Category Archives: Reviews and Critiques

A hideous cocoon

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Hmm!  It was another hideous week, and there are lots of very dark thoughts.  I came upon an unattributed picture yesterday from Reuters on the BBC that pretty much sums it all up.  It shows two men intertwined and sleeping on a kind of disgusting bridge over a railroad station in Yangon (Rangoon) Myanmar.  They are covered in mosquito netting.  The disconcerting element for me, other than the desperateness of their lives, which is a little made up story in your mind, is the red floral pattern in the netting, which make the sheet look bloodied.

A year ago I posted about E. E. McCollum’s incredible “Cocoon Series.”  They are such gorgeous images, woven to tell a tale of rebirth, emergence, and resurrection.  In the Myanmar image we have the opposite effect where netting tells a tale of desperation, crucifixion, and death.  It is a very powerful image to my eye.

The sacred and the profane

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I was attracted this morning to an intriguing photograph by Arno Burgi for the EPA showing a workman in Dresden where the “Semper Gallery” is undergoing restoration.  The construction worker in hard hat enters a door that seems to lead him through a poster of Raphael’s (1463-1520) painting “The Sistine Madonna.”

Really wonderful, and the painting works on several levels.  First, there is the sense of incongruity, of “the sacred and the profane.”  But really it is more than that.  The

Figure 1 - Ra[hael's "Sistine Madonna," from the Wikimedia Commons, The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.

Figure 1 – Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna,” from the Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by the  Yorck Project and distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH and in the public domain because the painting is more than 100 yrs old..

man walks through a door.  It is symbolic of liminal passage, the entrance to the cathedral, the ascent from the profane to the sacred.  The man seems just a bit hesitant, the virgin just a bit worried (as has often been said of this work by Raphael), and finally you find yourself wondering exactly what is behind the door.  And never once do you, or, at least, do I think that the man is exiting rather than entering. Hmm!  That’s a lot.  That’s pretty subliminal.

If you know the painting you will recognize that there is a wonderful; element not shown in the poster or the photograph.  This is the two cherubs at the bottom of the painting.    It is said that they are looking up at the Virgin and child, and at Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara, also not shown, or perhaps the cherubs are rolling their eyes at my over interpretation. One point ‘though, it has been said that Raphael’s painting is such a masterpiece that upon first seeing it the artist Antonio Da Correggio (1489-1534) was driven to tears and exclaimed, “And I also, I am a painter!”

Sharpness isn’t everything

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I was doing some bird photography yesterday and obsessing, I do a lot of that, over image sharpness.  I need to remind myself that sharpness isn’t everything, witness the image of the chamber maid by Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, Montmartre, ca. 1906, which we have previously discussed. And in looking through the usual candidates for great pictures of the week, I came across this amazing shot by Fully Handoko for EPA showing Indonesian villagers atop the crater of Mount Bromo in Probolinggo, Indonesia on August 12th.  These Tengger Hindus were celebrating the Kasodo ceremony, an expression of gratitude to the gods for a good harvest.

Fogginess, absolute fogginess! The people are reduced to mere silhouettes in the darkness.  For some reason, I am particularly drawn to the man on the horse.  You could crop him out and make a wonderful picture of that alone. The image seems to speak of the confusion of life on Earth and the clarity of heaven, as the pictures moves our eyes from dark murkiness to brilliant clarity, bottom to top.  Here the lack of sharpness seems to bespeak a mystic sacredness.  Remarkably, despite the fogginess and its flatness, we get an wonderful sense of the enormity of the scene. And, we seem to be in an impressionist world, where the vision isn’t quite clear until there is an explosion of light..

Usually in contemplating such a religious scene, we would comment on its timelessness – the fact that it could have been taken at any point in, perhaps, the last five hundred years.  But alas, that is not the case.  Two of the participants are taking pictures with their cell phones.

 

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.

Of Elmo and childhood memories

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Figure 1 - Automat (in New York City) by Bernice Abbott, 1936. From the Wikimediacommons, taken for the United States WPA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Automat (in New York City) by Bernice Abbott, 1936. From the Wikimediacommons, taken for the United States WPA and in the public domain.

First of all, I want to apologize for the blackout of HatiandSkoll messages over the last two days.  As best I can tell we were hacked and security systems functioned properly and shut down not the site but the emails.   Hopefully, the problems is now solved and we can get back to normal.  If you are still having problems please take a moment and let me know.

Yesterday,  was Friday and as usual on week’s end I was looking through “The Week in Photographs” in search of something both appealing and not disturbing.  There seems to be less and less “good news,” which is a pretty sad commentary on our times.  I came across this delightful image by Eduardo Munez for Reuters showing a man named Jorge, who is an immigrant from Mexico dressed as Elmo, resting in New York City’s Times Square, on July 29. I just love the “man-bag” that he is carrying. But then the “bad news”, there have been so many street performers dressed as beloved Sesame Street characters, so many demanding money from tourists, that Sesame Workshop, which owns the rights to characters, is planning on seeking an injunction against the performers.  I can see the headlines now.  “Elmo arrested, Cookie Monster incarcerated.”  Then there will be the images of crying children.  Hmm! Definitely shades of “Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street.”

