{photography} – Page 92 – { feuilleton }

Colour photography, 1908

Portrait of Jessie M. King by J. Craig Annan (autochrome).

I don’t recall having seen a photo of artist Jessie M. King prior to this so it’s an additional surprise to find one in colour. All these examples are from Colour Photography: and other recent developments of the art of the camera (1908), one of the many books edited by Charles Holme from features in The Studio magazine. Needless to say, not all the entries are colour but a number of the monochrome plates have their own qualities, such as that painterly effect which so many early photographers were eager to cultivate. Anyone familiar with Gertrude Käsebier’s very painterly The Crystal Gazer, famous for its appearance on the cover of a Cocteau Twins sleeve, may like to know that two more portraits by Ms Käsebier are included in Holme’s selection. For a look at more recent attempts to match the effects of painting with the camera, see this piece by Rick Poynor about the remarkable work of Saul Leiter.

A Tangle After a Storm by Walter Bennington.

A Late Winter Sun by Dr. H. Bachmann (gum print).

Continue reading “Colour photography, 1908”

Weekend links 88

Typographic Composition (1924) by Teresa Zarnowerówna from a post about Polish graphic design at 50 Watts.

• “Direct action is a matter of acting as if you were already free… […] …the link between military and money systems remains the dirty secret of capitalism.” A lengthy and essential interview with “anarchist anthropologist” David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5000 Years.

• “…it was after being told by an art director that he preferred her images of women to men that Toyin [Ibidapo] began to shoot boys in an attempt to prove him wrong. Something that Cult of Boys does perfectly.”

The pornographic imagination is deeply intertwined with the pain and horror of life. Some of that comes from our basic biological reality, which is unpleasant enough, and much of it comes from our social structures. Biological life has been completely degraded and continues to become more and more degraded in novel and more horrific ways, so it is inevitable that our horrible social structures – our schools, prisons, families, slaughterhouses and farms – become sites for the pornographic imagination.

Stephen Beachy discusses his novel, boneyard.

• “To my right is a wall bracket that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a human face made of porcelain fruits. The anteater rests on top of the television.” Jonathan Jones meets Jan Švankmajer.

• Anselm Kiefer‘s new exhibtion at White Cube, London, takes its name and some inspiration from Fulcanelli’s alchemical exegesis, Le Mystère des Cathédrales (1926).

• Today (Sunday, 11th December) on Resonance FM at 8.00pm GMT, Alex Fitch talks to Alan Moore about HP Lovecraft and related matters.

• Nick Hydra is putting all 112 issues of occult encyclopaedia Man, Myth & Magic online.

• Ira Cohen ‘s 1968 film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda is available again on DVD.

• Colleen Corradi Brannigan’s paintings of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

• “Margate’s a bloody toilet!” Can you handle The Reprisalizer?

• Bibliothèque Gay on Cocteau’s Le livre blanc (in French).

• Josie & the Pussycats in A Clockwork Orange.

• Lovely Book Covers

• Words With The Shaman (1985) by David Sylvian w/ Jon Hassell, Steve Jansen & Holger Czukay – I: Ancient Evening | II: Incantation | III: Awakening (Songs From The Treetops).

The Flatiron Building

The Flatiron Building, Detroit Publishing Company (1903).

Beautiful Century posted this view of New York’s Flatiron Building at the weekend which had me looking for a larger copy. Happily this is one of the many high-resolution photos at the Shorpy Historical Archive where it’s possible to scrutinise a wealth of detail. Old photos like this are, as Michael Moorcock once said about old postcards, a form of time travel, especially when they’re as good as those in the Shorpy collection. The Flatiron was a popular subject for photographers—famously so in Edward Steichen’s 1904 nocturne—and Shorpy has many more examples such as the street-level view below. Both these photos show a common feature of pictures taken before the age of the motor car: people standing in the middle of the road. The Flatiron also has an oblique connection with Julian Biggs’ film via the mysterious origins of the phrase “23 skidoo“.

The Flatiron Building, Detroit Publishing Company (c. 1905).

Reinhart Wolf photographed many of New York’s skyscrapers in the late 1970s, the Flatiron included. I have a book of those photos and noticed in his Flatiron view that one of the circular decorations on the foremost angle of the building near the top is now missing (compare his view with the Shorpy photos). Every time I look at the Flatiron now I think of that missing chunk of masonry. Was it removed or did it fall? If the latter, when did this happen and what damage did it cause?

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Edward Steichen

Flamboyant excess: the art of Steven Arnold

Invitation to Yin and Yang by Steven Arnold.

“Less is NOT more, MORE is more, less is less.”

Steven Arnold

Thanks to Monsieur Thombeau for pointing the way to The Steven Arnold Archive, a respository of biographical and career detail about Steven Arnold (1943–1994):

…a California-based multi-media artist, spiritualist, gender bender, and protégée of Salvador Dalí. His work consisted of drawings, paintings, rock and film posters, makeup design, costume design, set design, photography, and film.

Arnold’s work with outrageous performance troupe The Cockettes seems to receive more attention today than his other creations so it’s good to see the balance being redressed. It was a surprise, for instance, to find he’d drawn a poster in 1967 for The Matrix club, San Francisco. Similar works are mentioned but the site doesn’t have any examples and I’ve yet to see any elsewhere.

And I haven’t seen the Cockettes film, Luminous Procuress (1971) either. Salvador Dalí unsurprisingly responded with enthusiasm to its atmosphere of androgynous weirdness:

Luminous Procuress is an altogether extraordinary, individualistic phantasmagoria. It was filmed entirely in San Francisco over a two-year period, and describes the adventures of two wandering youths in San Francisco who visit the home of a mysterious woman, the Procuress. She is an elegant emblem of sorcery, her vivid features glowing under bizarre, striking maquillage, and one is not certain who she is or where she intends to lead the protagonists. Although the language she speaks is vaguely Russian, it appears that the Procuress has psychic powers. She discerns a sympathetic response to her on the part of the youths, and by magical means, conducts them through fantastic rooms, on a psychic journey… (more)

Definitely one for the future viewing list. Meanwhile, one of Arnold’s tableaux photos, The Advantages of Modern Marriage, is currently on display in Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945–1980 at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles. The exhibition runs to April 1st, 2012.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• James Bidgood

A London Street Scene

A London Street Scene (1840) by John Parry.

If any painting requires the attentions of the Google Art Project it’s this depiction of a bill poster going about his work by John Orlando Parry (1810–1879). I know this from a cropped view (see here) which shows the care Parry applied to details of typography and the layering of the posters. There’s also some humour with the pickpocket boy on the left, and the artist himself as the subject of one poster in the centre of the picture. Wikipedia has a large version here but it’s too washed-out and blurred to be any use. For a view of the genuine article at work, see this LSE Library photo.

A note about the painting’s date: online sources give 1830 but the copy I have in a book from the V&A says 1840.