| Newsletter for Collectors - Vol 4.3 | May 23, 2010 | | | Home • What‘s New • Photographers • Online Exhibitions
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WELCOME
Luminous-Lint is rolling along and thanks for your support and enthusiasm, Alan
NEW ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
WARNING
Some of the online-exhibitions in this Newsletter contain images that may be considered disturbing and if you are of a sensitive disposition I would advise against viewing them. You have been warned. |
Well it is Victoria Day holiday weekend here in Canada and so I‘ve been pulling together some exhibitions. Some of these have been lying around for years and not been made public. You will note a concentration on a number of themes here - medical, scientific, documentary and erotica (well nudes anyway) - it must be a morbid phase I‘m going through....
Make sure you look at the Bees of Rose-Lynn Fisher as they are just wonderful.
- Rose-Lynn Fisher: Bee When I put up the online exhibition on photomicrographs a few weeks ago Rose-Lynn Fisher contacted me with an theme for an online exhibit. She has just completed a series of scanning electron microscope images of honeybees that has been published in Bee (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Thanks to Rose-Lynn for sharing these.
The outstanding beauty of these can be seen in my favorite "Wing, 270x" (LL/36995) which appears to be an astral bridge reaching through stars - extraordinary.
A few days ago I was out assisting a beekeeper friend of mine here in Nova Scotia and got stung so I have a certain affinity with these miniature wonders - Enjoy.
- Bill Lee: Imaginary Worlds This series by Bill Lee, a collector of 19th century photography and a painter, uses carte de visites and cabinet cards as a starting point for photocollages. Many thanks to Bill for sharing his work.
From time to time the Bassenge auction house in Berlin has works by the Czech graphic designer Bohumil Stepán (1913-1985) who did satirical photo collages using carte de visites in the 1960s - some of his work was published in the book Bohumil Stepán Familienalbum. Collagen (Munich, 1971) which I‘ve never seen. This is a form of art that I‘ve done as well and I‘d be interested in hearing from others who work in a similar way or have a scan of the book cover by Bohumil Stepán - alan@luminous-lint.com.
- Jean-Philippe Charbonier: The Biter Bit Jean-Philippe Charbonier, a French photojournalist and documentary photographer, took photographs of other photographers as he travelled the globe on assignment. This series has never been published and was produced back in 1976 as a private portfolio. I‘d like to thank Agathe Gaillard of the Agathe Gaillard Gallery in Paris for her permission to include this series on Luminous-Lint and Gery Cichowlas who has been an enthusiastic supporter and excellent dinner companion.
- Khaled Hasan: Living Stone - A community losing its Life In the last few years Khaled Hasan has won a pile of well-deserved awards for his documentary work and he has been kind enough to share his series on how the stone workers of Jaflong in Bangladesh are destroying the environment.
"Once upon a time there was a blue River that flowed in Jaflong, but now it is going to lose its natural beauty. Uncontrolled stone-crushing threatens the local people‘s health." – Probal Das, a stone worker.
The words and captions are those of Khaled and the stone workers.
- Milton Rogovin: Lower West Side Milton Rogovin will be 100 this year. In speaking with Mark Rogovin about his father‘s birthday I suggested that we should put up an online exhibition that did not show the well known images that are already published in monographs and exhibition catalogues but rather prints from Milton‘s work from the 1970s that have never been shown. Mark enthusiastically agreed and this online exhibition is the result of going back through photographs taken on the Lower West Side.
I‘m in the priviledged position of looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs every day and, although portraiture is the commonest genres, humanity is represented surprisingly rarely. These photographs have everything to do with a deep respect for the people shown as valued and unique individuals.
You can see a lot of photographs before humanity shines through.
Look into the eyes of the people in these photographs and you are making direct one-on-one contact with them through the lens of Milton Rogovin.
- Death To grasp the relationship between photography and death a poem from Root‘s Daguerrean Gallery in New York in 1853 sums it up in a way that is a little difficult for our more cynical times.
