Pink Floyd Drummer Nick Mason Presents the History of Music & Technology in a Nine-Part BBC Podcast

in History, Music | June 21st, 2019

Image by Phil Guest, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’ve seen Pink Floyd in the news late­ly, it’s maybe because gui­tarist David Gilmour recent­ly put up his col­lec­tion of over 120 gui­tars for a char­i­ty auc­tion, fetch­ing “cer­ti­fi­ably insane” prices like a whop­ping $3.975 mil­lion for the famous black Strat played on Dark Side of the Moon. (The gui­tar now “wears the crown as the world’s most expen­sive six string,” notes Enmore Audio.)

But there’s more going on with ex-Pink Floyd mem­bers than Gilmour’s gui­tars or Roger Waters’ polit­i­cal activism. Drum­mer Nick Mason, long renowned post-Floyd for his huge­ly expen­sive car col­lec­tion, has tak­en on anoth­er role this month: as a pod­cast host and music his­to­ri­an in a nine-part series for the Open University/BBC pro­duc­tion, The Doc­u­men­tary Pod­cast.

Titled A His­to­ry of Music in Tech­nol­o­gy, Mason’s series cov­ers an awful lot of ground, “chart­ing the his­to­ry of music and tech­nol­o­gy and explor­ing the world of leg­endary artists, pro­duc­ers and inven­tors. The series shines a light on game-chang­ing inno­va­tions includ­ing the syn­the­siz­er, elec­tric gui­tar, sam­plers, drum machines and the record­ing stu­dio itself.”

A His­to­ry of Music in Tech­nol­o­gy fin­ish­es its run tomor­row. Cur­rent­ly, you can stream all but the final install­ment at BBC News, Apple pod­casts, and Stitch­er. The first episode— “Sound Recording”—which you can hear above, begins in pre­his­to­ry. Long before the tech­nol­o­gy for repro­duc­ing sound could be imag­ined, ear­ly humans showed keen inter­est in the acoustic prop­er­ties of caves, as Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na pro­fes­sor Mark Katz explains.

“I think peo­ple have always had an infat­u­a­tion with try­ing to hold on to [sound], to mod­i­fy it, to cap­ture it,” says Katz—whether that meant seek­ing out the best set­tings for pre­his­toric drum cir­cles or build­ing struc­tures like cathe­drals with spe­cial­ly-designed son­ic prop­er­ties. But for thou­sands of years, the only way to pre­serve music was to write it down in nota­tion.

It took until “the back half of the 19th cen­tu­ry,” says Mason, “before cred­i­ble attempts were made to bot­tle sound for the first time.” (Those very first attempts could record sound but could not play it back.) From the ear­ly tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, it’s a long series of leaps, bounds, zig zags, stum­bles, and cir­cling back around to find ways not only to record sound but also to ampli­fy and mod­i­fy it and cre­ate it whole­sale from elec­tri­cal sig­nals.

Above and below, you can hear Mason’s hour-long his­to­ry of the elec­tric gui­tar (Episode 3), the syn­the­siz­er (Episode 5), and sam­plers and drum machines (Episode 6). Mason ded­i­cates two episodes, 7 and 8, to the devel­op­ment of the record­ing stu­dio itself—unsurprising for a mem­ber of Pink Floyd, a band who, like Hen­drix, the Beach Boys, and the Bea­t­les, craft­ed the essence of their psy­che­del­ic sound from stu­dio exper­i­ments.

“When sound record­ing first emerged,” says Mason in “The Stu­dio Part 1” intro, “crit­ics claimed it could be the end of music.” For the dozens of new gen­res record­ing and pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy has enabled, it was only the very begin­ning. Those of us who see com­put­ers killing the spon­tane­ity of rock and roll, for exam­ple, or the very human­i­ty of music itself, might reflect on how our reac­tions mir­ror those of some myopic ear­ly crit­ics.

Amer­i­can com­pos­er John Philip Sousa, for exam­ple, saw record­ing as “reduc­ing the expres­sion of music to a math­e­mat­i­cal sys­tem of wheels, cogs, discs, and cylin­ders,” lan­guage that sounds very like the com­plaints of cur­rent-day purists. Maybe arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will nev­er write a great love song, but it will most cer­tain­ly help humans cre­ate music as unimag­in­able to us today as the syn­co­pat­ed thump of elec­tron­ic music would have been unimag­in­able to Sousa, king of syn­co­pat­ed brass band march­es.

