Photographic History Course

Free Online Course on Photographic History

 

The University of Edinburgh are running an online course on the history of photography from the daguerreotype to the imapct of the cheap kodak camera.

"Explore the Victorian craze for photography, examine its history, from the earliest images in 1839 and how it has influenced the way we capture and share images today as photography moved from being a niche concern of the few, to one of the most important cultural forms of the modern world."

At Winters we will be studying the course from 12 October along with archivist Jane Middleton-Smith, artist Debbie Cooper and some of our brilliant heritage volunteers. We invite you to join us and share your experience and thoughts!
You can sign up for the course on here: https://www.coursera.org/course/vicphoto
The course runs for 5 weeks and requires from 1 to 3 hours study per week.

Volunteers Blog - Daryl

Hello, I'm Daryl one of the Heritage Project volunteers.  Having recently been on the blogging workshop, offered to us by the Winter's Heritage Project, I thought I'd take the plunge and tell you about my experience of my half day conservation sessions at Winters.

I had done my half day of glass negative conservation a few weeks ago, but I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to volunteer for a second half day yesterday.

Being the second time (third if you count the Open Day) that I had been behind the scenes at W W Winter I felt a bit more at home.

I was working again with another volunteer that I had met at the Conservation Workshop in January which helped.  We had also been on the previous cleaning session together and at the blogging workshop.

We were directed to a back room on this occasion to address some 12 inch by 10 inch glass negatives.  Previously I had worked in the newly refurbished room on 3 inch by 4 inch negatives.  On that previous occasion we had not managed to process very many as it was our first visit, but this time we got through quite a few more.

During a break Louisa showed us some images from larger negatives that she had digitised by taking digital photos of them.  Unfortunately many of them were beyond recovery, but not all.  The images often of only part of the original were fascinating.  Although I have to admit to being more interested in the machines and buildings than the people, but that's just me.

There was a great image of what seemed to be a Foden Steam Lorry; our cursory web search suggested that it would have been between 1906 and 1911, over one hundred years ago !  Unfortunately our web search turned up nothing about the company painted on the lorry door "Spa".  The lorry was loaded with what looked to me like wooden crates which could have been beer or pop or could it have been "mineral water".  Was there a market for mineral water 100 years ago ?  I don't know, but I'm sure someone out there will :D

Back at the job we were there to do we cleaned and stored some images of Repton School Hockey Team, several wedding images, a couple of a workshop with belt driven lathes in operation and a company motor coach outing.

It was all over very quickly and since we are almost at the end of the first phase there were no further scheduled conservation sessions available.  I will have to wait and see what the next phase brings.

*Editors Note: We found a few Spa~Water bottles in the glass hole in the cellar. Spa-Tona (formerly Spa-Iron Brew) was a drink produced by Burrows & Sturgess of Derby. Hubert thinks we did commercial photography for them - hence the 'still full' bottles seen in this photo!

Guest Blog 2

The Volunteer Experience

Local graphic designer, Michael Seymour, describes aspects of the project:

"As a volunteer at Winters I'm grateful to be a part of the preservation and maintenance of this local heritage site. Such a discovery offers historical insights to techniques and processes of a bygone era. In my opinion the very purpose of photography is to capture moments in time thus inspiring me to help rediscover and further preserve these forgotten moments of Derbyshire's past."

As someone who works with images, Michael is particularly intrigued by the pre-digital editing processes; the hand-retouched negatives that show the pencil shading to smooth out skin tone, the blocking out of areas with masking fluids; now performed 'virtually' on Photoshop as the captured image is now all-but-extinct as an artefact.


"Working alongside fellow volunteers and members of the Winters team we record, catalogue and digitise both written and visual data and are constantly finding new and exciting pieces to add to the collection."

Michael and his fellow volunteers are integral and essential to preserving these pieces of history!

Time to Celebrate

We are on a high at the moment - this week we are open for Heritage Open Days AND we have announced phase 1 of our Heritage Lottery Funded archiving project *big cheesy grin*.

Heritage Open Days 2014

In case you've been on Mars and missed all the tweeting, facebook posts and newsletter, we will be open on Thursday 11th, Friday 12th, & Saturday 13th of September as part of National Heritage Open Days. There are many more venues taking place across Derbyshire but we hope you will make a point of dropping in to Winter's for a tour of the premises which this year, in honour of the WW1 centenary will include a few images of British soldiers and German Officer Prisoners of War from the period.
Other lovely points of interest are antique camera equipment, heritage oddments, and the building itself, dating from 1867. You can read a bit more about these on the Heritage Open Days website blog where you can also read about 1000's of exciting heritage events and venues across the UK.

Heritage Lottery Funding

We did it! It has been a long and winding process but phase 1 of our HLF bid has been approved and we are keen to get started.
This will involved preparing a work and storage room, and then on to the interesting bit - working towards archiving the thousands of plate glass negatives. Many of you have kindly already shown interest in volunteering; if it's something you are interested in do get in touch for a volunteer form and we'll take it from there.

Thank you

A quick thank you to everyone who came to last years Heritage Open Days. It was your enthusiasm and support that gave us the memento to take on this endeavour. we also want to thank Jane Middleton-Smith who will be working with us as our professional archivist, and artist-in-residence Debbie Cooper who has been fundamental in guiding us through the process., whilst working on her own project, 'Derby Anon', involving some of our original portraits and the people of Derby (including you?)

Heritage Lottery Funding Bid

 

Progress

Hours of discussion, paperwork, statements of interest, meetings etc are starting to come together for Winters. We had a hunch there would be some interest based on the amazing support we got from the public during last years Heritage Open Days. There are of course no guarantees but we are hearing the right noises going in to this final stage of application.

When will we know?

Our full complete application is submitted in two weeks and we should have an answer by July. Our thoughts? We can't help but dream big!

Over the side entrance - three 'Ws' and 1867

The dream!

We will need your help to turn the dreams in to reality. We hope to dip our toe in the water with an archiving work room and bring those plate negatives back to life but this is just the beginning. It is developing 'Friends of Winters' that will be the foundation of things to come. We need a body of people who want to be active in restoring, conserving and developing every aspect of our heritage with emphasis on the building (which already has a grade 2 listing) and access to the public.

The ceiling cornicing on the left is currently hidden by a lower false ceiling. Wouldn't it be lovely to have all these architectural details revealed?

Outcomes...

Will it be a museum? A center for study? A center for learning? Is it important to 'travel back in time' and realise a museum studio; to catalogue all the images onsite; to transfer skills and knowledge of traditional photography? We believe that all these things are important, but you will have to drive the project (with our full support) whilst we concentrate on the day-to-day running of the business and our lovely 21st century customers.
We are hugely grateful to our current list of volunteers offering their help. Do get in touch if you are also interested in cataloguing and archiving. However, also let us know if you would like something to really get your teeth into. Do you have a passion for heritage and / or photography? May be you have some project management experience, or have worked on similar projects in the past? We want to hear from you please!

 How many feet have trodden these stairs. Look at the curve in the lead where 150 years of wear is showing.

 

Get in touch

Email us on office@wwwinter.co.uk to let us know. There is no commitment at this stage. We are simply putting together a pool of interested parties. who will love and cherish this place as we do :-)