Figure 1 – Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, Montmartre, ca. 1906. This is one of the images featured in the MFA exhibit on Pictorialism. This image is from the Wikimediacommons and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. In the public domain in the United States because it is more than 75 yrs. old.

Drum roll, please.  This year’s Favorite and Noteworthy Photograph #10, the winner, and the last image on Hati and Skoll for the year 2014 is Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, “Montmartre, 1906.” I have spoken about this image before.  I saw it earlier this year at an exhibit at Bostons Museum of Fine Arts and fell immediately in love with it.  The image is truly stunning and represents bromoil printing at the glorious high point of photographic pictoralism.  The diffuse pointillism of the image closely mirrors contemporary impressionism.  The foggy vision of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica is amazing and quite magical. And then there is the enigma. Exactly what is the young woman looking at on the street below?

I’ve got to take a deep breath here.  After showing images related to World Wars I & II in this series, I thought it would be of value to show something related to the War in Vietnam – as an event closer to our immediate memory.  But I had something completely different in mind.  I was thinking about the anti-war movement and a photograph of students sticking flowers in the muzzle of National Guard rifles. Hmm! I found that image pretty quickly but I started to search the credits on it, and this took me into the vividly black and white world of Vietnam War press images.  It was really just before color became dominant, and the black and whites from that war are ever so brilliant, vivid, and starkly gruel.

It all came back like an old nightmare and I realized that the image by Nick Ut showing children fleeing an accidental napalm attack by the South Vietnamese Airforce with little Phan Thị Kim Phúc screaming in terror and pain her clothes burned away defines the Vietnam War.  It is the most significant image of that war.  Indeed, it is, without any doubt, one of the great images of the mid – twentieth century, and it marks a turning point in what is expected from press photographers.  We now expect imbeddness, and we expect reality. And somehow it is amazing that with all this reality that the wars continue.

It is always intriguing when I can post an image on the same date as it was taken.  Today’s favorite photograph has been referred too from the outset as the greatest photograph of World War II, “St. Paul’s survives the Blitz.”  It was taken on December 29, 1940 by Herbert Mason, who was the chief photographer for The London Daily Mail and it was taken from the rooftop of the Mail’s offices. St. Paul’s took a direct hit from an incendiary bomb that night, but Churchill had created  a special corps of firefighters to save the building.  They were at work that night climbing the beams and rafters with hoses. Luckily the bomb fell through to the basement, where it was easily extinguished.

It is perhaps unnecessary to speak of the image’s significance or what makes it a great photograph.  It took two days before government censors allowed the photo to be published, unsure of whether it would have a negative or a positive effect on the British people.  In the end it stands as a profound testimonial to the resilience and determination of the British people in the face of Evil and tyranny.  In the way that only a photograph can, it gave life to the words that the Prime Minister had spoken in parliament that previous June 4:

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Such is the power of that image that it gives us a profounder understanding of the sacrifices that were endured in the defense of liberty and human rights three quarters of a century ago, and maybe the image, as good images do, transcends time and is a lesson for modern men and women in the face of the challenges that we face today.

The greatest image of World War II? Perhaps, but certainly one of the most meaningful and one of my favorites.

Ansel Adams, The Tetons and the Snake River, 1942. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain because it was taken by an employee of the National Pak Service, US National Archives Identifier 519904.

There are several Ansell Adams photographs that are my favorites.  And I think that I should be allowed at least one in this year’s “Favorite and Noteworthy Photographs 2014.” The Tetons and the Snake River, 1942” is one of them.  The drama of the sky, the mountains, and the river are simply exquisite. The glow of the snow, of the sun in the clouds, and of its reflection is the river are truly wonderful.  In the depth of the dynamic range, the dark forest, the shaded mountains, the snow, and again the sky are magnificent and show Adams at the height of his craft and the zone system at its best.  The winding river carries the eye in a sort of dance as it divides the image into the requisite thirds in a most curious manner. And speaking of the eye, the great thing about Adams’ work is an almost contradictory dichotomy.  Every time that you see one of his great images, you see an old friend.  You remember seeing it for the first time, but it is always as if you are discovering it anew.

Ansel Adams, The Tetons and the Snake River, 1942. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain because it was taken by an employee of the National Pak Service, US National Archives Identifier 519904.

