Category Archives: History of Photography

The Last Muster Project

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Figure 1 - Portrait before 1867 of Lemuel Cook the last official veteran of the American Revolution. From the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Portrait before 1867 of Lemuel Cook the last official veteran of the American Revolution. From the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Yesterday’s post about Alonzo Cushing was fresh in my mind, when I went this morning to the “Concord Museum” to see a special exhibit tracing the events of April 18 to 19, 1775 hour by hour. These were the events that sparked the American Revolution.  And I was not expecting photographs because of age.  But as it turns out there was another exhibit called “The Last Muster” and this was only photographs, photographs of the few veterans of the American Revolution who managed to live to see the invention of photography and to be themselves photographed.

Oh,and before I move on, allow me one major peeve.  I object to the current trend in museums not to show original objects.  We don’t see the original photographs; but more often than not barely disguised copies of the originals.  I saw this in Charleston as well. Boo!!!!

This exhibit relates to “The Last Muster Project” and book by a similar name, by photodetective Maureen Taylor.  Taylor has done an amazing job of searching out photographs of “the survivors.”  Still, who actually was the last man out is a matter of some controversy.  It all depends on what you mean. Last proven veteran? Last pensioner? Are drummer boys acceptable?  You know what, it really doesn’t matter; the effect of all of the images on our psyches is the same. So I am not going to enter the fray here and I have sided with the United States Governement and included as Figure 1 a portrait taken before 1867 of Lemuel Cook (1759-1866). Cook was  the last official veteran of the American Revolutionary War, who enlisted in the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons, Continental Army.  To me this is really amazing.

And the reason that it is so amazing is, as always, that it connects us across time and as a nation.  Indeed, as a generation dies out unless we record their stories, or in this case photograph them, we loose their first hand experience.  The momentous event becomes by degrees just a bit more abstract and impersonal.  We see that now as we rapidly lose the “Greatest Generation,” the World War II warriors.

Indeed, in 1864 the Rev. Elias Brewster Hillard a congregationalist minister from Connecticut set out desperately to document these “Last Men” before they died out.  He published his photographs and stories in “The Last Men of the Revolution (1864).”  The date is important, because at the time the nation was embroiled in a civil war that put at jeopardy what these men set out to accomplishe.  Indeed, I would argue that the American Civil War as a fight for liberty was the American Revolution, part II. This book was reprinted by Barre Publishers in 1968.  Hillard recognized the importance of this task of preservation.  Ms. Taylor, using modern techniques set out with her Last Muster Project to discover more of these memorable men and women.  Her book documents the lives of seventy of these individuals.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize how often I am drawn back to the Old North Bridge in Concord, MA as a place of beauty and history.  When my son was younger he used to march in a band that crossed that bridge on Patriots Day commemorating what happened there.  I would stand with the other parents and revelers on the other side of the bridge, where the British Regulars came to cross, and it struck me on many a cold and windy April morning how insanely brave these framers and tradesmen were to stand and defend that spot against the mightiest army in the world.

 

Portrait of Alonzo H. Cushing

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Figure 1 - First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing, from the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wikimedia Commons. Uploaded by DIREKTOR and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing, from the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wikimedia Commons. Uploaded by DIREKTOR and in the public domain.

We have spoken before about the nineteenth century faces that stare back at us from antique photographs. They seem to possess a haunting element of awareness. None are more haunting than the faces of soldiers from the American Civil War. You wonder just what was in store for these people. And while you might not know, what you do know is how terrible the statistically odds were and the inevitable fact that at the very least the person in the photograph would experience hell.  The tense is confusing.  Would experience? Did experience? It is the photograph itself that creates the ambiguity.

This morning I came upon the photograph of Figure 1 in the New York Times.  If the face is anonymous what do I experience in the seeing? I am are taken by the soft, handsome, youthfulness of the subject. Notice the eyes. They probably were blue. They look slightly way from us in distractedness and the catch-light is there to give the portrait life.  And the catch-light is a connecting point, because any of us would light the eyes in just this way if we were taking the image today. There is a certain jauntiness to the tie. Yes it all makes you wonder and it all brings the subject back to life.