Root‘s Daguerrean Gallery.— He succeeds admirably in taking the likenesses of children. And what mother would not love to preserve the infant features of her children to look upon in after years, especially should they be taken away by death. We have rarely seen a more beautiful illustration of this than in the following:
Sweet child, that angel face must fade,
As years shall come and go.
For time doth ever mar the fair
And bright of all below.
But thy fond mother‘s jealous care
Hath robbed the yawning tomb,
And by the might of art, hath fixed
For e‘er thy youthful bloom.
Within her sacred shrine there hangs
In all its infant grace,
On Root‘s unequaled, perfect plate,
Her darling‘s glorious face.
Then, mother of the blooming child,
Trust not the fleeting hours,
But, as this mother did by hers,
Do thou at once by yours.
Then, should the sudden dart of death
Your loved one call away,
You‘d bless the hint by which you had
The picture done to day,
By Root, 363 Broadway.
The Christian Parlor Magazine, Volume 10, 1853, p.379.
This online exhibition is a lesson in the changing societal responses to death. In the 19th century it was socially acceptable and indeed expected that death-bed photographs would be taken as memento mori. Here we have family photographs along with those from the criminal and military worlds.
This online exhibition contains images that may be considered disturbing and if you are of a sensitive disposition I would advise against viewing it. You have been warned.
- Scientific: Medical This exhibitions includes many classic medical photographs.
This online exhibition contains images that may be considered disturbing and if you are of a sensitive disposition I would advise against viewing it. You have been warned.
- Scientific: Medical - Mental health and hypnosis 9. Clause (E.) Register to be kept.
And be it Enacted, That in every licensed Madhouse there shall be regularly kept a book, to be intituled, "Madhouse Register," in which shall be distinctly set forth all the particulars relating to every furious or fatuous person or lunatic, who shall be received or detained in such Madhouse enumerated in the Schedule hereunto annexed.
"A Bill To alter and amend certain Acts regulating Madhouses in Scotland, and to provide for the Custody of dangerous Lunatics" (30 March 1841. - 4 Vict.), Parliamentary Papers, Great Britain
This online exhibition contains images that may be considered disturbing and if you are of a sensitive disposition I would advise against viewing it. You have been warned.
- Scientific: X-rays In November 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen at the University of Würzburg discovered and named X-rays using the mathematical designation for an unknown value. A couple of weeks later he took a picture of the hand of his wife complete with her wedding ring. On seeing her ghostly skeleton in the image she exclaimed...
"I have seen my death!"
- Scientific: Medical - Guillaume-Amant Duchenne de Boulogne By using electrical charges directly on the face to stimulate nerves and muscles Guillaume-Amant Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875) made considerable advances into neurophysiology. To photograph his results he collaborated with Adrien Alban Tournachon (1825-1903) the younger brother of the Parisian Nadar.
Guillaume-Amant Duchenne de Boulogne Mécanisme de la Physionomie humaine ou Analyse Électro-Physiologique de l‘Expression des Passions
(Paris: Libraire J.B. Bailličre et fils, 1876)
- Scientific: Movement The study of movement through a sequence of successive still photographs was the foundation of cinema. It is a strange coincidence that two of the photographers whose research on the movement of animals and humans were born and died in the same years - Étienne Jules Marey ( 1830-1904) in France and Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) in the USA. Their innovations of multiple cameras, multiple images on single plates and improved shutters had enormous implications for physiology, medicine, sports and art where animal movement could now be shown with scientific accuracy for the first time. There were other scientists who should not be overlooked Ottomar Anschütz (1846-1907), Arthur Clive Banfield (11875-1965), Prof. A.M. Worthington, Ernst Mach, the Bragaglia brothers in Italy, the researchers into efficient workflows Frank B. and Lillian Gilbreth and Harold E. Edgerton (1903-1990) whose mastery of the stroboscopic flash captured multiple moments on a single frame.
