Weekly transmission 23-2018 presents:
14.06.2018 PWT 23-2018 Who Are You, M. Giroux?
31.05.2018 PWT 22-2018 SILLY SILHOUETTE OF LA FAYETTE
“After the forming of the National Constituent Assembly, LaFayette helped write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with Thomas Jefferson’s assistance; inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence, this document invoked natural law to establish basic principles of the democratic nation-state. In keeping with the philosophy of natural liberty, Lafayette also advocated for the end of slavery.
After the storming of the Bastille, Lafayette was appointed commander-in-chief of the National Guard and tried to steer a middle course through the French Revolution…
As leader of the National Guard, Lafayette attempted to maintain order and steer a middle ground, even as the radicals gained increasing influence…”
La Fayette et Mme de Staël – à propos d’une correspondance inédite
La popularité de La Fayette est depuis quelques années en recrudescence, mais c’est à l’Amérique qu’il le doit…”
((Paul-Gabriel Othenin de Cléron, comte d’Haussonville, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1921)
Texte integral en ligne : https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Fayette_et_Madame_de_Staël
PWT 22-2018 Lafayette Nous Voila
AH ! ÇA IRA, ÇA IRA, ÇA IRA ! Edith Piaf singing (Youtube) :
27.05.2018 You could not crash in the party last Saturday ? … Please join us at Bloomsbury Holyday Inn next Sunday
“… and so, at last, to the festivities of today, when Markle was hitched to her true love—her true true love, forever and ever—at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Third time lucky. The heavens above were of an unfamiliar blue. Ever since Elizabeth II was crowned under soaking skies, the pact between good news and bad weather has been a matter of national pride, yet here we were, suffused with warmth—an event so rare that it was greeted by Amal Clooney in a dress of liquefied sunshine. Her husband’s suit, to judge by its tint of shimmering gray, had been woven from the same material as his beard. Oprah Winfrey was in pink and continued to radiate satisfaction, despite the fact that, having turned up promptly at a quarter to ten, she had to occupy her spot in the knights’ stalls of the chapel (not the coziest of perches) for two and a quarter hours before the main event. So contagious were “the atmospherics,” as one member of the palace staff described them, that even Victoria Beckham was affected. She didn’t actually smile, but there were several moments when it looked as if she might.
The surrounding mood was of a buoyancy not seen since the London Olympics in 2012. Ordinary citizens initiated conversations of their own free will rather than, as custom dictates, either waiting for their dogs to sniff each other or deciding not to speak at all. More than two thousand members of the public had been invited onto the castle grounds and were guaranteed a clear view of the proceedings. The invitation was, in part, a vote of thanks for services rendered. One such guest, Helen Mack, had worked in the hospice movement for thirty years, providing care for the terminally ill; another spectator, Cavita Chapman, is not only a senior manager in the treatment of mental health—a cause to which Harry has lent outspoken support—but, as I learned, an expert on the insanely complex plot of “Suits.” Chapman was crisp in her assessment of the real-life couple, expecting great things of Meghan (“She’s a feminist”) and the Prince—“Harry’s always been, you know, ‘Why not?’ ” Put together, Chapman said, “Both of them will change the world.”(Anthony Lane, The New Yorker) Read more »
Claude-Marie Ferrier (1811-1889)
Windsor Castle and Town Skyline, 1851
Salt paper print from an albumen glass negative
JOIN US AT THE LONDON PHOTOGRAPH FAIR – THIS SUNDAY!
27th May 2018, 10am – 4pm
ABOUT
With thousands of rare, unique and unusual finds at every event, The London Photograph Fair is the meeting place for vintage photography dealers, collectors, curators and connoisseurs – since 1982
LOCATION & TIMES
Venue: Bloomsbury Holiday Inn, Coram Street, London WC1N 1HT
Date & Hours: Sunday 27th May 2018, 10am – 4pm
TUBE
Russell Square (1 min walk) / St. Pancras Station (7-10 min walk)
10.05.2018 PWT 19-2018 THE KING WHO WOULD BE A MAN
06.05.2018 PWT 18-2018 Port Famine, A Tragedy Without Pictures
Weekly transmission 18-2018 presents:
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532–1592) was a Spanish explorer …
Fortifying the Strait and closing the loop of the Columbian exchange …
Fondation de deux villes dans le détroit de Magellan au XVIe siècle
Weekly drawing by Théophile Bouchet: “Closing the loop”
Two unpublished drawings by Wilhelm Heine who crossed the Strait
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532–1592) was a Spanish explorer,
author, historian, mathematician, astronomer, and scientist. His birthplace is not certain… In 1555 he began his exploring career, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. His first destination was New Spain (in what is today Mexico), where he lived for two years. Little is known of this period in his life, other than that he encountered difficulties with the Inquisition. He then sailed to Peru, where he lived for more than twenty years, gaining a reputation as a navigator.
