Überkamera

As contemporary photographers vie to create the largest digital image (the Dubai skyline and now Budapest), Jim Schaefer reminds us of the drama that played out in 1900 in his hometown of Alton, Illinois. The Chicago & Alton Railway had just built a special 8-car train to offer daytime service between Alton and St. Louis. Believing it to be the most handsome train in the world, director Mr. Charlton asked company photographer Mr. Lawrence about making an 8' photograph of it in its entirety. Lawrence explained that the photo would have to be made in sections and joined together during the printing process. Charlton was dissatisfied with this turn-of-the-century "stitching" technology, which would be neither seemless nor faithful to perspective. Instead, he gave the photographer carte blanche to develop the largest camera in the world to capture without flaws the faultless train. In 2 1/2 months, manufacturer J.A. Anderson of Chicago produced a mammoth camera (1st image) with the following specifications:

Size of glass negative: 8' x 4 1/2'
Length with bellows extended: 20'
Length with bellows folded: 3'
Weight: 1,400 lbs.
Number of operators: 15
Exposure time: 2 1/2 min.

On the day the train was photographed, the camera was hauled 6 miles to the middle of a field by horse-drawn van. Exposures were made using a telescopic, rectilinear lens with 10' of focus. Three prints were submitted to the Paris Exposition of 1900 and provoked such amazement that the photo (2nd image - be sure to click on it to enlarge it) was believed to be fake. Once it was authenticated, they awarded George Raymond Lawrence with the ‘Grand Prize of the World for Photographic Excellence.’

Schaefer, who teaches a course called "Looking at Photography" at Georgetown University, sees in both the past and the present a fascination with using the latest technology to create the biggest picture. But photography is not about superlatives - it's about conveying a vision. He quotes Shakespeare to remind us, "'The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King,' not the sets or the costuming or the size of the proscenium arch."

Dog roundup

Time for a weird news roundup on the theme of dogs, prompted by the fact that all of these events occurred in July 2010 - with the exception of the story that broke in May about a condo in Baltimore DNA-testing the resident dogs to identify who is pooping in the hall.

July 13, Allentown, Pennsylvania - Left in a hot car while his owner ran some errands, Max sounded the horn repeatedly to draw attention to his desperate situation.

July 14, Wellington, New Zealand - A hunting dog shot his owner in the butt by stepping on the trigger of a rifle.

July 19, Frederick, Maryland - A yellow labrador named Delta died in a car in a Costco parking lot while the owner was shopping for pet supplies. After she found the dog, she went back into the store to return the dog food, bedding, and treats she had purchased, and was subsequently charged with animal cruelty.

July 22, Toronto - A visiting dog attending an Anglican church has caused an uproar after it received Holy Communion.

July 23, Frankfort, Kentucky - A purebred pet named Copper escaped from her backyard and was picked up and brought to the Humane Society, but has been released into the wild because the shelter mistook her for a coyote.

July 24, Auckland - The life of a rottweiler participating in a pet store promotion will be spared after causing damage to an employee's face that required plastic surgery.

July 24, San Jose, California - "Outback Abby" is a paraglider, snowboarder, and competitive surfer.

July 27, Minneapolis - A dachshund jumped on the accelerator when a car was in motion, sending it through the front of a liquor store.

July 29, Atlanta - Rufus (pictured, staring at the camera) is relocated from Afghanistan after saving the lives of U.S. soldiers from a suicide bomber.

July 30, Mason City, Iowa - Lastly watch Lacy shuck and eat ears of corn on the family farm.

