The London Diorama

Abstract

A Month in London, or Some of its Modern Wonder described¹ is as evocative a title for a book as one could wish for, and when I saw it was dated 1832, it was irresistible. It turned out to be a piece of thinly disguised fiction, so beloved in that age which felt that serious instruction, particularly for the young, must be sugar coated. An American tourist treats two young English relatives to a month's sightseeing in London. A chance acquaintance, named Mr Finsbury (and, most appropriately, living there), appears before the end of the Introduction, and volunteers to take them on the rounds. One particular adventure starts with a ride on George Shillibeer's three-horse Omnibus.     

The ‘Peccavi’ Photographs

Abstract

Among the holdings of the Asiatic Library of Bombay, there is a major album entitled Sind Photographs, which has become known to the initiated under the title ‘Peccavi Photographs’, in memory of a delicious political pun¹. All the photographs are portraits, with captions neatly inscribed. None is signed, but one bears the imprint ‘Photo by Capt. Houghton’, which was sufficient to provide researchers with an important clue as to their origin.     

A scene in a library

Abstract

This essay concerns one photograph: the eighth plate in The Pencil of Nature, called A Scene in a Library, which originally appeared in the second installment of Talbot's inaugural book on photography (figure 1). I have already written extensively about A Scene in a Library — and given its title to a book on illustrated books.¹ But it is a photograph that, together with the text that accompanies it, has never ceased to intrigue me. I continue to wonder what Talbot's intentions were when he chose this photograph for his book. Why did he choose it over similar photographs that he had made and could possibly just as well have used? Why did he title it the way he did — A Scene in a Library — when we know that it was not actually taken in his library? Why and when did it occur to him to write the piece of text that accompanies the plate — which speaks of experimentation with the invisible end of the light spectrum? And what did he have in mind when he put the plate, the caption and the accompanying text together? For A Scene in a Library is remarkable — and exceptional — for the unaccountable way in which it puts text together with image. Almost all the other plates have text that bears on them fairly straightforwardly, either explaining how and where they were made or indicating possible uses for the photograph in question. Not so A Scene in a Library, which functions, rather, as a kind of clef de roman, and which has, as I hope to show, an emblematic status in The Pencil of Nature precisely because it is an exception.     

Danny Lyon's family album

Abstract

The modest appearance of I Like to Eat Right on the Dirt: A Child's Journey Back in Space and Time (1989), by Danny Lyon belies its true portent.¹ As an experimental photo story, developed from purely photographic models, this book opens up whole new horizons.     

From the studio to the snapshot: An immigrant photographer of the 1920s

Abstract

In his justly famous work, Looking at Photographs, John Szarkowski remarked¹ that ‘Photography has learned about its nature not only from the great masters, but also from the simple and radical works of photographers of modest aspiration and small renown ….’. It is thanks to critics like Szarkowski that we are encouraged to view photographs on their own terms, instead of always having to compare them to the rigid aesthetic hierarchies of Hochkunst.     

The Reception of Albert Renger-Patzsch's Die Welt ist schön

Abstract

No history of photography or publication on the photography of the 1920s fails to mention the photo-book Die Welt ist schön. Regarded as a ‘manifesto of the revival of Realism,’¹ and hailed as the ‘bible’ of Neue Sachlichkeit photography,² ‘hardly any other book has influenced a generation of photographers to the same great extent and with such long-lasting effects as this volume‘.³ It was the book's tide in particular that was received like a catchword and influenced the reception of this photographic volume: ‘The tide became symbolic for an attitude of Neue Sachlichkeit to the world and the book was acknowledged as the ideal volume of Neue Sachlichkeit photography’.⁴ Hitherto in the history of the book's reception, this opinion has been restricted primarily to the reference to Walter Benjamin's well-known negative critique of 1931.⁵ Amongst the multitude of reviews of Die Welt ist schon, it is Benjamin's assessment which is most frequendy cited in the literature. That Benjamin was able to neglect explicidy mentioning Renger-Patzsch's name and to refer merely to the tide of the book can be interpreted as proof of the great fame of this photographic author. In fact, Die Welt ist schön had by this time been reviewed in nearly all leading cultural magazines and daily newspapers and evaluated as an exemplary volume of a modem, neusachliche photography. For critics such as Benjamin, however, the tide was synonymous with a new, sterile ‘l’art pour l'art' photography which manipulated reality and denied social contexts. But to confine negative criticism of Die Welt ist schön to the political left and its praise to a more conservative attitude is too simple a model as becomes apparent when all of the reviews are taken into consideration. Karl With's attempt to summarize the contradictions of this picture book may be cited here: ‘Ein seltsames Buch!} (A strange book!). Exciting in its busding abundance, as well as in its silence’.⁶     

