A 110-Year-Old Book Illustrated with Photos of Kittens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

in Books, Education, Internet Archive, K-12, Photography | October 18th, 2021

 

Unlike our 21st-cen­tu­ry cat memes and oth­er such online feline-based enter­tain­ments, children’s author Eulalie Osgood Grover’s 1911 work, Kit­tens and Cats: A First Read­er was intend­ed to edu­cate.

Its relat­ed poems will almost cer­tain­ly strike those of us whose under­stand­ing of feline atti­tude has been shaped by LOL­Cats, Grumpy Cat, the exis­ten­tial Hen­ri, Talk­ing Kit­ty Cat’s acer­bic Sylvester, and the mor­dant 1970s TV spokescat Mor­ris as sweet to the point of sick­ly. But it boasts six hun­dred vocab­u­lary words, a rhyme struc­ture that pro­motes read­ing aloud, and a note to teach­ers with sug­ges­tions for class­room activ­i­ties.

Grover explained how her feline cast of char­ac­ters would win over even the most reluc­tant read­er, inspir­ing “much the same delight to the lit­tle read­er of juve­nile fic­tion, as do adven­ture and romance to the grown-up read­er”:

In one respect kit­tens take prece­dence over dolls. They are alive. They must be treat­ed kind­ly. They will not bear the abuse and neglect giv­en to many beau­ti­ful dolls. They demand atten­tion and com­pan­ion­ship, and they return a real devo­tion in return for kind­ness and care. There­fore we love them and espe­cial­ly do our chil­dren love them and delight in sto­ries of them.

The loose­ly struc­tured sto­ry con­cerns a grand par­ty thrown by the Queen of the Cats. Fol­low­ing some breath­less prepa­ra­tions, the guests take turns intro­duc­ing them­selves to her majesty, though unlike T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (1939), there’s not much that could be cob­bled into a hit musi­cal.

Grover flesh­es out the nar­ra­tive with call­backs to a num­ber of cat-rich nurs­ery rhymes — Hick­o­ry Dick­o­ry Dock, Three Lit­tle Kit­tens, Hey Did­dle Did­dle, As I Was Going to St. Ives, Ding Dong Bell…

One lace-bon­net­ed char­ac­ter is rem­i­nis­cent of Tom Kit­ten’s moth­er, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, and her unsuc­cess­ful attempts to wran­gle her ram­bunc­tious off­spring into cloth­ing fit for “fine com­pa­ny,” though the wit falls some­what short of Beat­rix Potter’s.

Head­gear abounds, as do restric­tive buntings that must’ve been a great help when deal­ing with unco­op­er­a­tive mod­els and long expo­sures.

Although the pho­tog­ra­ph­er is uncred­it­ed, the images are like­ly the work of Har­ry Whit­ti­er Frees, a “pio­neer of the anthro­po­mor­phic kit­ten pho­to­graph genre” as per the New York Dai­ly News. In his intro­duc­tion to his far more ambi­tious­ly posed 1915 work, The Lit­tle Folks of Ani­mal Land, Frees allud­ed to his process:

The dif­fi­cul­ties of pos­ing kit­tens and pup­pies for pic­tures of this kind have been over­come only by the exer­cise of great patience and invari­able kind­ness. My lit­tle mod­els receive no espe­cial train­ing, and after their dai­ly per­for­mance before the cam­era they enjoy noth­ing more than a good frol­ic about the stu­dio.

That’s a pleas­ant thought, though his­to­ri­an and post­card col­lec­tor Mary L. Wei­gley tells a some­what dif­fer­ent tale in an arti­cle for Penn­syl­va­nia Her­itage, describ­ing how only 3/10 of his neg­a­tives could be pub­lished, and his work was so “chal­leng­ing, time-con­sum­ing and nerve-wrack­ing” that he took 9 months out of every year to recu­per­ate.

Cats!

