Mahatma Gandhi and the spinning wheel

Figure 1 – Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel in the late 1920’s. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States.

I thought that I would follow-up on yesterday’s blog about spinning and weaving with the iconic image (Figure 1) of Mahatma Gandhi at his spinning wheel. It was, as we discussed, a matter of protest, a matter of breaking the colonial-mercantile system, where the colony produces a raw product like cotton, exports it to the “mother country,” only to re-import it at a high mark-up as cloth. Political meaning aside, and I think a symbolic point not lost on Gandhi, is the sense that he is reweaving, redefining the thread of history.  It is a long thread that required great patience to spin. The photograph of Figure 1 was taken in the late 1920’s and Indian Independence not achieved for another twenty years.

The telephone as germ vector

Figure 1 – Alexander Graham Bell in New York City calling Chicago in 1882. From the Wikipedia, originally from the US LOC and in the public domain because of its age.

I received an advertisement/invitation from my alma mater the other day, suggesting that I might want to join a tour of Eastern Europe. There, I was promised, I could sit once more in a telephone booth.  This was touted as the ultimate retro experiment. But it got me wondering why the payphone was something worth reliving. When I grew up these were everywhere around NYC and most of them didn’t work. Worse, most of them first took your money and then didn’t work. But the most unappealing aspect of the pay phone or telephone booth was the stench of tobacco, body odor, and the proliferation of germs. It was the key target of enterprising young reporters investigative reports, who had their sights on the legacy of Nellie Bly and who would have them swabbed and the swabs cultured to reveal a plethora of bacterial species, many only to be found, well how shall I put this, in your nether regions. Same is true of support bars and straps in subway trains. It is best to assume a self-protective disposition.

But the point that I am making is a simple one. There’s a reason that they call it progress. And this is a significant one. Cellphones are a lot cleaner than payphones ever were. It’s a matter of preserving the species. 

So I went in search of a decent copyright-free payphone image, and this to no avail. There were of course all sorts of tardis images for “Dr. Who” aficionados. There were also a few images of 1940’s and 1950’s  pinup-girls sitting in phone booths and a very famous portrait of the Beetles. . But not what I was looking for. So I have chosen instead to go with the image of Figure 1, which shows Alexander Graham Bell himself making the first call from NYC to Chicago in 1881.  There is also I pretty cool recording of Bell experimenting with the telephone from 1885.  As we have discuss in the past everyone one of these communications advances: the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, represented in its own right an internet. The Lily Tomlin character of the condescending telephone operator, Ernestine, with her plug in network comes to mind as the poster child for the brave new world of internets. “Is this the party with whom I am speaking?

So I am thinking that I should pay a bit more attention to payphones and antique phones as I encounter them. Evern the “princess phone,” once such a strylistic advance is now an antique. Perhaps a few retrospective and nostalgic photographs are in order, even if they werre disgusting or is it “grody to the max?

Lennart Nilsson (1922-2017)

This week the photography world mourns the passing of Lennart Nilsson at 94. Nilsson was a Swedish photographer, who used micro-cameras, endoscopic fiberscopes, electron microscopes, and specially designed lenses to photograph the development of the human embryo from fertilization through maturation. His images both still and video were literally breathtaking and left the technical-minded wondering just how did he do that.

Mr. Nilsson said of himself on his website, “I’m just a photographer who happened to be fascinated with mankind.” He was famous both for his book that took us into the terrain of the human body, as if we were exploring the moon – “Behold Man: A Photographic Journey of Discovery Inside the Body,” in collaboration with pathologist Jan Lindberg, and for his landmark book on human development, “A Child is Born.”

With Nilsson’s passing we lose a pioneer and explorer, who truly pushed aside the limits of photography and of human understanding.

What a wonderful world

Figure 1 - First full disk image from the NASA NOAA Goes-16 geosynchronous satellite.

Figure 1 – First full disk image from the NASA NOAA Goes-16 geosynchronous satellite. Credit NASA and NOAA.