Royal Mayan burial

In northern Guatemala is a Mesoamerican archaeological site called "El Zotz." The largest temple structure at that site is called "El Diablo" and has dangerously steep sides like the temple at the nearby site of Tikal. Beneath the "El Diablo" pyramid is the 1,600-year-old tomb of a Mayan king that was discovered on May 29th. Last week, archaeologists announced the contents of that tomb:

• The body of the king, laid to rest on a now-collapsed bier in the role of a ritual dancer. He had bell-like ornaments with clappers made of dog teeth placed around his waist and legs, and he had jewels embedded in his teeth. He wore a headdress, and held a sacrificial blade that was covered with red organic residue that may be blood.
• The remains of 6 infants, one of them partially burned, which were probably sacrificed to accompany the king to the afterlife. The children range in age from 1 to 6.
• Painted ceramic bowls filled with human fingers and teeth wrapped in what may have been leaves - possibly a symbolic meal offering. The tomb held many other pieces of blood-red pottery, including a mythical head of unknown meaning (3rd image), a tamale bowl (4th image), and a lid topped with a devil (2nd image). "These items are artistic riches, extraordinarily preserved from a key time in Maya history. From the tomb’s position, time, richness, and repeated constructions atop the tomb, we believe this is very likely the founder of a dynasty," say the scientists. The contents also included jade, wood, and textiles that retain their color.

All of this lay within or adjacent to the burial chamber (1st image), which measures 6' high, 12' long, and 4' wide. Tightly sealed and compared to "Fort Knox," the tomb had a strong odor of decay when it was opened, which lead archaeologist Stephen Houston calls "a complete King Tut moment.” He comments, “I can lie down comfortably in it, although I wouldn’t want to stay there.”

A second look at Wallace's cabinet

Images © Robert Heggestad 2009 – All Rights Reserved

Just 4 days after my post about the specimens collected by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was thrilled to receive an e-mail from the very man who now owns the cabinet! Robert Heggestad explained that he had heard about my blog from a friend in Indonesia and offered to send me more information, which he did. The photos above and the data below are selected from the 800-page PowerPoint containing the results of his research and a 68-page paper in which he connects the specimens to the scientist’s unique travels and research. “As you can imagine,” Heggestad writes, “after spending the past three years learning about his multifaceted life, I have become a great Wallace fan.” He notes that the cabinet is no longer on exhibit, but is still at the American Museum of Natural History cared for by Dr. David Grimaldi, Curator of Diptera, Fossil Insects & Lepidoptera, who will publish a paper on the historical and scientific significance of the collection. “I think this is a fabulous thing…a national treasure, actually,” says Dr. Grimaldi.

The collection contains some 1679 specimens in 26 glass-topped drawers that were originally hermetically sealed. “Of dragon-flies, I have many pretty species…” Wallace wrote in a letter from Singapore in 1854, and indeed the cabinet contains 36 dragon and caddis flies (1^st image). The drawers in which the 398 butterflies and 294 moths were pinned had been built with a compartment along the front filled with camphor crystals, used to prevent damage to insect collections by other small insects. Wallace’s butterfly specimens include a “cracker” butterfly (Papilio amphinome, 2^nd image), native to South America and named for the unusual sound the males produce as part of their territorial displays; a brush-footed butterfly (Papilio clymena, 3^rd image) collected in Brazil and commonly known as an “88” because of the pattern on its wings. The moths include a blue underwing (Catocala fraxini, 4^th image), named for the bright hindwings hidden beneath dull forewings, and 2 species of sphinx moth (Sphingidae jambica, 5^th image, and Sphingidae rustica, 6^th image), known for their quick and sustained flying ability, for which they are often mistaken for hummingbirds. Of the sphinx moth, Wallace wrote, “this moth, shortly after its immergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task which requires such unerring aim.”

Among the 396 shells (7^th image) and stones and 86 pods and botanical specimens (8^th image) is the fruit of a large leguminous tree of Brazil (Hymenaea, 9^th image), the pulpy center of which is edible. But perhaps the most intriguing specimen is the skin of an African sun bird (10^th image), an Old World bird also reminiscent of hummingbirds because of the iridescent coloration of the males.

