A Beautifully Illustrated Edition of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, the Bestselling Book by Historian Timothy Snyder

in Books, Current Affairs, History, Politics | October 19th, 2021

For all its talk of lib­er­ty, the US gov­ern­ment has prac­ticed dehu­man­iz­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism and mass mur­der since its found­ing. And since the rise of fas­cism in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, it has nev­er been self-evi­dent that it can­not hap­pen here. On the con­trary — wrote Yale his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der before and through­out the Trump pres­i­den­cy — it hap­pened here first, though many would like us to for­get. The his­to­ries of south­ern slav­oc­ra­cy and man­i­fest des­tiny direct­ly informed Hitler’s plans for the Ger­man col­o­niza­tion of Europe as much as did Europe’s 20th-cen­tu­ry col­o­niza­tion of Africa and Asia.

Sny­der is not a schol­ar of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, though he has much to say about his country’s present. His work has focused on WWI­I’s total­i­tar­i­an regimes and his pop­u­lar books draw from a “deep knowl­edge of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean his­to­ry,” write Françoise Mouly and Genevieve Bormes at The New York­er.

These books include best­sellers like Blood­lands: Europe Between Hitler and Stal­in and the con­tro­ver­sial Black Earth: The Holo­caust as His­to­ry and Warn­ing, a book whose argu­ments, he said, “are clear­ly not my effort to win a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test.”

Indeed, the prob­lem with rigid con­for­mi­ty to pop­ulist ideas became the sub­ject of Snyder’s 2017 best­seller, On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, “a slim vol­ume,” Mouly and Bormes note, “which inter­spersed max­ims such as ‘Be kind to our lan­guage’ and ‘Defend insti­tu­tions’ with bio­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal sketch­es.” (We post­ed an abridged ver­sion of Snyder’s 20 lessons that year.) On Tyran­ny became an “instant best-sell­er… for those who were look­ing for ways to com­bat the insid­i­ous creep of author­i­tar­i­an­ism at home.”

If you’ve paid any atten­tion to the news late­ly, maybe you’ve noticed that the threat has not reced­ed. Ideas about how to com­bat anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments remain rel­e­vant as ever. It’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that Snyder’s book dates from a par­tic­u­lar moment in time and draws on a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive. Con­tex­tu­al details that can get lost in writ­ing come to the fore in images — cloth­ing, cars, the use of col­or or black and white: these all key us in to the his­toric­i­ty of his obser­va­tions.

 

“We don’t exist in a vac­u­um,” says artist Nora Krug, the design­er and illus­tra­tor of a new, graph­ic edi­tion of On Tyran­ny just released this month. “I use a vari­ety of visu­al styles and tech­niques to empha­size the frag­men­tary nature of mem­o­ry and the emo­tive effects of his­tor­i­cal events.” Krug worked from arti­facts she found at flea mar­kets and antique stores, “depos­i­to­ries of our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness,” as she writes in an intro­duc­to­ry note to the new edi­tion.

Krug’s choice of a vari­ety of medi­ums and cre­ative approach­es “allows me to admit,” she says, “that we can only exist in rela­tion­ship to the past, that every­thing we think and feel is thought and felt in ref­er­ence to it, that our future is deeply root­ed in our his­to­ry, and that we will always be active con­trib­u­tors to shap­ing how the past is viewed and what our future will look like.”

It’s an approach also favored by Sny­der, who does not shy away, like many his­to­ri­ans, from explic­it­ly mak­ing con­nec­tions between past, present, and pos­si­ble future events. “It’s easy for his­to­ri­ans to say, ‘It’s not our job to write the future,’” he told The New York Times in 2015. “Yes, right. But then whose job is it?” See many more images from the illus­trat­ed On Tyran­ny at The New York­er and pur­chase a copy of the book here.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The Downfall of Oscar Wilde: An Animated Video Tells How Wilde Quickly Went from Celebrity Playwright to Prisoner

