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Today, the V&A announces the appointment of renowned photography curator and scholar Duncan Forbes as Director of Photography. Forbes will take up the newly-created role in April 2020 to drive forward the V&A’s reputation as one of the world’s leading institutions for the research, exhibition and understanding of international photography.

Forbes will lead the V&A’s team of photography curators on its mission to bring new photographic narratives and histories to light through new acquisitions, artist collaborations, international partnerships, research projects and exhibitions. He will also spearhead a major cataloguing and digitisation programme to further enhance public access to the V&A’s photography collections – one of the largest and most important in the world.

In addition, Forbes will oversee the development of Phase Two of the V&A Photography Centre, opening in 2022 and led by Marta Weiss, Senior Curator of Photographs. The V&A Photography Centre is designed to showcase the museum’s expanded photography holdings following the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection in 2017. The first phase, encompassing a suite of four galleries, was opened by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge in October 2018 with a display spanning a history of photography from the daguerreotype to digital, a digital wall for screen-based media, a screening room, newly-commissioned work by leading contemporary artists and space to showcase new acquisitions. Phase Two will add a further four rooms, including two climate-controlled galleries suited to the display of large-scale contemporary works, interactive features and a reading room dedicated to the enjoyment of photographic books.

Previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, Forbes has researched, exhibited and published prolifically on the medium. He returns to the UK from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “Photography is one of our most powerful forms of global communication, and a medium that we have been collecting and interpreting since our founding in 1852. We now care for one of the most important international photography collections in the world, and we’re on a mission to share it with audiences across the globe. With Duncan at the helm, we’ll drive forward our support of emerging and established practitioners and develop our contemporary collecting programme through the generosity of the V&A Photographs Acquisitions Group. Through the expansion of the V&A Photography Centre, ground-breaking UK and touring exhibitions, artist collaborations, pioneering research and international partnerships, we’ll open up photography to new perspectives and possibilities like never before.”

Duncan Forbes said: “I’m thrilled to be joining the V&A at such an exciting moment in the development of its photography holdings. The addition of the Royal Photographic Society collection in 2017 has lent further weight to what is already one of the world’s great photography collections. The challenge of bringing new histories to light in collaboration with partners around the world is a compelling one. I can’t wait to get started.”

The V&A was the first museum in the world to collect photographs, beginning with its founding in 1852, and continues to collect and commission new work today. Comprising over 800,000 photographs, the collection charts the global history of photography from its invention to the present day. Spanning fine art, fashion, journalism, documentary, portraiture, sport, architecture, medical and landscape photography, alongside many other genres, highlights include:

•  A range of pioneering photographic media, including daguerreotypes, calotypes, and early colour photography
•  Work by key British innovators including William Henry Fox Talbot, Hill & Adamson, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron and Lady Clementina Hawarden
•  20th-century greats and international artists including Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Claude Cahun, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martine Franck, Horst P. Horst, Rinko Kawauchi, Dorothea Lange, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti, Curtis Moffatt, Helmut Newton, J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston
•  Work by the most exciting image-makers working today including William Eggleston, Sir Don McCullin, Zanele Muholi, Cornelia Parker, Martin Parr, Sebastião Salgado, Cindy Sherman, Juergen Teller and Wolfgang Tillmans
•  Photography books, journals and archival materials relating to the world’s most revolutionary artists and practitioners
•  Cameras and equipment associated with groundbreaking photographers from William Henry Fox Talbot to Madame Yevonde
•  Recent acquisitions of work by Valérie Belin, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Martin Kollár, Susan Meiselas, Abelardo Morell, Thomas Ruff, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Jem Southam and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Duncan Forbes was previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Senior Curator of Photograph at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. He has most recently been based in Los Angeles, working as a Researcher at the Getty Research Institute, where he has been exploring and extending its rich archival holdings of photography. Forbes has published widely in the history of photography and curated exhibitions across three centuries of photographic history, including with leading contemporary photographers. His most recent books and exhibitions include Provoke: Between Protest and Performance: Japanese Photography 1960–1975 (Steidl, 2016), Beastly / Tierisch (Spector Books, 2015), Manifeste! Eine andere Geschichte der Fotografie (Steidl, 2014), and Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny (Hatje Cantz, 2013). His latest essays have appeared in Camera Austria International (Graz, 2018 and 2019), Helen Levitt (Kehrer Verlag, 2018), Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (Prestel, 2018), ZUM (São Paulo, 2017), The Japanese Photobook, 1912–1990 (Steidl, 2017), and History Workshop Journal (London, 2017).

