Andrew Jackson by Mathew Brady
The great Mathew Brady studied photography under Samuel Morse, and opened his own photography studio in New York in 1844. Starting next year, he started taking photos of famous Americans, and produced The Gallery of Illustrious Americans in 1850. For Brady, neither his itinerant photoadventures nor the album was lucrative, but it brought increased attention to Brady’s work. The most famous images in the album was an elderly Andrew Jackson, the former president of the United States, whose photo he took at the president’s plantation, the Hermitage in 1845.
He would be the first U.S. president to have his picture taken. At the age of 78, just months before his death, the sickly president sat for Mathew Brady, whom he denounced for making him “look like a monkey.” Jackson was sickly throughout his term too, prompting concerns that he might die prematurely. Despite suffering from chronic headaches, abdominal pains, and a severe hacking cough, caused by a musket ball in his lung from a duel (his coughs would often brought up blood and sometimes even made his whole body shake), he served two full terms, and retired far more popular than he was when he entered. A formidable politician, ‘Old Hickory’ was by then an elder statesman–politicians sought his approval for their bills, an imprimatur that guaranteed widespread support. Cantankerously he supported two successful presidential campaigns, and worked tirelessly on the annexation of Texas, encouraging his friend Sam Houston to endorse annexation.
Sonia Romanoff attacks a paparazzo
As I always maintained, you know an iconicity of a photo by looking at parodies and pastiches it caused. I first saw this with Cameron Diaz reenacting the scene (see below), photographed by James White. The original is, of course, above–actress Sonia Romanoff attacking a paparazzo with ice-cream in Rome’s historic Via Venato in 1966. The paparazzo in question was Rino Barillari, self-styled king of paparazzi, who was one of the original paparazzi whose antics inspired Federico Fellini to make La Dolce Vita.
Sonia Romanoff–an unsuccessful Yugoslavia-born actress–eventually married an 81-year old count to get an Italian citizenship and disappeared into obscurity. The above photo by Giacomo Alexis has been her only milestone.
Joan Crawford Receives Her Oscar
So another Oscar night has come and gone. I watched part of the ceremonies: Neil Patrick Harris rocked the opening; Steven Martin and Alec Baldwin were not as good as they usually were on SNL; best actor/actress tributes were touching; Farrah Fawcett was notably absent from In Memoriam and Tom Hank’s Best Picture announcement was very abrupt. The night lacked any memorable moment, but Katherine Bigelow’s Oscar moment is definitely long overdue one for women in the industry.
Almost all nominees come to the award show now–the biggest night of the showbiz; I saw Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon papers–about whom a documentary film is made this year–in the crowd (Even Steve Jobs is there). It was not always the case: Martin Brando refused his Oscar. In 1971, Vanessa Redgrave refused to attend after being nominated, saying that Americans didn’t like her and that the Nixon administration refused her a visa. Six years later, she did attend the ceremony only to accept the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and denounced Nixon and the “Zionist hoodlums” in her acceptance speech.
George C. Scott dismissed Oscars as a “two hour meat parade”, and refused to attend even when he won Best Actor for Patton. Some absences were tragic: Sidney Howard, winner of the 1940 screenplay award for his Gone with the Wind, was run over by a tractor just before Oscars night. Some were intentional: George Bernard Shaw refused to cross the Atlantic to collect his writing award for Pygmalion. He even quoted: ”It’s an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before – and it’s very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England”. Shaw received his statuette by mail and used it as a door stop.
In view of all these absences, Joan Crawford’s in 1946 was masterly. Nominated as best actress for Mildred Pierce, she didn’t want to face losing so she claimed she was ill with flu. She sent her make-up artist and hair stylist to the ceremony in case she won, which she did. Immediately, the statuette was sent to her hospital, closely followed by photographers. There she posed for the above pictures. They stole the next day’s front pages and upstaged everyone else who won that night.
Patrice Lumumba
Horst Faas joined the A.P. in 1955 at the age of 22 and began his illustrious photojournalism career by covering the Congo crisis in 1960. There, he bribed Congolese soldiers with Polaroid snapshots to gain access to important events. The practice enabled him to be in the right place to take the last picture of Patrice Lumumba (above).
