Photography

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“It Doesn’t Matter What’s In My Head. It Matters What That Physical Connection Is.”

September 12, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Public Books, Lawrence Weschler and Errol Morris discuss the latter’s obsession with the meaning of photographs, most recently 1855 pictures of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton. An excerpt:

“Errol Morris: 

It seems to me that we’ve forgotten a very important fact about photography. That photographs are physically connected to the world. And part of the study of photography has to be recapturing, recovering, that physical connection with the world in which they were taken. Something which has rarely been part of the enterprise of studying photographs. Take a photograph of Einstein, for instance. The point is, it doesn’t matter who I think it’s a photograph of. What matters is, was Einstein in front of the lens of the camera? That man. Was that man in front of the lens of the camera? Is there a physical connection between the image on that photographic plate or the digital device, whatever, and the man standing there? It doesn’t matter what’s in my head. It matters what that physical connection is.

Lawrence Weschler: 

What actually happened. But the question remains, why do you care? Or rather, why do you care so much? Because I think you really do care.

Errol Morris: 

Ultimately, why do people care about reference? Because… let’s put it this way. If you care what our connection is to the world around us, then you care about basic questions. Questions of truth. Questions of reference. Questions of identity. Basic philosophical questions. So go back to the [Roger] Fenton photographs for a moment. I want to know what I’m looking at. I think photographs have a kind of subversive character. They make us think we know what we’re looking at. I may not know what I’m looking at, even under the best of circumstances here and now. But I have all this context available to me. I know you’re Ren Weschler. I’ve met you before. We actually are friends. And I have this whole context of the world around me. But photographs do something tricky. They decontextualize things. They rip images out of the world and as a result we are free to think whatever we want about them.”

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Houdini And Lincoln, Reading A Book (1920s)

September 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech | Permalink

I came across this classic photograph of Harry Houdini and President Lincoln, and assumed it was the former debunking seances, which he loved to do. But it was actually a different kind of demystification–that of spirit photography. That phenomenon, which was first documented in the 1850s, supposedly showed ghosts of the dead making their presence known in photographs. It was a funereal kind of photobombing. In the 1920s, when Houdini created this image to show how phony the whole thing was, even bright people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were still arguing that spirit photography was genuine. From Kristi Finefield at the Library of Congress:

“In fact, Sir David Brewster, in his 1856 book on the stereoscope, gave step-by-step instructions for creating a spirit photo, beginning with:

‘For the purpose of amusement, the photographer might carry us even into the regions of the supernatural. His art, as I have elsewhere shewn, enables him to give a spiritual appearance to one or more of his figures, and to exhibit them as ‘thin air’ amid the solid realities of the stereoscopic picture.’

He went on to explain how this was easily done. Simply pose your main subjects. Then, when the exposure time is nearly up, have the ‘spirit’ figure enter the scene, holding still for only seconds before moving out of the picture. The ‘spirit’ then appeared as a semi-transparent figure, as seen in The Haunted Lane.

One of the more famous–and infamous–spirit photographers was William H. Mumler of Boston. He turned his ability to make photographs with visible spirits into a lucrative business venture, starting in the 1860s. Doubts grew about his work, but even when a spiritualist named Doctor Gardner recognized some of the so-called spirits as living Bostonians, people continued to pay as much as $10 a sitting. Mumler was charged with fraud in 1869, though not convicted, due to lack of evidence.  However, his career as a photographer of the spirit world was essentially over.

Celebrities took sides in the debate in the 1920s. Famed author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an outspoken Spiritualist who believed that the supernatural could appear in photographs, while illusionist Harry Houdini denounced mediums as fakes and spirit photography as a hoax. Doyle and Houdini publicly feuded in the newspapers.

To demonstrate how easy it was to fake a photograph, Houdini had this image made in the 1920s, showing himself talking with Abraham Lincoln. He even based entire shows around debunking the claims of mediums and the entire idea of Spiritualism.”

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The “Messiah” Holds Court In Los Angeles (1949)

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

I know there’ve been cults all throughout human history, but I tend to think of the ones that popped up in America after 1965. The classic 1949 photo above shows an earlier cult, a postwar sect established in Los Angeles known as the WKFL (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Love) Fountain of the World. Founded by inveterate jailbird Francis Herman Pencovic, who reinvented himself as the self-styled messiah Krishna Venta, the group had an apocalyptic edge and seemed to be an antecedent to the Manson Family. Penecovic was murdered in 1958 in a suicide bombing perpetrated by former members of the cult. From the International Cultic Studies Association:

“His name was Krishna Venta, and Monday, December 10, 2008, marked the 50th anniversary of his violent assassination, which all told ended ten lives.

Born Francis Pencovic in the San Francisco of 1911, Venta was an interesting candidate for messiah, having previously lived as burglar, thief, con artist, and shipyard timekeeper. This changed in 1946 when, following a stretch on a chain gang and a stint in the Army, Pencovic’s body (or so he claimed) became the host vessel for the ‘Christ Everlasting,’ an eternal spirit being who had not only died on the cross at Calvary 2,000 years earlier, but had commandeered to Earth from the planet Neophrates a convoy of rocket ships whose passengers included Adam and Eve.

But in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, insisted Venta, such ancient history was irrelevant. This time around, his Earthly mission was to gather the 144,000 Elect foretold in Revelation and deliver them from an apocalypse heretofore unseen by mankind.

