Photobook
Simon Hill HonFRPS, President of the RPS simon.hill@rps.org
William Henry Fox Talbot was a polymath, perhaps best known as one of the founding father’s of photography, alongside Johann Heinrich Schulze (1717), Thomas Wedgwood (circa 1800), Nicéphore Niépce (circa 1820), and Louis Daguerre (1839). Talbot’s
salted paper photographic process was the result of experiments he had begun in 1834. However, it was not until a few months after Daguerre’s announcement (made without revealing any useful details) of his
daguerrotype process in early January 1839, that Fox Talbot announced details of his process to the Royal Institution on 25 January 1839.
Celebrating 50 years as a member and volunteer of the RPS Published 25 May 2021
Dr Afzal Ansary ASIS FRPS receives a President and Council Commendation for his continued support and dedication to the RPS.
Afzal is one of the RPS most prolific volunteers. Having worked in medical and scientific imaging throughout his professional life, Afzal decided to get involved in volunteering with the RPS when he retired. He began as a committee member on the North West region and eventually became the Regional Organiser. He went on to concentrate on his other volunteer roles - as a key member of the Science Committee and Distinctions Advisory Board, and Chairman of the Imaging Scientist Qualifications Board, Chairman of the Medical Group, and Chairman of the Combined Royal Colleges Medal Awards Committee.
Distinctions
In the summer of 1851, the
Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was held in London. “The Great Exhibition” was organised under the Presidency of HRH Prince Albert and benefited from the astute management of Henry Cole, the industrial designer credited with the introduction of the first Christmas card in 1843.
The Great Exhibition became a symbol of Britain’s “Golden Years” - showcasing the cultural and technological achievements of the mid-Victorian era. Visited by six million people - equivalent to a third of the population of Britain at that time - exhibits included ‘Bakewell’s image telegraph’ (a precursor of the modern fax machine); the ‘Tempest Prognosticator’ (a barometer using leeches); and the modern pay toilet, with over 800,000 visitors paying one penny for the privilege and in so doing coining the expression, “Spending a penny!”
Propaganda Published 05 April 2021
Simon Hill HonFRPS, President of the RPS simon.hill@rps.org
On 6 April 1920 - exactly 101 years ago tomorrow - the photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, joined the fledgling Nazi Party. When Adolf Hitler took control of the Party in 1921, Hoffmann became his official photographer and Hitler decreed that no-one other than Hoffmann should take photographs of him; although Wieland Wagner (son of the composer, Richard Wagner) was later granted special permission to photograph Hitler at the Bayreuth Festival where Wagner’s epic
Der Ring des Nibelungen (‘The Ring of the Nibelung’) was showcased.
Hoffmann reputedly took over two million photographs of Hitler and eventually became his confidant and one of his most trusted propagandists. Hoffmann and the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, ‘choreographed’ events that r
Without Fear Published 08 March 2021
My chance find of an archive press photograph for sale on
Ebay has introduced me to a group of women who shattered male domination of war reporting. The photograph is of a young woman brushing her hair, dressed in military fatigues, with a camera round her neck. The woman is anonymous but on the reverse is the caption,
“Ma’am, what are you doing here?”
The camera is a Minolta SRT101 with, unusually, a black shutter speed dial. The black dial suggests that it was manufactured between 1966 and 1969, right in the middle of the Vietnam War (1955-1975). A