Patrice Lumumba helped win Congo’s independence from Belgium in June 1960, but within ten week, he was deposed by a CIA backed-coup because of his communist leanings, and his fiery and controversial independence day speech which culminated with Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques! (We are no longer your monkeys!)*.
After the coup, he was put under house arrest, while a CIA officer was sent with a tube of poison toothpaste. He escaped his house arrest, but rearrested from a plane in Elizabethville. He was beaten and humiliated in front of diplomats and journalists, and was on the truck that would inevitably carry him to his execution when the above picture was taken.
It was Lumumba’s last photo. A month later, he was executed, and his body dissolved in acid. The colonel who deposed Lumumba, Joseph Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) would rule the country until 1997 and proved to be no less a thorn on the West than Lumumba.
[* Congo's independence ceremony was one of the most awkward episodes in modern diplomatic history. Belgian King Baudouin praised developments under colonialism, and the "genius" of Leopold II and glossed over atrocities committed during the Congo Free State. Patrice Lumumba's rebuttal was vicious: "Slavery was imposed on us by force! We have known ironies and insults. We remember the blows that we had to submit to morning, noon and night because we were Negroes!" The King just sat there, deeply shocked and offended. Although Baudouin wanted to return to Brussels immediately, his ministers persuaded him to stay--a negotiation that delayed the official programme for an hour.]
Automobile Delange
In America, Jacques Henri Lartigue’s claim to fame was that he was replaced from the cover of Life magazine by the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. However, in the wider world, Lartigue was probably the symbol of the transformation of photography into an affordable family pastime. The greatest of the earliest amateurs, he showed how a mundane scene can be transformed into a magnificent image.
He started with photographs of family games and childhood experiences, later moving onto the beginnings of aviation and cars and the women of the Bois de Boulogne. Without even realising it, he became the father of “modern” photography. One of his favourite subjects was the motorcar, which he photographed as early as 1910 in the photo of a two-wheeled bobsleigh taking a turn at 60 km/h.
For someone whose photo career began at the age of six–with his father’s camera–in 1900,the title of his firsbook, a journal he kept throughout his life was especially fitting: Diary of A Century.
Michael Foot
From left to right: the former Prime Minister Lord Home, Liberal leader David Steel, Michael Foot, Chancellor of Exchequer Geoff Howe (back), PM Margaret Thatcher
A trenchant philosopher, giant of belles-lettres, eloquent orator and skillful Machiavelli of backbench politics, Michael Foot seemed well suited for the premiership. A Victorian one that is. In practice, however, his deeply cerebral aloofness and don-like pedantry proved to be his undoing. Michael Foot, as the Opposition Leader, presided over a three-digit electoral defeat in 60 years, which ended his political career as much as the old Labour itself.
Oxford-educated, Byron-quoting old guard of Labour politics, Foot became the Opposition Leader just before his 70th birthday. White-haired, asthmatic and disheveled, he would walk into the Commons leaning on a walking stick, accompanied by his dog. Regardless of weather, he would refuse all offers of official cars or a lift and would limp off to catch a bus back home. But it was one sartorial choice that proved to be undoing of Michael Foot.
On 8th November 1981, Foot attended the Remembrance Day wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph, wearing a so-called “donkey jacket”. Although the Queen Mother was quite amused by the jacket, the media was not. Already mocked in the media for looking like “an out-of-work Irish navvy”, Foot appeared “as if he had just completed his Sunday constitutional on Hampstead Heath,” criticized the Guardian. He earned an enduring nickname, Wurzel Gummidge. Foot always denied that it was a donkey jacket, merely a short overcoat, but the jacket became the main issue of that election season.
In the end, Margaret Thatcher riding high on the heels of Falklands War was handed an easy electoral victory. Michael Foot was promptly shown the door by his party. A man of principle Foot refused to enter the House of Lords, whose abolition he championed. He left politics, never to return, even when his beloved Labour began to embrace Thatcherism he denounced vehemently. Internationally, his stature as an statesman was unparalleled: he spoke out against aristocracy, nuclear weapons, Franco’s Spain, Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Milosevic’s Yugoslavia. In that sense, Michael Foot was a romantic refuge from the 1930s, and the last of his breed. They don’t make politicians like Foot anymore. Mr. Michael Foot was a sound man, and as one who refused to trade his clothes, appearances nor principles for popularity, he remained an outsider through his entire career, and died as one this morning. He was 96.
