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So thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here. And today I'm going to talk about the research that I've been doing.

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I call it the Ysabel project uncovering 19th century institutional photographers.

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One woman at a time, Isabelle Agnes Capital, was recently identified as the South Kensington Museum's official museum photographer.

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Now, the Victorian Albert Museum or the BNA from 1868 to 1891.

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And she's one of the central figures in shaping its institutional photographic practise.

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Up until recently, capital was excluded from the prevailing institutional narratives put forth by photography and institutional historians.

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In talks such as this, I often focus on the biographical details that define the life and career of Kalka,

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employing her biography as a case study to argue a model of what a 19th century female institutional photographer's practise looked like.

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In the process,

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I assess the socio political context that shaped their careers and subsequently perpetuated their exclusion from the prevailing histories.

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In this instance, I will also interweave my own personal narrative,

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describing my work to uncover Calgary's story as well as those of her female peers.

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I have been a catalogue of photographs at the BNA since 2010.

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I was brought in as a part of an ongoing project to reunite and catalogue the original photographs collection of the museum,

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a programme known as the Factory Project, as a late baby boomer.

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The Warhol illusion appealed to me.

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Shortly after joining, I was in conversation with Christopher Marsden, senior archivist at the BNA, as the newest member of the team.

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I was looking for interesting projects and he suggested a group of album imprints documenting the early construction of the museum.

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Christopher was in the early stages of developing his 2018 display, designing the BNA,

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and he was keen to access the 19th century photographs taken by the museum's photography studio at the Museum

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Buildings catalogue and would not only identify the extent of photographic material available as a resource,

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it would also make these documents available to tag and search within the museum's

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collection management platform and also on the museum's public collection web page.

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Search the collection.

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These photographs have always been part of the museum's collection, but were held within the National Archive Library since 1850 three,

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which contain the photographs collection prior to the establishment. In nineteen seventy seven of the BNA National Collection of Photography.

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Up until recently, many such photographs, often categorised as topographical or documentary,

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were found outside the boundaries of the stores of the curatorial section, accumulating in offices and documents,

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store rooms as overspill from the original library collection or as part of the dispersal of

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photographs that were left behind in nineteen seventy seven when the collection was formed.

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Despite their ubiquity, or perhaps because of it, they had been rendered what Elizabeth Edwards has termed transparent.

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But recent research into institutional archives by scholars such as Edwards has resulted

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in a reassessment of photographs found outside of the official collection rehabilitated.

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They enhance our understanding of the museum's institutional history and stimulate new research into the rich,

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hidden narratives that surround the collection. And cataloguing photographs in the collection.

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My first action is to consult the original photograph registers.

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These volumes document the title and are content of the images, the data acquired and from whom.

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In addition to the official museum photographer from the earliest days of the museum's founding in 1852,

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photographs were acquired from a range of sources, including international institutions.

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Independent commercial for time first. And directly from artists such as Julia Margaret Cameron, in this instance,

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while looking for the details of acquisition over and over the name Mrs. Kalpa was listed as a

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source despite the significance of the images documenting the institution's unique early history.

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I was surprised to find no information of Cowper on Cowper in the photograph section files entry.

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I went back to the earliest photograph registers, where I discovered that from 18 March 1868, character's name,

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rendered in a neat Victorian hand, is listed as the source of photographs acquired by the museum over a period of twenty three years.

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In light of evidence suggesting the presence of hundreds of photographs produced by Cowper,

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I found it curious that her recognition was virtually non-existent.

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Equally surprising, existing official histories histories of the VNS photographic service offered scant information.

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Only one historian makes a passing reference to her that spelled her name incorrectly to

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assemble a biography of Kalpa as a case study for female institutional photographers.

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I have been investigating the circumstances of her employment at the museum and the institutional structure within which she operated.

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This involves looking at what and Laura Stolar refers to as the archives.

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Ragged edges searching for examples where official records contradict or question documents that museum historians have discounted or ignored.

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This includes a wide range of material, internal museum correspondence.

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Museum staff diaries, census and probate records. Negative records.

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Copyright records. And, of course, a material analysis of the photographs themselves.

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The earliest recorded receipt of a photograph by Cowper coincides with the death in January

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1868 of the museum's celebrated first official museum photographer Charles Thurston Thompson.

