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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.

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And it is also a great consideration to what we talked about without Williams early on.

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And we've recurring notions such as jagoff careers, professions, funding money, the awareness of artistic talent,

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the importance of networks and contacts, and obviously to after those of auto's.

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So I'm sure we'll have loads of questions coming up for you, too.

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But I know that Maggie Murray used in the room somewhere level in the zoo somewhere.

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I wanted to ask a question. So, Maggie, you want to amuse yourself and ask your question?

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We can start with you. I hope you hear.

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And yes, I'm a perfect Mikey. Hey, hello.

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Hello, Jessica. I see Jessica.

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I just I wanted to ask you whether Helen ever was in a group or a collaboration with other women.

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I know. I know. She was with with her partner leftists.

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But I come from a background of photography where it was informed both by my politics and also the need to earn a living.

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I was in the hot flashes and former photographers and the support of other groups and the network.

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Other women in the group. And the networking was very important. Did she have anything like that?

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No, she didn't. It was just it was just lettuce.

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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.

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She was very, very interested to meet some of them and had lots to talk to them about.

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But no, she did not.

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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,

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particularly that politics. Andolan and took Juda heart went you photographed in the Welsh valleys like my mother did, and so on.

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But she never made that contact saying.

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Right. Well, thank you very much. Which would you be aware of, of her work?

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Yes, she was aware of that. Again, probably through political sources, but some.

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I don't remember her talking about very much, but I do remember her mentioning her and it was very,

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very nice to meet for the talk and focus and talk and see that exhibition, which I thought was brilliant, some really interesting.

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And it's going to make Maggie for your question.

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She has a question for Erica and she asks, Do you know if she photographed any of the jury, Margaret Kamins, donations?

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Might she have met her even? So I don't have evidence that she actually photographed any of Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs.

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But there's a really Tantalus tantalising possibility that they interacted because Isabelle Agnes Kapoor was running the

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photography studio at the South Kensington Museum when Julia Margaret Cameron came in as kind of the first artist in residence.

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Some people might know that Henry Cole had invited Margaret Cameron to set up a

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studio and she took photographs of various aristocratic and well-known people.

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And I'd been desperately trying to find some evidence that perhaps Cowper and Cameron were talking wet collodion together.

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But I've yet to find the smoking gun. But I did find that Julia Margaret Cameron, before she turned to photography,

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actually had written a translation of a book I believe was a poem I'm blanking right now.

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But what I did find was that callipers father had engraved the illustrations for her book.

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So they certainly would have known of each other. Certainly the family did.

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Mm hmm. Interesting. Thank you. And we have a question from Mark and Jessica.

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Thank you for a wonderful insight into the whole process of sex, suffering and ends legacy.

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My family has many photographs of hers and also some some we have always attributed to Joan.

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Are there plans to digitise the archive? I think that's a question for the for the Bodleian, really.

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The whole archive. Isn't that decides at the moment? I imagine it will be eventually.

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I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I can't answer that. And. And Fox has a question, one.

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Another wonderful presentation. How do we ensure that women's archives will be preserved?

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This was an incredible, incredible story. But how many women will be overlooked after like this?

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Erica. Jessica, you want to come? I'll.

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I mean, when I started at the BNA, I was very much kind of working on my own.

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I was kind of the the low woman on the totem pole.

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So I really I was pretty hungry for a project. And I was also very conscious not to step on anybody's toes.

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And so these file cabinets of 19th century photographs, which were kind of in the state of limbo,

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were very open for me to begin to analyse and delve into.

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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.

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You know, it wasn't like a project that already existed. And then I came in and took it on.

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It just happened to be found through my work. So I don't know what the answer is.

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Money? Yes. Yes.

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And in my case, I, as I've described it, did not until I retired.

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You know, I had some time, but I was germinates for a long time before before I got going on it.

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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.

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Not much. But it was really worthwhile doing.

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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.

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I mean, and it needs to have ways of.

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Emerging, I guess, because you said you started your you're working twenty twelve.

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Right. And when 2020. So it's years isn't years of work.

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So it's it's kind of a mind blowing. Yeah. And I.

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I really like Erica. You come to by the rule of seven.

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And it made me laugh because I was thinking.

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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?

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Can you tell tell me more about that, even if it's it was billed as a joke.

