This image ...and many others like it....was taken by Fernand Cuville using the Autochrome Lumière process invented by the Lumiere Brothers in 1903 that allowed colour photography to be born.

It shows the crater caused in the aftermath of an explosion of 19 mines placed underneath German positions near Messines in West Flanders by the British on June 7, 1917.

The mines contained around 455 tonnes of explosive and was estimated to have killed or injured around 10,000 German soldiers.

It is though to be the largest planned explosion in history until the 1940's when the atomic tests took place, and could be heard as far away as London and Dublin.

In fact it could have been more destructive..... as only 19 of the planned 21 mines detonated!!!

..and the photo...or one of them showing the "poetry of physics"...that inspired Dali and Halsman to make Atomicus.....



"Milk Drop Coronet" taken by Harold Edgerton in 1936.

This photograph captures the splash of a  milk drop as it strikes a thin layer of milk.

Edgerton saw himself as a scientist first and foremost rather than an artist.... many of the advances and applications he discovered around the stroboscope had far more profound consequences than the making of art......aerial photography in the war and the documentation of atomic tests to name but two.

His interest was in electrical engineering and it was that which saw him apply the use of strobe light equipment to photography.

His success allowed photographs to be taken with equipment that could flash up to 100 times a second and enabled him to become a pioneer in capturing the detail of fast events.........

Eventually his inventions and discoveries enabled him to reduce photographic exposure times to less than a millionth of a second.....

(and although the technologies and processes are quite different compare this to the 10 minutes needed in Daguerre's photo in 1838 at the top of the page!!!)....

......thus enabling faster and faster events to be captured in greater and greater detail.

Thanks to Edgerton...the beauty of everyday occurrences previously unseen by the naked eye could be captured for all to see!!!!!

Love those pics renge, as only a human could.

Can't beat any of these recent pics posted, so 4 skins (!) jumping the ticket barrier:

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...from the analytical mind and technical wizardry of Harold Edgerton....

..to photojournalism at its most raw, powerful and controversial........



"Vulture Stalking a Child" Ayod, Sudan. 11 March 1993 taken by Kevin Carter.

One of the most emotive...visceral and controversial images ever published.

Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist and member of what came to be known as the "Bang Bang Club"......which consisted of three others.....the name being coined in a reference to the slang used by residents in the townships to describe violence.

Carter was no stranger to this violence.......he was the first to photograph an execution by "necklacing" in South Africa in the mid 1980's...which is another story in itself.

On 11 March 1993 Carter and another photographer hitched a lift on a UN flight to the village of Ayod in Southern Sudan....misery was all around them....

Carter didn't have to look far to find the distressing sight of an emaciated child trying to reach safety and was about to take some shots when the vulture landed......

...he subsequently said that he watched the child for around 20 minutes because he was waiting for the vulture to "spread its wings"....presumably to increase the menace and therefore the impact of the image...(as if it wasn't menacing enough!!!)

...this didn't happen and so, after 20 minutes he took the shot and chased the vulture away.

The image was purchased and published by the New York Times on 26 March 1993 and then syndicated around the world.

Such was the impact of the image the paper was inundated with people asking it to confirm the fate of the child....did the child reach safety????....did the child survive...????

The Times issued an editors note simply saying that the child was unharmed by the vulture but her ultimate fate was unknown........

Carter took a large amount of criticism for the photo and many thought he should have helped the child........but given the  fact that all journalists were warned never to touch anyone for fear of spreading disease ...in practical terms there was very little he could have done amidst so much suffering......

....one editorial went thus..  “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene".

So, a haunting image of a lonely emaciated child being stalked by a vulture... in the middle of nowhere in the midst of famine and war....being left to the vagaries of fate....very powerful.....

Except.....the other photographer on the flight....Joao Silva.....shed a little more light on the situation in a subsequent interview......

He stated that the UN flight was part of Operation Lifeline Sudan and was in Ayod to deliver aid....

..as the UN started to distribute corn the men and women of the village came out of their wooden huts to gather it......

....and so as the parents of the children were busy taking food from the plane, they left their children where they were only briefly while they collected the food, and then they returned to them.

Silva states that this was the situation for the child in the photo taken by Carter.

So an image in which at first seems to contain no hope may have contained a little....the child was not as alone and helpless as first seemed.

Carter won the Pulitzer prize for the image in 1994, but he had seen enough......

....on 27 July of the same year he committed suicide.

Part of his suicide note read thus....