To draw attention to this cause, Venta donned a monk’s robe, permanently discarded footwear, and thereafter forewent cutting both hair and beard.  In the Truman and Eisenhower eras, Venta, who frequently made headlines for both his luck at the dog track and his repeated arrests for failure to pay child support, cut a unique figure.  His message, however, could not have been more tailor-made for Cold War America.

Armageddon, prophesied Venta, would begin as an armed race war in the streets of America.”

Sister Audrey, 1958.

Krishna Venta, homesteading in Alaska, 1958.

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John Muir, Grizzled, Cradled By Nature (1907)

July 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photograph by Francis M. Fritz of John Muir shows the California conservationist in late life, seven years before his passing. Muir spent the majority of his years studying rocks, icebergs, forest and birds, and pressing successfully for the formation of national parks. A folksy story about him that was republished in the April 24, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“A writer in Ainslie’s Magazine tells this of John Muir:

John Muir, the mountain climber, is a fascinating companion. He abounds in fun and his talk is apt to become a monologue, as listeners grow too interested even for comment. He runs in a steady, sparkling stream of witty chat, charming reminiscences of famous men, of bears in the woods and red men in the mountains; of walks with Emerson, of tossing in a frail kayak on the storm-tossed waters of Alaskan floods. By turn he is a scientist, mountaineer, story-teller and light-hearted school boy.

Alhambra Valley, where he has a home of many broad acres, is a beautiful vale curled down in the lap of Contra Costa hills, sheltered from every wind that blows and warmed to the heart by the genial California sunlight. Here he dwells, a slender, grizzled man, worn-looking and appearing older than he is, for hard years among the mountains have told upon him.

It was a fair picture of peace and plenty under the soft, blue September sky. A stream ran close at hand, shaded by alders and sycamores and the sweet-scented wild willow. On the bank nearest us stood a solitary blue crane, surveying us fearlessly. A flock of quail made themselves heard in the undergrowth, and low above the vineyards a shrike flew, uttering his sharp cry. Noting him I said to Mr. Muir:

‘So you don’t kill even the butcher birds?’

He looked up, following the bird’s flight.

‘Why, no,’ he said, ‘they are not my birds.'”

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“I Know Now It Was A Fool Thing To Do”

June 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

As you can tell from this classic 1933 photograph, when it came to love, Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow only had eyes for each other. But there were a number of others they called on in a professional capacity. One such partner in crime was W.D. Jones, who ran roughshod with the pair for eight months in the early 1930s. In 1968, Jones shared his story of life on the lam with the infamous duo with Playboy. The opening of “Riding with Bonnie & Clyde“:

“BOY, YOU CAN’T GO HOME. You got murder on you, just like me.”

That’s what Clyde told me. That was what he said after I seen him kill Doyle Johnson in Temple, Texas, on Christmas Day, 1932. For me, that’s how it all started.

I had got with Clyde and Bonnie the night before in Dallas. Me and L. C., that’s Clyde’s younger brother, was driving home from a dance in his daddy’s old car. Here come Bonnie and Clyde. They honked their car horn and we pulled over. I stayed in the car. L. C. got out and went back to see what they wanted. Then he hollered at me, ‘Hey, come on back. Clyde wants to talk to you.’ Clyde was wanted then for murder and kidnaping, but I had knowed him all my life. So I got out and went to his car.

He told me, “We’re here to see Momma and Marie.” (That’s Clyde’s baby sister.) “You stay with us while L. C. gets them.” I was 16 years old and Clyde was only seven years older, but he always called me “Boy.”

Them was Prohibition days and about all there was to drink was home-brew. That’s what me and L. C. had been drinking that Christmas Eve and it was about all gone. Clyde had some moonshine in his car, so I stayed with him, like he said, while L. C. fetched his folks. They lived just down the road in back of the filling station Old Man Barrow run.

After the visiting was over, Clyde told me him and Bonnie had been driving a long ways and was tired. He wanted me to go with them so I could keep watch while they got some rest. I went. I know now it was a fool thing to do, but then it seemed sort of big to be out with two famous outlaws. I reckoned Clyde took me along because he had knowed me before and figured he could count on me.

It must have been two o’clock Christmas morning when we checked into a tourist court at Temple. They slept on the bed. I had a pallet on the floor.•

W.D. Jones, 1933.

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Communards, After the Coup De Grâce (1871)

June 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Politics | Permalink

This horrifying classic photograph was taken sometime during May 1871, when members of the failed Paris Commune uprising were executed en masse. An estimated 20,000 Communards faced the firing squad and thousands more were jailed or deported. The heady two months of Socialist rebellion ended with scores of lifeless citizens who resembled broken dolls returned to their boxes. From an eyewitness account of a triple execution of revolutionaries who had been convicted of murder, which first appeared in the London Daily Telegraph and was reprinted in the New York Times on June 10, 1872:

