The Commissioned Oxford Stereos of Spiers and Son
What makes Spiers and Son’s Oxford in the Stereoscope so unique for the photo historian is that the original negatives used to print the cards have nearly all survived and that there were at least twice as many images taken than were published. It is a real photographic treasure!
Collecting as a Mirror of Changing Times:
Photography at the Städel Museum
“I’ve put several trial photographs on display at the Städel’sches Kunst-Institut”, announced Frankfurt photographer Sigismund Gerothwohl (1808–before 1902) in 1845 in an advertising text in the newssheet of the Free City of Frankfurt.
Walker Evans
at Centre Pompidou, 2017
For Evans, true lyricism entered spontaneously or was discovered after the fact.
From Pigment to Light
Artists frequently hesitate to apply the results of their experiments to their practical work, for they share the universal fear that mechanization may lead to a petrification of art.
Sue Davies OBE
(née Adey, 14 April 1933 – 18 April 2020)
Two days after I arrived in London in March 1975 I started working at The Photographers' Gallery. It was ten days before the photography auction that Philippe Garner and Sue had tirelessly worked on for months.
Photographic destroyers: framing and mounting materials!
The poor quality materials commonly used in commercial mounting and framing can seriously damage photographs, especially gelatine silver prints. Such prints are particularly vulnerable as the finely divided silver, which forms the image, has a huge surface area so is chemically very reactive.
When a family album turns out to be a piece of photographic history
During the summer of 2019, while we were going through stereo cards and photographs at Bruno Tartarin’s professional premises, my assistant Rebecca drew my attention to a photo album she had just leafed through and which had awakened her interest.
JAKARTA (BATAVIA) in Nineteenth Century Photographs
Since my teenage years, I have always been fascinated to seek out the earliest photographs of the cities I visited to understand what the cities used to look like and how they developed into what they are today. This was normally achieved through books. Naturally when I arrived in Jakarta in late 1989, I sought out books containing early photographs of the city.
Early Photography in Vietnam
We travelled slowly down the narrow coastline from Hanoi in the north, to Saigon in the south. On the walls of a number of coffee shops and restaurants, along the way, enlarged coloured French postcards of early-1900s local scenes and portraits were often displayed - suggestive of Vietnamese people’s latent interest in the visual history of their country.
How to Become the Greatest Living Photographer!
My father, Erwin, came to New York in July 1939 to advance his photographic career. He had just finished a one-year contract with Vogue (Paris) where he had produced that most memorable image of Lisa Fonssagrives floating in her dress on the Eiffel Tower. Erwin was then hoping to arrange a better contract from Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines.
Collecting photographs before the modern photography market
In the late 1960s I was a student at university. I had no money and struggled to afford the two shillings and sixpence each month to buy Creative Camera Owner magazine. But I knew I had to have it.
In My Room: Saul Leiter’s intimate Portraits
The women in the photos are collaborators – conspirators – sharing with the photographer intimate moments that will be preserved in gelatin silver. Saul and his subjects are playing, romping, having a good time together. As each woman lets her guard down, revealing her true self, she reflects the trust she has in Saul.
Early Photography in Ladakh, Baltistan & Lahoul 1860-1930
Ladakh, is a remote province of the North-Western Indian Himalaya, situated, to the north of Kashmir, and on the borders of Pakistan and Tibet. Although nowadays politically a part of India, it is largely culturally Buddhist and ethnically Tibetan.
Babylon Halt – Agha’s travel photographs
These weren't run-of-the-mill holiday pictures. Agha had them printed on 11 x 14 inch paper, an unusually large size for holiday snaps. Some of the images reminded me of the Tintin books I used to read as a child.
Dennis Waters
(18 October 1951 – 12 May 2020)
He was an entrepreneur, a scholar, a showman, but most importantly, a husband and a dad. Every time I heard Dennis end a phone call to his wife or children, he ended it with, “Love Ya".