Why the Leaning Tower of Pisa Still Hasn’t Fallen Over, Even After 650 Years

The Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa has stood, in its dis­tinc­tive fash­ion, for six and a half cen­turies now. But it has­n’t always leaned at the same angle: to get the most dra­mat­ic view, the best time to go see it was the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, when its tilt had reached a full 5.5 degrees. Grant­ed, at that point — when by some reck­on­ings, the tow­er should no longer have been stand­ing at all — it was closed to the pub­lic, pre­sum­ably due to fears that the sheer weight of tourism would push it over the tip­ping point. The 1989 col­lapse of Pavi­a’s eleventh-cen­tu­ry Civic Tow­er also had some­thing to do with it: could­n’t some­thing be done to spare Pisa’s world-famous land­mark from a sim­i­lar fate?

Attempts to shore up the Lean­ing Tow­er up to that point had a check­ered his­to­ry, to put it mild­ly. Built on soft soil, it start­ed to lean in back in the twelfth cen­tu­ry, before its con­struc­tion was even com­plete. The process of that con­struc­tion, in the event, took near­ly 200 years to com­plete; dur­ing one decades-long pause dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly embat­tled peri­od for the Repub­lic of Pisa, the tow­er actu­al­ly set­tled enough to pre­vent its lat­er col­lapse, though it remained aslant. In the late thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, the best solu­tion avail­able for this con­di­tion was sim­ply to build the rest of its floors in a curved shape in com­pen­sa­tion.

For cen­turies after, the sight of the Lean­ing Tow­er tempt­ed gen­er­a­tions of struc­tur­al engi­neers to straight­en it out. It even tempt­ed non-engi­neers like Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, who in 1934 ordered large amounts of con­crete pumped into its foun­da­tion. Like most such oper­a­tions, it only made the tow­er lean more; only in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry did the tech­nol­o­gy come along to ana­lyze its foun­da­tions and the soil in which they were embed­ded clear­ly enough to devise an effec­tive solu­tion. This end­ed up involv­ing the removal of soil with a slant­ed drill from under the tow­er’s high­er end, which even­tu­al­ly brought it back to lean about four degrees, as it did near­ly two cen­turies ago. After sub­se­quent sta­bi­liza­tion work, it was guar­an­teed to remain upright for at least anoth­er two cen­turies.

You can learn more about the con­struc­tion and re-engi­neer­ing of the Lean­ing Tow­er in the videos above from TED-Ed and Dis­cov­ery UK. But you may still ask, why was it nev­er brought down by an earth­quake? “It turns out that the squishy soil at the structure’s base that caused its fetch­ing infir­mi­ty – the tow­er was tilt­ing by the time its sec­ond sto­ry was built in 1178 – con­tains the secret to its struc­tur­al resilience,” writes Joe Quirke at Glob­al Con­struc­tion Review. This means that “the soft­ness of the foun­da­tion soil cush­ions the tow­er from vibra­tions in such a way that the tow­er does not res­onate with earth­quake ground motion.” The very ele­ment that caused the tow­er to lean kept it from falling over, an irony to match the fact that such a seem­ing­ly mis­be­got­ten build­ing project has become one of Italy’s proud­est tourist attrac­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See Galileo’s Famous Grav­i­ty Exper­i­ment Per­formed in the World’s Largest Vac­u­um Cham­ber, and on the Moon

When the Indi­ana Bell Build­ing Was Rotat­ed 90° While Every­one Worked Inside in 1930 (by Kurt Vonnegut’s Archi­tect Dad)

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

Why Hiroshi­ma, Despite Being Hit with the Atom­ic Bomb, Isn’t a Nuclear Waste­land Today

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.

A Look Inside the Labor-Intensive Process of Making a Tiffany-Style Lamp

What do Tiffany lamps have in com­mon with Kleenex?

A brand name so mighty, it’s become an umbrel­la term.

