Blogs

A call for papers has been made by Museu del Cinema, The Department of History & History of Art at the University of Girona and the Ministry Project “Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences”. The organisers are seeking papers that respond to: 

Topic A: Virtual worlds in early cinema: devices, aesthetics and audiences
- Media archaeology. The archaeological study of the devices previous or contemporary to the cinematograph might be helpful to introduce the History of cinema inside a much broader process, focused on the evolution of visual devices, screens and projection/audition systems.
- The viewer experience in the face of the visual spectacles. In order to comprehend the devices’ impact. It is fundamental to know which was the audience experience in front of the images.
- Virtual experiences on early films. Another research path might draw from the period existing films, in order to check how new sensorial ways are glimpsed in them. The idea of considering early cinema films as spaces to the visual attraction can lead us to consider the realist simulation effects that they gather.
- Immersive spectacles and virtualization. The study of leisure spaces from them past reflects the existence of hybrid spectacle systems, between cinema, theatre, magic lantern which proposed specific forms of exhibition and enhanced theatre viewer immersion in possible worlds.
- Bridges between the past and the development of virtual technology in the present. It is possible to establish a thinking that carries out a revision of the past through a double logic based on the analysis of the re-use by the new technologies of pre-existing techniques and other based on the aesthetic reflection around virtuality modes in the present and its connection with other aesthetic achievements that were developed in a moment of transformation and reuse of the means of communication.
Topic B: pre-cinema and early cinema
- Presentation of works in progress on pre-cinema or cinema until 1915.

Deadline for papers: 5 May 2021
Conference 20 and 21 October 2021. 

See more here: https://www.girona.cat/shared/admin/docs/c/a/call_for_papers.eng.pdf

St Andrews University is offering a MLitt in History of Photography. The course provides a range of innovative modules that cover areas from the origins of photography to contemporary practices and debates, including modernist art photography, documentary approaches, photographic collections, and technological advances up to the digital era. 

The MLitt in History of Photography is a taught postgraduate programme run by the School of Art History. The MLitt offers a unique opportunity to study the history of photography as a specialised field of research. Highlights include:

• This innovative degree is inspired by the important role played by St Andrews in the early history of the most influential visual medium of the modern era.
• Students are introduced to the theoretical and methodological challenges and debates that photography’s multiple functions and contexts have provoked since its invention.
• Classes make full use of the outstanding photographic collections of Special Collections, University Library and associated photographic archives.
• Small class sizes prioritise discussion with peers and interaction with the tutor.
• Students may apply to take part in exchange programmes at our partner institutions.

Course starts 6 September 2021. Applications by 11 August 2021 at the latest. 

Read more here: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/subjects/art-history/history-photography-mlitt/#d.en.93814

My talk on early Royal Navy photographs compiled by Lieutenant Arthur Onslow is up on YouTube. https://youtu.be/-g28qDQGwrk 

Mostly taken between 1858 and 1863 the talk is mainly focussed on the actions of HMS Herald while it was engaged in one of the longest surveying missions ever undertaken by the Admiralty. Among the many rare images are those of Menang Noongar men & women taken by Onslow and naval artist and photographer James Glen Wilson on their visit to King George Sound, Western Australia in February 1858. There are also early images of Quandamooka people from Moreton Island, Queensland taken when HMS Herald visited around November 1858.

Other photos covered in this talk are: HMS Iris, Tanna, Vanuatu, 1858; the beacon erected on Mellish Cay by H.M.S Herald using the remains of French Man-O-War Duroc; Table Bay, Cape Town South Africa, 1861; HMS Phaeton, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1862; Street Scene, Matamoros, Mexico, ca. 1862; HMS Phaeton, Nelson Dock, English Harbour, Antiqua, West Indies, 1863 and Tudor Street, Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies, ca. 1863. 

These photographs are all contained in an important album of early Australian and Pacific photographs which includes images by a veritable ‘who’s who’ of amateur photographers working in Sydney at the end of the 1850s. These include John Smith, Robert Hunt, Matthew Fortesque Moresby, Edward Wolstenholme Ward as well as the work of professionals like William Hetzer. 

