Category Archives: History of Photography

Photographs of subjects not meant to be seen

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Figure 1 - Howard Carter opens the innermost shrine of King Tutankhamen's tomb near Luxor, Egypt which one of carter's water boy found the steps down to (1922). From the Wikimediacommons, original photograph from the NY Times archive and in the public domain because of the date of publication.

Figure 1 – Howard Carter opens the innermost shrine of King Tutankhamen’s tomb near Luxor, Egypt (1922). From the Wikimediacommons, original photograph from the NY Times archive and in the public domain because of the date of publication.

It was announced this past Monday,  by Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, that mummies of approximately fifty ancient Egyptians were discovered and uncovered in a massive tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings.  Among these embalmed remains were princesses, princes, and well-preserved infants from the time of the Pharaohs and these were believed to be relatives of 18th dynasty Kings Thutmose lV and Amenhotep lll, who ruled in the 14th century BC.

As is usually the case, the Tomb had been raided both in ancient times and as recently as the 19th century by grave robbers in search of treasure.  As a result the scene is one of chaos, yet still extremely significant archaeologically. Images of this chaos are both thought provoking and reminiscent of images from almost a hundred years ago showing the excavation and unwrapping of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen by by Howard Carter and George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon.

Back in 1922 the discovery of King Tut’s tomb caused quite a stir. It and the movie that followed spawned the bogus concept of the Curse of the Mummy, and of course, an endless litany of plays on the word “mummy.”  Today there is also the interesting connection between  Earl Carnavon, Highclere Castle, and the British television series “Downton Abbey.”  Carnavon was the real thing!

A striking theme in all of this is the fundamental ambiguity that archaeology creates.  These are the tombs, the final resting places, of actual people, who once lived.  From where comes the right to excavate their graves and put their bodies on display in some museum?  Is there some magic date at which these tombs cease to be private and suddenly become open to the public.  It is a strange dichotomy between the pursuit of knowledge of the sacred and overt violation and sacrilege.

At a further level, the photographs are truly fascinating and hold their own particular ambiguity.  These tombs were never meant to see the light of day or even of artificial light.  They were passed on to the realm of the dead, indeed they became of that realm, and their illumination was never meant to be, we were not meant to see them.  And yet here we do see them, here we do photograph them.  These are truly photographs that were not meant to be taken of subjects not meant to be seen.

Polar extremes

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Figure 1 - The last formal photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken on February 5, 1865 by Alexander Gardner. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The last formal photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken on February 5, 1865 by Alexander Gardner. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Today is April 15th.  Yesterday I posted two images taken on April 14th – the second was on April 14t, 1865. This is a black day in American history because on April 15, 1865 – a day after the second image President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth of the then famous Booth family of actors. He died at 7.22 on the morning of April 15, 1865.

So my pictures of today were both taken by Alexander Gardener, one of the great Civil War photographers, and a rival of Mathew Brady.  Figure 1 shows Gardner’s “Last formal picture of Abraham Lincoln” and was taken on February 5, 1865.  Figure to is Gardner’s portrait of the famous (now infamous) actor John Wilkes Booth taken on an unknown date also in 1865.

The two images in a sense represent polar extremes – extremes of political thought certainly.  The camera in a way fails us.  It does not allow us to really see, and only to speculate in retrospect with knowledge of who the sitters were, into the tormented souls of these two men – Lincoln tormented by the heavy responsibility for so man deaths and Booth tormented by the lost cause of his beloved South.

Lincoln, as we know, had a premonition of his own death.  It was as if his worldly task was to save the Union and with that accomplished the fates discarded him.

Figure 2 - John Wilkes Booth Figure 1 - The last formal photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1865 by Alexander Gardner. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – John Wilkes Booth Figure 1 – The last formal photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1865 by Alexander Gardner. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

“About 10 days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for
important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed
when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream.
There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued
sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed
and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same
pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to
room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of
distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every
object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were
grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What
could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a
state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived
at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque,  on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered,
others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded
of one of the soldiers, ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed
by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which
woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was
only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.[12]

A difference of four years

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Figure 1 - The raising of the Confederate flag over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861. From the LOC and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The raising of the Confederate flag over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861. From the LOC and in the public domain.

