And so thank you both for fascinating papers. And just so, so like foot voting, and I have so many questions and I'm sure most of you do, too.
And it is also a great consideration to what we talked about without Williams early on.
And we've recurring notions such as jagoff careers, professions, funding money, the awareness of artistic talent,
the importance of networks and contacts, and obviously to after those of auto's.
So I'm sure we'll have loads of questions coming up for you, too.
But I know that Maggie Murray used in the room somewhere level in the zoo somewhere.
I wanted to ask a question. So, Maggie, you want to amuse yourself and ask your question?
We can start with you. I hope you hear.
And yes, I'm a perfect Mikey. Hey, hello.
Hello, Jessica. I see Jessica.
I just I wanted to ask you whether Helen ever was in a group or a collaboration with other women.
I know. I know. She was with with her partner leftists.
But I come from a background of photography where it was informed both by my politics and also the need to earn a living.
I was in the hot flashes and former photographers and the support of other groups and the network.
Other women in the group. And the networking was very important. Did she have anything like that?
No, she didn't. It was just it was just lettuce.
She went when she came when she came to make the film for Channel four and met the other five photographers, still the four photographers.
She was very, very interested to meet some of them and had lots to talk to them about.
But no, she did not.
And I was very disappointed to discover that she really hadn't ever made contact with Edith to the heart because they had so much in common,
particularly that politics. Andolan and took Juda heart went you photographed in the Welsh valleys like my mother did, and so on.
But she never made that contact saying.
Right. Well, thank you very much. Which would you be aware of, of her work?
Yes, she was aware of that. Again, probably through political sources, but some.
I don't remember her talking about very much, but I do remember her mentioning her and it was very,
very nice to meet for the talk and focus and talk and see that exhibition, which I thought was brilliant, some really interesting.
And it's going to make Maggie for your question.
She has a question for Erica and she asks, Do you know if she photographed any of the jury, Margaret Kamins, donations?
Might she have met her even? So I don't have evidence that she actually photographed any of Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs.
But there's a really Tantalus tantalising possibility that they interacted because Isabelle Agnes Kapoor was running the
photography studio at the South Kensington Museum when Julia Margaret Cameron came in as kind of the first artist in residence.
Some people might know that Henry Cole had invited Margaret Cameron to set up a
studio and she took photographs of various aristocratic and well-known people.
And I'd been desperately trying to find some evidence that perhaps Cowper and Cameron were talking wet collodion together.
But I've yet to find the smoking gun. But I did find that Julia Margaret Cameron, before she turned to photography,
actually had written a translation of a book I believe was a poem I'm blanking right now.
But what I did find was that callipers father had engraved the illustrations for her book.
So they certainly would have known of each other. Certainly the family did.
Mm hmm. Interesting. Thank you. And we have a question from Mark and Jessica.
Thank you for a wonderful insight into the whole process of sex, suffering and ends legacy.
My family has many photographs of hers and also some some we have always attributed to Joan.
Are there plans to digitise the archive? I think that's a question for the for the Bodleian, really.
The whole archive. Isn't that decides at the moment? I imagine it will be eventually.
I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I can't answer that. And. And Fox has a question, one.
Another wonderful presentation. How do we ensure that women's archives will be preserved?
This was an incredible, incredible story. But how many women will be overlooked after like this?
Erica. Jessica, you want to come? I'll.
I mean, when I started at the BNA, I was very much kind of working on my own.
I was kind of the the low woman on the totem pole.
So I really I was pretty hungry for a project. And I was also very conscious not to step on anybody's toes.
And so these file cabinets of 19th century photographs, which were kind of in the state of limbo,
were very open for me to begin to analyse and delve into.
And I had the time. And so I guess it's you just gotta get the right researchers in there and there's got to be funding.
You know, it wasn't like a project that already existed. And then I came in and took it on.
It just happened to be found through my work. So I don't know what the answer is.
Money? Yes. Yes.
And in my case, I, as I've described it, did not until I retired.
You know, I had some time, but I was germinates for a long time before before I got going on it.
And I did find the president's up to date last night. But my you know, I've been tied up with my mom all my life, but none quite like a break.
Not much. But it was really worthwhile doing.
Yeah. It's a question of funding. It's a question of time. And it's a question of labour and being able to recognise your labour.
I mean, and it needs to have ways of.
Emerging, I guess, because you said you started your you're working twenty twelve.
Right. And when 2020. So it's years isn't years of work.
So it's it's kind of a mind blowing. Yeah. And I.
I really like Erica. You come to by the rule of seven.
And it made me laugh because I was thinking.
So do we actually have to expose women photographs at least seven times to to the public for them to then recognise their names and know the work?
Can you tell tell me more about that, even if it's it was billed as a joke.
But I mean, it is interesting in a way,
with the idea of having to persevere in a way and having to go back again and again and again to same kind of subjects.