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But I mean, it is interesting in a way,

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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.

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Well, I remember when I first started uncovering all these photographs and it became

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apparent that Kalpa probably was one of the most largely held collections in the BNA.

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And I was kind of dumbfounded. And I remember going up to Martin Barnes, senior curator of photographs, and I'm like.

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Why has nobody written about or discovered her and he jokingly said something like, well, we've been she's been waiting for you.

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I don't know. I mean, and then. Yes, very disappointing.

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I was sitting in a lunchtime lecture. And I think those slides that Tristram Hunt showed,

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they probably had been those images had been recycled so many times and they had always been attached to the photographer's name.

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I. I sent him a note afterwards. I don't know why it's taking so long.

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You know, also I'm not a curator, so I don't get as much exposure.

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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.

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But funding as a result of Cauvin has been cut. So I don't know.

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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

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consider that they are important boxes and they are important archives and that we need to work with,

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for and with them, I guess, in a way.

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And often it's about female researchers, daughters, curators, critics, writers that didn't get interested in those.

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And then maybe do the work, the labour and the do.

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Yeah. Anyways, we have a question from Kada and she asks, Can Jessica talk a bit about the visit to the USSR in 1936?

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Yes. Yes. [INAUDIBLE].

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The question that is this is this is in the period that she was working in Cambridge and going back to Swanage.

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Right. And they were both. Both she and she and my mother were very, very tied up.

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This is a political scene in Cambridge. And the studio actually was a venue for meetings.

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And they helped organise an anti-war exhibition of all sorts, things like that.

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So they were very interested. What was going on in the Soviet Union? And interesting enough leches, Ramsey went first.

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You went two years beforehand. And that I believe there are negatives of that trip.

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But I haven't seen very many photographs. I think the Cambridge Library hasn't has a few photographs from the lettuces Russian trip.

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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.

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And he was very particular interest was in agriculture.

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So they he said, yeah, go go do this trip.

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Please try and see some farms. So that's that's how it happened.

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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.

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But she went four times is quite interesting thing that she went as alone as a woman.

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She turned up in Leningrad as it then was Moscow,

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where the group of architects and attended a few lectures on plans for the expansion of Leningrad and so on, and talked about architecture.

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But then she went down the Volga on her own, messed up with a different group, I think, who were interested in agriculture.

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And they went to these both the collective land and state farms.

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And those were her most well, some of the best known photographs were taken on the collective farm in particular with the women.

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Interesting. Interesting. Thank you. And.

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So you should do better. It's a great tool, Erica. Like what? I'm too interested in the business of photography.

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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?

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Did she have to pay for this to do or was it freely available to her?

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And thanks for a fascinating tool. You can work, actually.

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Well well, there are lots of there's lots of evidence of invoices.

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And that's how I was able to calculate how much she was paid per square inch of glass because in the photograph,

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in the negative registers, each time a negative is received.

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The price paid for it is recorded.

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And interestingly, the amount that capital was paid per square inch of glass is the same that her brother was paid before he died.

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But he was also given an annual stipend, which I have not found evidence of.

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There was obviously not time to go into it,

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but there was a really interesting situation right before Kalpa was hired where the Subcounty Museum was accused of MONNA of a monopoly,

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essentially, and unfairly cutting out commercial photographers.

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And so because Kirsten Thompson basically had a monopoly on the whole business there.

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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.

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So even though she did all the work this Atkins' did, Museum could say, well, we don't have an official museum photographer anymore.

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So I think instead of the hundred stipend that Thurston Thomson got, she got room and board.

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Remember, she lived at the museum with her kids. So, yes, I mean.

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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.

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But her husband was one of the major chemists to come to work for this company, Chance Brothers.

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And they made the glass for these negatives. So I wonder if where you know, where the glasses come from.

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And that is something I might be able to look up in the correspondence once I'm back on site there at once.

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The archives open up again. Yes. Maybe a follow up question from Deborah.

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Have you looked at Roger Fenton's work as a copy photograph at the British Museum?

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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.

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Deborah, do you want to meet yourself right up right? Sorry, that wasn't for Jessica.

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Sorry. Sorry about that.

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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.

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Yes, I haven't read it. Right. Yes.

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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.

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Again, there was this really interesting situation where a lot of photographers like Fenton.

