The post requires proven experience of archives administration as well as experience in dealing with mixed media archives.  The successful candidate will also be expected to demonstrate knowledge and experience in dealing with complex rights management issues.

For more information about the role please contact Debra Hiom (d.hiom@bristol.ac.uk) or Hannah Lowery (h.j.lowery@bristol.ac.uk)

Closing date for applications: midnight Wednesday 22 May 2019

See more here: http://www.bris.ac.uk/jobs/find/details.html?nPostingID=40814&nPostingTargetID=136335

Two daguerreotypes by Antoine Claudet of Queen Victoria c.1854 have been revealed by the Museum of London. According to the Observer newspaper the pictures are among the most significant in the museum’s 150,000-strong collection, because not only are they two of the very earliest images of Victoria as Queen, then aged 34, but they also reflect her fascination with photography. The photos were never intended for public consumption – which is part of the reason they have never been seen – and will not be put on display at the museum.  Publication in a national newspaper is seemingly of lesser concern.

See: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/19/queen-victoria-photography-museum-of-london-daguerreotype-stereograph-royal-images

Image: Museum of London

Phillips is an international auction house, conducting sales of 20th Century and Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Modern & Contemporary Editions, Jewels and Watches. Phillips is currently seeking an ambitious and motivated individual to fill a full-time Associate Specialist position within our Photographs department.

Based in London, the primary focus of the position will be to lead the cataloguing of property for auctions, valuations and private sales and conduct research to determine authenticity, provenance, bibliography and exhibition history, liaising with outside experts where relevant, while cultivating networks among collectors, dealers, curators and others in order to develop and maintain best-in-class knowledge of the Photographs market and to support the department in sourcing and selling property.

In addition to this, the Associate Specialist will be responsible for supporting the department co-heads with business getting efforts by driving and handling the groundwork for department business getting trips, undertaking client research and assisting with client development tasks in collaboration with the global client development team, working with the department administrator to finalise a schedule for client visits and handling estimate requests.

The full job description and application link can be accessed here: https://www.phillips.com/careers

The Wiener Library’s summer 2019 exhibition displays the remarkable work of German-Jewish photographer Gerty Simon, and features many of her original prints from the 1920s and 1930s.

Gertrud (Gerty) Simon (1887-1970) was a prolific and successful photographer. Her photographs were presented in a number of exhibitions in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Gerty Simon worked first in Weimar-era Berlin, where it seemed likely from the identity of her subjects that she had connections with the thriving and innovative creative scene of actors, writers, composers, dancers and artists there, as well as with the world of politics. She photographed the likes of singer and actress Lotte Lenya, theatre critic Alfred Kerr and his young daughter Judith, the artist Käthe Kollwitz and Albert Einstein.

Gerty Simon and her son Bernard fled the Nazi regime in 1933 and settled in Britain. Very quickly, Gerty Simon was able to re-establish her photography studio and create a reputation for photographing subjects from the most influential circles of London society. Between 1934 and 1937, she photographed amongst many others: Sir Kenneth Clark, Peggy Ashcroft and Aneurin Bevan. Her work also featured in a number of exhibitions, including London Personalities held at the Storran Gallery in Kensington in 1934. The Sunday Times described her at this time as “most brilliant and original of Berlin photographers”.

The quality of the photographs and significance of many of Gerty Simon’s sitters, as well as her story of displacement from Germany and re-establishment in Britain meant that, for The Wiener Library – the world’s oldest collector of material on the Nazi era – this was a particularly compelling collection. This project will bring into focus, for the first time in eighty years, the work of this powerful and innovative photographic artist, particularly as Gerty Simon photographed so many important cultural figures from the lost world of Weimar Berlin. We hope that through this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue focusing on her life and work, Gerty Simon will once again receive the recognition she deserves.

This exhibition is part of Insiders/Outsiders, a nationwide arts festival taking place from March 2019 to March 2020 to celebrate refugees from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British culture.

Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon
30 May 2019 – 15 October 2019
The Wiener Library,  29 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DP
Free admission. Monday-Friday 10am-5pm, Tuesdays 10am-7.30pm
www.wienerlibrary.co.uk / +44 (0) 207 636 7247

Image: Gerty Simon; self-portrait, date unknown © The Bernard Simon Estate, Wiener Library Collections.

The V&A is Britain’s national museum of art, design and performance, and is one of the greatest museums of decorative arts in the world. The V&A’s purpose is to enable everyone to enjoy its collections and explore the cultures that created them; and to inspire those who shape contemporary design. We are currently recruiting for the post of Curator of Touring Photography Exhibitions in the Word & Image Department. The post-holder will possess a broad knowledge of the history of photography, curatorial flair, and the requisite confidence and experience to liaise with exhibition venues and in China.

Photographs is one of the Sections that make up Word & Image (WID) Collections. It is a small and dynamic team with a high profile because of the international significance of the collection, photography’s wide audience appeal, the museum’s commitment to photography as a key area and the opening of the new V&A Photography Centre in autumn 2018. The Section maintains and develops the world-renowned national collection of the art of photography, which includes the Royal Photographic Society collection. The new touring exhibitions will be drawn from this world-class collection.

Purpose of job
The post-holder will have responsibility for a series of 3 exhibitions, which will tour to multiple venues in China from late 2019 to 2021. The post-holder will be expected to plan, curate and implement exhibitions. The role will involve collaboration with museums and galleries across China. The post-holder will be required to travel regularly to the exhibition venues and act as a confident and articulate ambassador for the V&A. The role will also involve liaison with photographers and their estates, and numerous V&A departments, including the Exhibitions and Loans Department and the Collections Services teams (Conservation; Technical Services; Photography Services; Documentation and Collections Management Services.)