Well, I remember when I first started uncovering all these photographs and it became
apparent that Kalpa probably was one of the most largely held collections in the BNA.
And I was kind of dumbfounded. And I remember going up to Martin Barnes, senior curator of photographs, and I'm like.
Why has nobody written about or discovered her and he jokingly said something like, well, we've been she's been waiting for you.
I don't know. I mean, and then. Yes, very disappointing.
I was sitting in a lunchtime lecture. And I think those slides that Tristram Hunt showed,
they probably had been those images had been recycled so many times and they had always been attached to the photographer's name.
I. I sent him a note afterwards. I don't know why it's taking so long.
You know, also I'm not a curator, so I don't get as much exposure.
You know, there are there was going to be a show at Fome of Negatives and she was going to be included in that quite extensively.
But funding as a result of Cauvin has been cut. So I don't know.
I just keep plugging away. Yeah, it's interesting because it's also a case of archives and boxes finding the right people to actually
consider that they are important boxes and they are important archives and that we need to work with,
for and with them, I guess, in a way.
And often it's about female researchers, daughters, curators, critics, writers that didn't get interested in those.
And then maybe do the work, the labour and the do.
Yeah. Anyways, we have a question from Kada and she asks, Can Jessica talk a bit about the visit to the USSR in 1936?
Yes. Yes. [INAUDIBLE].
The question that is this is this is in the period that she was working in Cambridge and going back to Swanage.
Right. And they were both. Both she and she and my mother were very, very tied up.
This is a political scene in Cambridge. And the studio actually was a venue for meetings.
And they helped organise an anti-war exhibition of all sorts, things like that.
So they were very interested. What was going on in the Soviet Union? And interesting enough leches, Ramsey went first.
You went two years beforehand. And that I believe there are negatives of that trip.
But I haven't seen very many photographs. I think the Cambridge Library hasn't has a few photographs from the lettuces Russian trip.
But it was really interesting to compare them. So Helen went she just met my father and I knew he was already a member of the Communist Party.
And he was very particular interest was in agriculture.
So they he said, yeah, go go do this trip.
Please try and see some farms. So that's that's how it happened.
It was. I've come across quite a lot of people who were sort of left wing went on these tours that were organised by the Soviet Friendship Society.
But she went four times is quite interesting thing that she went as alone as a woman.
She turned up in Leningrad as it then was Moscow,
where the group of architects and attended a few lectures on plans for the expansion of Leningrad and so on, and talked about architecture.
But then she went down the Volga on her own, messed up with a different group, I think, who were interested in agriculture.
And they went to these both the collective land and state farms.
And those were her most well, some of the best known photographs were taken on the collective farm in particular with the women.
Interesting. Interesting. Thank you. And.
So you should do better. It's a great tool, Erica. Like what? I'm too interested in the business of photography.
In how much detail do the icon go? Do they show how much she paid with her materials, how many people she employed as assistants or indeed servants?
Did she have to pay for this to do or was it freely available to her?
And thanks for a fascinating tool. You can work, actually.
Well well, there are lots of there's lots of evidence of invoices.
And that's how I was able to calculate how much she was paid per square inch of glass because in the photograph,
in the negative registers, each time a negative is received.
The price paid for it is recorded.
And interestingly, the amount that capital was paid per square inch of glass is the same that her brother was paid before he died.
But he was also given an annual stipend, which I have not found evidence of.
There was obviously not time to go into it,
but there was a really interesting situation right before Kalpa was hired where the Subcounty Museum was accused of MONNA of a monopoly,
essentially, and unfairly cutting out commercial photographers.
And so because Kirsten Thompson basically had a monopoly on the whole business there.
And so hiring Cowper in one way also was a very convenient way to address the criticism because she was a non hire as a woman.
So even though she did all the work this Atkins' did, Museum could say, well, we don't have an official museum photographer anymore.
So I think instead of the hundred stipend that Thurston Thomson got, she got room and board.
Remember, she lived at the museum with her kids. So, yes, I mean.
And also, there's this thing about the glass. I want to. I because art has been closed, have been unable to look into it.
But her husband was one of the major chemists to come to work for this company, Chance Brothers.
And they made the glass for these negatives. So I wonder if where you know, where the glasses come from.
And that is something I might be able to look up in the correspondence once I'm back on site there at once.
The archives open up again. Yes. Maybe a follow up question from Deborah.
Have you looked at Roger Fenton's work as a copy photograph at the British Museum?
No, it's just it's the simple answer to what might happened. That could explain what's not what I should be looking for.
Deborah, do you want to meet yourself right up right? Sorry, that wasn't for Jessica.
Sorry. Sorry about that.
But she's reference to a Bush offence working at being one of the first people to copy works on his negatives over at the British Museum.
