Figure 1 – Double exposure by Henry Van der Weyde showing Richard Mansfield simultaneously as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887-1900). From the Wikipedia, from the US Library of Congress and in the public domain in the US because of its age.

The double exposure was one of the earliest “special effects.” We have discussed how in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries it was used to deceive and create ghost or spirit photographs – cheating the view that “the other-side,” while invisible, connects with this world through forms of physical energy such as light. Then, of course we have early horror films like Le Manoir du Diable (1896) and other uses of these “special effects to entertain and enhance.

At about the same time, in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson published his masterpiece novel “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The story involves the eminent Dr. Henry Jekyll, who invents and drinks a serum that turns him into the evil and murderous Mr. Edward Hyde. The themes are complex, as they deal with the fundamental questions of human personality, the thin line between the classes, and of multiple personalities. Like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” there is also the question of science and its growing ability to manipulate humanity.,

The actor Richard Mansfield (1857-1907) upon readings Stevenson’s novella immediately saw the intriguing opportunity of performing a dramatic dual role. He secured rights to adapt the book into a drama in the US and England and commissioned its writing. The play debuted in Boston in May 1887 and then moved on the Broadway. It was critically acclaimed, and Mansfield was invited to bring it to London. It opened there in August 1888, just before the first Jack the Ripper murders. This actually led to Mansfield being suspected of the crimes. Mansfield continued to play the dual role until shortly before his death in 1907.

So we have Figure 1 by photographer Henry Van der Weyde (1838-1924), which uses the double exposure to vividly capture Mansfield’s signature dual role. It is a masterful use of the double exposure, designed to take the still image to a new level; one that captures transition in time.

Today the double exposure feature of modern design and image processing programs is complex. I am speaking about the ability to fade edges, to send one of the exposures forward or back, the ability to control the relative transparencies of the two exposures. In the analog days the double exposure represented a kind of paradox. Returning to Alexander Pope and his “Rape of the Lock,” we are told that spirits are nebulous with something less than the solidity of the tangible human form.

Figure 1 – Hindenburg Disaster by Sam Shere, Zeppelin the Hindenburg on fire at the mooring mast of Lakehurst (United States of America) 6 May 1937. Ballast water is thrown down. Exit airships.From the Wikipedia, from Flickr Commons, Nationaal Archief/Spaarnestad. In the public domain in the United States.

One of the most famous of news photographs ever taken was Sam Shere’s (1905-1982) image of the Hindenburg disaster that occurred on May 6, 1937, eighty years ago today and shown in Figure 1. Sam Shere famously said of the moment: “I had two shots in my big Speed Graphic, but I didn’t even have time to get it up to my eye. I literally ‘shot’ from the hip–it was over so fast there was nothing else to do.”  He was awarded the Editor and Publisher Award for best news picture for 1937 for this photograph.

There were ninety-seven people on board and thirty-six casualties including one worker on the ground. Equally, iconic is Herbert Morrison’s iconic reporting of the terrible moment. (Click here to hear it.)

“It’s practically standing still now they’ve dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and (uh) they’ve been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It’s starting to rain again; it’s… the rain had (uh) slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it (uh) just enough to keep it from…It’s burst into flames! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire… and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames and the… and it’s falling on the mooring mast. And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it’s… [unintelligible] its flames… Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it… it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it – I can’t even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It’s… it… it’s a… ah! I… I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it’s just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I… I… I’m sorry. Honest: I… I can hardly breathe. I… I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah… I can’t. Listen, folks; I… I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

Shere’s photograph is truly one of the most famous images in the history of news photography. It is, in fact, the case in modern times that our collective memory is defined and frozen in these great images of “newsworthy” events. They actually define the news. Indeed. In 2001 as I watched the news image, the live reporting, of the World Trade Center attacks, Shere’s picture from another generation kept coming to my mind. It is so ingrained in the pantheon of human imagery.  

Again, I can vividly remember two and three decades later watching dirigibles pass overhead in New York City. Today’s Goodyear Blimp, the icon of modern day sporting events, is the magical heir of those great airships.

Figure 1 – Miss Genevieve Ebbets throwing out the first pitch at the opening of Ebbets field on April 5, 1913. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Presidents, premiers, and kings may huff and puff, seeking relevance and immortality in every word. But history can be more subtle and fickle in its choices of what is momentous. These early days of May celebrate infamously (on the East coast) and famously (on the West) a moment of great transition in mid-twentieth century America- the fiftieth anniversary of the time when Walter O’Malley decided to move the Brooklyn Dodgers – correction Brooklyn’s Dodgers – from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Brooklyn loved its Dodgers and only a great poet like Alexander Pope could bring words apt enough of love’s tragedy to be appropriated for that both tragic and momentous event.

