Historic Photography Uncovered

John Dillwyn Llewelyn

Speaking at the official launch of the new Historic Photography show at the National Museum Cardiff its Director General  David Anderson told his audience  to remember the moment. It was the start of a great and new emphasis on what he called the most important collection in the Museum, its photographs. Thanks to the Esme Fairbairn Trust an ongoing digitisation programme has started. Photographs originating  from all departments in the Museum covering Geology ,  Botany, Social History,  Fine Art and more  are being digitised and will form a publicly accessible database in the near future.David Anderson  told us to look out for much more around Photography than has ever been offered before.

For now go and see this first flowering, the most magical and varied collection of photographs and cameras and explanations of photographic processes. This exhibition traces the evolution of photography, as a scientific process, as a social record and a medium for artistic expression.

The photographic material on display dates from the mid-19th to mid-20th century .My favourites show  the beaches I love; Caswell Bay, Tenby, Three Cliffs looking just like they do today but dotted with little ladies in full blown Victorian and Edwardian garb, extraordinary.
The exhibition continues until 19th April

Family Photo archive, a new addition to the Library at the Bishopsgate Institute

Lucy feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square in 1981

There is to be a place in London where old family photos will be collected for researchers to view. News in from Spitalfields Life the wonderful daily blog by the Gentle Author (check it out!) tells us that Stefan Dickers, Archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute is offering a home to unwanted albums and family photographs, where they will be safely stored as an archive. It is to be called the London Family Photo Archive . He is happy to take receipt of  digital copies of photographs if you wish to keep the prints.
“We are looking for family and personal photos of everyday life, no matter if you have lived in London since birth or are a recent arrival to the city,” Stefan explained to me, “We are also looking for photos that depict Londoners on day trips and holidays outside of the city.”
If you might wish to contribute albums or pictures and would like to know more please contact library@bishopsgate.org.uk

This sounds like a wonderful resource in the making....and look at what else they have!
Since opening in 1895, Bishopsgate Library has built up through its collecting policy a record of the development of photography in the capital, alongside it's ever growing collections of books, maps, directories and press cuttings. The emphasis is on the everyday life of London and the Library has specialised in collecting street photography and social and cultural images of London, rather than portraiture or people. The collections are also not limited to famous photographers.
Library Collections cover London History, Labour and Socialist History, Freethought and Humanism, Co-opertaion, Protest and Campaigning, Parliamentary profiles and they hold the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia archive

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Lights Out on August 4th

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 1914

National Library of Wales Cymru 1914 archive

Everyone in the UK is invited to take part in LIGHTS OUT by turning off their lights from 10pm to 11pm on 4 August, leaving on a single light or candle to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War .

Millions of people are expected to participate and hundreds of local authorities, iconic buildings, national organisations including the BBC and the Royal British Legion, parish councils and places of worship have already pledged their support. Iconic landmarks such Blackpool Illuminations, the Houses of Parliament, Eden Project, Imperial War Museums and Tower Bridge will turn off their lights; the Royal British Legion has launched a campaign for at least one million candles to be lit across the UK and theatre productions including those of the National Theatre’s War Horse, both nationally and internationally, will invite their audiences to take part in LIGHTS OUT after their curtain calls.

 Leading international artists have been commissioned by 14-18 NOW to create special public artworks, for one night only in the form of a light source.

Bedwyr Williams’ work Traw will be a large-scale video and sound installation  at the site of the North Wales Memorial Arch, Bangor. The memorial takes centre stage in front of images projected onto the enormous facing wall of Bangor University’s new Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre.

Taking photographs found in the Cymru 1914 archive, Williams has created a sequence of images of local soldiers and civilians   affected by WW1. Excluding all uniform and references to rank, the close up faces reveal something of the individual’s personality and personal sacrifice in a war where death was measured in millions.

Bedwyr Williams is one of Wales’ leading visual artists. In 2013 he represented Wales at the Venice Biennale.