Down­load a free copy of Eulalie Osgood Grover’s Kit­tens and Cats here.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold the Photographs of John Thomson, the First Western Photographer to Travel Widely Through China (1870s)

in History, Photography, Travel | October 13th, 2021

In the ear­ly 1860s, a few West­ern­ers had seen Chi­na — but near­ly all of them had seen it for them­selves. The still-new medi­um of pho­tog­ra­phy had yet to make images of every­where avail­able to view­ers every­where else, which meant an oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el­ing prac­ti­tion­ers like John Thom­son. “The son of a tobac­co spin­ner and shop­keep­er,” says BBC.com, ” he was appren­ticed to an Edin­burgh opti­cal and sci­en­tif­ic instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er where he learned the basics of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

In 1862 Thom­son sailed from Lei­th “with a cam­era and a portable dark room. He set up in Sin­ga­pore before explor­ing the ancient civ­i­liza­tions of Chi­na, Thai­land — then known as Siam — and Cam­bo­dia.” It is for his exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy of Chi­na in the late 1860s and ear­ly 1870s that he’s best known today.

First lav­ish­ly pub­lished in a series of books titled Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na and Its Peo­ple (now avail­able to read free online at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library: vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three, vol­ume four), they now con­sti­tute some of the ear­li­est and rich­est direct visu­al records of Chi­nese land­scapes, cityscapes, and soci­ety as they were in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The first West­ern pho­tog­ra­ph­er to trav­el wide­ly through the length and breadth of Chi­na,” Thom­son brought his cam­era on jour­neys “far more exten­sive than those under­tak­en by most West­ern­ers of his gen­er­a­tion,” extend­ing “beyond the rel­a­tive com­fort and safe­ty of the coastal treaty ports.” Those words come from schol­ar of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Allen Hock­ley, whose five-part visu­al essay “John Thom­son’s Chi­na” at MIT Visu­al­iz­ing Cul­tures pro­vides a detailed overview and his­tor­i­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of Thom­son’s work in Asia.

Thom­son’s pho­tographs, writes Hock­ley, “fall into two broad cat­e­gories: scenic views and types. Views encom­passed both nat­ur­al land­scapes and built envi­ron­ments. They could be panoram­ic, tak­ing in large swaths of scenery, or they might high­light spe­cif­ic nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na or indi­vid­ual struc­tures.”

Types “focused on the man­ners and cus­toms of Chi­nese peo­ple and tend­ed to high­light the defin­ing fea­tures of gen­der, age, class, eth­nic­i­ty, and occu­pa­tion.” A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, both Thom­son’s views and types have giv­en schol­ars in a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines much to dis­cuss.

“It is clear from his com­men­tary to Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na that, how­ev­er sym­pa­thet­ic he was towards Chi­nese peo­ple, he could often be supe­ri­or and high-hand­ed,” writes Andrew Hiller at Visu­al­iz­ing Chi­na. “If Thom­son nev­er sought to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of Britain’s pres­ence, his atti­tude towards Chi­na was ambiva­lent. Whilst crit­i­cal of what he saw as the cor­rup­tion and obfus­ca­tion of Qing offi­cials, he nev­er­the­less could see the country’s poten­tial.”

Thom­son also helped oth­ers to see that poten­tial — or at least those who could afford to buy his books, whose prices matched the qual­i­ty of their pro­duc­tion. But today, thanks to online archives like His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs of Chi­na and Well­come Col­lec­tion, they’re free for every­one to behold. Chi­na itself has become much more acces­si­ble since Thom­son’s day, of course, but it’s famous­ly a much dif­fer­ent place than it was 25 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. The land through which he trav­eled — and of which he took so many of the very ear­li­est pho­tographs — is now infi­nite­ly less acces­si­ble to us than it ever was to his fel­low West­ern­ers of the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Hear a lec­ture on Thom­son’s pho­tog­ra­phy in Chi­na from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don here.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

How Vivid­ly Col­orized Pho­tos Helped Intro­duce Japan to the World in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Meet Tsuneko Sasamoto, Japan’s First Female Photojournalist and Now, at 107, Japan’s Oldest Living Photojournalist

in Photography | October 12th, 2021

You should nev­er become lazy. It’s essen­tial to remain pos­i­tive about your life and nev­er give up. You need to push your­self and stay aware, so you can move for­ward. 

– Tsuneko Sasamo­to

Sound advice whether one is inter­est­ed in sus­tain­ing a cre­ative prac­tice or remain­ing vig­or­ous as one ages.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tsuneko Sasamo­to is an excel­lent poster child for both. Born in Tokyo in 1914, short­ly after the begin­ning of the first World War, she is Japan’s first female pho­to­jour­nal­ist and — at 107, its old­est liv­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ist.