Oh, and I do always respect copyrights.  They are critical to artistic expression.  It’s just the image that’s so haunting me.

Anyway, my brain started to wander back to chance encounters in my childhood.  One of the magical places that I used to go to with my father was “The Automat”  You may recall Marilyn Monroe singing in “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend:”

“A kiss may be grand
But it won’t pay the rental
On your humble flat
Or help you at the automat.”

These were cool places, where the food was behind little windows.  You made your pick, put in yours coins (do you remember coins?), and then took out your lunch  For a child, for my sister and I, it was wonderful and just so much fun.  Figure 1 is a photograph from 1936 by Bernice Abbott of a New York City automat taken for the WPA.

But then there were characters as well.  One Saturday in December my father and I sat down only to see Santa Claus getting his lunch and he was kind enough to sit down and chat with us.  What luck for me to have lunch with Santa, simply amazing.

So I do worry a bit about the Sesame Street characters on Times Square.  They may be annoying in their demand for tips.  So don’t tip them.  But they do distract us from more gruesome news and they are the stuff that childhood dreams are made of.

Meanwhile, back on Mars…

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Figure 1 - Images of the moon Phobos eclipsing the sun from Mars Rover Curiosity. From NASA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Images of the moon Phobos eclipsing the sun on August 20, 2013 from Mars Rover Curiosity. From NASA and in the public domain.

 

Here go those gorgeous robot eyes again!  Thank you to reader Howard for alerting me. During last summers imaging session,  Mars Rover Curiosity shot a stunning set of images of Mars moon Phobos eclipsing the sun.  Three of those photographs can be seen in Figure 1. And you can also watch a video of the eclipse.

So a couple of points.  Earth’s moon, aka “The Moon” and sometimes “Selene.” by rare happenstance is exactly 110 X it’s diameter from the Earth as is the sun.  This results in the remarkable eclipses, where the moon’s shadow perfectlu occludes the sun’s light and we see solar flares and the suns outer atmosphere or corona.  All very beautiful.  Phobos is irregular shaped and has a diameter of ~ 11 km, It orbits around 6000 km above Mars surface. Compare that to our moon, which orbits at 384,400 km.  As a result even though the sun is much farther away from Mars, Phobos does not manage to complete occlude the sun.  We have instead an irregular shaped rock beautifully outlined against the sun’s disk.

Before you think of Phobos as a diminutive little thing, I would remind you of the origin of the name Phobos and that of his twin brother the other moon of Mars, Deimos. These were the sons of Ares or Mars. Deimos was the god of terror.  Phobos was the god of fear. (Hence phobia).  They accompanied Mars, the god of war, into battle driving his chariot relentlessly forward.

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.

Holy cow, Batman.

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Well “Big Bang Theory” enthusiasts Comic-Con 2014 is currently running through this Sunday in San Diego.   It is Friday and, as always, I am looking for something light among “The Week in Pictures” features on the various news services and I found from the EPA this photograph of a pretty young lady named  Emily Reeve who is dressed as a 1950’s pop art housewife.  The image, of course, is meant to pay homage to the many wonderful pop art works by Roy Lichtenstein. And as I was researching this blog, I was not totally surprised to find a plethora of photographs of “pop art women” from Comic-Cons” present and past.

Comic-Con is, needless-to-say the ultimate dress up event, and I wish I were there with my camera. Perhaps the right get-up for me would be “Tintin” with camera.  Oh, BTW the cast of the “Big Bang Theory” usually puts in an appearance.  Pretty girls with dots painted on their faces and Penny, what could be better?

Happy thoughts

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This morning I found myself still enjoying last week’s “Week in Pictures” and still trying to avoid dwelling too long on the gruesome events of the day.  So I’ll stick to happy stuff!  First, I really love Nikita Dudnik of the AP’s photo of the beach goers in Novosibirsk caught in a hailstorm.  You gotta admire the photographer, who was probably also caught out in the storm. I apologize to anyone who calls Novosibirsk home, but about twenty years ago I went to a seminar by scientists from a research institute there about nasty tick-borne illnesses (the ticks are nasty, the illness deadly) and the unbelievably high level of ticks there in summer. I came out with the conclusion that this was a place on Earth only very marginally supportive of human life.  No wonder everyone is on the beach ready to be pelted with golf ball size hail. Stay out of the grass people! Yikes! Guess summer is over. 8<)

Next is Christian Hartmann of Reuters spectacularly picture of an elderly French woman cheering as the Tour de France rides by in fantastic blur before her.  This is a classical and beautiful example of using blur to create an exciting sense of motion.

Finally, take a look at Erik De Castro also of Reuter’s picture of tigers enjoying a cooling swim at a zoo in Malabon in the Phillipines.  You gotta love the big guy licking the glass. Some will try to accuse me, I know, of posting a cute cuddly animal picture. But as all cat lovers are keenly aware: cats are the most human of people.