JF Ptak Science Books

Daily Dose of Dr. Odd: On What Silent Massive Bells Sound Like

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Looking at these pictures, the first thought about what silent bells sound like is pathetic nothingness, and that apart from any secular importance or significance.  But when the Russians pulled out of Poland they took the bells of the churches with them, keeping them from the advancing German army, keeping them so that the Germans didn't melt them down to use in munitions.  The bells disappeared too from many Russian cities, pulled back deeper inside Mother Russia, far from the advancing army.

[Source, above and next three images, from the Illustrated London News, 4 October 1915.]

Images of the Quick and the "Still": Trouvelot's Sparks and Stars, ca. 1890

JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1827

Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1823-1895) was an ex-pat Frenchmen who settled in Medford ("Don't Pronounce the First D") Massachusetts, and who became a very highly accomplished and deeply skilled astronomical observer and astro-illustrator.  (I've included a suite of fifteen of his most accomplished works below, all found in greater detail via their links from their source at  the NY Public Library Digital Collections.)

Trouvelot covered the spectrum in his art and photography--in addition to making photographs of the deeply settled but still open-to-mystery astronomical objects, he also was the photographer of extremely intransient things.  Among the later are some fantastic images that he made of high-voltage electrical discharges (images of which I found initially at the blog  Translinguisitic Order). 

The image above is an example of that work, despite it looking like something rather deep-space-y, it is decidedly terrestrial--it is an image that he made of a discharge from either a Ruhmkorff coil or Wimshurst machine, and was produced ca, 1888/9.  It was a signature accomplishment, like photographing lightning or making an atlas of clouds, a watermark of sorts in a decade of photographic highpoint contributions in the sciences. (Some of these accomplishments were found in the work of Etienne Marey, who was able to isolate action in a continuous series of photographic still images, which for its time revealed shocking results.  Not only did the Marey work display the magnificence of motion, it also provided just about the first opportunity in the history of people to show the action in reverse.)

Trouvelot's drawing of a meteor shower, which I know has a very certain biological feel to it:

Caption from NYPL: "Image ID: trouvelot_012. The November meteors. As observed between midnight and 5 o'clock A.M. on the night of November 13-14 1868. (1881-1882)

And this spectacular image of the "Great Nebula in Orion" as it used to be called in some textbooks, now better known as Messier 42 or M42 or NCG 1976, which was and probably still may be one of the closest scrutinized things in the sky. It was recognized first perhaps by Niclas Claude F de Peirsec in 1610, with the first published account following in 1618 by Cysatus of Lucerne, though it didn't get any real traction until it fell into the hands of Christian Huygens (1656) who also published the first image of the big bright spot in the middle of the sword of Orion in 1659.  (This is a little off-target but I like the historical end of the story.)

And just for the sake of it, the Messier drawing:

And Andrew Commons' photograph of the nebula in 1883 was a great improvement over our old friend Henry Draper's 1880 groundbreaking attempt:

It is still a little bit of a mystery to me that it took another two decades or so for people to consider that first photo (above) as "art"--perhaps it was the classification of the work as "scientific" and therefore not-necessarily-art, but folks surely made use of this and the Marey and other scientific photography of the 1880's in their art of the 19-teens.  Trouvelot never lived to see it, though; and perhaps it wouldn't've made sense to him.  I just don't know. 

It is also amusing that for this great "finder" the root of the first half of his name in French is "find".

The full suite of fifteen images by Trouvelot, below, all thumbnails from NYPL:

WWI Photographs: Pigeon Trucks and Medical Dogs

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1822

A fascinating aspect in modern technology and warfare is the reliance upon pigeons and dogs--and their achievements--for war services.  Evidently several hundred thousand pigeons were used to relay messages between divisional headquarters and battlefield positions and such during WWI, with something like 90% of the messages being delivered successfully--a remarkable achievement, since it was not uncommon for the pigeons to fly dozens of miles to perform their task. The services worked so well in fact that the American carrier pigeon service training facility for the army was not closed until 1957.

Dogs were used as guards and ambulance litter carriers, but it seems they were mostly used for communication purposes, taking messages back and forth through the masses and intricacies of trenches. 