Fabian Bachrach
Millions of people have seen the above photo, but few, if any, will recall who took the iconic image. Fabian Bachrach, who died last Friday at 92, was best known for his above classic portrait of the-then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which became the official presidential portrait.
In 1959, John Kennedy sat for a Bachrach. When they were developed, none were usable: the images were either out of focus or showed the senator, who endured chronic back pain, standing awkwardly (Kennedy can’t sit still very long either). Although Fabian Bachrach called Kennedy’s office repeatedly for a second session, he was granted an appointment the only next summer. Bachrach flew from Boston to Washington only to find the session cancelled and his subject detained by all-night Senate proceedings. He waited for 8 hours and only just as he was about to be leave, Kennedy appeared.
The senator gave him only ten minutes. Bachrach took six photos; one in black and white became the presidential portrait while another color one showing Kennedy seated in a leather armchair with an American flag behind him was also widely reproduced.
The patriarch of the oldest continuously operating photo studio in the world, Fabian Bachrach inherited an institution which had officially photographed every American president since Abraham Lincoln. A native Bostonian, Bachrach created the portraits from Joseph P Kennedy as early as the 1930s, took wedding pictures for JFK and other Kennedys and would went on to craft the official senate portraits for two other Kennedy brothers. International leaders and celebrities all sat for Fabian Bachrach.
Iran Hostage Crisis
Day 4
On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and began to consolidated power. When President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to visit America for cancer treatment in October 1979, radicals in Iran seized the American embassy on November 4, fearing a repeat of 1953, when the US and the UK deposed a previous Iranian government and put the Shah in his place. Fifty-three people were taken as hostages.
For many, the most famous pictures of the hostage crisis–which lasted 444 days–were taken on its very first day. Many photographers were a demonstration nearby and they rushed onto the scene just in time to take the memorable images of blindfolded communication officer William Belk (topmost) and footage of another blindfolded communication officer Jerry Meile led away by the militants. Seeing how damaging these pictures are to the morale of the American public, the militants would parade the blindfolded and handcuffed hostages for the cameras for the next few days to humiliate Washington.
After much dithering, Jimmy Carter decided to send a rescue operation, which he had to abort when helicopters malfunctioned, and one crashed into a transport plane while taking off. Walter Cronkite would measure its hostage crisis by added a count of days to his famous sign-off. The hostage crisis along with the deepening economic crisis, cost Carter his reelection bid. After the election, Carter tried harder than before to get hostages released, but the Iranians made a point of releasing them just minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. The 444-day crisis was over, but not America’s long national nightmare with Iran.
See this excellent paper on media impact during the hostage crisis: http://www.cloudjammer.com/ojd/downloads/jordan_john_d_200705_ma.pdf
Samuel P. Dinsmoor
Samuel P. Dinsmoor of Lucas, Kansas served with distinction in the Union army during the Civil War. Dejected and deranged when his wife died in 1917, Dinsmoor retreated into building a log cabin out of limestone in his yard. He was neither an architect nor an engineer and at age 64, Dinsmoor was not even healthy. His cabin finished, Dinsmoor set out to create the intertwining concrete sculptures that would even be known as Dinsmoor’s “Garden of Eden.”
Termed as “Second Adam” by the sensationalist press of the time, Dinsmoor would continue to depict his interpretations of the Bible and modern civilization in the sculpture form for the next 25 years. At the age of 81, he married his 20-year old Czechoslovakian housekeeper and fathered two children. But a grim sense of memento mori was slowly catching up with him: he took a double-exposed photograph of himself looking at his “corpse” as a postcard. The photo–hugely popular for some reason–now hangs in his mausoleum, where the remains of Dinsmoor in a concrete Masonic coffin with a glass lid has been since his death in 1932. (Dinsmoor even prepared his death to be a part of the attraction).