“The priest, going up to each in turn, kissed him on both cheeks, in what seemed to me a hurried and perfunctory manner. Then, while the sentence was being read to the prisoners in a quick, low, quite inaudible tone, BOIN made a long harangue, much of which was lost in the perpetual rolling of those ghastly drums. But one could distinguish snatches of sentences such as ‘Soldiers, you are children of the people as we are, and we will show you how children of the people can die. Nous mourons innocents,’ and then opening wide his light coat–he wore no waistcoat–he offered white shirt-front for a mark, and striking his heart with his open palm, he exclaimed: ‘Portez armes en joue! feu! tirez au coeur!’ This he repeated several times, and while he was yet speaking, standing out clear away from the poteaux, and looking death at ten paces literally in the face, a sword flashed in the sun, and the three men leaped from the ground only to fall to it in horrible contortions. The smoke and the report were unheeded, for all the senses of the horrified spectator were arrested by the awful spectacle of writhing limbs and twisting hands. BOIN seemed to be rewarded for his bravery by suffering less than the others, but SERIZIER literally rolled over, and BOUDIN also moved. The surgeon then went up, examined BOUDIN first, and then directed one of the sergeants in reserve to give the coup de grace in the ear. Then SERIZIER was examined and treated in the same way; and lastly, after a considerable interval, BOIN was dragged into position and dispatched. I cannot give you any idea of the sickening impression produced by this seemingly deliberate butchery. I can say seemingly, for the men may have been dead, but, in any case, surely if the coup de grace must be given, it should be done at once. I did not time the proceedings, but, long as my description is, I believe not more than two minutes elapsed from the time that the ambulance wagons came on to the ground to the time that the volley was fired. Several more minutes, however, elapsed before the dull thud of the last coup de grace delivered a bout pontant right into the poor wretch’s ear stuck upon the ground. I have seen something of the horrors of war at Sedan and Strasbourg; I have witnessed the degradation of a public hanging in England, but have never seen anything so horrible as this supplemental butchery of the coup de grace.“

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Phineas Gage, Recovered To An Extent (1848)

June 6, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Phineas Gage wasn’t a medical man, but he did a great deal to enrich America’s knowledge of brain science and psychology.

In 1848, the Vermont railroad construction foreman somehow survived an explosion in which a long, 13-pound iron rod passed completely through his head. His left frontal lobe destroyed, Gage was “no longer Gage,” and was now prone to streaks of stubbornness, profanity and impatience that were not previously native to him. It strongly suggested to scientists that different parts of the human brain governed different functions. The marked change in his personality and his odd but formidable notoriety made him the most famous freak in an America for a time, and Gage was even a featured performer at Barnum’s American Museum in New York. He lived a dozen more years following his accident, dying in San Francisco after a series of convulsions. From his case study the 1868 Bulletin of the Massachusetts Medical Society:

“He has no pain in the head, but says he has a queer feeling (in his head) which he is not able to describe. His contractors, who regarded him as the most efficient and capable foreman in their employ previous to his injury, considered the change in his mind so marked that they could not give him his place again. The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint of advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operation, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible… Previous to his injury, although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart business man, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard, his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was ‘no longer Gage.'”

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Andrée Falls Short Of His Goal (1897)

May 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Nils Strindberg, the photographer responsible for these two classic pictures of the Andrée Polar Expedition of 1897, was dead long before the film was developed. Strindberg, fellow crew member Knut Frænkel, and exploration leader, Salomon August Andrée, all succumbed to freezing conditions several months after a ballooning crash stranded them far from their destination. (The film they shot of their struggles wasn’t recovered until 1930, when their mysterious disappearance was finally solved.)

Salomon August Andrée, born in 1854, was a Swedish engineer, physicist and his country’s first aeronaut. He longed to reach the North Pole and set out with that goal in mind in the hydrogen balloon Örnen (or Eagle). He and his cohorts were ill-prepared in numerous ways and certainly he had deluded himself about the possibility for success, but beneath his bravado the truth nagged at him. Even though the skilled adventurer had been nervous about the dangerous expedition, many weren’t worried when he first lost contact with civilization. They should have been. From the July 26, 1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Andrée has not been heard from. His alleged pigeons were somebody else’s pigeons. Nevertheless, there is no cause for alarm. His balloon is the staunchest that ever was made and although gas will leak from an ordinary balloon so that it would be unlikely to stay up for more than a week, there is no reason why his should not float for a month, because it has been made actually tight, is composed of three layers of silk, each oiled, and the outer one was thickly varnished. Only an accident could puncture it so as to allow any rapid escape of gas. The loss of his drag rope may have compelled him to fly higher than he had intended, for he wanted, if possible, to keep at a height of about 600 feet. His brief experience in the air may have modified this intention. From a higher altitude he can overlook a far wider expanse of country and even if portions of it were covered with clouds of fog he would still be able to define his whereabouts with a measure of certainty, which he could not do if he were immersed in the vapors near the sea.

As he is prepared for reasonable emergencies, however, the time for anxiety is not yet. As to his forebodings, they count for nothing. Any body would feel a trifle anxious in undertaking a journey of this kind, especially when he had other lives than his own in his charge; but these glooms were probably dispelled within ten minutes after the balloon had risen into the bracing air above Spitzbergen. If Andrée attains the pole and loses his life in so doing we may get the news of the achievement in some of the ways that he has devised.”