Early scottish photographic exhibitions

Abstract

There is that nerve-shredding time after the finalization of a text before, and immediately after, publication, when the author wonders what new photographs, correspondence, or other invaluable materials will rise up from unknown sources to mock his or her temporary certainties. So far, no one has yet come forward with another print of Camille Silvy's River Scene, France, or La Vallée de l'Huisne, from 1858 to disturb the (admittedly open) conclusions of my book on the photograph.¹ There is, however, new material to add. Pointed in the right direction by Sara Stevenson of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, I recently read some fascinating documents in the Scottish Record Office. Deposited on indefinite loan there by the Edinburgh Photo graphic Society in 1979 are the papers of the Photographic Society of Scotland (founded 1856, dissolved 1873). Bundies of hundreds of letters, invoices, and other papers document some of the early Edinburgh exhibitions more amply and significantly than any other photographic exhibitions of the time, so far as I am aware.² I concentrate here on the exhibition held in the Winter of 1858/59, at which Silvy's River Scene, France (1858) was first shown.     

Between orientalist clichés and images of modernization

Abstract

In contemporary writing about nineteenth-century photography of the Middle East it has become almost a cliche to describe many of these images as ‘Orientalist’-that is, reflecting or propagating a system of representation that creates an essentialized difference between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘West’. Most of these scholars draw on Edward Said's influential book Orientalism, which traces how Europe manufactured an imaginary Orient through literary works and the social sciences.¹ For example, Nissan N. Perez writes in his book Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East (1839–1885) that ‘Literature, painting, and photography fit the real Orient into the imaginary or mental mold existing in the Westerner's mind .... These attitudes are mirrored in many of the photographs taken during this time [the nineteenth century] ... Either staged or carefully selected from a large array of possibilities, they became living visual documents to prove an imaginary reality’. ²     

Strand's world

Abstract

Paul Strand's photographs are always a pleasure to look at, just as Calvin Tompkins' writing is always a pleasure to read. Aperture, the sine qua non of American photographic book publishing, has recently brought out yet another volume of Strand's photographs, this time pairing them with a critical essay by Calvin Tompkins and adding what is perhaps the most interesting element of all, a section entitled, ‘excerpts from correspondence, interviews and other documents’. The book is a stunning contribution to photographic literature. The pictures themselves are beautifully and faithfully reproduced. Tompkins' interpretive historical essay, altered very little from its first appearance in The New Yorker (16th September 1974), is graceful and informative. The book is executed with the high degree of taste associated with Aperture, thoroughly befitting the intelligence of Strand's photographs. By publishing more pages on Strand than on any other photographer, Aperture had made its own contribution to the Strand legend. This includes the recent, charming article by Catherine Duncan (‘The Garden: Vines and Leaves’, in Aperture, No. 78) and, of course, the monumental two-volume catalogue (also issued in a single volume version) which served as an accompaniment to the Strand retrospective exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1971.     

The Album of Camille Silvy

Abstract

Camille Silvy (1834-1910), an elusive figure in the history of photography, was very successful in the brief 11 years that he produced photographs. He has been primarily known for his beautifully toned cartes-de-visite, in addition to larger images, most prominently River Scene, France. Recently, much attention has been given to this Silvy masterpiece, which has been the subject of a book and an exhibition.¹ The book, intensively researched by Mark Haworth-Booth, sheds considerable light on Silvy's life and career. One of the items that Haworth-Booth uncovered was an album or scrapbook that belonged to Silvy and now belongs to Silvy's descendants in Paris. This album served as a scrapbook or memory book and provides clues and insights into Silvy's life. It reflects his inspirations and early training, his interests, his professional accomplishments, events in his life, and his lifelong interest in documentation.     