Lud­dites and technophiles and every­one in-between will learn much from Mason’s series, and the kind of musi­cal edu­ca­tion he’s offering—replete with expert informed opin­ion from schol­ars and musi­cians like himself—will go a long way to prepar­ing us for a musi­cal future we might only dim­ly glimpse now in the most inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies Mason is sure to cov­er in his final episode

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Record­ing Stu­dio Rad­i­cal­ly Changed Music: Hear His Influ­en­tial Lec­ture “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool” (1979)

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

How Com­put­ers Ruined Rock Music

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

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What the Textbooks Don’t Tell Us About The Atlantic Slave Trade: An Animated Video Fills In Historical Gaps

in History | June 21st, 2019

The scale of the Atlantic Slave Trade is hard to imag­ine. It can be tempt­ing to min­i­mize it in order to alle­vi­ate some anx­i­ety. One way of min­i­miz­ing slav­ery assumes a kind of inno­cence in the enter­prise, an “every­body was doing it” atti­tude. But, of course, not every­one in Europe prof­it­ed from the kid­nap­ping, sale, and life­time cap­tive labor of over 10 mil­lion African peo­ple in the Amer­i­c­as. Only few peo­ple on any con­ti­nent real­ly did, though the insti­tu­tion flood­ed the mar­kets with often addic­tive con­sumer goods that raised the gen­er­al stan­dard of liv­ing for a few more.

Not only did slav­ery leave a last­ing impact on the mil­lions of descen­dants of enslaved peo­ple, but also on “the economies and his­to­ries of large parts of the world,” notes Antho­ny Hazard’s TED-Ed video above. Slav­ery was inte­gral to the most for­ma­tive peri­ods of West­ern cap­i­tal­ist democ­ra­cies in Europe and the U.S. “The crops grown in the new colonies, sug­ar cane, tobac­co, and cot­ton,” were com­modi­ties trad­ed in the first glob­al mar­kets and built dynas­ties of cap­i­tal and wealth.

Slav­ery has occurred all over the world, with insti­tu­tion­al­ized inequal­i­ty and some form of forced labor form­ing the basis of every empire. The Atlantic slave trade “stands out,” says Haz­ard, “for both its glob­al scale and its last­ing lega­cy.” At the time, African slav­ery resem­bled oth­er forms of forced servi­tude exist­ing con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly in Europe and the colonies, such as inden­tured servi­tude and serf­dom. Euro­pean slave traders exploit­ed trib­al divi­sions, and the greed of African chief­tains and kings led to an arms race on the con­ti­nent.

Some African lead­ers prof­it­ed, but a large part of the con­ti­nent suf­fered demo­graph­ic loss­es that have res­onat­ed into the present. “Not only did the con­ti­nent lose tens of mil­lions of its able-bod­ied pop­u­la­tion,” but these loss­es caused economies to col­lapse, and the war­fare begun by com­pe­ti­tion for Euro­pean cap­i­tal con­tin­ued, leav­ing African coun­tries open to col­o­niza­tion. This despo­li­a­tion and mass ren­di­tion of enslaved peo­ple was accom­pa­nied by racist pro­pa­gan­da that assuaged the con­sciences of Chris­tians, as Ibram X. Ken­di has exhaus­tive­ly shown in his Nation­al Book Award-win­ning his­to­ry, Stamped from the Begin­ning.

Slav­ery acquired its specif­i­cal­ly racial­ized char­ac­ter. Africans, Euro­peans were told, were bio­log­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or, thus slav­ery did not vio­late Chris­t­ian ethics and, in fact, improved people’s lot by Chris­tian­iz­ing and civ­i­liz­ing them. Before the age of print­ing and a pop­u­lar press, how­ev­er, few peo­ple in Europe knew what was hap­pen­ing in the colonies, or knew any­thing at all about African peo­ple, who might as well have been the mon­sters of sailors’ myth and leg­end in many people’s minds.

As lit­er­a­cy spread, and more peo­ple read and heard accounts and argu­ments, even from for­mer slaves them­selves, increas­ing num­bers came to staunch­ly oppose slav­ery, as would hap­pen a few decades lat­er in the north­ern part of the U.S. Part­ly due to the activ­i­ties of Quak­er pub­lish­ers and writ­ers, British pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment in the 18th cen­tu­ry turned toward abo­li­tion in waves. “In 1788 over one hun­dred peti­tions were pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment,” wrote his­to­ri­an John Pin­fold on the 100th anniver­sary of Britain’s abo­li­tion of the slave trade.