NASA and NOAA have released the first images from the NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite and these are glorious. GOES-16 is the first satellite in NOAA’s fleet of next-generation of geostationary satellites taken from 22,300 miles above the Earth’s surface. Its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument can capture composite color full-disk visible image of the Western Hemisphere. An example is shown in Figure 1. It can provide such an image every fifteen minutes and it can zoom in on hurricanes or other trouble spots. This is an amazing weather satellite. But for now we can just look at Figure 1 in amazement.

“I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

 

George David Weiss and Robert Thiele and, of course Mr. Louis Armstrong

In defense of photography

Figure 1 - Thadeus Lowe ascending in the Intrepid to observe the battle of Fair Oaks (VA), May 31, 1862. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Thadeus Lowe ascending in the Intrepid to observe the Battle of Fair Oaks (VA), May 31, 1862. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

It was a surreal weekend here in the United States as White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer and the White House declaring the fact that there is no way to accurately estimate crowds from photographs, and the fact that the crowds at the Trump Inauguration were the biggest ever.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”

As he stormed out, one reporter did ask how he knew this, if there was no way to measure it? 

But this fact/alternative fact universe is not my subject here. What I am here concerned about is that the validity of photography or more accurately of photometry has been threatened. Photography, already under threat because of the incipient demise of film, has been challenged! Someone must come to its defense.

So can you estimate crowd size from photographs? The answer is yes, absolutely, of course you can. Indeed, we have been using such aerial reconnaissance since the American Civil war to estimate troop concentrations. And the key point, or the key word here, is estimate.  Any such estimation is just that an estimate. It offers a level of uncertainty. The more controlled the measurement the more certain of the number you are. Meaning equivalent camera position … In the olden days, we scientists used to do numerical integration by taking pictures and then weighing the filled parts and the unfilled parts. There is nothing genius there. To get to an absolute number, not just which is bigger [now termed “more bigly”], you need to perform some kind of calibration, you know like have a bunch of people stand on a lawn. And with such crowd estimation the information can be “backed up” with, for instance, subway ridership.

And back to the “which is bigger” question, I refer you to the New York Times [now referred to as the Evil Empire].  I mean, people, it’s obvious. You can trust both the photograph and your eyes. And more importantly, in the present case particularly, who really cares? It’s not important! It’s like worrying about the size of someone’s hands or other body parts.

Where the subject gets really interesting is when you ask the arguably more interesting question whether there is a better way. And the answer to that is, probably yes. It takes us, once again, into the world of the singularity. A recent scientific paper in the Open Journal of the Royal Society demonstrates that crowd size can be estimated pretty accurately by monitoring cell phone activity. While it may introduce an economic bias towards people with smart phones, it is a more accurate approach than simple photometry. And, needless-to-say, the best way to achieve an accurate estimate is to use multiple techniques simultaneously. If your goal is to get an accurate measurement it can be done. Somehow, I suspect that accuracy is not the issue here. No matter how accurate, you can always deny it and weave (Oh no! I’m going to say it.) an alternative truth.*

It strikes me that we have a curious tautology here. An “alternative truth” is, in fact, a lie. But an “alternative lie” is still a lie.

Remembering Inez Milholland

Figure 1 -Inez Milholland leadin the women's march on Washington ahead of Woodrow Wilsons inauguration. From the LOC and in the public domain because of its age,

Figure 1 -Inez Milholland leading the women’s march on Washington ahead of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. From the US LOC and in the public domain because of its age,

Today would be a good day to contemplate Figure1 and to remember Inez Milholland. Milholland was a leader of the American Suffrage movement. On March 3, 1913, Milholland donned white kid boots and a white cape, climbed onto a white horse and led the then largest women’s march in American history, approximately 5,000 people. This rally helped win passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the vote. Yesterday’s prejudices are always condemned. The prejudices of today, we do not recognize as prejudices. So this image isn’t really quaint and amusing but profoundly meaningful.

Do I need to say that onlookers, including the police, hurled insults and threats at the marchers, tripping the women as they marched? In the end, over a hundred women were hospitalized. And what of President-elect Woodrow Wilson? He was to be inaugurated the next day and took side streets to avoid the event.

