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.

On Friday I posted about satellite images of typhoon Haiyan bearing down mercilessly on the Phillipines.  I called this post “The Destroyer of Worlds,” because it was very clear even then what we would see.  And now we can see it.

The reports, the videos, and the images are beginning to come in and it is as expected or maybe worse than expected, because you can never truly foresee something this bad.  There are over ten thousand dead, whole towns destroyed.  And there are countless families destroyed.  The New York Times today quoted Robert S. Ziegler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines, who said that he was worried that he was very concerned that the damage reports were coming from Tacloban, the capital of the province of Leyte, which is 360 miles from Manilla, but not from the many fishing communities that line the coast.

“The coastal areas can be quite vulnerable — in many cases, you have fishing communities right up to the shoreline, and they can be wiped out” by a powerful storm surge of the sort that hit Tacloban, he said. “The disturbing reports are the lack of reports, and the areas that are cut off could be quite severely hit.”

Nothing really can be said that truly captures what we are now seeing.  Even the images only touch a raw nerve and then are gone.  But the people remain, the desperation remains.  We begin with a beautiful view from space.  But as soon as we come closer down the stark reality captures us and we begin to imagine.  Finally, zoom down to the human level and it becomes very personal.

Figure 1 – Image from 1842 showing Mozart’s widow, Constanze Weber, lower left two years before her death.  From the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

I was doing some mindless searching of the web today at lunch and I met someone that I never expected to encounter.  This person was Constanze  nee Weber (1762-1842), the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791).  Wait a minute, you say, how is this possible?  Well take a look at Figure 1 which shows  Constanze Mozart at age 78 years two years before her death.  She is in the front left and dressed in black.  Bavarian composer Max Keller is seated center front, and to his left is his wife Josefa. From left to right in rear: family cook, Philip Lattner (Keller’s brother in law), and Keller’s daughters Luise and Josefa. The print is a 19th century copy of the original daguerreotype photograph taken October 1840, at Keller’s home.  This image was discovered in 2004 in the Altötting state archive in 2004.  So amazing, right? You’ve got to love the way Lattner leans forward, the expression on Keller’s face, and the touching way that Josefa leans against Luise.

We have spoken a lot about this, but the words “I met” still ring very true.  Somehow seeing someone’s photograph is meeting them, somehow you feel closer to them than with a painted portrait, no matter how finely done.  They become kindred in a way – fellow occupants of modern times.  You cannot help but stare into their faces in a way that doesn’t work with a painting.  It’s not after all, an artists conception, it is a real instant lived.  You create a little story in your mind.  In this case the story is of the first encounter with some new fangled gadget – maybe the first time you saw a digital camera – or maybe the first time you saw a Polaroid Instamatic (if you ever did).  You can relate to the moment captured. The party on the lawn stops and everyone gathers round as the magician photographer does his sorcery.  And finally, and in a way that once more contrasts ever so deeply with the experience of a painting, you feel a twinge of remorse that this person or persons passed away.  You met them, knew them, and shared a moment with them.  Perhaps there is truth to the view that the camera captures your soul.

Figure 1 – Pacific Typhoon Haiyan approaching the Phillipines on Nov. 6, 2013, Image Credit:
NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team, in the public domain.

As I am writing Typhoon Haiyan is barreling down on the central and southern Phillipines.  Robotic eyes from spacing are watching the whole story unfold, and despite the natural beauty of these space images, we are, unfortunately, certain to see much worse in the days to come as scenes of the human tragedy unfold.

Haiyan has achieved status as a Category 5 hurricane.  According to Brian McNoldy, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami, Fla.,”Haiyan has achieved tropical cyclone perfection. It is now estimated at 165kts (190mph), with an 8.0 on the Dvorak scale… the highest possible value.” Haiyan is approximately 500 mi in diameter.  Some believe it to be the most powerful typhoon ever recorded.  The image shown in Figure 1 was taken from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on Nov. 7, 2013 at 04:25 UTC.

