Blogs

I am currently working on a major research project concerning Modfot and am looking to make contact with these photographers if possible. If anyone has any contacts please pass them on or let the person know that I am looking to make contact. I am aware that some may longer be with us.

These are the photographers I would like to speak with:

Malcolm Aird, Fill Bullock, George Bunzl, Geoffrey Franglen, H S Fry, Peter Keverne, Tony MOrris, Dunstan Pereira, Doreen Pollock, Alan Richards, John Stonex, Michael Taylor, Peter Wilkinson, D Baxter, Edward Pritchard, Ron Chapman

Big thanks

Grant

I have around 100 large format colour black and white negatives circa late 1950s. I couldn't tell, but they looked like they were in some plastic sleeves that had deteriorated or some plastic coating (that seemed to have a blue tint). The chemicals in the film or the coating could have reacted with each other. Has anyone come across this before? Is there some way the negatives can be salvaged? Some solution or something to remove the outer plastic?

I've attached some photos. Any suggestions?

Grant Scott has put out a call for information on the 1967 exhibition Modfot One and the promotion of contemporary photography in the UK in the 1960s. Please get in touch if you think you have anything to contribute in the way of memories, facts and stuff. 

Contact: Dr Grant Scott e: gscott@brookes.ac.uk

For information on Modfot see: https://the-golden-fleece.co.uk/wp/modfot-one/

The Burlington Magazine is seeking submissions of articles for a special issue devoted to photography scheduled for 2023. The Burlington Magazine is the world's leading art periodical and seeks to publish articles on original research, new works and discoveries.

Details on submissions: https://www.burlington.org.uk/about-us/about-the-magazine/submit-an-article

What are photographs ‘doing’ in museums? Why are some photographs valued and others not? Why are some photographic practices visible and not others? What value systems and hierarchies do they reflect?

What Photographs Do explores how museums are defined through their photographic practices. It focuses not on formal collections of photographs as accessioned objects, be they ‘fine art’ or ‘archival’, but on what might be termed ‘non-collections’: the huge number of photographs that are integral to the workings of museums yet ‘invisible’, existing outside the structures of ‘the collection’. These photographs, however, raise complex and ambiguous questions about the ways in which such accumulations of photographs create the values, hierarchies, histories and knowledge-systems, through multiple, folded and overlapping layers that might be described as the museum’s ecosystem.

These photographic dynamics are studied through the prism of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, an institution with over 150 years' engagement with photography’s multifaceted uses and existences in the museum. The book differs from more usual approaches to museum studies in that it presents not only formal essays but short ‘auto-ethnographic’ interventions from museum practitioners, from studio photographers and image managers to conservators and non-photographic curators, who address the significance of both historical and contemporary practices of photography in their work. As such this book offers an extensive and unique range of accounts of what photographs ‘do’ in museums, expanding the critical discourse of both photography and museums.

What Photographs Do
Elizabeth Edward and Ella Ravilious
UCL Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781800082984
Free download: https://bit.ly/3OntzJw

Or buy in softcovers (£30) or hardback (£50) at  https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/192312

The book is a developed history of the radiological sciences – covering the back-story to Röntgen’s discovery, the discovery itself and immediate reception the early days of radiology leading to classical radiology (the pre-digital world). The 1970s as the ‘golden decade’ of radiology will be covered in detail, with the development of CT, MRI and modern interventional radiology. It will appeal to interested members of the public, to those working in the field, and to historians of medicine and science. 

Invisible Light. The Remarkable Story of Radiology
Adrian Thomas
Routledge, 2022
Hb: 978-0-367-34426-9 | £31.19
20% Discount Available - enter the code FLE22 at checkout
Details: http://www.routledge.com/9780367344269

This is one of nine Assistant Curator posts that sit in the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design Department. As such, the main purpose of the job is to provide curatorial support in the development, care of, documentation and research, presentation and interpretation of a part of V&A’s Collection, in this case the Photography Section. Assistant Curators spend a significant portion of their time working on object-related activity that pertains to the care and display of collections, maintaining documentation and developing interpretation to allow for their presentation to wide audiences.

As a member of the Department, the postholder will also play a role in the wider work of the V&A, contributing to policy, projects and public programmes and supporting fundraising and income generation. Assistant Curators also play a role in their relevant department and will be part of the community supporting the museum’s scholarship in the Photography Section. In short, this is a wide-ranging role in which the postholder will be able to develop their skills in all aspects of museum curation.

Open to internal applicants only. 

Details here

This photobook collection was brought together over the past 30 years with the intention of representing a broad range of titles dating from the late 19th century to the modern day. There are many rare and beautiful books in outstanding condition which sit alongside a diverse range of titles which have been historically overlooked but have now become an important part of the contemporary photobook ‘canon’.

