George Davison’s medal-winning pin-hole photograph garnered much controversy as the battle between ‘straight’ and pictorial photography raged on.
From the very first photographic images to the work of contemporary photographers, photography is one of our major areas of expertise and is represented throughout our collection.
The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially the XXII Olympic Winter Games, are taking place in Sochi, Russia.
Associate Curator Ruth Kitchin picks some photographic highlights from John Thomson’s 19th-century album Foochow and the River Min.
This miniature gilt locket with pull out concertina of 12 albumen prints is a photographic souvenir from the wedding of the world’s most famous little people.
Backdrops and drapery have been used for as long as photographers have been taking photographs, but one of the strangest uses was by Lewis Carroll in 1865.
Christmas is a popular subject in the Photographic Advertising Limited archive. The photographs, unsurprisingly, suggest joy, goodwill… and overspending.
We’ll be making hundreds of images from the world’s largest public collection of Cameron portraits available online as part of a year-long digitisation project.
Christmas is number one in the UK celebration calendar, so it’s no wonder that festive photographs in our collection are as common as the Christmas jumper.
In 1826, Niépce used his heliography process to capture the first photograph, but his pioneering work was soon to be overshadowed by the invention of the daguerreotype.
Believe it or not, this grotesque and surreal lantern slide was a favourite at Victorian magic lantern shows—the forerunner to cinema whose popularity lasted for 300 years.
The use of photography to keep a record of criminals began in the 1840s when police forces commissioned portraits of offenders for so-called Rogues’ Galleries.
Filmed in 1915, Charles Urban’s Britain Prepared used military footage to promote British strength and determination in the war effort during the First World War.