Scientific: Photomicroscopy

Professor Albert Richards: X-Rays of Flowers

Aerial photography and imaging

Rome, The Colosseum

19th Century Printed Illustrations based on Photographs

London, The Streets, Buildings and Monuments

WELCOME
 

NEW ONLINE EXHIBITIONS
 

• Scientific: Photomicroscopy "Yet such has been shown to be the fact, and every improvement in the powers of the microscope has enlarged our ideas of the extent of animal life in the fluids of the globe; so that the philosopher is now ready to admit no limit to the possible minuteness of living beings, but looks to still further improvements in the microscope as a means of extending his acquaintance with them, and not as likely to set any bound to his inquiries."
  William and Robert Chambers, eds. Chambers‘s Information for the People, New and Improved Edition (Edinburgh, William and Robert Chambers, 1842), Volume 1, p.534
   
  This exhibition provides a resource of classic scientific images that can take some time to track down. If you would like to suggest additional images please contact me alan@luminous-lint.com.
   
  
• Professor Albert Richards: X-Rays of Flowers Professor Richards taught at the University of Michigan’s dental school for over forty years and along with his research he took elegant x-rays of the floral world. Thanks to the family of Professor Richards, The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City (CA, USA) - one of my favorite museums, and to Brian Wigginton for suggesting this exhibition.
   
  
• Aerial photography and imaging This is the start of a collection showing the history of aerial photography both as a research and military tool but also as a vertical abstraction of reality. This is one of those exhibitions that will be added to as I come across additional examples - I‘m still seeking examples by Patricia Macdonald, Robert Petschow and Alex MacLean.
   
  
• Rome, The Colosseum [Sidenote: A.D. 75 (a.u. 828)] [Sidenote: Book 66, 15] In the sixth year of Vespasian as magistrate and the fourth of Titus the precinct of Peace was dedicated and the so-called Colossus was set up on the Sacred Way. It is said to have been one hundred feet high, and to have had - according to one account - the figure of Nero, according to others that of Titus. Vespasian would often have beasts slain in the theatres. He did not particularly enjoy gladiatorial combats of men, although Titus during the youthful sports which were celebrated in his own land had once had a sham fight in heavy armor with Alienus.
   
  Source: Cassius Dio, "Dio‘s Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211), An Historical Narrative Originally Composed In Greek During The Reigns Of Septimius Severus, Geta And Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus And Alexander Severus: And Now Presented In English Form By Herbert Baldwin Foster"
   
  
• 19th Century Printed Illustrations based on Photographs The exhibition provides an easily accessible collection of 19th century woodcuts, engravings and lithographs that were based upon photographs at a time when illustrations could not be printed directly from photographic positives or negatives in mass media or books.
   
  Within this collection there are the well known images based on Daguerreotypes brought together by Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours for his publication Excursions daguerriennes: vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe (1841-1842), and those of Timothy O‘Sullivan at the "Shoshone Falls" and in the "Shifting Sand-Mounds" that were published in "Photographs from the High Rockies" in Harper‘s New Monthly Magazine (June 1869). Besides these there are less well known images based on original photographs by Abraham Bogardus, J.E. Mayall, Mathew B. Brady, Louis Auguste Bisson, Richard Beard and others. There is also the remarkable case of the Daguerreotype of the hand of Captain Jonathan Walker with the brand SS (Slave Stealer) burnt into it and how it was used as a propaganda image against slavery in the American South.
   
  The magazine illustration of "The American and French Fashions Contrasted" from The Water-Cure Journal (New York) of 1851 shows two illustrations side-by-side. The one on the right is the pre-photograph style of magazine illustration and the one on the left was based on a photograph. The difference is striking.
   
  
• London, The Streets, Buildings and Monuments "His first impressions of London were as gloomy as fog, smoke, and dingy brick buildings could make them; in addition to this, the question which his own judgment now put to him, "What do you intend to do in England" absolutely startled him as not having before occurred;—the sum of a hundred pounds in hand constituted his whole worldly wealth."
  P.B. "The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White" in The Westminster Review, No.LXXXVII, December 1845, p.145
   
  
• 19th Century Photographic Studios: Dark tents This has been fun to research and includes many little known examples. If museums have photographs of surviving developing boxes, dark tents and portable darkrooms I‘d be interested in learning about them.
   