The post-holder will have responsibility for a series of 3 exhibitions, which will tour to multiple venues in China from late 2019 to 2021. The post-holder will be expected to plan, curate and implement exhibitions.

See more here.

The Icon Photographic Materials Group and the National Library of Scotland are delighted to announce a practical workshop with photographic conservator Clara M. Prieto. Conservators, archivists and curators of historical photograph collections are invited to participate. The one-day workshop will be taught at the National Library of Scotland on each of two consecutive days: Thursday 4th and Friday 5th July 2019.

Clara M. Prieto de la Fuente is an independent conservator and restorer of photographs and graphic art. In addition to conservation treatment and research, she teaches conservation and restoration at the Escuela Superior de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales in Madrid. Until 2010 she worked for Anne Cartier-Bresson in the Atelier de Restauration et Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris as Conservation Project Manager. After receiving a grant from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía she returned to Madrid, and in 2012 became a fellow of the Instituto de Patrimonio Cultural de España. She holds a Master’s degree in heritage conservation and a degree in the conservation and restoration of graphic art; in 2008 she was awarded a scholarship from the Ministerio de Cultura de España in order to specialise in photographic preservation at the Institut National du Patrimoine, Paris.

This workshop will familiarise participants with the history, processing and housing of daguerreotypes. Theory on the documentation and system design for developing the new structural housing system for cased daguerreotypes will be outlined, and each participant will carry out practical work developing one or two protection systems for cased daguerreotypes

The new structural housing system is designed to strengthen the first line of defence of the daguerreotype - the case - and protect it during storage, exhibition, handling and viewing, thereby mitigating the risk of further deterioration. The main objective of the workshop is to build a housing system that takes into account the whole object in its functionality and original structure, while allowing for its handling and viewing without increasing the risk of damage. The proposed system not only comprehensively protects daguerreotypes, and other encased photographs such as ambrotypes, but also recreates something of the original intimate viewing experience.

Each workshop will host a maximum of eight participants, who are encouraged to bring their own encased daguerreotypes or ambrotypes for practise. ¼" plates will be used most frequently, but the exercises can be done using plates of any size; smaller plates will be more complicated while larger ones will require more material.

To book tickets visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/protecting-daguerreotypes-a-new-structural-housing-system-tickets-61227450954 

This major exhibition will examine the relationship between photographers, photography and the British seaside from the 1850s to the present. It is Turner Contemporary’s first ever photography exhibition.

As well as featuring the work of eminent photographers including Jane Bown, Henri Cartier Bresson, Vanley Burke, Anna Fox, Susan Hiller, Paul Nash, Martin Parr, and Ingrid Pollard, the curators have included rich and often unknown work from across photography’s history, including Raymond Lawson’s remarkable chronicle of family life in Whitstable.

Enzo Ragazzini captures the anarchy of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, while Stuart Griffiths makes a bleak narrative of the 1990 rave scene in Brighton. Daniel Meadows, Barry Lewis and Dafydd Jones all photographed at Butlins in the 1970s and Grace Robertson records the raucous goings-on of a women’s’ day out to the coast in the 1950s.   Composer Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears, partners in music and in life, created a haven by the sea that they preserved in photographs.

Images of hotel life, the beach, the holiday camp, dressing up and dressing down, wild waves and coastlines all combine to create a rich picture of the British seaside.

In response to Seaside: Photographed, artists Bethan Peters and Stacie Lee Bennett-Worth have been commissioned to create a new artwork inspired by local residents. In Spring 2019, they will deliver workshops to families in collaboration with Thanet Early Years Project exploring the seaside through play, movement and digital media. They will create a work based on the ideas generated that will be available for the public to see in Summer 2019.

Curated by Val Williams and Karen Shepherdson, Seaside: Photographed is a touring exhibition organised by Turner Contemporary. The exhibition will take place at Turner Contemporary in summer 2019, touring to three other UK venues in 2020, each with their own unique connection to the seaside; John Hansard Gallery, Grundy Art Gallery, and Newlyn Art Gallery and the Exchange. With support from Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring Fund.

A book accompanies the exhibition. 

See more here: https://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/seaside-photographed

Image: Anna Fox, Hayling Island 1986 © Anna Fox, courtesy James Hyman Gallery, London. 

A new publication looks at Berwick-on-Tweed's earliest photographers. Jim Walker's book chronicles Berwick's photographic scene from the 1840s and shows examples of work in and around Berwick, Tweedmouth and Spittal. 

See more here: https://www.berwick-advertiser.co.uk/news/jim-s-look-thro-the-lens-1-4883831

Thro' the Lens. Berwick's earliest photographers
Jim Walker
£9.99
ISBN 978-1-999-8312-8-8
Available from Grieve bookshop.

Chiswick's auction of Photographica which takes place on 16 May includes a range of cameras and photographs. Of particular interest is are several lots of previously unseen material from Herbert G Ponting.

Other lots of note are: 

• Lot 134. A portrait of ABD ALLAH BEN ABDI, MARSHAL OF THE LOGIS DES SPAHIS, 1862
• Lot 136a. J J E Mayall. UNCUT PROOF CARTES DES VISITE PORTRAITS,
• Lots 140-142.  H G Ponting. An early collection of Herbert George Ponting’s unpublished personal stereo cards (10) c.1900, with handwritten inscriptions and annotations
• Work by FM Sutcliffe, Bert Hardy, Charles Harry Hewitt (1915-1987) and others. 

The full catalogue can be downloaded here.