As for the photograph, there can be no doubt of Ms. Milholland’s intent. She was liberty leading the charge on a white charger; so full of classical meaning and symbolism. She was visually recalling the words of Abraham Lincoln.

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”

Favorite Photograph 2016 #10, “Mahmoud Rslan/AFP, “Rescued Syrian Child, 2016”

Last year, when we reached this culminating point in my favorite photographs list, I found that I could not escape the immediate and haunting images of Syrian refugees and in particular of  Nilufer Demir Aylan’s Story showing a police officer cradling the lifeless body of the drowned child.  When I first saw that picture everyone said that it would prove to be a “game changer.” I doubted it at the time and have not been proven wrong.

So now twelve months later we find ourselves on “that sad height.” We are haunted once again, this time by a photograph taken by Mahmoud Rslan of the AFP of a dazed and bloodied Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh, who had just been  rescued from a destroyed building in Aleppo after an air strike. Again the call for outrage and inaction. This must be my “Favorite Photograph # 10 for 2016.” Rslan has captured all the tragedy and despair of the moment, ever so masterfully.Funny to call it “favorite,” since it will haunt me for a very long time. Little Omran reminds me ever so much of the two children revealed beneath the Robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present in Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.” Their names we are told are “Ignorance and Want.”

I do not know the answer to the problems which cause such tragedies or the solution to global impotence. I only know that there will be more such photographs. The New Year will usher in its own iconic photographs of misery. I only know that the world could benefit from more empathy and acts of human kindness.

 

 

 

 

Favorite Photographs 2016 #9, NASA, “John Glenn on Friendship Seven in Orbit, 1962”

Figure 1 - John Glenn in orbit on the Friendship 7 Feb. 20, 1962. photographed automatic sequence motion picture camera. NASA Public domain. during

Figure 1 – John Glenn in orbit on the Friendship 7 Feb. 20, 1962. photographed automatic sequence motion picture camera. NASA Public domain.

I was searching through the NASA photograph archives looking for a picture that would commemorate John Glenn’s Friendship 7 flight on Feb. 20, 1962. What struck me the most was how many pictures there were of people. Yes there were planets and galaxies, but so many people. While NASA gives us some of the most stunningly profound images of space it all ultimately comes back to people. NASA and the exploration of space are human endeavors.

As a result it really all comes back to the image of Figure 1. I remember the thrill when these images were first released – fifty five years ago. Man in space. Man in orbit. Man on the moon. This is human destiny. Men and women shall move forward in this realm of exploration that ultimately dwarfs and, indeed, eclipses all other exploration in the history of the human race.

And it all evolved photographically. Black and white image and videos. Color images and videos. Building a compact lightweight video camera in those days wasn’t so easy. Certainly thye space race was a motivating factor in these innovations. But with the moon landing we were effectively there, as if the Goddess Selene had sent out her personal camerawoman to photograph the event.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

Favorite Photographs 2016 #8, Ansel Adams, “Mount Williamson, The Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1945”

I think that it is important to every once in a while, perhaps more often than not, to spend some time studying the photographs of Ansel Adams. So for Favorite Photograph 2016 #8 I have chosen Adams’ “Mount Williamson, The Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1945.” This image is exemplary in what it teaches us about the superfluity of color, about the possibilities of  tonal range and depth of field. It is truly a masterpiece, and I cannot tell you how often I have stood before it in awe at a gallery or exhibition. It makes you want to rush back out with your camera to try again to equal the master.

And there is one other point about it that has always struck me and that is the perspective. You have this sensation that you want to bend down and see things from a bit lower. Adams created this sensation with his camera position and along with the depth of field it lends a sense of dynamism and three-dimensionality to the image. A contributing factor to this sense of motion is the way in which the human eye perceives. We construct the whole in our minds but our eye perceives in a series of points of concentration, which in this case involves details of the foreground, midground, and background. That is why the depth of field is so important in making this image work. If you were to fuzz out one element it would have the effect of stabilizing the image in your eye. But as is, the whole effect is like being there.