Figure 1 – Arnold Genthe, Nora May French, 1907. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain because of its age.

I continue to be extremely intrigued by autochromes.  As a result, I do a lot of web searches on them.  So, not a surprise, I have become quite interested in an early adopter of this technology the German American photographer, Arnold Genthe, who created some very marvelous autochromes at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century.  So in preparation for this “Favorite and Noteworthy Photographs 2014” I found myself studying Genthe’s work, particularly the extensive collection of the United States Library of Congress. To my surprise what kept drawing me, almost mesmerizing me, was not an autochrome but rather the beautiful sepia image of Figure 1, a portrait of American Poet Anna-May French.

Born in Berlin, in his day Genthe was famous for his images, often taken with a hidden camera, of San Francisco street life.  He was an early documenter of San Francisco’s Chinatown. His studio was destroyed in 1906 by the great San Francisco earthquake and fire.  Probably his most famous photograph was of this great disaster,  Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906.  Soon after the earthquake, Genthe joined the artists’ colony in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and it was there that he met an photographed Anna-May French.

Why is this photograph appealing?  To me it is the soft Vermeer side light.  The eyes with their catch-light have a lovely appeal and are filled with what William Butler Yeats referred to as “the pilgrim soul in you.”  But most of all there is the way that the lighting dramatically emphasizes the wildness of the subject’s hair.  It is just wonderful.

And as for the story behind those eyes, of Nora’s “pilgrim soul”, Nora May French (1881-1907), the dates a very ominous.  French was a bohemian poet in Carmel-by-the Sea circles.  She was trapped in the ambiguity of the bohemian lifestyle for a young woman of her day, tormented by social pressure to accept a conventional marriage.  On November 11, 1907 while staying with friends in Carmel Nora attempted suicide with a handgun.  But as a result of her trembling hand, she missed her mark only shooting off a lock of her hair.  But during the night of November 13-14 she killed herself by ingesting cyanide.  As a tribute, her friends collaborated in having a memorial collection of French’s poems published in 1910.  The rest, as Hamlet said was silence, for almost a hundred years.  In 2009 her poems were republished as “The Outer Gate: The Collected Poems of Nora May French.” On the cover is Genthe’s portrait.

A reader and colleague recently introduced me to the magnificent portrait of arctic explorer Peter Freuchen (1886 – 1957) and his wife Dagmar Freuchen – Gale (1904 – 1991) taken in 1947 by portrait and fashion photographer Irving Penn (1917 – 2009) and really fell immediately in love with it.  Luscious blacks and whites and fabulous contrast intentionally created between the towering and massive figure of Peter and the petite figure cut by his wife Dagmar.  It is not without reference to the story of beauty and the beast. I know of few portraits that bear the same intense level of drama and capture both of its subjects ever so perfectly.

Freuchen was one of those larger-than-life figures who defined the twentieth century. Freuchen who was, by the way, six foot seven inches tall, was an arctic explorer, journalist, author, and anthropologist. He starred in an Oscar winning movie and was an Danish resistance fighter against the Nazi.  Sentenced to death, he managed to escape to Sweden.  He is also famous for winning the $64,000 question on the “$64,000 Question.

Legends about Freuchen abound.  He amputated his own toes which had gone gangrenous from frostbite and cut his way out of a blizzard shelter with a knife fashioned from his own feces.  How many people can claim that?

Dagmar Freuchen-Gale, was a teacher, artist, editor, expert on world cuisine. She was a well known fashion illustrator, working for working for magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

For me this is a new but very deservedly favorite photograph.

Figure 1 – British soldiers playing footbal on a Greek beach in 1915. In the public domain by virtue of its age.

To my Christian readers, Merry Christmas from Hati and Skoll Gallery.  To all my readers all the joy of holidays, of family, and of friends.  May we soon recognize that all men and women are part of the family of man.

And in that vein, for today’s “Favorite and Noteworthy Photograph,” I’d like to take you all back one hundred years today to the then waging Battle of the Somme. There was that day a Christmas truce, Weihnachtsfrieden in German, and Trêve de Noël in French.  The truce was unofficial but widespread along the Western Front.  German and British soldiers came out of their trenches to exchange greetings, souveneirs, and treats.  They played games, such as football or soccer.

