Autumn Leaves by Matt White. Kodachrome original, 2010

The end of Kodachrome...

Since 1935, superb, marvellous Kodachrome has been just about the best colour transparency film available. National Geographic insisted on Kodachrome for all its colour images before the digital age. I have been shooting on it since the 1970s (now that does age me...) but knowing that the end was in sight, has meant the last couple of years has been quite a Kodachrome festival for me. I shoot 35mm Kodachrome 64, and 16mm and 8mm movie film in Kodachrome 25, and 40 types. It is lovely stuff, but has a pretty complicated processing system, for this subtractive colour film. Since the numbers of labs round the world has been falling, this had been getting more difficult, and in the last year only one lab worldwide has been able to process Kodachrome. It is Dwaynes of Parsons, Kansas, USA. Kodak, at the end of November ceased to honour the process paid 35mm K64, and it will withdraw the chemicals from Dwaynes at the end of December. Kodak apparently has no plans to sell patents for this wonderful film, or for the chemicals, so it seems to be a dead end for this lovely film. Kodak's reasons are that Kodachrome was not making sufficient profit for Kodak, and as the accountants rule everything Kodak does, it is the end for this iconic, and spectacular film. I am sad to see it go.

Tom Hunter exhibits

Two opportunities to see the work of Tom Hunter very soon.  

Details can be found here:   Tom Hunter Website

We are keen to visit the exhibition at Purdy Hicks gallery London

Titled  Unheralded Stories the show runs from 24 November – 23 December 2010 and is a great opportunity to see new work by the artist.

From: Living in Hell and Other Stories series
Nun tears strip off club client,  2004

Work to be hosted at Purdy Hicks Gallery, Telephone 020 7 401 9229 contact@purdyhicks.com

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

The Department are off to see this show at Tate Modern on Tuesday 28th of September.  We will post our reviews soon...

Exposed

Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Tate Modern 28 May  –  3 October 2010 

About the exhibition

"...promises to be a magnificent, intriguing, sometimes shocking, sometimes risque show". The Evening Standard

Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects. 

Beginning with the idea of the 'unseen photographer', Exposed presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers including Brassaï's erotic Secret Paris of the 1930s images; Weegee's iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe; and Nick Ut's reportage image of children escaping napalm attacks in the Vietnam War. Sex and celebrity is an important part of the exhibition, presenting photographs of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Paris Hilton on her way to prison and the assassination of JFK. Other renowned photographers represented in the show include Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Man Ray. 

The UK is now the most surveyed country in the world. We have an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance – images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV.

Much of Exposed focuses on surveillance, including works by both amateur and press photographers, and images produced using automatic technology such as CCTV. The issues raised are particularly relevant in the current climate, with topical debates raging around the rights and desires of individuals, terrorism and the increasing availability and use of surveillance. Exposed confronts these issues and their implications head-on.

Pictures at an exhibition

Natalie Gallard de Zaleu



































The Temoin family at the house that is now the Bibliotheque where the exhibition is held
















Some of the glass plate negatives












Matt White left, Elisabeth Doussett, Director of the Bibliotheque centre, and Philippe Gitton Minister of Culture and History, right

Exhibition Launch in Bourges

Patrick Gallard de Zaleu, descendant of the Témoins, 3rd from left, Elisabeth Doussett Director of Bibliotheque de Bourges 2nd from left, Matt & Robbie White 5th&6th from left, Natalie Gallard de Zaleu at right, with Gallard de Zaleu cousins at left and centre at the launch on Friday 17th September

Exhibition of century-old photographs in Bourges

From Discovery to Exhibition:

The story of the Témoin photographs

While visiting a brocante at Lurcy-Levis in 2007, I saw at a stand a box containing small boxes of Lumiere glass negatives. I bought two of them. The following year I visited the same brocante and bought all the rest of them, some 170 glass-plate negatives. As a photographer these pictures were of great interest to me. I found that some were marked 1909. I also found out that some were taken in the city of Bourges. A great number of the pictures featured a family who were obviously wealthy, since the photographs featured their travels in Italy, Spain, and France. Investigating the pictures revealed more details. With the help of the Musee du Berry, in particular Beatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, I found that many pictures featured a festival in Bourges that looked like ‘Les fetes de l’argentier’ that took place in 1910. Beatrice, on seeing some of the pictures went out on her bicycle with her husband and emailed me back the same views taken with her digital camera, confirming the locations of four street scenes in Bourges.