But in this case there is no need to wonder. The image is of First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing. Cushing was a West Point graduate and he was there at the battle, at the spot, and at the most pivotal and momentous of moments. Cushing stood his ground on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg against Pickett’s Charge 151 years ago last month. Despite mortal wounds he kept firing his canon. Cushing is credited with playing a major role in turning the tide that day, an event which arguably led to preservation of the Union.which shows West Point graduate and Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing.  It seems just a bit incomprehensible.  These were the battles of a century and a half ago and a lot has happened since, the world and America have moved on.  Yet it was important and for this bravery, Cushing was just posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Obama.

When he went off to fight, Cushing told a cousin that “I may never return…I will make a name for myself.” Now a hundred years later the promise seems both prophetic and ironic. It makes us realize all the more that everyone of these soldier images, Union and Confederate, is a silent witness to something both monumental, something beyond themselves, and at the same time something intensely personal.

It is really kind of odd the importance we attach to historic photographs of people. Read a biography and you inevitably find yourself drawn to the portraits. Somehow the visage in the photograph gives genuineness and life to the story. In this case what a horrible yet courageous story it was.

Theodore Roosevelt in Color

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Figure 1 - The Roosevelt Family, colorized Pach Brothers Postcard. From the Wikimedia Commons, upload by Infrogmation and in the public domain. because of its age.

Figure 1 – The Roosevelt Family in 1903, colorized Pach Brothers Postcard. From the Wikimedia Commons, upload by Infrogmation and in the public domain. because of its age.

Our discussion yesterday about the Panama Canal got me thinking about whether there were any autochromes or color photographs of Theodore Roosevelt. So after a few Google, Bing, and Wiki searches I came to the conclusion that yes there were. The most definitively autochrome of the Roosevelt images is a rather unflattering photograph of Teddy holding an American flag from 1907 from the George Eastman House. There is also, by the way and as an aside, an absolutely gorgeous autochrome of our old friend Mr. Samuel Clemens taken in 1908 by Alvin Langdon Coburn.

Figure 2 - "Wiggle" stereo image by Underwood and Underwood of Theodore Roosevelt with John Muir in the Yosemite Valley. From the Library of Congress through the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – “Wiggle” stereo image by Underwood and Underwood of Theodore Roosevelt with John Muir in the Yosemite Valley in 1903. From the Library of Congress through the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

There are a fair number of color pictures of Theodore Roosevelt. I wanted to include one of the more spectacular of these as Figure 1. It was taken by the Pach Brothers in 1903 and shows the entire Roosevelt Family. Pres. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt seated on lawn, surrounded by their family; 1903. From left to right: Quentin, Theodore Sr., Theodore Jr., Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel. This is actually a contemporary colorized postcard version of a really gorgeous black and white image that is in the United States Library of Congress. I vote for the black and white as most beautiful. But what I wanted to point out here was the thirst that people had at the time for colored photographs. There was a huge demand for color in images and both the highly talented photographic colorists and the autochrome process filled this need. Innovation is ever driven by two factors: public demand and the belief that if we got clever something just might be doable. Note, that is the belief not the fact that something is doable that gets it accomplished.

Figure 3 - "Princess Alice" in 1903. Colorized photograph by . From the Library of Congress and the Wikimedia Commons. In the public domai because of its age.

Figure 3 – “Princess Alice” in 1902. Colorized photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston. From the Library of Congress and the Wikimedia Commons. In the public domain because of its age.

Roosevelt, of course, live just as photography was moving into color and as moving pictures were appearing. There are, in fact, several film clips of the President. There is also a wonderful Underwood and Underwood stereo pair showing Roosevelt with John Muir in the Yosemite Valley from 1903 (Figure 2). Click on this image to “animate” the 3D effect. When Roosevelt woke up in the morning and his sleeping bag was covered with snow he exclaimed: “This is bully!”