in History, Literature | October 18th, 2021

Oscar Wilde left a body of lit­er­a­ture that con­tin­ues to enter­tain gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of read­ers, but for many of his fans his life leads to his work, not the oth­er way around. Its lat­est retelling, Oscar Wilde: A Life by Matthew Stur­gis, came out in the Unit­ed States just this past week. “Uni­ver­sal­ly her­ald­ed as a genius” when his play The Impor­tance of Being Earnest pre­miered in Lon­don in 1895, he was just a few months lat­er “bank­rupt and about to be impris­oned. His rep­u­ta­tion was in tat­ters and his life was ruined beyond repair.” This is how Alain de Bot­ton tells it in “The Down­fall of Oscar Wilde,” the ani­mat­ed School of Life video above.

Wilde was impris­oned, as even those who’ve nev­er read a word he wrote know, for his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. This de Bot­ton described as “the swift fall of a great man due to a small but fate­ful slip,” a result of the social and legal con­di­tions that obtained in the time and place in which Wilde lived. Hav­ing fall­en for “a beguil­ing young man named Lord Alfred Dou­glas,” known as “Bosie,” Wilde found him­self on the receiv­ing end of threats from Bosie’s father, the Mar­quess of Queens­bury. Their con­flict even­tu­al­ly pro­voked the Mar­quess to pub­li­cize Wilde and Bosie’s rela­tion­ship all through­out Lon­don, and since “homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was ille­gal and deeply frowned upon in Vic­to­ri­an soci­ety, this was a dan­ger­ous accu­sa­tion.”

Though Wilde fought a valiant and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly elo­quent court bat­tle, he was even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” and sen­tenced to two years of impris­on­ment and hard labor. “For some­one of Wilde’s lux­u­ri­ous back­ground,” says de Bot­ton, “it was an impos­si­ble hard­ship.” This time inspired his essay De Pro­fundis, and lat­er his poem The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol, but accord­ing to most accounts of his life, he nev­er real­ly recov­ered from it before suc­cumb­ing to menin­gi­tis in 1900. He had plans, writes The New York­er’s Clare Buck­nell, “for a new social com­e­dy, a new Sym­bol­ist dra­ma, a new libret­to.” But as his lover Bosie put it, Wilde’s life of post-release con­ti­nen­tal exile was “too nar­row and too lim­it­ed to stir him to cre­ation.”

The Unit­ed King­dom has since par­doned Wilde (and oth­ers, like com­put­er sci­en­tist Alan Tur­ing) for the crimes com­mit­ted in their life­times that would not be con­sid­ered crimes today. More than a cen­tu­ry has passed since Wilde’s death, and “our soci­ety has become gen­er­ous towards Wilde’s spe­cif­ic behav­ior,” says de Bot­ton. “Many of us would, across the ages, want to com­fort and befriend Oscar Wilde. It’s a touch­ing hope, but one that would be best employed in extend­ing under­stand­ing to all those less tal­ent­ed and less wit­ty fig­ures who are right now fac­ing grave dif­fi­cul­ties.” Wilde might have come to a bleak end, but the life he lived and the reac­tions it pro­voked still have much to teach us about our atti­tudes today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

Pat­ti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s 1897 Love Let­ter De Pro­fundis: See the Full Three-Hour Per­for­mance

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Little-Known Bombing of Pompeii During World War II

in History | October 15th, 2021

In 79 AD, 17-year-old Gaius Plin­ius Cae­cil­ius Secun­dus, known as Pliny the Younger, gazed across the Bay of Naples from his vaca­tion home in Mis­enum and watched Mount Vesu­vius erupt. “Dark­ness fell, not the dark of a moon­less or cloudy night,” Pliny wrote in his eye­wit­ness account — the only sur­viv­ing such doc­u­ment — “but as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room.” Unbe­knownst to Pliny and his famous uncle, Pliny the Elder, admi­ral of the Roman navy and revered nat­u­ral­ist, hun­dreds of lives were also snuffed out by lava, clouds of smoke and ash, and tem­per­a­tures in the hun­dreds of degrees Fahren­heit. The Elder Pliny launched ships to attempt an evac­u­a­tion. In the morn­ing, he was found dead, like­ly from asphyx­i­a­tion, along with over two thou­sand res­i­dents of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum.

