Blogs

Another Country offers a lively, vital rethinking of British documentary photography over the last seven decades. This collection includes a diverse range of photographers working in an exciting array of photographic and artistic modes, encompassing images from iconic reportage to photo-text pieces, from self-portraits to political photo-collages.

A seminar day looking at some of themes explored in the book takes place on 11 June 2022 at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol. See: https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/events/another-country/

Another Country: Documentary Photography Since 1945
Gerry Badger, with contributions by Lydia Caston, Ekow Eshun, Clare Grafik, Hana Kaluznick, J. A. Mortram, Rianna Jade Parker, Simon Roberts, Lou Stoppard, Bindi Vora and Val Williams.
Thames & Hudson In collaboration with the Martin Parr Foundation on 19 May 2022
£50
https://thamesandhudson.com/another-country-british-documentary-photography-since-1945-9780500022177

Rachel Nordstrom has announced that she will be leaving her post as Photographic Collections Manager at the University of St Andrews, at the end of May. She has been at St Andrews for nine years and was appointed to her current role in 2015.

Rachel has accepted a post at Historic Environment Scotland as Operations Manager for their National Collection of Aerial Photography. This is a fascinating collection which spans nearly 100 years and holds not only all declassified aerial reconnaissance from WWII onwards, but land surveys dating back to the 1920s from across Europe, along with commonwealth surveys from around the world. As she notes "with over 30 million photos there will be lots for me to do!"

She joins on 15 June and can be contact from that date at: Rachel.Nordstorm@hes.scot 

During her time at St Andrews Rachel has raised the profile of the photography holdings at St Andrews and was instrumental in realising the St Andrews photography festival and associated conferences https://www.standrewsphotographyfestival.com/

The Scotsman is reporting today that documentary photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert has gifted his archive to St Andrews University, in part with the support and advice of Rachel Nordstrom. Jeremy is a founder member of Document Scotland.

As The Scotsman notes: 

To celebrate and mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the National Portrait Gallery presents a new digital display, a competition for families, as well as an exclusively designed range of products to commemorate the Queen’s 70-year reign.

The Gallery’s Collection includes over a thousand portraits of the Queen, and a new digital display will allow online visitors to explore a selection of those works, as well as an animated timeline of her reign. It will also feature an illustration of Dorothy Wilding’s portrait, Queen Elizabeth II (1952), taken just 20 days after she ascended to the throne, using a photomontage of 207 individual portraits. From the earliest of images depicting the Princess Elizabeth’s ‘Merry Smile,’ to the official photographs taken throughout her reign by the likes of Dorothy Wilding, Tim Graham and William Horton, this online display will give visitors the chance to explore some of the most iconic portraits of the Queen, while learning more about the artists who captured them. Horton’s photograph of the Queen, taken in 1945 at the Auxiliary Territorial Service Training Centre in Camberley, sits alongside an earlier photograph, depicting the Queen and Princess Margaret as children, with broadcasting microphones at Windsor Castle on 13 October 1940, carrying out wartime public duties. In addition to photography, the display also includes works by Pietro Annigoni, who painted the Queen in 1969 wearing the red robes of the Order of the British Empire, and Michael Leonard, whose painting was commissioned to mark Her Majesty’s 60th birthday.

Taking further inspiration from the Collection, the Gallery has also launched a new competition, inviting families to explore the Queen’s reign through her portraits. By recreating their favourite photographs, paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures that depict the Queen, families have the chance to exhibit their winning portraits on the Gallery’s website. Judged by the National Portrait Gallery’s Youth Forum and photographer Kymara Akinpelumi, whose work was exhibited in the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021, all winners will also receive a Jubilee-themed bundle of gifts, including a copy of Elizabeth II: Princess, Queen, Icon (£14.95), a special book published to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee. Recreations should be submitted through the Gallery’s competition portal by 5pm on 17 May 2022. The winners will be announced on the Gallery’s social media channels on the Platinum Jubilee weekend in June.