Her tra­di­tion­al father thwart­ed her hopes of becom­ing a painter, but ear­ly encoun­ters with a black-and-white film by Man Ray and the work of Mar­garet Bourke-White sug­gest­ed that pho­tog­ra­phy might prove a sim­i­lar­ly ful­fill­ing path.

By 1940, she was able to par­lay a job as a part-time illus­tra­tor on the local news pages at Tokyo Nichinichi Shim­bun (now known as the Mainichi Shim­bun) into a pro­ba­tion­ary gig as a shoot­er, though as a young woman, she was con­strained by gen­der expec­ta­tions.

Unlike her male coun­ter­parts, she was not allowed to doc­u­ment WWII at the front. Instead, she was charged with spe­cial inter­est sto­ries of a patri­ot­ic nature and por­traits of diplo­mat­ic envoys. She deeply resent­ed her pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­dat­ed uni­form — skirts and heels that occa­sion­al­ly ham­pered her from get­ting the shot.

Her ambi­tion ben­e­fit­ed from a stub­born­ly defi­ant streak. An arti­cle in The Japan Times details how she weath­ered dis­crim­i­na­to­ry com­ments, resist­ed male fam­i­ly mem­bers’ scripts, and, in 1947, piped up to ask Gen­er­al Dou­glas MacArthur, Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Pow­ers, if he would grant her a redo when her cam­era mal­func­tioned at the rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny he was attend­ing.

Oth­er sub­jects from her eight decades-long career:

Stu­dent pro­test­ers

The wives of coal min­ers who were on strike against the then-largest coal mine in Japan

Young women train­ing to be geisha

The Impe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly

Social­ist Par­ty head Inejiro Asanu­ma the day before his 1960 assas­si­na­tion

A who’s who of Japan­ese nov­el­ists, poets, and artists

The 2011 earth quake and tsuna­mi

And, for her exhib­it 100 Women at the Japan­ese Cam­era Indus­try Insti­tute, she includ­ed some notable sur­vivors of the Mei­ji and ear­ly Showa eras, such as Queen of the Blues, Noriko Awaya. As Sasamo­to recalled:

I pho­tographed her toward the end of her life when she was in her eight­ies and bedrid­den. I was one of the few allowed to see her at that time, I think because I was born in the Taisho era (1912–26) and she felt I could under­stand her…. She kept telling me, ‘I am not for­mi­da­ble.’

Short­ly after turn­ing 100, Sasamo­to weighed in on dig­i­tal cam­eras — their lighter weight made them easy to car­ry around, but their func­tions were dif­fi­cult to under­stand.

As for her health reg­i­men: main­tain­ing con­tact with fam­i­ly and friends, a dai­ly piece of choco­late, a glass of red wine every night, and way more red meat than rec­om­mend­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Ger­da Taro, the First Female Pho­to­jour­nal­ist to Die on the Front Lines

Women Street Pho­tog­ra­phers: The Web Site, Instra­gram Account & Book That Ampli­fy the Work of Women Artists World­wide

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Is the Famous Photo of Lee Harvey Oswald Posing with the Gun Used to Kill JFK a Fake?: 3D Forensic Analysis Reveals the Answer

in History, Photography | September 9th, 2021

As long as the 20th cen­tu­ry remains in liv­ing mem­o­ry, the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy will con­tin­ue to draw pub­lic inter­est. A great many Amer­i­cans feel they still haven’t heard the “whole sto­ry” behind what hap­pened on Novem­ber 22, 1963; a few have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to find­ing out, grow­ing less inclined to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a lone gun­man the deep­er they get into the doc­u­ments. But that gun­man, Lee Har­vey Oswald, does fig­ure direct­ly into some of the mate­r­i­al held up as evi­dence of a con­spir­a­cy. Take the “back­yard pho­tos” that depict him pos­ing with what was ulti­mate­ly found to be the very gun used to kill JFK.