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Evelyn Nesbit, Before The Murder, Sleeping Peacefully (1901)

May 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic (and unintentionally prophetic) photo, taken by Rudolph Eickemeyer, profiles chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit atop a fearsome bearskin rug when she was not yet either famous or infamous. Five years later the love triangle of Nesbit, husband Harry K. Thaw and architect Stanford White came to a tragic end on the roof of Madison Square Garden. The ensuing media sensation cannot be overstated. In a 1907 New York Times article, Mrs. Evelyn Florence Nesbit Holman recalls the odd and chilly nuptuals that took place on April 4, 1905 between her daughter and the sadistic and batshit crazy Thaw:

“I was not consulted about the marriage. We did not know that a marriage had been arranged until my husband and I were asked to go to the home of the Reverend Dr. McEwan. This was one hour before the ceremony. All the arrangements had been carried out by Mr. J. Dennison Lyon, Mr. Thaw’s banker. Mr. Lyon had the marriage license clerk at the clergyman’s house. It was necessary that the mother sign an application for a license, for my daughter was a minor. This I readily and cheerfully did. I was glad that Mr. Thaw was man enough to give her his name. 

“We were shown into the drawing room. No one greeted us or spoke to us. Mrs. William Thaw came in, accompanied by her son, Josiah, and another witness. The clergyman was there. No salutations were exchanged. Florence and Mr. Thaw entered. The ceremony ended, they and the rest immediately left the room. No words of farewell were said. I went into the hall and encountered one of the witnesses, a woman. I asked to see my daughter. ‘I will see if I can find her,’ she replied. She went away and did not return.

“Mrs. William Thaw came into the hallway. I told her I wished to see Florence. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, and turned away.

“The clergyman was the next to whom I appealed. ‘I don’t know anything about her,’ he responded, passing by me. I have never seen my daughter since.”

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Jess Dixon Floating, It Appears, In A Flying Car (1936)

May 7, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jessie Earvin Dixon was a mid-century American inventor from Alabama who would appear to have designed a roadable helicopter. In the classic photo above, Dixon seems to be hovering above ground in his vehicle, though apart from this photo there are no test results extant. It’s hard to believe an invention of this magnitude wouldn’t have been a bigger deal if it truly worked, but perhaps it somehow fell through the cracks.

  • From a 1941 Mechanix Illustrated article that was posted on Modern Mechanix:

“This Helicopter-Car Flies Over Traffic!

JESS DIXON, of Andalusia, Ala., got tired of being tied up in traffic jams, so he designed and built this novel flying vehicle. It is a combination of automobile, helicopter, autogiro, and motorcycle. It has two large lifting rotos in a single head, revolving in opposite directions. It is powered by a 40 h.p. motor which is air-cooled. He claims his machine is capable of speeds up to 100 miles an hour.”

“1936 = Roadable helicopter. 1pOH; 40hp air-cooled engine. Coaxial rotor system with cyclic and collective pitch control. ‘Foot pedals actuated a hinged vane on the tail, counting on rotor downwash for yaw control.’ In a photo the helicopter is seen hovering, but no test results were found.”

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Astronauts, After Desert Survival Training (1964)

April 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech | Permalink

Although they’re dressed like sheiks rather than spacemen, the 14 robed figures in this classic photograph had just completed the grueling three-day Astronaut Desert Survival School near the Stead Air Force base in Nevada. Mercury and Apollo astronauts were brought not only to the scorched sands of Nevada but transported all around the nation to prepare them for the rigors of outer space. An excerpt from Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon: 

“There was some heavy and intense training to be carried out. The men had to condition their bodies to withstand multiple stresses such as those associated with weightlessness and acceleration, vibration, immobilization and disorientation, noise, and heat and cold. They had become proficient in the use of dozens of training devices and rescue aids, to simulate a number of incidents and learn how to avoid or survive them.

Just as they had undergone contingency training in the Panamanian jungle, the astronauts could not exclude a landing in the ferocious heat and isolation of the desert, so after the classroom studies it was back on the road again. They were transported to a survival-training group near Stead AFB in the dry sagebrush country of western Nevada. Once again they could use only the equipment they would have at hand after an emergency landing as their survival gear. 

Apart from survival training, field trips saw the astronauts conveyed to all corners of the country, where they were acquainted with geological compositions similar to those they might encounter on the moon’s surface. They descended into the mile-deep grandeur of the Grand Canyon, scouted the Big Bend country of the Rio Grande, visited the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in the Katmai Monument in Alaska, and crunched over black lava flows in Arizona’s Sunset Crater.”

Ham The Astrochimp, Upon Return (1961)

April 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Months before America sent its first astronaut into space in 1961 and kicked the race to the moon into another gear, a chimpanzee named Ham departed Earth on a Mercury mission. Trained beginning in 1959 with behaviorist methods, Ham was not only a passenger but also performed small tasks during his suborbital flight. In the classic NASA photo above, Ham shakes hands with his rescuer aboard the U.S.S. Donner, after his 16-minute mission was successfully completed and he plunged back to his home. The famous chimp lived until 1983 and is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico. From a wonderfully terse account of Ham at Find A Grave:

“The first chimpanzee in space. Born in present-day Cameroon, captured by animal trappers and sent to Miami, FL. Ham’s name is an acronym for the lab that prepared him for his historic mission — the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, located at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959, he was selected from among a group of six chimpanzees (four female and two male). They trained to perform a series of simple tasks while in space to ascertain whether a human might be able to do the same tasks under space flight conditions. On January 31, 1961, Ham blasted off from Cape Canavaral becoming the world’s first AstroChimp. He proved that it was possible for a human to venture into space by taking a 16½ minute, 2000 mph ride atop an 83-foot Mercury Redstone rocket known as the MR2. Three months later the first American human, Alan Shepard, followed him into space.”

