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Dr Kelley Wilder

Job: Professor

Faculty: Arts, Design and Humanities

School/department: School of Humanities

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

Dr 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 and image making.

Research group affiliations

Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC)

Publications and outputs

  • Photographs, Science, and the Expanded Notebook
    Photographs, Science, and the Expanded Notebook Wilder, Kelley 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’. Wilder, K. (2022) Photographs, Science, and the Expanded Notebook. Umeni Art, LXX (3), pp. 279-289
  • Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography
    Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography Wilder, Kelley Wilder, K. (2021) Photographs as Bureaucracy in the Business of Photography (2021) In: Costanza Caraffa (ed) On Alinari: Archive in Transition (Florence and Berlin: Max Planck) pp. 116-127
  • Touring Nature
    Touring Nature Wilder, Kelley 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. Wilder, K. (2020) Touring Nature. In: Mellenthin, P. and Osadtschy, O. (Eds.) Exposure Time: Photographs from the Ruth and Peter Herzog collection, Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag.
  • Science, Art and the Business of Color
    Science, Art and the Business of Color Wilder, Kelley Wilder, K. (2019) Science, Art and the Business of Color. In: Gockel, B. (ed.) The Colors of Photography. Berlin: de Gruyter Press
  • Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge
    Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge Wilder, Kelley 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. Wilder, K. (2019) Stereo Atlases as Hybrid Knowledge. In: Klamm, S. et al. Hybrid Photography, London: Bloomsbury Press.
  • By the Light of the Moon
    By the Light of the Moon Wilder, Kelley This chapter is part of the exhibition catalogue for the Royal Greenwich Museums exhibition 2019. Wilder, K. (2019) By the Light of the Moon. In: Vandenbrouck, M., Barford, M., Devoy, L., Dunn, L. (eds). The Moon: A celebration of our celestial neighbour. Glasgow: HarperCollins, pp. 108-117.
  • Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology
    Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology Wilder, Kelley 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. 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. Wilder, K. (2018) Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology. Journal of Victorian Culture. 23 (4), pp. 503-507
  • The Two Cultures of Word and Image: On Materiality and the Photographic Catalog
    The Two Cultures of Word and Image: On Materiality and the Photographic Catalog Wilder, Kelley Wilder, K. (2018) The Two Cultures of Word and Image: On Materiality and the Photographic Catalog. In: Bärnighausen, J., Caraffa, C., Klamm, S., Schneider, F., Wodtke, P. (eds.) On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo-Archives in the Humanities and Sciences, Open Editions.
  • Through the Looking-Glass: Hans Danuser’s 'Last Analogue Photograph'
    Through the Looking-Glass: Hans Danuser’s 'Last Analogue Photograph' Wilder, Kelley Wilder, Kelley. (2018) Through the Looking-Glass: Hans Danuser’s Last Analogue Photograph. In: Danuser, H., Darkrooms of Photography. Gottingen: Steidl Verlag
  • Not one but Many: Photographic Trajectories and the Making of History
    Not one but Many: Photographic Trajectories and the Making of History Wilder, Kelley This essay examines the networks that form an archive using variations on a single photograph from the Thomas Rodger studio of St Andrews. Using the concept of a ‘thick thing’, the essay charts the trajectories of photographs of bronze age funerary urns as they left Rodger’s studio, were collected in albums and used in lectures, and returned to the University of St Andrews Special Collections. Taking just one of Rodger’s photographic assignments as a prism allows us to think about the circulation of many of his photographs both during his lifetime and after, as both the creation of ‘thick things’ and as ‘material performances’ that have since gained the title ‘Early Scottish Photography’ in the St Andrews Special Collections. From a humble object photograph and its variations, the essay argues for the agency of the photographs and their studio origins in forming the special collections photographic collection, and making, in a very literal sense, the stuff from which we write history Wilder, K. (2017) 'Not one but Many: Photographic Trajectories and the Making of History'. History of Photography, 41 (4), pp. 376-394

Click here for a full listing of Kelley Wilder's publications and outputs.

Research interests/expertise

Dr 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 and image making.

Areas of teaching

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

Qualifications

D.Phil., Oxford University 2003

Courses taught

MA - History of Photography, Images and Practice

MA - Photography and Industry

BA - co teaching Newton to Nuclear: An Introduction to the History of Science, Medicine and Technology

Membership of external committees

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

 

Conference attendance


Photo Archives V: The Paradigm of Objectivity (Getty Research Institute/Huntington Library/ KHI)

Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q7kyPITxxo

Recent research outputs


Kelley Wilder, 'Flash! A Literary and Visual Culture of Performative Technology' Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 23, Issue 4, 28 September (2018) 503–507.

Wilder, K. ‘Not one but Many: Photographic Trajectories and the Making of History’ in History of Photography 41:4 (2017) 376-394.

Wilder, K. 'Through the Looking-Glass: Hans Danuser’s Last Analogue Photograph' in Hans Danuser, Darkrooms of Photography (Gottingen: Steidl Verlag, 2017)

Wilder, K. 'Fields of Vision: Photographing the Glass Record' in Wayne Barrar, The Glass Archive (Massey University: Wellington, NZ, 2016) 4-11.

Wilder, K. 'A Note on the Science of Photography: Reconsidering the Invention Story' in Tanya Sheehan and Andrew Zervigon eds. Photography and Its Origins (New York: Routledge, 2015) 208-221.

Current research students

  • Ella Ravilious 'Photographic Collecting Practices of the National Art Library' CDA with Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Erika Lederman  'Women Photographers and the South Kensington Museum' CDA with Victoria and Albert Museum
  • Marta Binazzi 'All Rights Reserved. Copyright and Patent Laws’ Impact on the Commercialisation of Permanent Photographs of Artworks in Europe: 1865-1900'
  • Valentine Nyamdon 'Manufacturing a Subversive Reality: Backdrops and Photographic Manipulations in Cameroonian studio Photography'

Externally funded research grants information

Pictures in Natural Collections: with Damian Hughes, Post Doctoral Grant (M3C)

Doing Science in a Photographic Age 2017-2018 (British Academy)

 

 

Internally funded research project information

 

The Meaning of Photographic Materials (HEIF) 2017

The Nature of Kodak Research, PhD funded to run 2012 – 2015.

Practising Photography in the Sciences, PhD funded to run 2012 – 2015.

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