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Yet official records of the Department of Science and Art under the auspices

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of which the photographic service operated and all the existing histories,

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report that no individual took on the role after Thurston Thompson's death.

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But perhaps the terms of enquiry need rethinking because despite the official records

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and prevailing histories stating that no photographer replaced Thurston Thompson,

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I found Kalpesh resignation letter clearly stating her role as official museum photographer.

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She she writes, I resigned the post of official photographer, which I have held for twenty three years.

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I shall be obliged by your accepting my resignation from the thirty first of December next, just to be clear.

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This letter is catalogued and archived within a file titled Mrs. Kalpa resigned her post as official photographer.

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In this instance, not so ragged and Edge remembered the histories as well as official records state that the position was abolished in 1868.

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Callipers, resignation letter from the supposedly redundant position of official Musim

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photographer correlated with another clue found in the Diary of Henry Cole,

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a key figure in the history of British institutional photography and the founding director of the South Kensington Museum.

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On the evening of eight February 1868, he records a visit to his home by Charlotte Thompson.

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Her husband, Thurston Thompson, had died two weeks earlier.

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His death left the museum without an official photographer, and his widow had an important message to convey.

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Cole writes, In the evening, Charlotte Thompson came and resolved to have nothing to do with photography of future

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proposed to our Thompson that Mrs Campero should take up their artistic work,

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but not the trade. I found this reference to Mrs Cowper and the suggestion she take on photographic responsibilities at the museum.

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Very compelling. Who is Mrs Cowper? What is her relationship to the network of museum professionals?

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Where does the material evidence of her work reside and how to locate it?

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What were the circumstances of their production? What role within the image production networks did she play?

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What were the curatorial and administrative decisions and practises in place that have kept your story hidden?

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And finally, how has the South Kensington Museum Photographic Ecosystem incorporated gender into the organisation to address these questions?

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I've taken special care to focus on what Edwards has referred to as the defining subjective noise that

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attends the photographing of objects and foregrounds the social biographies of the photographs themselves.

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In this way, previously hidden women's stories and a more nuanced institutional history which includes these narratives, reveal themselves.

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Looked at this way. Photographic collections expose underlying intentions originating from institutional authority.

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The roots of the South Kensington Museum photographic service line, the 1851 Great Exhibition,

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Cole was involved in the organisation of the event, putting Thurston Thompson in charge of the exhibition's photographic arrangements.

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Cole saw early on the potential of photography to dramatically extend educational resources up and museum.

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You conceived of a forward thinking photography policy that included enhanced photography, documenting museum objects and temporary exhibitions.

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In 1856, Cole recorded to Dorking and walked with R.A.

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Thompson, discussed for the latter the terms for making negatives and positives officially.

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Later that year, when Cole installed Thurston Thompson as the official museum photographer and a dedicated photographic studio,

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the first museum photographic service came into being.

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Photographs were available to artists and scholars as reference in resource material through the museum's publishing activities.

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The images were also circulated amongst national schools of design and institutions further afield beyond education.

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Cole also understood the value of photography to support a range of curatorial and administrative activities,

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including conservation and exhibition design.

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Here's an image from a series of photographs of mirrors from Thurston Thompson's tenure on the left hand side,

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showing the official photographer reflected in the glass. I like to show this to illustrate how systemic gender bias is.

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A reinforced Thurston Thompson's Thompson's conscious recording of himself at work in the newly

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minted profession suggests pride in his work and an increasing public recognition of the vocation.

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Thompson was widely recognised in his time, and subsequent histories have only served to elevate his status.

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By the time of his death, the work of the official museum photographer had become an integral part of the museum's operations.

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Viewing this image alongside an image of a mirror taken by Kapper, it's easy to see how history has rendered her invisible.

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I began digging into the correspondence records at the museum.

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The first letter from Kalpa, an official museum records documents her application for employment on 10 February 1868,

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two days following Charlotte Thompson's visit to call on March 18 of that same year,

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an entry in the photograph register records receipt of six mounted album photographs of Hatfield Hatfield House presented by Mrs.

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I, a kalpa from that date on entries with reference to Kalpa or numerous by July.

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Her address is recorded as the Residences South Kensington Museum onside a combination accommodation reserved for senior museum staff,

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including Cole and his family. Cupper and her children occupied Unit three.