See portraits of the Queen from NPG Collection here.

Image: Queen Elizabeth II by Dorothy Wilding, bromide print, 26 February 1952

Tate has announced the launch of the Tate Photography Series, a new publishing programme providing an introduction to some of the most important and exciting photographers at work today. Four titles will be published each year, all connected through a common theme. The first four books, on Liz Johnson Artur, Sheba Chhachhi, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and Sabelo Mlangeni explore community and solidarity in distinct ways. 

 Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen was born in Finland and studied in London, then moved to Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1960s. She has been based in the North East of England ever since, deeply rooted in the local community. Focusing on two of her photographic series, this book captures a working-class neighborhood and reveals the devastating impact that the redevelopment of Newcastle’s East End had on the community, but also the moments of joy experienced in daily life.

Liz Johnson Artur presents images from her series Time Don’t Run Here, made during the Black Lives Matter protests throughout the late spring of 2020 in London. Johnson Artur is a Ghanaian-Russian photographer and artist based in London whose work documents the lives of Black people in Africa and from across the African Diaspora, more recently focusing on the richness and complexity of Black British life. 

Sheba Chhachhi is a photographer, women's rights activist and an installation artist based in New Delhi. The powerful photographs reproduced in her book are selected from three major series, co-curated with her subjects. Interweaving the mythic and the social, her work, as she puts it, ‘is really about opening up a conversation, in the process of creating as well as sharing, to invite people to think about personal, social and public concerns, primarily around feminism and ecology.’

Sabelo Mlangeni is based in South Africa and works collaboratively with the people he photographs to tell the stories of communities on the periphery of society. He has focused on Johannesburg, as well as the rural areas surrounding his hometown of Driefontein. Mlangeni’s work seeks to re-center themes of friendship, love and joy in the face of ever-present risk. Above all, his images tell stories of seeking out your people, choosing a family and building a home, wherever you find yourself.

Each title is priced at £12. Details here: https://shop.tate.org.uk/books/tate-photography-series

Photograph: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Kids with Collected Junk Near Byker Bridge (Byker),1971

Photographs made in the 1870s are to help with the conservation of the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry. In a new partnership London's V&A Museum and the City of Bayeux have agreed to share research and expertise around the Tapestry. This is in lieu of planned loan of the Tapestry to the UK which was abandoned after a condition report discovered the Tapestry in a worse condition that expected. 

As part of a research, conservation and digitisation project, around 180 glass negatives of the tapestry taken by Edward Dossetter, which are in the V&A’s collection are to be digitised and will form part of a digital database showing the Tapestry's state when it was restored at the end of the nineteenth century. Dossetter photographed the tapestry in 1872 under the instruction of photographer Joseph Cundall as part of the first collaboration between the V&A (then the South Kensington Museum) and the City of Bayeux.

Six full-size copies were made from Dossetter’s negatives by the Arundel Society. These were then coloured by hand to create the longest composite photograph made in the 19th century. The partnership will also provide the City of Bayeux access to the two Arundel Society copies of the Bayeux Tapestry in the V&A collection, as well as opportunities for research, curatorial and scientific exchange.

See more: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/05/19/digitising-bayeux-tapestry-victoria-and-albert-museum-work-with-french-city-research-famous-medieval-work

https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/caring-for-our-collections/photographing-bayeux

Photographs: V&A Museum. Below: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O118318/bayeux-tapestry-photograph-cundall-co/bayeux-tapestry-photograph-cundall--co/

One of the highlights of the recent Photo London fair was James Hyman's The Countess of Castiglione. The exhibition has now opened at Hyman's gallery in London.  The exhibition includes over fifty rare portraits of the Countess from the 1850s to the 1890s. Directed and staged by the Countess, herself, and created in collaboration with the studio photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson, these “self-portraits” are some of the most extraordinary pictures in the history of photography, precursors to fashion photography and performative self-portraiture.