Such images would seem strong­ly to impli­cate Oswald in the assas­si­na­tion, and the War­ren Com­mis­sion seems to have regard­ed them in just that way. But for near­ly six decades now, some the­o­rists have argued that the back­yard pho­tos are fake — an idea that began with Oswald him­self, who before his own assas­si­na­tion insist­ed that he’d nev­er seen them in his life, and that some­one had “super­im­posed” his face onto anoth­er body.

The Vox video above lays out the main ele­ments of one par­tic­u­lar pic­ture that have been called repeat­ed­ly into ques­tion: the angles of the shad­ows, the shape of Oswald’s chin, the length of the gun, and Oswald’s unusu­al pos­ture.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, foren­sic experts tried just about every­thing to test the authen­tic­i­ty of this pho­to,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. They could­n’t find any evi­dence of fak­ery, but they did­n’t have the 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy at the com­mand of the UC Berke­ley School of Infor­ma­tion’s Hany Farid, a well-known spe­cial­ist in the analy­sis of dig­i­tal images. Farid and a team of researchers recon­struct­ed Oswald’s body and weapon­ry (though not the copies of The Mil­i­tant and The Work­er, two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly opposed news­pa­pers, he bran­dished in his oth­er hand) and found that every­thing added up, from the seem­ing­ly mis­aligned shad­ows cast by the sun to the sta­bil­i­ty of his odd stance. If there was indeed a con­spir­a­cy to kill JFK, then, it was­n’t a con­spir­a­cy of pro­to-Pho­to­shop­pers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2,800 JFK Assas­si­na­tion Doc­u­ments Just Released by the Nation­al Archives

Novem­ber 22, 1963: Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Noam Chom­sky on Com­mem­o­rat­ing the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: It “Would Impress Kim Il-Sung”

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pioneering Time-Lapse Cinematography Behind the Netflix Documentary Fantastic Fungi

in Biology, Film, K-12, Nature, Photography, Science | September 3rd, 2021

Mush­rooms are hav­ing a moment, thanks in part to pio­neer­ing time-lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Louie Schwartzberg’s doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi.

Now stream­ing on Net­flix, the film has giv­en rise to a bumper crop of funghi fantat­ics, who sprang up like, well, mush­rooms, to join the exist­ing ranks of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, culi­nary fans, week­end for­agers, ama­teur grow­ers, and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers.

Schwartzberg, who ear­li­er visu­al­ized pol­li­na­tion from the flower’s point of view in the Meryl Streep-nar­rat­ed Wings of Life, is a true believ­er in the pow­er of mush­rooms, cit­ing funghi’s role in soil cre­ation and health, and their poten­tial for rem­e­dy­ing a num­ber of press­ing glob­al prob­lems, as well as a host of human ail­ments.

Fan­tas­tic Funghi focus­es on sev­en pil­lars of ben­e­fits brought to the table by the fun­gal king­dom and its Inter­net-like under­ground net­work of myceli­um:

  1. Bio­di­ver­si­ty

A num­ber of projects are explor­ing the ways in which the myceli­um world can pull us back from the bring of  deser­ti­za­tion, water short­age, food short­age, bee colony col­lapse, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants, nuclear dis­as­ters, oil spills, plas­tic pol­lu­tion, and glob­al warm­ing.

  1. Inno­va­tion

Mush­room-relat­ed indus­tries are eager to press funghi into ser­vice as envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able faux leather, build­ing mate­ri­als, pack­ag­ing, and meat alter­na­tives.

  1. Food

From fine din­ing to for­ag­ing off-the-grid, mush­rooms are prized for their culi­nary and nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits.

  1. Phys­i­cal Health and Well­ness

Will the hum­ble mush­room prove mighty enough to do an end run around pow­er­ful drug com­pa­nies as a source of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine to help com­bat dia­betes, liv­er dis­ease, inflam­ma­tion, insom­nia and cog­ni­tive decline?

  1. Men­tal Health

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins, UCLA, and NYU are run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als on the ben­e­fits of psy­che­del­ic psilo­cy­bin mush­rooms as a tool for treat­ing addic­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, PTSD and sui­ci­dal ideation.

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

Of course, there’s also a rich tra­di­tion of reli­gions and indi­vid­ual seek­ers deploy­ing mind alter­ing psy­choac­tive mush­rooms as a form of sacra­ment or a tool for plumb­ing the mys­ter­ies of life.

