some flat pianos...

"i have seen
a curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
of inland ground, applying to his ear
the convolutions of a smooth lipped shell;
to which, in silence hushed, his every soul
listened intensely; and his countenance soon
brightened with joy; for from within were heard
murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
mysterious union with its native sea."

w. wordsworth, from "the prelude"
image: cdv, circa 1880

when peering into a tremendous ocean overhead...

“... the clouds flew low and fast, and when he looked up, he felt he was peering into a tremendous ocean overhead, streaming above the earth.

now the earth was an isolated marble for him, sapphire-blue and streaked with white in the blackness of the universe, a tiny particle floating in the void – as he had seen in color photographs. this picture of the earth was not something he had in daily life. usually the earth was the school building, the fish ponds, a mood of the sky that he wrote down in a notebook... no, not even these things, it was made up only of things that were taken for granted. the most usual and normal, the most humdrum things, which were repeated a thousand times, so that he didn’t even register them anymore – that was the earth. from far away it was something that seemed like his conception of life: something wondrous, mysterious. but the closer he came to this life, the more it dissolved into details, into tiny things, through repetition. life was a vegetative thing, just as the earth was nothing special in the universe, a triviality. he rode the train and noticed he was thinking about the earth as though it were an alien star, so remote in the infinity of space that he could not tell it was inhabited by human beings, as though he himself were living not on it but outside of it. he felt as if he had fallen from the earth. it was an oceanic feeling of loneliness.”

gerhard roth, winterreise

when strangers cross your path more than once...

it's happened before, but i'm still mystified every time...

here are two CDVs, one shot in chicago, one shot in buffalo ny. i found one about 2 years ago, and the other arrived in the mail a few days ago.

clearly the two musicians in the top image are the same two in the center and right of the bottom image. the horn and the tambourine look the same, but the horn player looks quite a bit older in the bottom image.

certainly a touring group of musicians sold or gave away enough photos that they would eventually end up in various cities and in the hands of different antique dealers, but the fact that they have come together again in this room, to my mind, is a bit of a miracle.

unfortunately, neither card has any writing on the back, hence no idea who the musicians are other than both were sold to me as being "gypsy" musicians... and that is all i know.

when arkansas looked at paris... (maybe)

i remember way back in undergraduate school, i took a history of photography class while studying in paris. i remember spending an entire day talking about a photo by alfred steiglitz of people on a ship, dissecting every person, every thing as being part of a kind of implied drama or narrative. when i saw this cabinet photo of people at the entrance of eureka springs, arkansas it reminded me not only of the steiglitz image, but also a number of classical paintings where each figure has more weight in its relationship to another, than by itself.

if one were looking at this the way we spoke about steiglitz, then one could see somehow that the black umbrella behind the boy is a kind of void or hole and perhaps suggests, as he is the youngest in the image, a symbol of birth, youth, and life. he's holding a hat that seems of a man, suggesting a trajectory through life, his eventual becoming a man; and his glance to the side, away from the people, and towards an unknown future. as one drifts to the left to the second umbrella one sees it not as a protector or a void, but as a container, a bowl in its upside down-ness. here one wonders if the object has been left to capture the sunlight rather than to reflect it, and so when the lady sitting next to it stands up and places it over her head, she not only protects herself from what will be above, but fills herself with all that has rested within her umbrella, filling or coating her with some syrupy glow from the sky...

so much of this image is about the gazes, and how other than the couple in front, none of the people seem to be looking at the same thing, or even each other, which led me to map the lines from their eyes to see what kind of linear image their gazes would form...

in terms of a cabinet photo, this image is pretty complex and awkward - clearly posed, but clearly intended to seem candid, and certainly outside of the ordinary language and composition of the bulk of cabinet photos i've seen.

it was the presence of the umbrellas, as well as the "era" in which the photo was taken that suggested seurat to me. could it be a coincidence that this photo was taken only a few years after seurat had finished his masterpiece in 1886? i wonder if images of this french painting traveled to rural america in the late 1880's, and if so, how it might have found its way to inspire a photographer to arrange arkansas-ians in such a way that they feel connected to the classical language of france, as participants in an allegorical drama.