Today, we live in a world of selfies and social media: an Instagram world of constructed identities, performance, and disguise. But before all this, before super-models and influencers - 150 years ago - one of the most radical figures of the nineteenth century was pioneering new forms of fashion and conceptual photography: autofiction. In hundreds of portraits produced over a period of decades the Countess staged scenarios and performed different roles, to present different characters and personalities and to reflect multiple, fluid, unfixed identities.

Despite decades of activity, photographs by the Countess are incredibly rare as very few prints were made and she chose not to distribute. In fact, major exhibitions of her work only took place at the end of the 20th century at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris in 1999 and then at the Metropolitan Museum, New York in 2000. Most of her work is now in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

The exhibition presents some of the most famous images of the Countess as well as an exquisite, recently discovered painted photograph of her which will be exhibited for the very first time.

The exhibition includes vintage prints as well as prints specially made in 1900 for her great admirer, the symbolist poet Robert Montesquiou, who spent thirteen years of his life writing her biography, which was published as La Divine Comtesse in 1913.

The Countess of Castiglione. The Creation of a Legend
James Hyman Gallery
50 Maddox Street, London, W1S 1AY
9 June – 29 July 2022
See: https://www.jameshymangallery.com/exhibitions/182-the-countess-of-castiglione.-the-creation-of-a/overview/

I am looking for any kind of information relating to photographs of Western travellers pictured in costume while on their travels in Egypt. I know that several commercial studios based in Cairo and Alexandria, such as Schier & Schoefft (see image attached), Facchinelli and Dittrich, offered this service, but I am having trouble finding examples that have been digitized and made available online.

Please feel free to contact me either by replying to this blog post or by sending me an email at steph.hornstein[at]gmail.com.

Thank you!

Photography from daguerreotypes, through collodion and on to contemporary work is being offered at auction By Chiswick Auctions on 24 May. The sale includes one previously unrecorded portrait, part of a set of four by Julia Margaret Cameron (est £12,000-15,000), Beard studio daguerreotypes and work from Paul Strand, Rodchenko and others. 

The catalogue is available here: https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/search/?au=808

Image: J M Cameron, captioned 'Winner of the prizes at the Royal Artillery Games, Freshwater'. 

The purpose of the Curatorial Fellowship is to further develop expertise in the history of photography by researching the collections of the V&A, while gaining vital curatorial experience working in a museum.  The Curatorial Fellow will divide their time between key curatorial duties (including cataloguing, collections care, display, exhibition and publication preparation and researching potential acquisitions) and pursuing an independent research project based on the V&A’s photography collection, which will culminate in a tangible output such as a conference, publication and/or web project. 

The research project will be based on the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which was transferred to the V&A in 2017, and may relate to portraiture, colour photography or photographic processes, all areas of interest to the American photographer Bern Schwartz and The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. The topic and scope of the project will be agreed at the start of the Curatorial Fellowship, depending on the Fellow’s expertise and the priorities of the Photography Section. 

Curatorial Fellow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation
£27,000 Per Annum, fixed term for two years, This is an externally funded Curatorial Fellowship sitting in the Photography Section of the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design (AAPD) department. 
To apply, please submit your application online by Monday 13 June 2022 at 23:59. Details here.

Join leading experts, curators, and photographers in the virtual re-launch of Trans Asia Photography, the world’s first and only open access journal devoted to research on Asian photography. Established more than a decade ago, the journal has moved its base to Toronto and relaunches this year with a new publishers, Duke UP, and new editors, Thy Phu, Deepali Dewan, and Yi Gu. This event previews the upcoming themed issue on "Photography," examining the third title keyword, and explores what is at stake in thinking "Asia" and "Photography" together.

This relaunch also features board members, Rahaab Allana, Nadine Attewell, Geoffrey Batchen, Sabeena Gadihoke, Tao Leigh Goffe, Kajri Jain, Will Kwan, Tong Lam, Christopher Pinney, Atsuko Sakaki, Stephen Sheehi, Laura Wexler, and Wu Hung.