There is no single photobook history, thus the title of this collection which is intended to form the foundation of further discoveries from both the past and the future.

It was a labour of love gathering these books together and the intention is now for them to find a new home. For more details on pricing and information about The Photobook Histories collection please contact: Nick Higbee at the Pallant Gallery Bookshop shop@pallantbookshop.com

Details: https://www.photobookhistories.com/

In 1946, shortly after his retirement from the Department of Geography at Sheffield University, Dr R N Rudmose Brown donated a small collection of photographs taken in British Columbia in the late 1860s to the Royal Geographical Society.

Their presence in the Society's Collection invites reflection on their donor, maker, origins, initial circulation, repurposing, preservation, significance, and meanings. Rudmose Brown, founder member of the Institute of British Geographers was the younger son of botanist Dr Robert Brown (of Camster), and had likely inherited the collection from his father, who had been a friend of photographer Frederick Dally (1838-1914), when the two lived in Victoria, BC, during the 1860s.  At that time, geography – not in the sense of a rigidly defined academic discipline, but rather more broadly as popular quest for knowledge about the world, its places, and its peoples – had a firm hold on the Victorian mind; photography was a way to foster, facilitate, and further its pursuit.

Employed as an aid to field work, an accessory of travel, and a form of visual documentation, photography, like geography, was a way of picturing place. More broadly and with the authority of on-the-spot observation, Brown's photographs speak to the entangled and mutually reinforcing connections between photo-graphos (light writing) and geo-graphos (earth writing). Through them, we can begin to understand how nineteenth-century photographs were embraced as agents of sight to extend the powers of human observation across space and time, and served as sites of agency where the subjective experience of space and time was expressed and shaped. 

Picturing place: reflections on a photograph collection from British Columbia
Joan M. Schwartz
London, Royal Geographical Society, and online
25 November 2022, from 1430-1545, £5 non-members
Register: https://www.rgs.org/events/autumn-2022/be-inspired-picturing-place/

An online print sale featuring the work of more than 50 of the best photographers working in Britain today runs until 19 December. It will raise funds for the new Centre for British Photography and the Hyman Foundation’s support of emerging photographers in Britain, through commissions, grants, exhibitions and acquisitions.

Featuring the work of Julia Fullerton-Batten, David Hurn, Karen Knorr and Martin Parr among others and priced at £70, the A4 prints will be available to purchase from 17 November – 19 December 2022 on the Centre for British Photography website: www.britishphotography.org.

The Centre, a new home for British photography, will open in London in late January 2023. It will build on the world-renowned Hyman Collection of British photography and the work of the Hyman Foundation. Three floors of exhibitions will present the diverse landscape of British photography today, as well as an historical overview. The 8000 sq. ft. Centre will be FREE to visit year-round and will offer exhibitions, events and talks, a shop and an archive and library.

Created by Sampad in partnership with Birmingham Archives, Library of Birmingham and University of Birmingham, From City Of Empire To City Of Diversity: A Visual Journey is an exhibition which documents post-1945 migration and the huge contribution made by those who settled in Birmingham from the Commonwealth.

The exhibition has been created from The Dyche Collection, one of the most important photographic collections within Birmingham Archives and acquired by Birmingham Central Library in 1990.

The collection of photographs from The Dyche Studios gives a fascinating and personal insight into Birmingham’s transformation. People who had moved to the city visited the studio to have their portraits taken so they could send them home to their families, capturing key moments in their lives and often painting a more positive picture of life in Birmingham than they were experiencing.

The exhibition also draws upon other collections held by Birmingham Archives, notably Benjamin Stone, Helen Caddick, Paul Hill, Nick Hedges, Vanley Burke and George Hallet.

Together with personal memories and stories of migration, these have been transformed into an exhibition which shows the range of experiences that have shaped Birmingham into the city it is today.

From City Of Empire To City Of Diversity: A Visual Journey
Birmingham Back to Backs
55-63 Hurst Street/50-54 Inge Street, Birmingham, West Midlands, B5 4TE
until 6 March 2023.
There will be a series of curator’s talks on23 and 26 January 2023.
Details: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/birmingham-west-midlands/birmingham-back-to-backs/exhibition

Katherine Howells at The National Archives, Kew, has written a blog about the copyright records held at TNA and how the data can around them be analysed.  In the 1860s photography as a new medium was coming under scrutiny and issues of ownership and copyright were being debated. This culminated in the 1862 Fine Arts Copyright Act, which allowed people to register photographs, paintings, and drawings with the Stationers’ Company for copyright protection for the first time. These records are now held at The National Archives in record series COPY 1.

