My Kind of Amusement Park

(Above) Vintage postcard from Prehistoric Forest in better days. This card is available at CardCow.

(Above) Back of postcard.

(Above) A Woolly Mammoth at the long abandoned Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan. Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.

Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.

Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.




MY KIND OF AMUSEMENT PARK? CLOSED. ABANDONED. So where does an amusement park go when they go out of business? Well, a few of them have simply been fenced off and left to decay, perhaps hoping for a buyer—someone with dreams of reviving it to make, uh... millions. The now defunct Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan (first opened in 1963) is actually for sale—and you can buy this 8-acre sweetheart for just $584,000. Oh, there are approximately 100 fiberglass dinosaurs on the property, including an arcade, gift shop, a swimming pool in not so good shape and a... community shower (which makes me a bit uncomfortable).

NileGuide, the travel blog, showcases eight different amusement parks, all fenced off with plenty of “No Trespassing” signs around. But come on—that’s no way to see an abandoned theme park! Go ahead, be bold.

And be sure to check out the larger site RoadsideArchitecture. It is chock full of good sites!

An AM repost from 6/30/10.

Envelope Found Art

(Above and below) This is my favorite. A 1926 envelope postmarked by an obsessive, insane postmaster, I am quite sure. Waa-haa-haaa-haa! Click on image for larger view.

(Above) Back of insane envelope.

(Above) Illustrated Centennial envelope, 1936.

(Above) 1898 envelope for Brunswick cigars. Kinda cool how the wavy postmark is almost like smoke wafting from the cigar.

(Above) Beautiful 1893 envelope for Diamond Creamery Butter.

(Above) German envelope to National Bank of Germany.

(Above) 1936 envelope, postmarked from Mason City, Iowa.


ENJOY THE GRAPHIC, VISUAL POWER AND BEAUTY OF THESE ENVELOPES, and have a great week.


An AM repost from 5/3/09.

19th Century Japanese Pregnancy Dolls

(Above) 19th-century obstetric training doll - Wada Museum

(Above) “Dark-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum

(Above) “Light-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum

(Above) Wood carved fetus model set (circa 1877) - Toyota Collection

(Above) Baby doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum


IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY, SIDESHOW CARNIVALS known as misemono were a popular form of entertainment for the sophisticated residents of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The sideshows featured a myriad of educational and entertaining attractions designed to evoke a sense of wonder and satisfy a deep curiosity for the mysteries of life. One popular attraction was the pregnant doll.

Although it is commonly believed that these dolls were created primarily to teach midwives how to deliver babies, evidence suggests they were also used for entertainment purposes.

For example, records from 1864 describe a popular show in Tokyo’s Asakusa entertainment district that educated audiences about the human body. The show featured a pregnant doll whose abdomen could be opened to reveal fetal models depicting the various stages of prenatal development.

Similarly, records of Japan’s first national industrial exhibition in 1877 indicate a Yamagata prefecture hospital doctor named Motoyoshi Hasegawa showed off an elaborate set of fetus models illustrating seven different stages of growth, from embryo to birth.

Although it is unclear whether the fetus model set pictured in the final image above is the same one Hasegawa showed in 1877, records suggest his model was a hit at the exhibition.

[Source: Geijutsu Shincho magazine, July 2001] via PinkTentacle.

An AM repost from 7/8/09.

Bye Bye Blackboard

(Above) Albert Einstein
Physicist
Einstein’s blackboard was used in a lecture in Oxford on May 16, 1931.

At that time Einstein’s theories of relativity were being combined with astronomical data to explain the shifts towards the red in the spectra of distant galaxies, which indicated that the universe was expanding. In his lecture Einstein outlined a fairly simple model to explain this apparent expansion. In the first line on the blackboard, D, the measure of expansion in the universe, is defined in terms of the expansion factor P. The expression for the density of matter in the universe, given by Ú in the third line, is derived from the field equations. The last four lines contain numerical data, giving values for density, radius and age of the universe, where ‘L. J’ stands for ‘Licht Jahr’ (light year) and ‘J’ for ‘Jahr’ (year). According to the last line, the age of the universe is about 10, or perhaps 100 billion years (the bracket indicates an alternative figure, not a product of two figures).

Einstein’s blackboard deals with some of the most fundamental questions in cosmology.

(Above) Cornelia Parker
Artist
Navigating a Cliff Edge in Darkness 2005
‘Written while blindfolded, using cliff chalk from Beachy Head, Sussex’

(Above) The Right Reverend Richard Harries
Bishop of Oxford

‘I had the privilege of chairing the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research. Most of us were non-scientists, but with the aid of a very good scientific adviser we did I think grasp some of the fundamental principles involved. Cloning was one issue we had to discuss and both then and subsequently I have found these little drawings helpful both for myself and others to whom I am talking.’