“A fur­ther wave of peti­tions fol­lowed in 1792,” Pin­fold goes on, “when no few­er than 519 were pre­sent­ed, the largest num­ber ever pre­sent­ed dur­ing a sin­gle ses­sion in Par­lia­ment. On this occa­sion every sin­gle Eng­lish coun­ty was rep­re­sent­ed amongst the peti­tions, with some also from Scot­land and Wales, and it has been esti­mat­ed that around 400,000 peo­ple, rough­ly 13 per­cent of the adult male pop­u­la­tion of the time, had put their names to them.” It took anoth­er 15 years, but the slave trade was abol­ished in 1807.

Those num­bers don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­cate such wide­spread sup­port for the total abo­li­tion of race-based slav­ery in the colonies. Racist ide­ol­o­gy runs through abo­li­tion­ist lit­er­a­ture, as it did, and does, through the cul­ture in gen­er­al. But they tell an essen­tial part of this hun­dreds-of-years-long sto­ry: one in which access to infor­ma­tion swayed huge num­bers of peo­ple to make what we uni­ver­sal­ly (with excep­tions unwor­thy of men­tion) believe to be the only moral course of action. Inform­ing our­selves about this his­to­ry shows us that Atlantic slav­ery was dri­ven by the desire of a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of peo­ple for a mas­sive accu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal at the cost of mil­lions of lives. And that it took the resis­tance of much larg­er num­bers to end the inde­fen­si­ble prac­tice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Slave Bible” Removed Key Bib­li­cal Pas­sages In Order to Legit­imize Slav­ery & Dis­cour­age a Slave Rebel­lion (1807)

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

Christo­pher Hitch­es Makes the Case for Pay­ing Repa­ra­tions for Slav­ery in the Unit­ed States

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

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The Ruins of Chernobyl Captured in Three Haunting, Drone-Shot Videos

in History, Television | June 18th, 2019

Voic­es of Cher­nobyl—Svet­lana Alexievich’s oral his­to­ry of the 1986 nuclear explo­sion in Ukraine—brings togeth­er the har­row­ing tes­ti­monies of over 500 eye­wit­ness­es to the acci­dent: Fire­fight­ers, nurs­es, sol­diers, for­mer Sovi­et offi­cials, engi­neers, nuclear sci­en­tists, and ordi­nary Sovi­et cit­i­zens (at the time), who saw, but could not under­stand, events that would cost tens, per­haps hun­dreds, of thou­sands of lives.

We will nev­er know the exact toll, due to both inter­nal cov­er-ups and the immea­sur­able long-term effect of over 50 mil­lion curies of radionu­clides spread out over the Sovi­et Union, Europe, and the globe for over three decades. But Alexievich’s book eschews “the usu­al approach of try­ing to quan­ti­fy a dis­as­ter in terms of loss­es and dis­place­ment,” notes Robert Matthews at the Jour­nal of Nuclear Med­i­cine. She opt­ed instead to tell the sto­ries “of indi­vid­u­als and how the dis­as­ter affect­ed their lives.”

The inher­ent­ly mov­ing, dra­mat­ic sto­ries of peo­ple like Lyud­mil­la Ignatenko—the wife of a doomed fire­fight­er whose unfor­get­table jour­ney opens the book—immediately draw us into the “psy­cho­log­ic and per­son­al tragedy” of the dis­as­ter. For their vivid­ness and sheer emo­tion­al impact, these sto­ries have a cin­e­mat­ic effect, fill­ing our imag­i­na­tion with images of gris­ly tragedy and a grim per­sis­tence we might not exact­ly call hero­ism but which cer­tain­ly counts as a close cousin.

It’s no won­der, then, that parts of Alexievich’s deserved­ly-Nobel-win­ning his­to­ry made such a bril­liant tran­si­tion to the screen in Craig Mazin’s HBO minis­eries, which draws from sto­ries like Lyudmilla’s in its por­trait of the explo­sion and its con­tain­ment. The series’ psy­cho­log­i­cal focus, and the need to cre­ate indi­vid­ual heroes and vil­lains, cre­ates “con­fronta­tion where con­fronta­tion was unthink­able” in real­i­ty, as Masha Gessen writes in her cri­tique at The New York­er. We can­not trust Cher­nobyl as his­to­ry, though it is incred­i­bly com­pelling as his­tor­i­cal fic­tion.