NASA has many robotic eyes trained on Haiyan.  These are the ever watchful sentinels of Earth. They study wind, temperature, and pressure.  The trouble with robotic eyes, at least for now, is their intrinsic lack of soul.  They do not feel or empathize. Still save many lives will be saved by virtue of the warnings that they provide and by the knowledge base that they build.  Looking at images like this, simultaneously so beautiful and so terrible, I cannot help but recall the words of  J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and of all the world’s mythologies that his phrase evokes.

Figure 1 – A rare “selfie” of the author, (c) DE Wolf 2013.

I went out to lunch with my wife last Saturday, and we wound up checking out the Eileen Fisher Company Store.  This is a pretty husband friendly store.  They have a nice array of “husband chairs” and they do not clutter them up with piles of clothing.  You can also sit and watch an endless video loop on a  big screen TV about eco-friendly fabric dying and the sixteen ways to tie a scarf. So if you want to discuss either of these, I’m quite definitely your man!

But after a while the videos became old, and my wife had yet to emerge from the dressing room; so I took to reading the news on my cell phone.  There I came upon a blog by Helen A. S. Popkin for NBC News entitled “Don’t try this at home: all the selfies you’re hopefully never going to take.”  It is Popkin’s hypothesis, and I think a rather safe one, that all the hubbub about selfies in 2013 is only going to be eclipsed by the hubbub about them in 2014.  Basically this is the age of the selfie craze.

I strain to project my mind forward fifty years.  It is a humbling exercise, because we never know all the twists and turns that nature and mankind will take.  Still I am pretty sure that just as we today go to major museums, like the Metropolitan in NY, the MFA in Boston, or the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, to see retrospectives about, for instance, the Kodachrome Era or Snapshots of the Sixties, our progeny will head to these, or other, museums to see the great retrospective about The Golden Age of the Selfie.  You can pretty much count on it, and it will be fun for them to see and wonder what was going on in the minds of these self-possessed, just as we now look and wonder about those people in the Daguerreotypes.

Hmm!  It is easy enough to imagine this.  Where things get interesting is when you try to understand how monetary value will become attached to these selfies as collectors’ items.  People collect early photographs and great photographs.  Today they collect the memorabilia photographs of the mid-twentieth century.  The point is that these are on paper, glass, or metal.  They are by definition one-of-a-kind and rare.  How does this kind of collection translate going forward into this and future centuries?

Years ago you would met someone, say on a bus, and after a while you would pull out your wallet and show snapshots of your family, and yes even your pets.  Today you pull out your smart phone.  The smart phone has the same size, format, and perspective of the snapshots of old.  The are copyable and easily transferable.  Still the simple fact of their being merely stored as so many pixels and bytes makes them vulnerable in the long term.  You don’t even have to bother throwing them in the trash to send them to ignominious oblivion.

This simplicity of destruction will make them intrinsically rare.  So I am thinking that some entrepreneurial sort will find a way to make money selling them.  And that’s where it will all begin.

In her blog – you see they’re no longer columns or articles, but blogs – Pokin quotes  a user-submitted definition of “Selfie” on the crowd-sourced “Urban Dictionary:”

“The taking of a picture of yourself and posting it on Facebook because you have extremely low self-esteem and you need people to comment to tell you how hot or pretty you look.”

I predict that a some point those of these narcissistic examples of human vanity will become more than so.  They will make the transition to art – not just art, but collectable art.

Figure 1 – Photograph of an erupting solar prominence taken of September 24, 2013 by the SDO. From NASA and in the publi domain.

A few days ago I happened upon some of the beautiful images coming from NASA’s “Solar Dynamics Laboratory (SDO).” Two of these are shown in Figures 1 & 2.  These particular images were taken with the satellite’s deep ultraviolet camera.  I could go on for quite a while explaining why this region of the electromagnetic spectrum was chosen, how these cameras work, and why it’s important.  But I choose to focus instead on the simple point that these images are truly spectacular.