(Above) Joanna MacGregor
Pianist

‘I wrote the music on this blackboard while I was giving a lecture about Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Holywell Music Room on 22nd March this year, before performing them. I was trying to make a connection between Bach’s super-sensitivity to the contemporary styles around him – very very acute in this piece – and today’s musicians. There’s a lot of information in the Goldberg’s – structure, harmony, a ladder of canons – and coded information we can only guess at – myths, cosmological allegories, and a soulful journey. It all starts with the bass line.’

(Above) Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
President of the Royal Academy
‘Tension & Compression’


BLACKBOARDS ARE WIPED AFTER USE: they are meant for immediate communication, not for permanence. Even when are being used, their messages are continuously revised, erased and renewed. But when Einstein came to Oxford in 1931, he was already an international celebrity. After one of his lectures, a blackboard was preserved and has become a kind of relic. It is the most famous object in the Museum.

The exhibition in 2005 marked the centenary of the Special Theory of Relativity by inviting a number of well-known people in Britain to chalk on blackboards the same size as Einstein’s. All of the guest blackboards were prepared in the early months of 2005. The result was an exhibition about science, art, celebrity and nostalgia. The blackboard is fast disappearing from meetings, classes and lectures, hence the exhibition title: ‘Bye-Bye Blackboard’.

The exhibition was on display in the Special Exhibitions Gallery at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford from April 16 to September 18, 2005.

I gained knowledge of this wonderful exhibition through Eric Baker’s posting of images January 26, 2009 through the Design Observer. The copy above is from that posting, © Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

An AM repost from January 29, 2009

Autochromes: The Earliest Color

(Above) An impressive 5 x 7 inch autochrome, circa 1905, from the gallery of Alex Novak and Marthe Smith. Learn more at 212.822.5662 or visit their website at www.vintageworks.net. Click for larger view.

So, you thought the year 1905 was black and white, did you? :-)

Be sure and click on images for a larger view.


All of these photos were made in Belgium around 1900 to 1910!





IF YOU COULD SEE BACK 110 YEARS, just for a moment—the people and their dress, a city street or country path in real color, that would be pretty amazing, wouldn’t it?

Just a few years ago, color photos and movie film of World War II was made available for the first time that documented various aspects of the war. Even during 1940-45, color film was quite rare. The few color photos that I have seen reproduced of soldiers and the war (rather than in B&W) brings the distant past a lot closer. Of course, it wasn’t until the 1950’s that color was finally introduced to the world—and even then, it had its limitations.

But did you know that color images were being made at the turn of the 20th century? The process was called the autochrome, and it was a complicated process using, of all things... potatoes. If it wasn’t an autochrome, any color images you might find from that period or before were hand-colored tintypes, Daguerreotypes, and other monochromatic processes. Here, for the first time, was a process that could truly capture the ambient color of the day. It looked a lot like a glass slide, and was about 4 x 5 inches (and larger) in size.

The autochrome 1907-1932

The autochrome process was invented during the years 1895-1903, by the French brothers Louis Lumière (1864-1947 and Auguste Lumière (1862-1954). It took them four further years to work out and refine the several fabrication processes. Finally in 1907 the autochrome plates came on the market and were an instant success. Until now, the photographers’ only way to produce color was tinting the plates by hand which was done by many photographers with breathtaking artistry.

Here’s part of what it took to make an autochrome plate

The nucleus of autochrome glass plates are dyed grains of potato starch measuring between 0.006—0.025mm.

1. Make three heaps of starch, dye each pile in respectively violet, green and orange.
2. Make a mix of these three different colored grain starches.
3. You need a glass plate between 0.9 and 1.8mm thick.
4. First you have to varnish the plate with a latex based varnish.
5. Blow the colored mix of grains on the varnished plate.
6. Gently brush the plate to remove the surplus grains.
7. Next, a fine layer of charcoal is applied to fill the interstices between the grains.
8. The whole plate then has to be pressed to reduce overall thickness of layers.
9. After pressing, apply a second layer of varnish.
10. To finish off, place a panchromatic emulsion layer.
    

This is briefly the production process of an autochrome plate, but imagine for all the different production stages industrial machines had to be invented to produce plates on a grand scale.

Some interesting facts

• There are between 6,000 to 7,000 grains on a square millimeter.
• A rolling pressure of 5000 kg per square centimeter had to be achieved to press the layers without breaking the fragile glass plate.
• Around 1914 the daily production was 6,000 autochrome plates.
• It is estimated that between 1907 and 1932 around 20 million plates were sold.
• The biggest collection of autochromes (72,000 plates) is housed at the Albert Kahn Museum at Boulogne Billancourt, France.