Finally, I’d like to share as Figure 3 one more colorized image. This is of his daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980). It is a coloration of a black and white portrait made in 1902 by Frances Benjamin Johnston. Alice was one of the great beauties of her day. She was outspoken and her antics led to her being fondly dubbed as “Princes Alice” by the public. When asked why he couldn’t better control his daughter, Roosevelt famously said “I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”

I remember back in the late seventies reading an article about Alice Roosevelt Longworth who then lived in a house near DuPont Circle in Washington, DC.  This was was covered in poison ivy. She was said to have a pillow on her settee that read “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me.“

The Panama Canal Centenary

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Figure 1 - The Pedro Miguel Locks of the Panama Canal photographed by Earle Harrison in color using the Autochrome Process. From the Wikimedia Commons uploaded by Mschlindwein and in the public domain because its was photographed before 1923.

Figure 1 – The Pedro Miguel Locks of the Panama Canal photographed by Earle Harrison in color using the Autochrome Process. From the Wikimedia Commons uploaded by Mschlindwein and in the public domain because its was photographed before 1923.

In addition to the centenary of the start of the First World War, this August, August 15th to be precise, marked the opening of the Panama Canal, that great dream of a “Path Between the Seas.” I have been looking at a lot of photographs of the construction of the canal, including, of course, many pictures of that larger than life and somewhat controversial figure, President Theodore Roosevelt.

Most interesting among them are the color autochromes of Earle Harrison.  Figure 1 is an example of these and you might also what to check out the link above for some more dramatic examples. The whole collection of these images was recently reissued.

I have spoken at length about the autochrome process and will, in fact, admit to be really intrigued by it. The Autochrome process works as follows.  An adhesive layer was coated onto a glass plate. Potato starch grains graded to 5 to 10 um where attached to this layer.  The starch grains were dyed with either red orange, green, or blue violet dye (an unusual color wheel). Gaps between the grains were filled with lamp black (essentially soot).  This fragile layer was coated with a shellac and then overlain with a conventional silver halide gelatin emulsion.  Because of the high sensitivity of these emulsion to UV light from the sun, a yellow orange filter needed to be placed in front of the camera lens when taking a photograph to block-out these rays.

When a photograph was taken the colored potato starch grains acted as minute filters.  The silver halide emulsion was developed by conventional means and then reversed to a positive by what is effectively a bleaching process.  Since the colored starch matrix remains intact, when the positive image (say illuminated from behind) will become colored as light passes back through the filter matrix.

Like our own time, the early twentieth century was a period of huge technological advancement, posing a series of complex moral an ethical issues.  Indeed, it is all really an accelerating continuum.   And again like our own time, it was a period of great ethical hypocrisy.  World War I represented the worst that technology had to offer, highly efficient mechanized killing.  The Panama Canal represented the middle ground. There was the dream, powered by visions of huge profit, that drove men to build the canal, which was the ultimate Herculean project.  It took over thirty years to complete, and was a triumph (?) over nature both in terms of the actual digging and reinforcement and in terms of overcoming yellow fever.  The autochrome, I would argue, ever subtle, was the best.

Humans see in color, and as long as photography was confined to black and white there was something important missing. Color represents a significant dimension of reality.  Actually, as we have seen it really adds three dimensions.  And thanks to the Lumiere brothers we can look back and marvel, as if we were there for the events.  Shackleton set sail for his destiny in the Antarctic.  The Panama Canal opened. And Europe leaped head first into disaster.  All caught on camera.

Kodak Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates

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Mark Twain gave sage advice about the proper way to behave in the afterlife.

“Upon arrival do not speak to St. Peter until spoken to. It’s not your place to begin.
Don’t try to Kodak him. Hell is full of people who have made that mistake.
Don’t ask him what time the 4:30 train goes; there aren’t any trains in heaven, except through trains, and the less information you get about them the better for you.
Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.“

Mr. Clemens was always one to embrace technology.  He would certainly love the vain and narcissistic pursuit of the selfie – the glorification of you.  And there is a subtle point in this reasonably famous quote, and that is the use of the word Kodak, otherwise a brand name, as a verb.  There may be a modernization of this, now that we store our images on “The Cloud.” It was the latter day equivalent of the word Xerox, that being only one brand of copy machine.  And now of course, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, who would rather we “Bing it,” we still “Google it,” even if as yahoos we are actually “Binging it.”  Life does get confusing.

