{photography} – Page 112

Weekend links 31

One of a series of illustrations by Vera Bock for A Ring and a Riddle (1944) by M.Ilin and E. Segal. Via A Journey Round My Skull.

• The Creator of Devotion: Photos from a Vogue Hommes Japan feature by Matthew Stone. And also here.

• Dressing For Pleasure: Jonny Trunk gets out the rubber gear. Related: King of Kinky.

• Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) is having a show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.

• Hackney Dissenting Academy #1: Throbbing Gristle, Iain Sinclair & Alan Moore.

• Out Of The Flesh (1984) by Chakk. A great single never reissued on CD.

• Photographer Charles Gatewood remembers William Burroughs.

The Endless Mural. Follow links here to have a play around.

• Vinyl record sales are at the top of a four-year sales trend.

• Can explosions move faster than the speed of light?

• Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Car is reborn.

• Maximus Clarke talks with William Gibson.

• Why Stephen Fry loves Wagner.

• Kafka’s Last Trial.

• Alice Coltrane in concert, Warsaw, 1987: Harp solo | Impressions | Lonnie’s Lament | A Love Supreme.

The cyanotype process is a very old photographic printing technique and also the source of the word “blueprint”, after the process became common among builders and engineers for the printing of plans. The technique also has its enthusiasts today, some examples of which can be seen here. These views of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, were taken by Carl Curman, a Swedish scientist and photographer, in 1878. The Swedish National Heritage Board at Flickr has two sets of Curman’s travel photography which include additional views of the Alhambra as well as other cyanotypes.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Constantinople, 1900
• Edinburgh, 1929
• Old Bunker Hill
• Inondations 1910
• Berenice Abbott
• Eugene de Salignac
• Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
• The temples of Angkor
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Edward Steichen
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

Contortions

Much of the work I’ve been doing for the past few weeks has been steampunk-related so I’ve been searching for more antique reference material than usual. A recent delve unearthed this pair of vintage contortionists. The photograph above dates from circa 1880 and is from the George Eastman House collection at Flickr. Also at Flickr is a great set of vintage theatre posters which includes the example below. (And also at the Library of Congress.) More about the steampunk work in due course.

Weekend links 29

A Folies Bergère dancer, c. 1909.

• Six Novels in Woodcuts: The Library of America publishes a boxed set of Lynd Ward’s works: Gods’ Man, Madman’s Drum, Wild Pilgrimage, Prelude to a Million Years, Song Without Words and Vertigo.

• RIP ace graphic designer Raymond Hawkey. Related: Raymond Hawkey: An eye for detail, and Hawkey’s James Bond cover designs from the mid-60s.

• The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, an exhibition at Duke University, North Carolina, features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, using vinyl records as subject or medium.

The Île de la Cité, a steel engraving by Albert Decaris (1950).

• Fred Tomaselli will have a new exhibition of his work at the Brooklyn Museum next month.

• Socialist Monuments in Bulgaria photographed by Linda Ferrari.

• What would Howard think of the Mythos Art Dildo?

• Space is Process, a film about Olafur Eliasson.

• Thurston Moore’s Indie Books.

• Chris Colfer in a leather bar.

• Ephemeral New York.

• Chrome! Helios Creed’s YouTube channel.

Le Palais de l’Optique, 1900

Here at {feuilleton} the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 is never far away. This post is linked to those of the previous two days via the zodiac signs which decorate the lavish canopy on the Palais de l’Optique, one of the smaller exposition halls. The zodiac signs seem oddly inappropriate for displays of scientific endeavour until you discover that the principal attraction was François Deloncle’s Grande Lunette, or Great Telescope, one of the largest refracting telescopes ever built.

The astrological signs, then, signify the heavens which the telescope allowed an audience to view on a giant screen. The elegant poster advertising the attraction is by Georges Paul Leroux (1877–1957), and was discovered at Gatochy’s Flickr pages. The diagram below shows the colossal scale of thing and—appropriately—ought to be viewed at a larger size on Pignouf’s page. When you consider the small scale of film projections in 1900 the screenings from this monster must have been quite spectacular. The Exposition Universelle 3D Project has additional photos.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle films
• Exposition jewellery
• Exposition Universelle catalogue
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro

Category: {photography}

Weekend links 31

Alhambra cyanotypes

Contortions

Weekend links 29

Le Palais de l’Optique, 1900