Rather what the show gives view­ers, writes Gessen, is a stun­ning­ly accu­rate visu­al por­tray­al of the time peri­od, one that seems at times to have recre­at­ed his­tor­i­cal footage shot-for-shot. The show’s total immer­sion in the bleak, bureau­crat­ic world of mid-eight­ies Sovi­et Rus­sia has so enthralled view­ers that peo­ple have tak­en to post­ing Insta­gram pho­tos of them­selves inside the Cher­nobyl exclu­sion zone. Though it may seem like a fool­ish thing to do giv­en the lev­els of radi­a­tion still present in much of the area, Cher­nobyl has in fact been slat­ed for rede­vel­op­ment since 2007. Tourists began vis­it­ing the area not long after­wards.

Since the zone became acces­si­ble, hours of footage from Cher­nobyl and near­by city of Pripy­at, for­mer home of Lyud­mil­la Ignatenko, have appeared in ama­teur video and and more pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions like “Post­cards from Pripy­at” (top), shot by Dan­ny Cooke for CBS, “The Fall­out,” a demo reel shot by Aer­obo Designs, and the drone footage in the Wall Street Jour­nal video just above. These are stun­ning mon­tages of decay­ing Sovi­et cities left behind in time. Even emp­tied of the indi­vid­u­als whose sto­ries keep us com­pul­sive­ly read­ing eye­wit­ness accounts like Alexievich’s and watch­ing fic­tion­al­ized dra­mas like Mazin’s, the videos still have a sto­ry to tell, a visu­al account of the remains of an empire brought low by cor­rup­tion, fear, and lies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

The Ani­mals of Cher­nobyl

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

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Scenes from HBO’s Chernobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in History, Television | June 14th, 2019

Audi­ences today can’t get enough of his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly his­to­ry pre­sent­ed as a pod­cast or a pres­tige tele­vi­sion series. Best of all is the his­tor­i­cal pres­tige tele­vi­sion series accom­pa­nied by its own pod­cast, cur­rent­ly exem­pli­fied by Cher­nobyl, HBO’s five-episode drama­ti­za­tion of the events lead­ing up to and the after­math of the tit­u­lar Sovi­et nuclear dis­as­ter. “The mate­r­i­al cul­ture of the Sovi­et Union is repro­duced with an accu­ra­cy that has nev­er before been seen in West­ern tele­vi­sion or film — or, for that mat­ter, in Russ­ian tele­vi­sion or film,” The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen writes of the show. “Sovi­et-born Amer­i­cans — and, indeed, Sovi­et-born Rus­sians — have been tweet­ing and blog­ging in awe at the uncan­ny pre­ci­sion with which the phys­i­cal sur­round­ings of Sovi­et peo­ple have been repro­duced.”

But along with all the praise for the accu­ra­cy on Cher­nobyl’s sur­face has come crit­i­cism of its deep­er con­cep­tion of the time and place it takes as its set­ting: “its fail­ure to accu­rate­ly por­tray Sovi­et rela­tion­ships of pow­er,” as Gessen puts it, or to acknowl­edge that “res­ig­na­tion was the defin­ing con­di­tion of Sovi­et life. But res­ig­na­tion is a depress­ing and untelegenic spec­ta­cle. So the cre­ators of Cher­nobyl imag­ine con­fronta­tion where con­fronta­tion was unthink­able.”

Among the chill­ing truths of the real sto­ry of the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter is how many peo­ple involved knew before­hand what could, and prob­a­bly would, go wrong with the reac­tor that explod­ed on April 26, 1986. But Cher­nobyl, adher­ing to “the out­lines of a dis­as­ter movie,” instead pits a lone truth-teller against a set of self-serv­ing, malev­o­lent high­er-ups.

Cher­nobyl cre­ator and writer Craig Mazin is not unaware of this, as any­one who has lis­tened to the minis­eries’ com­pan­ion pod­cast knows. On each episode, Mazin dis­cuss­es (with Peter Sagal from Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, inci­den­tal­ly) the com­pli­ca­tions of bring­ing such a com­plex event, and one that involved so many peo­ple, to the screen three decades lat­er, and the inher­ent trade­offs involved between his­tor­i­cal faith­ful­ness and artis­tic license. The video essay from Thomas Flight above com­bines clips from the Cher­nobyl pod­cast with not just clips from Cher­nobyl itself but the real-life source footage that inspired the show. The six-minute view­ing expe­ri­ence show­cas­es the often-aston­ish­ing recre­ations Cher­nobyl accom­plish­es even as it casts doubt on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever tru­ly recre­at­ing his­to­ry on the screen. But watch­ing cre­ators take on that increas­ing­ly daunt­ing chal­lenge is pre­cise­ly what today’s audi­ences can’t get enough of.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

The Ani­mals of Cher­nobyl

200 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Brilliant Colors of the Great Barrier Revealed in a Historic Illustrated Book from 1893

in Art, Biology, History, Nature | June 14th, 2019

Paul Simon’s famous lyric about every­thing look­ing worse in black and white
is hard­ly a uni­ver­sal truth, but when it comes to William Sav­ille-Kent’s ground­break­ing 1893 book The Great Bar­ri­er Reef of Aus­tralia: its prod­ucts and poten­tial­i­ties, the asser­tion may have some mer­it.