Image: Duncan Forbes / V&A handout.

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged.

This new book by Christopher Morton is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard's theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard's anthropology.

The Anthropological Lens: Rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Christopher Morton
256 Pages | 89 black and white illustrations
234x156mm
ISBN: 9780198812913
£30
Available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-anthropological-lens-9780198812913?cc=ro&lang=en&

Hyperallergic has reported that Paris Musées is now offering 100,000 digital reproductions of artworks in the city’s museums on open access — free of charge and without restrictions — via its Collections portal.

Paris Musées is a public entity that oversees the 14 municipal museums of Paris, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais, and the Catacombs. Users can download a file that contains a high definition (300 DPI) image, a document with details about the selected work, and a guide of best practices for using and citing the sources of the image. 

Images are currently available of 2D artworks, such as paintings or photographs, and are being made available under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license, which allows creators and owners of copyrighted or database-protected content to place those works in or as close as possible to the public domain. Works still in copyright will be available as low definition files. 

Paris Musées has significant holdings of photographs, including the work of Atget, Nadar, and photographically illustrated books.

Image: Portrait de Bautain, Eug., (photographe), c.1870-90. Musée Carnavalet.

How do scholars use photography in their research? What can they learn from photographs? What can we understand from them about our relationship with the photographs that we make and those that we encounter almost everywhere we go?

Edited by Dr Gil Pasternak from the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University (UK), The Handbook of Photography Studies has now been published by Bloomsbury, featuring and discussing work by some of the most influential photography scholars of our generation in 28 chapters and 6 contextualizing essays.

A state-of-the-art overview of the field, The Handbook of Photography Studies examines the thematic interests, dynamic research methodologies and multiple scholarly directions of this exciting area. It is a source of well-informed, analytical and reflective discussions of all the main subjects that photography scholars have been concerned with, as well as a rigorous study of the field’s persistent expansion at a time when digital technology regularly boosts our exposure to new and historical photographs alike.

Featuring the work of international experts, and offering diverse examples, insights and discussions of the field’s rich historiography, the Handbook provides critical guidance to the most recent research in photography studies. Split into five core parts, each with an introductory text that gives historical contextualization and scholarly orientation, this volume:

• analyzes the field’s histories, theories and research strategies;
• discusses photography in academic disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts;
• draws out the main concerns of photographic scholarship;
• interrogates photography’s cultural and geopolitical influences; and
• examines photography’s multiple uses and continued changing faces.

A systematic synopsis of the subject, this volume will be an invaluable resource for photography researchers and students from all disciplinary backgrounds in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

‘This book is a most useful contribution to the study of photography, with many excellent contributions. Chapters are much more substantial than is usual with works of this type, allowing authors to explore their topics in some depth and explore a range of approaches. Pasternak has done a wonderful job.’ Steve Edwards, Professor of History and Theory of Photography, Co-Director of the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

‘This is a book designed for twenty-first-century students, one that will prepare them to ask well-informed, timely questions about the medium’s histories and historiography.’ Tanya Sheehan, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, Colby College, USA

Gil Pasternak is Reader in Social and Political Photographic Cultures in the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC) at De Montfort University (UK). A member of the advisory board for the journals Photography & Culture and Jewish Film & New Media, earlier in life he worked as photojournalist, photography archivist and fine art photographer, and in 2016 he was consultant for the BBC film Smile! The Nation’s Family Album (2017).

Chapter contributors:

Marta Braun, Douglas Nickel, Melissa Miles, Costanza Caraffa, Jae Emerling, Luc Pauwels, Ben Burbridge, Daniel Rubinstein, Elizabeth Edwards, Christina Riggs, Gil Pasternak, Jennifer Tucker, Paul Frosh, Sarah Parsons, Annebella Pollen, Martin Hand, Jane Lydon, Stephen Sheehi, Oliver Moore, Eva Pluhařová-Grigienė, Darren Newbury, Louis Kaplan, Margaret Denny, Thierry Gervais, Susan A. Crane, Joan M. Schwartz, Martha Langford, and David M. Frohlich.