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“The chimp has been carefully selected, thoroughly examined and patiently tutored”:

Wyatt Earp, Gentle In His Rocker (1923)

April 12, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This classic photograph of legendary American frontier lawman Wyatt Earp in his dotage, shows a gunslinger at rest six years before his death, but nearly three decades earlier he was anythng but calm, having gotten himself into quite a fix in the Bay Area. Earp was brought in to referee the Bob Fitzsimmons-Tom Sharkey heavyweight prizefight in San Francisco on December 2, 1896, to be the strong arm to make sure that order ruled both inside the ring and out. But he caused a near-riot.

Earp walked into the ring with a Colt .45 strapped to him and that was the least crazy thing that occurred. The Wild West legend disqualified Fitzsimmons in the 8th round on a phantom foul. Plenty of people felt the call was crooked. The ring was nearly torn down and lawsuits were filed. Before long, Earp was jeered out of town. An excerpt from “Earp Has No Fears,” which ran in the December 4, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“San Francisco, Cal.–Wyatt Earp, the most talked about man of the hour, takes a philosophical view of the criticisms that are being heaped upon him for his decision Wednesday night, and says he will wait for the time to set him right with the public.

‘If I had any fears that I erred in my decision they would have disappeared when I saw Sharkey to-day,’ said he last night. ‘Sharkey did not strike a foul blow to my mind. At the break he struck Fitzsimmons as soon as his arm was free, but that is following Queensbury rules. It is true that it was agreed that there was to be no fighting at the break, but my instructions from the club were not to be technical, but to give the audience a good fight for their money.’

When Wyatt Earp appeared in the ring to act as referee, he wore a large sized pistol. Last night Earp was arrested on a charge of carrying concealed weapons. He was released on bail.

Police Commissioner Gunst is satisfied that the fight was jobbed. So disgusted is he with the general result that he has announced that there will be no more prize fighting in San Francisco if his influence can prevent it.”

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Shockingly, Earp was hired to manage security for Fitzsimmons’ next match three months later in Carson City, Nevada, versus “Gentleman” Jim Corbett:

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“Before Rolled Film, Eadweard Muybridge Found A Way To Make Motion Pictures”

April 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Photographer and locomotion pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, who miraculously made still photographs dance and gallop, was born on April 9th 182 years ago. He’s celebrated by a Google Doodle.

From Thom Andersen’s 1975 documentary, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer:

 

In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover, Harry Larkyns, in a crime of passion. He was acquitted and his wife succumbed to a stroke soon thereafter. The baby born of the extramarital affair was raised in an orphanage. From Stanford Magazine: “THE OPERATIC EPISODE began on October 17, 1874, when Muybridge discovered his wife’s adultery. In 1872, he had married a 21-year-old divorcée named Flora Stone. When she bore a son in the spring of 1874, Muybridge believed that the child, Floredo Helios Muybridge, was his own–until he came across letters exchanged between Flora and a drama critic named Harry Larkyns. The most damning evidence was a photo of Floredo enclosed with one of the letters: Flora had captioned it ‘Little Harry.’

Convinced he’d been cuckolded, Muybridge collapsed, wept and wailed, according to a nurse who was present. That night, he tracked Larkyns to a house near Calistoga and shot him through the heart.

At his murder trial in 1875, the jury rejected an insanity plea but accepted the defense of justifiable homicide, finding Muybridge not guilty of murder. After the acquittal, Muybridge sailed for Central America and spent the next year in ‘working exile.’“

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George Ripley, When Brook Farm Was A Memory

April 6, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink


George Ripley had the best of intentions.

In 1841, the Transcendentalist social reformer and journalist founded the short-lived Massachusetts collective, Brook Farm. Established along with other progressives of his day, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, the communal space was to be a haven for workers who longed for industry, not toil. The profits would be shared fairly. But there were no profits, just debts. Brook Farm didn’t experience a moral collapse, but a financial one. The kinetic never was able to match the potential. Hawthorne got a a novel out of the experiment (The Blithedale Romance), but what did Ripley gain from this bitter failure apart from heartbreak? He said of the experience at its end in 1846: “I can now understand how a man would feel if he could attend his own funeral.”

But here’s the thing: Maybe Brook Farm wasn’t the unmitigated disaster it seemed at the time. Massachusetts today is the leader among American states in both education and health care. Ripley can’t claim responsibility for those developments, but perhaps he and other idealists help lay a foundation for the state’s magnanimity. Utopias can distort reality, yes, but they give us a goal in the distance.

This classic photograph of Ripley, taken by Mathew Brady, is dated somewhere from 1849 to 1860. A brief article about the original promise of Brook Farm from the February 1, 1899 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“‘The Brook Farm Experiment’ was the subject of a lecture given before the Long Island Historical Society last night. The lecturer was Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. The hall of the society, on Pierrepont and Clinton Streets, was so crowded that many stood in the aisles during the whole discourse.

“A tract of arable land was purchased, Mr. Ripley pledging his library for a part of the necessary payment.”