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Further evidence of calories role was found in the museum's negative archive.

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A recently initiated survey of the 19th century glass negatives has revealed many signed by Calcutt,

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one possibly dated to 1867, when Thurston Thompson was still alive, suggesting she was employed with him before his death.

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Here's another example of the way in which countermarch negatives. Other clues to authorship include the faint initials IAC.

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She read that she frequently wrote in pencil on the corner of the mouse, discovering her neat signature on her work, similar to Thurston.

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Thompson's recording of its reflection implies a consciousness of her role as a professional or perhaps a subtle strategy of resistance.

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Though it's more likely her mark was part of a system of annotations devised to track her work for billing purposes as a public institution,

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the South South Kensington Museum employees were civil servants.

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In 1868, the civil service was still closed to women as such campers compensation was on a per piece basis,

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calculated at three pence per square inch of glass produced. There are many invoices in the archive raised by Mrs PAB Cowper.

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Photographs taken by Kapper represent a wide range, including objects in museum collection, lone objects building construction and even a still life.

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Research has revealed this image was distributed to art school examiners,

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along with test papers, as a model when assembling items for still life examinations.

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Part of the national curriculum.

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What's fascinating about this image is that most of the books included in this view are illustrated with canvas photographs.

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The number of photographs is impressive.

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Considering them the late eighteen sixties, Capra would have relied upon the laborious, wet collodion process,

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which involved the handling and storage of delicate glass material and was dependent upon natural light,

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which often meant photographing outside and coping with fickle English weather.

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In terms of composition, Colquitt emulated formal consideration similar to those established by Thurston Thompson,

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presenting museum objects against plain light backgrounds with scant contextualising information uniformly lit,

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perpetuating what Svetlana Alpers has referred to as the museum effect.

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It is important to understand the full range of activities that constituted the South Kensington Museum's early institutional photographic.

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It's the establishment. This included printing, mounting labelling, classifying and circulation of photographs,

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activities that were synchronised with the registration notation and cross referencing of object numbers,

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photograph numbers, negative numbers and the storage and care of prints and the delicate glass negatives.

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Cowper was also called upon by coal to provide expert opinion on photographic matters and was tasked with photographing coal's children.

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Running the studio was a considerable undertaking and by the end of the 19th century,

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no other institution matched South Kensington Museum in terms of scale of photographic operations.

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My research has yielded the fact that Kalpa was the sister of Charles Thurston Thompson.

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Isabel Agnes Thompson was born 1826 to the eminent Wouldn't Graver John Thompson and his wife Harriet,

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like their father, Isabel and her siblings worked, as would engravers from the late 18th thirties.

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Through the eighteen forties, Kalua engraved illustrations for the critic John Ruskin's only work of fiction.

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The King of the Golden River, a children's fairy tale written for 13 year old Effie Grey.

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Part of the famous Victorian love triangle that included Ruskin, whom she left.

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You married the pre Rafina life painter John Everett Malenko.

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And recall was a significant presence in cappers life even before she moved into the museum.

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His diary records many visits during the eighteen forties with John Thompson and his talented children who live near to the museum in Kensington.

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A diary entry for 31 March 1841 records.

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Called it the Thompsons with drawings and asked Mr. T. to let his daughters engraved, which he assented to do.

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Isabel was 16 years old. Isabel married Charles Kapper in 1852.

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Charles, his background and training, regarded alongside that of Thurston Thompson's,

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illustrates the multiple entry points that she had for establishing a photographic practise.

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Charles, trained as a chemist, had deep roots in the world of printing, photography and publishing.

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Charles, his father, invented a steam powered press shown at the Great Exhibition,

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which was later used to print the Times of London, as well as the illustrated London News.

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Charles worked as a chemist for the glass manufacturing firm Chance Brothers of Birmingham,

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well known for their glazing of the roof of the Crystal Palace.

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But the chance for him is also noteworthy for its role in producing a pure and flawless sheet glass called Paten Plate.

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According to Michael Pritchard,

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whose piece examines the role of the development of British photographic manufacturing and retailing in the 19th century from 1848,

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Peyton Place was the material of choice employed by the British photographic industry until it was replaced by cheaper alternatives.

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Later in the century is about subsequent photographic practise as representative

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of the easy flow that existed during the late 19th century between photography,

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engraving and printing. And Charles settled in Kensington on 22 March 1853.