When the buried town was first unearthed, a new cycle of wit­ness, death, and res­ur­rec­tion began. “Since its redis­cov­ery in the mid-18th cen­tu­ry,” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “the site has host­ed a tire­less suc­ces­sion of trea­sure hunters and arche­ol­o­gists,” not to men­tion tourists — start­ing with aris­to­crat­ic gen­tle­men on their Grand Tour of Europe. In 1787, Goethe climbed Vesu­vius and gazed into its crater. “He record­ed with dis­ap­point­ment that the fresh­est lava was already five days old, and that the vol­cano nei­ther belched flame nor pelt­ed him with stones,” writes Amelia Soth in an arti­cle about “Pom­peii Mania” among the Roman­tics, a pas­sion that cul­mi­nat­ed in Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton’s 1834 pot­boil­er, The Last Days of Pom­peii, “hands-down the most pop­u­lar nov­el of the age.”

Bulwer-Lytton’s book “had such a dra­mat­ic impact on how we think about Pom­peii,” the Get­ty writes, that the muse­um named an exhi­bi­tion after it that fea­tures — unlike so many oth­er his­to­ries — Pom­pei­i’s 20th cen­tu­ry “apoc­a­lypse”: an Allied bomb­ing raid in the autumn of 1943 that dam­aged near­ly every part of the site, includ­ing “some of Pom­pei­i’s most famous mon­u­ments, as well as its muse­um.” As Nigel Pol­lard shows in his book Bomb­ing Pom­peii, over 160 Allied bombs hit Pom­peii in August and Sep­tem­ber. Few tourists who now flock to the site know how much of the ruins have been rebuilt since then. “Only recent­ly have the lit­er­a­ture and the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty paid due atten­tion to these dra­mat­ic events, which con­sti­tute a fun­da­men­tal water­shed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the site,” writes arche­ol­o­gist Sil­via Berte­sa­go.

A Pliny of his time (an Elder, giv­en his decades of sci­en­tif­ic accom­plish­ment), Pom­pei­i’s super­in­ten­dent, arche­ol­o­gist Amedeo Maiuri, “accel­er­at­ed the pro­tec­tion of build­ings and move­able items” in advance of the bomb­ing raids. But “who will save mon­u­ments, hous­es and paint­ings from the fury of the bom­bard­ments?” he wrote. Maiuri had warned of the com­ing destruc­tion, and when false infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fied the slopes of Vesu­vius as a Ger­man hide­out, the longest-run­ning arche­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion in the world became “a real tar­get of war.… The first bomb­ing of Pom­peii took place on the night of August 24 1943.… Between August 30 and the end of Sep­tem­ber, sev­er­al oth­er raids fol­lowed by both day and night.… No part of the exca­va­tions was com­plete­ly spared.”

Maiuri chron­i­cled the destruc­tion, writ­ing:

It was thus that from 13 to 26 Sep­tem­ber Pom­peii suf­fered its sec­ond and more seri­ous ordeal, bat­tered by one or more dai­ly attacks: dur­ing the day fly­ing low with­out fear of anti-air­craft retal­i­a­tion; at night with all the smoke and bright­ness of flares […]. Dur­ing those days no few­er than 150 bombs fell with­in the exca­va­tion area, scat­tered across the site and con­cen­trat­ed where mil­i­tary tar­gets were thought to be.