Sav­ille-Kent, a nat­u­ral­ist whose work in var­i­ous British aquar­i­ums even­tu­al­ly led to a gig rebuild­ing deplet­ed Tas­man­ian oys­ter beds, fell hard for the col­or­ful fish, bêche-de-mer, corals, sponges, tur­tles, and oth­er marine species he encoun­tered in Aus­tralia.

He pho­tographed the Great Bar­ri­er Reef while serv­ing in Queens­land as Com­mis­sion­er of Fish­eries. 48 of his images were pub­lished in the afore­men­tioned book, offer­ing read­ers an unprece­dent­ed arm­chair tour of a coral reef, albeit in black and white.

 

While Sav­ille-Kent def­i­nite­ly achieved his goal of fur­ther­ing the public’s aware­ness of the reef, he also upstaged him­self by includ­ing 16 col­or lith­o­graphs inspired by his orig­i­nal water­col­ors.

These plates, by Lon­don-based lith­o­g­ra­phers Rid­dle and Couchman—whose work usu­al­ly ran toward por­traits of well-born gen­tle­men—exude a live­ly Seuss­ian appeal.

Saville-Kent’s care­ful­ly cap­tured fish, echin­o­derms, and anemones lit­er­al­ly pale in com­par­i­son to the bright spec­i­mens the lith­o­g­ra­phers, who pre­sum­ably lacked his first­hand expe­ri­ence of the forms they were depict­ing, brought to such vibrant life in the back of the book.

These days, alas, the Great Bar­ri­er Reef resem­bles Sav­ille-Ken­t’s pho­tos more close­ly than those gor­geous lith­o­graphs, the vic­tim of back-to-back bleach­ing events brought on by pol­lu­tion-relat­ed cli­mate change.

Sav­ille-Kent is buried at All Saints Churchin Mil­ford-on-Sea, Hamp­shire, Eng­land. His grave is dec­o­rat­ed with coral.

Browse a dig­i­tal copy of The Great Bar­ri­er Reef of Aus­tralia: its prod­ucts and poten­tial­i­ties here.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

New Archive Dig­i­tizes 80,000 His­toric Water­col­or Paint­ings, the Medi­um Through Which We Doc­u­ment­ed the World Before Pho­tog­ra­phy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, June 17 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her pub­lic domain-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in History, Photography | June 11th, 2019

Ger­da Taro by Anony­mous, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We may know a few names of his­toric women pho­tog­ra­phers, like Julia Mar­garet Cameron, Dorothea Lange, or Diane Arbus, but the sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence of women in pho­tog­ra­phy from its very begin­nings doesn’t get much atten­tion in the usu­al nar­ra­tive, despite the fact that “by 1900,” as pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dawn Oost­er­hoff writes, cen­sus records in Britain and the U.S. showed that “there were more than 7000 pro­fes­sion­al women pho­tog­ra­phers,” a num­ber that only grew as decades passed.

As pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment became small­er, lighter, and more portable, pho­tog­ra­phers moved out into more chal­leng­ing and dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. Among them were women who “fought tra­di­tion and were among the pio­neer pho­to­jour­nal­ists,” work­ing along­side men on the front lines of war zones around the world.

War pho­tog­ra­phers like Lee Miller—former Vogue mod­el, Man Ray muse, and Sur­re­al­ist artist—showed a side of war most peo­ple didn’t see, one in which women war­riors, med­ical per­son­nel, sup­port staff, and work­ers, played sig­nif­i­cant roles and bore wit­ness to mass suf­fer­ing and acts of hero­ism.

Image via Flickr Cre­ative Com­mons

 

Before Miller cap­tured the dev­as­ta­tion at the Euro­pean front, the hor­rors of Dachau, and Hitler’s bath­tub, anoth­er female war pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Ger­da Taro, doc­u­ment­ed the front lines of the Span­ish Civ­il War. “One of the world’s first and great­est war pho­tog­ra­phers,” writes Giles Trent at The Guardian, Taro “died while pho­tograph­ing a chaot­ic retreat after the Bat­tle of Brunete, short­ly after Franco’s troops had one a major vic­to­ry,” just days away from her 27th birth­day. She was the first female pho­to­jour­nal­ist to be killed in action on the front­line and a major star in France at the time of her death.