James Van Der Zee's Harlem book of the dead

Abstract

‘Night Funeral in Harlem’ by Langston Hughes, which was first published in 1951, exemplifies the importance of funerals to African-Americans throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Like James Van Der Zee's Harlem Book of the Dead, the poem is about the crossroads of life and death. Like the Haitian Voudoun God Ghede, whose capacity for living is legendary but whose symbol is the cross on the tomb, the Hughes poem and the Van Der Zee book show how the bodies of the dead affect the souls of the living. Van Der Zee's book is about judgement: about how the living and the dead view each other at their final encounter. This dialogue also describes Ghede who is lord of the interaction between the living and the dead and who is ‘the final judge of a man's life and the worth of his soul in death’.¹ Through its poems and pictures the book depicts people at a cosmic threshold, and like Ghede, who is guardian of the history and heritage of the race, the Harlem Book of the Dead is intimately connected to the culture from which it springs.²     

Thomas Annan and the scottish landscape

Abstract

Thomas Annan (1830–87) was a successful Scottish photographer who produced work in all the main subject categories associated with commercial practice in the midnineteenth century, including portraiture, landscape, urban and industrial documentation and reproductions of works of art. While it is true that the versatility and range of his achievement have not gone unacknowledged, his reputation today undoubtedly rests on one particular body of work— his survey of Glasgow's High Street slums, first published in 1871 as Photographs of the Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow.¹ Stark, shocking, and yet strangely hypnotic, the images in this book are among the earliest as well as the most powerful of their kind ever made. They are also sufficiently ambiguous in their status as ‘representations’ to have provided a fruitful target for critical analysis among cultural historians anxious to demonstrate the deeply problematic nature of the nineteenth-century documentary project as a whole.² Old Streets and Closes is in every way an outstanding work. It speaks eloquently of a now vanished past, while confronting us with the inherently paradoxical nature of photography's contribution to historical discourse.     

Forum Romanum/Campo Vaccino

Abstract

In a famous passage in his Memoirs, Edward Gibbon describes his first experience of the Roman Forum, in the autumn of 1764: ‘After a sleepless night I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation’.¹ Shordy thereafter, while musing over the ruins, Gibbon decided to undertake the project that was to become his life's work, the monumental Decline and Fall if the Roman Empire, which he completed in 1788. Almost exacdy a century after Gibbon's revelatory stay in Rome, the American writer William Dean Howells paid his first visit to the Forum, in 1866. He was appalled by the conditions he found: ‘In hollows below the level of the dirty cowfield, wandered over by evil-eyed buffaloes, and obscenely defiled by wild beasts of men, there stood here an arch, there a pillar, yonder a cluster of columns crowned by a bit of frieze’.²     

Bibliography: Photo narrative today

Abstract

The following bibliography is not exhaustive. Its aims are twofold: first, to introduce some of the most important modern creative work published in France, Britain and the USA; and second, to present a substantial survey of recent theoretical writing and criticism about the photo narrative, with particular emphasis on photo fiction. The critical work available reveals that historical research in the field is extremely scarce. A comprehensive history of photo narrative has yet to be written. Such a work would embrace all forms of photo narrative, irrespective of their function or destined audience. Of necessity, it would trace the recurrent use of photographic sequences from the early work of Muybridge and Marcy to contemporary experiments. Modern photo narrative often exhibits characteristics found in earlier work, such as the sequentially organized American Photographs by Walker Evans and the picture stories that begin to appear in the 1930s. New tendencies are nevertheless apparent, notably the disruption of traditional forms, the juxtaposition of fact and fiction, and the use of autobiographical material.     

Photography at the Amon Carter Museum

Abstract

This slender but handsome volume samples a tantalizing forty-eight of the 200 000 photographs in the Amon Carter Museum's holdings of American photography. Devoted to American art, the museum collects photography in three major areas, all represented here: fine art photography, historical photography and artist collections. In Singular Moments one finds great names like Ansel Adams, iconic images like Barbara Morgan's Martha Graham — Letter to the World (Swirl), documentary work by less famous practitioners such as Carl Mydans and Laura Gilpin, and fascinating glimpses into the nineteenth centmy through the lenses of unknown early photographers, especially those of the American West. The book ably reproduces a great variety of techniques, from daguerreotypes, chloride prints and photogravures to more recent processes such as dye destruction prints as well as gelatine silver prints. A bibliography gives the novice reader an excellent starting place for further reading and hints at the vast scholarship that the entire collection represents. Singular Moments invites all those interested in photography to watch this museum for future exhibitions from its enormous and evidently beautiful collection.     