Visit the Handbook’s webpage to find out more about its aims, aspirations, and content: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-handbook-of-photography-studies-9781474242219/

My last post to this blog concerned the two Valley of Inkerman photographs taken in 1856 by either James Robertson or Felice Beato, but more likely the latter. In this blog, the image entitled The Inkerman Ravine (see below) is discussed. Although Robertson’s signature is in the bottom right-hand corner, it also may have been the work of Beato. Whether this photograph was taken in 1855 or 1856 is unknown to the author.

The only description of this photograph comes from the Royal Collection Trust website that reads: -

Photograph of the Inkerman Ravine. The photograph shows a valley with steep rocky sides. Several rough roads run through the valley and there is a small group of tents on the hillside to the left. The Battle of Inkerman was fought in this ravine on the 5th November 1854.Photograph of the Inkerman Ravine. The photograph shows a valley with steep rocky sides. Several rough roads run through the valley and there is a small group of tents on the hillside to the left. The Battle of Inkerman was fought in this ravine on 5^th November 1854.

During the Crimean War, the valley in the picture was called the Careenage Ravine or Careenage Creek Ravine by the British and the Ravin du Carenage by the French. The side-ravine that leaves the Careenage Ravine in the centre of the picture was called the Mikriakov Glen. How the photograph came to be called The Inkerman Ravine is unknown, but it may have been deliberate ploy to associate the location with the famous battle in order to sell copies to the public in Britain. However, the Battle of Inkerman was not fought in this ravine on 5 November 1854 as the Royal Collection Trust suggests. It was largely fought on the Inkerman Ridge, a section of which is seen on the skyline of The Inkerman Ravine.

Nevertheless, the location in the image is significant because there was a famous action here during the Battle of Little Inkerman, which was also known as the Combat of the Lesser Inkerman, on 26 October 1854. As at the Battle of Inkerman just over a week later, the main Russian attack took place on the Inkerman Ridge with their troops first occupying the high ground known as Cossack or Shell Hill. This hill is just beyond the high point on the skyline of The Inkerman Ravine. In addition to their main thrust on the Inkerman Ridge, the Russians also directed a column of what was believed to have been marines or sailors up the Careenage Ravine. This column of 600-800 men was to advance up the Careenage Ravine and a side-ravine known as the Wellway before appearing at the rear of British lines on the Inkerman Ridge. However, sixty men of the Guards under the command of Captain Goodlake were posted across the Careenage Ravine. These men initially retreated a few yards, but then halted at a small trench across the floor of the ravine and fired on the Russian column. According to a map published by Alexander Kinglake in Volume 5 of his book entitled The Invasion of the Crimea, the trench was at the location seen in The Inkerman Ravine. The Russians hesitated and there was a stand-off for some time. After the arrival of British reinforcements, which consisted of Captain Markham and men of the 2^nd Rifle battalion, there was a sharp encounter and the Russians were forced to retreat back down the Careenage Ravine.

Russian forces also advanced up the Careenage Ravine during the Battle of Inkerman, but this time they did not encounter any resistance and almost reached the end of the Wellway on the Inkerman Ridge. Here they were defeated and had to retreat the way they had come.

The Careenage Ravine at the location seen in The Inkerman Ravine was also photographed by Colonel Vladislav Klembovsky, who later became a leading figure in the Russian army. He died in a Soviet prison in 1921. His image, which was published in an album of images of Crimean War sites in 1904, is shown below. He states in his caption that the slopes in his picture were those of the Careenage and Mikriakov Ravines. The author’s own image taken in 2012, which is also presented below, shows that the junction of the two ravines as captured in The Inkerman Ravine is still recognisable today.

I am very proud that my latest book Scotland in 3D - A Victorian Virtual Reality Tour was selected by The Scotsman, Scotland's leading newspaper, as one of their photographic books of the year. They commented that the book magically brought the Victorians closer to life. The book is currently on sale for £3 off in January at www.scotlan3d.com 

The full text of The Scotsman review is here:

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/books/from-victorian-scotland-in-3d-to-pyongyang-in-pastel-shades-the-best-photography-books-of-2019-1-5064747

Dr Kelley Wilder, Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University has been awarded a Professorship in Photographic History at the same university. Details of her inaugural lecture will be announced in due course.

More to follow... 

A new photography fair which will be held during Photo London has been announced. The Classic Photograph Fair London will offer a wide range of images from early paper negatives and daguerreotypes to press photographs documenting the stormy 1960s.  

The fair will take place on 16 May 2020 from 0900-1800 at the Arcade, Bush House, 60 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG. It is being supported by Chiswick Auction. 