Of course, Kleenex is still man­u­fac­tur­ing tis­sues, where­as authen­tic lamps from Louis Com­fort Tiffany’s New York stu­dio were pro­duced between 1890 and 1930.

Hand­craft­ed of coiled bronze wire and many pieces of blown favrile glass arranged in intri­cate nat­ur­al motifs, bonafide Tiffany lamps can fetch prices of over a mil­lion dol­lars.

The “Tiffany lamps” for sale on Way­fair?

Not the gen­uine arti­cle.

Still, if the one on your end table brings you plea­sure, who are we to get snip­py about it?

There’s plen­ty of that atti­tude to be found in the YouTube com­ments for the above process video …

To be clear, what you’re see­ing is the process by which an afford­able col­ored glass lamp­shade in the style of Tiffany comes togeth­er at an over­seas fac­to­ry.

The qual­i­ty may be lack­ing, but it’s still a pret­ty labor-inten­sive propo­si­tion.

First, the pieces are cut by hand or using blades mount­ed on met­al arms. Their shapes and num­ber are pre­de­ter­mined by a pattern…again in the style of Tiffany.

You won’t find the speck­led con­fet­ti glass or gold­en hued glass with a translu­cent amber sheen that are defin­ing fea­tures of the real McCoy here…

Once the pieces have been cut and sort­ed, their edges are wrapped in cop­per foil tape. (In Tiffany’s day this would have involved hand cut­ting strips of cop­per, then smear­ing them with beeswax to help them to adhere to the glass.)

The wrapped pieces are then laid out in a mold accord­ing to the pat­tern and sol­dered togeth­er.

The bot­tom edge is rein­forced, and the shade is fit­ted onto a lamp base.

If you’re a muse­um cura­tor, a con­nois­seur of the gen­uine arti­cle or a glazier, we don’t fault you for get­ting a bit salty.

(Our favorite com­ment: Oh the human­i­ty. I used to be a glazier. I could­n’t fin­ish watch­ing the video. The way they cut the glass dry and slide it around with­out felt on the table makes me cringe. You can hear the crin­kling sound of glass par­ti­cles under it when it’s being slid around. The small­est con­toured cuts and breaks are so rough they’re prac­ti­cal­ly gnawed. If clear glass was han­dled this way every win­dow would have deep scratch­es and would prob­a­bly self destruct from ther­mal cycling or a strong breeze.)

If you’re sus­cep­ti­ble to ASMR, enjoy your tin­gles — all those crin­kling sounds of glass par­ti­cles!

If you’re some­one who’s insa­tiably curi­ous as to how ordi­nary things are made, we hope you’ll con­sid­er the twelve min­utes of this Process Dis­cov­ery video time well spent, and no less inter­est­ing than their non-nar­ra­tive peeks into the man­u­fac­ture of bub­ble mail­ers, snow globes and swim gog­gles

We leave you with a brief tour of the “real thing”, cour­tesy of the New York His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety:

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent

 

 

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Only Color Picture of Tolstoy, Taken by Photography Pioneer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

The pho­to above depicts Lev Niko­layevich Tol­stoy, bet­ter known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world as Leo Tol­stoy. It dates from 1908, when he had near­ly all his work behind him: the major nov­els War and Peace and Anna Karen­i­na, of course, but also the acclaimed late book The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His own death, in fact, lay not much more than two years before him. (See footage of the final days of his life here.) This did­n’t offer much of a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to the chemist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who had recent­ly devel­oped a pho­tog­ra­phy process that could cap­ture the great man of let­ters in “true col­or” — and who under­stood that such a por­trait would score a pro­mo­tion­al coup for his inno­va­tion.