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There was another guy named Stephen Thompson.

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They really took issue with the fact that Thurston Thompson had this monopoly on photographing objects in this national collection,

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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.

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But they I know at one point the British Museum's photographic service was also under the supervision of South Kensington Museum.

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Interesting. And Jessica and Donna is now asking about the collaboration between Rossborough and Ramsey,

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and it would be great to hear more about how they work together.

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For example, did they collaborate on particular projects or history of woman business partners in studios would be really important research area.

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There was a Piaget's spread. Subjects in this in the chat box.

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Again, I think I'd love to see that happen. They they had an interesting project and they weren't they weren't cooperatively.

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One would look in the studio one day and the other would work in the darkroom.

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And then the following day, they said they would print their own photographs.

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So I think that we're all to separate, probably. But I just don't know enough about it.

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I like to think that some of those photographs were planned. I mean, that's an extraordinary one.

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And the book, I say can save money. The. The nude photographs that of the poets should get there in the end.

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Which I'm sure they must have collaborated on. I can't see them if I can find it.

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Yes, it's on. It's this one. Yeah, you can see it.

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Yeah. And they were they were they were friends with the Cocklin, right, in the past.

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Oh, let Ginzburg certainly. I'm sure they will work together.

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And three, I can't imagine that's what it was.

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But it's quite remarkable how little my mother talked about that period in Cambridge when she's bringing us up.

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She was entirely concentrating on running her student and oxblood, bringing in the dough, really.

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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.

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And she rediscovered herself, I think. And she was living with us in our house and we had the bridge at the time.

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So I was very, quite aware of what the what those conversations were going on.

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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.

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Thank you. And Erica, another question about woman.

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You call it progres photographs. And can you not.

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I can't comment too much on it.

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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.

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So women were employed by the South Kensington Museum to colour photographs and there were records of them in the register.

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And that's another topic. They were they also hired women to catalogue photographs.

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I have lots of records of women who had been assisting a woman who had been assistant to Murali,

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was hired to come in because she was obviously very highly qualified to catalogue photographs.

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And again, everybody was Paice paid per piece because they couldn't be civil servants.

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Interesting. And another maybe for a question by Mary Marry.

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Have you been able to find any images made by. And I signed the remit of her employment at the museum.

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The answer is no. I have contacted a couple of her descendants and.

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Actually, I haven't even been able to find a photograph of her.

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There's one possible one, but the only photograph I confirmed photograph I have of her is under the cloth.

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So, no. And I haven't found evidence of an archive.

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When she moved up to Glasgow being absorbed by any institution or anything like that.

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So no. Thank you, Jessica.

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I maybe have a question for you about networks and contacts and about the importance of

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reaching out and the importance of being able to talk to people in order to do what you did.

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And can. Can you tell us more about that?

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You explain quite a bit in your paper about and maybe linking it to Erica's network map that you showed doing your paper.

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I mean, and linking it also to Val's comment about.

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Making a history of photography through individuals, in a way.

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And who decides to do what? When basically. Well, it just don't sort of emerged, really.

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I mean. I think I was very lucky.

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I made some very I met some really, really nice people and made some very, very nice thumbtacks.

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You know, we stayed in touch with each other and it's really showed great interest in it.

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I find it quite difficult at the beginning to convince myself, quite apart from anyone else, that I was doing something serious.

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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.

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And I'm quite careful to to to try and not make it seem sort of chatty.

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And yet I wanted to portray her life as well as her work.

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So it was just I was constantly thinking about these things as I was doing it.

197
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And then people signed up. I had a wonderful day with Duncan, folks.

198
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So I he was just, you know, were just pulling photographs of the shelves and looking at them.

199
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And he was explaining, exclaiming over them. And that was very, very nice.

200
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And it was like that when everyone knew that you got involved, really.

201
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So, you know, I was constantly give him, you know.

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Made to believe I was doing a very worthwhile project. Mm hmm, interesting.

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I'm so sorry. There's too couple two other questions up came up.

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But we are now out of time and we need to go to lunch break.

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So I'm very sorry. Mark and Ellie, maybe we'll have time later on doing the today to ask those questions.

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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.

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Thank you so very much. Eric and Jessica, for such fascinating papers and and for such generous answers to the questions.