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Professor Kelley Wilder

Job: Professor of Photographic History

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Research group(s): Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC)

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH

T: N/A

E: kwilder@dmu.ac.uk

W: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/phrc

Social Media: photographichistory.wordpress.com

 

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Personal profile

Professor Kelley Wilder is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice.  In her work Kelley  considers the photographic practices of nineteenth century scientists and artists like William Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Herschel, Henri Becquerel and others. New projects include work on Photographic catalogues and archives, and nineteenth and twentieth century material cultures of photographic industry.

Research group affiliations

Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC)

Publications and outputs

  • Photography: Between Discipline and Indiscipline
    dc.title: Photography: Between Discipline and Indiscipline dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: An unruly medium that has denied any easy categorisation, photography bridges the apparent gap between the arts and the sciences, either by accepting both into dialogue or denying the correlation between the two. Early on, photography was seen as uncomplicatedly both art and science, then merely science, then asserted as art (sometimes), then seen increasingly as a compromise or dialogue between two or more worlds. It is exactly this dialogue that has moved the medium fruitfully onwards. But it is not only the medium that has moved. Just as photography purportedly saw the world around us in much the same way we saw it, it has shifted as human perception about it has shifted. Photography took up important roles in the art world while retaining every ounce of its applications to science. This chapter walks photography through decades of self investigation to show how it became relevant to art and stayed that way.
  • Photographic Networks in the Venus Transit
    dc.title: Photographic Networks in the Venus Transit dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley
  • Photology, Photography, and Actinochemistry: The Photographic Work of John Herschel
    dc.title: Photology, Photography, and Actinochemistry: The Photographic Work of John Herschel dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: John Herschel published at least nine important articles on photographic chemistry between 1819 and 1858. He introduced hyposulphite as a fixer and seven new imaging processes, among them the Cyanotype or, as it became commonly known, the blueprint. He produced negatives on glass, anticipating the breakout innovation of the 1850s by a decade. He is well known for popularizing important vocabulary like “photography,” “snapshot,” “negative,” and “positive,” and he was instrumental in supporting a thriving network of individuals now considered photographic pioneers. This chapter demonstrates how Herschel's contribution to photochemistry should be evaluated outside of photographic history, and how it relates to the growing field of industrial chemistry in the nineteenth century. dc.description: Photographic History Research Centre
  • Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography
    dc.title: Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley
  • Photographs, Science, and the Expanded Notebook
    dc.title: Photographs, Science, and the Expanded Notebook dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: Notebooks are a critical part of observational and experimental practices in the lab and the field, and they appear in all disciplines of science, humanities, and the arts. In photographic history, notebooks by wellknown experimenters like William Henry Fox Talbot and John Frederick William Herschel have been critical to understanding how photography was developed. But in spite of their ubiquitous presence and critical place in photographic history, very little attention has been given to understanding the effects of photography on the notebooks, or to the photographic patterning of scientific notetaking. This article is about photographic notebooks and the way in which photography insinuated itself into the working practice of a few scientists, creating a new and hybrid ‘expanded notebook’.
  • Touring Nature
    dc.title: Touring Nature dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: In the first decades of the Twentieth century, a vibrant network of both people and institutions, amateurs and professionals, scientists and businessmen engaged with science photography through popular science, tourism, exhibition, and publication. Science photographs were studied, exchanged, collected, published, bought, and sold in a well-established industry of science imaging. This short exhibition catalogue essay traces a small part of this industry through the Herzog collection. Exhibition Kunstmuseum Basel, July 2020- October 2020.
  • By the Light of the Moon
    dc.title: By the Light of the Moon dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description: This chapter is part of the exhibition catalogue for the Royal Greenwich Museums exhibition 2019.
  • Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge
    dc.title: Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: This paper examines the nature of knowledge generated by the use of stereo images in scientific atlases. Taking both photography and drawing to be stereo imaging methods in the sciences, it contends that it is not only photography we should pay attention to. Market factors in the production of stereo atlases, the complicit introspection required of stereo atlas users, and the control exerted by the authors of stereo images combined to create a unique sort of hybrid knowledge.
  • Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology
    dc.title: Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley dc.description.abstract: In Flash! Photography, Writing, & Surprising Illumination Kate Flint presents a technology history in the fullness of its literary and visual culture as it plays out over more than a century. Her narrative is not about inventions, firsts or the sort of exceptionalism of individual geniuses that often populate the stories of photography or photographically related technology. It is instead about presenting the technological, literary and visual cultures of the flash as mutually productive, inseparable entities. dc.description: Roundtable article The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • Science, Art and the Business of Color
    dc.title: Science, Art and the Business of Color dc.contributor.author: Wilder, Kelley

View a full listing of Kelley Wilder's publications and outputs.

Research interests/expertise

material cultures of photography

photography and science

archives, catalogues and photograpy

photography, industry and technology

Areas of teaching

  • Photographic history
  • Photography and industry
  • Photographic research practices
  • Material histories of photography
  • Science and Photography
  • History of Technology

Qualifications

D.Phil., Oxford University 2003

Courses taught

Photographic History MA

Honours and awards

 


 

Membership of external committees

Library Committee, Royal Society

Advisory Board, Studies in Theory and History of Photography, University of Zurich

 

Membership of professional associations and societies

 European Society of the History of Photography 

 History of Science Society

 European Society for the History of Science

 

Projects

2020-2023      Mercator Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany. DFG project, "Astronomie-Glasarchiv: Fotografische Praktiken in der Sternwarte, 1850-1950" (The Astronomical Glass Archive: Photographic practices of the Observatory 1850-1950), PI Professor Omar Nasim, Regensburg.

2019-2024      Research Fellow of the Science Museum, London

2019-2020      Marie Curie EU Training Grant (€84,497) ‘Photomechanical Reproduction in Europe’ with Dr. Petra Trnkova, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

2017-2018      M3C Creative Economy Engagement Postdoctoral funding (£29,741) for ‘Pictures in Natural Collections’, with Damian Hughes and the Natural History Museum, London

2016-2017      HEIF Network fund 'The Meaning of Photographic Materials' (£3000)

2016-2017       British Academy Research Grant for project 'Doing Science in a Photographic Age' (£6,635)

Forthcoming events

Lcture at the Leicester Lit and Phil. 24 February 2025

2025 PHRC Conference Photography, Value, History, 16-17 June 2025

Recent research outputs

 

Key articles information


Gregg Mitman and Kelley Wilder eds. Documenting the World: Film, Photography and the Scientific Record (Chicago, 2016)

Kelley Wilder, Photography and Science (Reaktion, 2009)

Current research students

  • Ella Ravilious AHRC CDA with V&A 'Photographic Collecting Practices of the National Art Library' CDA with Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Martin Jürgens M4C 
  • Corey Keller
  • Carolin Lange M4C

Externally funded research grants information

2020-2023      Mercator Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany. DFG project, "Astronomie-Glasarchiv: Fotografische Praktiken in der Sternwarte, 1850-1950" (The Astronomical Glass Archive: Photographic practices of the Observatory 1850-1950), PI Professor Omar Nasim, Regensburg.

2019-2020      Marie Curie EU Training Grant (€84,497) ‘Photomechanical Reproduction in Europe’ with Petra Trnkova, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

2017-2018      M3C Creative Economy Engagement Postdoctoral funding (£29,741) for ‘Pictures in Natural Collections’, with Damian Hughes and the Natural History Museum, London

2016-2017       British Academy Research Grant for project 'Doing Science in a Photographic Age' (£6,635)

Internally funded research project information

2016-2017      HEIF Network fund 'The Meaning of Photographic Materials' (£3000)

 

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