Among the giants of photojournalist in the mid-twentieth century was Margaret Bourke-White (1904 – 1971). She was the first foreigner permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the first American female war photojournalist, and the first female photographer for Henry Luce’s Life magazine.  Much of this photography focused on poverty during the Great Depression, particularly in the American South.

Arguably no photograph exemplifies this genre better than Margaret Bourke White’s image “Kentucky Flood, 1937.” This is the fifth “Favorite Photograph for 2015.  In January and February of 1937 the Ohio River flooded. It is estimated that one million people were left homeless, that 385 were killed, and property losses reached $500 million ($8 billion in today’s dollars). The photograph brilliantly shows desperate African Americans in a bread line standing in front of a billboard that pictures the “typical white American family” and proclaims “World’s Highest Standard of Living; there is no way like the American way.”

What is most remarkable about this photograph is its timelessness. It speaks of historical events and the fundamental dignity of humans facing extreme adversity. At the same time it might as well be a poster today for “Black Lives Matter.” The true paradox of the image is that “the real American Dream” is not in the white faces of the family in the car but in the “black faces on the line.” In the words of Edward Kennedy 1980.”

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Figure 1 – Princess Alice (later Grand Duchess Louis IV of Hesse) by Alexander Bassano. In the public domain because of its age.

Over the last couple of months I have come to recognize the amazing talent of the great portrait studio photographers of the nineteenth century. Photography had come of age and those with a talent and an understanding of the “rules” of portraiture could flourish. Today’s favorite photograph for 2015, shown here as Figure 1, is a prime example and was taken by London society portraitist Alexander Bassano (1829 – 1913).  It took me a while to choose which of his works to include, but I found myself coming back again and again to this lovely portrait of Princess Alice (Alice Maud Mary 1843 – 1878); later Princess Louis of Hesse and Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine). She was the third child and second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort. She was the first of Victoria’s nine children to die, and one of three to be outlived by their mother, who died in 1901.

First, what is the appeal of this portrait. An obvious stunning feature is the light which comes in from the right hand side and glimmers off the shiny dress (silk?). A side profile is a tough perspective to pull off with a sitter with prominent features like  those of Princess Alice. Contrast this with an 1856 portrait of Alice (right) at age 13 and her sister Victoria (left) taken by Roger Fenton. But the effect is superb and really speaks to Basanno’s talent. Note the sweep of head to hand to elbow  across the shoulders and down the other arm to the book. This sweep delicately divides the photograph according to “the golden rule of thirds” and creates a wonderful dynamism.  I think also that this reverse S curve is meant to tell us of Alice’s intellect, the connection of book and brain. Aesthetically we also note how the line of the shoulders to the left elbow is perfectly aligned with the right arm. Only the book deviates with this parallelism and then only slightly. The only flaw in the subject, for me, is the degree of lost focus in the left knee. I would prefer if it were more subtle.

I have done some research into the fundamentals of this pose. It is not all that common but has been used effectively in other portraits. We have, for instance, Berthar Müller’s 1900 portrait of Queen Victoria, which like the image of Figure 1 is in the National Portrait Gallery in London. I also found an very interesting portrait on the web that effectively uses this pose entitled Victorian Lady with her Microscope. Basanno was a prolific photographer. In 1921, after his death, when the firm moved, the Lady’s Pictorial described the collection of approximately a million systematically numbered negatives that had to be transported from the cellars of the original premises to the new location.

The life of Princess Alice was unfortunately a tragic one.  When her father, Prince Albert, was diagnosed with typhoid fever in December 1861, Alice nursed him until his death. Queen Victoria appears to have had a spontaneous mutation that led to the hemophilia gene becominng prevalent in European royal houses. Alice was a carrier for this gene, and in 1873,  her youngest and favorite son, Friedrich ( “Frittie”), who was a hemophiliac, died after falling from a third story window. Whether a child without this bleeding disorder could have survived such a fall is debatable. Alice also passed the gene on to her daughter Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (empress consort of Tsar Nicholas II). Alexandra was murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 as was another daughter Elisabeth, who had married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia.

In November 1878, Alice’s household became stricken with diphtheria. Alice’s husband and all of her children became ill with the exception of daughter Elizabeth who had been sent away. Her daughter Marie was the first to die, and she kept the child’s death a secret from the other children. Finally, she told the sad news to her son Ernest, who became inconsolable. Alice had a rule not to touch the infected children. However, she broke this rule by kissing her son. This appears to have led to Alice herself contracting diphtheria, and she died on the 14th of December 1878, seventeen years to the day of the death of her father. Her last words were “dear papa.”

The slopes of Hale Crater showing running water in a pseudocolor image created from (Infrared-Red-Blue/Green(IRB)) data. From NAS/JPL/Univ. Arizona and in the public domain.