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The Times recorded a stillborn son delivered to Mrs. Charles Cooper,

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two sons and two daughters, followed by twenty three December 1860 when Isabel's husband died.

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Isabel was 34 years old, had four children under the age of five and was pregnant with her fifth.

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Trying to place Kalpa economically has led me to the work of historical geographers who are currently in the

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process of reanalysing census data in order to more accurately represent the economic status of 19th century women.

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The last will and testament of Charles records a legacy of around 4000 pounds, not an insubstantial sum to that time.

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It also mentions business, a business partnership, railway shares and other securities,

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as well as two residences, according to Dr Caroline Shout, a research associate in geography at Cambridge.

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This is still quite early in the democratisation of shareholding, demonstrating that Kalka was probably upper middle class.

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Not much is known of CalCars life during the period between the death of her husband in 1860 and a brother Thurston Thompson's death in 1868.

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Cole's diary entry of six November 1867 provides a possible clue.

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Paris Thurston Thompson arrived with Mrs. Kalpa Cappers Arrival with Thurston Thompson in Paris while he was on official museum business.

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Hence that in widowhood she was working with her brothers. This is not outstanding.

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The number of women commercial photographers swoon was increasing by the eighteen sixties,

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though they remained relatively invisible within the professional photographic community, often hidden by their affiliation with a male relative.

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Under whose name they practise their trade callipers rolled or attached to her brothers,

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follows trends concerning professional female photographers from that period.

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Many cases have been noted where the careers of female photographers were fostered by their relationship to a male practitioner.

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Often a husband or other deceased male relative would be left for the wives or, in Capri's case, a sister to take over.

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According to Steve Edwards,

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the tragic event of widowhood was frequently the reason for women being precipitated into the responsibilities of studio ownership.

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Kapper stable economic status, though, suggests that her photographic career was also motivated by a passion rather than

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simply need Camper's experience in the printing industry producing wood engravings.

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As an apprentice to her father, as well as her experience assisting her brother,

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making negatives would have prepared a well for a role in the production of photographically

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illustrated books that South Kensington Museum started to publish in 1868.

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Negative registers record the frequent movement of glass negatives between Mrs. Cowper and the print and the printers Condole and Fleming,

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who were charged with printing the photographs, including in these publications.

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In addition to her role working as Thurston Thompson's assistant with her past experience as an accomplished wood engraver,

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Cowper would have developed the highly specialised visual skills to see images in reverse,

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as well as to swap dark for life skills that would enable her to quickly and accurately read

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the quality of a negative and its suitability for print in a compelling area of research.

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As an analysis of the circulation of callipers, images not only within the museum,

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but also between institutions demonstrating the ways that female institutional photographers shaped photographic collection.

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Cowper provided images for vines published to the museum's arrangement with the Arundell Society.

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Her photographs would have also been for sale to the public, to the museum's dedicated on site sale style.

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They also circulated amongst the regional art schools as part of the circulation collection.

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My search to comprehend the breadth of campus influence has me identifying her photographs in the collections of international launderers,

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in the archives of eminent artists such as the arts and craft designer Ernest Skimps.

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Harper was likely exposed to photography through both her husband's professional experience and through her brother's post at the museum,

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wherever she apprenticed. Once Canberra took over from her brother, it was not long before her skill was acknowledged in the press.

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An article in the journal 1870 refers to the silver photographs of lace taken by Mrs Cowper for the South Kensington Museum,

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which are considered to be the greatest success yet attained by the art.

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In the same article, the critic notes that cappers producing negatives are three feet square, suggesting a high level of technical skill.

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Was not without a sense of raw talent as a photographer between 1871 and 1874.

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She exhibited examples of her work in the annual London International Exhibitions, the 1871 catalogue,

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lists of photographs and stole directly adjacent to the celebrated for Taat for Julia Margaret Cameron in the Royal Albert Hall.

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Kopper's employment was a perfect pairing of existing skills with professional responsibilities.

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But beyond her technical expertise, Cappers extraordinary personal connexions served as a professional network,

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searching for evidence of cappers work and sifting through the ephemera on the archive margins has

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facilitated the visualisation visualisation of the web of Connexions and which Kalpa was embedded.