Commenting on the project Bedwyr Williams said: “As a young art student I walked past the memorial arch in Bangor many times and I have to admit that I never gave it a huge amount of thought. Working on this project I’ll never be able to walk past this place again without thinking of the lives lost fighting in the First World War.”

How we view Civil Rights, the images, the meanings and the roles of photography

Human Rights Human Wrongs 5.45pm 5 March 2014 at the National Museum Cardiff in the Reardon Smith lecture theatre

Bob Fitch, Martin L. King (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.),

Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America,

December 1965.

Reproduction from the Black Star Collection,

Ryerson University. Courtesy of the Ryerson Image Centre.

Using the 1948 Universal Declaration of human rights as a point of departure, Mark Sealy, MBE, RPS Hood Medal, Director Autograph ABP and Founding CEO of Rivington Place London, examines whether images of political struggle, suffering, and of victims of violence work for or against humanitarian objectives, especially when considering questions of race, representation, ethical responsibility and the cultural position of the photographer.

The talk will reflect on the imagery that has informed perceptions of civil rights, ranging from historic events such as the Selma to Montgomery March and Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, to the independence movements in many African countries as well as more recent examples of injustice within wider global conflicts. Here the historical and contemporary roles of photography to validate and question the case for civil and human rights will be examined from different perspectives.

The event is FREE but booking is essential as places are limited.

This lecture forms part of a series accompanying a project by  National Museum Wales to work on its rich and diverse historic photographic collections

To reserve your place,  email: Historic.Photography@museumwales.ac.uk

with your name and contact telephone number.

High Resolution Wellcome Images free to download and use

Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Three Navajo men proceeding as war gods.
Silver gelatine print 1904 By: Edward S. Curtis
Published:   1904. 

Cardiff Met Electronic Library>Databases A-Z contains a link to the Wellcome Images  database. Wellcome Images is also available on the internet here.

Wellcome has just announced over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available to be used for commercial or personal purposes under a Creative Commons licence  if accompanied by an acknowledgement of the original source (Wellcome Library, London). The images can be downloaded in high-resolution directly from the Wellcome Images website to be freely copied, distributed, edited, manipulated and built upon for personal or commercial use. The images range from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco Goya. Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, says “Together the collection amounts to a dizzying visual record of centuries of human culture, and our attempts to understand our bodies, minds and health through art and observation. Using the advanced search you can search the collection by a huge range of different techniques including etching, ultrasound, silver gelatin print and my all-time favourites;  the exquisitely lovely 300+ transmission electron micrographs.

New link for images on Databases A-Z : Flickr Commons

Our Electronic Library at Cardiff Met contains over 100 databases and also includes links to quality websites. Go to the Electronic Library and click Databases A-Z (Cardiff Met users only).

Image taken from page 582 of 'The United States of America. A study of the American Commonwealth, its natural resources, people, industries, manufactures, commerce, and its work in literature, science, education and self-government. [By various authors.] 

A new link on Databases A-Z will lead you to Flickr Commons.  The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives. Recently The British Library has added over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft . The images cover a wide range  of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams,  illustrations some beautiful or very colourful, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, landscapes, wall-paintings and  more.
Something to explore over the Christmas break...

Product Designs: It's Nice That

BSG's WOOD.b bike

I was looking for a good selection of Product design images and came across It's Nice That.

"Founded in 2007, It’s Nice That is a publishing platform that encompasses several different online, print and events offerings as part of its mission of championing creativity across the art and design world".

The website, updated daily with at least nine new articles has an international readership of around 350,000 unique users a month. They publish a quarterly magazine Printed Pages and The Annual which rounds up some 150 of the most interesting projects to feature on the site in a single year. Their events programme includes annual creative symposium Here and monthly Nicer Tuesdays talks.

