my work

The First Film is a feature length documentary about the inventor Louis Le Prince, released in cinemas in 2015. Nominated for Best Documentary Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival; Nominated for Best Documentary Award at the Galway International Film Fleadh 2015. Longlisted for Best Documentary BAFTA 2015  

Feast Wagon was a contemporary art exhibition held at the Tetley Gallery, Leeds, based on and inspired by research on Louis Le Prince’s brother-in-law, John Robinson Whitley and on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. It included work by Turner Prize-winning artist, Lubaina Himid. 

The Feast Wagon publication accompanied the exhibition of the same name. The essay I contributed was entitled Dreaming Yourself into the Real World (a short appreciation of ghost-dancers, contemporary artists and nineteenth century industrial entrepreneurs) 

The Shadow Traps was an illustrated talk on Le Prince presented as part of Leeds International Film Festival 

A White Horse in Roundhay was an illustrated talk on Le Prince presented as part of Leeds International Film Festival and introduced to the public for the first time the story of a ‘new’ film by Le Prince. 

Celebrating Louis Le Prince was an exhibition held at Leeds Central Library as part of Leeds International Film Festival. It was opened by Laurie Snyder, the great-great-granddaughter of Louis Le Prince. 

The Measure of the Moon was an illustrated talk presented as part of Leeds International Film Festival. It consisted of a series of interconnecting stories which traced a line from seventeenth century astronomy, through the pioneer days of photography to the invention of motion pictures and beyond, 

Cradle of Innovation is an anthology published on June 14th 2018. I have contributed two chapters (on Louis Le Prince and Wordsworth Donisthorpe) 

New Approaches to Silent Film Historiography was the Silent Film Historiography Conference held by the University of Leeds in August 2018. I delivered a paper entitled Learning to See a Bridge (some observations on reading a one second film). 

Man with a Movie Camera is an article on the film fragments of Le Prince and was published in History Today Magazine in the January 2019 edition. It was subsequently re-printed in the online section of TIME Magazine. 

Louis Le Prince and the Birth of Film in Leeds is an online article commissioned by The Northern Film School (Leeds Beckett University). It was published to mark the 2nd Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Lecture given by director Ben Rivers. 

The Shadow Traps is a podcast series in which the story of Le Prince is laid out in great detail. Starting in 2019 it is still currently running and is on Episode #40. 

Rivers of Silver, Cities of Gold is an article on the inventor Elizabeth Fulhame whose experiments with sensitized cloth prefigured the birth of photography. It was published in History Today Magazine in the November 2019 edition. 

A fifty-page biography of Le Prince, with particular attention paid to his time in Leeds, published in November 2020 as part of a larger volume – Miscellany, Second Series Vol 30 - on the history of Leeds by the Thoresby Society. 

An article for The Secret Library Blog, published on September 25th (days after the 130th anniversary of  Le Prince’s disappearance on the 16th). The article contains a photograph which I believe to be of Le Prince himself. 

A two-part radio documentary on the inventor, broadcast on Radio France Culture on 27 & 28th November, 2021.

A Channel Five series on different aspects of life in the county of Yorkshire. I was interviewed in December 2021 by Christa Ackroyd, for an upcoming episode of the (second) series.

An article for The Secret Library Blog, published on April 14th 2022. The article celebrates the church in whose grounds Le Prince’s mother and father-in-law (Sarah and Joseph Whitley) are buried. It incorporates stories of others buried in the grounds, and also offers a suggestion as to the possible identity of Harriet/Annie Hartley, who appeared in Roundhay Garden Scene.

Host/interviewer for an evening ‘In Conversation With…’ Paul Fischer, author of a new biography on Le Prince. Held at the Leeds Central Library on April 28th 2022.

A blog post for Leeds School of Arts (Leeds Beckett University) to accompany the upcoming talk 'The Lost Films of Louis Le Prince'. It contains two images of Leeds Bridge Scene that may be the only ones that survive, that were actually part of a sequence projected back during Le Prince's lifetime.

A lecture on the ‘lost films’ of Louis Le Prince, given on September 9th as part of the national Heritage Open Days Festival. This talk revealed what I believe to be the subjects and locations for three 'lost' sequences by Le Prince: A White Horse in Roundhay; A Train in Holbeck and A Panorama.

An article, the first in a series, on Louis Le Prince for The Optilogue website, published in December. This series is, in a sense, the culmination of a decade of research. It is an attempt to provide the most accurate account of Louis Le Prince's work given to date.

'[a] good mix of the human and the technical; clear and lively writing; does what it sets out to do, by suggesting that someone 'lost' or forgotten' isn't actually lost at all if you just do a bit of digging.' Dr. Richard Wrangle, former Assistant Director of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture.

‘Clovelly Cottage’ is the first British commercial film and was made by Birt Acres. 

The frames were later identified as being from a film made in 1900 or earlier by a Mr. Williamson and entitled ‘Divers’. No other frames of this film are known to exist. 

An acknowledgement for material found on subject. 

An acknowledgement for material found on subject. 

An acknowledgement for material found on subject for Peter Domankiewicz’s talk at the British Silent Film Festival Symposium.

An acknowledgement for feedback and mention of work on subject

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