Getting down to business

This has been a big week for the Olive Edis project team as we’ve been making some important decisions about the content of our planned displays and exhibitions, as well as firming up plans for the the book we are producing about Edis.

Apologies to Cromer Library users – their copy of Face to Face is currently sitting in my office!

One of the most exciting elements of this project for me is the potential to bring Edis’ work to a much wider audience, and make people more aware of the huge contribution she made to the history of photography. One of the ways we hope to achieve this is through a book about her life and work, which will be the first published book solely about her and her career. The only other book which focuses on Edis is Face to Face: The Remarkable Story of Photographers Olive Edis & Cyril Nunn (2005), which is, as the title suggests, a joint study of Edis and her friend, protegé and collaborator, Cyril Nunn. It was Cyril who was the keeper of Edis’ legacy until we acquired the collection from him in 2008 with the help of The Heritage Lottery Fund and The Art Fund. Face to Face is now out of print, although Norfolk Library & Information Service have several copies available to borrow.

On Wednesday, Curator Alistair Murphy and I met with our publisher to have a chat about our plans for the book, and I have to say that now I’m even more excited! We plan to create a book that will not only act as a biography of Edis and a guide to the works in our new displays and exhibitions, but also as a “coffee-table” book with gorgeous high-quality reproductions of her work, which can be enjoyed for the images alone. Fishermen & Kings: The Photography of Olive Edis will be available for sale at Norwich Castle from October 2016, when our major exhibition opens, and at Cromer Museum from March 2017, to coincide with the opening of our new permanent Edis gallery. We hope that the book will also travel with the touring exhibition we are producing, and will be available to buy at host venues.

We’ve also been discussing merchandise with our retail manager here at Norfolk Museums Service, and are planning a range of lovely items including postcards, tote bags, notebooks and more. I can’t wait to see it all! I’ll be sharing our progess here, of course.

The other major job we’ve been working on this week is the mammoth task of selecting images for the book and objects for the exhibitions from our collection of over 2000 items. There are so many wonderful photos in the collection, it was almost painful to have to filter out so many, but we managed to narrow it down to a long-list of around 300. To help us to visualise our selection, we made a lovely mess in our Education Room by spreading out printed copies of each photo. After two days of deliberating (and occasionally debating), we have created our first draft “A” list of around 175. Next week we’ll come back to them and start to think in more detail about the story we want to tell.

As I was snapping a few quick pictures on my phone, I noticed these three photos happened to have been sorted into piles next to each other. It struck me that these three portraits are almost a perfect representation of Edis’ work – world-famous author Thomas Hardy, local fisherman “Lotion Tar” Bishop, and Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragette movement, all photographed with the same respect and dignity, while maintaining their individual character.

Thomas Hardy & Lotion Tar Bishop © Cromer Museum, Emmeline Pankhurst © National Portrait Gallery, London

That’s all for this week. As always, your thoughts are welcome! Use the comment function here on the blog or get in touch directly.