The richness of the content in this scrapbook allows for any number of possible discussions but this talk focuses on the naval photographs which form a strong narrative thread that flows through the album. Importantly, as the photos were originally credited to James Macarthur, the talk also adds to the argument that Arthur Onslow was central to the compiling of these photographs and perhaps by extension the many other images in the album.

Our team is collecting information on photograph preservation projects throughout the world to assist us as we write a monograph titled, Significance, Use, and Conservation of Photograph and Image Collections, to be published in the Routledge Series in Conservation and Museology. In these survey questions, we are broadly defining photograph preservation projects to include photograph conservation and rehousing, emergency response, education and outreach, research, and digital image collection initiatives. We are particularly interested in learning about projects that promote conservation advocacy and community engagement.

Your privacy is important to us. Your data is protected and will not be shared beyond this research group. We would greatly appreciate it if you could complete the survey before March 10. It should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. Your input will be a tremendous help in raising awareness of photographic heritage worldwide.

Link to survey: https://utexas.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_82GgIHMVqNpfF5Q

Thank you for your time and expertise!

Debra Hess Norris, University of Delaware
Heather Brown, Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Shannon Brogdon-Grantham, Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute
Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Marta Garcia Celma, M+ Museum, Hong Kong
Amber Kehoe, Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Lee Price, Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, Philadelphia
Ioannis Vasallos, The National Archives, UK

For questions related to the survey and/or the publication, please contact copicbook@gmail.com.

A 30 min talk about the photographers on Mawson's Australian Antarctic Expedition 1911-1914 is now on YouTube. Frank Hurley is probably the best-known photographer from the expedition but this talk introduces works by the other photographers on the expedition and looks at the large negative collections held by the State Library of NSW.

View full video on YouTube

The Horner Collection is a group of over 1000 photographs which were taken by the Horner photography studio in Settle for three generations from 1864 to 1960. Their photographs capture the changing faces and places of Settle and the surrounding areas for nearly a hundred years.

The Museum of North Craven Life is crowdfunding to secure the collection, digitise and preserve it in Settle where the studio was located. The collection includes many original glass plate negatives which will need careful conservation and storage.

The museum has secured a £1500 grant from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and needs to match this and pay for transport and associated costs. So far it has raised £3145 of £4000.

See more and lend your support here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/horner-collection

In December 1920, in the aftermath of the first world war photographs appeared in a London magazine which apparently proved the existence of fairies. Embraced by believers, dissected by sceptics, and sprinkled with celebrity by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Cottingley Fairy Photographs fascinated everyone.

One hundred years later, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, has collaborated with young people living in Edinburgh to reflect on image-making and image-faking. Their work is shown here, alongside artists and photographers who engage with the legacy of the Cottingley Fairies.

See: https://stills.org/exhibitions/photographing-fairies/

The Scottish Council on Archives Preservation Committee has announced its first webinar in its latest series: Focus on Photography. From identifying photographic type and how to care for them to dating images through fashion, these sessions will explore many different aspects of managing photographs in archive collections. Designed for archivists and anyone with photographs in their collection, the webinars will give practical advice from experts, and offer guidance on caring, storing, and cataloguing items.

Each session will take place on Zoom and run for around thirty minutes, featuring a short presentation with plenty of opportunity for your questions. We are delighted to be working with Susie Clark, photographic conservator, for our initial workshops.

Session One: Getting to Grips with Your Photographic Collection

Wednesday 24 February, 12:00-12:30

This session will provide an outline of the ways in which you might divide up photographic collections, whether into positives and negatives, black and white and colour, or by subject matter, format, or materials, and why each may be relevant.