Today is April 14th.  Today and tomorrow I’d like to talk about images that represent polar extremes.  Todays are a pair separated in time by four years.  The years are 1861 and 1865.  Today I’m posting two pictures from the United States Library of Congress: one taken on April 14, 1861 and the other taken on April 14, 1865.  On April 14, 1861 after the bombardment by confederate forces of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and its subsequent evacuation by Major Robert Anderson and his Union troops, the Confederates raised their flag over the fort (Figure 1).  On April 14, 1865, Brigadier General Anderson returned to Fort Sumter for the raising of Old Glory over the fort.  Also present on that day was Harriet Beecher Stowe (Figure 2).

The contrast or similarity of these two historic images speaks to the symbolism of flags and to the aspiration of men and women with conflicting ideas.  History is ultimately a cauldron, and war its most unpredictable brew.  Wars like the American Civil War are so terrible that you would think that we would do everything possible to avoid them.  Yet in our imperfections we tumble irrevocably towards them.  This particular war, really the second phase of the American Revolution, was truly born of unresolved conflicts of the eighteenth century. Ultimately, we are driven forward by the ideas of the times and these images can only in a very small way give us a glimpse what was in the minds of Americans during those years.

Figure 2- The raising of Old Glory over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Figure 2- The raising of Old Glory over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Extinct jobs and lost professions

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Yesterday, I found a thought-provoking photo series on MSN showing professions that no longer exist. They call it “Extinct Jobs.” When I was in high school, my father had a colleague who liked to photograph scenes in New York City that were likely to soon vanish.  It is a worthwhile endeavor, and this is an example of such work, albeit not by a single person.  With regards to our own times it is truly amazing how fast things have changed.  I suspect that we would not have predicted witnessing such rapid technological and indeed, sociological change in our lifetimes.

As for this series there are a number that catch my eye and mind in particular.  We have, of course, the telephone operator.  Try to reach a living person today.  But there are quainter(?) lost professions. In this context, I think that quainter means more antiquated and beyond the common memory.  So how about the “Knocker-up” of 1920’s London.  No it doesn’t mean that.  The knocker up was a man whose job it was to carry a long stick and knock on the windows of people who had to get up early.  He was a human alarm clock. Then there is the “rat catcher,” whose job it was to catch and kill rats in English train stations.  The image was taken on November 7, 1939.  But the image that seems most distant and raises the hairs on the back of my neck is the “London gas-lamp lighter.”  The image is from 1935.  But what it evokes, in the cobwebs of my mind, is almost exactly exactly a century old (August 3, 1914).  On the eve of World War I, Sir Edward Grey, British foreign secretary, is said to have remarked that “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”  There is some controversy as to whether Sir Grey actually said this.  However, both this series of photographs and those words emphasize a profound truth: that the events of human history can offer up profound change.

Jumpin’ with meteors

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First, we had “Dancing with Wolves.” Then there was “Swimming with sharks.”  And now the latest “Jumpin’ with meteors.” Oh BTW for you shark fans, “Sharknado II” is scheduled to be released in July.  But I digress – could not resist this story.  It seems that two years ago Norweigian sky diver, Anders Helstrup, went jumping in, or above, Hedmark, Norway and was almost hit by a meteor while parachuting and the best part is that he caught it all with his helmet cameras.    So we get both this cool still frame, with the meteor caught in multiple positions on its path and even a great video of the whole event. The meteor was in what is referred to as its “dark flight” when it has slowed and cooled down sufficiently not to be glowing. It is estimated that the meteor was a few meters from Helstrup and weighed about 5 Kg. Technically it doesn’t become a meteorite until it hits the ground.  Hitting a sky diver apparently does not count!