“WHAT dire Offence from am’rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,”

The Rape of the Lock

A large part of the problem in those days was the fact that while the Dodgers dominated major league baseball, there was no way to expand their smallest in the League stadium Ebbets Field. Ebbets field itself was a New York City icon, and I can recall quite vividly my father taking me to see it shortly before it was destroyed to make room for an apartment complex.

So in memory of the event, and as a nod to my love of early twentieth century images, where the women all have long beautiful hair, concealed beneath magnificent hats, (and apparently wore dead animals on their shoulders) I am offering up the image of Figure 1, which shows Miss Genevieve Ebbets, youngest daughter of Dodgers’ owner Charley Ebbets, throwing out the first pitch at the opening of Ebbets Field on April 5, 1913. She poses ever so much like Lady Liberty.

You can just make out her hair. So I am reminded again of Pope and his conclusion to that wonderful epic poem.

“When those fair Suns shall sett, as sett they must,
And all those Tresses shall be laid in Dust;
This Lock, the Muse shall consecrate to Fame,
And mid’st the Stars inscribe Belinda’s Name!“

Figure 1 – Into the maelstrom. Image of Saturn’s North Pole taken by the Cassini satellite on November 22, 2012. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute and in the public domain in the United States.

It seems appropriate to take note of the pending death of the Cassini Spacecraft, which for nearly two decades has been amazing us with photographs of Saturn and its moons. Figure 1 is a striking example of the images taken by these beautiful robot eyes. This image from NASA’s Cassini mission was taken on Nov. 27, 2012,using its narrow-angle camera. The camera was pointing toward Saturn’s North Pole from approximately 224,618 miles (361,488 kilometers).

Cassini will “not go gently into that good night.” Its final set of “low altitude” orbits of the planet are taking it within the Saturnine Ring System. Over the period of April and September 2017, Cassini will execute a series of twenty-two orbits that will dive between the planet and its rings. On its final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back data and images of its own suicide. Congratulations NASA and congratulations Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

One is tempted in writing this epitaph to say something like, who could have imagined such a thing. But the answer to that question was a boy who five decades ago sat in the cool darkness of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, watching the planetary orbs circling in mechanical precision against the stars projected upon a pitch-black darkness. The air was always cool and paradoxically there was always oxygen to breathe. He dared to imagine.

Figure 1 – Charles Ogle as Frankenstein in Thomas Edison’s kinetogram by that name, 1910. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

The other night I watched the Mel Brooks’ movie “Young Frankenstein.” It got me wondering about early horror movies and early monsters. This in turn raised the inevitable question of what or who was the earliest monster movies. Monsters come in many flavors and one of these is the “man monster,” like Frankenstein. One of the earliest “man monsters” was indeed Frankenstein, brought to life in 1910 by Thomas Edison in his kinetogram “Frankenstein.”  The historic photograph of Figure 1 shows Charles Ogle portraying Frankenstein’s monster in this feature. You can, in fact see the whole film on YouTube.

Now what are we looking at? Is the photograph scary? Do we want to scream and run? Probably not. Still i find my eye drawn to the monster’s left hand, a symbol of death, decay, and corruption.What we see, perhaps, is the transition from a heavily emotive stage presence of the nineteenth century to first, the heavily emotive screen presence of the silent movie era and then to the more realistic and subtle emotions of modern films.The image captures the transition.

But there is something more profound in this image. It refers back to a definition of the term monster, which is now politically incorrect. Medically the term monster used to refer to the highly deformed, the miscreated. Remember the late nineteenth century was the time when the great circuses had  “freak side shows,” where people gawked at the deformed.

To those times, “man monsters” flew in the face of the belief that man was created in the image of God. In London at the Royal College of Surgeons is the famous Hunterian Museum with its collection of “man monsters.” This is significant because in its library Darwin did some of his research on the Origin of Species. If species were immutable, never changing, how could one explain the strange variations that surrounded him in glass jars? What did it all mean?

Equally important was the point that these “man monsters” challenged our humanity in other ways. The very “man monster” Frankenstein, is such an important example. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly gave her novel the title “Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus.” Prometheus, significantly in mythology gave the human race fire. The novel was published in 1818 when the world was at the dawn of the scientific era. This would prove a time that challenged conventional views and even brought into question the deity’s role as the sole arbiter of life and death.

In the novel, the “monster” is very much the victim of the story. He is a victim that challenges his creator. In many ways he is the hero of the story.

This brings us to another “man monster” of fiction and early twentieth century film. This is Quasimodo, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. Who can forget the great moment in Charles Laughton’s 1939 film version, when Quasimodo resumes his place beside the Gargoyles atop the cathedral and watches his beloved Esmeralda depart with Gringoire. He leans against one of these silent stone monsters and sadly says, “Why was I not made of stone like thee?“