‘The story of what actually took place at Brook Farm,’ Mrs. Howe said, ‘is soon told. A tract of arable land was purchased, Mr. Ripley pledging his library for a part of the necessary payment. A dwelling house already on the premises was altered and enlarged, and other buildings of cheap construction were added from time to time, as the growth of the association made it necessary. Farming must have begun in 1841, as in 1842 Orestes Bronson writes of the community existing and flourishing. The work of the great family was carefully apportioned, Mr. Ripley taking upon himself some of the heaviest and least pleasant part of it, such as the daily cleaning of the stables. Justice was the ideal of the infant association. Within its domain, all labor was equally esteemed. Brain work should enjoy no preference over hand work, and the hand which guided the pen should be ready when so ordered to guide the plow. At times all the members of the community gathered to wash the dishes, and the male members did their full share. The first object in the administration was naturally the support of  life. Every effort was made to improve the land, which made but an ungrateful return for such labor. A practical farmer directed agricultural operations, much of what was produced was consumed on the premises, but milk and vegetables, excellent in their kind, were sent to the market. Mr. Ripley once mentioned to me a Boston conservative who used to say that he didn’t like Ripley’s ideas but he did like his peas.'”

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Otto Lilienthal, Man With Wings (1895)

March 22, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Otto Lilienthal meets with success, 1895.

When your last words are “sacrifices must be made,” you probably led an adventuresome and abbreviated life. Such was the case of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, who is captured in mid-flight in the above 1895 classic photograph. Lilienthal, known as the “Glider King,” lived his life in the service of popularizing humans conquering the sky, successfully demonstrating heavier-than-air flight by leaping from crafts of his own creation from an artificial mountain he built in Berlin. Lilienthal delivered his notable final words in 1896, after he crashed to the ground when his apparatus stalled. The aviator had somehow escaped serious danger prior to this fateful flight. A note about him from the July 26, 1894 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“THE FLYING MAN IS NOT HURT–Berlin–There is not truth to the story that a serious accident has occurred to Otto Lilienthal, the famous flying man, whose development of flying machines, with birds as his models, has been watched with interest the world over. Lilienthal was experimenting with one of his machines. He sustained a slight fall, but was entirely uninjured and the machine was only slightly damaged.”

The aftermath of Lilienthal’s fatal final crash, 1896.

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Mochida Family, Tagged, Headed To Internment Camp (1942)

March 9, 2012 in Photography, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"He raised snapdragons and sweet peas."

While the United States acted with incredible bravery during World War II, one grievous mistake we made was the internment of Japanese-Americans, who were considered suspect merely because we were at war with the land of their ancestry. One such family forced to relocate from their home and community into a camp was the Mochidas of Hayward, California, seen in the above classic photograph, which was taken by the great Dorothea Lange. The original caption:

“Members of the Mochida family awaiting evacuation bus. Identification tags are used to aid in keeping the family unit intact during all phases of evacuation. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweet peas. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration.”

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Custer, With Wife, Two Years Before Last Stand (1874)

February 28, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photo profiles General George A. Custer with his wife, Elizabeth, at Fort Lincoln in Dakota Territory, two years before he met his waterloo at Little Big Horn. The slaughter that Custer and his cavalry walked into in 1876 was a shocking event that reverberated throughout the country in a time before media was truly mass. Custer’s fame, which was burnished continually by his wife after his death, was also enhanced by the brewery Anheuser-Busch, which commissioned a series of large-scale paintings of the general’s last stand and hung them in saloons and theaters in states all over the nation. A story of what occurred at the foot of the canvas in Detroit from the August 7, 1891 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“A tall, venerable looking man stood upon the platform of the cyclorama of the battle of Big Horn yesterday afternoon and gazed long and earnestly upon the canvas. The old man was feeble, and as he leaned upon the ropes for support the hot tears coursed each other down his furrowed cheeks. The other spectators in his vicinity eyed him with a mix of sympathy and curiosity. Presently a crowd of survivors of the Sixth cavalry, which was commanded by George A. Custer during the war, came up the stairs. Just as the cyclorama lecturer began to tell in his monologue how Custer, his brothers Tom and Boston and his brother in law, Lieutenant Calhoun, had been slaughtered at Big Horn by the Sioux, the old man turned to go as though the narrative had no special interest for him, when one of the veterans, seizing his hand, exclaimed: ‘Why, old man, God bless you.’ Then, turning to his comrades, he ejaculated: ‘Boys, this is George A. Custer’s father.’ Instantly the white haired patriarch was surrounded by boys in blue, who fairly struggled for the privilege of grasping his hand.

‘I was with your son,’ said one, ‘when he made the raid out of Winchester and broke through Early’s line.’

‘I was with him in the First cavalry,’ said another, ‘when Tom, his brother, was shot in the mouth.’

‘I remember that engagement very well,’ replied the old man: ‘Tom brought the red necktie home that he wore on that day, and I’ve got it yet. The blood is on it still.’

There were tears in the eyes of many of the crowd that saw General Custer’s cavalry introducing themselves to the general ‘s venerable father. The latter is now 84 years old.”

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Flannery O’Connor, In A Bright Mood (1947)

February 15, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

"She was touched by evil and no doubt knew it." (Image by Cmacauley.)