Him­self wound­ed in his left foot by a bomb, Maiuri helped draw up a list of 1378 destroyed items and over 100 dam­aged build­ings. Hasty, emer­gency rebuild­ing in the years to fol­low would lead to the use of “exper­i­men­tal mate­ri­als” like rein­forced con­crete, which “would lat­er prove incom­pat­i­ble with the orig­i­nal mate­ri­als” and itself require restora­tion and repair. The ruins of Pom­peii were rebuilt and res­ur­rect­ed after they were near­ly destroyed a sec­ond time by fire from the sky — this time entire­ly an act of humankind. But the necrop­o­lis would have its revenge. The fol­low­ing year, Vesu­vius erupt­ed, destroy­ing near­ly all of the 80 B‑25 bombers and the Allied air­field at the foot of the moun­tain.

In the video above, you can learn more about the bomb­ing of Pom­peii. See pho­tographs of the destruc­tion at Pom­peii Com­mit­ment and at the Get­ty Muse­um, which fea­tures pho­tos of Pom­pei­ian sites destroyed by bomb­ing side-by-side with col­or images of the rebuilt sites today. These images are dra­mat­ic, enough to make us pay atten­tion to the seams and joints if we have the chance to vis­it, or revis­it, the famous arche­o­log­i­cal site in the future. And we might want to ask our guide if we can see not only the ruins of the nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, but also the mul­ti­ple undet­o­nat­ed bombs from the “apoc­a­lypse” of World War II.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Archaeologists Discover 1300-Year-Old Pair of Skis, the Best-Preserved Ancient Skis in Existence

in History, Sports | October 14th, 2021

Surf­ing is gen­er­al­ly believed to have orig­i­nat­ed in Hawaii and will be for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the Poly­ne­sian islands. Yet anthro­pol­o­gists have found evi­dence of some­thing like surf­ing wher­ev­er humans have encoun­tered a beach — on the coasts of West Africa, in the Caribbean, India, Syr­ia, and Japan. Surf­ing his­to­ri­an Matt War­shaw sums up the prob­lem with locat­ing the ori­gins of this human activ­i­ty: “Rid­ing waves sim­ply for plea­sure most like­ly devel­oped in one form or anoth­er among any coastal peo­ple liv­ing near warm ocean water.” Could one make a sim­i­lar point about ski­ing?

It seems that wher­ev­er humans have set­tled in places cov­ered with snow for much of the year, they’ve impro­vised all kinds of ways to trav­el across it. Who did so with the first skis, and when? Ski-like objects dat­ing from 6300–5000 BC have been found in north­ern Rus­sia. A New York Times arti­cle recent­ly described evi­dence of Stone Age skiers in Chi­na. “If ski­ing, as it seems pos­si­ble,” Nils Larsen writes at the Inter­na­tion­al Ski­ing His­to­ry Asso­ci­a­tion, “dates back 10,000 years or more, iden­ti­fy­ing a point of ori­gin (or ori­gins) will be dif­fi­cult at best.” Such dis­cus­sions tend to get “bogged down in pol­i­tics and nation­al pride,” Larsen writes. For exam­ple, “since the emer­gence of ski­ing in greater Europe in the late 1800s” — as a sport and pure­ly recre­ation­al activ­i­ty — “Nor­way has often been con­sid­ered the birth­place of ski­ing. Nor­way has pro­mot­ed this view and it is a point of nation­al pride.”

Despite its ear­li­est records of ski­ing dat­ing mil­len­nia lat­er than oth­er regions, Nor­way has some claim. The word ski is, after all, Nor­we­gian, derived from Old Norse skíð, mean­ing “cleft wood” or “stick.” And the best-pre­served ancient skis ever found have been dis­cov­ered in a Nor­we­gian ice field. “Even the bind­ings are most­ly intact,” notes Kot­tke. The first ski, believed to be 1300 years old, turned up in 2014, found by the Glac­i­er Arche­ol­o­gy Pro­gram (GAP) in the moun­tains of Inn­lan­det Coun­ty, Nor­way. The archae­ol­o­gists decid­ed to wait, let the ice melt, and see if the oth­er ski would appear. It did, just recent­ly, and in the video above, you can watch the researchers pull it from the ice.