Woman Train­ing for a Repub­li­can Mili­tia, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“On 1 August 1937,” notes a Mag­num Pho­tos bio, “thou­sands of peo­ple lined the streets of Paris to mourn the death” of Taro. The “26-year-old Jew­ish émi­gré from Leipzig… was eulo­gized as a coura­geous reporter who had sac­ri­ficed her life to bear wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing of civil­ians and troops…. The media pro­claimed her a left-wing hero­ine, a mar­tyr of the anti-fas­cist cause and a role mod­el for young women every­where.” Taro had fled to France in in 1933, after being arrest­ed by the Nazis for dis­trib­ut­ing anti-fas­cist leaflets in Ger­many. She was deter­mined to con­tin­ue the fight in her new coun­try.

Repub­li­can Sol­diers at the Navac­er­ra­da Pass, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Taro met anoth­er Jew­ish émi­gré, well-known Hun­gar­i­an pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Capa, just get­ting his start at the time. The two became part­ners and lovers, arriv­ing in Barcelona in 1936, “two-and-a-half weeks after the out­break of the war.” Like Miller, Taro was drawn to women on the bat­tle­field. In one of her first assign­ments, she doc­u­ment­ed mili­ti­a­women of the Uni­fied Social­ist Par­ty of Cat­alo­nia train­ing on a beach. “Moti­vat­ed by a desire to raise aware­ness of the plight of Span­ish civil­ians and the sol­diers fight­ing for lib­er­ty,” her clear sym­pa­thies give her work depth and imme­di­a­cy.

Repub­li­can Dina­miteros, in the Cara­banchel Neigh­bor­hood of Madrid, by Ger­da Taro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Taro’s pho­tographs “were wide­ly repro­duced in the French left­ist press,” points out the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy. She “incor­po­rat­ed the dynam­ic cam­era angles of New Vision pho­tog­ra­phy as well as a phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al close­ness to her sub­ject.” After she was crushed by a tank in 1937, many of her pho­tographs were incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed to Capa, and she sank into obscu­ri­ty. She has achieved renewed recog­ni­tion in recent years, espe­cial­ly after a trove of 4,500 neg­a­tives con­tain­ing work by her and Capa was dis­cov­ered in Mex­i­co City.

Although she had been warned away from the front, Taro “got into this con­vic­tion that she had to bear wit­ness,” says biog­ra­ph­er Jane Rogoys­ka, “The troops loved her and she kept push­ing.” She paid with her life, died a hero, and was for­got­ten until recent­ly. Her lega­cy is cel­e­brat­ed in Rogoyska’s book, a nov­el about her and Capa by Susana Fortes, an Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion, film projects in the works, and a Google Doo­dle last August on her birth­day. Learn more about Taro’s life and see many more of her cap­ti­vat­ing images, at Mag­num Pho­tos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

1,600 Rare Col­or Pho­tographs Depict Life in the U.S Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion & World War II

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

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

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See the Very First Solar Eclipse Captured on Film: A Magical Moment in Science and Filmmaking (1900)

in Film, History, Science | June 5th, 2019

The “con­quest of space,” so to speak—the human under­stand­ing of and trav­el to the cosmos—has come about through a suc­ces­sion of great sci­en­tif­ic minds, as well as some of the most inter­est­ing and accom­plished peo­ple all around. We nev­er seem to tire of learn­ing about their devo­tion to math­e­mat­ics, physics, med­i­cine, and sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery writ as large as pos­si­ble. But some­times the con­quest of space has required the unique tal­ents of magi­cians. From the ancient mages who excit­ed human imag­i­na­tion about the stars for thou­sands of years, to alchemists like Isaac New­ton and beyond.

Wit­ness the strange career of Mar­vel White­side Par­sons, bet­ter known as Jack Par­sons: sci-fi fanat­ic, occultist, dis­ci­ple of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, and one­time mag­i­cal part­ner of L. Ron Hub­bard. Par­sons is most famous for found­ing the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry, the research cen­ter that pow­ers NASA. Then we have magi­cian Nevil Maskelyne—son of magi­cian John Nevil Maske­lyne, and pos­si­ble descen­dent, so he said, of the fifth British Roy­al Astronomer, “also named Nevil Maske­lyne,” writes Jason Daley at Smith­son­ian. Maske­lyne the very much younger doc­u­ment­ed the first total solar eclipse ever cap­tured on film.

