Figure 1 – The Tyneside Irish Brigade advancing on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. Taken by an official of the British government and in the public domain in the US and UK by virtue of its age.

As we attempt to deal with “the unspeakable” in our own time, we are ever shadowed by the Great War that played out exactly a century ago. July 1, 1916 marked the start of the Battle of the Somme. Ultimately it lasted from July 1 to November 18, 1916 and was fought on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. It was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front. More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. July 1, 1916 itself was the bloodiest day in British military history.

When the British went “over the top” they suffered 57,470 casualties. This was, greater than the total combined British casualties in the Crimean and Boer wars. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had pushed the Germans back by six miles. Indicative of the state of stalmate this was the largest gain in territory since the Battle of the Marne in 1914. Historian debate the role of the Somme in the ultimate Allied Victory.

There are many photographs that survive of this battle. Some are real and some were staged at the time to serve government propaganda and news purposes. Figure 1 shows a support company of the Tyneside Irish Brigade advancing from the Tara-Usna Line opposite La Boisselle on the first day of the battle. It was taken by a member of the Royal Engineers No 1 Printing Company. It’s fuzziness and back lighting create a feeling both of surrealism and age. It is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal” and the “Dance of Death.” It seems a dim and distant memory or nightmare that still stands to haunt us asking the question both for now and then of “Why?” One point is terribly clear, our ability to photograph wars has certainly not brought them to an end.

Figure 1 -Lycopodiella cernua. Image from the Wikimedia Commons original by Eric Guinther distributed under a Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution 4.0 International license.

Last night I was doing some reading about the lycophyta. This is a phylum of vascular plants. OK, don’t ask me why. It’s just that I am interested in all sorts of things. Figure 1 is an example of a lycophyte specially Lycopodiella cernua. If you walk along in forests, like I do, these kinds of plants are quite common. Indeed, that statement could be made for a very long time. The fossil record dates them back to the Devonian, 416 million to 358 million years ago.

You may at this point ask what this all has to do with photography and the thing is that in my taxonomy book I came across a cryptic statement that lycophyte spores were used in photography flash powder. This seemed a invaluable factoid and perked my love of the esoteric gene. So today I did some computer searching.

Lets see human uses of lycopodia abound. There are the usual uses in treating ailments such as urinary tract problems, diarrhea and other digestive tract problems, headaches, skin ailments, and the induction of labor. And, needless-to-say, in some cultures they were used as aphrodisiacs. Where would we be without that? And here’s the critical thing, the spores are also very flammable because of to their high oil content. As a result, they were used in Native American cultures for dramatic ceremonial purposes. The shamans would toss the spores into a fire for a flash of light. As a result, Lycopodium powder was used as a flash powder for photography. The dried spores of the common clubmoss, was similarly used in Victorian theater to produce flame-effects and in fireworks. A blown cloud of spores burned rapidly and brightly, but with little heat. It was considered safe by the standards of the time. Famous last words!

In the 19th century lycopodium powder was a common laboratory supply, The inventor of photography Nicéphore Niépce used lycopodium powder in the fuel for the first internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore, in about 1807.  Chester Carlson used lycopodium powder in 1938 in his early experiments to demonstrate xerography, aka the precursor of today’s Xerox machine. Still not impressed? Take a look at this video.

On the day following the historic Breixt vote in the United Kingdom, it seems that the world is ready to knock down icons of stability and throw caution to the wind. The regime of the EU evolved to maintain world economic order after the battles of World War II. So it seems quite appropriate that the greatest icon of that war fell, or at least was corrected, this week as well.

The United States Marine Corps acknowledged this week, seventy-one years after the event, that it had misidentified one of the Marines in Joe Rosenthal’s ironic flag raising image from Iwo Jima. The previously unknown Pfc. Harold Schultz of Detroit is the sixth man in the picture, service leaders confirmed.