This classic photograph profiles arguably the greatest American short-story writer, Flannery O’Connor, in a happy moment with friends Robie Macauley and Arthur Koestler. O’Connor, who suffered from lupus, managed in her brief life to find all of the darkness of humanity in narrow strips of the South. How could someone whose illness made it necessary to live a sheltered life have such a deep understanding of terror? Did she herself possess the capacity for great evil, which remained dormant for reasons we can’t quite understand? From “Touched by Evil,” Joseph O’Neill’s excellent 2009 Atlantic consideration of O’Connor and her work:

“One problem with O’Connor the exegesist is that she narrows the scope of her work, even for Catholic readers. To decode her fiction for its doctrinal or supernatural content is to render it dreary, even false, because whatever her private purposes, O’Connor was above all faithful to a baleful comic vision derived, surely, from an ancient, artistically wholesome tradition of misanthropy. Nonetheless, a spiritual drama is playing out. Only it is not the one put forward by the self-explaining author, in which she figures as an onlooker occupying the high ground of piety. On the contrary, Flannery O’Connor’s criticism reveals her as scarily belonging to the low world she evokes. She was touched by evil and no doubt knew it. That is what makes her so wickedly good.”

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Millie And Christine McCoy, Nightingales (1890s)

February 13, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photograph, taken by Michael A. Wesner, is the best visual record extant of Siamese twins Millie and Christine McCoy, who were best know during their era as the sideshow act, “The Two-Headed Nightingale.” The daughters of slaves who were sold to and kidnapped by a series of carny men, they were popular stage attractions until their deaths in 1912. From “A Double Headed Woman” an 1881 article about the clever women in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“They call her the ‘two-headed woman.’ She is at Bunell’s new museum. There are two heads, two necks, and two shoulders, and two sets of upper and lower limbs, but just below the shoulders the two bodies are joined. Mentally, two; physically, one. She can’t see herself–that is, they can’t see each other–because the backs of their heads almost touch. They sing and dance well. She was talking to herself–that is, the two mouths were engaged in speaking–behind the scenes, when the Eagle reporter entered yesterday, and one of her was gently tapping her foot on the floor.

‘How do you do?’

‘I am well,’ said one head.

‘First rate,’ said the other.

‘And what is your name?’

‘I’m Millie,’ muttered one.

‘And I’m Christine,’ murmured the other.

‘Could Millie feel well and Christine the opposite?’

‘Bet your–‘

‘Millie!’

‘You see,’ said Millie, as she gracefully plied her fan, ‘we generally feel the same.’

Indeed!

‘Touch me on the foot a certain number of times,’ said Millie, ‘and then Christine will tell you how often you did it.’

The reporter touched the foot four times and then Millie, with a ripple of laughter asked:

‘How often, Christine?’

‘Four times, Millie dear,’ was the reply.

‘Below the point where the juncture occurs,’ said Christine, ‘we both feel alike. But you could touch me on the cheek a certain number of times and Millie would know nothing about it.’

‘Do your thoughts run in the same direction?’

‘Not always,’ said Millie, ‘Now I might think a man was perfectly horrid, and Christine might think he was simply charming. ‘

‘And yet,’ jocosely remarked the reporter, ‘you couldn’t settle the question by a little run-in, as it were?

‘For a very good reason,’ said Millie. ‘Because if Christine is hurt below the point where we are united, I am hurt also.’

‘Does Millie do the eating for both?’

‘Not at all. We generally eat at the same time.”

‘And while Millie might relish a beef steak for supper, Christine might fancy a reed bird or a prairie chicken?”

‘That might be the case, although, as a rule, we both eat the same things.

‘But you order supper for two?’

‘Yes,’

‘And one person eats it?’

‘Cert.’

‘How old are you?’

‘We are 30, and we were born in Virginia.’

‘Since then, I presume, you have traveled around the world?’

‘Pretty nearly,’ was the reply from both, and then she arose from her seat and walked to the stage, where she sang a duet.”

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Elsa Schiaparelli, With Mannequin, Wearing Shoe Hat (1937)

February 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photo of daring Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli modeling her Shoe Hat reveals a fashionista who was equally surrealist artist. From a May 17, 1937 Life magazine article about the designer outfitting the wife of former royalty:

“The sheer weight of pomp and ceremony has focused world interest on London where a shy Englishman and his proper English wife have been crowned rulers of the world’s greatest empire. But genuine human interest turned rather to Tours across the channel where a more romantic drama was enacted. Certainly the women of the world were little absorbed in the conventional satin gowns of England’s new queen. What Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson would wear, however, aroused their avid curiosity. Mrs. Simpson did not disappoint them. She ordered her gowns from Elsa Schiaparelli, maddest and most original of Paris couturières. With typical boldness, ‘Skap’ fashioned for the bride of the year a white dance frock with a daringly tight bodice and a bright red lobster stretched the length of the flaring skirt. On other dresses were button shaped like fish, chessmen, butterflies. The complete wardrobe of 17 ensembles cost Wallis Simpson an estimated $5,000.”

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Tim Mara, New York Giants Founder, Watching The Ponies (1934)

February 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tim Mara, front left.