Pho­to: Andreas Christof­fer Nils­son, secretsoftheice.com

“Mea­sur­ing about 74 inch­es long and 7 inch­es wide,” notes Livia Ger­shon at Smith­son­ian, “the sec­ond ski is slight­ly larg­er than its mate. Both fea­ture raised footholds. Leather straps and twist­ed birch bark bind­ings found with the skis would have been attached through holes in the footholds. The new ski shows signs of heavy wear and even­tu­al repairs.” The two skis are not iden­ti­cal, “but we should not expect them to be,” says archae­ol­o­gist Lars Pilø. “The skis are hand­made, not mass-pro­duced. They have a long and indi­vid­ual his­to­ry of wear and repair before an Iron Age ski­er used them togeth­er and they end­ed up in the ice.”

The new ski answered ques­tions the researchers had about the first dis­cov­ery, such as how the ancient skis might have main­tained for­ward motion uphill. “A fur­row on the under­side along the length of the ski, as you find on oth­er pre­his­toric skis (and on mod­ern cross-coun­try skis), would solve the ques­tion,” they write, and the sec­ond ski con­tained such a fur­row. While they may nev­er prove that Nor­way invent­ed ski­ing, as glac­i­er ice melts and new arti­facts appear each year, the team will learn much more about ancient Nor­we­gian skiers and their way of life. See their cur­rent dis­cov­er­ies and fol­low their future progress at the Secrets of the Ice web­site and on their YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Archae­ol­o­gists Find the Ear­li­est Work of “Abstract Art,” Dat­ing Back 73,000 Years

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Medieval Ten­nis: A Short His­to­ry and Demon­stra­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British Newsreel Angsts Over Whether Automated Machines Will Displace People

in Film, History, Technology | October 14th, 2021

When Amer­i­cans hear the phrase “slot machine,” they think of pen­sion­ers com­pul­sive­ly pulling levers day and night in Las Vegas. But when the British hear it, a much less bleak vision comes to their minds: the auto­mat­ed dis­pen­sa­tion of cig­a­rettes, cof­fee, gro­ceries, and even entire meals. Or at least such a vision came to the minds of Britons back in 1964, the year of the British Pathé news­reel above. With its bril­liant col­ors and jazzy score, Slot Machine Age proud­ly dis­played to the view­ing pub­lic the range of coin-oper­at­ed won­ders already mak­ing their way into dai­ly life, from pay phones and pin­ball machines to shoe-buffers and bot­tle-recy­cling sta­tions.

“This inven­tion, this brain­child of the boffins, has cre­at­ed a new dis­ease,” declares the announc­er: “slot machine fever.” Again, this has noth­ing to do with gam­bling, and every­thing to do with automa­tion. Near­ly 60 years ago, buy­ing some­thing from a machine was a nov­el­ty to most peo­ple in even the most high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries on Earth.

Yet even then the automat, where din­ers pulled all their dish­es from coin-oper­at­ed win­dows, had in cer­tain cities been an insti­tu­tion for decades. Alas, such estab­lish­ments did­n’t sur­vive the explo­sion of fast food in the 1970s, whose busi­ness mod­el made use of more, not less, human labor.

But in the 1960s, the age of the robot seemed well on its way — so much so that this phrase titles anoth­er, slight­ly lat­er British Pathé pro­duc­tion show­cas­ing a “semi-com­put­er­ized ver­sion of the dumb­wait­er” being tried out in hotel rooms. From it the film’s hon­ey­moon­ing cou­ple extract cock­tails, peanuts, tooth­paste, and “that last cig­a­rette of the day.” It even offers read­ing mate­r­i­al, a con­cept since tried again in France, Poland, San Fran­cis­co, and an eccen­tric book­store in Toron­to, but the glo­ri­ous age of all-around con­ve­nience pre­dict­ed in these news­reels has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. We cit­i­zens of the 21st cen­tu­ry are in many cas­es hard­ly pleased, but rather anx­ious about what we see as our grow­ing depen­dence on automa­tion. Still, with the coro­n­avirus-induced vogue for con­tact-free pay­ment and din­ing, per­haps it’s time to give the automat anoth­er chance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Witness Maya Angelou & James Baldwin’s Close Friendship in a TV Interview from 1975

in Books, History, Literature, Poetry, Television | October 11th, 2021

In the mid-50s, Maya Angelou accept­ed a role as a cho­rus mem­ber in an inter­na­tion­al tour­ing pro­duc­tion of the opera, Por­gy and Bess:

I want­ed to trav­el, to try to speak oth­er lan­guages, to see the cities I had read about all my life, but most impor­tant, I want­ed to be with a large, friend­ly group of Black peo­ple who sang so glo­ri­ous­ly and lived with such pas­sion.

On a stopover in Paris, she met James Bald­win, who she remem­bered as “small and hot (with) the move­ments of a dancer.”

The two shared a love of poet­ry and the arts, a deep curios­i­ty about life, and a pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to Black rights and cul­ture. They forged a con­nec­tion that would last the rest of their lives.

In 1968, when Angelou despaired over the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King Jr., Bald­win did what he could to lift her spir­its, includ­ing escort­ing her to a din­ner par­ty where she cap­ti­vat­ed the oth­er guests with her anec­do­tal sto­ry­telling, paving a path to her cel­e­brat­ed first mem­oir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

The book wouldn’t have been writ­ten, how­ev­er, with­out some dis­creet behind-the-scenes med­dling by Bald­win.

Angelou con­sid­ered her­self a poet and a play­wright, and resist­ed repeat­ed attempts by fel­low din­ner par­ty guest, Ran­dom House edi­tor Robert Loomis, to secure her auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

As Angelou lat­er dis­cov­ered, Bald­win coun­seled Loomis that a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy would pro­duce the desired result. His dear friend might not con­ceive of her­self as a mem­oirist, but would almost assured­ly respond to reverse psy­chol­o­gy, for instance, a state­ment that no auto­bi­og­ra­phy could com­pete as lit­er­a­ture.

As Angelou recalled:

I said, ‘Well, hmmm, maybe I’ll try it.’ The truth is that (Loomis) had talked to James Bald­win, my broth­er friend, and Jim­my told him that ‘if you want Maya Angelou to do some­thing, tell her she can’t do it.’

“This tes­ti­mo­ny from a Black sis­ter marks the begin­ning of a new era in the minds and hearts and lives of all Black men and women,” Bald­win enthused upon its pub­li­ca­tion.

They became sib­lings of affin­i­ty. Wit­ness their easy rap­port on the 1975 episode of Assign­ment Amer­i­ca, above.

Every episode cen­tered on some­one who had made an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the ideas and issues of Amer­i­ca, and Angelou, who alter­nat­ed host­ing duties with psy­cho-his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win, colum­nist George Will, and oral his­to­ri­an Studs Terkel, land­ed an extreme­ly wor­thy sub­ject in Bald­win.

Their friend­ship made good on the promise of her hopes for that Euro­pean tour of Por­gy and Bess.

Their can­did dis­cus­sion cov­ers a lot of over­lap­ping ground: love, death, race, aging, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, suc­cess, writ­ing, and the close­ness of Baldwin’s fam­i­ly — whom Angelou adored.

Those of us in the gen­er­a­tions who came after, who became acquaint­ed with Angelou, the com­mand­ing, supreme­ly dig­ni­fied elder stateswoman, com­mand­ing more author­i­ty and respect than any offi­cial Poet Lau­re­ate, may be sur­prised to see her MO as inter­view­er, gig­gling and teas­ing, func­tion­ing as the cho­rus in a room where code switch­ing is most def­i­nite­ly not a thing:

Bald­win: I think…the only way to live is know­ing you’re going to die. If you’re afraid to die, you’ll nev­er be able to live. 

Angelou: Hey, hey!

Bald­win: You know. 

Angelou: Hey, hey.

Bald­win: And nobody knows any­thing about that. 