Grant­ed, he was a stage magi­cian, not a fol­low­er of “The Great Beast 666.” Maske­lyne’s inter­est in show­man­ship and spec­ta­cle drew him not to sex mag­ic but to film­mak­ing and astron­o­my, inter­ests he com­bined when he made the first film ever of a total solar eclipse. Nowa­days, mil­lions of peo­ple have the means to make such a film in their pock­et, pro­vid­ed they have a good view of the infre­quent cos­mic event (and do not ever look at it direct­ly). In 1900, when Maske­lyne under­took the chal­lenge, film­mak­ing was just emerg­ing from infan­cy into tod­dler­hood.

The Lumière broth­ers, often cred­it­ed as the first film­mak­ers, had held their first pub­lic screen­ing only five years ear­li­er. They called their ear­ly pro­duc­tions actu­al­ités, essen­tial­ly “real­i­ty films.” Some of these, like the leg­endary L’ar­rivée d’un train en gare de La Cio­tat, famous­ly shocked and ter­ri­fied audi­ences out of their seats. In 1900, film was still a kind of mag­ic, and “like mag­ic,” says Bry­ony Dixon, cura­tor at the British Film Insti­tute (BFI), film “com­bines both art and sci­ence.” The sto­ry of Maskelyne’s achieve­ment is “a sto­ry about mag­ic.”

Maskelyne’s love for film inspired in him a pas­sion for astron­o­my as well, and he even­tu­al­ly became a fel­low of the Roy­al Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his first cin­e­mat­ic con­tri­bu­tion to the field dis­ap­peared, nev­er to be seen again. Two years before he shot the footage above from the ground in North Car­oli­na on May 28, 1900, on a ven­ture fund­ed by the British Astro­nom­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, Maske­lyne trav­eled to India to doc­u­ment a sim­i­lar event. The film can­nis­ter was stolen on his return trip home

But he had learned what he need­ed to, hav­ing designed “a spe­cial tele­scop­ic adapter for a movie cam­era,” just as he and his father had ear­li­er improved upon the film pro­jec­tor by build­ing their own. Maske­lyne had his spec­ta­cle. He showed the film in his the­ater, and the Roy­al Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety ensured that we could see it almost 120 years lat­er by archiv­ing a minute of the footage. Thanks to a part­ner­ship between the British Film Insti­tute and the RAS, the film has been restored, dig­i­tized in 4K res­o­lu­tion, and made freely avail­able online as part of a trove of Vic­to­ri­an-era films” just released by the BFI.

While thou­sands, maybe mil­lions, of dif­fer­ent mov­ing images of 2017’s solar eclipse exist on social media accounts, of this event 120 years ago there has exist­ed only one. Now that brief moment in time can reach mil­lions of peo­ple in an instant, and exist in an infi­nite num­ber of per­fect copies, a phe­nom­e­non that might have seemed in 1900 like an advanced form of mag­ic.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moons, Moons, They’re Every­where. The Unex­pect­ed Shad­ows of the Solar Eclipse

Last Night’s Solar Eclipse in a 60-Sec­ond, 700-Pic­ture Time­lapse Video

Solar Eclipse Seen From Out­er Space

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

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Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Person to Win Twice, and the Only Person in History to Win in Two Different Sciences

in Gender, History, Science | June 4th, 2019


For most of sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ry, women who made con­tri­bu­tions to var­i­ous fields have been side­lined or ignored in favor of male col­leagues, who reaped fame, pro­fes­sion­al recog­ni­tion, and cash rewards that come with pres­ti­gious prizes like the Nobel. Cor­nell his­to­ri­an of sci­ence Mar­garet Rossiter coined the term “The Matil­da Effect” to describe sex­ist bias in the sci­ences. Rossiter’s work and pop­u­lar reap­praisals like book-turned-film Hid­den Fig­ures have inspired oth­er women in acad­e­mia to search for for­got­ten female sci­en­tists, and to find them, lit­er­al­ly, in foot­notes.

When sys­tem­at­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion lim­its oppor­tu­ni­ties for any group, those who do receive recog­ni­tion, the excep­tions to the rule, must often be tru­ly excep­tion­al to suc­ceed. There has been lit­tle doubt, both in her life­time and in the many decades after­ward, that Marie Curie was such a per­son. Although forced to study sci­ence in secret at a clan­des­tine “Float­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” in her native Poland—since the uni­ver­si­ties refused to admit women—Curie (born Marie Salomea Sklodows­ka in 1867) would achieve such renown in her field that she was award­ed not one, but two Nobel Prizes.

