Welcome and Keynote 

0930 

Registration opens / Tea and Coffee  

0945-1000 

Introduction / Housekeeping  
Charles Draper 

1000-1015 

Introduction: Dr Michael Pritchard 

To set the scene for the day Michael Pritchard will look at how Talbot and Herschel studies have evolved since the nineteenth century. He will show how their respective experiments and achievements have left a legacy that still resonates with contemporary artists and photographers.  

YES 

Panel 1: Herschel, Talbot and their circle  
(chair: Mike Edmunds)  

1020-1025 

Panel Chair: Introduction and speaker introductions 

1025-1040 

Speaker 1: Dr Andy Cochrane FSA 

Lacock, the Home of Photography 

YES 

1040-1055 

Speaker 2: Professor Emerita Kelley Wilder  

Defining Photography 

Sir John Herschel played a critical role in all aspects of the development of photography. He invented some of its chemistry, popularised some of its terms, deployed photographs as evidence, and collected them as art and technology. But photography failed to fit some of his most cherished general laws, caused him endless difficulties and resulted in numerous failures. How did Herschel help to define what we know as photography today in the face of so much uncertainty as to what it was and how it fit into science as it was known at the time? This talk discusses Herschel’s attempts to place and classify photography in his worldview. 

YES 

1055-1110 

Speaker 3: Dr Sara Stevenson  

The First Essay in Social Documentary: Hill and Adamson’s Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth 

Between 1844 and 1846, D O Hill, Robert Adamson and Jessie Mann, working in Edinburgh, and using the Calotype process undertook an original exercise working principally with the fishing community of Newhaven on the Firth of Forth. Through aesthetic and technological experiments, they determined to picture the excellence and distinction of this small society. The results remain an extraordinary challenge even in our own times. 

YES 

1110-1125 

Speaker 4: Anne-Lou Buzot 

John Herschel’s photographic legacy 

YES 

1125-1140 

Panel Q+A 

BREAK 

Panel 2: Photography origins and acceptance 1834-1861  
(chair: Charles Draper) 

1155-1200 

Panel Chair: Introduction and speaker introductions 

1200-1215 

Speaker 1: Dr Rose Teanby FRPS 
Silent trailblazers: four early women photographers and their studios in Bath 

This talk introduces four of the earliest women professional photographers in Bath. The photographic studios of Hannah Whaite, Emma Roper, Lucy Williams and Emma Tuttell represent inspirational stories of resilience and commercial acumen at a time of widespread social restriction for women. These four trailblazers overcame professional and personal challenges to become the wives, widows and unmarried women who relocated a ‘woman’s place’ from domesticity to a photographic studio, establishing a unique creative legacy in the city of Bath. 

YES 

1215-1230 

Speaker 2: Dr Anthony Hamber  

John Herschel and photography in the long 1840s 

John Herschel and Henry Talbot (more commonly referred to as William Henry Fox Talbot) had first met in 1824 and had a common interest in light. Both were to become pioneers of early photography. 

This paper will examine the social, institutional, and commercial environments in which photography evolved during the 1840s, ending in the 1851 Great Exhibition, which acted as a major catalyst to propel the medium into the mainstream.  

YES 

1230-1245 

Speaker 3: Dr Sian Prosser 

Warren De La Rue’s 1857 astronomical photography 

YES 

1245-1300 

Panel Q+A 

LUNCH 

Panel 3: Historic photographic processes and contemporary practice  
(chair: Michael Pritchard) 

1415-1420 

Panel Chair: Introduction and speaker introductions 

1420-1435 

Title and synopsis coming shortly.  

Dr Jo Gane joannagane@gmail.com  

YES 

1435-1450 

Speaker 2: Kristina Chan 

Intimate Ecologies: Recontextualising Early Photographic Processes in Contemporary Art 

Kristina Chan presents her paper on early photographic processes and their contemporary application in landscape practice. Drawing on Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes and Talbot’s pursuit of nature through light, Chan examines Lucid Dreams(Royal Photographic Society), Shared Latitudes (Bergen, Norway), and Habitable Climes (High Commission of Canada, Royal Geographical Society), informed by her sustained engagement with historical archives. 

YES 

1450-1505 

Speaker 3: Dr Caroline Douglas, artist 

‘pray go on with these delightful experiments…’ Herschel, Somerville, and the Making of Colour Photography 

This paper explores the collaborative nature of John Herschel and Mary Somerville’s photographic conversations. It does so by turning to art practice and processes of reenactment, and addresses two questions: how does a repositioning of Somerville as a photographer (in this instance, through her 1835 and 1845 experiments) change the way we think about the history of the medium? And how can photographic art practice contribute to the task of locating Somerville in the early history of photography?  

YES 

1505-1530 

Panel Q+A 

1530-1600 

General Q+A, wrap up and close  

Charles Draper 

close 1700 

Drinks