Find our more and to book a table here: https://www.classicphotofair.co.uk/

A new exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor’s Center, is celebrating the nation’s memories of visiting the prehistoric site. A 1875 snapshot of Isabel, Maud, and Robert Routh, who made the journey there by horse-drawn carriage was unearthed by descendants of the Rouths in response to English Heritage’s request for family photographs taken at Stonehenge over the years. The first known photo of the site itself is from 1853 than the Routh image.

“People have been visiting Stonehenge for centuries, and since the 19th century, people have felt compelled to take photos of themselves and their loved ones in front of the stones. But rather than lying forgotten in a dusty old photo album or on a memory card, we want people to share with us their photos of Stonehenge,” said Stonehenge director Kate Davies when putting out the call in 2018, during the centenary celebrations over Stonehenge’s donation to the nation by the site’s last private owners, Cecil and Mary Chubb.

English Heritage historian Susan Greaney and photographer Martin Parr, who co-curated the exhibition, whittled down the more than 1,400 photos submitted to just 144, covering a span of nearly 150 years. The newest image on view is by Parr himself, taken during the fall equinox this September. The photographer captured an unknown couple kissing in front of the stones while, in true 2019 fashion, holding a selfie stick aloft.

Parr hopes to identify the pair and to give them a print of the image. English Heritage is also encouraging anyone who might have an earlier photograph of their ancestors visiting Stonehenge to come forward. Martin Parr took this photograph at Stonehenge on the fall solstice in September 2019, and hopes to identify the couple.

These amateur snapshots amount to something of a social history of the UK. There are joys—honeymoon memories, family picnics back when sitting on the stones was still allowed—and also sorrows, as seen in a photograph of a 10-year-old girl and her 20-year-old brother, wearing his military uniform back in 1941. It was taken the last time they saw each other, shortly before he went missing in action during World War II.

“I loved looking at the images that people sent in,” Parr said, “They really show what the stones mean to people and how our relationship with a site like Stonehenge has changed and yet stayed the same through time.”

Image: Isabel, Maud, and Robert Routh in 1875, in what’s believed to be the oldest family photograph taken at Stonehenge. Courtesy of the Routh family / English Heritage.

Your Stonehenge 150 years of personal photos
Open daily at Stonehenge Visitor Centre,
Admission details https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/prices-and-opening-times/
until August 2020. 

Cambridge School of Art has announced a symposium Telling our tales through ambiguous photography: Decolonizing the visual library of the African continent as part of the Stories of Kalingalinga exhibition programme at the Ruskin Gallery. The symposium is designed to trigger conversations between academics, practitioners and students and external contributors about photography in, about and of Africa. It is a day of exchanging ideas and planting seeds for future collaborative research and practice.

Decolonizing institutions like libraries is often discussed in the context of the written word while visual materials, just as much produced from a particular perspective as texts, also contribute to an expansion of our understanding of the African continent when reframed or re-entangled. The symposium aims to showcase practitioners, practice researchers and theorists who are working towards renewed and diverse visual understandings of the continent. The speakers will highlight the importance of collective making and collaboration with partners from the north and south. Contributions from a wide range of approaches aim to facilitate discussion and innovation throughout the day.

The programme will run as a one-day event and will welcome international speakers (some via video conference) from or links with Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, The Netherlands, USA, UK and Zambia. The sessions will include presentations and video contributions by invited speakers, followed by discussion and a gallery visit to the Stories of Kalingalinga exhibition. During lunch there will also be an opportunity to view Kerstin Hacker’s growing collection of photobooks from and about the African continent.

For further information please contact the event organiser Kerstin Hacker at Kerstin.hacker@anglia.ac.uk

The Symposium is kindly supported by the Centre for African Studies at Cambridge University and Cambridge Africa.

Here is the eventbrite link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/telling-our-tales-through-ambiguous-photography-african-photo-symposium-tickets-87050062079

Telling our tales through ambiguous photography: Decolonizing the visual library of the African continent
31 January 2020
1000 to 1700, afterwards you are welcome to join the wine reception

Cambridge: Anglia Ruskin University
The Symposium is part of the framework programme for the Stories of Kalingalinga exhibition. See: https://aru.ac.uk/news/exhibition-aims-to-change-perceptions-of-africa

Image: © Zenzele Chulu

Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography is a conference within a conference, hosted by the National Stereoscopic Association at the 46th annual 3D-Con in Tacoma, Washington.