This, needless-to-say, kind of begs the question why Helstrup has waited two years before releasing the images.  The answer is that they were trying to keep it all hush hush while they searched, apparently unsuccessfully so far for the meteorite. Rocks falling from the sky?  The odds against this are, well, astronomical. And that’s lucky for Helstrup who probably would have been cut in half by the encounter if it had occurred.

 

Vivian Maier revisted

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Last July, I posted about the discovery of an unknown photographer, Vivian Maier, and the website that now posthumously displays her work. Maier was a nanny and amateur street photographer, who chronicled New York City and Chicago in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Maier died in a nursing home in 2009, on the verge, as it were, of being d”discovered.”  John Maloof bought a box of her negatives at a Chicago auction in 2007 for about $400.  A Google search revealed nothing about Maier.  But never-the-less he was drawn to the images. In 2009 he scanned some of the images and put them up on Flickr.  He had about 30 to 40,000 of her negatives.  Many of these were marvelously and cleverly constructed selfies in a mirror. Mr Maloof established a website of her work.  Now there is a just released documentary entitled “Finding Vivian Maier,” and we will be able to explore further the meaning of her work.

Ms. Maier had a wonderful vision and talent.  But she did not pursue photography as a profession, only as a pastime or, better said, as an artistic expression and outlet.  In a poignant way her story is the story of many of the readers of this blog and many of the members of social media photography SIGs.  You just have to look and you find some very serious talent out there.  It is truly an expression of the democracy that modern photography represents – and also of the freedom that digital photography offers in enabling production of a quality image so easily.  I have found that everyone has their own special and unique photographic vision.  It is like a fingerprint or even DNA.

Where does true artistic vision lie?  In Ms. Maier’s case you see something else that we have spoken of so often, and this is the way that photography transcends time and takes you back to now long lost places and days.  As someone who grew up in New York City in the 50’s and 60’s, I can relate ever so personally to Ms. Maier’s images – and I love them for it.  The people are there, captured in silver and electron states.  But they are merely specters.  The actual subjects have moved on inexorably through time.  And in saving Vivian Maier’s life’s work, John Maloof has truly given us a great gift.  It is the gift of vision.

 

 

 

Glenn McDuffie dies at 86

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One of the truly iconic photographs of the world war two era is Alfred Eisenstadt’s Iconic image of a sailor kissing a nurse on VJ Day – the end of the war.  While Eisenstadt, who died in 1995, never said who the sailor was, navy veteran Glenn McDuffie long claimed that he was the “kissing sailor.”  While others also shared this claim, McDuffie’s story was backed up by a forensic scientist, who said that McDuffie’s face matched the bone structure of the sailor in the picture. 

McDuffie was changing trains in New York City, when he heard that the war was over and that his brother would be released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. “I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” McDuffie told the Associated Press years later. “And then I saw that nurse,” he said. “She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face … I just went right to her and kissed her. “We never spoke a word,” he said. “Afterward, I just went on the subway across the street and went to Brooklyn.”

Setting the record straight on selfies

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Figure 1 - The world's first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – The world’s first selfie, a daguerreotype by taken by Robert Cornellius in 1839. In the Library of Congress, from the Wikipedia, and and in the public domain.

Yesterday the TV networks and internet were all above about former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell’s sixty year old selfie.  Did Colin Powell invent the selfie as kinda implied by some new media. Well not so much!  Significantly, Powell does not claim to have invented the selfie, anymore than Vice President Al Gore ever said that he invented the internet.  Still it’s worth setting the record straight. Readers of this blog are already aware that throughout the history of photography this mirror type selfie has been a common trick – witness our discussion of Vivian Maier, whose self-portraits were contemporary with Sec. Powell’s. Hers were also taken in the mirror.

Figure 1 - 1865 "rotating" self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – 1865 “rotating” self portrait by Nadar, from the Wikipedia, in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in the public domain because of its age.

What is widely considered to be the world’s first photographic selfie, remember that the self-portrait has been a time honored form in portraiture, was a daguerreotype was taken in November or December of 1839 by Robert Cornelius.  This is shown in Figure 1.  Perhaps, more interesting is Figure 2, which shows an animation of the 1865 “revolving” self-portrait by the great nineteenth century French photographer Nadar, of balloon over the French village of Petit-Becetre fame..