As the 2012 Super Bowl champion New York Giants enjoy a ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan, here’s a classic 1934 photograph of Tim Mara, a grade-school dropout and bookie who purchased the rights to the franchise for $500 in 1925. In this picture, Mara (1887-1859) is at a familiar haunt, the Jamaica Race Track in Queens, conducting some business. A passage about the team patriarch from Barry Gotteher’s The Giants Of New York The History Of Professional Football’s Most Fabulous Dynasty:

“As a youngster on New York City’s Lower West Side in the early years of this century, blond, pink-cheeked Timothy James Mara had no time for games. To help support his widowed mother and himself, he rushed from his morning classes at P. S. 14 to his afternoon newspaper route along Broadway. After a hurried dinner, he was at the Third Avenue Theatre every evening working as an usher. ‘It just got to be too much for a thirteen-year-old,’ he later recalled, ‘so I quit school.’

Timmy Mara was ambitious. Delivering his newspapers to the St. Denis and Union Square hotels, he was fascinated by the color and confidence of the well-heeled bookmakers who flourished le’gally in those days of plenty. At fourteen, Timmy started working as a runner collecting small tips if the bettor won or 5 percent commissions if he lost and by the time he was eighteen he was taking book himself. He opened a bindery for legal manuscripts on Nassau Street, but, within a few months, he was doing more bookmaking than bookbinding. Affable, gregarious, and honest, he made friends and customers easily; so easily that in 1921 he decided to close his successful downtown office and open a betting enclosure in the most exclusive section at Belmont Race Track. It was a bold and risky venture, but despite some early losses including $60,000 on a fillie named Sally’s Alley in 1922 Mara survived to build one of the best businesses and reputations in New York. Win or lose, Tim Mara was always good for a smile and a joke. ‘Where did you get that one from?’ he’d bellow to a prospective bettor. ‘If that animal wins, I’ll give you my watch.'”

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Breathing At The Battle Creek Sanitarium

January 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This classic photograph from the early 1900s captures a group breathing activity at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which became one of the most famous health resorts in the world under the stewardship of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a brilliant if eccentric doctor, a holistic enthusiast and an enterprising Adventist. Originally established in 1866 as the Western Health Reform Institute, Kellogg’s spa offered restorative hydrotherapy, diet, exercise, enemas and vibratory chairs. The good doctor also was co-inventor of the cornflake with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg. The sanitarium remained open until the 1940s when it was purchased by the U.S. government and converted into an Army hospital. An excerpt from the 1943 New York Times obituary for Kellogg, who lived until 91:

“A determined practitioner of the rules for simple eating and living he preached for all humanity, Dr. Kellogg was perhaps the best example of the truth of his own dogmas.

When he became a physician Dr. Kellogg determined to devote himself to the problems of health, and after taking over the sanitarium he put into effect his own ideas. Soon he had developed the sanitarium to an unprecedented degree, and he launched the business of manufacturing health foods. He gained recognition as the originator of health foods and coffee and tea substitutes, ideas which led to the establishment of huge cereal companies besides his own, in which his brother, W. K. Kellogg, produced the cornflakes he invented. His name became a household word.

Dr. Kellogg’s youth was one of hard work. Born in Tyrone, N. Y., on Feb. 26, 1852, he moved to Battle Creek with his parents, John Preston and Ann Jeanette Kellogg, at an early age. He worked in his father’s broom factory and also served as a ‘printer’s devil’ in Battle Creek publishing houses.”

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Anthony Hopkins as Kellogg in the 1994 film adaptation of T.C. Boyle’s novel, The Road to Wellville:

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Typist, Wearing Surgical Mask, During Flu Pandemic (1918)

January 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photograph shows a New York City typist tending to her duties during the 1918 influenza outbreak. The surgical mask became a ubiquitous accessory on street cars and baseball diamonds, as well as at workplaces, but still 50 million lives were claimed worldwide. From a 2007 historical article by John Galvin in Popular Mechanics:

“Initially called ‘the three day fever,’ it started like any flu, with a cough and a headache, followed by intense chills and a fever that could quickly hit 104 degrees F. It could take a month before survivors felt completely well, and after they emerged from an energy-sapped stupor many said it felt as though they’d been aggressively hit with a club. But for those 650,000 Americans who actually died from the Spanish flu in 1918, the suffering was much worse.

Deep brown spots would appear on a victim’s cheeks and a thick, bloody fluid would begin to overwhelm his lungs. Starting at the ears, their faces would gradually turn blue as circulating blood could not get oxygenated. Soon, victims would start to drown in their own fluid — often coughing up a pinkish froth as they fought to inhale. ‘It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate,’ an army doctor, based outside of Boston at Camp Devens, wrote to a colleague in 1918. ‘It is horrible.’

The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people around the world — 34 million more than died from the First World War in progress alongside it.”

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Dorothea Lange, Seated Atop A Ford (1936)

January 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic picture taken by Rondal Partridge profiles genius photographer Dorothea Lange in California in 1936, the same year she snapped her most famous image, “Migrant Mother.” Posessing the eye of a painter and the sensibilities of a documentarian, Lange captured the rough-hewn life of Americans during the Great Depression, particularly that of the Okies. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, she eventually settled in San Francisco, where she opened a studio. Lange passed away there in 1965. From her obituary in the New York Times:

“Her portrait ‘Migrant Mother,’ is in the Library of Congress. In 1960 it was selected by a University of Missouri panel as one of the 50 most memorable pictures of the last 50 years.

She enjoyed telling newcomers how to improve their work. ‘Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion,’ she advised them. ‘Then pick another, or handle several themes at a time. Let yourself loose on a theme. It is the only way to make the most of it.'”

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