“the pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist....I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain......of starving or wounded children, of trigger happy madmen”

So, the image taker didn't survive and the child's fate is unknown......as for the vulture.....

.....in doing what came naturally, it played a part in one of the most iconic and controversial images in history!!!!

never seen that before egner, between the image and subsequent text im welling up here. Incredibly sad moment.

....from the depiction of a tragedy playing out in a moment of time on our planet......

..to our planet itself.....and its (and our) place in the scheme of things......



"Earthrise" taken from Apollo 8 on 24th December 1968 by William Anders.

The first picture of earth from space......well the second actually....!!!!!

Anders was part of the three man crew of Apollo 8.....the others being Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.....who became the first to people to orbit the moon and in doing so help to lay the foundations for the later planned moon landing......

For their first three lunar orbits they were oblivious to what would turn out to be their privileged front row seats to the most beautiful and profound view any human had witnessed......they had their backs to earth!!!!!!

Anders had been taking images of the lunar surface but just before they were to appear from behind the moon for the fourth time......Borman needed to do a "roll" so that Lovell could do a navigational sighting....

As they came out of the roll they bore witness to something no other human had ever seen........Earthrise.

Once the initial wonder subsided they realised they had to take pictures...

....amazingly none of their mission objectives included taking a picture of Earth from lunar orbit!!!!.....

..so Borman grabbed the floating camera and took the photograph.

Anders also wanted to capture the image so he grabbed the camera from Borman....but...he realised it was loaded with black and white film........so with Lovell they loaded a colour roll into the camera......and Anders took the second shot of the Earthrise....

...and of course the far more visually aesthetic colour image that Anders took is the one that was used and that history will remember.

At this time of course film was used and so the images still had to get through re-entry and from the Pacific and back to the NASA photo lab where they were to be developed by Dick Underwood, Chief of NASA Photography........

When the picture of the fragile blue and white sphere...... suspended against the cold dark background of space...... with the grey and barren lunar surface in the foreground..... appeared before Underwood's eyes it took his breath away.....

....as he states

"The processing of that first roll and seeing those Earthrise pictures while the film was still wet was one of the great moments in my life. Seeing the film come out of first wash was like being a witness to a great event in history."

Its been said that Earthrise was the beginning of the environmental movement......perhaps though it simply awakened in many people what they already knew deep down....that the planet we call home is fragile and precious..... and needs to be cherished!!!!

......Lyndon Johnson....Jackie Kennedy....and her pink (almost) Chanel suit.....!!!



John and Jackie Kennedy at Love Field, Dallas taken by Art Rickerby.

An image of JFK and Jackie Kennedy making their way to the presidential motorcade having descended from Air Force One on the morning of 22 November 1963 at around 11:50 am......

Fashionistas couldn't get enough of Jackie Kennedy......and JFK knew the power she could wield with her looks and style.......before they departed for Dallas he had discussed with her what she was going to wear....

"There are going to be all these rich, Republican women at that lunch ... wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets. And you've got to look as marvellous as any of them. Be simple.....show these Texans what good taste really is."

Chanel at the time was the epitome of chic and represented the strong and independent woman.... pink would soften outfit and ensure some femininity to appease the conservative element......so the outfit was chosen......

However....style was all well and good...but patriotism was just as if not more important...

The First Lady needed to be seen to be buying and promoting American fashion.....so in a typical political compromise the fabric was purchased from Chanel in Paris but made and fitted at Chez Ninon.....a New York fashion house........

So ....Jackie Kennedy descends from the plane and strides across the tarmac in her pink ..almost..Chanel suit looking the epitome of style as befits the fashion icon she had become.....accompanying her husband at the beginning of what should have been just another ordinary presidential visit......

Sadly...as we all know.....events in Dealey Plaza would ensure that the day would end up being anything other than ordinary....

...within an hour of this image being taken JFK would be dead....Jackie widowed.....and the United States would need a new president.......



Presidential Inauguration of Lyndon B Johnson 22 November 1963, taken by Cecil Stoughton.

An image of JFK's successor...being inaugurated as the 36th President of the United States....roughly two hours after the death of JFK....flanked by his wife Lady Bird Johnson and Jackie Kennedy.

The presidential entourage has returned to the relative privacy of Air Force One with JFK's body.

Practicalities had to be considered and America could not be left without a president for long.