The collection also includes a British butterfly that is now extinct, fireflies and bedbugs captured by Wallace when he was 11 years old, and glasswing butterflies. The cabinet includes 2 specimens of the death’s-head moth featured in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Wallace gathered insects with “protective resemblances” - beetles that look like dewdrops, and moths that look like leaves, sticks, and bird droppings – and insects that mimic each other. He had many examples of protective coloration. He collected multiples of a single species to show individual variation. Wallace believed “that a superior intelligence, acting nevertheless through natural and universal laws, has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose” - a more theistic view than Darwin, and the equivalent of today’s theory of “intelligent design.”

Mummy family

Three of the mummies in the Mummies of the World exhibit now at the California Science Center are a nuclear family - father, mother, and child. The bodies of Michael Orlovits, his wife Veronica, their son Johannes, and more than 200 0ther mummies were discovered in a long-forgotten church crypt in Vác, Hungary, in 1994. They had been naturally preserved by the cool, dry air of the crypt and the oil from the pine shavings that had lined their coffins. Their identities, ages, familial relationships were revealed in church records, but tests like CT scans, X-rays, radio carbon dating, MRI, mass spectrometry, isotope analysis, and DNA testing reveal additional biological details about their lives:

Michael was born in 1765, making him 245 years old. A miller by trade, he was laid out in his Sunday best - and it was not until his body was shifted for the CT scan that it was discovered that a metal cross had been tucked inside those clothes. Michael had a broken leg that hadn't healed completely at the time of his death, and his wife Veronica, who was born in 1770, was found to be severely tubercular. Their son Johannes had been born in 1800 and was one of their 4 children, all of whom died before the age of 3.

Dr. Heather Gill-Frerking of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum (pictured with the mummies) calls CT scanning and other non-invasive techniques "the gold standard in studying mummies."

Tombstoning

While cliff diving remains a tourist attraction in Acapulco, "tombstoning" has become a fad around the world.

The man in the photograph above jumped from a cliff in Cornwall, England, after checking the depth of the water at different tides and waiting for the right weather conditions. He merely bruised his ribs, but this "adrenalin rush" has killed at least a dozen people in the U.K., including a 16-year-old in Minehead Harbour, Somerset, in 2007 and a 24-year-old at Kit Hill, Cornwall, in 2003. The daredevil jumps have left others paralyzed - and has prompted authorities to repeatedly warn against the dangers.

In a similar composite photo made in 2007, a young man survived a jump off Plymouth Hoe into Dead Man's Cove in Devon. A jump from Wenlock Edge, Shropshire, which was captured on video this month, left a man unscathed. But it is not just the young taking these risks. A 46-year-old father of 6 was killed tombstoning Torbay, Devon, in June 2007. A 75-year-old retired army major had to be airlifted to the hospital after a jump earlier this month from Dorset's Durdle Door, a landmark that has lured other jumpers. A U.K. psychologist explains,"It's not that the teenagers and adults are not aware of the risks involved. They just undervalue them in favour of the thrill of the moment."

Chinese nail houses

Buildings like this dot the growing urban landscape in China. Developers have coined a term for them - nail houses - because they stand out like nails stuck in wood that cannot be pounded down. Although they are not the only examples in Chongqing (see 8th image), the best known hold-outs may be a couple whose house (2nd image) eventually stood on a plateau as a construction company excavated several stories into the ground for a shopping mall. Rather than vacate like the 280 other households, the owners hung a banner that read "Citizens legal private property will not be infringed upon," and took to the courts. A 3-year mediation resulted in compensation that was less than they had hoped for, a similar-sized apartment downtown, and the demolition in 2007 of the house that had been in their family for generations.

The owner of a house in Chaoyang District, Beijing (7th image), did not accept the offer that his 229 neighbors took 8 years ago, and is now in the position of pleading with authorities to compensate him so that he can evacuate from the middle of traffic, which bottlenecks from 8 lanes to 2 at his property. The owner of the last building at a construction site in Hefei, Anhui province (5th image) also wants more adequate compensation.