When our petty conflicts, the meanness of our times, the prejudice, and the hate are all long forgotten. Figure 1, one of many images from the Mars Orbiter that were released this year and definitively demonstrated liquid water flowing on Mars will be remembered, and if we are lucky (for it is more than we deserve) it will shed us in a brighter light.

Mars and the possibility of life there has long intrigued mankind. Finding water there must be the first step, and this was a huge leap in our understanding. At first glance it may seem unreasonable to allow into our list an image taken by robot eyes. But let me point out two things. First, it is as if the entirety of mankind pushed the button that took this image – it is not merely the work of a computer program. And second, the choice of composition and color made by the scientists that compile these images most certainly betrays a major component of human aesthetics.

There are many images that compose the body of evidence. I have tried to choose one that is particularly beautiful. This image is in fact not a true photograph but what is referred to as a pseudocolor IRB image that combines image data from (Infrared-Red-Blue/Green(IRB) detectors. In pseudo color you have to choose what is referred to as a look-up-table or LUT and this is done both to most vividly reveal the differences between regions and to appeal to a very human aesthetic.

Figure 1 – Leonard Missone, London’s Waterloo Place, 1899, in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Coming from a photographic generation that worshiped the f/64 group, it is almost blasphemous to admit being drawn to pictorialist art. But I have already admitted previously in this blog my admiration for Annie Brigman (The Bubble 1909), Emile Joachim Constant Puyo (Montmartre 1906), and th early works of Edward Steichen (The Flat Iron Building at Night 1904). So why stop there?

A few weeks back I discovered the dreamy works of Leonard Missone, and really fell into a rapture.  So today’s Favorite Photograph is one he took of London’s Waterloo Place in 1899 and is shown as Figure 1. Missone was, in fact, a student of Puyo’s so the similarity is understandable.

Misonne was a Belgian photographer, the greatest of the Belgian pictorialists.  He studied mining engineering at the Catholic University of Louvain (1834-1968). However he was bitten by the muse and never, in fact, practiced engineering. In university he became interested in music and art.  He started taking photographs in 1891 and from 1896 onward, it was his exclusive medium.

The blurred painterly admospheric effects, especially the way light creeps around objects in the fog were his hallmark, and “London’s Waterloo Place” is defining of his art, which earned his work the appellation “Corot photography. Missone worked in a wide range of printing processes such as oil, Fresson, and gum-bichromate. In 1931 he invented and patented a screened that he called the “Flou-Net” that was placed in front of the camera lens to produce a range of soft-sharp effects, and in 1935, he developed the mediobrome process, which was a cross between a bromide and oil print.

We have all walked down damp streets like this on a foggy evening. We have seen the wagon, now car, tracks on the damp street. Look at the photograph and the characteristic feel and smell come back to you as does the way in which the fog damps the street sounds creating a private place among the crowds. I have seen this work characterized as a painting on the web and I think that this mistake would have pleased Missone.

Figure 1 – Lock and Whitfield, Portrait of Sir Richard Burton, from the Wikimedia Common, original in the National Portrait Gallery, London. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or less.

Well, remarkably today is December 22, 2015 and it is time to begin Hati and Skoll’s annual feature of ten favorite images. I thought that it would be fun to play it a little quirky this year. So some of the images that you are going to see are not necessarily well known. They are favorites of mine and have a particular appeal to me. So to start off my first favorite for 2015, ah the waning year, is this Woodbury type image by photographers Lock and Whitfield of the great British explorer, Victorian polyglot, and prolific writer, Sir Richard F. Burton, 1876. This appeals both to a life-long interest that I have had in Richard Burton and a more recent curiosity about the great photographic portrait artists of the 19th century.

Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (1821 – 1890) was a British explorer,  translator, writer, and soldier. He was famous as an orientalist and was best known for his elegantly documented, in disguise journey to Mecca. This was at a time when Europeans were forbidden access on pain of death. Along with John Hanning Speke, Burton was the first European to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile the One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights) and the Kama Sutra. Burton is said to have spoken 29 languages. He studied religions and in the end concluded that “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.”

Samuel Lock was an artist who in the early 1850s worked on the conversion of talbotype photographic portraits into painted miniatures. In 1856, he began a collaboration with photographer George Whitfield. Lock and Whitfield had studios on Regent Street in London and Kings Road in Brighton. They are best known for their series of Woodbury types published as Men of Mark. The stunning portrait of Burton is from the first series.

The image is remarkable for the intense, aggressive stare of the subject and also for the uncompromising sharpness of the image. You see every hair of the beard, every wrinkle and blemish of the face. This includes the scar on Burton’s left cheek, which was the result of an attack in 1856 by Somali warriors. when Burton was impaled by a javelin that entered one side of his face and exited the other. He was forced to make his escape with the weapon still transfixing his head. This harrowing adventure was described in his book  First Footsteps in East Africa (1856). The title is significant. Burton, like many explorers of the day was obcessed with the “Question of the Nile,” what was its source in Central Africa. His first footsetps were just that, first footsteps to be followed by an assault on the Central Lake Regions. This was a man possessed, and I think this single-minded determination is admirably captured in this portrait.