The image below comes from The Illustrated London News for 2 October 1915:

Osman, Lt. Col. A.H., Pigeons in the Great War: A Complete History of the Carrier Pigeon Service during the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (London, 1928)  Read more at Suite101.  [All images below are available for purchase from our blog bookstore, here.]

Fabulous Bathing Beauty Panoramic Photograph, 1925.

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Magnificentt.  Also I just couldn't resist presenting this image vertically to give some aspect of its presence, which is captivating. [Source: the Library of Congress, here].

Balboa Beach Bathing Party, 1925.

Quiet, Beautiful Bathing Beauties, 1900

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These images are just quietly magnificent.  They were made by the Detroit Publishing Company, and published sometime between 1890 and 1900.  The original is a glass negative, and this digital copy appears on the Library of Congerss site, here. 

The Face of the Finished Foe: German POWs, 1918

JF Ptak Science Books      Post 1809

I've written a number of times on this blog about WWI images, many of which are in my own collection of News Service Photo Group images, like the one just below, which can be found here. Many of them are remarkable, astonishing even--especially those relating to soldiers whose war has ended, finding them as prisoners of war.  At least they weren't dead, like the dozens of millions of other soldiers.

 

(Original photograph available at our blog bookstore here.)

I uncovered another of these images, tonight, long misplaced.

[Image available from our blog bookstore, here.]

There were over 8 million soldiers taken prisoner during WWI, that in addition to the 21 million who were wounded and the 9.7 million killed:  38 million.  Plus 6.8 million civilians who were killed: 45 million.  And the numbers for civilians wounded are just, well, not reliable, as they were not really collected, or collectible.  At the end of it all, there were probably between 50 to 75 million soldiers and civilians killed or wounded or taken captive during the war...not including civilians who were killed by the hardships or starvation caused by the conflict.  Big, big numbers.

Some of these soldiers were taken in entire armies, surrenders of hundreds of thousands; and some came in pairs, or singles, as in the photo above.  There are two captured Germans here, the two men in the middle, who are flanked by a British soldier and (I think) a Canadian officer, with two locals in the background.  The short man front-and-center was paraded no doubt for his propaganda value--certainly not five feet tall, slender, with a tiny, not-average face.  The Tommy is certainly enjoying the situation, while the officer maintains composure. 

I'm sure the photo could've been made by any photographer for any army at any time.

The photograph was made in 1918, a few months before the end of the war, but there was still fighting to be done, and the value of showing the the British and Allied publics the "face" of a now-wilting enemy must have been considerable.  There was considerable control and tightness over the sort of images allowed to be produced and published coming from the front line, photographs being made by a "pool" of news photographers the contents of which were closely evaluated by military censors before being allowed to circulate to newspapers and magazines.

Dorothea Lange--FSA Photographs at the Library of Congress Site

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1806  

Found below is a selection of photographic images from the Farm Security Administration collection at the Library of Congress.  Today's photographer:  Dorothea Lange.

On of the great innovations in a sea of great things accomplished during the Franklin Roosevelt administrations was the formation of the Farm Security Administration, a division of the government established to help farmers through the devastating Dust Bowl and Great Depression.  A subset of the FSA was a photographic unit which was set up to document the progress made by the FSA (and provide, I am sure, for some much-needed good news, a hearts-and-minds campaign).  This division was headed by Roy Emerson Stryker, who wound up hiring a collection of dream-team photographers unlike any ever assembled for a single purpose.  Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn were sent out all across the country and wound up with the greatest and most beautiful photographic history ever assembled in the United States.  There were about 77,000 images made, and I recall reading (somewhere) that the total budget for the Stryker group for the years 1936-1942 was about $100,000, meaning that each completed image cost just over a dollar apiece. So far as art funding by the government is concerned, that about the best it has done.

[Listed below are some samples of Lange's work at the LC--there are more than 3,000 images by her in the collection, found here.  All images below are also expandable.]

