Figure 1 – Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise at the Australia Zoo, sticking out her tongue. Image by Cory Doctrow and from the Wikimedia Commons under creative commons license.

My wife remarked today that the major use of social media appears to be the exchange of pictures of cute and cuddly animals and of videos of flash mobs dancing.  It seems to me that there is a  lot of truth in this.  My posting about Mark Twain and the love of cats, or ailurophilia, has stirred up a bit of controversy among my more rabid dog loving readers,  or poochalikes.  This got me wondering about the relative universality of images designed to tug on our collective heart strings and evoke a big giant “Awwwww!”  I mean, and at the risk of insulting fidophiles further, one person’s cute is after all another person’s lunch.

I was amazed recently when I showed the famous video of Matty the Sloth giving a flower to his caregiver to a friend and reader from South America, that she smiled politely, shook her head, and informed me that I do not like these.  There must be something about tree sloths, where familiarity breeds contempt.  I mean dodge a few doggie dos on the lawn and you too could stop being a Sirius dog-lover.

In truth I actually do like dogs, albeit not as much as I like cats.  But I definitely have enough love to go around – and each for his own.  There are insect lovers and snake lovers, bird lovers and horse lovers.

A surprising number of the readers of this blog are turtle and tortoise lovers.  Figure 1 is for them.  I know it is not an especially artistic image.  It is an image of a Galapagos tortoise named Harriet, who until June 23, 2006 was resident of a zoo in Australia.  Harriet was a handsome tortoise – cute and cuddly to some.  In the picture she is perhaps sticking out her tongue at us.  Perhaps she recognizes her own importance to the world.

Harriet, you see, was born around 1830.  So she was around 175 when she passed away.  She is believed to have been collected in the Galapagos during the voyage of the Beagle in 1831-1836. There is some evidence that she was collected by by Sir Charles Darwin himself.

It is believed that Harriet and two other tortoises were brought to the Australian Botanic Garden in 1841 by John Clements Wickham, who was the First Lieutenant of the HMS Beagle during Darwin’s voyage and later Captain of the ship.  The names of the tortoises were: Tom, Dick, and Harry. Awwww!

So here’s the thing, Harriet and her kin were truly zoological celebrities.  They were much more than mere representatives of their species, Geochelone nigra porteri.  They played a very key role in our understanding of how life evolved on the Earth.  They paid a price for this celebrity by being exiled from their homes for nearly two centuries.

Turtles have lived on the planet Earth for in excess of 200 million years.  We may wonder how this is possible.  As Ogden Nash remarked:

“The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.“

Figure 1 – scene from the world’s first “horror movie,” “Le Manoir du Diable,” or “The Manor of the Devil,” 1896. It was a three-minute-long film, released on Christmas Eve, 1896, at the Theatre Robert Houdin, 8 boulevard des Italiens, Paris. Here a gentleman is subdues by spectres. From the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Yesterday I wrote about “grade B horror” movies, which led me to wonder if there is such a thing as a “grade A horror” movie.  After all, it is a peculiar badge of distinction to be referred to as a “grade B horror movie,” since it means “so bad as to be good!” Very confusing!  OK, well to my original question, yes, I believe that there are “grade A horror movies.”

My son is probably shaking his head right now, since he knows what comes next.  I believe the M. Night Shyamalan‘s “The Village” is a “grade A horror movie.”  “What?” you ask.  Yes, I am probably the only person in the world, who thinks that this was a great movie.  Let me tell you why.  “Please don’t,” I can hear my son saying.  I like this movie because it transcends the genre.  It is more than a scary movie.  It is filled with wonderful mythic illusions.  Ivy is the classic “hero of a thousand faces.”  She is the Savior.  She is blind and the only one who sees.  When the creatures attack, and she is left alone on the porch, she puts out her hand knowing that Lucius will be there to rescue her – come on, am I the only one who feels this?  And when she is abandoned by her fellow travelers in the quest (Psst! It’s the story of the Quest for the Holy Grail.”) – she tosses away the protective pebbles – knowing that her strength must come not from superstitious magic but from within herself.  Really?  Nobody else feels this with me?  Hmm.  Did I mention that the evil critters are the spittin’ image of something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting?

The point I am making is that a story is a story – a photograph is a photograph.  But when it resonates with our collective mythology it transcends itself and becomes something much more.  We all, well most of us, love a good vampire story.  And, if you do, take a look at this gorgeous still from F. W., Murnau’s 1922 terrifying (in a 1920’s kind of way – which means that my mom and her friend Becky probably screamed their way through it),  Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Vampires appear to be ageless.  Bad!  And part of that agelessness is that the story resonates deeply with religious mythology.  Blood as a regenerating fluid runs to the deepest fertility myths of our distant past.  And the story of the vampire is the story of the antichrist.  In Christianity, the Christ give eternal life through holly communion, and in the Legend of the Vampirethe antichrist vampire appropriates this and gives eternal life through unholy communion.  Kinda cool stuff for sure.

