Andrew Nicol said, in the dim and distant past:
if anyone in edinburgh has a couple of hours to spare, take a look at "facing the light", an exhibition of david octavius hill and robert adamson's calotypes, at the scottish national portrait gallery. the pictures in the final section alone are worth the entrance fee, which is exactly no pence.
I've been to this exhibition a couple of times now. The first time (before I read this post), I was slightly disappointed. The second, slightly less so. For those of you who aren't interested in photography -- hey, what sort of list is this anyway? -- Hill and Adamson were extremely early photographers, and were certainly the first in Scotland. Mr Hill started in photography so that he could use portrait photographs as studies for paintings; Mr Adamson, much younger, seems to have just been Inspired. Over a couple of years, until Mr Adamson's death, they took several thousand photographs, mostly portraits. If you forget all of the above, they are not good photographers. Not at all. Calotyping -- which uses a negative made of thin paper -- was not ideal for portraiture, purely because of the time for which you had to stand still. On some of the photographs you can see men's arms propped up by sticks, to try and keep the picture sharp. It's only when you remember these limitations -- and that they were making photography up as they went along -- that their good photographs become incredible. Nearly all of their best pictures are the ones that aren't portraits. In the same gallery is a rather nice exhibition by a chap called Stephen Lawson. He takes long, thin pictures made over a time-lapse, from a few seconds to a whole year. Lovely pictures, like a photo taken of a whole day on Berie Beach, which (as scottish people will surely know) is near Cnip, Bhaltos, and is one of the nicest beaches in Scotland. Of course, you have to remember. He wouldn't have done it without Hill and Adamson, whatever I say about the quality of their pictures. You always have to have someone to think of something first. I've thought about taking photos in an Old Style. Sometimes, they have a wonderful effect which can't be equalled by modern film and shutters, never mind about digital thingys. The best I have come to so far was through scanning the picture, though, not through film and paper. I wan to take pictures of water that take several minutes, pictures of breaking waves that turn into an image of a cliff rising through ghostly mist. Anyway. Enough pictures. You can't write about photos for any length of time without needing illustrations. I had a discussion with someone recently, that if you can write about one thing well, then -- with a bit of practise and maybe a few reference books -- you can write about anything at least fairly well. That's still true, but it's hard to discuss a photograph if the other person can't see what you're talking about. Now that gives me an idea. I should write a story about a blind photographer. I want to write lots of stories, and lots of them are about photographers. And, for my next trick, several words selected randomly. See if you can work out what it means: Formalin pickpocket, autoclave put up mind-numbing squirearchy Duenaburg gradation. Schongauer pilotfish disappear give in trellis progesterone. I never realised my dictionary had so many German proper nouns in it. love xx caitlin (who must be having One Of Those Days) -- http://www.joannou.net/topofthestairs/ "When life gives us lemons, we just sit there and sulk about it, in the corner of the room, in a fetal position." - Matthew Henderson, on the Sinister mailing list. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+