In Twain’s case I believe that his usage belies the incredible rise of Kodak and the popularization of photography.  Of course, with popularization came its sister mediocritization, as we discussed in my recent blog about the pictorialists, who hated this sort of thing.

Fugure 1 -n Koday Picture Spot from Disney's MGM Hollywood Studios, from the Wikimedia Commons and uploaded by Tregowith under creative commons license.

Figure 1 -Kodak Picture Spot from Disney’s MGM Hollywood Studios, from the Wikimedia Commons and uploaded by Tregowith under creative commons license.

Kodak’s dominance of photography through popularization got to the point where you couldn’t go to a scenic spot in the United States without encountering a sign referred to as a Kodak Picture Spot.  “This location recommended by top photographers to help you tell the story of your visit in pictures.” Stand here and you will get a beautiful picture, which by the way you could take to the nearby Kodak store and have it processed.  Oh, and please buy some film while you’re at it.  You wouldn’t want to run out. Figure 1 is an example from Disney’s MGM Hollywood Studios. Kodak ended this sponsorship relationship at Disneyland in 2012.  Which is pretty much when Kodak, the inventor of digital photography cried “uncle” and gave up the consumer photography market.

Of course, anyone who loves photography for the sake of art and beauty abhors this concept, which caters to the view that photographs are essentially trophies.  That’s the least of it.  The more paranoid among us might suggest a certain level of mind manipulation, an attempt to cookie cut as into the perfect customer – to Xerox us into similitude!.

Remembering being tested

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Figure 1 - Figure 1 - Nixons departing the White House for the last time, August 9, 1974, from the wikimediacommons, taken by a US Government employee and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Figure 1 – Nixons departing the White House for the last time, August 9, 1974, from the Wikimediacommons, taken by a US Government employee and in the public domain.

Saturday marked the fortieth anniversary of the resignation of Richard M. Nixon.  It was a moment of collective memory.  My wife worked at the time for Harrison M. Trice, who was a distinguished professor or organizational behavior at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.  Harry had been convinced that Nixon was going to declare martial law and stay president.  Sound paranoid?  The thing was that Harry had been a graduate student at The University of Wisconsin, when Nixon came with Senator Joseph McCarthy and declared: “We’re going to drive the communists out of this university with whips this thick.” Hmm!  “You’re president is not a crook!”  Except that he was a crook and had precipitated the greatest constitutional crisis in the United States since… Well, since McCarthy.

American’s were desolate.  I was watching a newsreel last night, an interview of a woman, my mother’s age at the time, and she said: “This country is going to celebrate it’s two hundredth birthday in a couple of years.  I want to be proud of America and right now I’m ashamed.”  It was pretty powerful stuff.  But political support for Nixon eroded to the point that Republicans in congress and the senate told him that they didn’t have the votes to stop the impeachment.  And so… The constitution held.  We were both appalled and proud.

There are many images of the day.  But the power of the constitution, of the union, was best represented by the Fords escorting the NIxons to the helicopter which started the Nixon’s journey home (Figure 1).  And then there was a last futile attempt at bravado as Nixon turned one last time, put out his arms, his fingers flashing V’s as symbols of false victory.

Figure 1 - Nixon poses one last time as he departs the White House, August 9, 1974, from the wikimediacommons, taken by a US Government employee and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – Nixon poses one last time as he departs the White House, August 9, 1974, from the Wikimediacommons, taken by a US Government employee and in the public domain.

We cannot become complacent to war and human suffering

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Figure 1 - Remains of a Buddhist temple in Nagasaki, Japan, September 7, 1945. Image from the Wikimediacommons, from the United States Department of Defense War and Comflict Image Collection, and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Remains of a Buddhist temple in Nagasaki, Japan, September 7, 1945. Image from the Wikimediacommons, from the United States Department of Defense War and Comflict Image Collection, and in the public domain.

