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.

Today is December 2014, which means that it is time for the annual “Favorite Photographs” feature.  I’ve been thinking about this over the last two months or so and I’ve started to question exactly how many favorite photographs I can have without diminishing the whole thing.  So I’m going to do this a little differently this year and make the series a combination of not only true favorites but also noteworthy images.  For the noteworthy part, I thought that I would focus on images that are, I hope, just a little bit what I like to call quirky – something unexpected.  The goal overall is to choose images that bring a smile: a smile of recognition, a smile of amusement, or the smile of common humanity that great art elicits. As always, it is my intent not to violate copyrights.  As a result, some of these images, like today’s, will be links.

So to begin with, this past Thursday I was reading on the BBC about the untimely death of Mandy Rice-Davies. Ms. Davies, a former model was one of the main figures in the 1960s “Profumo affair.”  Davies and her roomate Christine Keeler were at the center of a scandal which almost brought down Harold Macmillan’s government.

In 1961 Keeler met society osteopath and artist Stephen Ward. Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, at a pool party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by Lord Astor. The affair was short-lived because Profumo was warned by the security services of mixing with the Ward circle. Through Ward, Profumo also met Russian naval attaché and intelligence officer, Yevgeni Ivanov, with whom Keeler claimed to be briefly involved.  After her relationship with Profumo ended, two of Keeler’s partners became involved in a violent jealous quarrel. This had the unfortunate effect of bringing Ms. Keeler into the public eye, more significantly the press’ eye, which led to  the “Profumo affair,” the scandelous involvement of the Secretary of War with a woman also involved with a Soviet spy.  Keeler initially denied all improriety but eventully confessed. Profumo was forced to resign both from the government and parliament. The “Profumo Affair” is reminiscent of the Lewinski scandal of the 1990’s.  Keeler caught up in the drama and power-play ultimately served a prison term for perjury.

All of this would have nothing to do with photography except that a that height of the public uproar in 1963, Keeler sat for a portrait by Lewis Morley to promote a movie about the scandal. Ms. Keeler was reluctant to pose in the nude, but the film producers insisted. As a compromise, Morley persuaded Keeler to straddle a chair, thus obscuring most of her body.   The result was “Lewis Morley “Christine Keeler, 1963.”

In reading Ms. Rice-Davies obituary all of this came back to me, and I found myself seeing this image of Christine Keeler again after fifty years.  It is like a time capsule, and I believe that it represents a commentary on how women were treated in photographs fifty years ago, and to a large extent today.  Indeed, it struck me that a series exploring the different, but so very often stereotypically, they have been treated since the invention of photograph would be an interesting endeavor.

Morley’s portrait is photographically excellent and well done – really a masterpiece of black and white portraiture.  Ms. Keeler seems to emerge from the darkness as if  spotlighted in a most alluring pose.  The nudity speaks both of seductress and victim.  That is a common ambiguity.  The image brings to mind the contemporary drama Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.  The characters of that play also occupy the darkness of the stage until those moments when the play Hamlet catches up with them and they briefly emerge from the shadows into a brilliant light to play their minor parts among the greater players.