How Jackie Kennedy came to be at LBJ's side for the oath is contentious.....some say it was the image taker Stoughton (the White House photographer at the time) who suggested it....some that Lyndon Johnson himself wanted it and that the first lady's aides were unhappy at this and deemed it inappropriate......

Whichever way it came about she agreed had to prepare herself and said this...

“I saw myself in the mirror....my whole face was spattered with blood and hair... I wiped it off with Kleenex....then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, to let them see what they’ve done.....If I’d just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture.......I should have kept the blood on.”

Several people also gently suggested to her she should change out of the blood splattered Chanel.....she was adamant that she wouldn't......again when Lady Bird Johnson asked her about changing she replied.......

"Oh, no ... I want them to see what they have done to Jack"

Lady Bird also comments......

"Her hair was falling in her face but she was very composed ... I looked at her. Mrs Kennedy's dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked, it was caked with blood....her husband's blood. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights.... that immaculate woman, exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood."

Either by luck or design the blood down her right side is not visible in the photo.....but the dejection and sense of loss etched on her face is all too apparent.......

The pink...almost..Chanel suit that she and her husband had chosen for what turned out be their last day together was finally discarded by her the following morning......

It now resides somewhere in the National Archives in a temperature controlled environment untouched from the last day it was worn.....waiting for the deed to which it is subject to run its course...which will happen in 2103....

....at which time any Kennedy family descendants can decide whether or not to let one of the most iconic outfits ever worn..... on one of the most dramatic days ever in history.....see the light of day!!!!

....another Kennedy tragedy....



Senator Robert Kennedy lying on the floor of the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel just after Midnight, LA, 5 June 1968. Taken by Bill Eppridge.

A few years earlier Eppridge was on assignment for Life Magazine with Lyndon Johnson when he first spotted Kennedy aboard Air Force One.....he was quietly puffing on a cigar ...and so Eppridge took a few discreet shots.

One of these was published by Life and subsequently Eppridge was assigned to photograph Kennedy on the campaign trail starting in 1966........

as Eppridge recalls....

"I went and I introduced myself to the senator, told him what I wanted to do....... I said I wanna stick right with you, and he looked at me kinda funny and he says, "OK, but no cigars, huh?'"

Eppridge loved his easy going style.....

"He allowed me to photograph moments that were really true moments..... not setups, not photo ops, but just moments that happened, and I loved it."

On the fateful night Kennedy had just finished speaking and left the stage and had planned to walk through the ballroom on his way to another gathering of supporters elsewhere in the hotel....

.....however with printing deadlines fast approaching and the press corps wanting their sound bites...... .. it was decided that Kennedy would forgo the second gathering and instead go through the hotel's kitchen and pantry area straight to a press conference.

Kennedy never made it of course.......in the kitchen area......just after shaking hands with a busboy, Juan Romero...he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan and subsequently died of his wound around 24 hours later.

It is the busboy....Juan Romero ...the last person to shake the senators hand.....who is in the image...cradling Bobby Kennedy's head as he lay....and looking up into the lens of Eppridges camera with an expression on his face that words do not really do justice to.....

All this time of course Eppridge had been sticking as close as he could to Kennedy...as he had been doing in the months previous....this is what he says....

"I got through the curtain into the kitchen and I first heard two shots, and I turned to my left and there was the senator lying there. And at that point my profession changed. I became a historian"

Kennedy's wife asked photographers to leave the room......but Eppridge remained..... backing up into the crowd.....

"Every once in a while, I would reach around and click the shutter on the camera that was hanging around my neck,I never put it up to my eye. I shot from the hip and came up with one quite acceptable picture.

"Acceptable picture" is an understatement of course........the shaft of light hitting Bobby Kennedy's face and outstretched hand imbues the image with a "devine" quality in my opinion........the image wouldn't look out of place next to one of the "old master" paintings.....

But...of course..it is not a painting.....its an image of an all too real event.. the aftermath of an assassination ...a murder... and a man who would eventually die not long after........powerful stuff.....

Eppridge justifies it thus......

"I know it was the right thing to do, I think that kind of a situation has got to be documented, it has to be told, and it has to be told to people who do not understand the horrors that we can face."

An iconic picture of another sad and momentous day in the history of the Kennedys and of American politics.

The assassination of JFK was a great loss; Bobby´s was a tragedy. Somebody really had it in for the Kennedys.

Not quite a photo, but interesting nonetheless:

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....more from Eve Arnold....




Horse training for Militia, Inner Mongolia 1979. Eve Arnold.




