Contemplating this word and its definition started another mind boggling experience down the cyberspace rabbit hole leading me to click upon click and page after page of reading and looking at all sorts of images and image related material including the exploration of my own image making.
Images or objects which are identical in form to another, but with the structure reversed, as in a mirror.
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| Everything Bright - digital image by Kate Eggleston-Wirtz |
I often digitally manipulate my drawings or photographs creating mirrored images. Typically, the original drawings are made on black paper using a white gel pen or sometimes an acrylic paint pen. Then I scan it and work into it digitally. I’ll flip the image horizontally, attach it to the original image then flip it again vertically. Lastly, colour is added. Here is an example:
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| Parrots - digital image by Kate Eggleston-Wirtz |
After trawling through my own artwork and making a new mirrored image created from a recent drawing (see above) I began thinking about mirroring the word ‘image’ and other related words which
proved interesting. I had a bit of a play.
In further delving I came across mirror writing. Leonardo DaVinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) produced backwards mirror writing. One theory of why he did this was that this method would keep his hands clean. He was a left-hander and writing in the conventional way potentially would have smudged the page.
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| Mirror Writing - Leonardo da Vinci, Museum of Science |
Iconic Images
In searching for the most iconic images, I came across a wide range of photographs representing either firsts in image capture and/or pivotal moments in history. These images stick in one’s memory, pull at heart strings and have come to represent the essence of humanity.CNN has a list of 25 photographs ranging from firefighters raising a flag at the site of the World Trade Centre in New York after the 9/11 attacks to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s image of an American sailor kissing a woman in Times Square in celebration of the end of WWII.
Wikipedia has a list of what it classifies as the most important photographs in history. View from the Window at Le Gras (1826) by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is considered the first photograph of nature and also the oldest surviving camera photograph. It was produced by positioning sheets of silver salts coated paper at the back of a camera obscura. Niépce called these images retinas.
Boulevard du Temple (1838) by Louis Daguerre is the earliest surviving photograph depicting people. It is a daguerreotype which is a direct positive process invented by Daguerre himself. The process was introduced to the public at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris on 19 August 1839. Check out the shoeshine guy in the lower left.
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| Boulevard du Temple - photograph by Louis Daguerre |
Robert Howlett’s 1857 photograph of British engineer Brunel (1806-1859) has been deemed important in the genre of environmental portraiture (showing a person in their home or workplace). It is also a fascinating representation of the Industrial Revolution. The chains are extraordinary in size and interesting in sharp contrast to Brunel’s rather insignificant watchchain hanging from his waistcoat.
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| Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing before the launching chains of the Great Eastern - photograph by Robert Howlett |
A final image to note in the Wikipedia list is of Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion (June 1878), precursor to motion pictures. From 1884 to 1887 Eadweard Muybridge made extensive photographic studies of motion, both human figures and animals. I first became familiar with him back in the 80s when my brother gave me a book of his images which I have used as reference material for many years.
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| The Horse in Motion - Muybridge |
In the summer of 2022 I had a video call with friends who were at a flea market in France. They wondered if I would be interested in a pile of old photographs. If so, they said they would bring them back to the UK for me. I was so excited to receive a bag full of notable images. Here is one of the photographs and a poetic response to the young lady on the right in the front row.
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| Wedding Day - photograph A. Gautier |
The billowing silk bow crowned her head
like bunny ears, as she leant on him
with doe eyes wearing a half-drawn smile
and a fine white dress.
Clasped hands placed, one over the other
lay in her lap cradled in fabric,
a crevasse formed in an avalanche
of eyelet lace cascading over the knees,
down calves cloaked in black stockings
swallowed by boots, tongues caught
in the middle of their story
with scuffed toes
and worn heels
digging holes.
Thank you for reading.
Kate
J
Sources:
Britannica, 2024. Eadweard Muybridge British Photographer. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eadweard-Muybridge Accessed 25 July.
CNN, 2016. 25 of the most iconic photographs.https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/01/world/gallery/iconic-images/index.html Accessed 25 July, 2024.
Library of Congress, 2024. The Daguerreotype Medium. https://www.loc.gov/collections/daguerreotypes/articles-and-essays/the-daguerreotype-medium/ Accessed 28 July.
2 comments:
Thanks Kate. Your blog got me thinking about what makes images 'iconic'. I didn't necessarily come to any conclusion though I suppose form (composition), texture (light/shade) and quirkiness are key components.
The thing about LdV writing left-handed is interesting but I'm not sure about the 'smudging' theory. I've just experimented, and it's perfectly possible to write left-handed from left to right without smudging - but much harder to write left-handed from right to left without doing so...and I didn't even try writing backwards!
Well done with the delightfully observed poem. I liked the structure and the clever play of language.
Well that was a lot of very interesting rabbit holes.
There's something so magical about the early experiments of photography. What an exciting period of history that was.
Splendid poem. Such observation.
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