“After many years of work, I have now achieved excel­lent results in pro­duc­ing accu­rate col­ors,” Prokudin-Gorsky wrote to Tol­stoy ear­ly that same year. “My col­ored pro­jec­tions are known in both Europe and in Rus­sia. Now that my method of pho­tog­ra­phy requires no more than 1 to 3 sec­onds, I will allow myself to ask your per­mis­sion to vis­it for one or two days (keep­ing in mind the state of your health and weath­er) in order to take sev­er­al col­or pho­tographs of you and your spouse.” After receiv­ing that per­mis­sion, Prokudin-Gorsky spent two days at Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s fam­i­ly estate, where he took col­or pic­tures of not just the man him­self but his work­ing quar­ters and the sur­round­ing grounds.

“A few months lat­er, in its August 1908 issue, The Pro­ceed­ings of the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety ran the fol­low­ing announce­ment describ­ing ‘the first Russ­ian col­or pho­to­por­trait,’ a col­or pho­to­graph of L. N. Tol­stoy,” accord­ing to Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal. The result­ing fame drew Prokudin-Gorsky an invi­ta­tion to show his work to Tsar Nicholas II, who sub­se­quent­ly fur­nished him with the resources to spend ten years pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ing Rus­sia in col­or. “To this day, nobody knows exact­ly what cam­era Prokudin-Gorsky used,” writes Kai Bernau at Words that Work, “but it was like­ly a large wood­en cam­era with a spe­cial hold­er for a slid­ing glass neg­a­tive plate, tak­ing three sequen­tial mono­chrome pho­tographs, each through a dif­fer­ent col­ored fil­ter.” This appears to be a tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dant of the process devel­oped in the ear­ly eigh­teen-six­ties by Scot­tish physi­cist-poet James Clerk Maxwell, cre­ator of the first col­or pho­to­graph in his­to­ry.

To view that pho­to­graph, Maxwell “pro­ject­ed the three slides using three dif­fer­ent pro­jec­tors, each affixed with the same col­or fil­ter that had been used to pro­duce the slide.” Prokudin-Gorsky, too, had to project his pho­tos, though he did lat­er make col­or prints; “he also pub­lished it, in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers, as a col­lectible post­card,” says Tol­stoy Stud­ies Jour­nal, adding that the ver­sion seen here is a scan of one such post­card. How accu­rate­ly a lith­o­graphed repro­duc­tion like the one above of Tol­stoy rep­re­sents the ‘real’ col­ors of Prokudin-Gorsky’s orig­i­nal pro­ject­ed image is debat­able”; the basic tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fer­ence between “sub­trac­tive” lith­o­g­ra­phy and “addi­tive’ pro­jec­tion means that we can’t be see­ing quite the same pic­ture of Tol­stoy that the Tsar did — but then, it’s a good a like­ness of him as we’re ever going to get.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

The Very Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

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.

A Fully Functional Replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, the First Analog Computer from Ancient Greece, Re-Created in LEGO

?si=n8hyTDl7Wn6FLq3a

Dis­cov­ered amidst the wreck­age of a sunken ship off the coast of Greece in 1901, the Antikythera Mech­a­nism (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) is often con­sid­ered the world’s old­est known ana­log com­put­er. Dat­ing back to approx­i­mate­ly 150–100 BCE, the device has a com­plex arrange­ment of pre­cise­ly cut gears, all designed to track celes­tial move­ments, pre­dict lunar and solar eclipses, and chart the posi­tions of plan­ets. It’s a tes­ta­ment to Ancient Greek engi­neer­ing. Above, you can see a ful­ly func­tion­al repli­ca of the Antikythera Mech­a­nism re-cre­at­ed in LEGO, cour­tesy of the sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature. As one YouTu­ber put it, “The device is unbe­liev­ably cool, and the video is mas­ter­ful­ly done.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the World’s Old­est Com­put­er Worked: Recon­struct­ing the 2,200-Year-Old Antikythera Mech­a­nism

Down­load Instruc­tions for More Than 6,800 LEGO Kits at the Inter­net Archive

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Poem, “The Moon and the Yew Tree”

Court Green, the rur­al Devon prop­er­ty Sylvia Plath called home for six­teen months toward the end of her life is a pop­u­lar pil­grim­age for Plathophiles, seek­ing to wor­ship at the well­spring of some of her best known poems — The Bee Meet­ing, Dad­dy, Lady Lazarus, and many oth­er works posthu­mous­ly pub­lished in 1965’s Ariel.

