Framing Ownership: Tracing the Creative and Commercial Lives of Women Photographers through Copyright Records, 1880–1912
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
8-3-2026 2:32 PM
Description
The 1862 Fine Arts Copyright Act allowed women experimenting with photography and building photographic businesses to register their photographs for copyright protection for the first time. This groundbreaking legislation has resulted in the accumulation of a vast archival collection of over 100,000 photographs, originally registered with the Stationers' Company between 1862 and 1912, and now held at The National Archives. The collection includes not only well-known and influential photographers, but also little-known small-scale pioneers. Encompassing women who took up photography for financial and business security, as a form of creative expression, or to record personal activities and familial connections, the records offer a unique insight into the variety of creative and commercial ways women chose to engage with photography and copyright. This paper leverages the collection to investigate the creative and commercial lives of a small number of women who approached the medium of photography in very different ways and explore what the records can tell us about their attitudes to intellectual property.
Katherine Howells is a principal records specialist and leads the Modern Britain team at The National Archives of the UK. She specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British visual culture and digital research methods, and she focuses particularly on The National Archives' collections of photographs, government publicity and intellectual property records. Katherine holds a PhD in Digital Humanities and an MA in Early Modern History, both from King’s College London. Her main research interest is in how historical images are remembered and reused in culture and society, and the impact of this reuse on people’s sense of identity and perception of the past. Katherine’s doctoral research focused on British cultural memory of famous propaganda posters produced by the government during the Second World War. This was part of a larger AHRC-funded project researching the publishing history of the Ministry of Information. Prior to this, she has explored the impact of photography and film in shaping the cultural memory of the First World War and how images, architecture and the heritage industry have influenced how British people imagine the Tudor period.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Howells, Katherine, "Framing Ownership: Tracing the Creative and Commercial Lives of Women Photographers through Copyright Records, 1880–1912" (2026). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day. 34.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2026/schedule/34
Framing Ownership: Tracing the Creative and Commercial Lives of Women Photographers through Copyright Records, 1880–1912
The 1862 Fine Arts Copyright Act allowed women experimenting with photography and building photographic businesses to register their photographs for copyright protection for the first time. This groundbreaking legislation has resulted in the accumulation of a vast archival collection of over 100,000 photographs, originally registered with the Stationers' Company between 1862 and 1912, and now held at The National Archives. The collection includes not only well-known and influential photographers, but also little-known small-scale pioneers. Encompassing women who took up photography for financial and business security, as a form of creative expression, or to record personal activities and familial connections, the records offer a unique insight into the variety of creative and commercial ways women chose to engage with photography and copyright. This paper leverages the collection to investigate the creative and commercial lives of a small number of women who approached the medium of photography in very different ways and explore what the records can tell us about their attitudes to intellectual property.
Katherine Howells is a principal records specialist and leads the Modern Britain team at The National Archives of the UK. She specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British visual culture and digital research methods, and she focuses particularly on The National Archives' collections of photographs, government publicity and intellectual property records. Katherine holds a PhD in Digital Humanities and an MA in Early Modern History, both from King’s College London. Her main research interest is in how historical images are remembered and reused in culture and society, and the impact of this reuse on people’s sense of identity and perception of the past. Katherine’s doctoral research focused on British cultural memory of famous propaganda posters produced by the government during the Second World War. This was part of a larger AHRC-funded project researching the publishing history of the Ministry of Information. Prior to this, she has explored the impact of photography and film in shaping the cultural memory of the First World War and how images, architecture and the heritage industry have influenced how British people imagine the Tudor period.