  1. The Arts

Direc­tor Schwartzberg under­stand­ably views mush­rooms as muse, a fit­ting sub­ject for pho­tog­ra­phy, music, film, poet­ry, art and oth­er cre­ative endeav­ors.

 

With regard to this final pil­lar, many view­ers may be sur­prised to learn how much of the 15 years Schwartzberg ded­i­cat­ed to cap­tur­ing the exquis­ite cycle of fun­gal regen­er­a­tion and decom­po­si­tion took place indoors.

As he explains in the Wired video above, his pre­ci­sion equip­ment excels at cap­tur­ing devel­op­ment that’s invis­i­ble to the human eye, but is no match for such nat­ur­al world dis­rup­tions as insects and wind.

Instead, he and his team built con­trolled grow­ing envi­ron­ments, where high­ly sen­si­tive time lapse cam­eras, dol­lies, timed grow lights, and more cin­e­mat­ic light­ing instru­ments could be left in place.

Set dress­ings of moss and logs, cou­pled with a very short depth of field helped to bring the Great Out­doors onscreen, with occa­sion­al chro­makeyed panora­mas of the nat­ur­al world fill­ing in the gaps.

Even in such lab-like con­di­tions, cer­tain ele­ments were nec­es­sar­i­ly left to chance. Mush­rooms grow noto­ri­ous­ly quick­ly, and even with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and cal­cu­la­tions, there was plen­ty of poten­tial for one of his stars to miss their mark, shoot­ing out of frame.

Just one of the ways that mush­rooms and humans oper­ate on rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent time­lines. The direc­tor bowed to the shrooms, return­ing to square one on the fre­quent occa­sions when a sequence got away from him.

Pro­vid­ing view­ers an immer­sive expe­ri­ence of the under­ground myceli­um net­work required high pow­ered micro­scopes, a sol­id cement floor, and a bit of movie mag­ic to finesse. What you see in the final cut is the work of CGI ani­ma­tors, who used Schwartzberg’s footage as their blue­print.

Net­flix sub­scribers can stream Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi for free.

From Octo­ber 15 — 17, film­mak­er Louie Schwartzberg is host­ing a free, vir­tu­al Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi Glob­al Sum­mit. Reg­is­ter here.

You can also browse his col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty mush­room recipes and sub­mit your own, down­load Fan­tas­tic Fungi’s Stoned Ape poster, or have a ram­ble through a trove of relat­ed videos and arti­cles in the Mush Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Brood X Cicadas are her mush­rooms. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Illustrated History of Depeche Mode by Anton Corbijn

in Music, Photography | June 8th, 2021

Last year, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anton Cor­bi­jn released a new book, MOOD/MODE, show­cas­ing work out­side the bound­aries of the rock pho­tog­ra­phy world in which he’d made his name. But no mat­ter whom he’s pho­tograph­ing, Cor­bi­jn brings a high seri­ous­ness to the endeav­or that he explains as part of his reli­gious upbring­ing in the book’s intro­duc­tion. “My Protes­tant back­ground always marked & influ­enced my por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy. Mankind. Human­i­ty. Empa­thy,” he writes, were the ideals he absorbed as a child. Such beliefs “kept me from doing work that lacked a deep­er pur­pose.”

Cor­bi­jn grew up in a small vil­lage out­side Rot­ter­dam, Jean-Jacques Naudet writes. “His father and many oth­er male mem­bers of his fam­i­ly were pas­tors. Life was strict and sim­ple, on Sun­day every­body dressed in black. Reli­gion was omnipresent.”

He moved away to the city and began tak­ing pho­tos of the music scene at 17. But the look and feel of his ear­ly life nev­er left him. It was this aes­thet­ic that attract­ed Depeche Mode, one of Corbijn’s longest-run­ning musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors and a band who were no strangers to brood­ing in black and mak­ing reli­gious ref­er­ences and appeals to human­i­ty.