An AM Repost from 1/23/09

Learn more at: Autochromes.
Copyright 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 Thomas Weynants (Pipistrello)
Media_Museum Version (6) 01 / 01 / 2008 - All rights reserved by SOFAM

The Critical Analysis of a Snapshot

(click on images for a larger view)
WHAT MAKES A GREAT SNAPSHOT? As a general rule, many of the same things that one might use to judge any artwork fall into play. Connoisseurship in any field has its criteria. My good friend Brian loves great automobiles. If I were to ask him what makes a great automobile, I would guess him to say craftsmanship, performance, design, quality—those kind of things. Notice I didn’t say anything about cost. If I had asked him “what are the qualities of the most expensive cars in the world?” that is a different question altogether. Then, he might say something like rarity, being first. To that point, an 1898 one-off prototype of a steam-powered car (ugly, by many standards) might trump the very first Mercedes, for example. But then again, maybe not. But I have opened a can of worms here—in a field I know little about. I do know that the art—the design— of an automobile can give it immortality. Raymond Loewy’s Avanti, for example, still turns heads today if you would be fortunate enough to see one.

In the world of snapshots, or “vernacular photography” as they call it today, we have to understand the difference between the work of a trained photographer and that of an everyday snapshot shooter. We’ll call the everyday snapshot guy “Uncle Charlie.”

Uncle Charlie, who has his Brownie camera with him one day to get a few shots of his friend’s retirement party, is leaving work when sees a blimp flying overhead and remembers he still has a picture left. He thinks the sighting of a blimp unusual enough to want to record it. He tried to get directly under it but it is moving too fast. Charlie thinks: “Damn that building! If only I had a better shot! Oh, what the hell!” *Click!* When the pictures come back from the drugstore, he is probably bothered a bit by all the intrusions that came with the picture, like the pole, wire, the two buildings—but, he thinks, at least I got my picture. Mission accomplished.

Now, if the great modernist photographer Lee Friedlander happened to have been there on the same day, the last thing he would have wanted was a single shot of the belly of the blimp. Chances are he would have run to the alley and tried to get a shot similar to the one that Uncle Charlie took, which was basically by accident and default. Friedlander would have reveled in the juxtapositions of the blimp to the wire and the buildings to the blimp and seized upon that very moment. Could he have taken a better picture of that blimp on that day? Probably. But Uncle Charlie stumbled onto this great photo—in spite of himself. It is doubtful that this anonymous snapshot shooter allowed his mind to make the critical analysis that a trained photographer might have done.

So, what about that criteria? What do I look for in a great snapshot? Well, the great snapshots are absolutely rare. You have to figure that 99% of the time there is no negative, so this is all you will ever have of this particular view. What you are holding in your hand is the only existing image of this particular shot. For example, there are millions of pictures of men in hats. But only ONE like the one you see above. That makes it a one-of-a-kind. Add to that the qualities I list for you below—and you have a great photo.

When I look at a snapshot I look for the following things: (1) composition: simply, does it work as a picture? (2) tonality: does it have a full-range of values, from white to gray to black? Or, does it break this rule for something more dramatic or sublime? (3) content: what is it a picture of? Is the image unusual, with uncommon subject matter? Does it challenge me visually? Is there a surprise, something unexpected? Do I continue to see more the longer I look? (4) condition: Is the photo is good shape? Is it bent, wrinkled or damaged? Or, is it pristine?

(5) My last criteria, and this is personal to my collecting eye: does the snapshot remind me of something a great photographer might have taken? Is it a little Diane Arbus? Is it an “accidental” Weegee, Friedlander, Siskind, Steiglitz, Strand or other?

I’ll be showcasing some other snapshots from time-to-time. Thanks and stay tuned.

An AM repost from 1/15/09.

Steven Meisel: Master Photographer

(Above) Steven Meisel, (b. 1954) photographer, cover of Italian Vogue.


(Above and following) Steven Meisel, additional works.




(Above) 1859 Japanese woodcut, artist Kunisada: front cover of book


(Above) 1859 Japanese woodcut, artist Kunisada: inside spread


Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918) “Death and the Woman,” painted in 1915.


(Above) Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) “The Maiden,” painted in 1912.


THERE IS NO QUESTION photographer Steven Meisel (b. 1954) is a great fashion photographer. I thought it would be interesting to show some of his recent work, which is gorgeous, and some other art historical references with excessive pattern clashes that relates to that. Being an informed artist, Meisel was certainly knowledgeable of the work of painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele of the Austrian Secessionist movement at the turn of the 20th century. These painters, especially Klimt, explored fully this notion of the human figure entwined with and melting into the immediate surroundings. Schiele was knowledgeable of the older, more respected Klimt—and certain pieces of his work reflect that. Schiele’s life was tragic—persecuted by the law for “pornographic” drawings, he died at the young age of 28—a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic of Europe that took 20 million lives in 1918.

Certainly, Meisel knew of the incredible work of Verushka, basically the world’s first supermodel, and her camoflauge series, where she would use body paint to become (or blend into) wood, rocks or the landscape.

The 19th century Japanese woodcuts, though more obscure—explore similar graphic devices of patterning.

An AM repost from 2/12/09.