Tags: photo

3462

Saturday, June 27th, 2020

W00t! My copy of Purple People has arrived! Really looking forward to reading @QwertyKate’s “jolly dystopia.”

Friday, June 19th, 2020

Went for a nice walk in the countryside. ’Twas lovely to have the company of fellow humans like @Clagnut, @ChrisHow, and @CassieCodes.

Sunday, June 14th, 2020

Sitting in the sunshine with something for all the senses.

Thursday, June 11th, 2020

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph | Open Culture

I wrote a while back about one of my favourite photographs but this might just give it a run for its money.

It was only near the end of the 19th century that shutter speeds improved, as did emulsions, meaning that spontaneous moments could be captured. Still, smiling was not part of many cultures. It could be seen as unseemly or undignified, and many people rarely sat for photos anyway.

O-o-dee of the Kiowa tribe in traditional dress with a heartwarming smile on her face in a photograph over 100 years old.

Monday, June 1st, 2020

Tuesday, May 26th, 2020

Replying to

Ich kenne die Regeln nicht, also ich weiß nicht ob ich das richtig mache, aber hier sind sechs Bücher die ich (ziemlich) neulich gelesen hab’ (die nicht auf mein Kindle oder aus der Bibliothek sind). https://adactio.com/notes/reading — Ich kenne die Regeln nicht, also ich weiß nicht ob ich das richtig mache, aber hier sind sechs Bücher die ich (ziemlich) neulich gelesen hab’ (die nicht auf mein Kindle oder aus der Bibliothek sind).

https://adactio.com/notes/reading

Sunday, May 17th, 2020

Photograph

Do you have a favourite non-personal photograph?

By non-personal, I mean one that isn’t directly related to your life; photographs of family members, friends, travel (remember travel?).

Even discounting those photographs, there’s still a vast pool of candidates. There are all the amazing pictures taken by photojournalists like Lee Miller. There’s all the awe-inspiring wildlife photography out there. Then there are the kind of posters that end up on bedroom walls, like Robert Doisneau’s The Kiss.

One of my favourite photographs of all time has music as its subject matter. No, not Johnny Cash flipping the bird, although I believe this picture to be just as rock’n’roll.

In the foreground, Séamus Ennis sits with his pipes. In the background, Jean Ritchie is leaning intently over her recording equipment.

This is a photograph of Séamus Ennis and Jean Ritchie. It was probably taken around 1952 or 1953 by Ritchie’s husband, George Pickow, when Jean Ritchie and Alan Lomax were in Ireland to do field recordings.

I love everything about it.

Séamus Ennis looks genuinely larger than life (which, by all accounts, he was). And just look at the length of those fingers! Meanwhile Jean Ritchie is equally indominatable, just as much as part of the story as the musician she’s there to record.

Both of them have expressions that convey how intent they are on their machines—Ennis’s uilleann pipes and Ritchie’s tape recorder. It’s positively steampunk!

What a perfect snapshot of tradition and technology meeting slap bang in the middle of the twentieth century.

Maybe that’s why I love it so much. One single photograph is filled with so much that’s dear to me—traditional Irish music meets long-term archival preservation.