First Broadcast is their audio visual site for hosting original content, Company of Parrots a shop for specially-commissioned products and This At There is a dedicated arts and design exhibition listings guide to London. The Jobsboard connects employers and jobseekers in the creative industries.

enjoy great contemporary designs under the following categories

Advertising

Animation

Architecture

Art

Events

Exhibition

Fashion

Film

Furniture Design

Graphic Design

Illustration

Interactive

Miscellaneous

Music

Photography

Product Design

Publication

Sculpture

Set Design

Web

Alinari online-free to explore

"Dreaming of pirates", Terrazza Mascagni, Livorno

Photographer: Vestrini, Michele

Date of photography: 1958

Alinari black and white photographs were used by art historians before the days of good quality colour reproductions in books so that they could  view the representations of buildings and works of art that the Italian company photographed. Art history departments bought them for study-put on reserve and/or available for browsing always as representations of a building or a painting, not seen then as interesting as examples of photography.

Over 167,000 photographs have now been digitised and are available on subscription as Alinari 24 Ore to individuals and Institutions at a reasonable price.

Subject areas which would find these images useful as well as art and architectural history include cultural studies,  history, economics, sociology and science. It is also possible to search by photographer’s name.

You  may be interested in the free access for educational use. The database can be searched and images have a small watermark on them (as in the image above) until you buy the image or subscribe.

Look here for details.

A cheery start

Here at Cardiff Met we offer an MA in Death and Visual Culture and for staff and students of that course and all others interested in the subject here is a link to the wonderful Wellcome Institute Collection covering  their current exhibition 'Death: A self-portrait' which runs until 24 February 2013. Events associated with the exhibition including discussion days and a day of films about death are listed here

'(The) exhibition showcases some 300 works from a unique collection devoted to the iconography of death and our complex and contradictory attitudes towards it...  including art works, historical artefacts, scientific specimens and ephemera from across the world. '

On show are rare prints by Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya , anatomical drawings, war art and antique metamorphic postcards; human remains , Renaissance vanitas paintings and twentieth century installations celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead, ancient Incan skulls and a chandelier made of 3000 plaster-cast bones by British artist Jodie Carey.

The website also offers links including one to  'Stories from the Day hospice' a blog by Chrissie Giles who throughout the summer of 2012, spent time at the day hospice at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, running a creative writing group. In a series of posts she reflects on her experiences there and showcases some of the writing produced by group members.

  You can also view three extraordinary skulls (two Mexican, one Japanese) from every angle as they revolve on screen.

A book 'Death a Picture Album' accompanies the exhibition.

Let's dance

It's the festive season where we may well find ourselves at  parties dancing.

To get dance-move ideas you could always watch Ai Wei Wei do the Gangnam style.

But to see something more old-style go here where you can also listen to the entertaining NPR radio program that talks about Muybridge and his life and work.

Stephen Herbert has collected many more of these animations made from Muybridge's photographs and  very much more (perhaps everything!!) on Muybridge and his work here

 

Artes Mundi (again)

I have recently attended some very interesting side events for the Artes Mundi Exhibition. A small square leaflet lists these opportunities , there is a web page  listing what's on  and also the facebook page advertises Artes Mundi events. Following these information sources I was able to attend the National Museum this week when the police horses corralled the crowds gathered in the Museum foyer using crowd control techniques, I heard beautiful music in the space occupied by Sheela Gowda's empty tin drums for tar used by Indian roadworkers, I felt sorrow-full in the room with the memorials to the dead of Teresa Margolles as a Welsh Performance artist Kathryn Ashill  counted in Welsh-was she counting the dead? When she stopped counting she whispered into our ears the words Memento Mori-'you too will die'.
 I have also attended an artists parents evening where I was celebrated for my creation (an artist daughter) and talked with other parents of artists and Darius Miksys about art, science , child rearing and mermaids and I watched a play by Miriam Backstrom where 'a director' annoyed 'an actor ' beyond endurance in her efforts to make him be a character she could then reject. I watched two films by Phil Collins and heard him in converstaion about his work afterwards with his old friend Jason Bowman.