in that same photo class we spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the moment when photography and painting were at odds over the value and place of photography within the fine art establishment. here, painting is clearly at its modernist beginnings, while photography is trying to find a first voice that could be wholly its own. this photograph is modern, not in terms of it's visual language as much as in the creation of a composition that speaks about things beneath its surface - relationships, feelings, moods, and unspoken stories. here, photography doesn't try to mirror the contemporary language of painting (i.e. it doesn't fuzz itself up to look like a painting), but exploits what photography could, perhaps, do better at the time - reveal an image as it is in the world, and to allow the clarity of that image to speak about things beyond what is seen - suggesting the potential of what can be revealed by simply looking at the real...

of course, while the things within the photograph are real, their placement and implied connections are wholly the work of the photographer's compositional direction, and one could probably talk about what is constructed and what is "real" until one is blue in the face. nonetheless, in many ways, i believe this photograph of the entrance to eureka springs is as complex and modern as seurat's painting, if not more so, in the way it that it suggests or implies various narratives and stories - using the way a complex classical composition can be thrust into the present, through the re-presentation of the very real contemporary visual language of the moment.

of course, the argument for this photograph as something modern is intuitive and unresolved. one could see the image as looking backwards to a painter like j.l. david; or looking forwards, evoking the surrealist tendencies and languages that would crop up in the paintings of delvaux, magritte and de chirico, a few decades later.

i love how certain images send you down paths you never thought you were interested in. these discussions around photography and painting had me bored to tears in school, and as much as i have become interested in the history of photography, it's relationship to painting is of little concern to me. but images tend to bring out of one's mind these things that lay dormant for ages, and so one has no choice but to go where the image takes them. i must say that in the end, i do love this photograph for reasons i couldn't begin to express in words, and mostly i am wondering what might've been beyond the turnstile, and also perhaps, the sound, and the song, of the clarinet...

yea the fading things of time and a mansion of quietness...

"a mansion of rest, of quietness and peace, where all mortal soul cries will eternally cease. where with holy angels and seraphs thou shall join, in my arbor of love, eternal and sublime. beyond the vain terrestrial, yea the fading of things of time, where eternal joys shall ever more be thine. so come receive a crown of my holy love, and on thy soul shout the song of sweet mirth"

image, a faded cdv of some kind of organ grinding clown circa 1890, text from a shaker gift drawing transcribed into a small notebook a few weeks ago while visiting the american craft & folk art museum in nyc...

the one that rode the yellow horse...

inscribed on the back:
gus rowden
dixon, mo
he was the one that
rode the yellow horse and
dressed in yellow cambric
like a gold bug in the
free silver parade in dixon
for mckinley and bryan
presidency.

when things suggest and/or resemble... (or when portraits are in the center of scrawlings...)

atop is one of the most wonderful and strange cdv's i've ever found. it's from a photograph studio in evansville wisconsin, circa 1890, featuring a strange combination of a photograph of a guy with a horn and a small toy drum, floating in the center of some seriously wonderful scrawlings.

the boy in the center of this universe is clarence baker (at least that is what is scrawled on the back), and the rest of the images are "his chums" (at least that is what is scrawled on the back).

i've never seen a cdv that contained an image surrounded by drawings, and i would assume that the "drawings" are actually scratches etched into the negative. certainly dr. freud would have a field day with clarence's "chums", particularly all the snakes and the man with the horns (oh poor clarence has only one).

i wonder if the bloke in profile with a hat is clarence's alter ego and perhaps the old dude with the top hat pushing clarence forward into life - and oh what a life - is his father. i'm not sure about the strangely scary elf at the top, but clearly the horned guy with the pointed tail in his mouth is the devil - who clearly has clarence's smile...

the cdv kept reminding me of a painting, which i finally remembered was by thomas eakins, pictured below the photo of clarence. since the photo and the painting are from about the same time, i can't help but wonder if the approach of one was influential on the other. eakins painting is an 1897 portrait of henry rowland, who was considered "the highest known authority in this country upon the subject of the laws and principles of electricity..."

it is one of my favorite eakins paintings, not just because of the beautiful notational scribblings on the frame, but also the prism in the center, suggesting not just science, but perhaps some deeper mysteries and alchemical truths...

when one returns to find bells in their mailbox...

well... wyoming was incredible, and i will probably post some of my doings on flickr at some point. the other good news is that my post office box was overflowing with airform goodness, which i will be posting over the next few weeks. here we see a cdv from germany circa 1890 featuring a very large bell and two little people.

i have a feeling since the old guy is touching the bell with his pointer he is saying, "a bell is a bell is a bell...", while the little boy in the sailor outfit is perhaps imagining what it might be like to turn the bell upside down and try to float it out to sea like a boat...