Curie and her hus­band Pierre shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Antoine Hen­ri Bec­quer­el, dis­cov­er­er of radioac­tiv­i­ty, in 1903. The sec­ond prize, in Chem­istry, was hers alone in 1911, “in recog­ni­tion of her ser­vices to the advance­ment of chem­istry by the dis­cov­ery of the ele­ments radi­um and polo­ni­um, by the iso­la­tion of radi­um and the study of the nature and com­pounds of this remark­able ele­ment.” Curie was not only the first woman to win a Nobel, but she was also the first per­son to win twice, and the only per­son to win in two dif­fer­ent sci­ences.

These are but a hand­ful of achieve­ments in a string of firsts for Curie: denied posi­tions in Poland, she earned a Ph.D. in France, award­ed the degree in 1903 by the Sor­bonne, the same year she won her first Nobel. “Her exam­in­ers,” notes the site Famous Sci­en­tists, “were of the view that she had made the great­est con­tri­bu­tion to sci­ence ever found in a Ph.D. the­sis.” Three years lat­er, after Pierre was killed in an acci­dent, Marie was offered his pro­fes­sor­ship and became the first female pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris.

Curie suc­ceed­ed not in the absence of, but in spite of the sex­ist obsta­cles placed in her path at near­ly every stage in her career. After she received her doc­tor­ate, the Curies were invit­ed to the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion in Lon­don. Only Pierre was per­mit­ted to speak. That same year, the Nobel Com­mit­tee decid­ed to hon­or only her hus­band and Bec­quer­el. The Acad­e­my relent­ed when Pierre protest­ed. Curie fell vic­tim to a wave of xeno­pho­bia and anti-Semi­tism (though she was not Jew­ish) that swept through France in the 1900s, most famous­ly in the so-called “Drey­fus Affair.”

In 1911, the year of her sec­ond Nobel, Curie was passed over for mem­ber­ship in the French Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. It would take anoth­er 51 years before the first woman, Mar­guerite Perey, a for­mer doc­tor­al stu­dent of Curie, would be elect­ed to that body. That same year, Curie was per­se­cut­ed relent­less­ly by the French press, the pub­lic, and her sci­en­tif­ic rivals after it was revealed that she had had a brief affair with physi­cist Paul Langevin, one of Pierre Curie’s for­mer stu­dents.

But no mat­ter how many men in posi­tions of pow­er want­ed to deter Curie, there always seemed to be more influ­en­tial sci­en­tists and politi­cians who rec­og­nized the supreme val­ue of her work and the need to help her con­tin­ue it. After her sec­ond Nobel Prize, her native coun­try final­ly rec­og­nized her with the offer to direct her own lab­o­ra­to­ry in War­saw. Curie turned it down to focus on direct­ing the Curie Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the Radi­um Insti­tute of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris, which she found­ed in 1914, a major achieve­ment and, again, only a small part of her lega­cy.

Curie is known, of course, fore­most for her excep­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic work, but also for open­ing doors for women in sci­ence all over the world, though much of that door-open­ing may only have hap­pened decades after her death in 1934, and much of it hasn’t hap­pened at all yet. Inci­den­tal­ly, in the fol­low­ing year, the Curies’ daugh­ter Irène Joliot-Curie and her hus­band Frédéric Joliot-Curie were joint­ly award­ed the Nobel Prize in Chem­istry. Since then, only two oth­er women have claimed that hon­or, and only two women, includ­ing Marie Curie, have won the Prize in physics, out of 203 win­ners total.

There may be noth­ing yet like gen­der par­i­ty in the sci­ences, but those who know where to look can find the names of dozens of women sci­en­tists run­ning women-owned com­pa­nies, women-found­ed research insti­tutes and aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments, and, like the famous Curies, mak­ing major con­tri­bu­tions to chem­istry. Per­haps not long from now, many of those excep­tion­al sci­en­tists will be as well-known and wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed as Marie Curie.

via Fan­tas­tic Facts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Marie Curie Attend­ed a Secret, Under­ground “Fly­ing Uni­ver­si­ty” When Women Were Banned from Pol­ish Uni­ver­si­ties

Read the Uplift­ing Let­ter That Albert Ein­stein Sent to Marie Curie Dur­ing a Time of Per­son­al Cri­sis (1911)

How Amer­i­can Women “Kick­start­ed” a Cam­paign to Give Marie Curie a Gram of Radi­um, Rais­ing $120,000 in 1921

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

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