We are so bombarded with images of war and human suffering that we must remember that we can never allow ourselves to become enured to it.  I offer this disturbingly beautiful and haunting image by Cpl. Lynn P. Walker, of the United States Marine Corps taken on September 24, 1945 showing the remains of a Buddhist Temple in Nagasaki after the bombing. 

Hiroshima – August 6, 2014

Nagasaki – August 9, 2014

The first Nikon One Touch

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Figure 1 - Nikon "One Touch" autofocus consumer camera, 1985. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Nikon “One Touch” autofocus consumer camera, 1985. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

This past weekend I was depositing my trash at the town dump.  It sounds like a simple task.  But among Yankees (I am a Yankee come lately, and BTW this has nothing to do with a certain baseball team that has appropriated the name) this is more of a rite thank a task.  Trash is sorted and recycled, and most importantly treasures are recycled, or passed on to new owners.  I usually focus on the book swap, but this Saturday I wandered into what is fondly referred to as “the put and take.” The name explains it all. And there waiting for me was the little black beauty of Figure 1- a Nikon One Touch.

Now I do not collect old cameras, although I do have a few old consumer cameras of note.  That was a minor collection started for me by my son, who one Christmas gave me a nice little Kodak Brownie. Incongruously, it too is made of black plastic.  Go figure!

Of course, I went home to explore this little Nikon more thoroughly.  As it turns out the “One Touch” is part of the L-Series.  The L-Series began in 1983 with the L35 AF/AD.  This was Nikon’s entrance into the autofocus market for consumer cameras – really a moment in photgraphic technological history.  I use the term “consumer cameras” to distinguish them from SLRs.  That explains the AF.  What the AD stands for is “auto-date” the camera marked each frame with the date. This was pretty high tech for 1983.  In 1985 Nikon introduced the first of the “One-Touch Series,” the  L35AF2/L35AD2/One•Touch. This has a elegant automatic window that covers the lens when it is not in use.

So what’s the point?  The point is that these cameras are elements of a transitional technology that took us from 35mm SLRs with their autofocus and autoexposure features to today’s DSLRs and more importantly today’s pretty sophisticated digital point and shoots.  Today you’ve got to try pretty hard to take bad pictures.  It can be done, however.  But the significant fact is that today’s cameras, which are really little photographic robots complete with their own little microprocessor brains, make it a lot easier to take technically good pictures – freeing the Sunday photographer to fulfill his/her artist destiny.

So my heading into the little “put and take” shed was a sort of trip down memory lane back into into the early eighties.  Those were the days of big hair styles.  Who can forget Meg Ryan in “When Harry met Sally,” which was 1989?  The other part of the nightmare were shoulder pads, which often came in several layers making the women look like football players.

The birth of a moon

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Figure 1 - NASA's Cassini satellite in orbit around Saturn documents the formation of a new moon on April 15, 2013. From NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – NASA’s Cassini satellite in orbit around Saturn documents the formation of a new moon on April 15, 2013. From NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 is an example of something that I never thought that I would see.  It is a moment of thought-provoking grandeur, brought to us by tireless robotic eyes that extend our vision and our horizons, like those of Ulysses’ mariners ever outward.

According to a paper published in the planetary astronomy journal Icarus, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of a small icy object within the rings of Saturn that may be a new moon.  These images were taken by Cassini’s narrow angle camera on April 15, 2013.  They show disturbances, a perturbation merely, at the very edge of Saturn’s A or outermost ring.

NASA scientists also found other unusual protuberances at the ring’s, which they believe to be gravitational disturbances caused by nearby massive objects.  This may significantly increase our understanding of the process of formation of Saturn’s ice moons like the cloud enshrouded moon Titan and the ocean moon Enceladus. Scientists believe that the ring system of Saturn once supported the outgrowth of giant ice moons, but that the process is now largely complete.

We tend today to take this kind of imagery for granted, rather than marvel at it with the awestruck devotion that it deserves.  It all began with Draper’s first daguerreotype of Earth’s moon in 1839.