There is this fine line between science and art.  Here the images were chosen from a great many by a human being as one’s that appeal to a human aesthetic.  Similarly the colors chosen for the rendering again appeal to human sensibilities and in no small way to our sense of the mythic.  The red-orange images evoke association with the phrase “cauldron of the gods.”  Is the Sun’s fire the forge of Hephaestus?  As we know, the Sun is not made of fire but of insanely hot plasma, a state of matter where the atoms have been strip by the intense heat of their electrons.  But in our artistic mythic enthusiasm we forget the scientific facts and dwell a few moments in the romance of the image.

In such images, I believe we stand at the crossroads between science and art.  We see that ultimately there is a piece of both in all human intellectual effort.  Photography has always, at it does in the case of the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s images, occupied this liminal zone.  In what it reveals it is art.  In the chemistry and physics of how it works, and how it is practiced, it is science.

This dichotomy defines the sense of wonder that we have when looking at scientific images like these.  They took great science to produce.  But someone practiced in art selected then and selected how they would be displayed.  Please enjoy these pictures. Visit NASA’s SDO mission website to see more of them and their accompanying videos.  At the same time remember what Hamlet said:

Figure 2 – Deep UV image of a sunspot group showing the magnetic field lines and taken by the SOD from Januray 9-15, 2013. From NASA and in the public domain.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy” about Michaelangelo (1475-1564). Pope Julius II (1443-1513), played by Rex Harrison (1908-1990), keeps asking Michaelangelo, played by Charlton Heston (1923-2008), “When will you make an end of it [ the painting of the Sistine Chapel]?” To which Michaelangelo replys, “When I am done.” I have long marveled at the artists of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries who could spend seven or more years on a single painting or sculpture, or the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages who took on a task that would take longer than their lifetimes.  They were all working for the ages.  And let me offer, as a final example, the fact that Edmond Halley (1656-1742), of Halley’s comet fame, near the end of his long life, began a new sky survey that would have taken him seventy-five years to complete.

In what context then should we view the world of digital photography, a world of instant gratification, that fits in so well with all of the other hurried aspect of our lives?  I have huge respect for the modern day practitioners of large format photography.  The entire art is a time consuming labor of love, where the end is only accomplished when it is finished.  Back when I was taking analogue photographs, albeit in 35 mm, the dark room was ultimately the rate limiting element.  Achievement a single decent print might be a studied two hour plus process.  The darkroom had to be setup, finally cleaned up, and you were thrilled and satisfied if the evening’s labors produced a single good print.  Printing negatives was always is, but never to be printed.  And I haven’t even mentioned the cost.  Printing was costly, and still is.  All of this, for me anyway, conspired in the picture taking process.  Do you really want to take that picture?  Will you ever print it? Will it be worth the effort and the money?

And of course, color was pretty much out of the question.  Most photoprint shops did a lousy disappointing job.  The only way to get the color that you wanted was to take transparencies.  And then what?

There was a lot of adversity in the whole process.  The great thing about Ansel Adams’ books was that they provided a method that, if adhered to, could lead to a decent and satisfying photograph.  I still have several of these silver gelatin, selenium toned images hanging in my hallway and I still pause to contemplate them.  They still elicit the memory of their production, particularly the smell of the darkroom.

Here, then, is yet another consequence of the instantaneity of digital photography.  The process, while still time-consuming, fits more comfortably into our day.  There is no setup and cleanup.  You can experiment to your heart’s content.  Printing your own digital images can still be a bit costly.  But I have found that I do not print enough to justify this cost and choose a good printing service instead.  Indeed, and I say this with a twinge of guilt, I have stopped printing all of my finished work.  Of course, the eco-minded will probably applaud me for this.

We are left with the question of motive.  Are we creating for the ages?  I believe that social media has taught us that fame and notoriety are ever so fleeting.  I create for myself.  It’s nice, of course, to share and to be appreciated by the like-minded.  We are in no position to comprehend what access posterity will have to our labors or whether and in what ways they will even care.  So it is hardly worth worrying about.  People create because that is what people do.  It is an essential element of being human.  Digital photography has just made it more accessible.