(Her ex-hus­band Ted Hugh­es wrote his col­lec­tion, Crow, there as well, not long after Plath died by sui­cide. Some­thing tells us his wid­ow, Car­ol, a staunch defend­er of her husband’s lega­cy, doesn’t exact­ly roll out the wel­come mat when she sees star­ry eyed devotee’s of her husband’s first wife tromp­ing around the perime­ter of the prop­er­ty where she still lives…)

Plath schol­ar Dor­ka Tamás made the trip to St. Peter’s, the North Taw­ton church abut­ting Court Green. Plath took plea­sure in describ­ing its grounds in let­ters to friends and fam­i­ly, and immoratl­ized its mas­sive yew in “The Moon and the Yew Tree”:

I looked around the Vic­to­ri­an grave­stones, slow­ly pass­ing the souls of the dead. The beau­ti­ful green trees could not con­trast more with the Neo-goth­ic church. I knew at first sight which one is the yew tree in Plath’s poem. I was search­ing for the win­dow of Court Green, Plath’s office win­dow, from which she could have an expan­sive view of the yew…North Taw­ton has been an ambigu­ous place for both Plath and Plathi­ans. In the year she spent in the iso­lat­ed vil­lage, she pro­duced her best and most well-known poems, but it was also a place where she expe­ri­enced extreme iso­la­tion after Hugh­es left her. Nev­er­the­less, the coun­try life pro­vid­ed plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for Plath to explore her cre­ative, aes­thet­ic, and domes­tic inde­pen­dence, such as horse rid­ing in the field of Devon, exper­i­ment­ing with bee­keep­ing, paint­ing her children’s nurs­ery elbow chair, and mak­ing apple pie from the apples of her gar­den. The poet­ry and fic­tion Plath wrote between autumn 1961 and win­ter 1962 are embed­ded in the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment in Devon and com­mu­ni­ty, places, and non-human life of North Taw­ton. 

Poet David Trinidad, an avid col­lec­tor of Plath-relat­ed mem­o­ra­bil­ia, whose sou­venirs include a vial of dust from the stu­dio she occu­pied dur­ing a res­i­den­cy at Yad­do and a fac­sim­i­le of a blue pat­terned Lib­er­ty of Lon­don scarf she gave her moth­er dur­ing a 1962 vis­it to Court Green, prizes his cut­tings from St. Peter’s yew:

Plath wrote The Moon and the Yew Tree on Octo­ber 22, 1961, less than two months after mov­ing to Court Green. Every­thing in the poem is true: her prop­er­ty was sep­a­rat­ed from an adja­cent church by a row of head­stones; on Sun­day eight bells would toll; an ancient yew tree grew in the church grave­yard. …She doesn’t men­tion the yew tree specif­i­cal­ly in any of her let­ters; she saved that for the poem.

God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith, whose sou­venirs run more toward Polaroids, wrote of vis­it­ing Plath’s grave in her mem­oir, M Train, and iden­ti­fies the poet as some­one who makes her want to write.

Her per­for­mance of “The Moon and The Yew Tree,” above, is more straight­for­ward than Plathi­an, allow­ing the dark­ness of the work–which The Mar­gin­a­lian’s Maria Popo­va calls “one of (Plath’s) finest poems and one of the most poignant por­traits of depres­sion in the his­to­ry of literature”–to speak for itself.

As Popo­va notes, the poem was writ­ten dur­ing a dif­fi­cult peri­od, in an attempt to ful­fill a writ­ing exer­cise sug­gest­ed by Hugh­es, “to sim­ply describe what she saw in the Goth­ic church­yard out­side her win­dow.”