TAP Relaunch & Celebration 
Online Event, 26 May 2022
10-11:30am EDT | 1500-1630 BST
CLICK HERE to register for this free event.

A forthcoming symposium focuses on an often-neglected aspect of photography history - photographs of and by women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and more broadly, women and early photography around the world.

The project is inspired by our exploration of photographs taken by the Aberdeen-based photography studio of George Washington Wilson (1823-1893), who was named the Photographer Royal for Scotland in 1860. His collection is housed at the University of Aberdeen library, and consists of over 37,000 glass plate negatives, produced by the firm that he, and then his sons, headed from the 1850s to 1908. It includes landscapes, cityscapes, and portrait photographs from across Britain and its former colonies and beyond. The GWW Collection includes diverse representations of women, in terms of their location, class, occupation, and ethnicity. An online exhibition of a selection of these photographs can be seen via this link: Envisioning Women's Places: Photographs from the George Washington Wilson Collection · University Collections (abdn.ac.uk)

Professor Elizabeth Edwards, author of Photographs and the Practice of History (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) will be keynote speaker at this event.

The symposium has been coordinated by Dr Áine Larkin, Lecturer in French, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and Heidi Brevik-Zender, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Riverside. 

Helmut Newton (1920-2004) was one of the most singular and successful photographers of his generation, known for his provocative fusion of fashion, portrait, and erotic subjects.

Philippe Garner, a 50-plus years veteran of the art auction world, has admired Newton’s work since he discovered it in the late sixties.

He met Newton in 1975 and enjoyed his friendship until the photographer’s death in 2004. Now Vice-President of the Helmut Newton Foundation, he looks back on Newton’s life and work in response to questions from David Breuer, Chief Executive of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.

Immigrants and their Art: Helmut Newton: Living to make pictures
In conversation with Philippe Garner
Tuesday 17 May, 6.30 pm BST via Zoom
Book: https://www.trybooking.com/uk/events/landing?eid=27679&

Although not photography, the related optical instruments of the microscope and telescope presented new ways of seeing, as did the camera. In the seventeenth century, human vision was technologically enhanced with the invention of the telescope and then of the microscope. Scenes of wonder emerged as the assisted eye traversed the night skies or delved into the fabric of the minute new stars and planets appeared at the end of Galileo’s tube and entire oceans were discovered in a drop of vinegar.  

This talk examines the effect of the telescopic and microscopic gaze upon English poetic production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tapping into archival and previously neglected sources as well as more famous literary works, the talk discusses the responses of wonder, satire, and philosophical reflection in both English and Neo-Latin verse on ‘Optick Glasses.’  

From an elephant turned mouse to a louse turned monster, these poems evince preoccupation with bodily forms and Ovidian transformations. Inspired by the Muse of the Lens, contemporary poetry thus expands and moulds its imaginative worlds, revealing its inextricable link with science in the period. 

The Muse of the Lens: Microscopes, Telescopes and Poetic Imagination in 17th- and 18th-century England 
19 May, 1700 (CEST) | 1600 (BST)
Ivana Bičak – University of Durham 
Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (C S M B R) 
The event is free to attend but registration is required here

The archive of Elisabeth Buchmeyer Lewis (1935-2018) has been acquired by Hundred Heroines which will be staging a first look at it in June. After studying at the London College of Printing, Elisabeth soon gained a reputation as a modernist photographer.  By the time of her death in 2018, she had created a vast collection of images with immense social, political, and aesthetic value.

From rock stars to classic cars, Elisabeth’s photographs chart the course of an astonishing career. Beyond the allure of London’s music scene and the Morgan Motor Company, Elisabeth recorded the working lives of women, and artistically reminisced about her German childhood.

According to Katherine Riley 'She leaves behind an archive which forms a distinctive and fascinating view of a post-war world of optimism and rapid change.' 

