Grayson Perry, on Martin Parr

When I first came upon the photography of Martin Parr in a colour supplement at some point in the 1980s, a very loud bell rang. Here was someone who was pointing out with laser precision the aspects of society I didn't even know I was driven by. He framed anthropological observations that I didn't yet know I was fascinated by. Class, identity, individualism and belonging, what it is to be British: in these subjects, Martin's photos are my guiding text. Often the most affecting encounters with culture are those that make concrete the wisps of feeling we have been sensing for years. For me, the photographs of Martin Parr did just that, and I'm sure they have done the same thing for millions of other people all over the planet.

Since that first encounter, his work has been a guiding beacon for me, pointing out patterns and dissonances in society, but more importantly showing me how to look. Over the course of his long and vastly prolific career - to date he has produced more than 100 books and many more exhibitions - Martin has developed an anthropological 'sat nav' that will reliably take him to where his hyper-developed image-making skills can play and disrupt. His genius is not just in spotting the shot, but in booking the flight and getting the access [...]

One of the first things I asked him is something I'm sure other people must wonder: 'How do you get away with taking some of these photographs?' If I saw Martin striding purposefully towards me with a camera, I would be tempted to run. The few times he has taken my photo, I have ended up looking like someone in a Martin Parr photograph. I stare blankly out, my pretentions pinned like a butterfly to a card. I have occasionally seen him at work in the field, alert but camouflaged by banality. He has developed a carefully crafted image: the genial dowdy everyman that no one will notice, in faded clothes and sandals, who pokes the camera in someone's face with utter confidence and then turns away and disappears into the background the split second after pressing the shutter.

- Grayson Perry, in Martin Parr: Only Human, London, 2019, p.10-11. 

The lucrative profession of photography in 19th century New Zealand

Alfred Burton's [1885 photo montage] The Maori at Home will always remain a remarkable and unique record. A few years earlier the journey would have been impossible or at least suicidal. A few years later the Maori had become sophisticated in front of the camera. This work deservedly gained him the Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society. And it undoubtedly brought the firm kudos that was reflected in all the branches of their photographic work. Burton Brothers became a national New Zealand concern and known widely abroad.

Just how much Alfred gained financially from these important additions to the catalogue of topographical and ethnographical photographs it is not possible to say, because no account books of the period have survived, and, as has been emphasised before, many photographers in Dunedin who specialised in portraiture during the formative years appear also to have done well.

The record of freeholders in New Zealand which was published in 1882 gives some idea of relative prosperity in the profession. Robert Clifford, apart from his dwelling in Fleet Street, had freehold property in Mornington, the North East Valley, and West Harbour, to a total value of £1,710; Frederick Henry Irwin, of the London Portrait Rooms, held freehold property to the value of £3,500; Alexander Peyman, no longer in partnership with Irwin and living in England, owned 1,273 acres at Wanganui valued at £12,730, and properties to the value of £7,870 in Oamaru and £2,500 in Dunedin, and Caroline Peyman at Wanganui had freehold property to the value of £1,737; William Meluish, living in England, had in 1882 freehold property in Dunedin to the value of £8,820, and Alfred Burton held freehold an acre and dwelling at Sunnyside, Roslyn valued at £780 and property in Dunedin giving a total of £1,180. These figures, at that date and viewed relatively, may not signify great wealth, but they do suggest that the top photographers were men of social standing and some substance.

- Hardwicke Knight, Burton Brothers: Photographers, Dunedin, 1980, p.34-5. 

Lambert Wickes' contribution to the cause of American independence

US naval officer Lambert Wickes took the war to England's back door in 1777:

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Reprisal left St Nazaire to cruise in the [English] Channel in January 1777 - a miserable time of year in those waters, and consequently an excellent time for raiding. Wickes quickly took five prizes (three brigs, a snow, and a ship), which for him made it "a tolerable successful cruise." The snow, Swallow, was a mail packet from Falmouth bound for Lisbon, and fought for an hour before striking her flag. Men on both sides were wounded, but none killed. In Reprisal, the first lieutenant's left arm was shot off above the elbow, "and the Lieut. of Marines had a musket ball lodged in his wrist." [...] Benedict Arnold may have found the marines to be "the refuse of every regiment"; to others, they were an essential adjunct to operations, and Wickes's crew included a detachment of two of their officers and thirty men.

After selling his prizes in France to pay his crew and maintain his ship, Wickes was joined in April by the Continental brig Lexington (a name that would grace many American warships) and the cutter Dolphin. (She, incidentally, was an English boat, secretly sold to the American service from her home port of Dover.). In May the three vessels set off to try their luck, standing out across the Channel for the Irish Sea. In essence such raiding was identical to privateering; the only difference was that it was done by naval ships under official orders. But to a young naval officer, that probably made it close to ideal. It was daring, exciting, novel, and, when successful, profitable too. Few captains would ask for more in wartime.

Before they left the Bay of Biscay, the squadron encountered a British ship of the line, too powerful for them to challenge. Escaping, they were blown west of Ireland by a gale and took no prizes until three weeks after leaving port. By then they were back in the north side of the Channel; and in a single week they captured eighteen vessels. Satisfied with that, they headed for base and again met a British ship. Reprisal had eighteen guns; her opponent had seventy-four. In the chase that followed, Wickes scattered his squadron, and to lighten Reprisal threw all her guns over, until finally, believing it would increase her flexibility and speed, he sawed through some of her beams. It was a common idea at the time; but it was probably that which brought about his death. Though he escaped from the British once more, he was never able to tell his adventures to his grandchildren. Returning home in September, Reprisal foundered in a gale and was lost with her captain.

Wickes had been a brave man, and his death was a blow to the Continental Navy. Had he lived, he might well have outshone his more celebrated colleague John Paul Jones; and of the two, it could well be argued that Wickes was the more courageous, for when he conducted his pioneering raids, he (unlike Jones) had no guaranteed safe port in France. Wickes paved the way for Jones.

Today Jones is far more widely remembered, and in the context of the U.S. Navy's whole history, that is right [...] But at the time, Wickes's contribution to the immediate cause of American independence was far greater. This is not simply because he captured more prizes; they paid for his voyage, but little more. Instead, the true value of his voyage lay in its political consequences [...]

By helping to heat up Anglo-French antagonism, simmering since France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, Wickes brought vital French support for America that much closer. This was exactly what the American commissioners in Paris wanted, and the French were indeed growing visibly keener. During the summer of 1777, in the French port of Brest, an American privateer (General Mifflin, flying the "Grand Union flag") was saluted with nine guns by Admiral du Chauffault - the traditional signal of the navy of one sovereign state to another.

- Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy 1775-1991, London, 1991, p.30-31.

Prince Eugene's Belvedere

The Upper Belvedere in Vienna, 28 May 2026

The high reputation of Prince Eugene [of Savoy] has endured over the centuries, as has his personal stamp on Vienna with his summer and winter residences being two baroque jewels of the city. His city palais on the Himmelpfortgasse was built by both Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lukas von Hildebrand. The building, which has a twelve-bay baroque façade, also has an exquisite interior, including an extraordinary staircase, stone sculptures and frescoes. The building currently hosts the Austrian Finance Ministry.

Eugene's most famous residence was the Belvedere, a historic complex of two palaces and beautiful baroque gardens, just outside the city walls. Johann Lukas von Hildebrand designed and built the Lower and Upper Belvedere between 1712 and 1723. One of Europe's standout baroque landmarks, it is listed together with the rest of Vienna city centre as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Lower Belvedere, with its beautiful Hall of Mirrors, was the day. to-day summer home of Prince Eugene, while the Upper Belvedere was conceived with prestige and display in mind, positioned on a rise overlooking the middle of the capital with copper roofs. They were designed to resemble Turkish tents, an allusion to Eugene's victories over the Ottomans. The sumptuous grandeur of the interior includes Herculean figures supporting the vaulted ceiling of the Sala Terrena and the two-storey-high Marble Hall with its ornately painted ceiling.

The gardens between the Lower and Upper Belvedere are a baroque masterpiece in their own right and look down towards Fischer von Erlach's baroque Karlskirche, with its oversized flanking columns. Eugene had an intense interest in horticulture and nature, seeking out rarities and abnormalities. His menagerie was the second largest in Europe after that of King Louis XIV, numbering 43 species of mammals and 67 species of birds, including 'unheard of' species of the time. Eugene was also an avid collector of books and developed friendships with the leading international authors and thinkers of the age, including Gottfried Leibnitz, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles-Louis Montesquieu. More than 15,000 books formed part of a world-class collection together with hundreds of manuscripts and prints, described as follows by Rousseau: 'The Prince's library is very extensive and consists of exceptionally fine books beautifully bound. But what is more remarkable is that there is scarcely a book in it that the Prince has not read or at least looked through. It is difficult to believe that a man who almost alone carries such a public burden for all Europe, who is Field-Marshall and the Emperor's Prime Minister, can find the time to read almost as much as someone who has nothing else to do'

- Angus Robertson, The Crossroads of Civilisation: A History of Vienna, New York, 2022, p.37-8.

Brassaï's Parisian night photography

Here is Brassaï himself, towards the end of his life [in a 1976 interview with Claude Bonnefoy], describing one of his night-time expeditions in the early 1930s: 'I used to spend whole nights beside the canal, waiting for the right moment to take the shot, or in other words for a little fog to soften the lights. Often the hirondelles, the policemen on bikes, seeing a man squatting down would stop and ask me: "What are you up to?" And I'd say: "I've come to take a photo." At two in the morning, that seemed like an odd thing to do. So, I'd have a couple of prints on me so I could show them what it was possible to achieve at night. Then the ones that liked taking pictures would ask me for advice. I explained to them that I had several exposure times - the "Gauloise exposure", in other words the time it took to smoke a Gauloise, and the "Boyard exposure", which was about twice as long. This airy description, long after the event in question, contrasts with remarks made by Brassaï during the 1930s when he referred to 'a period of endless experiments with developers and exposure times', which were probably closer to the truth. The table of exposure times, reproduced at the back of Camera in Paris, shows that far from being a mechanical and repetitive practice the calculations involved a number of parameters, including natural lighting conditions and supplementary light sources. The exposure time could be anything from a fraction of a second to ten minutes or longer: 1/50 of a second for a photograph taken using flash ('14 July, Place de la Bastille'; 'Parisian cats'), one minute without supplementary light ('A carriage in front of "Le Dôme""), ten minutes for a Seine embankment shrouded in fog, or a panoramic view taken from one of the towers of Notre-Dame.

- Sylvie Aubenas & Quentin Bajac, Brassaï: Paris Nocturne, London, 2013, p.196-98.

Scenes from a West Country horse-fair

The crowd had thickened perceptibly now; and Wolf realised that he was seeing the most characteristic gathering for that portion of the countryside that he was ever likely to see. Here were smart self-satisfied tradesmen from Ramsgard with their wives and their girls. Here were weather-stained carters from Blackmore; cider-makers and cattle-dealers from Sedgemoor; stalwart melancholy-looking shepherds from the high Quantocks; a sprinkling of well-to-do farmers from the far-off valley of the Frome; sly, whimsical dairymen from the rich pastures of the Stour; and, moving among them all, slow-voiced and slow-footed, but with an infinite zest for enjoyment, the local rustic labourers that tilled the heavy fields watered by the Lunt.

The two men pushed their way back to the taut, vibrating rope, beyond which the driving contest was now proceeding; and as they rested there, Wolf's mind felt liberated from all its agitations, and he drank in the scene before him with unruffled delight. The peculiar smells that came to his nostrils - leather, and straw, and horse-dung, and tobacco-smoke, and cider-sour human breath, and paint, and tar, and half-devoured apples - were all caught up and overpowered by one grand dominant odour, the unique smell of the trodden grass of a fair-field. Let the sun shine as it would from the cold blue heaven! Let the chariots of white clouds race as they pleased under that airy tent! It was from the solid ground under human feet, under equine hooves, that this Dorsetshire world gave forth its autochthonous essence, its bitter-sweet, rank, harsh, terrestrial sweat, comforting beyond conscious knowledge to the heart of man and beast.

Nothing could have been more symbolic of the inmost nature of that countryside than the humorous gravity with which these lean yeomen and plump farmers drove their brightly-painted gigs and high dog-carts round that hoof-trodden paddock! The obvious reciprocity between the men who drove and the animals driven, the magnetic currents of sympathy between the persons looking on and the persons showing off, the way the whole scene was characterised by something casual, non-official, nonchalant - all this produced an effect that only England, and perhaps only that portion of England, could have brought into being. Behind Wolf and his companion surged a pushing, jostling, heterogeneous crowd, giving vent to a low, monotonous murmur; and behind them again could be heard the raucous cries and clangings and whistlings from the noisy whirligigs.

- John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent, London, 1929, p.174-5 (1961 edn.).

The origins of Dr Strangelove's accent

Weegee's most striking photographs were made on the War Room set, where much of the drama of Dr Strangelove takes place. Visionary production designer Ken Adam's expressionist, windowless interior was all dark gloss surfaces and angled walls, with a huge circular table illuminated from above, like a poker room. Since there were no public images of the U.S. government's real Pentagon War Room, Ken Adam was free to imagine it (just as he imagined the unseen interior of Fort Knox for the James Bond movie Goldfinger, also released in 1964). Preeminently a photographer of the night, Weegee was perfectly at home in the darkened space. He could use his flash or the production's bright lights to pick out his subjects, just as he had done in the treacly midnights of 1930s and '40s New York. His portrait of Peter Bull, playing Russian ambassador Alexi de Sadesky, looks as if it could have been taken in the crowd at a Manhattan theater premiere.

The British actor Peter Sellers was tasked with playing three key roles in the film: U.S. President Merkin Muffley, Captain Lionel Mandrake of the British Royal Air Force, and the eerie Dr. Strangelove - a former Nazi who is now the President's chief scientific advisor. Sellers was also a keen amateur filmmaker, shooting many home movies as well as photographs. He and Weegee struck up an endearing friendship on set. Sellers had an extraordinary ability to absorb and mimic accents, and became fascinated with Weegee's way of talking, which was a gruff but sweet cocktail of eastern European consonants and streetwise New York vowels. Sellers needed very distinct accents for each of his parts. His impression of Weegee became the basis of his voice for Dr. Strangelove. On a TV talkshow shortly after filming, Sellers recalled:

"I was stuck, you see, because I didn't want to do sort of a normal English broken German accent thing, so on the set was a little photographer from New York, a very cute little fellow called Weegee. You must have heard of him. And he had a little voice.... And I got an idea... I put a German accent on top of that, and I suddenly got... him into Dr. Strangelove. So really, it's Weegee. I don't know if he knows it."

- David Campany, 'Weegee & Kubrick', in Clement Cheroux (ed.), Weegee: Society of the Spectacle, London, 2025, p.193.

See also:
Photography: Dennis Hopper: photographer, 15 September 2025

Photography: Sherman meets Blanchett, 8 May 2022

Photography: Who Shot Rock 'n Roll, 1 January 2013

The "empty" transit lane problem

Much of the resistance to transit lanes comes from how they appear to motorists. If you are sitting in stopped traffic and a transit lane is right next to you, the transit lane will look empty most of the time. Now and then a bus will flash past, but if you're sitting still and the bus is going at full speed, you'll mostly be gazing at empty pavement.

Motorists who see that often decide that the bus lane isn't working. Surely, if it were working right, you'd see buses in it most of the time, wouldn't you? Wrong. Fast-moving buses are a quick blur to the stopped motorist. Only a blocked or failing bus lane appears to be full of buses [...]

In most cities, the motorist's perception is so dominant that their confusions can become political imperatives. Wherever transit lanes operate, elected officials get angry letters about how empty they are, as though this implies that they are wasting space. Planning studies for transit lanes sometimes refer to "empty lane syndrome," as though this common fallacy in the motorist's perception is an objective technical problem. It is certainly a political problem, but it's one rooted in ignorance, and only information will combat it.

- Jarrett Walker, Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives, Washington DC, 2012, p.206-7.

See also:

Blog: How to take a bus, 28 November 2018

Blog: Dale Bracewell's transport solutions, 10 July 2018

Blog: Wellington tramlink, 14 January 2015

How gorillas got their name from a Carthaginian explorer

It is a shame that [Greek explorer Euthymenes'] work was ridiculed by later writers - Herodotus does not name Euthymenes, but he most vehemently attacks the idea that the Nile was fed by Oceanus and it is not a theory that is given much credence in the subsequent discourse. Yet perhaps he has been unfairly treated. His expedition and the information he gathered must have made its way to other navigators and explorers in the Mediterranean. In the fifth century BCE a Carthaginian by the name of Hanno undertook a similar voyage, possibly going as far south as modern Cameroon. Along the way, Hanno described meeting indigenous peoples, wild animals, and one particular oddity for which he is most well known:

[T]here was another island, full of savage men. But there were a lot more women, with their bodies covered in hair: our interpreters called these people Gorillai. When we pursued them in the chase, we were unable to capture any of the men; for they all fled to the high ground and kept us at bay by throwing stones. However, we took three of the women, who bit and clawed at their captors and did not want to follow. So we killed and flayed them, and brought their skins back to Carthage.

This story of a wild tribe of hairy people, with strong, powerful men who were outnumbered by women, living in West Africa stuck in the European imagination. In 1847 CE, when Thomas S. Savage sent a partial skeleton of a large, powerful, hairy ape from West Africa to Jeffries Wyman at Harvard, the story of Hanno immediately came to mind as he wrote up the first scientific assessment of a new great ape. We do not know whether Hanno was actually describing a troop of gorillas, but one thing is certain - it is because of his account that gorillas have acquired their name.

- Owen Rees, The Far Edges of the Known World: A New History of the Ancient Past, London, 2025, p.142-3.

Maria Bamford's workplace trajectory

Given my tendency to reject those who accept me, this is the work pattern that I fight against to this day:

1. I cry in the bathroom at the impossibility or first sign that I am not good at my job (for example, upon hearing, "Did you forget to order creamer?" [receptionist], or, "Can you pace it up?" [voice-over gig]).

2. I start to see the flawed nature of my employers and the unethical moral quandaries of the job. There's a reason the animation is done in Korea! The labor is cheaper and not well-treated! There is hypocrisy in what I thought was beautiful! Now that I'm a part of it, it is BAD!

3. I start to "speak up" passive-aggressively (via comedy). At Nickelodeon, I made a satirical short film with myself and another production assistant killing off all of the Nickelodeon executives in a Masterpiece Theatre-style mystery.

4. I am well-liked but troubling to the people who have hired me. I do a good job, but those in charge sense my lack of respect. As with everything, once I am invited to be a part of it, it is BAD.

I was at Nickelodeon for one year and I was voted Employee of the Month the same month I got fired. After being fired, I won a voice-over role on their new series, CatDog. They gave me a severance of two months pay and with that, I was able to move to a nicer neighborhood, get a dog, and begin earning more from stand-up than from temping. But I would still do anything for cash. I've answered phones for comedy development executives right after having pitch meetings with them. I worked eight hours at NBC4 reception after doing The Tonight Show the night before. The weatherman walked by and said, "You were on Leno last night!" and kept walking. The gradual change into being a full-time performer took about as long as it took me to pay off my medical debt - eight years.

- Maria Bamford, Sure, I'll Join Your Cult, New York, 2023, p.146-7.

Dennis Hopper: photographer

The aftermath of Hopper's first film as director saw the global superstar and auteur on a self-exiled binge in Taos, New Mexico. Wrangling footage of his second, The Last Movie, into something approaching coherence while remaining true to shifting principles of incoherence proved predictably tough going - not least for anyone expected to sit through the result. Hopper's banishment was by then complete, but it was not unprecedented. After repeated run-ins with director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas he was effectively blackballed by Hollywood at the tender age of twenty-one.

He went to New York, where he studied with Lee Strasberg and fell in love - with modern art and [his first wife] Brooke [Hayward], James Dean had urged him to start taking photographs when they were filming Rebel Without a Cause in 1955 but Hopper did not get a serious camera a birthday present from Brooke until 1961. Back in LA the couple discovered a simmering art scene that was about to come to the boil. Hopper was in its midst as collector (he bought one of the first Warhol soup-can paintings), participant, friend and witness.

He was shy he said later, and liked the way the camera gave him something to fiddle with. As in a low-budget indie production, the nascent scene had a cast of dozens, some natives of this coastal paradise (like his lifelong friend, curator and impresario Walter Hopps), others, like Hopper himself (Kansas) and Ed Ruscha (born in Nebraska, raised in Oklahoma) from the Midwest. In opposition to the psychological depths plumbed by Abstract Expressionism (Hopper's first painterly passion in New York), LA art relished and reflected the mass visual culture of southern California. 'Pop' may have been a conceptual import, but its raw materials could be locally sourced. The streets were full of stuff that would end up in the paintings (and the photographs): cars, gas stations, billboards for the movie stars whom Hopper counted among his friends. They brought a glamour to the art which, in turn, celebrated the profundity of the superficial. The marriage of showbiz and art has been enduring, as a merger, it has proved stunningly lucrative.

- Geoff Dyer, See / Saw: Looking at Photographs, Edinburgh, 2021, p.80-81.

See also:
Photography: Joel Meyerowitz: the heart of the photographic moment, 9 July 2024

Photography: Cindy Sherman: chameleon, comedian, 15 January 2017

Photography: Ans Westra: Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013

How history minimises feminist achievements

This is another way feminists get screwed over by history. Women like Barbara Castle and Harriet Harman fought great battles to enact legislation which now seems like common sense. So they get little credit. The mainstream tradition of the party, which once regarded their views as madly fringe, instead rewrites them as pushing on an open door. Men get to be radicals. Women are battleaxes and harridans when they are pushing for change, then irrelevant old biddies, or soft-focus saints, once they've achieved it. In terms of achieving her political agenda, Harriet Harman has had incredible success. And yet the current fashion in Labour is to deride her as an irrelevant 'Blairite', while praising the backbench career of Jeremy Corbyn, which has no significant legislation to show for it.

[London labour organiser] Jayaben Desai nearly suffered a similar neglect. 'I'm sure there are tons of really active Asian women in the trade union movement, but we don't really hear about them,' says [Ayesha] Hazarika. 'I thought, if it would be unusual now for a strong woman of colour to be involved in these type of disputes, I couldn't even believe that a woman back all those years was involved, particularly at a time when Enoch Powell had quite recently mobilised the trade union movement to march.'

Hazarika believes that George Ward, the Grunwick owner, employed South Asian women because he believed they would be submissive, with a strong work ethic, and would 'give him no trouble at all'. Desai's protest, then, smashed expectations of both her ethnic background and her gender.

- Helen Lewis, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, London, 2020, p.151

Man Ray the photographic liberator

On the occasion of Man Ray's retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1966, the German Dadaist Hans Richter contributed a catalogue essay in which he succinctly captured the creative vision of his friend of forty years: There is no eggshell, no thermometer or metronome, no brick, bread or broom that Man Ray cannot and does not change into something else. It is as if he discovers the soul of each conventional object by liberating it from its practical function. Further elaborating on the artist's practice, he noted that Man Ray 'just cannot help to discover and reveal things because his whole person is involved in a process of continuous probing, of a natural distrust in things being "just so"".

Over the course of a half-century creative career spanning two continents and two world wars, Man Ray's process of continuous probing was nowhere acutely manifested than in his idiosyncratic photographic practice. Playfully experimenting with dramatic use of light, shadow, perspective and framing as well as inventive techniques such as positive / negative reversal, double exposure and solarization, Man Ray pioneered conceptual approach to the medium that liberated it from steadfast orthodoxies by which it had been bound since its inception. His rejection of the conventional belief in photography as a transparent reflection of reality and his radical approach to image making generated new appreciation for the medium's potential as an art form and a vehicle for accessing what Walter Benjamin termed the 'optical unconscious'. In the words of Man Ray, photography 'is a marvelous explorer of those aspects that our retina never records'.

- Wendy Grossman, 'Liberating photography', in Nathalie Herschdorfer, Man Ray: Liberating Photography, London, 2024, p.10 

The world's first photographic portrait studio

How rapidly a combination of inventiveness and business sense can lead to success can be seen in the collaboration of [Alexander] Wolcott and [John] Johnson, partners in a New York manufactory which produced and distributed optical instruments and other equipment involving precision engineering. After their initial successes in early October 1839, the two continued to work on improving their mirror camera. This not only had the advantage of repгoducing the view the right way round but also avoided the loss of light which occurred with the usual lenses. In addition, the concave mirror focused the light, so that far more light reached the plate. With the exposure time thus reduced, the making of portraits became a practical proposition, although the construction of the camera permitted only a small format of, at most, five square centimeters.

Early in March 1840 Wolcott, with Johnson as a partner, opened a portrait studio in New York, the first anywhere in the world. On March 15 they moved to other premises and installed a lighting system by which two mirrors reflected light from outside onto the subject. On May 8 Wolcott patented the camera, which was to have a major influence on the early spread of the daguerreotype in the United States and Britain. The idea of using a mirror instead of a lens, which tended to swallow up light had. in fact, first been put forward in Scotland in April 1839, but had not been followed up. The deficiencies of Daguerre's process were thus being addressed very early on, indicating a desire to make it suitable for use by a larger number of people as quickly as possible.

It frequently happened that identical or similar ideas cropped up in towns that were far apart, and were developed further without the inventors knowing of each other's work. This simultaneity shows that the invention of the daguerreotype was in line with the current state of scientific thinking and that its further development was determined by the requirements of its potential users whether behind or in front of the camera. Almost all the significant inventions relating to the daguerreotype between 1839 and 1841 were arrived at independently by several different people. Which one of them first became publicly known was often a matter of pure chance.

- Timm Starl, 'A New World of Pictures: The use and spread of the daguerreotype process', in Michel Friztot, A New History of Photography. Cologne, 1998, p.39

See also:

Blog: A suitable hobby for ladies, 11 March 2025

Blog: Ans Westra Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013

Blog: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, 20 January 2013

Three reasons the Great Depression lasted so long

A large part of what made the Great Depression so painful was that it was not only deep but also long. There were many reasons for this. Let me pick out three:

A first reason it stretched on for so long was workers' unwillingness to take risks. With so much instability, most were content to settle for what manner of living they could find that was most secure. The experience of long and high unemployment casts a large and deep shadow on the labor market. Risky but profitable enterprises had a difficult time attracting the workers they needed, and so investment remained depressed.

A second reason it was long was the memory of the gold standard and the belief that economies needed to get back to it. This belief dissuaded governments in the 1930s from taking many of the steps to boost production and employment that they otherwise might have pursued: the gold standard was dead by 1931, but its ghost continued to haunt the world economy. Few of these much-needed measures were undertaken. The only one that governments did take up was currency depreciation: stimulating net exports by switching demand to domestic-made goods and away from foreign-made goods. Commentators disparaged currency depreciation as "beggar-thy-neighbor." It was. But it was the only thing generally undertaken that was effective.

A third reason was that the lack of a hegemon to guide coordinated action in international monetary affairs not only pre vented anticipatory reforms but also blocked coordinated global policy responses. The major monetary powers of the world passed up their chances to do anything constructive together. Recovery, where it came, was national only, not global.

In general, the sooner countries went off the gold standard, and the less constrained they were thereafter by the orthodoxy of gold-standard habits, the better they fared. Thus, the Scandinavian countries that bailed first from the gold standard did best. Japan was second. Britain also abandoned the gold standard, in 1931, but Japan embraced expansionary policies more thoroughly. The United States and Germany abandoned the gold standard in 1933, but Hitler had a clearer view that success required putting people to work than FDR did with the try-everything-expediency of his New Deal.

- J Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, New York, 2022, p.219-220.

How the telegraph knitted the world together

The electric telegraph allowed a conversation. It connected points on the globe as messages sped through copper at nearly the speed of light.

Not everyone was welcoming. Henry David Thoreau [...] groused: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

While Texas may not have had much important to learn from Maine, in the summer of 1860 Texas had a great deal to learn from Chicago: the Republican Party National Convention meeting at the Wigwam nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president. So started a chain of events that would kill twenty-five thousand white adult Texans and maim twenty-five thousand more, and that would free all two hundred thousand enslaved Black Texans within five years. Maine may not have had much to learn from Texas, but telegraphs reporting relative prices of Grand Bank codfish in Boston, Providence, New York, and Philadelphia were of great importance to Maine fishermen slipping their moorings.

Knowing the price of codfish is valuable, the freeing of hundreds of thousands of Americans is profound, and both only hint at the shift that came with telegraphed intelligence. Ever since the development of language, one of humanity's great powers has been that our drive to talk and gossip truly turns us into an anthology intelligence. What one of us in the group knows, if it is useful, pretty quickly everyone in the group knows, and often those well beyond the group, too. The telegraph enlarged the relevant group from the village or township or guild to, potentially, the entire world.

- J Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, New York, 2022, p.52-3.

Japan meets the West

While Japanese experimented with bustles, bonnets, and beef, on the other side of the world, Westerners were discovering a new and enchanting culture. In 1858, after Japan opened to trade with the West, Japanese goods suddenly became widely available. Poverty-stricken samurai sold their heirlooms, often at reduced prices, and swords, helmets, armor, kimonos, and exquisite porcelain found their way into the curio shops of the West.

Everyone was intrigued and charmed by the delicacy, precision, and beauty of Japanese art and artifacts. Trendsetting women wore kimonos, fashionable people collected woodblock prints, and filled their homes with screens, fans, lacquerware, blue-and-white porcelain, vases, curved swords, netsuke, and artifacts inspired by Japanese art. Audiences flocked to see Japan-inspired plays and operas, from The Geisha with Marie Tempest to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and David Belasco's play Madame Butterfly, which opened in March 1900 and inspired Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Japonisme, as the craze was dubbed, swept the West, inspiring artists, architects, and interior designers and spawning Art Nouveau. In 1856, the artist Félix Bracquemond discovered a collection of manga engravings by Hokusai in Paris (manga simply means "whimsical drawing," the same term used for manga comics today) and soon a generation of Western artists were collecting, being inspired by, and sometimes copying Japanese woodblock prints. In 1876, Monet painted his wife Camille in an extraordinary Japanese kimono. Van Gogh had six hundred woodblock prints and wrote that he yearned to visit Japan or at least learn to see with Japanese eyes.

- Lesley Downer, The Shortest History of Japan, New York, 2024, P.163-4

See also:

Japan: Affordable Tokyo studio living, 15 January 2021

Japan: Hutt Japan festival, 19 November 2017

Japan: Ueno Park Tokyo, 14 January 2009

Hobson's many challenges

[New Zealand's first Governor, Captain William] Hobson was experienced neither as a politician nor a diplomat when he arrived in New Zealand in January 1840 to take up his appointment as Lieutenant Governor. A successful but unremarkable naval career had done little to prepare him for this posting and in retrospect, the Colonial Office's selection of Hobson as New Zealand's first Governor was ill-advised, and perhaps even careless.

Had New Zealand been a colony with a negligible European settlement, Hobson may well have been equal to the task, but by 1840 the country had already witnessed two decades of increasing European intervention, with the accompanying emergence of factionalism between the various interest groups that had by then established themselves. Hobson's arrival stirred the ambitions of the missionaries, obstructed the designs of the land speculators, and unsettled the expectations of many of the British immigrants. Moreover, the whole colony was couched in intrigue, which Hobson initially approached as a naive outsider.

To complicate matters even further, Hobson had to contend with the instructions from his political masters in London. The policy he was expected to follow was sometimes vague and frequently impractical in its implementation. The delay of several months for communications between New Zealand and London often left the Governor marooned in an island of opposition and hostility.

- Paul Moon, Hobson: Governor of New Zealand 1840-1842, Auckland, 1998, p.306

See also:

History: Precolonial maritime NZ, 22 February 2025

History: In memory of Captain Williams, 22 September 2019

History: Pre-1840 European visitors to Wellington, 21 February 2016

Photography: a suitable hobby for ladies

In 1924 the Eastman Kodak Company published a small book, At Home with the Kodak, that implored women to record their families and homes in order to 'tell the truth' of change over time (growth of children, ageing of elders) and create 'the most fascinating of all stories the story of us

The notion that making photographs was an acceptable activity for women was not new. In England, women such as Lady Caroline Margaret Kerrison had become full members of the Royal Photographic Society of London in its first year, 1853. From the late 1890s, articles appeared in newspapers detailing the female members of various royal families who enjoyed 'snapping' and collecting photographs, especially of their travel experiences. By 1898, Princess Beatrice, a daughter of Queen Victoria, was said to have 600 photographs on display in her residence and thousands more 'safely stored away'. Queen Victoria had a darkroom made for Beatrice at the royal residence on the Isle of Wight.

Young New Zealand women were just as enthusiastic about the hobby. In 1913 Jack Callan gave his bride, Margaret Mowat, a Kodak camera at their wedding in Dunedin and she took the camera on their honeymoon. A young Dunedin woman, Miss Bunbury, a fashion buyer for the department store Arthur Barnett Ltd, received an Autographic Kodak camera in 1922 as a going-away gift for her trip to Britain, Paris and the United States, so she could document fashion garments for her employer. Of all the 'beautiful and valuable gifts' given to Elsie Gleave of Gisborne for her 'coming of age' party in 1926, only the 'excellent camera' was singled out for mention in the local newspaper. 

The first and second prize winners in the Ladies' Mirror magazine's inaugural snapshot competition in 1923, Miss Ethelwyn Arthur of Auckland and Miss M King of Otago, submitted photographs that won them the latest Kodak cameras - a No.1A Folding Autographic and a Vest Pocket. For Christmas 1928 the Vanity Kodak camera was marketed nationwide in newspapers as the perfect Christmas gift for women. The camera, 'in delightful colours - distinguished, dainty, chic, intensely feminin[e]', was a version of the Vest Pocket Folding camera (but at more than three times the price) and came in a lined case that included a mirror, a combination powder and rouge compact, and a lipstick.

- Lissa Mitchell, Through Shaded Glass: Women & Photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860-1960, Wellington, 2023, p.239.

See also:
Photography: Cindy Sherman: chameleon, comedian, 15 January 2017 

Photography: Ans Westra: Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013

Photography: Three photography exhibitions, 22 April 2011

The measure of Pope John Paul II

[Pope John Paul II] was a hard man to measure. Sternly authoritarian he nevertheless abandoned the use of the Royal plural in his encyclicals and allocutions: he was the first pope to write not as 'we' but in his own persona, as Karol Wojtyla. He was also a passionate believer in religious liberty, and at Vatican II played a key role in the transformation of Catholic teaching in that area. Often seen as dismissive of other faiths, he had an intense interest in Judaism, born out of a lifelong friendship with a Jewish boy from Krakow: he was the first Pope to visit the Roman Synagogue, and in 1993 he established formal diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. His openness to other religions extended to the non-Abrahamic traditions. In October 1986 at Assisi he initiated acts of worship involving not only Muslims, but Hindus, the Dali Lama and assorted Shamans. When praying by the Ganges at the scene of Gandhi's cremation he became so absorbed that his entourage lost patience and literally shook him back into his schedule. The uncompromising defender of profoundly unpopular teaching on matters such as birth-control, he was nevertheless the most populist pope in history, an unstoppable tarmac-kisser, hand-shaker, granny-blesser, baby-embracer. Convinced of his own immediate authority over and responsibility for every Catholic in the world, he went to the people, showing himself, asserting his authority, coaxing, scolding, joking, weeping, and trailing exhausted local hierarchies in his wake [...]

John Paul II's pontificate, the longest since Pius IX and the second longest in history, will also be judged one of the most momentous, in which a pope not only once more reasserted papal control of the Church, and thereby sought to call a halt to the decentralising initiated as a result of the Second Vatican Council, but in which the Pope, long since a marginal figure in the world of realpolitik, once more played a major role in world history, and the downfall of Soviet Communism. John Paul's own contradictions defied easy categorisations. Passionately committed to the freedom and integrity of the human person, he was the twentieth century's most effective ambassador for such freedoms, setting his own country on a path to liberation and thereby helping trigger the collapse of the Soviet empire. Two of his major encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, celebrate the ability of the free human mind to grasp fundamental truth and to discern the will of God which is also the fulfilment of human nature. Yet under his rule, the last quarter of the twentieth century saw a revived authoritarianism in the Catholic Church, in which, in the judgement of many, theological exploration was needlessly outlawed or prematurely constrained. Passionately committed to reconciliation with the Orthodox, his pontificate saw an expansion of Catholicism within the former Soviet Union which outraged Orthodox leaders and hardened the ancient suspicions he so painfully and sincerely laboured to dispel. This Polish pope did more than any single individual in the whole history of Christianity to reconcile Jews and Christians and to remove the ancient stain of anti-Semitism from the Christian imagination: his visits to the Roman synagogue and above all to the Holy Land in 2000, and his repeated expressions of penitence for Christian anti-Semitism, were imaginative gestures whose full implications and consequences have yet to appear. Yet he canonised Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who voluntarily took the place of a married man in a Nazi concentration camp death cell, but who had edited an anti-Semitic paper between the Wars. Wojtyla also canonized Edith Stein, the Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun and died because she was a Jew in Auschwitz in 1942. The Pope saw Stein as a reconciling figure. Jews saw her as an emblem of proselytisation and, as in the case of Kolbe, an attempt to annex the Shoah for Catholicism. Wojtyla was not deflected from his purpose, and despite protests both canonizations went ahead.

- Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale, 2006, pp.377 & 382-3.