Who would dare fault Plath for obey­ing the impulse to edi­to­ri­al­ize a bit?

The New York­er had accept­ed but not yet pub­lished “The Moon and the Yew Tree” when Plath took her own life on Feb­ru­ary 11, 1963. It was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in a two-page spread along with five oth­er poems six months lat­er. You can read it online here.

via The Mar­gin­a­lian

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in a 1962 Record­ing

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read 12 Poems From Sev­enth Heav­en, Her First Col­lec­tion (1972)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

“Doctor, My Eyes” Performed by Jackson Browne & Musicians Around the World

The music col­lec­tive Play­ing for Change is back. This time, they have Jack­son Browne per­form­ing his 1970s hit, “Doc­tor, My Eyes,” sup­port­ed by musi­cians from Brazil, Jamaica, India, Puer­to Rico, France and beyond. Browne is also joined by Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel, who played on the orig­i­nal 1972 song, and they still sound amaz­ing. Enjoy.…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

“When The Lev­ee Breaks” Per­formed by John Paul Jones & Musi­cians Around the World

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The 50 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

It’s not an espe­cial­ly straight­for­ward mat­ter to pin down when music videos first emerged. In a sense, the Bea­t­les were already mak­ing them back in the late six­ties, but then, MTV, where the music video as we know it rapid­ly took shape, did­n’t start broad­cast­ing until 1981. The very first video aired on the chan­nel, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Bug­gles, had actu­al­ly been made almost two years ear­li­er, in 1979. But that did­n’t stop it from doing a good deal to define the form that would, itself, define the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the eight­ies. Nor did it stop it from appear­ing, 40-odd years lat­er, on The AV Club’s list of the 50 great­est music videos of all time. They’re view­able as a Youtube playlist here, or you can stream them all above.

Not that it ranks espe­cial­ly high. In fact, it comes in at num­ber 50, lead­ing into a selec­tion of videos from artists pop­u­lar in a range of sub­se­quent peri­ods: Talk­ing Heads, George Michael, Nir­vana, LL Cool J, Brit­ney Spears, Tay­lor Swift. As the artis­tic ambi­tions of the music video grew, it reflect­ed not just a song’s cul­tur­al moment, but put sev­er­al such moments in play at once.

In Son­ic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot,” “a clip of Elvis Pres­ley is fol­lowed by space-jazz pio­neer Sun Ra; a snatch of under­ground com­ic book auteur Har­vey Pekar on Late Night with David Let­ter­man flits by.” For the “high water mark for kitschy 1990s irony” that is Weez­er’s “Bud­dy Hol­ly,” “Spike Jonze sets the video in the 1950s… but it’s the ’50s as seen on Hap­py Days, a sit­com that paint­ed a rosy pic­ture of the Eisen­how­er years.”

Jonze also draws inspi­ra­tion from sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion for the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” a trib­ute to the cop shows of that era that makes up for an appar­ent lack of bud­get with sheer humor and ener­gy (a reminder of the direc­tor’s ori­gin in skate­board­ing videos). I remem­ber my mil­len­ni­al peers get­ting excit­ed about that video in the 90s, as, in the 200s, they’d get excit­ed about Michel Gondry’s all-LEGO ani­ma­tion of the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl.” This was rough­ly when Brit­ney Spears was break­ing through to super­star­dom, thanks not least to videos like “Baby One More Time,” which com­bines the slick­ness of teen pop with the chintz of teen life. “The idea for Britney’s icon­ic school­girl uni­form and pig­tails came from the singer her­self: direc­tor Nigel Dick fol­lowed her lead, then had wardrobe buy every stitch of cloth­ing in the video from Kmart.”