Yes, I haven't read it. Right. Yes.
Is that for me? Yeah. We do have many of Fentons photographs as well in the beat that's had to be in a collection.
Again, there was this really interesting situation where a lot of photographers like Fenton.
There was another guy named Stephen Thompson.
They really took issue with the fact that Thurston Thompson had this monopoly on photographing objects in this national collection,
which was meant to be for everybody. So I don't have a lot of information in terms of Cowper and our relationship to Fenton.
But they I know at one point the British Museum's photographic service was also under the supervision of South Kensington Museum.
Interesting. And Jessica and Donna is now asking about the collaboration between Rossborough and Ramsey,
and it would be great to hear more about how they work together.
For example, did they collaborate on particular projects or history of woman business partners in studios would be really important research area.
There was a Piaget's spread. Subjects in this in the chat box.
Again, I think I'd love to see that happen. They they had an interesting project and they weren't they weren't cooperatively.
One would look in the studio one day and the other would work in the darkroom.
And then the following day, they said they would print their own photographs.
So I think that we're all to separate, probably. But I just don't know enough about it.
I like to think that some of those photographs were planned. I mean, that's an extraordinary one.
And the book, I say can save money. The. The nude photographs that of the poets should get there in the end.
Which I'm sure they must have collaborated on. I can't see them if I can find it.
Yes, it's on. It's this one. Yeah, you can see it.
Yeah. And they were they were they were friends with the Cocklin, right, in the past.
Oh, let Ginzburg certainly. I'm sure they will work together.
And three, I can't imagine that's what it was.
But it's quite remarkable how little my mother talked about that period in Cambridge when she's bringing us up.
She was entirely concentrating on running her student and oxblood, bringing in the dough, really.
And she very rarely looked back. It was very nice when Don Williams actually talked to her and asked her to talk about her previous work.
And she rediscovered herself, I think. And she was living with us in our house and we had the bridge at the time.
So I was very, quite aware of what the what those conversations were going on.
She did get she did get very excited, actually. Looking back on how I mean, you know, it to be pointed out how interesting it was.
Thank you. And Erica, another question about woman.
You call it progres photographs. And can you not.
I can't comment too much on it.
I know one of the things I have begun looking into in these photographs registers are many, many notations of coloured by and it has names of women.
So women were employed by the South Kensington Museum to colour photographs and there were records of them in the register.
And that's another topic. They were they also hired women to catalogue photographs.
I have lots of records of women who had been assisting a woman who had been assistant to Murali,
was hired to come in because she was obviously very highly qualified to catalogue photographs.
And again, everybody was Paice paid per piece because they couldn't be civil servants.
Interesting. And another maybe for a question by Mary Marry.
Have you been able to find any images made by. And I signed the remit of her employment at the museum.
The answer is no. I have contacted a couple of her descendants and.
Actually, I haven't even been able to find a photograph of her.
There's one possible one, but the only photograph I confirmed photograph I have of her is under the cloth.
So, no. And I haven't found evidence of an archive.
When she moved up to Glasgow being absorbed by any institution or anything like that.
So no. Thank you, Jessica.
I maybe have a question for you about networks and contacts and about the importance of
reaching out and the importance of being able to talk to people in order to do what you did.
And can. Can you tell us more about that?
You explain quite a bit in your paper about and maybe linking it to Erica's network map that you showed doing your paper.
I mean, and linking it also to Val's comment about.
Making a history of photography through individuals, in a way.
And who decides to do what? When basically. Well, it just don't sort of emerged, really.
I mean. I think I was very lucky.
I made some very I met some really, really nice people and made some very, very nice thumbtacks.
You know, we stayed in touch with each other and it's really showed great interest in it.
I find it quite difficult at the beginning to convince myself, quite apart from anyone else, that I was doing something serious.
I wanted it to be quiet. You know, I wanted to be. It was my memoir. But I wanted it to be sort of academic.
And I'm quite careful to to to try and not make it seem sort of chatty.
And yet I wanted to portray her life as well as her work.
So it was just I was constantly thinking about these things as I was doing it.
And then people signed up. I had a wonderful day with Duncan, folks.
So I he was just, you know, were just pulling photographs of the shelves and looking at them.
And he was explaining, exclaiming over them. And that was very, very nice.
And it was like that when everyone knew that you got involved, really.
So, you know, I was constantly give him, you know.
Made to believe I was doing a very worthwhile project. Mm hmm, interesting.
I'm so sorry. There's too couple two other questions up came up.
But we are now out of time and we need to go to lunch break.
So I'm very sorry. Mark and Ellie, maybe we'll have time later on doing the today to ask those questions.
Depending on timing. But I think we should maybe now take a short break and and go and eat something and come back at 130.
Thank you so very much. Eric and Jessica, for such fascinating papers and and for such generous answers to the questions.