A first-glimpse-into-the-archive show at the Heroines Hub in June. If you knew Elisabeth and would like to share a memory (either recorded or written) contact:  hello@hundredheroines.org

https://hundredheroines.org/historical-heroines/elisabeth-buchmeyer-lewis/

Dominic Winter’s first photography sale of 2022 comprises 253 lots, from the early to the nearly new. Highlights of the sale are two albumen prints by Julia Margaret Cameron, Alice Liddell as St Agnes and a portrait (see below) of Julia Jackson (Mrs Herbert Duckworth). The latter has interesting provenance and was gifted to the owner by the British artist and writer Angelica Vanessa Garnett (née Bell, 1918-2012), daughter of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, and granddaughter of the subject by her second marriage to Leslie Stephen. Both photographs are estimated at £10,000-15,000.

Other photographers of note include Cecil Beaton, Elizabeth Pulman, Henry King, Man Ray, Angus McBean, Tessa Traeger, a group of 5 very rare photographs attributed to Richard Banner Oakeley and three exceedingly rare late photographs of Upper Burma by Linnaeus Tripe.

There are good albums and collections relating to China and India, as well as USA and West Indies. The sale includes stereoviews and interesting collections of magic lantern slides and postcards. The sale finishes with the concluding part of the Richard Sadler collection.

Digital catalogues in various formats are now available on the website. Public viewing daily from Monday 16th May, 9.30-5.30 and day of sale from 9am.

For further information and enquiries please contact Chris Albury chris@dominicwinter.co.uk / 01285 860006

Dominic Winter Auctioneers, Mallard House, Broadway Lane, South Cerney, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 5UQ

www.dominicwinter.co.uk

See the catalogue here: https://issuu.com/jammdesign/docs/dw_19may22?fr=sNTQ1MDMzNDQ0OTU

Top image: Lot 1. John H. Anderton. From a group of 28 photogravures. 

What is the shape and size of a photographic history that is written from the point of view of having no photographs? When photographs are destroyed, lost, repressed, or never intended to be permanent, it leaves a gap in what we usually refer to as our main research material.

By chance or by design, photographs disappear every day. They might be destroyed, or lost, or designed to fade. They might be rendered undiscoverable through complicated bureaucracy, secrecy, or algorithms. Contemplating the space left without photographs, a veritable foil to the enormity of the image archive, can enrich our understanding of photographic history and methodology.

In this 10th annual conference of the PHRC we will feature papers interrogating photographic histories that are not image led; photographic histories that excavate imageless histories. Each of these will consider topics that address themes like:

• Disappearing or fading photographs by design or by accident
• Histories of archival findings and losses
• Suppression of photographs
• Photography as auxiliary to other things
• Historiographical considerations of a photography without images
• Methodological innovations to reconstruct photographic cultures when images are not available, or never were
• Photographs rendered as data

Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC)
Leicester and online
13-14 June 2022
Details, programme and registration: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2022/

Today, Historic England has launched an interactive education tool which will display hundreds of images of the Queen visiting key heritage sites across England during her reign. The story map resource has been created by Historic England’s Heritage Schools team to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and will help school children learn about some of the significant places she has visited in their area of the country.

Funded by the Department for Education and run by Historic England, the Heritage Schools programme aims to help school children learn about their local heritage and its significance.

From opening important civic buildings like town halls and schools, to visiting museums, sports grounds and pubs, the map shows the huge variety of heritage sites the Queen has visited both during and prior to her reign. The story map not only teaches children about the Queen’s role as our monarch, but also highlights the heritage she has visited that is right on their doorsteps.

The story map is available to everyone via the Historic England website, and features images of the Queen visiting significant buildings, places and events in every region of the country. Alongside these images there is information about when and why the Queen visited, as well as a brief history about the site itself.

Many of the buildings are listed on the National Heritage List for England (NHLE), and children and the public can take part in the Platinum Jubilee commemoration, and make history, by contributing their own images, drawings or information about the building to the NHLE through Historic England’s Enriching the List project.

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive, Historic England said “This interactive map shows the incredible variety of sites the Queen has visited in the past 70 years. We hope schools, teachers, parents and the wider public will explore the map, discover more about their local historic sites and follow in the Queen’s footsteps by supporting their local heritage.”