I am also signed up for the rest of my life to stand up for any immigrants I see treated badly and not to walk on by. I have a poster and a badge to prove it created by the artist Tania Brughuera.
This years Artes Mundi has afforded me the richest art experiences I have had for a very long time. The art in the exhibition is fascinating, affecting, and says important things. The side events have been stimulating and original. I recommend you go along and investigate yourselves. If you do go to the National Museum to see the work then try go round on one of the  live guide tours. The live guides have all met the artists  and know the work well and will engage with you in talking about what you see and what you think about it.Tours take place daily at 2pm.
Artes Mundi continues until January 13th 2013

Every Picture tells a story: Girl Reading

Girl Reading by Katie Ward comprises seven linked stories set over a period of over 700 years, from 1333 to 2060. Each is an imagined story behind a painting, photo or sculpture. The subject is always  a  girl, or young woman reading. The pictures are not shown in the book so I have given you the links below.
The stories are also concerned with the changing position of women and the choices they have had during those hundreds of years

 

Here are the artworks

 

Simone Martini, Annunciation, 1333 (Uffizi) (painting available from Bridgeman Education in Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Pieter Janssens Elinga, Woman Reading, 1668–70 (Alte Pinakotek, Munich)
Angelica Kauffman, Portrait of a Lady, circa 1775 (Tate Gallery-or if at cardiff Met use the link from the Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Horatio Nelson King, Giulia Grisi, 1860s National Portrait Gallery
Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait of a Sybil (Mary Emily (‘May’) Prinsep), 1870 National Portrait Gallery
Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), circa 1916–17 (National Portrait Gallery)
Heinrich Vogeler, Martha Vogeler, circa 1905
Théodore Roussel, The Reading Girl, 1886-87 ((Tate Gallery-use the link from the Cardiff Met Electronic Library)
Women and Girls Reading Flickr Group
William Wetmore Story, The Libyan Sibyl, 1861–68 Smithsonian American Art Museum
Kimbei Kusakabe, Woman Writing with Brush, 1890s Old Photos of Japan
Correggio’s Mary Magdalene, which was lost during the Second World War, but was much emulated, for example: Cristofano Allori, Penitent Mary Magdalene, circa 1600 Pitti Palace

Artes Mundi

Miriam Backstrom The Opposite of Me is

Artes Mundi, Wales’s biggest contemporary visual art show is back for its 5th exhibition in its new home, the National Museum of Art, on the top floor of National Museum Cardiff. For the first time Artes Mundi  is in partnership with organisations such as Cardiff-based multidisciplinary arts centre Chapter, who will provide an additional venue for some of the works.

Exhibition: 6 October 2012 – 13 January 2013
The shortlisted artists were selected from over 750 nominations covering every continent in the world except Antarctica. Their art  has one overriding theme in common; their work explores social themes, telling stories of lived experience and gives a platform for commentary on the world today.

Miriam Bäckström (Sweden)

 Bäckström’s ongoing interests explore how history is told, and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre and video.

Tania Bruguera (Cuba)

Since the late 1990’s Tania Bruguera’s artistic practice has often reflected back on the social, cultural and economic experience of being Cuban.

Phil Collins (England) Informed by the visual traditions of cinema and television, Phil Collins’ diverse practice is based on close engagement with place and community.

Sheela Gowda (India) For Sheela Gowda the social and cultural reality of India has formed the basis of her practice.

TeresaMargolles (Mexico) Teresa Margolles’ work focuses on the collective turmoil of the Northern Mexican social experience where drug-related organized crime has resulted in widespread violence and murder.

Darius Mikšys (Lithuania) For Mikšys, installations provide the opportunity to experiment, conceptualise, and re-imagine processes of making, displaying and engaging with art.

ApolonijaŠušteršič (Slovenia) Artist and architect Apolonija Šušteršič has focused on the social aspects of living environments manifested in art as well as architectural contexts since the 1990’s.