Note:  occassionally found among these images are those with a black dot in the center.  That was the editorial work of Mr. Stryker, who for some reason hole-punched images that he thought weren't quite up to snuff, or unacceptable for some reason.  In this ruination he also decided to archive them, which means if he was keeping them anyway he might as well have not plugged them, keeping them whole and intact and in their own pile. Anyway, that is what the black dot is all about.

An Alphabet of Australian Convict Mugshots, 1900-1920

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1797

These photographs are remarkable capsules of space and time--they hold the mostly-realized fates of their subjects, taken into custody in Sydney for crimes from prostitution to stealing to loitering to bigamy to murder and around and around. The poses are interesting in that there seems to be no unified way of making them, which means that most often the detained person had the opportunity to adopt whatever posed they pleased, given the emotional constraints of their situation.  Some are defiant, some at complete ease in front of the camera; others are completely distracted and scared, and embarrassed and guilty.  There also doesn't seem to be a segregated point for making the photographs, tough there is a common-looking wall and hallway for some of them.  It would be interested to know if the Sydney police were making an editorial statement by placing their subjects in unflattering locations, like standing near a dripping faucet, or amidst trash, or in a garden, or in front of toilets.  In any event the range of emotions is remarkable, even for looking through only a few hundred of the more than 100,000 images that are on line here and there from the good folks in Sydney.     [The images below all started out their life at Sydney Justice and Police, and then used in parts by the following websites and blogs from which I harvested my selection below,:  Retronaut , the Independent,,  Live Journal   the Daily Mail, and the Historic Houses Front (which also has full-ish records for each photograph).  An interesting interpretation of many of the images can be found at SCAN.

Analytically  interesting, an interpretative invitation.  Apprehensive? 

 

 Bored

The Topography of Antiquarian Sisters

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Photo source: Library of Congress, via Vintage Photography, at retro-vintage-photography.blogspot.com

This photograph--a daguerreotype, really--is both extraordinary and terribly common, at the same time, and is so in a way that is difficult to define, just that it is so.  It is the work of Frances Benjamin Johnston (whose collection resides at the Library of Congress) and was completed between 1845-1860, and shows the photographer's aunts.  They make a formidable group.  I'd like to be able to find the data that the outline of their portraits form, because to me they look lik a graph.

The photographer, Frances Johnston (1864-1952),  was one of America's first successful female workers in the field of photography and photo-journalism.  She opened a studio around 1890, and went into business, no doubt helped along by her wealthy family's social clipboard.  That it took 50 years or so and the application of a family's small fortune to firmly establish a woman at this rank in photography, so close to the year 1900, so far into the advance of photography, is remarkable. The self-portrait, below, shows her mind:

she reveals herself a woman of the modern age, with her petticoats flaring and obvious, a cigarette in one hand, and a beer stein in the other, secrets no longer.

WWI--Post-War Photographs, November/December 1918

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I have made numerous posts on this blog using images from my archive of American news service WWI photographs, though there are few depicting scenes just after the end of the war's end on 11:00 a.m. on 11/11/11. These photographs below do so, and all come from the National Library of Scotland (which can be accessed here). They are all "British Official War Photographs", which was a service similar to its American cousin--various news and photo agencies were given access to images produced by a pool of photographers, all of which passed by the eyes of a military censor. They were for the most part aimed at the "correct" version of the news, though given the subject matter there were plenty of images that were extremely powerful.  In a war that claimed 100,000,000 casualties, the photographic image was a powerful war-time propaganda tool. 

[Original reads: 'SCENES ON THE WESTERN FRONT. WAR TROPHIES SECTION. German trophies from Vimy Ridge and Messines. In centre is Prussian Guards drum.']

On the History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things: the Heart of Some Sort West

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post   (Part of the series on the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things.)

I've owned this photograph for a long time.  It has been in the files for many years, waiting for something to happen to it, waiting for it to be a little understood in some slight way of identification.  I've still not gotten around to it.  To me, it has always seemed like a photograph of a small post out in the American Far West, 90 men in dress uniform inside their "fort", or outpost, the commander and the camp dog addressed in front and the sergeants out on the flanks.  The enlisted men stand at ease. 