My initial interest was that they were Lumiere plates, as these set the standards for all modern photography, with their speed and high resolution.

The pictures I thought most important featured a gentleman with a long white beard, who was pictured painting the church at Primelles. I forwarded these pictures to the Tate Gallery, The Courtauld Institute, and The National Gallery in London. Some curators thought the artist was Monet, while others thought it was Degas. But it is not either of those artists. Who it is, is still a mystery.

Beatrice de Chancel-Bardelot noted that an interior and exterior shot of a balcony were the present day Bibliotheque in Place Quatre Piliers. This led to the possibility that the family was the Témoins, who left hotel Témoin to the city of Bourges as a bibliotheque. Beatrice had a picture of Daniel Témoin, an eminent surgeon. He looked similar to the gentleman in my pictures, but then many gentlemen of the period looked similar. Documentary proof came from a photograph showing a 1906 Renault 6cv. An email to the Archives Departementales proved that the owner of the motor-car, whose number plate was shown in the picture, was Daniel Témoin of 4, Place Quatre Piliers.

Then in 2009 I met with Elisabeth Doussett of the Bibliotheque Municipale in Bourges, and found myself sitting in the room featured in one of the pictures. Elisabeth took my wife Robbie and me on a lovely tour of the library to all the rooms the public doesn’t see, including Dr Daniel Témoin’s consulting room, the kitchen, and dining room. Elisabeth’s office is the living room featured in the pictures, with Témoin, daughter and grand-daughters.

Elisabeth met with a descendant of the Témoins, M. Patrick Gallard de Zaleu, whose grandfather married one of the Témoin daughters. Patrick was able to identify many of the people and locations featured in the pictures.

Elisabeth also discovered the name of the family chateau, on the Cher, and that the Témoins owned a villa in Nice on the Cote D’Azur. A further and larger collection of glass-plate negatives, is held by the Van Iperen-Hoevens, also featuring the lives and travels of the family Daniel Témoin.

Having agreed that an exposition must be held of these photographs, Elisabeth and I made plans to display the collection.

First I had to make sure the negatives were in good condition, as we had decided to show only ‘real’ photographic prints, rather than digitally scanned images. This meant the negatives had to be cleaned, as most were dusty. Some had surface damage, while one or two were cracked, but not broken. I made some tests with a poor quality, double exposed negative, to clean it of dust. I ran the negative under cold running water, and used my clean finger to gently clear the dust from the surface. I kept immersion time down to less than 30 seconds, and dried the plates in sunshine on a windowsill. Comparison before and after this process showed a cleaner image with no added damage. I repeated this process with all 170 negatives, and all of them survived the cleaning.

As Northampton College has a large photographic facility, I was able to use a large, wall-mounted De Vere enlarger, with a 5x4 negative carrier, which I had to adapt to take the smaller negative size of the glass plates. The pictures were by no means easy to print, as some areas of the image had to be differentially printed, sometimes to twice the length of time of the rest of the image. Many pictures needed an exposure time of 20 minutes or more. The sheer size of them was also a slight problem, but I was able to complete the printing with no mishaps. It was a pleasure to see the images appear. Large photographs have a way of drawing you in to the picture, and you can see details that are invisible in smaller images.

There is a possibility that the photographer of these historic pictures is in the photograph in this exposition, showing a man featured with a camera on a tripod. He is likely to be the husband of one of Daniel Témoin’s daughters. But the collection, both mine and those held in the Van Iperen-Hoevens collection, feature images taken when the daughters were merely children, long before their marriages. So as yet this primary question remains essentially unanswered.

When I look at the family in these photographs, I feel I am a benign voyeur into their private lives. I also wonder about the journey these glass negatives made, from the original photographer or photographers, through two world wars, becoming separated from the Témoin family, and eventually being offered for sale at a brocante at Lurcy-Levis.

I am so glad the pictures found me, and that I did something about discovering their history.

Matt White

September 2010

Photographs of the 'vernissage' to follow