Addenda to Henry Collen and the treaty of nanking

Abstract

In 1922, the combined work of journalist Victoria Hayward and photographer Edith S. Watson was collected in a publication entitled Romantic Canada. Introduced by Edward J. O'Brien and published in Toronto, it is 254 pages in length and generously illustrated with 77 halftone reproductions.¹ The book takes the reader from the eastern to the western shores of Canada, following rural pathways through isolated settlements and historic villages, and stopping along the way to study the particularities of place and custom. What is extraordinary about this book is the way in which the photographs and text complement each other in creating a pictorial and literary celebration of traditional country life. For the photographic historian, the work offers insights into the discursive relationship between photographic aesthetics and the cultural role of woman journalists in post-First World War Canada.     

Sadakichi artmann,essayist and critic

Abstract

During the last two years of his life, Ralph Eugene Meatyard assembled a series of photographs into a book titled The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater. The album's main subject is his wife Madelyn Meat yard who wore one mask for the title role of Lucybelle Crater, and appeared in sixtyfour photographs accompanied in each by a different person wearing one other mask. Madelyn Meat yard's mask, an opaque representation of a grotesque hag, is described as resembling ‘Mammy Yokum from Outer Space’.¹ The other mask is transformed by its wearer, for it is a translucent representation of an androgynous older person. Only two images are titled, and the real names of the masked people are revealed in a listing at the end of the book.     

Talbot's broom and Swift's broomstick

Abstract

In 1986 I made an attempt to interpret Talbot's famous picture, The Open Door (1844) as emblematic of Reason (the bridle of the passions), Truth (the lantern of illumination), and Spirit (the broom that sweeps the threshold clean).¹ More recently, I was stimulated by Larry Schaafs account of the variants of the image to think a little further on the subject.² The earlier version of 1841, which is without bridle or lantern and with a more worn-looking broomstick than the one in The Open Door, was given the title of The Soliloquy of the Broom by Talbot's mother, Lady Elisabeth. Following her suggestion, The Open Door might be retitled ‘The Colloquy of the Broom with the Bridle and the Lantern’. To do this would leave the picture where it probably most properly belongs — in the emblematic tradition.     

Scheduling flexible manufacturing cells using Tabu Search

Scheduling is an important aspect in the overall control of a flexible manufacturing system. The research presented focuses on production scheduling of jobs within a flexible manufacturing cell (FMC)–one type of flexible manufacturing system. Due to the complexity of the FMC scheduling problem, a 0–1 mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is formulated for M machines and N jobs with alternative routings. Although small instances of the problem can be solved optimally with MILP models, a two-stage Tabu Search (TS² ) algorithm that minimises the manufacturing makespan (MS) is proposed to solve medium-to-large-scale problems more efficiently. During Stage I (construction phase), two heuristics are utilised to generate an initial feasible sequence and an initial MS solution. In Stage II (improvement phase), the acquired initial solutions from Stage I are combined with a Tabu Search meta-heuristic procedure that provides improved MS solutions. The TS² algorithm provides tremendous savings in computational time for medium/large-sized multi-machine FMC problems.     

Alfred Stieglitz's apples

Abstract

I have long been astonished by the silliness of Stieglitz's photographs of women with apples, despite the desperate attempts to suggest that somehow they prove him as American as apple pie. Coming across Erika and Fritz Kempe's Die Kunst der Camera im Jugendstil (Frankfurt: Umschau 1986), an excellent piece of pictorialist sourcehunting, I suddenly realized from Theodor and Oskar Hofmeister's ‘Apfelemte’ (1897) that Stieglitz was drawing upon a stock subject from German genre painting (see pl. 129). The inanities of O'Keeffe with a basket of apples next to her head and Engelhard awkwardly clutching apples to her body are just two attempts by Stieglitz to submit the two Georgias to generic fantasy.