“We were seen as just a pop band,” says Depeche Mode’s Mar­tin Gore. “We thought that Anton had a cer­tain seri­ous­ness, a cer­tain grav­i­ty to his work, that would help us get away from that.” Cor­bi­jn first helped them refine their look in mid-80s and “was able to give the Depeche Mode sound, that we were begin­ning to cre­ate, a visu­al iden­ti­ty,” says singer Dave Gahan. That iden­ti­ty is now the sub­ject of a new book from Taschen that col­lects “over 500 pho­tographs from Anton Corbijn’s per­son­al archives,” notes the arts pub­lish­er, “some nev­er seen before, as well as stage set designs, sketch­es, album cov­ers, and per­son­al obser­va­tions” about the “world’s biggest cult band.”

Cor­bi­jn became such an inte­gral part of Depeche Mode’s suc­cess, the band con­sid­ered him “a ver­i­ta­ble unseen mem­ber of the group,” writes Post-Punk.com, medi­at­ing their image not only through pho­tog­ra­phy but also live pro­jec­tions and, of course, music videos. They were able to achieve “a kind of cult sta­tus,” says Gore in the mini-doc­u­men­tary above, which also has an inter­view with Cor­bi­jn. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er walks us through his his­to­ry with the leg­endary synth pio­neers (whom he did not like at first), begin­ning with the first image he shot of them in 1981, when founder Vince Clarke was still in the band.

Clarke leans behind Gahan’s left shoul­der, the full band framed by a stone arch. To Gahan’s right is an enor­mous cru­ci­fix. It set a tone for the work­ing rela­tion­ship to come. “There has to be an ele­ment of the per­son in the pho­to­graph,” says Cor­bi­jn of his por­trai­ture, “but there also has to be an ele­ment of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er.” It took anoth­er few years after that first shoot, he tells The Guardian, but he real­ized “how good their music and my visu­als actu­al­ly went togeth­er.… They had soul.” You can order a copy of the new book, Depeche Mode by Anton Cor­bi­jn from Taschen here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Visu­al His­to­ry of The Rolling Stones Doc­u­ment­ed in a Beau­ti­ful, 450-Page Pho­to Book by Taschen

Depeche Mode Before They Were Actu­al­ly Depeche Mode: Stream Their Ear­ly Demo Record­ings from 1980

Lost Depeche Mode Doc­u­men­tary Is Now Online: Watch Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

 

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Watch 400+ Documentaries from German Broadcaster Deutsche Welle: Art Forgery, Fashion Photography, the Mona Lisa, and More

in Art, Photography, Television | April 28th, 2021

You’re cer­tain­ly famil­iar with Nou­velle Vague, the “French new wave” that shook up world cin­e­ma in the mid-2oth cen­tu­ry. You’ve prob­a­bly also heard of Hal­lyu, the “Kore­an wave” of pop music and tele­vi­sion dra­mas (and, increas­ing­ly, films) now crash­ing across not just Asia but the West. As for Deutsche Welle, lit­er­al­ly the “Ger­man wave,” you may know the term bet­ter in its abbre­vi­at­ed form: DW, the brand of Ger­many’s pub­lic inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­er. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured DW’s series Bauhaus World, a cel­e­bra­tion of that influ­en­tial Ger­man school of art, archi­tec­ture, and design, but it’s just one of 415 doc­u­men­taries free to watch on the DW Doc­u­men­tary Youtube chan­nel.

DW’s doc­u­men­tar­i­ans have a thor­ough­ly inter­na­tion­al man­date, as evi­denced by their pop­u­lar exam­i­na­tions of the dic­ta­to­r­i­al regime of North Korea, Bul­gar­i­a’s Roma mar­riage mar­ket, extrav­a­gant wealth in cen­tral Africa, and dire pover­ty in the Unit­ed States. You can also browse the archive through themed playlists rang­ing from pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics to human nature and soci­ety to cul­ture and arts.

That last sec­tion, no doubt of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to Open Cul­ture read­ers, demon­strates DW’s advan­tage as a long-stand­ing broad­cast­er sit­u­at­ed in the heart of Europe. Where bet­ter to start learn­ing about Goth­ic and Romanesque cathe­drals, top elec­tron­ic dance music DJs, Mar­tin Luther and the Ref­or­ma­tion, or the truth behind the Last Sup­per and the Mona Lisa?