This was also before Youtube, whose ascent made the music video more viable than it had been in years. The AV Club’s list does include a few videos from the past decade and a half— Bey­on­cé’s “Sin­gle Ladies,” Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” — but on the whole, it under­scores that there’s nev­er been anoth­er time like the eight­ies. That decade that went from “Ash­es to Ash­es” to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Relax,” “Mon­ey for Noth­ing,” “Walk This Way,”Take on Me,” and “Rhythm Nation” — to say noth­ing of insti­tu­tions like Duran Duran, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son, all of whom make the list more than once, but none of whom take its top spot. That goes to Peter Gabriel, whose stop-motion fan­ta­sia “Sledge­ham­mer” is MTV’s all-time most-played music video. “If any­one wants to try and copy this video, good luck to them,” Gabriel once said. He meant its painstak­ing pro­duc­tion, but he could just as eas­i­ly have been talk­ing about the place it attained in pop cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Hans Zim­mer Was in the First-Ever Video Aired on MTV, The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

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.

The Earliest Surviving Photos of Iran: Photos from 1850s-60s Capture Everything from Grand Palaces to the Ruins of Persepolis

The tech­nol­o­gy and art of pho­tog­ra­phy emerged in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe. And so, when a part of the world out­side Europe was well-pho­tographed in those days, it tend­ed to be a trav­el­ing Euro­pean behind the cam­era. Take John Thom­son, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, for his pho­tos of Chi­na in the eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. Even before that, an Ital­ian colonel and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Lui­gi Pesce was hard at work doc­u­ment­ing a land geo­graph­i­cal­ly clos­er to Europe, but hard­ly less exot­ic in the Euro­pean world­view of the time: Per­sia, or what we would today call Iran.

“Accord­ing to schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, the first pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Iran was Jules Richard, a French­man who, as stat­ed in his diaries, arrived in Tehran in 1844,” says the web site of the Nation­al Muse­um of Asian Art.

“He served as the French lan­guage tutor of the Gul­saz fam­i­ly and took daguerreo­types of Moham­mad Shah (reigned 1834–48) and his son, the crown prince, Nasir al-Din Mirza.” Alas, these pho­tographs seem to be lost, much like most oth­ers tak­en before Pesce’s arrival in the coun­try in 1848, “dur­ing the reign of Nas­er al-Din Shah Qajar, to train Iran­ian infantry units.”

Pesce’s pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects includ­ed Nas­er al-Din him­self, pic­tures of whom appear in the online col­lec­tion of Pesce’s work at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. It was the Met that received a copy of the pho­to col­lec­tion Pesce pro­duced of Iran’s ancient mon­u­ments — prob­a­bly the very same copy that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er had orig­i­nal­ly sent to Prince William I, King of Prus­sia.

In those days, even such exalt­ed fig­ures had a great deal of curios­i­ty about far-flung realms, and before pho­tog­ra­phy, they had no eas­i­er way of see­ing what those realms real­ly looked like than mak­ing the ardu­ous jour­ney them­selves.

The sites cap­tured in this col­lec­tion include Toghrol Tow­er, the Tomb of Seeh‑i Mumin, and the Mosque of Nass­er-eddin Shah — as well as Pasar­gadae, Naqsh‑e Rus­tam, and Perse­po­lis, the famed cer­e­mo­ni­al cap­i­tal com­plex of the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which Pesce was the first to pho­to­graph. Or at least he was the first to suc­ceed in doing so, Nas­er al-Din hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly sent Richard off to make some daguerreo­types of Perse­po­lis that nev­er came out.

But even Pesce’s pho­tographs, ful­ly exe­cut­ed using just about the height of the tech­nol­o­gy at the time, no longer have the imme­di­a­cy they would have when Prince William gazed upon them; more than a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, they have a pati­na of his­tor­i­cal dis­tance that shades into unre­al­i­ty, mak­ing them feel not unlike ruins them­selves. You can also view more pho­tos on Google Arts and Cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the World’s Old­est Ani­ma­tion Made on a Vase in Iran 5,200 Years Ago

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of Rome (1841–1871)

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Free Online

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

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.

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.