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...

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

performance tuesday night...

double whammy post today... the above cdv is from the late 1890's and pictures a one man band with all his gear. the double whammy part is that i'm doing a performance tuesday night, and this is pretty darn close to my own live set up (although i won't be wearing a tuxedo...).

tuesday october 23, i'll be performing at the hammer museum in los angeles at 8PM sharp (and it seems they really do mean sharp!). my set up will include the following items also shown above: various small bells, a record player, a zither/dulcimer like stringed object, possibly a banjo but also probably a surrogate banjo in the form of a lap steel guitar... and much more. the live soundmaking will be accompanied by a new video work.

the evening is FREE and will also include sawako and william basinski...

and last but not least, i recently posted a nice recording of a live set on 12k's term site, so you can click here and download it for free...

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...

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 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.

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 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...

man with a pagoda on his head...

a pretty darn stunning photo of a one man band with a pagoda shaped hat that seems to have bells on it. this guy certainly falls into the musical wonder category. i really like the pre-bob dylan harmonica style panpipes at his chin and the rods coming off his heels that trigger something mysterious behind his back; as well as the drum mallet extending from his elbow. unfortunately there's no artist name on this, but fortunately the photographer was charles eisenmann, who was based in the bowery in new york between 1870 and 1899.

eisenmann's studio focused on the sideshow side of life with clients/subjects such as p.t. barnum, jo jo the dog faced boy, the skeleton man, etc. judging from the bulk of eisenmann's subjects (and his favorite tag line: extra inducements to the theatrical profession), i'd wager a guess that the music man here was part of barnum's troop or one of the other "dime museums" in the area.

this type of small cdv photograph (4.25 x 2.5 inches) was made to sell as a souvenir or given away to generate publicity. the photo is a sepia toned albumen print, which dates it somewhere between the 1870's and 1880's, when the medium was at the height of its popularity (which coincides with the popularity of the cdv - before being replaced in the mid 1880's by the larger style cabinet photo). perhaps with the significance of the photographer known, at some point i might actually be able to figure out who this music maestro actually was...

sound sculpture

thought i'd share some victorian sculptural insanity. these are cdv's (known as carte-de-visites in the small size, while these larger ones seem to be called cabinet views - 4.5" x 6.75"). they were popular from the 1860's until they were replaced by RPPC's around the turn of the century. these are photos mounted on a card stock that usually has the photographer's printed stamp.

i've limited my cdv collection to one man band musical contraptions - by folks who like to call themselves "musical genius" or "musical wonder". i love the crazed geometry of most of this stuff and can't imagine the beautiful dance these machines made when in use (much less the sounds they must've emitted!). poor professor charles contraptions look quite tame and much more parlour scaled; but upon inspection the asian influenced string and tiny bells look as thought they probably sounded angelic.

the first two photos are of professor mc.rae, ontario's musical wonder (the wonder is that i found them a year apart!). the third one is of someone who has very messy handwriting but i can make out the last name on the signature on the back as chisholm. next is of professor c.e. charles musical genius - on the back he's written: "original musical inventions, and copy right secured. 12 years study and experience" this was taken by hugo broich of milwaukee wisconsin. the last one is prof. dobie detroit mich, taken in boonton n.j. unfortunately a web search on all of these names provided nothing, so i can't give you any more history on these guys than that... click on the images to see them bigger...

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.

"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

a musical wonder returns...

a little over a year ago (august 29th 2006 to be exact), i posted some images of CDVs of one man bands and their musical contraptions from the victorian era (click here to see that original post). some were stamped with a performer's name, but one of the images had no printed text or information other than a messy signature on the back that reads something like "chisolm".

last week, i found another photo of him! it's clearly from the same photographer and came from the same studio. of course, these guys traveled the country doing performances and demonstrations and handed their pictures out as promotion or sold them as souvenirs; but i can't imagine "chisolm, the musical wonder" had more than 20 of these made....

since i've been collecting photos, i've been amazed by a number of finds like this, where things that have been separated for about a hundred years have found their way back to each other. the above image is the new photo, and you can click here to see the older one.

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 2 of my favorite recent finds suggest joseph cornell

banjo player: cdv circa 1880; piano player: rppc circa 1900... if you click on the piano player you can see her larger...

before the surrealists...

a small cdv type photograph mounted on a cardstock. it's rubber stamped on the back: joseph ward, looking glasses and picture frames, boston. the image, from a drawing by j.p.soule, is from 1866, and from a series of "animated flowers". the cards are most likely from the 1880's. this is the only one i've been able to find.

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

a tintype...

while the bulk of my collection is RPPC's and CDV's, i have also picked up an occasional tintype when it relates to music and is affordable (a rarity that is akin to the stars being aligned).

the image above is probably the best of the few i have, particularly because the image is not only stellar, but it retains its original frame. if you click on it you can see the hand tinted rosy cheeks (which seems to be common amongst tintype portraits) as well as the fiddler's very sporty vest.

the tintype was developed by professor hamilton k. smith in 1856.

here's a bit of history: A wet-plate collodion process produced on a thin iron plate--named the melainotype (melaino, meaning dark or black) or ferrotype (ferro, referring to iron) and popularly called the tintype--was developed in Ohio in the early 1850s. While many mid-nineteenth century photographers did not value the tintype, it held many advantages over earlier photographic processes. It was less expensive, easier and faster to produce than the silver-plated daguerreotype, and much more durable than the glass-plated ambrotype. Like the ambrotype, the tintype was simply a collodion negative image that appeared as a positive due to the black (japanned) base upon which it rested. Despite reaching the peak of its popularity during the Civil War, the tintype continued to be used well into the second quarter of the twentieth century.

more here

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...