Registration is free, via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/141270769675

other events can be seen here: https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/events/

Susie Clark ACR ICON is an accredited Photographic Conservator and Consultant with many years of experience. She has worked for a large number of institutions, organizations and private individuals in Britain and abroad. She was the recipient of the Museums and Galleries Commission Jerwood Conservation Award for Research and Innovation for her work on the conservation of wet collodion positives. She was also the conservator for the Collaborative Research Project between the National Science and Media Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute looking at characteristics of different photographic processes. She has taught for many organizations and written for many publications. She is currently Assistant Co-ordinator for the ICOM-CC Photographic Materials Group and a committee member of the York Consortium for Conservation and Craftmanship which provides bursaries. She was previously a committee member of the Film and Sound Group of the Society of Archivists. She was recently an Honorary Teaching Fellow for the Centre for Archive and Information Studies at the University of Dundee.

The Florentine has announced that: the Alinari Archive, with its over five million items from the 1840s to the present day, was purchased by the Region of Tuscany at the end of 2019 and now has a new home. It is now under the management of the new Alinari Foundation (Fondazione Alinari), which has the scope of conserving and promoting the archive. The foundation announced its new home - the historic Villa Fabbricotti or Arcipressi, in Florence - and plans for the future, including a museum, although the location has yet to be determined.

Read the full piece here: https://www.theflorentine.net/2021/02/16/new-alinari-foundation/

After the success of last year’s inaugural 'Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography' held virtually at the 3D-Con (annual conference), the National Stereoscopic Association is again seeking papers on the history of stereography for its second annual “Sessions.”

We seek presentations on any aspect of stereo-media from the inception of stereoscopic photography to contemporary virtual and augmented reality. Topics include but are not limited to: historical and archival discoveries; studies on collecting and the culture of stereography; marketing and incorporation; intersectionality; immersive media, interactivity and performance; stereoscopic perception; 3D cinema and virtual reality; instrumentality and simulation. Papers on topics from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century are invited. The conference will be held in 3D on zoom.

The National Stereoscopic Association’s
Sessions on the History of Stereoscopic Photography
a virtual conference of the 47^th 3D-Con 
August 12, 2021
Deadline for abstracts: May 15, 2021.

Please send an abstract of 500 words, a biography of 250 words, and an information sheet found at:  https://3d-con.com/files/2020NSASessionsCallforPapersSessions.docx

email to: Melody Davis, davism6@sage.edu

Notification of acceptance by May 31, 2021.  Digital images will be expected by July 16, 2021.

A forthcoming publication will tell the story of the photographer and filmmaker Herbert Ponting.  Ponting (1870-1935) was young bank clerk when he bought an early Kodak camera. By the early 1900s, he was living in California, working as a professional photographer, known for stereoview and enlarged images of America, Japan and the Russo-Japanese war. In 1909, back in Britain, Ponting was recruited by Captain Robert Scott as photographer and filmmaker for his second Antarctic expedition.

In 1913, following the deaths of Scott and his South Pole party companions, Ponting’s images of Antarctica were widely published, and he gave innovative ‘cinema-lectures’ on the expedition. When war broke out, Ponting’s offers to serve as a photographer or correspondent were declined, but in 1918 he, Ernest Shackleton and other Antarctic veterans joined a government-backed Arctic expedition.

During the economically depressed 1920s and 1930s, Ponting wrote his Antarctic memoir, re-worked his Antarctic films into silent and ‘talkie’ versions and worked on inventions. Like others, he struggled financially but was sustained by correspondence with George Eastman, a late-life romance with singer Glae Carrodus and knowing that his images of Antarctica had secured his place in photographic and filmmaking history.

Herbert Ponting
Anne Strathie
ISBN: 9780750979016
Published: 19-03-2021

See: https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/herbert-ponting/9780750979016/

Historical photography collections sometimes contain images that can be deeply troubling to contemporary viewers. What should be done with collections that include photographs of colonial violence, enslaved subjects, racist stereotypes, or other difficult imagery?

Join moderator David Odo and photography curators Mark Sealy, Makeda Best, and Ilisa Barbash for a conversation about the challenges and possibilities of curating legacy collections of photographs today.

Presented in partnership with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.