It’s not true that no idea is original it’s just that we are off here by 120 years!

No cats were hurt in the production of this paradox

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Figure 1 - Falling cat landing on its feet. Multi exposure by 1894. Image from the Wikipedia and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Falling cat landing on its feet. Multi exposure by Etienn-Jules Marey, 1894. Image from the Wikipedia and in the public domain because of its age.

An ailurophile and reader expressed concern about Schrodinger’s Cat in the Box Paradox and whether any cats had been hurt trying it.  Well, to my knowledge it is strictly a thought or Gedankenexperiment and has never been explicitly tried. No physicist would attempt it, as the outcome is painfully certain, that being the whole point of the paradox.

Also evidence suggests that many scientists are true cat lovers and such a thing would be most abhorrent to them.  Indeed, Schrödinger in his description of the paradox expresses anquish at the thought of hurting  a cat.  The other player in the conversation that evolved into the cat in the box paradox was physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein loved all animals but was especially fond of cats.  His male cat “Tiger” would get depressed on rainy days. Einstein would talk to Tiger when it rained in an attempt to sooth the feline breast.  Einstein is famous for remarking that, “A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive. A tomcat has it so easy, he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days.”  Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics, was also a great cat lover and is credited with the invention of the cat door flap.

My favorite among scientist cat lovers however, was Sir Thomas Huxley.  His son relates in his biography of his father how if he found a cat asleep on his favorite chair, he would ask one of his children to move it.  In a passionate letter to his daughter, Huxley defends a scratchy kitten who his wife has banned from the drawing room and beseeches his youngest daughter Ethel to intercede with mama:

“I wish you would write seriously to M. She is not behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few more lively and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away at something that M says cost 13s. 6d. a yard, and reduced more or less of it to combings.M therefore excludes him from the diningroom, and from all those opportunities of higher education which he would naturally have in my house.I have argued that it is as immoral to place 13s. 6d. a yardnesses within reach of kittens as to hang bracelets and diamond rings in the front garden. But in vain. Oliver is banished, and the protector (not Oliver) is sat upon. In truth and justice aid your Pa.”

So I believe that we can safely say that no cats were harmed in the production of the Schrödinger’s  Cat Paradox.

Cats did, needless-to-say, figure vigorously in the resolution of another nineteen century conundrum – namely whether and how a cat manages to land on his feet when dropped upside down. STOP!!! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!! NOT ALL CATS ARE EQUALLY AGILE.  The problem was solved by with the multiexposure photograph from 1894 by Étienne-Jules Marey shown in Figure 1 and also by his 1890 video.  Actually Markey’s work only showed the mechanics of the fall. A full explanation had to wait until the late 1960’s.  Marey was a contemporary of Muybridge and a pioneer in understanding and photographing human and animal motion.

The key to the cat’s dilemma, (actually it is not a dilemma for the cat, who because of her righting reflex knows just what she needs to do)see Figure 2, is that when held upside down she has no angular momentum, meaning that she is not rotating.  Angular momentum must be conserved.  So it must remain zero.  But the cat needs to turn or  she will crash on his back.

The cat accomplishes this by cleverly rotating the two halves of its body in opposite directions, thus maintaining zero angular momentum.  I have looked at a number of sites on the web where the rotating cat problem is explained.  The best is this one and I cannot do better myself.  Let me just give a little background. Stand and try to twist your torso, you will notice that your legs will push against the ground and will try to twist your lower body in the opposite direction. If you are in free fall there is nothing to push off of.  You can twist your torso in one direction but only if you twist your lower body in the opposite direction. Angular momentum stays as zero, but it doesn’t help at all as you twist like a bread tie.  That is until you remember the ice skater who brings her arms in to rotate faster.  Watch the video. The cat pulls in her front paws to speed the turning of her torso while at the same time extends her rear paws to slow the counter rotation of her lower body. She then reverses the process. It’s really cool physics and wonderfully revealed to the world by stop action photography.