Events are scheduled throughout the duration of the exhibition. http://artesmundi.org/en/news/whats-on-artes-mundi/#

On 29 November an international panel of judges will award one of the artists the £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize, the UK’s largest art prize

Ten Environment Books that Changed the World

Friends of the Earth in their print journal 'EarthMatters'  (July 2012)  published a list of ten books that  they believe changed the Earth. Actually there are plenty of other Top Ten Environment Booklists just try Googling it!
There is a Cardiff based slant to this blog entry...I thought I'd check the list against Cardiff Met Library and Cardiff Public Library catalogues-here's the result . Information about how to join Cardiff Public Library is here. Follow the links from the book titles  for more information.

Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher

book on order at Cardiff Met Library

 The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour

book available from Cardiff Public Library

Earth from the Air by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

book available from Howard Gardens Library check the catalogue here

No Logo by Naomi Klein

book available from Cardiff Met Library check the catalogue here

The Ages of Gaia by James Lovelock

Books by Lovelock are available from Cardiff Met Library check the catalogue here

 Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber

  the one book neither Library Service stocked

Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world by MarkKurlansky

book available from Cardiff Public Library

Food for Free by Richard Mabey

book available from Cardiff Public Library

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed by JaredDiamond

book available from Cardiff Met Library check the catalogue here

The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann

Farthing Wood books available from Cardiff Public Library

 

travel to World Wonders from home

Would you like to take a journey on the Rhaetian Railway through the Swiss Alps? Or perhaps you’d prefer to explore the mosaics of Pompeii in Italy. Or gaze upon the nine-story Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain. Or track down the Aboriginal rock art at Kakadu National Park in Australia.

Google Street View has left the road and photographed some of the world’s most impressive monuments and parks. Launched at the end of May in Madrid, the World Wonders Project is the latest creation from the Paris-based Google Cultural Institute, a wing of the company that aims to spread culture and history to users around the globe.
To scan inside the Nijo Castle in Kyoto and traverse the grounds of Stonehenge, Google had to ditch its typical car-mounted scanners. Instead it created image-capture equipment suitable for adapted tricycles and vertical trolleys that can be pushed around to capture indoor sites. These trikes globe-trotted for a whole year, sailing down the Amazon River and sitting atop the Glacier Express train in Switzerland.

To document 132 heritage sites worldwide, the Google team has partnered with content providers such as UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund, and Getty Images The site is  geared towards educational uses , as both students and teachers can download free lesson plans and presentations.

Google World Wonders Project is here


A related video explains the background

Another Google Cultural Institute project launched early last year was The Art Project a collaboration with 17 museums and covering  about 1,000 works of art. In April 2012 , the updated version contained 32,000 artworks from 155 museums. The institute has also digitized Nelson Mandela’s archives, the Dead Sea scrolls, and documents and photos from the Yad Vashem Centre for Holocaust research.

Worth Global Style Network

Cardiff Met Library has a new and exciting electronic resource. It is called Worth Global Style Network, the resource that predicts and tracks new trends in fashion, textiles and related areas such as youth culture, marketing, branding and packaging. Rich in images both still and moving, you can view worldwide catwalk shows, see what’s in the high street shops right now or read what fabrics are likely to be appearing in two year’s time. Special features, news items and trend forecasting for colour, fashion and materials make this resource valuable for fashion, and textiles students but also definitely of potential interest for media studies students,  illustrators, graphic designers, product designers, interior designers and anyone interested in fashion and textiles and their world of image and fantasy, theatricality and display, invention and style. Available only to Cardiff Met staff and students it is part of the Electronic Library. Here is a link to it. Help and advice on this and all our other databases and resources available at Llandaff Library from Catherine Drake and at Howard Gardens Library from Jenny Godfrey.

Check out another fashion database we have for a month's trial until the end of May. It is called The Vogue Archive and comprises all the pages of all the American Vogue US edition from 1892-present as a  fully searchable database. Let Catherine or myself know what you think of it. Here is the link. Again this will only work for logged in staff and students of Cardiff Met.

