Archive Visit - Birmingham Central Library
From October 20-28 th , I went on my first big Archival Research Trip of my PhD! I spent Thursday October 21 st in the Archives of the Birmingham Central Library, who hold the papers of the Birmingham Photographic Society (BPS). I went in looking for anything related to the photographer Emma Barton, who was a member, and exhibited under the name Mrs. G. A. Barton. To date, Barton has been very overlooked by photographic historians. She was a very active photographer in her heyday, winning the top prize at the Birmingham Photographic Society Annual Exhibition several times throughout her tenure as a member, and exhibiting at the Royal Photographic Society Annual Exhibition, and across Europe. Although an attempt at recovering more of her history was made in the mid 1990s, culminating in the 1995 traveling exhibition Sunlight and Shadow, little further work has been done. I initially believed there was personal material on Barton at the Sutton Coldfield Library north of Birm