In Lima he was accused by the Inquisition of possessing two magic rings and some magic ink and of following the precepts of Moses. He then joined Álvaro de Mendaña’s expedition through the southern Pacific Ocean to find the Terra Australis Incognita, which, should Mendaña have followed Sarmiento’s indications, had reached New Zealand or/and Australia; but they discovered the Solomon Islands instead, in 1568. The expedition failed to find gold and attempts at establishing a settlement in the Solomon Islands ended in failure. In order to take credit for the discoveries for himself Mendaña threw the journals and maps made by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa overboard and abandoned him in Mexico. However, a trial was then held in Lima, with the result giving Sarmiento credit for the discoveries.
Continuer la lecture de « 06.05.2018 PWT 18-2018 Port Famine, A Tragedy Without Pictures »
26.04.2018 PWT 17-2018 Powerful Images of the Liberation of Paris
Aug. 26, 1944, de Gaulle was making his official entry into the capital…*
Few things had rankled more with the French leader that summer than the failure of Washington and London to recognize his Provisional Government as the Government of France. His nightmare was of being caught between the Scylla of AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories) and the Charybdis of a Communist‐run commune. He was determined Paris’s liberation should be largely a French gesture under his leadership, and he intended to install himself in the city as soon as it was free, with or without his allies’ blessing.
Suite sur le pdf : PWT 17-2018 Liberation of Paris
16.04.2018 LE SOUPER (Monday 23 April 2018 Dinner Party)
Full Menu:
First Course:
Goat Cheese Gateau
Tomato Jam
Buttermilk Biscuit Crumbles Young Variegated Lettuces
Main Course:
Rack of Spring Lamb
Burnt Cipollini Soubise Carolina Gold Rice Jambalava
Dessert:
Nectarine Tart
Crème Fraîche Ice Cream
East view of mansion at Mount Vernon (Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana)
About the portraits:
Xue-Lan-Se (born 2004)
The Candidate, 2017
El Muro, 2017
Photo ceramic impressions on aluminium (Fotalux), 30×30 cm
Unbreakable, indestructible, convenient for all outside walls,
each one of an edition of 7 numbered signed copies. each 400 US $
12.04.2017 PWT 15-2018 LA MUSIQUE ADOUCIT LES MŒURS – CHARMS TO SOOTH A SAVAGE BREAST
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!
‘Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.
Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night
The silent Tomb receiv’d the good Old King;
He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg’d
Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.
Why am not I at Peace?
William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697
SYLVAIN, PHOTOGRAPHE DE TAHITI
In 1946, a young French war correspondent photographer …
seduced by his stopover in Tahiti, when he returned to France from Indochina, chose to settle in Punaauia. Adolphe Sylvain, a public works engineer by training, has just participated in the Libération de Paris as a tank driver in General Leclerc’s 2nd DB. He took the opportunity to fix some of the famous photos of the liberation with his Rolleiflex.
05.04.2018 PWT 14-2018 NEGRE’S NEGATIVES
“In photography, a negative is an image in which the lightest areas of the photographed subject appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. This reversed order occurs because the extremely light-sensitive chemicals used to capture an image quickly enough for ordinary picture-taking are darkened, rather than bleached, by exposure to light and subsequent photographic processing.Negatives were once commonly made on a thin sheet of glass rather than a plastic film, and some of the earliest negatives were made on paper.
28.03.2018 PWT 13-2018 Back to the Cold War ?
Glavsevmorput’ or the Discrete Charm of Soviet Acronyms
One of the more spectacular ones was a 6300-mile polar flight of N025 from Moscow to San Jacinto, California, in early 1937, the precedent to likely ordering that a larger aircraft with crew and cargo replicate that feat.
Access to the pdf: PWT 13-2018 Glavsevmorput
23.03.2018 PWT 12-2018 Thirteen Fragile Original Gelatin Relief Matrices from Galerie Contemporaine
The lead mold, the negative matrix needed a positive matrix: a gelatin relief matrix like those. A high-power hydraulic press was used to press the gelatin matrix into some smooth, perfectly leveled plate of lead, forming then one, two, three negative lead matrices (molds). After a solution of gelatin, albumen, sugar, and ammonium dichromate was dried, it was exposed to sunlight under a glass negative of Nadar or Carjat.
19.03.2018 FRANTISEK DRTIKOL : DE LA GRACE AVANT TOUTE CHOSE
15.03.2018 PWT 11-2018 TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF CHINESE IMPRESSIONS
Two thousand years of impressions
Two thousand years of paper, two thousand years of impressions, two thousand years of destruction, with two main processes: the paper can move to the text (Eastern tradition) or the text can move to the paper (Western tradition).
In China, the stone or the block (matrix) is fixed firmly on a table. The printer takes a round horsehair inking brush and applies ink with a vertical motion. The paper is then laid on the block and rubbed with a long narrow pad to transfer the impression to the paper. The paper is peeled off and set to dry. Because of the rubbing process, printing is only done on one side of the paper. Further reading on Wikipedia related articles and access to a video with this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADfhgDRIhUk
Weekly transmission 11-2018 presents:
Before paper, 2566 BC: earliest extant papyrus, the Diary of Merer
Before paper, c. 300 BC: bamboo slips, the Book of Laozi
Two thousand years ago, invention of paper in China
175 AD: carved stone books and earliest paper and ink-rubbings
690 AD: did Wu Zetian commission 100,000 printed scrolls ?
July 751 AD: The Battle of Talas near Samarkand, a key event in the history of paper
764 AD: the Empress Kōken commissioned 1,000,000 small printed scrolls
1139 AD : the earliest extant book printed with wooden movable type
July 1377: the earliest extant book printed with movable metal type
March 1455: promotion of the Gutenberg Bible in Frankfurt
1640: the earliest extant book printed in British North America.
1725, the printing of the Chinese Imperial Encyclopaedia
WANG XUE-ZHANG (b. 1953). Three traditional ink rubbings of Luoyang carved inscriptions
Post-scritum by Theophile Bouchet: “A Westerner facing Chinese culture”
9.03.2018 PWT 10-2018 Toulouse Lautrec l’Oripeau
“Un tout petit forgeron à binocle”
“Lautrec, having read Poil de Carotte (Carrot Head), asked Tristan Bernard to let him meet the author, Jules Renard. Their first interview took place November 26, 1894 (Journal of J. Renard): “A very small blacksmith with binocle; a small double compartment bag; thick lips, and hands like those he draws with spreading and bony fingers, inches in a semicircle … It hurts first, by the smallness, then he is very alive, very nice, with grunts that separates his sentences and raises his lips, like the wind raises the bulges of a door. ”
Early in 1895, Lautrec researched a fox’s head to compose an ornate letter for an article of his friend in the Revue Blanche. It was Lautrec who proposed to Renard (1895) to illustrate a dozen of his Histoires naturelles, and to sell 100 copies at 25 francs each; the edition will be made by Floury in 1899, it will not be successful…” (Jean Adhémar, Toulouse-Lautrec 1951 BN exhibition catalogue)
PWT 10-2018 Toulouse-Lautrec l’Oripeau
photomontage supervised by Jean Adhemar, 1951, glass plate, 120×90 mm
PWT 09-2017 ASHES AND BONES STORIES
Ashes and Bones Stories: Martin Bormann’s copy of Palafox and Mendoza
We may be close to a big burning of books. Not by order of a single decision maker fanatic of the Qin Emperor exemplary orders of 213 BCA or another Great Leader a few centuries later. Just a general indifference with a multiplication of governemental bands listing books as outlaw, lists issued by technocratic bureaucraties, all impatient to get rid of thousands of librarians and optimize thousands of buildings.
Let’s pick one small volume, in a strict and severe binding, probably designed by Reichsleiter Martin Bormann. The text is a rather boring German translation of Palafox and Mendoza 1650s texts against the jesuits, printed in Gothic alphabet in 1773, the year of general bannisment of the Jesuits.
The property stamp deserves our attention as the heir of Hitler could have been interested in the administration of Latin America native people, he is said to have chosen the Paraguaian missions as a post apocalyptic heaven.
This small volume, difficult to read, brings our attention to contemplate three centurie: Spain and Mexico in mid 17th, the World in 1773 and the World abter the Fall oftheReich, 1945. Last point, ironically, Martin Bormann is the decision-maker who banished the use of gothic characters in German countries.
22.02.2018 PWT 08-2017 SAN FRANCISCO, HONOLULU, MANILA, YOKOHAMA, HONG-KONG, SHANGHAI: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
A Young Mexican Around the World in Eighty Days
Departing early February 1913, returning in the first days of May, Alberto Nunes jr was travelling with his father, Alberto Nunes and his portable camera. He recorded decisive moments of the trip, on the Union Pacific train, aboard the trans-Pacific liners SS Mongolia and Tenyo Maru — on 2nd class, with Chineses immigrants on steerage — some impressive night fire in Manila, buying toys in a Japaneses shop and the early sewing machines shops and offices. A member of the Nunes family was working for the growing Singer Company : Uncle Luis had became a Singer representative in Manila when he had visibly a terrible accident.
We can imagine the album open when the travellers were telling magical travel recollections to the young ones. Some pencil notes, verso, and ink captions, recto, supported the failing or rather transforming memories, human transmission is always in progress, opposed to the dry and perfect restitutions of machine brains.
