John Balean

Shortly after the invention of photography, in 1839, press photography was born. Only a few iconic names and images have been embraced by academia but ever since the first press imagery appeared, photographic masterpieces have been published, lost, damaged, destroyed, left anonymously and often completely forgotten. Press photography has a strong sense of narrative and enables us to see how the way we remember things can be distorted or manipulated.

John Balean gives a brief introduction about the origins of Press photography and TopFoto’s involvement in EuropeanaPhotography to help preserve digitally a collection of press photographic memory for future generations.

Information about the speaker:

John Balean is a photographer and international marketing manager at picture library TopFoto. He graduated from the University of Newcastle (Australia) with a bachelor of Arts in the Visual Arts and a major in Photography. J. Balean is TopFoto coordinator for the EuropeanaPhotography project. He has given lectures and written about the picture industry and is the Consultant Researcher to the Press Photo History Project. John has been an editor of the 2008–2009 CEPIC (Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage), from 2013 he is an elected member of the Committee of CEPIC. From 2012 he is an elected member of the Executive Committee of BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies). When time allows he creates daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography, using a vintage Gandolfi 5×7 plate camera.

International conference “Digitisation and photographic memory”