The Falklands War
Above, during the Falklands war, HMS Antelope was under attack from Argentinean fighters but the ship fended them off. After the attack, an attempt to remove unexploded bombs from the hull of the ship was blotched and the ship’s magazines exploded and she sank. The above photo taken in this moment of her magazines exploding was one of the most memorable of the original Falklands conflict.
I have written a lot about the Falklands already (here, here). War clouds are gathering over the Falkland Islands again. From the viewpoint of the Civil Service, these are policy actions Mr. Brown can take:
Doing Nothing: Although it is predicted that the Falklands sit over 3.5 billion barrels of oil, the odds of finding oil in the Falklands are slim. The terrain there is similar to the North Sea, but the independent studies put the chances of finding oil there at 17%.
Take it to the polls: The islanders don’t want Argentinean rule. Britain should stage a referendum there and the results will be the same as they were in Gibraltar, which shut the mouths of the Spanish.
Ignore Americans: Barack Obama doesn’t really believe in the special relationship with Britain. It is not important, but what is important that Gordon Brown wants to believe in such a relationship. Instead of wobbling, Mr. Brown should convey to Washington that if the US does not support the British claims in the Falklands, he can also say goodbye to the British troops in Afghanistan.
Diplomacy: Britain needs its EU business partners (Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France) to lobby for its claims internationally. With Russian gas always unpredictable, a simple British pledge to make Europe its primary buyer (if oil is ever found in the Falklands) would immediately unite the 27-member EU behind it. The EU is Argentina’s second-largest trading partner (after Brazil, with which Argentina runs a deficit) and Argentina will easily yield to pressure with its current debt problem.
Gunboat Diplomacy: Britain still has four nuclear submarines sitting idle at the naval base in Clyde. The Ministry of Defense should mobilize at least two of them to the South Atlantic. Assembling an expeditionary force will send a strong signal while simultaneously deterring a war.
Electioneering War: Mr. Brown is a lameduck premier. This Falklands crisis is god-send to him. Tories will unite behind him if he choose a drastic course, and a war can lead to an election victory in still jingoistic Britain. It is imperative that the civil service should convey this information to its representatives in the United Nations. The international community must be convinced not to push the British government so far as to force Mr. Brown to send a naval task force.
Esther Williams Trophy
Esther Williams was a swimmer-turned-movie star of the 1940s, but Esther herself was less important to her story than Sir David Stevenson, Vice Admiral and Chief of Australian Navy. When he was a lieutenant in Royal Australian Navy during the Second World War, Stevenson wrote “To my own Georgie, with all my love and a passionate kiss, Esther” on a photo of Esther Williams, and gave it to his fellow lieutenant, Lindsay George Brand, who had recently been spurned by the girl he loved.
Brand put the photo over his bed; it was stolen to another ship by a fellow officer; and, became a ‘trophy’–an object of constant amusement and rivalry among the officers of some 200 US, British, Australian and Canadian ships serving in the Pacific theatre. The original photo became the “trophy copy” kept in a safe location, while the second “fighting copy” was to be stolen or taken by force. After the “fighting copy” had been successfully removed from the custodial ship, the “trophy copy” would be presented to the new owners with appropriate ceremony. The new holders would fly an Esther flag or sent naval signals (signed ‘Esther’) to other ships to indicate where the trophy is. After the war, Esther herself would be a good sport and send a genuine signed photo to the ship that captured the trophy.
Fourteen years and 4000 nautical miles later, in 1957, “Esther” was retired and sent to the Australian Naval Historical Collection. Now residing behind a frame, the trophy was only brought into circulation again very rarely.
Taft plays Golf
The first American president to openly play golf was William Howard Taft. At that time, golf was considered a game for the rich and many politicians kept their golfing private, including Taft’s predecessor Teddy Roosevelt.
Roosevelt thought Taft brought shame to the office of the president by privately engaging in golf. It was Taft’s proclivity for participating in golfing exhibitions and speeches on golf that especially angered Roosevelt. The last straw was said to be the above photo, where overweight Taft made “a mockery of himself, and a mockery of the presidency”.
The photo was taken as Taft opens the Corpus Christi Country Club in Texas. For years afterwards, the club displayed the presidential golf club, ball, and photo in a glass case.