Figure 1 – Wiggle Stereoscopy of Santa Claus calling for back-up supplies, 1897. From Public Domain Review and in the public domain because of its age.

OK, so it is nearly Christmas, and I have spend more time than I should have searching for antique images of Santa Claus, aka Old Saint Nick.  The modern branding of this figure, of course, comes from Clement Moore’s poem “The Night Before Christmas.”  Yesterday I came across the curious image of Figure 1. It is an example of “Wiggle Stereoscopy” from 1897. I got this from Public Domain Review but the original is apparently in the United States Library of Congress’ Image Collection. It is actually a part of a series of stereopairs concerning Santa’s visit. As the story goes Santa has run out of supplies and needs to use that most modern of conveniences, the telephone, to call the elves for back up.

Is the real magic here Santa Claus or the stereo image? There are many ways of viewing a stereo pair. Wiggle stereoscopy is closely related to shuttered stereoscopy, where a shutter flips your eye’s view from one image to the next. It is remarkable that the mere act of flipping, and not so rapidly at that, creates the sense not just of 3D but of motion. Again this effect lies in the difference between physical optics and physiological optics. We cannot perceive a thing without our brains. And here our brain does a marvelous job of filling in the unseen but expected. The brain is inseparable from perception.

You may imagine further that there was something cute about Santa Claus, so antique a fellow, reaching for the modern telephone – and that back in 1897. Santa is truly technology-forward and today it would likely be an IPhone. The ambiguous paradox that is Santa Claus extends beyond our previous discussion of how does Santa Claus manages to confine himself to physical law and still visit every child in the world?  Back in the olden days, Santa was like Geppetto and made only wooden toys. But as you can already see in this 1897 image he continuously modernizes, and it is not so easy to manufacture using thermoplastic molds in a workshop at the North Pole. And then there is this small issue about patent infringement.  Has Santa become merely a distributor –  a money launderer of Christmas gifts? What will become of Santa Claus, indeed of the entire Elfen Workforce, when Amazon truly switches to drone technology?

Think of these weighty issue come Christmas eve. Ponder the conflict between modernism and myth as you listen for the sound of sleigh bells on the roof.

Figure 1 Thomas H. Huxley by Jose Maria Mora, albumen print, 1876 cabinet card, in the National Portrait Gallery London and in the public domain in the United States by virtue of its age.

Following in the footsteps of the great American portraitist, Napoleon Sarony was Jose Maria Mora (1846-1926). Mora was born to wealth and connection being a member of Cuba’s wealthiest plantation family. He studied painting in Paris. But the Cuban uprising of 1868 compelled him to return and join his exiled family in New York City, where he found employment with Napoleon Sarony and learned the photographic portrait trade. He was with Sarony for about two years, after which he set up his own studio at 707 Broadway, where he robustly competed with Sarony despite his mentor’s deep pockets and connections.

The “game” was celebrity photography, and the two studios competed vigorously for the exclusive right to photograph various visiting celebrities. Initially Mora competed by photographing the “second tier” actors and actresses of the day. Mora also had the largest variety of sets, or backdrops, of any photographer in the world supplied to him by the painter Lafayette Seavey. In the 1880s Mora became interested in photography as a medium for magazine publishing and formed arrangements with Harper’s, The Police Gazette, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, supplying images for engraving to support articles.

Unfortunately, it was around that point that Mora’s mental health began to deteriorate. He was embroiled in a family conflict with the Spanish government over the family’s holdings in Cuba. In 1895 he was awarded a sum of $200,000, a hefty amount in the day, but an amount that he found insulting.  He deposited this money in a bank account and retreated to the Hotel Breslin, where he lived as a recluse until his death, subsisting on pies and cakes that were donated to him by other guests. When he died in 1926 the $200,000 remained intact and his hotel room was a relic gallery of theatrical artists of the 1890s.

To illustrate Jose Maria Mora’s work, I have chosen this portrait of the great British evolutionary biologist, “Darwin’s bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). The National Gallery in London ascribes this portrait as having a date circa 1880. However, I believe that it can be more precisely dated as having been taken between August and September of 1876. During those dates Huxley was in the United States to speak at the dedication of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on September 12, 1876 and he traveled and lectured extensively along the east coast promoting Darwin’s theories. There is also a letter from Napoleon Sarony dated 16 September 1876 requesting that Huxley sit for him. Perhaps this was one battle that Mora won.

Regular readers know that I cannot let a great quote pass, and Thomas Huxley is a hero to scientists even today. As he entered New York Harbor Huxley was impressed by a nation whose skylines were defined by temples of learning rather than temples of worship. Huxley’s words at the Johns Hopkins still echo as a lesson today for those who confuse material success with true success:

“I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?”