Figure 1 – The great Bela Lugosi as “Dracula, 1931.” Image from Universal Studios via the Wikimediacommons, out of copyright and in the public domain.

Indeed, what separates good horror fiction from bad is a consistency of story.  Establish the boundaries of the possible – somewhere beyond what is truly possible – and stick to your own rules.  What separates great horror fiction from good is deep resonance with our collective myths.  Did I mention great writing, acting, and cinematography?

With photography this all gets very interesting.  There are few who really attempt to make the transcendent leap from beautiful reality to a mystic mysticism.  The Victorians, of course, dwelt there for a while.  Witness: Julia Margaret Cameron and Oscar Reijlander.  Theirs was a very traditional Christian mythology.  The great master, in my view, was Annie Brigman.  Consider her beautiful “Figure in a Landscape.”  This is not just a naked lady out for a swim.  We are bombarded by allusion.  She is the water nymph, a symbol of the virgin wilderness.  She is the spirit of the lake, Sir Thomas Malory’s “Lady of the Lake.” And, I think at a very different level, she is the youth confronted with endless possibility.

I would challenge all of you, as photographers, to attempt such a transcendent image.  It is not easy, even if you have robed or disrobed people ready and willing to pose for you.  To do this well is very difficult.  Fumbling to cliche’ is a much more likely result.  Even attempting a seductive vampire photograph without appearing silly is a major artistic challenge.

I read and follow a number of excellent photography user’s groups and it never ceases to amaze me now many talented photographers are out there.  The comments are usually terse, like “great” or “fabulous shot.”  Most of the time we are praising the technical: composition or dynamic range for instance.  These evoke a great aesthetic feel! In a select number of images, there is something unique, something that really catches your eye – something which demonstrates a real vision on the part of the image maker.  The rarest group of all are those which set off the neuro-fireworks of out collective mythology.  Like fine wine these resonate with our deepest sense of the artistic.

I want to thank reader, Andrew, for directing me to this wonderful photograph* by Roni Bintang of Reuters taken on November 18 showing a woman in Sibintun village, Indonesia, watching as Mount Sinabung spews ash. Sinabung threw a plume 8,000 meters into the atmosphere as thousands of residents sought refuge in temporary shelters, wisely fearful of more eruptions.

This is a great picture on many levels: yes, yes rule of thirds; foreground-background flip, the low perspective, and then wonderful twirling plume creating a great sense of motion.  But Andrew also points out the face in the smoke in the upper right.

This got me thinking about all the grade B horror movies I watched as a kid, which end in a fire and the face of the demon appears in the flames or fire.  Seeing faces in everyday objects, particularly nebulous ones like clouds and smoke plumes, is fairly common.  There is the now famous devil’s face in the flames of the World Trade Center.  And I’ve got a long going photo-project that I refer to as “Search for the Ents” where I photograph faces that I see in trees.  The best of which is “Old Tree Man.” My friend Michael D. and I have been trading these for years.  In the first instance you need only your imagination.  But photographically you often enhance – burn and dodge a bit to emphasize what is perceived.

This is such a common phenomenon that I think that it has more to do with the way in which our brains work than with the workings of demons.  Sorry, as a scientist, I tend to see nature as super rather than the supernatural.. Our eyes and brains are programmed to seek familiar structure, and the whole process functions by focusing or concentrating on a very limited number of code points.  We seek to create something of the nebulous.

*Actually, a number of you have been sending me interesting images and this is very helpful.  So please keep them coming!

Figure 1 – Front page cover of the newspaper L’Aurore of Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J’accuse…!, written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair. The headline reads “I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic,” from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

I went this past Saturday to the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair.  You never know what you are going to see at the Book Fair, which is where the fun comes in.  There are six hundred and fifty years of the printed books; so invariably there are the great tombs of science, the great works of literature, and the everything in between.  Everything in between runs the gamut from, exploration and politics to phrenology.  The whole event serves as a time capsule – an if you think of it as the flotsam and jetsam of human intellectual history, you’re pretty much on the mark.

I do a pass of all the great books and then I return to each stall to explore the ephemera: political and social pamphlets, photographs, and autographs.  One year I was amazed to see Emile Zola’s expose of the Dreyfus Affair, see Figure 1.  But this year it was “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

But more importantly on just about my last pass I found a half-tone copy of the image of Figure 2.  Showing Mark Twain in 1907 with one of his beloved kittens.  Mark twain was a great lover of cats:

“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.“

Twain recognized the fundamental point that the love of a cat was a thing to be sought,  won, and nurtured.

“By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a “noble” animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward–you will never get her full confidence again.“

In Figure 2, we see the fundamental human quality of Twain.  Once more photograph transports us across time and he becomes real to us.  We are admitted into his private life.

Figure 2 – Mark Twain with one of his cats, 1907. By Underwood and Underwood, from the NY Times Archives and the Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.