Darwin and the Mechanisms of Human Expression

A recent bout of research on photography and duplicity has led me back to Cambridge’s indomitable Darwin Correspondence Project. This editorial project is an extraordinarily valuable resource for Victorianist researchers, but I’m especially impressed by the compelling points of access the site provides into a mass of information that might otherwise seem quite imposing. I [...]

Read Full Post »

Out-of-place technological artifacts and productive unease

Gregory’s last post on Babbage and railroads, illustrated by that arresting Montparnasse train wreck photo, got me thinking about Victorian visual technologies and their ability to register accidents as phenomena. At the same time, Daniel’s analogy between aircraft data recorders (black boxes), on the one hand, and Babbage’s proposal for their 19th-century railroad equivalents, on [...]

Read Full Post »

For Your Weekend Amusement: Museum Links Roundup

In keeping with the levity that Alan introduced in his first post yesterday, I’d like to point you to some fun Victorian-related features at various museum and gallery websites. First, at the Musée McCord’s website, there is a “Victorian Period” online game that tests your knowledge about social customs and dress. I reached a level [...]

Read Full Post »

“Playing with Pictures”: Victorian Photocollage at the Met

A current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showcases a little-known, playful, and funny form of Victorian art. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage features a collection of photocollages created by Victorian women (and a few men), in which they integrated photos of family members and friends with watercolour [...]

Read Full Post »

Horses, Trains, and Francis Blake

My recent research on the history of the telephone has led me to learn more about Francis Blake (1850-1913), an American scientist who experimented with early sound technology and worked with Alexander Graham Bell.  Blake, who was also interested in photographic technology, made significant shutter-speed advances to improve high-speed photography. Like Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules [...]

Read Full Post »

Gothic Optics

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from Lancaster, where the International Gothic Association held its Ninth Biannual Conference: Monstrous Media / Spectral Subjects. I couldn’t have found a major conference so perfectly attuned to my interests, and the papers did not disappoint. The shortest route to explaining to friends just what “Gothic Media” might [...]

Read Full Post »

One Face From a Crowd

Fiona’s last post left me musing about Francis Galton’s composite photography. Galton proposed the process as a simple method, inspired by Herbert Spencer, for achieving a photographic average. In an article, “Composite Portraits, Made by Combining Those of Many Different Persons into a Single Resultant Figure,” Galton describes a method for exposing a photographic plate [...]

Read Full Post »

Back to the Future – now in 3D!

Whilst wandering the streets of Montreal recently, I came across an outdoor photo exhibition displayed along the west side of McGill College, just north of Ste-Catherine. The exhibition, entitled 1 image 2 eyes 3D, has been curated by the McCord Museum, and consists of 12 images of nineteenth-century Quebec.

Read Full Post »