I'm really not sure though who or where they are.  The camp is very spread out, for one thing.  And for the age (I reckon this to be made around 1885, perhaps a little earlier) I would've thought that boots would've been visible under trousers.  And their hats/helmets--they really don't look to be made for the sun, and also seem too much of a bull's eye/target.  That's on first glance--nothing about their uniform seems fitted to the place:  no protection from the sun, trousers caught on low burrs and scrub, and so on.  But the uniforms--and helmets--seem to be in line with the Prussian-influenced dress of the time (or at least around 1882), including the ribbon-y materials draped around the commander's neck.  (I really don't know enough about U.S. Army uniforms to make a good qualified guess about who these men are.)

But the photo as art has always intrigued me, capturing the heart of a lonely place.  I know, though, that having spent  a little time hiking in the desert that the place is hardly empty, or blank.  But it can still be lonely if you want it to be, a state which isn't dependent on any of the conditions mentioned in the title of this post--its a created space, the loneliness.

I've wondered too about who those people are,  sitting together, (huddled?) at the far end of the soldiers' barracks, a speck visible over the shoulder of the sergeant (the last figure on the right in the top photo)? I suspect they must be Native Americans, or at least indigenous people.  They've faded into history too with the rest of the people in the photograph, a chance at a piece of tangible memory missed because, well, no one made any notes (that survived, at least) about the image. 

The photograph looks hot and cold to me at the same time...

(This image is available for purchase via our blog bookstore, here.)

Depression-era Photographs of Miners from the Library of Congress

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Miner waiting for ride home.  Each miner pays twenty-five cents a week to owner of car. Capels, West Virginia.

I doubt that it was this truck that was going to make the commuter run, but it might well be.  There's a tool chest in the truck bed, along with what looks like an upholstered truck bench next to it--it certainly wasn't abandoned because the truck still has its wheels.

In the detail of the picture it seems as though someone made repairs to the truck bed's wooden racks with wire or rope rather than with nails (jsut to the left of the miner's right shoulder). Picture source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs, ca. 1938.)

 

The Great Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photography Series, in Color: Japanese Internment Camps

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The following images were made by Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photographers during World War II and are part of the famous FSA photography series that I  have written about here.  The color photographs--which were made in the first decade or so of the use of this new medium--represented only about 1,600 of the collection of 160,000 images in the FSA archive, and are far less known than their black-and-white complements, many of which are new iconic symbols for this period.  The color images are beautiful works, and somehow seem to bring these historic images a little closer to the present.

This series are some of the few color images made of daily life in the Japanese Relocation Camp at Tule Lake in 1942/3.  The internment ("relocation") of American citizens of Japanese heritage in "reservations" is a result of Executive Order 9066, signed into power by Franklin Roosevelt on 19 February 1942.  I've written about this episode in several places on this blog, including here. 

Japanese-American camp, war emergency evacuation,[Tule Lake Relocation Center, Newell, Calif.] 1942 or 1943.

The Great Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photography Series, in Color: Billboards, 1940-1943.

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The following images were made by Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photographers during World War II and are part of the famous FSA photography series that I  have written about here.  The color photographs--which were made in the first decade or so of the use of this new medium--represented only about 1,600 of the collection of 160,000 images in the FSA archive, and are far less known than their black-and-white complements, many of which are new iconic symbols for this period.  The color images are beautiful works, and somehow seem to bring these historic images a little closer to the present.

A cross roads store, bar, "juke joint," and gas station in the cotton plantation area, Melrose, La. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer, made in June 1940.

The Great Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photography Series, in Color: Grocery Stores, 1940-1943.

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The following images were made by Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photographers during World War II and are part of the famous FSA photography series that I  have written about here.  The color photographs--which were made in the first decade or so of the use of this new medium--represented only about 1,600 of the collection of 160,000 images in the FSA archive, and are far less known than their black-and-white complements, many of which are now iconic symbols for this period.  The color imahes are beautiful works, and somehow seem to bring these historic images a little closer to the present.

General store, Chacon, N[ew] Mex[ico] Collier, John, 1913-1992, photographer, 1943.