http://www.stacymehrfar.com/#/one/american%20palimpsests/2
12/18/09
12/1/09
Etienne Jules Marey
From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne-Jules_Marey
Étienne-Jules Marey (March 5, 1830 – May 21, 1904) was a French scientist and chronophotographer, born in Beaune, France. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography.
Marey found a way to record several phases of movements in one photo. He started by studying how blood moves in the body. Then he shifted to analyzing heart beats, respiration, muscles (myography), and movement of the body. To aid his studies he developed many instruments for precise measurements. For example, he was successful in selling an instrument called Sphygmographe to measure the pulse. In 1869 Marey constructed a very delicate artificial insect to show how an insect flies and to demonstrate the figure-8 shape it produced during movement of its wings. Then he became fascinated by movements of air and started to study bigger flying animals, like birds. He adopted and further developed animated photography into a separate field of chronophotography in the 1880s. His revolutionary idea was to record several phases of movement on one photographic surface. In 1890 he published a substantial volume entitled Le Vol des Oiseaux (“The Flight of Birds”), richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, and diagrams. He also created stunningly precise sculptures of various flying birds. He published La Machine Animale in 1873. The English photographer Eadweard Muybridge carried out his "Photographic Investigation" to prove that Marey was right when he wrote that a galloping horse for a brief moment had all four hooves off the ground.
Marey's chronophotographic gun was made in 1882. The instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second (all the frames were recorded on the same picture). Using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, molluscs, insects, reptiles, etc. Marey also conducted the famous study about cats landing always on their feet.
Marey also made movies. They were at a high speed (60 images per second) and of excellent image quality. His research on how to capture and display moving images helped the emerging field of cinematography.
11/29/09
11/26/09
11/23/09
11/22/09
11/17/09
11/15/09
11/5/09
Bill Moyers - PBS Online Archive
PBS has a number of his shows archived online. Watch these interviews:
Susan Sontag http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/sontag_vid.html
Maurice Sendak http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/sendak/watch.html
W.S. Merwin http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06262009/watch.html
10/31/09
10/18/09
Maurice B
Vince and I have been sorting through his old family photographs. His dad was a fantastic photographer. Vince's mom, Madeleine pictured above.
10/15/09
Giant Marionettes in Berlin
From The Big Picture:
Earlier this week, 1.5 million people filled the streets of Berlin, Germany to watch a several-day performance by France's Royal de Luxe street theatre company titled "The Berlin Reunion". Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance has the two separated by a wall, thrown up by "land and sea monsters". The Big Giant has just returned from a long and difficult - but successful - expedition to destroy the wall, and now the two are walking the streets of Berlin, seeking each other after many years apart.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/the_berlin_reunion.html
10/13/09
10/4/09
John Hinde's Holiday Camp Postcards
Butlin’s Holiday Camps are a unique British institution conceived by Billy Butlin for post-war Britain. He dreamt of a holiday centre for the great mass of working-class families, where they could have a good time irrespective of the unreliable British weather. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the photographer, innovator and entrepreneur John Hinde, a key figure in the development of the colour photograph as a postcard, set about recording the ‘social revolution’ that was Butlin’s. Hinde’s postcards not only provide a valuable documentation of the Butlin's phenomenon, but an account of the rise of leisure society in post war Britain. Set apart from the more romantic, black and white documentary images of Britain at that time, these images have been overlooked by the history of photography...
Text from Ffotogallery:
http://www.ffotogallery.org/exhibition.php?ex_id=310&p=20
From Wiki on John Hinde:
John Wilfrid Hinde (1916-1998) was an English photographer whose idealistic and nostalgic style influenced the art of postcard photography and was widely known for his meticulously planned shoots. Born in Somerset, England, his interest in colour photography arose during the 1940s. From the later half of the 1940s to the middle half of the 1950s, he entered the circus life, where he met his future wife. However, he soon returned to photography and, in 1956, he left the circus and founded John Hinde Ltd. in Dublin to produce and distribute his colour pictures of Ireland. Hinde's most famous work is that of the Butlin's Holiday Camps...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinde_%28photographer%29
More information on Butlin's camps and John Hide here:
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/05/theory-blown-up-out-of-all-proportion.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