Retired worker, Soochow 1979. Eve Arnold.

These two images are a couple of my favourites........part of those taken in 1979 in she was finally granted a visa to visit China to compile a project based on daily life.....

In 1951 she was the first woman to join the legendary "Magnum" photo agency...founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and others.

Cartier-Bresson described the agency......

"Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually."

Eve Arnold says of photography.....

"If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument." 

A perfect fit.

As well as projects on McCarthyism, Civil Rights and Malcolm X in the US she also travelled to many locations.......Soviet Union...Afghanistan....Egypt....Dubai...South Africa to pursue reportage stories on the daily lives of people and their struggles as well as issues close to her heart.......always looking to find the essence of the people involved...

She also took great images of politician...musician and actors both at work and at play.....and was equally at home with the celebrity and the unknown.......for her it was simply about getting to the essence of a person...

she says...

“"I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary, I see them simply as people in front of my lens.”

..one of the greatest

...here is just a fraction of her stuff....



George Lincoln Rockwell flanked by members of the American Nazi Party at Black Muslim meeting 1960.




There is no creche - migrant potato picker's children, Montauk, Long Island 1951.




The American drug companies tested Milltown, an early tranquilizer experiment at this asylum, Haiti 1954




Mother and baby's hand, five minutes after birth, Port Jefferson, NY 1952.




Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits, Nevada, USA 1960.




Rocky Marciano and daughter, Massachussetts 1956.




At the beach in Sochi, USSR 1966.




Three widows on the way to their "joint" husbands grave, Kabul, Afghanistan 1969.




Hydrotherapy for political prisoners, psychiatric hospital. Soviet Russia 1966.




Scribe and customer, Kandahar, Afghanistan 1969.




A woman in a market, Kandahar, Afghanistan 1969.




Bar girl, Cuba 1954.




Anti-Vietnam demonstration, London 1968




Female trombonist Lillian Briggs, performing at the Brooklyn Opera House, New York 1955




Peter O'Toole after his performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic. His wife Sian Phillips brings him in triumph to a party 1966




Orson Wells rehearsing a scene for the film A Man For All Seasons, in which he plays Cardinal Wolsey 1966

Brilliant stuff.

Will post some interesting JFK photographs on the 50th Anniversary later

50th Anniversary JFK Photograph 1 of 7

Kennedy delivering an impromptu speech in 1960, West Virginia

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..impressive re-enactment though poppy....

50th Anniversary JFK Photograph 4 of 7

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A rare uncropped photograph of Mrs Kennedy's blood-splattered dress

Different medium, but Storyville is a consistently brilliant documentary thread using archive footage.

I've never seen a bad one.

50th Anniversary JFK Photograph 7 of 7

The following day

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..the "Stars and Stripes".....

...the glorious....and the inglorious......




"Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" taken by Joe Rosenthal.

...the glorious...

On the morning of 19 February 1945 around 30,000 US Marines began an assault on Iwo Jima.....a tiny Pacific Island.....around 5 miles long and 3 miles wide....off the coast of Japan.

Iwo Jima was considered by the US military to be the "gateway" to Japan and was defended by around 22,000 Japanese soldiers who....although in effect defeated from the outset...at least had the advantage of control of the highest point on the island...Mount Suribachi.

On the morning of 23 February......after almost five days of encountering fanatical resistance.... the US Marines were finally at the summit of the strategic Suribachi......

Of course...as the assault on the summit was reaching its climax the top brass wanted to be there to see it and perhaps to revel in the political glow of the achievement.......

...the Secretary of the Navy.....James Forrestal had just landed on the beach in the company of a General as the flag was being raised and uttered.....

"....the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years."

He then went too far however and decided that he would like said flag as a souvenir.

As word of this reached a Battalion Commander ..Chandler Johnson...he was enraged...for him the flag belonged to those who had done the fighting and so he instructed a group to take down the original flag......secure it for the battalion..... and replace it with another flag with the words...

"And make it a bigger one!"

While all this was happening Joe Rosenthal was making his way to the island on a landing craft...as he had done in previous days to record the battle...and heard that a flag was about to be raised on Suribachi....

Alas for him....when he arrived at the summit the flag was already in place...or so he thought.

As he was preparing to photograph the first...smaller flag...the men Chandler Johnson despatched took down the original and replaced it with the larger flag as instructed......

..it is this.. the second raising of the flag over Iwo Jima by six marines that became one of the most iconic and reproduced images in history and won Rosenthal the Pulitzer prize.

