The National Media Museum has a fine collection of early photography, and Don McCullin, one of the better British photojournalists of the 20th century was invited to pick images of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean taken in the 19th and early 20th century to go on line on Flickr (he has a new book of similar sites taken recently.) They are also available as a slide show, which I found technically disappointing.
Possibly better still, if you can manage to get to the Museum’s Collections & Research Centre – for some reason they call it Insight on Wednesday 3 or10 June at 2pm or Sundays 7 and 14 June at 12pm you, together with all the others who’ve come, can see them for real. It may be in a rather obscure place, but even so I’d be surprised if the numbers are small enough to make this a worthwhile experience.
McCullin’s show at the Museum until Sunday 27 September 2009 in covers his personal vision of England, and is certain to be worth a visit – and the web site also has a number of video clips of the man talking about his life and work. There is also the full 70-minute podcast of Don’s talk with exhibition curator Colin Harding, recorded live on 8 May which you can access from this page.
According to the Flickr page, “Copies of the photographs selected by Don can be obtained through the Museums picture library, the Science and Society Picture Library.” It’s a pity that there isn’t a little more co-operation between the Museum and its picture library. I searched for one of the pictures, “Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894); ‘Haute Égypte, Grand Temple de Denderah, vue genérale’ (Upper Egypt, Great Temple of Dendera, general view), 1852 ; Salt print; 16.2 x 20.8″ and failed to find it. A second search on “Maxime Du Camp” gave 8 results, none of which was by the photographer (for some reason it felt I really wanted Tony Ray Jones or Roger Fenton.)
I’ve previously bought prints from the picture library and found them to be good quality inkjet prints – in some cases better prints than the vintage bromide originals. I rather doubt if those of fine salt prints from calotype negatives would be as satisfactory.
For a rather larger and more informative selection of similar pictures take a look at Voyage en Orient from the BNF (there is an English version, but the French is better if you can.)