Even more inter­est lies in DW’s explo­rations of less­er-known top­ics like the trea­sures of Turk­menistan, fak­ery in the art world, and Berlin’s Lit­tle Hanoi. There are also pro­files of such Ger­man fig­ures as Peter Lind­bergh, the late fash­ion and adver­tis­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er count­ed as an inspi­ra­tion by the likes of Wim Wen­ders, and Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, out­go­ing pres­i­dent of the Goethe-Insti­tut, a nat­ur­al sub­ject for DW to cov­er. Found­ed with­in a cou­ple of years of one anoth­er, both DW and the Goethe-Insti­tut take the pro­mo­tion of Ger­man cul­ture abroad as a large part of their mis­sion — and both do so in the knowl­edge that, to get oth­er soci­eties inter­est­ed in your cul­ture, you’ve got to show gen­uine inter­est in all of theirs as well. Explore the com­plete list of DW doc­u­men­taries here. And find more doc­u­men­taries online in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

Beat Club, the 1960s TV Show That Brought Rock Music to 70 Mil­lion Kids in Ger­many, Hun­gary, Thai­land, Tan­za­nia & Beyond

285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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3D Print 18,000 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks: Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

in Art, Google, History, Photography, Technology | April 23rd, 2021

To recent news sto­ries about 3D print­ed guns, pros­thet­ics, and homes, you can add Scan the World’s push to cre­ate “an ecosys­tem of 3D print­able objects of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.”

Items that took the ancients untold hours to sculpt from mar­ble and stone can be repro­duced in con­sid­er­ably less time, pro­vid­ed you’ve got the tech­nol­o­gy and the know-how to use it.

Since we last wrote about this free, open source ini­tia­tive in 2017, Scan the World has added Google Arts and Cul­ture to the many cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions with whom it part­ners, expand­ing both its audi­ence and the audi­ence of the muse­ums who allow items in their col­lec­tions to be scanned pri­or to 3D print­ing.


Com­mu­ni­ty con­trib­u­tors have uploaded scan data for over 18,000 sculp­tures and arti­facts onto the plat­form.

Chi­na and India are active­ly court­ing par­tic­i­pants to make some of their trea­sures avail­able.

Although Scan the World is search­able by col­lec­tion, artist, and loca­tion, with so many options, the com­mu­ni­ty blog is a great place to start.

Here you will find help­ful tips for begin­ners hop­ing to pro­duce real­is­tic look­ing skulls and sculp­tures — con­trol your tem­per­a­ture, shake your resin, and learn from your mis­takes.

Got an unreach­able object you’re itch­ing to print? Take a look at the drone pho­togram­me­try tuto­r­i­al to prep your­self for tak­ing a good scan — rotate slow­ly, remem­ber the impor­tance of light, and get up to speed on your drone by test-dri­ving it in an open loca­tion.

Keep an eye peeled for com­pe­ti­tions, like this one, which was won by a pho­to edi­tor and retouch­er with no for­mal 3‑D train­ing.

Art lovers with lit­tle incli­na­tion to crack out the 3D print­er will find inter­est­ing essays on such top­ics as the Gates of Hell, scan­ning in the pan­dem­ic, and the his­to­ry of hair­styles in sculp­ture

You can also embark on a vir­tu­al tour of some of the glob­al loca­tions whose splen­dors are being scanned, pro­grammed, and ren­dered in resin.

A vir­tu­al trip to Paris takes in some of the Louvre’s great­est 3‑dimensional hits: the Venus de Milo, Winged Vic­to­ry, and Psy­che Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

(Any one of those ough­ta class up the ol’ bed­sit…)

The vir­tu­al trip to Aus­tria includes Kierling’s mon­u­ment to Franz Kaf­ka, the Beethoven memo­r­i­al in Vienna’s Heili­gen­städter Park, and Klaus Weber’s trib­ute to Hugo Rheinhold’s Dar­win­ian sculp­ture, Mon­key with Skull. (1,868 down­loads and count­ing!)

A Google map awaits those who would tour the orig­i­nal fla­vor inspi­ra­tions in per­son.

Begin your explo­rations of Scan the World here, and do let us know in the com­ments if you have plans for print­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Cre­ate an “Open-Source” Record of Our Plan­et

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and some­times, a French Cana­di­an bear known as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.