Image: (top): The Queen about to embark from Heathrow Airport with her Corgis for her annual holiday at Balmoral in 1981. Heathrow Airport originally opened in 1946 as London Airport. The headquarters and engineering workshops for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, now British Airways, were built between 1950-55. Engineer, Sir Evan Owen Williams, who also designed the original Wembley Stadium, envisaged a flexible building that would adapt to the needs of the aviation industry. The Queen has owned Pembroke Welsh Corgis since she was a child and has had more than 30 since she began her reign in 1952. (lower): The Humber Bridge was officially opened by the Queen on 17 July 1981. The bridge took eight years to build and over 1000 people worked on its construction, which cost £91 million. When it was first built it was the world’s longest single-span suspension bridge and it remains the longest in the UK. People had campaigned for a bridge for over a hundred years as the Humber Estuary was a barrier to trade and transport. The bridge is a total of 2,200 metres (1.4 miles) long, the towers are 155.5 metres (510 feet) tall, and the wire used in the bridge would wrap around the moon more than six times. It is estimated that more than ten million vehicles cross the bridge every year. In 2017 is was given Grade I listed status

On 10 May 1897 Isabella Bird was engaged to lecture on Western China at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Jacki Hill-Murphy who has recently published The Life and Travels of Isabella Bird will recreate this lecture, using some of the original magic lantern slides, and talk about the rest of Isabella's solo world travels and how she survived many dangers.

Jacki Hill-Murphy, who has recently published The Life and Travels of Isabella Bird, will recreate that lecture, using some of her original magic lantern slides and talk about the rest of Isabella’s solo world travels and how she survived many dangers.

Jacki is an explorer, teacher, author and speaker. She has spent the last 10 years researching female explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries and recreating their expeditions.

This event has been organised by the Royal Geographical Society's West of England and South Wales committee.

Isabella Bird's magic lantern slides from China
Jacki Hill-Murphy
12 May 2022 from 1930-2100
Live or online: BRSLI, 16 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN
See: https://www.brlsi.org/whatson/isabellabird/

A new exhibition titled The other Shakespear, which brings to life some of the earliest and finest images of the Arabian Peninsula is being launched this month at the Royal Geographical Society on Exhibition Road. This is the first time these photographs have been on public display for more than a century.  The photographs taken by Captain William Shakespear (1878–1915) show both the changing and unchanging nature of this extraordinary landscape and its people. 

Captain Shakespear was a man of enterprise with a fearless love of exploration. He was a soldier by training, a diplomat by profession and an amateur photographer, botanist and geographer by inclination. He explored, photographed and mapped large tracts of Northern Arabia in the early 19th century and, because of an extraordinary friendship with Abdulaziz ibn Saud, later King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Shakespear became a vital and unique intermediary between Britain and the Arab world before and during the early days of World War 1. 

Some of the glass slides will also be on display. Captain Shakespear’s maps, notebooks and photographs belong to the RGS collection. 

In the desert, Shakespear used a large plate camera adapted to take panoramas and a No.1 Panoram-Kodak. This was portable and could store several panoramas on a single film roll. Later, Shakespear also used a small folding camera made by Houghtons Ltd., then the largest camera manufacturer in Britain. The Ensignette took film roll and was robust and rust-proof. Its popularity led to a new breed of amateur photographers, known as the ‘Pocket Snap Shooters’.  

Photographic equipment was an essential part of Shakespear’s expedition equipment, and also included a Kodak Tank Developer, used to process negatives, often in extremes of temperature with limited water supplies. The remarkable results place Shakespear amongst the most important early photographers documenting life on the Arabian Peninsula.  

The Other Shakespear Exhibition  
10 am to 5.30 pm - 10 May to 6 June 2022
Free entry, The Pavillion, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Exhibition Road, London SW7
https://www.rgs.org/events/summer-2022/the-other-shakespear/