Speakers:
Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph A.B.P. and Principal Fellow Decolonising Photography at University of the Arts London

Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museums

Ilisa Barbash, Curator of Visual Anthropology, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University

David Odo, Director of Academic and Public Programs, Division Head, and Research Curator, Harvard Art Museums

This talk will take place online via Zoom. Free admission, but registration is required.

Friday, 26 February 2021
2:00pm - 3:00pm (EST)  / 1900-2000 (GMT)

To register, please complete this online form.

The International Conference on Stereo & Immersive Media aims to bring together the research fields of photography, sound and cinema, considering their historical and current relationships with expanded and immersive environments. In 2021, due to the Corona virus pandemic, its 4th edition will adopt an online format and will combine traditional plenary sessions and themed parallel tracks, with a S3D Short Film Festival and a Virtual Art Gallery to showcase the most recent and diverse immersive artworks.

Stereoscopic and immersive technologies have been widening the scopes of photography, sound and cinema since the 19th century. Immersion draws both on state of the art technologies and on old and discontinued media that have once stimulated and expanded our perception. While these technologies (from stereo views to cinema, virtual reality or video gaming) have deeply strengthened the human relationship to virtual worlds, they have also made visual documents more engaging, triggering richer and more inspiring interpretations of reality. Today, some of these technologies are also being used and considered vital to reshape our perception of heritage and to allow new readings and museological experiences of historical collections.

The conference will be online 17 and 18 June 2021

cfp by 1 March 2021 See: http://stereoimmersivemedia.ulusofona.pt/submissions/

The collection store is home to hundreds of cameras, projectors and photographic accessories, and hundreds of thousands of images. This collections tells significant stories about local photographers, photographic technology, and the film & camera manufacturing and retail industry in Australia, with a focus on Kodak. Images range from humble family portraits and scenes sent to loved ones, to significant studio collections that document industry, agriculture and exploration.

Fiona and Lorenzo will be opening cabinets, drawers, albums and storage boxes in the photography collection store to show you some of their favourite artefacts. You will see beautiful 19th century brass and wood studio cameras as well as fantastic plastic 20th century cameras; magic lantern projectors and lantern slides; and a selection of images on glass, plastic and paper!

This online show will take place using Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join the webinar a few days before the event. This is your chance to ask our experts your burning questions face-to-face (well, via Zoom!).

23 February 2021
online 1800-1900 (Melbourne, AUZ) / 0700-0800 GMT)

AUZ $16 [approx, £6.75] (non-members) AUS $12 (members) 

Register here: https://museumsvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whats-on/members-virtual-event-live-from-the-image-collections/

Fiona Kinsey / Senior Curator, Images and Image Making, Museums Victoria

Fiona Kinsey is Senior Curator of the Images and Image Making Collection in the Society & Technology Department at Museums Victoria, where she has worked for the last 22 years. She currently collects, researches and interprets material culture relating to the history of the Australian photographic industry and photographic practice. Fiona is passionate about engaging with communities and for the past fifteen years she has worked on the Kodak Heritage Collection. This year Fiona has brought her attention to documenting the ways that Victorians have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in relation to panic buying and the changing relationships between producers, suppliers and consumers.

Lorenzo Iozzi / Senior Collection Manager, Images Society and Technology, Museums Victoria

Lorenzo Iozzi studied Fine Art (Painting) at RMIT University and has a Postgraduate Certificate in Art Conservation from the University of Melbourne. He continues a practical interest in fine art particularly through still life and landscape painting. He joined Museums Victoria in 2005 where his current role is Senior Collection Manager of Images in the Society and Technology Department. This work has fostered an interest in the way images shape our understanding of the world, in particular, through the photographic image. One of the most rewarding and comprehensive team projects has been to preserve and research the Museum’s magic lantern artefacts and lantern slide images.

A short film by Martin Shakeshaft gives an introduction to one of the oldest working photography businesses in the UK, W. W. Winter of Derby, which is still in business and with origins back to 1855. 