Ideas about landscape

Andy Goldsworthy
Elder leaf patch

edge made by finding leaves the same size
tearing one in two
spitting underneath and pressing flat on to another
Helbeck, Cumbria
October 1983

If you are interested in Landscape from many viewpoints and not just from the aesthetic or Fine Art perspectives then you will enjoy following the thoughts on Landscapism a blog written by Eddie Proctor. His most recent blog is 'a Manifesto for a Working  Landscape' which covers all possible aspects of 'Landscape' and contains a plea to bring them all together and stop thinking and planning for them separately. Don't miss the links on the left of his blog page including one to the on-line Preview of the Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue DVD Volume 1: 1976-1986 where you will find rare and early examples of Goldsworthy's work scanned in from his personal slide catalogue and there's also a link to  my favourite old rockers who used to work in the music industry and now celebrate nature, beer, music and art in equal measure on their wonderful blog 'Caught By the River'.

Open Educational Resources at UAL and MIT

There are many free resources on the Internet, we know this;  the ones known as  Open  Educational Resources: (OER's) comprise educational material that can be freely used by anyone without any copyright restrictions. An OER can be anything from a streamed video like this one showing the sand casting process to this link to an entire course on Anthropology

The sandcasting video, is from Process Arts, managed by Chris Follows at University of the Arts London (UAL)  c.follows@arts.ac.uk

Process Arts  focuses on "making" in art and design . This  site shows  insights into the acts of making and encourages users to share knowledge and experience online. You can  go there to explore  traditional and contemporary creative technical processes , and see work and the processes involved in its making online through  video, text, image and sound .

sample stills sequence

here are the most viewed items from Process Arts. Look to the right of the page for a full list of Resources

Interesting courses including bibliographies, online texts and images etc  are available from the MIT site where the Anthropology course linked above was taken from. Courses include many other subject areas of interest such as media studies, history, literature, music and theatre arts, women's and gender studies. MIT is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose mission  is "to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".

The Lively Morgue launched on Tumblr

The Lively Morgue For many decades, most of the photographs housed in the newsroom archive of The New York Times — known affectionately as “the morgue” — have been hidden away from the public eye in filing cabinets and manila folders.

The newspaper actually does publish  archival photographs every day and features photos in Lens the NYT photography blog in the 'Lively Morgue feature, an occasional series introduced in September 2010. So far, they have published 17 collections including a fabulous collection of 19 dance shots.

The morgue has at least 10 million frames in all. There are five million to six million prints and contact sheets, each sheet representing many discrete images. There are also  300,000 sacks of negatives, ranging in format size from 35 millimeter to 5 by 7 inches. The picture archive also includes about 4.7 gigabytes worth of imagery on each of 13,500 DVDs.

The NYT has now started to publish the images in greater quantities, again as “The Lively Morgue,” on Tumblr  the social blogging site. On the Tumblr, each photograph can be flipped over so that viewers can see notations on the reverse side, which explain the photos’ path at The Times over the years and there are notes about how to interpret them.

visit Tumblr to see the first images in an ongoing series.

Van Eyck in detail: The Ghent Altarpiece

 

The Mystic Lamb of 1432 by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, known as the Ghent Altarpiece, recently underwent emergency conservation within the Villa Chapel in St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent.

Every inch  of the altarpiece was scrutinized and professionally photographed at extremely high resolution in both normal and infrared light.

The photographs were then digitally “stitched” together to create highly detailed images which allow for study of the painting at unprecedented microscopic levels. The website itself contains 100 billion pixels. These high-definition digital images are now available on an interactive digital website, “Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece”

The website features overall photographs of the polyptych in its opened and closed positions, and from there users can zoom closer into the details of individual panels of the altarpiece, down to a microscopic level.  Scrolling and zooming features are guided by a thumbnail image to indicate the location and size of the detail on the altarpiece. Users are also able to open two windows simultaneously to compare any two images from the site.

This project, funded by the Getty Foundation ran from April 2010 through June 2011 and consisted of three main segments: an urgent conservation treatment, an assessment of the current condition of the altarpiece, and a campaign of technical documentation. Its goal was to establish whether a full restoration treatment of Van Eyck’s famous polyptych was necessary in the near future, which indeed turned out to be the case.