In the last thirty years, scholarship on stereography has moved from the margins to a more central position in the history of photography and visual culture. A new wave of scholars has emerged with studies that range from stereo’s inception to contemporary virtual and augmented reality. These scholars are creating a language for stereo photography even as it is expanding into nascent vision.

Potential topics for paper presentations include: historical and archival discoveries; studies on collecting, p/matronage, and the culture of stereo; the marketing and incorporation of 3D; domesticities and instruments; immersive media, interactivity and performance; 3D cinema and video; the politics of historiographical suppression or distortion; hyper-simulation to surveillance; representations of stereo in popular media; reading stereo perception, as well as others.

Papers on topics from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century are invited. Stereoscopic projection is available at the conference.

Call for Papers: Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography
August 14, 2020 at The National Stereoscopic Association’s 3D-Con
The Hotel Murano, Tacoma, Washington
August 11-17, 2020

Deadline for abstracts: March 2, 2020
Please send an abstract of 500 words and a biography of 250 words including institutional affiliation. Independent scholars are welcome. Email to: Melody Davis, davism6@sage.edu
Notification of acceptance by May 1, 2020.  Digital images will be expected by June 30, 2020.

Sport in its modern form developed contemporaneously with photography, and the growth of sport into a global phenomenon has been decisively influenced by its mediation in visual culture and photography. Photographs of sport, and of its most popular athletes, have long been essential not only to sports reporting but also to the commercial exploitation of professional sport as a form of spectacle and entertainment. Just as sport itself is open to a wide range of symbolic and political interpretations, certain sports photographs have transcended the ephemeral nature of daily reports to enter the popular imagination and collective memory. Equally, private photographs of junior and grassroots sport are increasingly valued as part of sporting heritage. Even in the age of television and the internet, the still photograph remains an essential element of sport as a cultural phenomenon.

Yet, as Mike O’Mahony observes in Photography and Sport (Reaktion, 2018), definitions of ‘sports photography’ have tended to be narrow, and the history of photographs of sport has only recently begun to receive the academic attention accorded to other photographic genres. Only rarely are sports photographs taken seriously in their own right. ‘Photographs taken during key sporting events […] are assumed […] to derive their value and meaning from an awareness of the event rather than the intrinsic values of the image itself’ (O’Mahony 11).

This colloquium aims to contribute to an ongoing process of challenging these assumptions through scholarly and critical engagement with the relationship between photography and sport. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on neglected or original aspects of this relationship, and welcome approaches that take an historical, theoretical or practical approach. Transnational and comparative approaches are very welcome. Possible topics might include:

• Definitions of sports photography
• Sports photography as historical source
• Sports photography and aesthetics
• Assessments of the work of individual photographers
• Critical readings of particular photographs
• Photography and sports heritage
• Photography and fan culture
• Sports photography and race / gender
• Sports photography in the digital age
• Sports photography and place

Colloquium: 'Beyond the Back Page: Readings of Sports Photography'
Centre for Visual Cultures, Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
Date: Friday 5 June 2020

Organiser: Dr Jon Hughes, Dept of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Royal Holloway (jon.hughes@rhul.ac.uk)

Keynote Speaker: Professor Mike O’Mahony, University of Bristol

Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2020

Please send abstracts of 200-250 words for 20-minute papers to Jon Hughes (jon.hughes@rhul.ac.uk) by not later than Friday 28 February 2020. Please also include full contact details and a short bio-text or link to an online profile.

The National Trust photography collections include around 550,000 objects located at 250 properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Dating from the 1840s through to today, they include prints, albums, cased objects, negatives, slides and photographic equipment. The in-situ nature of the collections sets them apart in the UK, offering rich opportunities to explore the social, cultural, political and economic aspects of photography.

This role, initially offered on a two-year fixed-term basis, is focused on enhancing the Trust's catalogue for the photography collections.

Are you excited by the prospect of new research, creating national connections and improving public access? The photography collections at the Trust are significantly under-researched and under-recognised. This role offers a rare opportunity to someone with a background in photography and a good sense of initiative.