See: https://youtu.be/8GMUjYaI4jw

Hi there, I'm Associate Prof. at University College Dublin in History of Art, where I teach annual classes in the history of photography. I try where I can to incorporate actual photographic objects into my teaching, as it makes a great impression on students, and reminds them of the materiality of the subject!

I'm currently working to build up a 'teaching collection' of original photographic examples for my students to be able to examine as part of their learning. I'm therefore not looking for highly 'collectible' or valuable items, but simply useful examples of different processes, that will be handled by the students (with care). I'm not particular about subject etc, only that the items are in reasonable condition.

I will of course pay for shipping etc. to Ireland! I know that EBay is another option, and I know some of these items are rarer than others, but thought I might check first with this community, in any event

Apologies if this has been posted before. Not British, but I'm sure members will be interested to hear that a trove of photographs of early American suffragists, including prints and glass negatives, has been discovered in a boarded-up attic in upstate New York. The photographer was James Hale, whose photography shop had been next door.

See https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/02/09/a-hidden-suffragists-portrait-studio-discovered-in-a-new-york-attic/

Editor's note: This has been widely reported and a quick Google search will pull up other reports and images.

We are pleased to launch a new opportunity in collaboration with The Ampersand Foundation for a mid-career photographer living in the UK. The Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship will provide a transformative opportunity for a mid-career artist to complete a new body of work.

Whilst many opportunities exist for emerging and graduate photographers including our own Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, the UK currently has few high-profile open access opportunities for mid-career photographers that support artists to make and exhibit new work. This new opportunity aims to enable and nurture the creation of new work through a combination of support including a £15,000 award, mentoring and curatorial support, a dedicated public programme and digital content with international reach, production budget and touring exhibition.

The artist will be selected through a free open call; submissions are now open and will close at midnight Sunday 28 February 2021. We are looking for projects which are already in the development phase that will benefit from financial resources and curatorial guidance and which can be completed in a 12 month timeframe by April 2022.

The shortlist and final selection of the fellowship awardee will be decided by an expert panel of curators and artists to be announced shortly.

The awardee will make new work over a period of approximately 12 months throughout 2021, ready to be exhibited by Photoworks in 2022. The entire programme, including the resulting exhibition, will be curated and produced by Photoworks in collaboration with a partner touring venue.

Find out more about this opportunity here.

This new opportunity is generously funded by The Ampersand Foundation and supported by our print partner Spectrum Photographic.

How are our experience of illness shaped by visual representations? Connecting visual practice to theory, using photography as a medium of both production and creative inquiry, we invite you to join us in exploring photographic treatments of the body.

This is a participatory course and uses a mixture of self-directed and collaborative photography, visual and archival research, collage, curation, critical inquiry, case-studies, photo dialogues and reading.

Created by practitioner/academics, Liz Orton and Dr Sukey Parnell Johnson for Clod Ensemble, the course begins online on 24th March for 6 weeks.

Further details can be found here: https://performingmedicine.com/events/medicine-and-the-photographic-body/

Cristina Nuñez is presenting a series of experimental online workshops by The Real Photography Company in Bristol, investigating alternative photography processes and techniques. The four one-month workshops will be run in the SPEX platform from April to July. You can enrol on one workshop or two, three or perhaps all of them for a special price.

The Real Photography Company are Justin Quinnell, Ruth Jacobs, Wendy Leocque, Sophie Sherwood. Based in Bristol UK, they are expert teachers in black and white photography and alternative darkroom processes. During the pandemic, with their darkrooms closed, they developed accessible photographic techniques and processes enabling people in lockdown to make images based on the principles of photography, but without the usual camera equipment, darkroom facilities or chemistry. In this series of workshops, the RPC invites you to participate in a creative exploration of the world around you, to make images from plants, everyday kitchen ingredients, the action of the sun on light sensitive materials, the passage of time and the turning of the Earth in space.

The one-month Workshops are:

• April: Pinhole Photography, Solargraphy and Room Obscura Projections
• May: Anthotypes and Chlorophyll Printing
• June: Lumens and Cyanotype Printing
• July: Kitchen Chemigrams

Click here to discover more about the workshops