This blog explores how the rich catalogue data for this collection can be cleaned and analysed in order to reveal how photographers and publishers responded to the new legislation and uncover information about the nature of photographic industries in the early 1860s.

Read the full blog here: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/analysing-britains-earliest-copyrighted-photographs/

Thanks to Dick Weindling for flagging this up.

Beginning in the 1920s, news agencies started distributing photographs using devices that transmitted images along telephone wires and radio waves. For the first time, large publics beheld images that had been separated from their material supports, travelling as electrical signals through telecommunications infrastructure. Yet, for another twenty years, wire photography remained limited to the industrialized world. All this changed during World War Two, when the American Office of War Information (OWI) established a news photography service that operated in colonial periphery, where privately funded news services had never distributed photos, since there was no chance of recovering profits.

Modern Enchantments, Anachronistic Space: The American Office of War Information Overseas Radiophoto Section in Central Africa and the British Raj, 1942-1945
Jonathan Dentler
Cpourtauld Research Forum
Monday 21st November 2022, 5:30pm - 6.30pm
Free, booking essential.
Online via Zoom, book here

A group of Frank Meadow Surtcliffe prints is being offered over several lots on 24 November in Morphets's Fine Art and Antiques auction.

Lots 6-31
Morphets, Harrogate
24 November 2022
See details here.

We have now extended the deadline and invite you to submit a titled abstract (c.100 words) with your name and affiliation to phmgicon@gmail.com by Friday 25th November! The 5-minute presentations should include around five PowerPoint slides, which should be illustrative rather than textual. Please get in touch as soon as possible for further details or to discuss your idea.

The Icon Photographic Materials Group is delighted to announce its upcoming online event: Lightning-talks (following on from the group’s Round Table events) accompanied by the group’s 2022 Annual General Meeting.

The event will consist of a series of five-minute presentations followed by questions and discussion. As always the event is welcome to anyone with an interest in the care and preservation of photographic materials.

We invite abstract submissions from conservators and non-conservators, whether you work in public institutions, private practice or education. Subjects could include sustainability, education, career development, preventive conservation and storage, scientific and analytical research, documentation, treatment practices, theory, history and ethics, outreach and funding (among others!). 

The Lightning-Talks event will be followed by a brief update from the group committee.

Call for Papers: Icon PhMG Lightning Talks and AGM

Lightning Talks and AGM: Thursday 8^th December 2022, 10 am - 1 pm

phmgicon@gmail.com

Dr Hanin Hannouch & Janine Freeston, have created a working group on color photography circa 1900, hosted by the Consortium of Science, Technology & Medicine. "The purpose of this working group is to propel a rising field of research; color photography in the 19th and early 20th century in order to reconfigure, expand, and problematize its role in the history of the discipline and in the historical contexts out of which it emerged." 

So far, 100 people have joined the group and so can you by clicking on this link!

Membership is free, easy, and it will give you access to a vivacious Resource section with free articles, videos, & our ever-growing multi-lingual bibliography on turn-of-the-century color photography.

The December 20, 4 PM UK time session will feature a presentation by Janine Freeston about "Women Making Color Photographs"

Abstract: Who are the women who produced color photographs? How did they contribute to the nascent trichromatic color photography processes at the turn of the last century? Are there more of them languishing in archives who have yet to be fully appreciated and how scholars uncover it? As the history of photography continues to evolve in its appreciation of women photographers, the substantial significance that women contributors made to color photography requires consolidation, such as Angelina Acland, Agnes Warburg, Violet Blaiklock, Marjory T. Hardcastle and Olive Edis to name a few. This talk highlights women working on unresolved color processes that demanded more technical, scientific and methodological prowess than that required from their counterparts working in monochrome. For example, some processes lacked chromatic fidelity, and yet a cohort of experimenting highly skilled photographers, a significant number of whom were women, persevered to offer numerous nuanced improvements that had evolved through their practical experiences or supplied work that supported the commercial potential that color photography presented.
I hope to appeal to members of this working group to interrogate their own resources and work together in amassing geographical, technical and biographical findings from the locations they are familiar with to provide a cogent and geographically balanced historical perspective highlighting the means and methods of contributions made by women beyond the exhibition of images. 

Also, on the menu, right after Janine is my short talk "Who is Gabriel Lippmann?"

Known for being a scientist and professor at La Sorbonne, color photographer, winner of the 1908 Nobel prize for physics, Lippmann's position in the history of (color) photography and that of his process "interferential color photography" can be described as awkward, at best. Why is that and who is he? Tune in to find out!

We will also be looking back at the wonderful speakers our working group has featured so far & revealing next year's schedule! 