At the time the American public associated the image with a great victory and a surge of patriotism.......from the time the image was taken however the fighting continued on Iwo Jima for a further month.......

...... three of those marines raising the flag in the image would go on to be killed in the days ahead...and by the time Iwo Jima was finished around 20,000 of the Japanese had died and their were around 26,000 US casualties out of around 60,000 men who took part.

The three surviving flag raisers became celebrities once identified... and they.....along with around 3.5 million poster reproductions of the image.....became the centrepiece of a countrywide tour for the "Seventh Loan War Drive" to raise funds for the war effort.

The image was also reproduced as a statue for the United States US Marine Crops Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

So...replacing a small flag with a larger flag allowed Joe Rosenthal to capture a moment in history that had cost the lives of thousands.....

"I took the picture, the Marines took Iwo Jima." he said...

..and we are left with a glorious patriotic image of the raising of the Stars and Stripes over Iwo Jima...if you are American at least...

.....for the Japanese of course the sentiments were quite different.......it was the first time a foreign flag....large or small.... had been raised over any part of their territories in 2000 years!!

.....back to the First World War......

.....and more colour images from Fernand Cuville using the Autochrome Lumiere process......

.....(as in his "Messines Crater" image posted on 14 November)





A little girl is playing with her doll. Two guns and a knapsack are next to her on the ground.

Western Front, Reims, Marne, France 1917.





German army slogan on the wall of a damaged brick building which reads "May God punish England! 1914/15".

Western Front, Bucy-le-Long, Aisne, France 1917.




Five French soldiers are clearing the rubble in the ruins of Reims, which was destroyed by almost 60 per cent by German artillery and air raids, 1917.





Two senior citizens of Reims, an old woman and Mr Reiser, are standing in front of a gate with many bullet holes.

Western Front, Reims, Marne, France 1917.




An Algerian guard on a bridge.

Western Front. Pommiers, Aisne, France 1917.





Two French soldiers and horses in the cloister of the abbey de Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, which was heavily damaged by artillery fire.

Western Front. Soissons, Aisne, France 1917.




Three French soldiers are cooking lunch on an open fire outside.

Western Front. Soissons, Aisne, France 1917.





French military doctors and nurses in front of Saint-Paul Hospital.

Soissons, Aisne, France 1917.




Two French soldiers from Africa are heating up a meal on an open air fireplace made from brick.

Western Front. Soissons, Aisne, France 1917.





Two French soldiers and a boy in front of the liquor store Felix Potin at the market.

Western Front. Reims, Marne, France 1917.





Senegalese workers with a rail bike are posing on the Western Front during winter.

Ham, Somme, France 1917.





French officers of the 370th Infantry Regiment are posing in the ruins after the attack of German troops at the Chemin des Dames near Reims in
1917.




Graves of the French soldiers killed at Laffaux May 14, 1917.

Western Front. Soissons, Aisne, France 1917


While he was serving in the French Army  photographer Fernand Cuville and his compatriot Paul Castelnau set about recording the events around them...not just the military aspect but the struggles and nuances of everyday life...... under the most difficult of circumstances.......

With the advent of the Autochrome Lumiere ... invented and patented by the Lumiere Brothers in the first decade of the 1900's....not only could they record daily life in great detail but ...for the first time...in colour....

These images..."Autochromes" as they would be known...taken by the autochromists Cuville and Castelneau would go on to form a tiny fraction of those that would be commissioned and collated by Albert Kahn.

Albert Kahn was a French banker and philanthropist who....in 1909....started a vastly ambitious photographic project called "Les Archives de la Planète"...
...."The Archives of the Planet"

The project aimed to do as the title suggests......to photograph and document the entire planet....and Kahn commissioned Autochromists to travel to every continent on the planet...to more than 50 countries...to document the societies and daily lives of those living in them.

As luck would have it...Kahn's photographers started documenting French life in 1914 just days before the start of the First World War and were able to document not just military life but the struggles of the civilian population as well.

Altough Kahn's ambitious project was curtailed by the great financial crash in 1929...it bankrupted him....between 1909 and 1931 72,000 autochrome images had been collected and collated from all around the world......

...and today they provide a fascinating glimpse into the fast changing daily lives of peoples around the world in the early decades of the 20th century.

One last image from Fernand Cuville........




A French anti-aircraft section of machine gunners has taken position in the ruins during the battle of the Aisne.

Bucy-le-Long, Aisne, France, 1917