Figure 1 is an image of soldiers playing football in 1915 that you often see associated with the Christmas Truce 1914.  I became just a bit skeptical that it was actually an image of the truce, when I read accounts of whether or not the famous game actually occurred.  I think that the evidence is good.  However, as it turns out the image of Figure 1, so powerful a depiction, was actually taken in 1915 and shows British soldiers recreating on the beach in Greece. When you recognize that these men probably fought and many of them died in the terrible Battle of Galipolis (1915-1916), the poetic license seems acceptable.

Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men.  After the Christmas truce, after Christmas 1914, they got back to killing and the machines of war.  May we be wiser in our time!.

Figure 1 – Benjamin Couprie, Participants at the First Solvay Conference, 1911. From the Wikimediacommons, uploaded by Fastfission and in the public domain by virtue of its age.

Today’s Favorite and Noteworthy Photograph (Figure 1)  is, indeed, one of my favorites but for different reasons than most.  It is by Belgian photographer Benjamin Couprie “Participants at the first Solvay Conference, 1911.”  The Solvay conference was an invitation only meeting of all the great contemporary physicists to discuss molecular theory.  The list of participants is truly amazing.  They are:

Seated (L-R): Walther Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Warburg, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Wilhelm Wien, Marie Curie, and Henri Poincaré.

Standing (L-R): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindemann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenöhrl, Georges Hostelet, Edouard Herzen, James Hopwood Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin.

What is, of course, most striking about the image is that Madame Curie is the only woman and, perhaps because of that fact, she seems the gravitational centroid of the photograph.  It seems very clear that this was Couprie’s intent, given the way that he has positioned the subjects in the photograph. For the modern viewer this seems a commentary on sexism in physics, then and to a large extent now as well.

Curie is a one of the true greats of twentieth century physics and chemistry.  I cannot overstate the point.  The Curies saw what was believed to be impossible, one element transmuting into another.  It seemed impossible, but as great geniuses, their minds were open.  Marie and Pierre Cure won the 1903 Nobel prize in physics.  In 1911 she was to win the chemistry prize, making her the first person to win the coveted award in two sciences.

Pierre died tragically in a carriage accident in 1906.  Several years later Marie became  romantically involved with physicist Paul Langevin, a doctoral student of Pierre’s. Langevin was estranged and separted from his wife.  At the meeting “love letters” between Marie and Paul were circulated to the press by Langevin’s wife.  When Curie returned to Paris her house was surrounded by an angry mob that terrified Marie and her two young daughters Irene and Eve.  It is in this regard that the story and image of Madame Curie and Christine Keeler are curiously connected.  Despite her genius Marie Curie, like Keeler, could not escape small-mindedness, prejudice, and stereotyping.  Mysogyny reigned. There is a wonderful letter very recently unearth in which Albert Einstein tells Curie to ignore the haters.   “If the rabble continues to be occupy itself with you then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it for the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.”

Following up on yesterday’s theme of “The Seductress” I’d like to discuss today Richard Avedon‘s, “Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, 1981.” And I will admit that this is, in fact, one of my favorite photographs.  Avedon was one of the twentieth century’s greatest portrait and fashion photographers. Kinski remains one of the world’s most beautiful women, and their collaboration in this work is truly electrifying.

The woman and the serpent is, of course, Eve and the serpent.  The goddess and the serpent goes way back in classical art and mythology.  The double serpent entwined around the stick or tree is the caduceus, (Hermes’ mthic staff) which is the symbol of the medical profession.  You will recall that Moses turned his staff into a serpent before the pharaoh. And there is a significant example of the artistic image in Michelangelo Sistine chapel, where the serpent beguiles Eve and “tricks” her and Adam into eating an apple of the tree of knowledge, leading to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In that regard Avedon is not simply creating a powerfully sexy image, but rather is carrying on in a long and classical tradition.

A colleague of mine had this image on the wall in his lab for many years.  I must suppose it was the classical references that he found so appealing.  There are some interesting links to follow: an interview with Avedon about the photoshoot and a 2005 satire by Mike Ruiz of the image with Miss Piggy taking Kinski’s place.  From the interview we learn an important lesson that creating such a remarkable portrait is a matter of collaboration between artist and subject and requires more than a little serendipity.