This speaks to two things. First, is the tenuous state of information from that time compared to ours. And second, is the power of photography to capture, freeze the moment, and ultimately play witness to the facts.

Figure 1 – I. W. Taber portrait of Princess Kaiulani, taken in San Francisco c 1897. In the Hawaii State Archives and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Our discussion yesterday about Loïe Fuller and the wonderful performance portrait of her by I. W. Taber begs the obvious question of exactly who Taber was? Isaiah West Taber (1830 – 1912) was an American photographer of the nineteenth century, who practiced in daguerreotypes. ambrotypes, and albumen prints. He was also a dentist and sketch artist and is today most known for his stereoscopic views of the American West. Taber was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. From 1845-1849 he was a whaler.  He briefly settled as a photographer in California in 1850, but opened his first studio in Syracuse, NY in 1854. In 1864 he returned to San Francisco, working first in the studio of Bradley and Rulofson. He opened his own studio in 1871.

Significantly, in 1880 Taber spent six weeks in Hawaii where he photographed Hawaiian King Kalākaua, on commission. In the following year the King visited Taber’s studio in San Francisco. Taber is also famous for street scenes of San Francisco and portraits of the California Dignitaries of the day. Unfortunately, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the subsequent fire destroyed his gallery including his collection of negatives and this ended his photographic career.

The quality of Taber’s work is arguably best revealed in two stunning portraits of Hawaiian Princess Kaiulani that were taken during a 1997 visit to San Francisco and the United States in hopes of restoring the Hawaiian Monarchy after its overthrow in 1892. One of these portraits is shown in Figure 1. The dress and hat are truly gorgeous. The book is meant, as it so often does in Western portrait art, to convey erudition. But I think the most captivating aspect of the portrait is the expression at once regal and demur. Kaiulani was only 22 at the time of the portrait. Tragically, she died two years later on March 6, 1899 at the age of 23 of inflammatory rheumatism. Poignantly, her father also said that he thought that since Hawaii was gone, it was fitting for Kaʻiulani to go as well.

Figure 1 – Painting of Loie Fuller by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Today I thought that we would get out of the woods and return to the Belle Époque. For some reason the other day the great dancer of that period, Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), came to my mind, and I started searching for photographs and videos of her. Loïe Fuller was a visionary, and in many regards like Evelyn Nesbit, like Sarah Bernhardt, like Anna Pavlova, and like Isadora Duncan she pioneered what performance stars do today – they ride the wave of a shrinking world and the developing technologies that promoted worldwide connectivity.

She was born Marie Louise Fuller outside of Chicago in Fullersburg, Illinois. She began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later as a “skirt dancer” in burlesque. She was essentially self-taught and developed her own characteristic techniques. Her choreography combined colorful silk costumes illuminated by multi-colored lighting, again by her own design. One of her most famous works was the “Serpentine Dance” and there is a miraculous hand-colored film clip made in 1896 by the Lumiere Brothers of it being perfomed. Apparently, the dancer in this is not Fuller herself but  flame dancer Papinta.

While Fuller became famous in America, she felt underappreciated and after a warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded, she was persuaded to remain in France, becoming a regular performer at the Folies Bergère at the Moulin Rouge with works such as her “Fire Dance.” Indeed, one of the reasons that we remember her today is because of paintings and posters of her performances by such artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Figure 1 is a painting of her by Toulouse-Lautrec. It is also significant to note that many of Fullers costumes required elaborate technical designs, which she invented and patented.

Not surprisingly, this colorful figure and her flowing costumes and dramatic lighting attracted the great photographers of her day, Searching among them is truly a visual delight. I have chosen here as Figure 2 a portrait of her dancing by Isaiah West Taber (1830 – 1912) I chose this both because of the wonderful sensitivity and expressively captured motion of the image but also because it is so similar to Toluose-Lautrec’s painting.

Figure 2 – Loie Fuller by I. W. Taber. In the public domain in the United States because of its age.