getting ready for new year's eve...

top, unknown folks or location, tintype, circa 1900; bottom cdv photographed by g.w. jorns, springfield, illionis, 1880's.

when backs are better than fronts...

it is not uncommon for me to buy something for all the wrong reasons. in this case, a cdv, where the photograph itself was incredibly boring (a portrait of a generic looking old woman's face), but the backside graphics for the photographer's studio are incredible! here you can see a little tiny fairyland of butterflies and spirits under the influence of asian aesthetics at the height of their influence on artists like whistler, as well as much european design in the late 1800's. it's quite remarkable that a portait studio would advertise their wares in such a mysterious and childlike way.

when optimism speaks...

joyous: bring the compressed right hand, fingers tightly curved, so that teh tip of thumb is near the tips of fingers, against the left breast, index finger and thumb resting over heart and pointing downwards. then hold extended hands, backs down, in front of body, hands same height, equally advanced and a few inches apart, fingers pointing to front. raise hands briskly, mostly by wrist action.

victory: bring right hand, back facing nearly up, in front of body, about height of shoulder, hand nearly closed, ball of thumb pressing against second joint of index, second joints of fingers nearly on line with back of hand, back of hand making a slight angle with wrist; i.e. knuckles higher than wrist; strike to the front, downwards and a little to the left, stopping hand suddenly, and giving it a slight rebound. right hand is raised in front of the body waving in a circular motion.

a cdv of a juggler/acrobat circa 1900, text from w.p. clark, the indian sign language, 1885

sound pipes, visual pipes...

a cdv of an anonymous bagpipe player taken in leeds, uk, circa 1880; and an early silvertone 78 rpm disc featuring pipe major j. starck. certainly the atmosphere of touch and age upon these two seems perfectly in sync; as the dust, blurs, and dissolving background in the photo tend to have a similar percentage of distraction and disintegration as the surface noises on the music. the beautiful thing about the recording is that normally bagpipes are the loudest acoustic instrument, and here, buried beneath noise and a thick shellac mono surface, the instrument sounds relatively small and dreamy. whereas the acoustic presence might scare the bees from the honey, the gentle presence in the recording might attract the butterflies.

click here to listen to foughaballagh.

somewhere between a bell and a book...

a cdv from the 1880's that arrived in the mail last week, picturing a man carrying the essential needs of a wanderer...

poor flowers in beds...

poor flowers in beds in neatly trimmed gardens.
they seem to be afraid of the police...
but they're so good they bloom in the same way
and have the same ancient smile
they had for the first glance of the first man
who saw them appear and touched them lightly
to see if they would speak...

image early hand colored cdv of flowers
text: poem from fernando pessoa's the keeper of sheep

ferris wheel sheet music cabinet...

a cabinet card from the 1890's of a ferris wheel sheet music cabinet - one darn amazing cabinet of curiosities. at 9 and a half feet tall, this must've been an imposing object, particularly weighted down with so much paper, as it supposedly held 4800 pieces of sheet music inside it... talk about an archive! i love the mix of different type faces and sizes on the back, which tells you everything you need to know.

when she whirled 2990 times in 32 minutes...

"mary bayrooty, the syrian girl who last year whirled for thirty-two minutes without cessation, making something like 2,240 revolutions established a new record yesterday afternoon in barnum & bailey's freak hall. she made 2,990 twirls in thirty-seven minutes. this is a new world record... when the last note died and the last whirl had been achieved, marie was fresh as paint. she ran across the floor to the nearest reporter and pinned a rose on the lapel of his coat, remaining until her fame had been suitably sounded. then she sat down and gave the other freaks a chance."

much as i wish i'd written the text above, it is a newspaper account of marie bayrooty that i found online while researching her. the CDV with her image was a recent find.

when bells talk...

"the same thing occurs with the sound of bells, in whose ringing you will discover whatever name or word you imagine."

words: leonardo da vinci, tratado di pintura.
image: cdv of bellringers photographed by r.h. bliven, 1880's.

before harry partch...

a small cdv of william campbell and his bagpipes. not much i can add to such a wonderful image...this might be the famous william campbell who won a highland society of london gold medal in 1897 and was a head bagpiper to the queen circa 1901... nice pants too...

when monks play music...

nice old cdv of some monks playing music... as winter approaches, the scars to the photo's surface begin to look a lot like snow...