  My usual plan of proceeding was to erect an ordinary digger‘s tent, supported upon a couple of forked poles and well fastened down with guy-ropes; then, from the ridge of the structure, suspending a square photographic tent made of mackintosh material, with black calico skirts resting on the ground and kept securely fixed with stones. In fine weather this supplementary operating-tent was erected outside the ordinary dwelling ; but at other times better protection was afforded by suspending it within the larger tent. A square window of yellow oiled silk, measuring about 18 inches in both dimensions, admitted enough light to work by, and was of course proof against fracture during my journeys. A packhorse carried a couple of strong leather trunks slung from the saddle, in one of which the chemicals were packed, while the apparatus was placed in the other.
   
  L. Mundy, "Photographic Experiences in New Zealand.", The Photographic Journal, No.254, Dec 11, 1874, p.87.
   
  
• Crime and punishment: Photographic evidence For certain topics there are two distinct but complementary exhibitions - the first shows the photographs whilst the second provides the original source documents and supporting evidence. This exhibition is the photographic part.
   
  
• Crime and Punishment: Identification - Source documents This exhibition requires reading as it includes many fascinating articles, news items and illustrative pieces. I am seeking scans of the Belgian police photographs of criminals from the 1840s that are reputed to be earlier than the frequently cited Swiss and French examples.
   
  
• Abstract: Solarization The accidental rediscovery of solarization by Man Ray and his model and lover Lee Miller was a process that the Dadaists loved. They appreciated the fact that a new process could be found by the chance encounter of a foot with a mouse in the darkroom meaning light was urgently required and that the flash of light could convert the commonplace print into a new form of mysterious reality.
   
  Solarization, the term Man Ray proposed, has nothing to do with the sun rather it is the ‘Sabattier effect‘ (named after the French scientist Armand Sabattier who discovered it in 1862) that creates an image that is part negative and part positive and is created by exposing the print to light part way through the darkroom development process. The level of solarization is dependent upon the stage of development, the level of light the partially developed print is exposed to, and the amount of time it is exposed.
   
  Ilse Bing, Maurice Tabard, and proponents of the very active Czech avant-garde movement of the 1920‘s including Jaroslav Rössler (1902-1990) experimented with solarization. Edmund Teske (1911-1996) was born too late to be involved in the flowering of the avant-garde but through his interests in music and Vedanta, the study of the Hindu Vedas, he developed a philosophical framework that blended into his photography. The constructs of time and space and their malleability could be expressed through alterations in photographic processes. The use of composite prints, where multiple negatives are combined to create a single image, was the photographic equivalent of merging space and time. To this he added what has been referred to as duotone solarization - where the final image has both black and white and brown and white solarized effects. His expertise in this process created images that subvert nature to create unnatural and yet beautiful photographs out of the mundane to empower them with emotional and almost sacred meanings.
   
  
• Street photography This is a continually evolving, and hopefully improving, survey of street photography.
   
  
• Colours: Red passion, aggression, courage, energy, guilt, love, anger, hatred, pain, socialism, fire, heat, sacrifice, violence, bullfighting, emergency, danger, sin, negativity, blood, devils, lust, communism, stop, exit, honor, leadership, Valentine‘s Day, yield sign, blushing, Christmas, purity, attraction, beauty, error, failure, wrong way, conservatism (US), happiness (China), good luck (China), HIV/AIDS awareness and drug intolerance
  Common connotations of the colour - Red
  (Wikipedia, accessed: 27 March, 2010)
   
  
• Colours: White ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
  Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil‘s Dictionary.
   
  
• Colours: Blue The sky is not less blue because the blind man does not see it.
  Danish proverb
   
  

19th Century Photographic Studios: Dark tents

Crime and punishment: Photographic evidence

Crime and Punishment: Identification - Source documents

Colours: Red

Colours: White

Colours: Blue

• 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.
   
  
• Tipped-in illustrations. I‘m seeking examples of 19th century magazines, books and advertizing material that included tipped-in plates. Alexander Gardner‘s Photographic Sketch Book of the War is a classic and I have those and there were several magazines including The Far East and the short-lived Photographic Review of Medicine and Surgery. A Bi-Monthly Illustration of Interesting Cases, Accompanied by Notes, edited by F.F. Maury and L.A. Durhring - if you have recommendations let me know.
   
  
• Astronomy. There seem to have been innumerable expeditions to cover eclipses and the transit of Venus in the 19th century. Anybody like to collaborate on an online exhibition?
   
  
• Medical. Any individual collaborators or institutions interested in medical photography? I have five online exhibitions on this subject currently in planning.
   
  

 
My own page on Facebook

NEW ADDRESS
 

Abstract	Erotica	Fashion	Landscape	Nature
view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links
Photojournalism	Photomontage	Pictoralism	Portrait	Scientific
view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links
Still life	Street	War
view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links	view photo     Read about  Exhibitions  Photographers  Books  Links