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While these networks were often familial. It does not mean they were not commercial.

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Demonstrating the creative ways 19th century women photographers engaged with the chosen profession upon retirement

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and eighteen ninety one couple moved to Surrey and then later to Glasgow to join her married daughter Beatrice.

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She died there on 17 February 1911 and is buried alongside her husband and three of her children at the Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

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She was eighty five years old. Now that Kapoor has been found.

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I've been revisiting the Vienna collection with a newly sharpened dog with an aim to uncover Helper's female contemporaries like Riggs.

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I've re-examined the photograph registers in correspondence archive,

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searching for the names of women working around the same time period that Capra was running the South Kensington Museum Photography Studio.

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I found that the museum acquired reference photographs from other female institutional photographers,

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including the Swedish photographer image Emma Chanson, based in Uppsala, Sweden.

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Madrid based Englishwoman Jane Clifford, who made photographs of the Prado Louise left home, who photographed at the Louvre,

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and Miss Kay and Reynolds, who also photograph installation shots at both the Natural History Museum and the Royal Institution.

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It is now more than 50 years after the establishment of the Viennese photographic service that the stories of

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women associated with the service are being uncovered and written into the Vienna's early institutional history.

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They've been revealed by focussing a critical eye upon the embedded practises with the image making college of the museum,

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which served, whether consciously or not, to marginalise the work of professional women photographers.

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What I will focus on now is the impact of my research,

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foregrounding not only a new institutional history but a more nuanced history of photography and women's role in it.

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Since 2014, in the past, three installations in the nine photography galleries have featured work by CALLIPER Davina's newly reinstalled cast.

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Kautz include many Kapre photographs as part of its historical narrative on reproductions and the BNA.

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In 2018, an exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary curated by Lindor, a British artist who is internationally renowned for a photo,

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montages, performances and radical feminism, featured cappers work loan from the DNA.

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Be in a bookshop now, says a postcard of one a his photographs.

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Over 400 Kalpa records have been added to the collections management system, feeding into the museum's public collection interface.

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Search the collection with many more expected. There have been a series of blog posts on Scalper's and an article in the BNA magazine.

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Two recent publications focussing on museums and feminism feature a chapter on Captain Harper even has her own Instagram account.

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In fact, she recently person participated in the challenge accepted meme featuring black and white selfies promoting female empowerment.

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Harper's narrative is also fitting into contemporary practises. Artist Sarah VanDerBeek, whose current series Women in Museums,

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explores the roles and dress presentations of women in institutions as reference calibre as an inspiration

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in an Instagram live conversation hosted by Metro Pictures and other curators are incorporating

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Katherine Pearce into their research and talk similarly to this one upcoming entry on Kalka in a volume

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on English in a Time photography edited by Scott Wilcox of the Yale Centre for British Arts and Cappers,

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included in a survey of historical photobooks by women to be published by 10 by 10 photobooks in twenty twenty one.

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There's also a chapter on Capri's role in the 19th century publishing industry,

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which will be published in the twenty twenty one volume on the History of Women in print,

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published by the Centre for Printing History and Culture and Culture. There is more work to be done.

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I'm still frequently met with surprised that the role of women as makers in 19th

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century photographic histories is not solely the purview of aristocratic women.

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And disappointingly, despite the addition of Calgary to the museum's collection database,

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the BNA Zone director Tristram Hunt used cappers work to illustrate a talking Ruskin without attribution,

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while the male photographers illustrated the talk were clearly identified.

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So I'm taking a page from the marketing manuals and applying the fundamental rule of seven.

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The rule of seven quite simply states that it takes a consumer an average of seven interactions with the brand before a purchase will take place.

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So I think I'm way beyond seven. So the process of assembling an archive of work by character and appears at the BNA

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involves a leap of faith that includes expansion of one's gaze upon the collection,

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taking specific care to include those photographs which that low in the hierarchy of museum values reaching beyond their content.

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The writing of callipers and her peers biographies will be crucial in the construction of the reputations and their promotion.

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The field of institutional photography.

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Presently, the current installation New Photography Centre features not only a technically advanced photograph of a tune it by Kamper,

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but also its accompanying signs. Negative Cappers photograph would have originally been made to inspire students in needlework.

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But it also points to a new perspective that ensures that the history of photography just not remain a story of men.

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Thank you.