We are offering two 2-year fixed-term contracts. Each will be part-time, working three days (22.5 hours) per week. Salary £27,735 pro rata

See more and apply: https://careers.nationaltrust.org.uk/OA_HTML/a/#/vacancy-detail/88505

Photographs are not simply images but also historically shaped three-dimensional objects. They hold a physical presence, bear traces of handling and use, and circulate in social, political and institutional networks. Beyond their visual content, they are increasingly acknowledged as material "actors," not only indexically representing the objects they depict, but also playing a crucial role in the processes of knowledge-making within scientific practices. This has a historical dimension: most scientific disciplines rapidly adopted photography as an important research tool. Thereby, the various material qualities of photographs afforded certain types of uses in those disciplines. Specialized photo archives were founded as interfaces of technology and science and as laboratories for scientific thought.
This book highlights some recent approaches to photo-objects and photo archives as parts of a dynamic and material system of knowledge. Taking photographic materiality as its premise, it analyzes the epistemological potential of analog and digital photographs and photo archives in the humanities and sciences. Issues range from the circulation and distribution of photographs, the construction of disciplinary methods through the handling and use of photographs, the formation and transformation of a canon by photography and respective hierarchies of value, to the arrangement, classification and working processes in photo archives and other institutions.

With papers by Zeynep Çelik, Idil Çetin, Lorraine Daston, Elizabeth Edwards, Haidy Geismar, Lena Holbein, Pip Laurenson, Maria Männig, Anaïs Mauuarin, Suryanandini Narain, Omar W. Nasim, Christopher Pinney, Christina Riggs, Joan M. Schwartz, Katharina Sykora, Petra Trnková, Kelley Wilder

Read online: http://mprl-series.mpg.de/studies/12/index.html
Download PDF: http://mprl-series.mpg.de/media/studies/12/studies12.pdf
Order print copy: http://www.book-on-demand.de/shop/15803

Photo-­Objects. On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo Archives in the Humanities and Sciences
Edited by Julia Bärnighausen, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franka Schneider, and Petra Wodtke

Edition Open Access 2019
Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge. Studies 12
ISBN 978-¬3-¬945561-¬39-¬3
e-¬ISBN [PDF] 978¬-3¬-945561¬-40-¬9
e¬-ISBN [EPUB] 978¬-3-¬945561¬-41-¬6

You will work as a research assistant on a Paul Mellon funded project conducted by the National Trust and the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London.  Your primary role will responsibility for co-ordinating a number of workshops involving academics and museum professionals, which are intended to explore approaches to the extensive photographic collections of the National Trust. In consultation with the Trust’s newly appointed curator of photographs and a Birkbeck Professor who is leading the project, you will help plan and organise a series of day-long workshops. You will correspond with participants and assume responsibility for the practical organisation of these events.

You will be based at the National Trust’s office in Grosvenor Gardens, London and will liaise between project personnel and communicate with curators and academics.

The post offers an excellent opportunity to work with the National Trust, gaining experience in the museum and heritage sector and involvement in an innovative research project in the history of photography.

You will have experience undertaking research in a related field and excellent organisation and communication skills. You will be capable of working both as part of a team and in a self-directed fashion; and be confident using standard IT systems and learning to use custom internal databases.

Desirable: A relevant knowledge of history of photography would be a distinct advantage as would familiarity with the National Trust and the wider heritage sector.

Remuneration 

Grade 6 of the College's London Pay Scale which is £33,836 rising to £38,594, per annum pro rata.

The salary quoted will be pro-rata for this part time post and is on the College's London Pay Scale which includes a consolidated Weighting/Allowance which applies only to staff whose normal contractual place of work is in the Greater London area.

Enquiries 

If you would like to know more about the role please click on apply below or contact Steve Edwards, Professor of History and Theory of Photography, via email: stephen.edwards@bbk.ac.uk.

Read more here: https://cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/research-assistant-history-of-photography-410027.html

In response to the exhibitions presented in the Photography Season at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, this conference will address the politics of photography in terms of its relationship to consumerism, capital and culture. The conference will include presentations from artists, theorists, historians and curators who will look at art and photography in terms of its economics, the art market, class structures, consumerism and commodity culture. The full list of confirmed speakers includes Julian Sander, Hilde Van Gelder, Russell Roberts, Amak Mahmoodian, Carey Young and Jean Wainwright.

24 January, 1000-1700
Cardiff: National Museum
See more here: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/10967/Photography-Conference-Capital-ConsumerismCulture/

Image: Body Techniques (after A Line in Ireland, Richard Long, 1974), 2007
© Carey Young. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

I recently acquired two small boxes of glass negatives, the first being magic lantern size plates are mainly of Blackpool landmarks,(will blog these shortly) the other is of figures in a range of costume, I know nothing about them and would love more information.