Angelou: Yes, yes, yes.

She pos­es great ques­tions, and lis­tens with­out inter­rupt­ing to her friend’s thought­ful­ly com­posed answers, for instance, his descrip­tion of his family’s response to his deci­sion to base him­self in France, far from their Harlem home:

Sweet­heart, you have to under­stand, um, you have to under­stand what hap­pens to my moth­er’s tele­phone when I’m in town. Peo­ple will call up and say what they will do to me. It does­n’t make me shut up. You, you also got­ta remem­ber that I’ve been writ­ing, after all, between assas­si­na­tions. If you were my moth­er or my broth­er, you would think, who’s next?

There’s a lot of food for thought in that reply. The famil­iar con­nec­tion between inter­view­er and sub­ject, both tow­er­ing fig­ures of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, brings a tru­ly rare dimen­sion, as when Angelou shares how Baldwin’s old­er broth­ers would reserve a part of the pro­ceeds from sell­ing coal in the win­ter and ice in the sum­mer to send to Bald­win:

In France! I mean to think of a Black Amer­i­can fam­i­ly in Harlem, who had no pre­ten­sions to great lit­er­a­ture… and to have the old­est boy leave home and go to Paris, France, and then for them to save up enough pen­nies and nick­els and dimes to send a check of $150 to him, in Paris, France!

Bald­win: That’s what peo­ple, that’s what peo­ple don’t real­ly know about us. 

Angelou: One of the things I think, I mean I believe that we are Amer­i­ca. It is true. 

Bald­win: You believe it? 

Angelou: Well. 

Bald­win: I know it. 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Watch a Nev­er-Aired TV Pro­file of James Bald­win (1979)

James Bald­win Talks About Racism in Amer­i­ca & Civ­il Rights Activism on The Dick Cavett Show (1969)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Walking Tour Around the Pyramids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

in History | October 8th, 2021

One of the first things tourists learn about the great Pyra­mids of Giza is how they are not far away in some remote loca­tion. Turns out they’re just pho­tographed that way with the West­ern Desert as back­drop. Turn around and you’ll see not just the bustling city of Cairo, but a freakin’ golf course. The next thing tourists learn is that there’s a lot of walk­ing if you want to take in both pyra­mids and the Sphinx. Hope you packed some good shoes!

Or you could sit back and watch this one-hour-and-50-minute walk­ing tour, shot in 4K, on a chilly Jan­u­ary morn­ing in 2019. There’s not many tourists around for most of it, bet­ter to instill a sense of won­der and oth­er­ness as you encounter these 4,500 year old struc­tures.

With its relax­ing bob­bing-head cam­era and its immer­sive field record­ing soundtrack—headphones are recommended—the video tours the entire ancient area, start­ing with the Mor­tu­ary Tem­ple of Khafre, then mov­ing to the two main pyra­mids, the ceme­tery, the small­er pyra­mid of Menkau­re, and end­ing on the Sphinx. There’s even room for a horse ride, although as it’s sped up, it turns out to be rather com­i­cal. It’s also a delight to hear the occa­sion­al camel make them­selves known.

Open Cul­ture has writ­ten about the Pyra­mids of Giza sev­er­al times. We’ve linked to the mas­sive Dig­i­tal Giza Project; shown a 3‑D recon­struc­tion of what the pyra­mids looked like when they were orig­i­nal­ly built (they were gleam­ing white, for one thing); fol­lowed a 3‑D tour *inside* the pyra­mid that is quite spine-tin­gling; and high­light­ed an intro­duc­to­ry course of Giza and Egyp­tol­ogy. The only remain­ing of the Sev­en Won­ders of the Ancient World con­tin­ues to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of archae­ol­o­gists, and this walk­ing tour is as close as your brows­er can get to being there. ProWalk Tours’ YouTube site also offers many oth­er pleas­ant walks, from the ancient to the mod­ern. They’re worth check­ing out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

Won­ders of Ancient Egypt: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast