The Passion of Former Days: cities

Showing posts with label cities. Show all posts

12 October, 2014

Edinburgh in Calotype

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson were a pair of Scottish photographers working in the 1840s. They are best known for their wonderful portraits, but over the course of their sadly short partnership (Adamson died only five years in, aged 27) they also created quite a few city views. This blog has previously featured a selection of their photographs of St. Andrews, Adamson's hometown; today is Edinburgh, the city in which they worked. At a time when most photographers worked with daguerreotypes, Hill and Adamson used the negative-positive process, creating negatives on paper (calotypes) which could then be printed on salted paper. The Special Collections at the University of Glasgow holds large numbers of their original negatives, and their online collection provides digitally reversed positive images.

The photographs are wonderful not only as some of the earliest views of a beautiful city, but for the aesthetic of the early paper negative. Even with skill level like Hill and Adamson's, the process was still highly unpredictable. The photographs are imperfect--which, I feel, is ultimately a testament to the incredible fact of their existence.

University of Glasgow Special Collections

View of the Mound, 1843. Inverted negative--the writing in the sky is a watermark in the paper, made visible by the process of negative scanning. Source

University of Glasgow Special Collections

A view of the Old Town. Source

University of Glasgow Special Collections

Edinburgh Castle and the Grassmarket. Source

Paris by Photochrom

I am extraordinarily lucky-- not only am I off to Paris today, I am off to Paris on a trip with a curator and photohistorian to go behind the scenes at a heap of museums and other institutions to view photographic treasures. I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming.

In case I'm not, to celebrate here is a selection of photochrom views of Paris from the late 19th century!

Library of Congress

Hôtel de Ville (Paris City Hall). Source

Library of Congress

A view over the city and the Seine. Source

Library of Congress

The Champs-Elysses. Source

Venice in the Rain

A beautiful set of photographs from LIFE photographer Dmitri Kessel (who also shot these similarily beautiful and atmospheric photos of a snowy Paris) depicting Venice on a rainy December day, 1952.

Dmitri Kessel, LIFE © Time Inc.

Gondolas moored on the Grand Canal. Source

Dmitri Kessel, LIFE © Time Inc.

The Basilica and Doge's Palace on the Piazza San Marco. Source

Dmitri Kessel, LIFE © Time Inc.

People in the Piazza San Marco. Source

Colour Photographs of Paris, 1939

Just in time for Bastille Day, fantastic colour photographs of Paris taken in July 1939, not even two months before the outbreak of World War Two. By William Vandivert, for LIFE.

You'll notice the colours have survived better in some than others... without seeing what the actual objects are it's impossible to know, but I suspect some were taken on Kodachrome film (the ones with better colour--Kodachrome lasts better than any other colour film) and the others on a different film (though still a Kodak one-- in just one of the images, you can see text on the right labelling it as Kodak!).

William Vandivert, LIFE © Time Inc.

Advertising posters on the Rue de Courcelles. Source

William Vandivert, LIFE © Time Inc.

Rooftops of the city. Source

William Vandivert, LIFE © Time Inc.

A street in Montmarte. Source

The Colours of Nighttime New York

The bright lights of New York City, as seen by LIFE photographer Andreas Feininger. Though they didn't come with a date, the movie marquees in some of the shots reveal it's 1945. I haven't determined if any of these ran in LIFE, but Feininger is known for the photographs of New York he took for the magazine (many of these, for instance).

Andreas Feininger, LIFE © Time Inc.

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Andreas Feininger, LIFE © Time Inc.

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Andreas Feininger, LIFE © Time Inc.

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Berlin, 1950

People living their lives in postwar Berlin. By Nina Leen.

None of these photographs come with additional captions, unfortunately. From the LIFE archives.

[note: I just (November 22 2012) discovered the online LIFE archives did something that changed and broke all the linked URLs; I will fix this at some point, but the original sources can be found by going through this set of related images in the archives ]

Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc.

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Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc.

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Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc.

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San Francisco Earthquake

Today, in 1906, a massive earthquake devastated San Francisco. These photographs are a vivid view of the incredible and frightening destruction.

From the collections of the Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries.

Van Ness Avenue at Vallejo St. Source

O'Farrell St. from Stockton. Source

The Corner of 7th and Natoma. Source

Regards to Broadway

Out and about on Broadway, NYC, 1944. Photographs by Peter Stackpole.

Source

A billboard that blows smoke rings. Source

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25 February, 2012

The Streets of Sydney, 1888

Another series of candid snapshots of people out and about... this time in the 19th century [c. 1885-1890, actually; I averaged], and Sydney, Australia! The State Library of New South Wales, from which these are drawn, states these are probably taken with a hidden camera-- even better, eh?