Hanin

Dr Hanin Hannouch (she/her), Curator for analog and digital media (photography, film, and sound collections) at the Weltmuseum Wien in Vienna and editor of the book Gabriel Lippmann's Colour Photography: Science, Media, Museums (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) became, as of Monday 7.11.2022, member of the advisory board of the European Society for the History of Photography (ESHPh). She will be developing the research activities of the Society in the form of symposia and events with international cooperation partners, as well as steering the future of the ESHPh's journal "PhotoResearcher" with the team.

The latest issue of "PhotoResearcher" is titled "Photobooks as Propaganda: A Platform for Power, Protest and Persuasion" and is guest-edited by Dr José Neves, lecturer in Photography at the Faculty of Arts, Science & Technology at the University of Northhampton.

Hanin welcomes collaborations and exchange with scholars, artists, historians, and curators and is reachable per email: hanin.hannouch@weltmuseumwien.at

The latest issue of The Classic, a free magazine about classic photography is now available for download or can be picked up from its usual distributors. Issue 8 includes interviews with Charlotte Barthélemy  and Adrienne Lundgren, features on Café Royal Books, Erwin Blumenfeld, woman and late Qing Dynasty photographs and other. 

Download the last and back issues here: https://theclassicphotomag.com/

Magda Keaney, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, will be leaving her post at the end of December to return to her home country of Australia for family reasons.

Keaney has been in post since October 2018 and has been responsible for a a series of significant projects at the Gallery. When asked what she thought her main achievement had been she noted "leading the photographs curatorial team toward a complete collection re-contextualisation and display for the NPG 'Inspiring People' project. This includes major new acquisitions and a representation of the Gallery's daguerreotype collection." She added: "I have especially relished the opportunity to curate the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize 2019, 2020 & 2021. To meet and work with such incredible photographic talent through the award has been a particular joy. I will continue to work with my much-admired colleagues and the supportive and brilliant photography community and network that I've been a part of through my independent curatorial practice." 

Keaney will continue to work as an external curator with the NPG towards a major photographic exhibition project currently underway and soon to be announced. The NPG reopens to the public after extensive refurbishment in spring 2023. 

Magda can be reached directly at: magdakeaney@hotmail.com

Her NPG profile is here https://www.npg.org.uk/research/staff-research-profiles/magda-keaney and below: 

Job description

As Senior Curator, Photographs, I lead a team of curators responsible for acquisitions, displays and exhibitions, research and care of the Photographs collection. I work across historical and contemporary periods to ensure that the Photographs collection is well researched, accessible and presented in thought provoking ways. The Gallery has produced many important photographic exhibitions and catalogues which we are continuing to develop. As Associate Curator, Photographs, I curated Irving Penn Portraits at the Gallery in 2010.

I am excited to be working toward our ‘Inspiring People’ project which is a remarkable opportunity to reimagine the interpretation and display of the collection. We are thinking about ways to weave photographic portraits and the stories they tell about who we are through the Gallery in unexpected, challenging and uplifting ways.

Biography

I started my curatorial career working as a researcher at the National Gallery of Australia. I developed my first photographic exhibitions as an Assistant Curator at the Australian National Portrait Gallery and I worked on the inaugural historic display of prominent Australians at the institution. I subsequently worked as an Assistant and Associate curator at the National Portrait Gallery, London. I was Curator at the Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion where photography was key to a cross disciplinary exhibition program I instigated. At this time I started work for my book ‘Fashion Photography Next’ published by Thames and Hudson, then also presented as an exhibition with Foam Photomuseum in Amsterdam and the Fashion Space Gallery. Before returning to London, I was Senior Curator, Photographs, at the Australian War Memorial, where I curated the Centenary of Armistice exhibition ‘After the War’.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in the History of Art from the Australian National University, a Postgraduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies from the University of Melbourne and a MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Research interests

My current research at the NPG is focused on the major reconceptualisation and presentation of the photographs collection for the Inspiring People project spanning nineteenth century to the contemporary period. I am also researching the work of Julia Margaret Cameron and Francesca Woodman side-by-side for a forthcoming exhibition.

My research is most often object and archive based and considers an expanded field of lens based practice. I have particular interests in women photographers, Australian photography, fashion image making, the photographic studio, photography and conflict and contemporary practice. I was the curator of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2019, 2020 & 2021, including ‘In focus’ displays by Ethan James Green and Alessandra Sanguinetti.

I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the Australian National University.

Recent Publications

Over two decades I have written extensively about photography for magazines and journals as well as for exhibition catalogues including:

100 Fashion Icons, National Portrait Gallery, 2019

‘Cindy Sherman’s Fashion Pictures’, in Cindy Sherman, National Portrait Gallery, 2019

‘Forced into Images’ by Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, in Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia, 2020

Fashion Photography Next, Thames & Hudson, 2014

Irving Penn Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, 2010