Buildings with outside walls showing that they were once connected to others (4th and 9th images) now stand alone in a new shopping district in Changsha, Hunan Province. A house owned by a "strong old woman" who runs a sugar cane distribution business out of the kitchen (6th image) sits on a corner in Shanghai surrounded by a high-rise complex. Another (3rd image) still stands solitary on a flattened plot as skyscrapers loom on Beijing's horizon.

Although it sat alone on a razed 63,000 sq. meter plot in central Shanghai, one remarkable house (1st image) escaped demolition by virtue of being historical. It had been built in the 1920s by 2 brothers who kept tigers, snakes, and anteaters in the garden; crocodiles in the pond; and 10 horses in the stable. The building became offices for a middle school, received its historic designation in the 1990s, and was slated in 2009 to be moved 53M on rails so it could remain standing.

Ripley's annual

Containing hundreds of items from the ridiculous (the world’s heaviest turban, 3rd image) to the sublime (the incorruptible body of St. Catherine of Bologna, 4th image), the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! annual is out, with an official publication date of August 10^th and a list price of $28.95. But Enter if You Dare! A Yearbook of the Weird is available for pre-order from Amazon for under $20. Let me tell you why it’s worth its weight. We’ve all heard of the Elephant Man, but I hadn’t known of Anita, the elephant-faced girl. She has a page to herself and her colleagues at Coney Island have received a 2-page tribute. I have long been aware of the worms added to tequila bottles, but had never seen bottles of snake wine (5th image). The book bows to the current fascination with vampires by featuring them in a spread, but benefits from the inclusion of several 19^th c. vampire kits outfitted with holy water and stakes.

As you can tell from my blog, my favorite facts and photos involve the natural world and weird news – preferably with a historical bent. My needs were satisfied, with a 2-page spread featuring the men and women who have gone over Niagara Falls in barrels and a behind-the-scenes look at how the models for the Ripley’s museums are sculpted. I was also happy to meet the piglet squid for the 1^st time and to learn that a man is growing pears in the shape of Buddha. That this book intersects with the interests of Quigley’s Cabinet is demonstrated by the inclusion of the Chinese child with polydactyly, the wedding dress of wool, the stone house, bird-eating spiders, goose barnacles, Mexico’s Island of the Dolls, eating hair, and Khagendra Thapa Magar of Nepal, who succeeds He Pingping as the world’s shortest man. I was also gratified to see a gallery of Mona Lisas – including my personal favorite: the Madonna and Child in toast, from the Ripley collection.

The cover of the book features a lenticular of a man peeking through his fingers, which is what I have to do when perusing the images of contortionists, competitive eaters, and human and animal parasites. The usual fare of people eating bugs and other unmentionables is supplemented by a set of instructions on how to enjoy the Filipino delicacy of balut (duck embryos). Included herein are the old Ripley’s standbys of shrunken heads, strange tattoos, and a menagerie of 2-headed animals (2nd image), many of them from Todd Ray’s freak show in Venice, California. There are new incarnations of sculptures painstakingly crafted from toothpicks and matchsticks, but there is also the peculiar work of Mexican artist Enrique Ramos, who paints crickets. The book features Chinese photographer Liu Bolin, who makes himself disappear, and artist Edgar Mueller, who makes the sidewalk disappear (6th image). And I stepped for the 1^st time into the world of Roger Hiorns, a British artist who covered the interior of an abandoned apartment with blue crystals, transforming it into an urban cave.

But my best discoveries in the book both had to do with publishing, a world I worked in for 16 years. I missed the news that the German publisher Eikhorn made a real buzz (if you’ll excuse the pun) at last year’s international trade show, the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009, by letting loose 200 live flies – each with a tiny banner attached! Another interesting snippet mentioned the publication by Taschen of a special limited edition of Norman Mailer’s book Moonfire – limited because the 12 copies are housed in an aluminum case that mirrors the topography of the lunar surface, include a framed photo autographed by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and contain a genuine piece of moon rock! In comparison to the €75,000 price, the Ripley’s annual is a bargain…