Although the majority of the photographs in this exhibition created were for scientific purposes the influence they had on the art world was enormous. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) saw the implications early on and without their inspirational images Marcel Duchamp‘s oil painting Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) could not have been created. That work itself led to Eliot Eliofson‘s wonderful photograph for Life Magazine (1952) of Duchamp descending a staircase.
- Scientific: Photomicroscopy I‘m seeking examples of artworks, collages, poems and messages on microscope slides from the middle of the 19th century. I‘d also be interested in scans of any lists of microscope slides showing these items or adverts for them. If you know where there is a copy of the portrait of Charles Dickens by M. Amadio of Throgmorton Street "no larger than a pin‘s point" you are my kind of person - alan@luminous-lint.com.
If you have not seen examples of these before take a look at A collection of John Benjamin Dancer microphotographs from the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge. Thanks to Prof. Brian Stevenson for his assistance with the Frederick Henry Evans and Alfred Reeves photomicrographs. Any collectors with John Benjamin Draper examples?
- 19th Century Photographic Studios: Photographic vans, wagons and cars Whoops - I forgot to mention that this online exhibition went up last week and contains a reference set of illustrations of Photographic Vans, Wagons and Cars - please select your own terminology. I‘m looking for further examples and original source materials to accompany this exhibition.
A sad event indeed from 1861 ...
"Poisoning by Cyanide of Potassium.—An inquest has been held at the Red Cow, Chapel Street, Stratford, on Henry Giblett, aged two years and six months. The deceased accompanied some other persons into a photographic van in Bridge Road, Stratford, and as they were having their portraits taken he suddenly became alarmingly ill, and by the time Mr. Kennedy, the surgeon, arrived, had expired from the effects of a quantity of cyanide of potassium, which it is supposed he swallowed out of a phial which was in a cupboard. The jury found an open verdict, "That the child died from the effects of the poison, but how administered there was no evidence to show."
Pharmaeutical Journal: A Weekly Record of Pharmacy and Allied Studies, Second Series, Vol.III, No.VI, December 2nd, 1861, p.342.
Thanks to Bill Lee for sending through the C.R. Savage photographs and to Laddy Kite for all his examples.
- Erotica: Men - a reference set This online exhibition provides a reference set of photographs showing how men have been photographed through the history of photography.
This exhibition contains material that some people might find offensive so please do NOT enter this exhibition if you are under 18 or you are likely to be offended.
- Erotica: Women - a reference set This online exhibition provides a reference set of photographs showing how women have been photographed through the history of photography.
This exhibition contains material that some people might find offensive so please do NOT enter this exhibition if you are under 18 or you are likely to be offended.
I‘m seeking examples for future online exhibitions:
- 20th century studio backgrounds from around the world. If you have taken a photograph of an itinerant photographer at a religous festival or market working with a background/backdrop anywhere in the world I‘d like to hear about it.
- Nineteenth century Scientific expeditions. We know about the US ones but what about the Dutch, Italian, Russian, French or Austro-Hungarian ones? There must have been a great many nineteenth century expeditions of exploration and discovery that took photographs. I will be happy to share any lists that are compiled along the way.
- Nineteenth century archaeology. Lots of interesting examples here and the exhibition should be released in the next week or so.
- First World War - Any collectors of World War I photographs who would like to collaborate?
Join in when you can - sharing makes the world a better place.
My own page on Facebook
If you go to my Facebook page - Alan Griffiths
or search for Luminous-Lint you‘ll join a community of around 3,900 fellow enthusiasts. I‘m finding it useful for keeping everybody updated about what is happening on Luminous-Lint and in the wider world of photography
generally. To everybody who is participating thanks for all your friendship, knowledge and support.
NEW ADDRESS
Want your invitations, catalogs, books and prints to arrive at my place? Well check your address book:
Alan Griffiths
Luminous-Lint
Box 33055
Quinpool RPO
Halifax NS B3L 4T6
CANADA
IMPORTANT: Couriers, such as Fedex and UPS, require a street address and telephone number so send me an email (alan@luminous-lint.com) to obtain further instructions if that is the way you ship.
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