The album contains 89 original photos by Alberto junior, printed on postcard papers, together with some printed views and a Japanese portrait with the curious note: “Geisha que attendo a mi abuelo Alberto J. Nunes en una casa del Yoshi-Wara”. (The Geisha who took care of grandfather Alberto in one of the Yoshi-Wara special houses).
Acces au pdf
15.02.2018 PWT 07-2018 HAPPY NEW YEAR: CALLING ON THE DOG DAYS TO BE
The Dog (狗) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac
Access to full transmission, PWT 07-2018 Calling up the dog days to be
The Great Race called by the Jade Emperor:
“An ancient folk story tells that Cat and Rat were both very bad at swimming.
Although they were poor swimmers, they were both quite intelligent. To get to the meeting called by the Jade Emperor, they had to cross a river to reach the meeting place. The Jade Emperor had also decreed that the years on the calendar would be named for each animal in the order they arrived to the meeting.
Cat and Rat decided that the best and fastest way to cross the river was to hop on the back of Ox.
Continuer la lecture de « 15.02.2018 PWT 07-2018 HAPPY NEW YEAR: CALLING ON THE DOG DAYS TO BE »
01.02.2018 PWT 05-2018 BREAKING THE WALL, GALERIE DU PALACE GOES TO MEXICO
“Frontiera hipnótica de la conciencia” (English presentation)
Serge Plantureux presents three young French artists under the age of thirty, who articulate their reflection around hypnosis guiding to the border of consciousness, aiming to modify time and space perception. This is a resolutely contemporary notion. Our post-truth era reveals a multitude of fields in which, trough creation, imaginary and reality are mixed-up. To such a point further than what is “possible” or “improbable”, opening perspectives on bottomless chasms.
Lyes Hammadouche questions the limits and boundaries of time contemplation trough moving mirrors filled with universes, guiding the gaze to an altered state of consciousness.
Théophile Bouchet draws bodies flirting with waves, floating on the surface of awareness. The eyes are invited towards optical boundaries.
Colin Lusinchi realizes Martian surface samples from possible coring for mining and colonization without limits. These Martian cores testify to the impacts of meteorites and invite the passerby to the cosmic journey,
A seismograph records the vibrations of the space trough the living presence of visitors.
26.01.2018 Washington National Gallery of Art : Healy’s Portrait of President-Elect on Display
Healy’s Portrait of President-Elect on Display
“In November 1860, shortly after Abraham Lincoln was elected president, George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894) began the portrait on view in this gallery. Healy’s painting was the first portrait for which Lincoln posed following his election and also the last to show him without a beard. Prior to the election, Lincoln had received a letter from an eleven-year-old girl, who wrote that his appearance — as well as his chances for winning — would be improved if he grew whiskers. Lincoln replied that since he had never worn whiskers, the change might be viewed as an “affectation.” Three months later, however, while traveling from Illinois to Washington for his inauguration, Lincoln made a point of stopping in the young girl’s hometown, where he delighted in showing her his newly grown beard. Healy’s empathetic portrait of the clean-shaven president-elect records Lincoln’s features before the outbreak of the Civil War and the radical change in his appearance that followed, as documented in these photographs.”
Access to the complete pdf in progress :Dossier Lincoln 0418
25.01.2018 PWT 04-2018 “Without friends, without intrigue, without fortune …” Louis Cabat Self-educated Painter and Photographer
Louis (Nicolas) Cabat (1812-1893)
“Cabat, a French landscape painter, born at Paris Dec. 24, 1812; studied painting under M. Camille Flers (1802-1868), and visited the most picturesque parts of France. He first exhibited in the “salon” of 1833 some landscapes which the critics pronounced to be too realistic; but he persevered in this style of painting till 1837, and became the founder of a school. From that period till 1848 he only contributed twice to the annual exhibitions (in 1840 and 1841), but since 1848 he has been a regular contributor. M. Cabat was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1867, and unanimously chosen Director, in Nov., 1878, of the French School of Painting at Rome.” (Thompson Cooper, Men of the Time, 1884)
When director of the Villa, a young artist, Henri Lucien Doucet (1856-1895), sent a piece considered too bold (scene of Harem) which entailed the non-renewal of Cabat at the head of the Villa.
Cabat is considered a self-educated artist like his friend of early days, Charles Jacque. “Charles Jacque had first been introduced to these Old Masters early in his career (he was 17 years old in 1830) when Louis Cabat, then a young porcelain painter who lived next door to Jacque (passage Saint-Antoine), took him to the Bibliothèque Nationale where they looked at prints by or after the work of Poussin, Lorrain, Dürer, and Rembrandt.” (Rehs Gallery)
