lifeasdaddy

Who is that dancer?

A photographic puzzle starts when I ask myself a question.

Who is that dancer?

Unidentified partner of ballet dancer Valentin Zeglovsky, 1947 / Max Dupain

Held by State Library of New South Wales.

Call number  

ON 247 / 688-716

  I can show you the answer:

 

How do I get from question to answer?

 

Well, with a little bit of photo detective work.

I sometimes browse the photographs on the photo sharing website Flickr and usually take in the photos posted there by the State Library of New South Wales.

One in particular caught my eye today:  Unidentified partner of ballet dancer Valentin Zeglovsky, 1947 / Max Dupain

It is a great photograph, well lit, well composed.

But, unidentified?? Such a good photograph, but we don't know of whom?  That's usually the sort of question to which I can find the answer. Someone who was worth Max Dupain taking the time to create that work of art, she should be known.

 

I clicked through to the website of the State Library of New South Wales to find out more about the photograph.

There I see an "Administrative/Biographical Note" which says:

For further information, see: "Valentin Zeglovsky: on stage, backstage and at the studio of Max Dupain" in the Valerie Lawson blog Dancelines, 12 November 2011. http://dancelines.com.au/valentin-zeglovsky-on-stage-backstage-and-at-the-studio-of-max-dupain/ (accessed November 15, 2011)

Hmm. Valerie Lawson. She's a well-known journalist. So let's look at her blog page here.

Valerie's blog post gives some background about the photographs, and a good deal of biographical information about Valentin Zeglovsky - a well-known ballet dancer of years past.

It also gives the information that Valentin Zeglovsky married dancer & actress Pamela Bromley-Smith in 1949, and that Valerie thinks she may be the unidentified woman.

Well, there's a working hypothesis right there.

Let's see if we can find a photograph of Pamela Bromley-Smith to compare with the many of the unidentified woman.

There are three excellent close-up photographs of the unidentified woman on Valerie's blog which will provide excellent comparison.

Ok, now the go-to place for biographical research into 20th Century Australians is the National Library of Austrlia's Trove website.

Let's type Valentin Zeglovsky into the search box and see how we go.

This is the result. The search returns 13 photographs, none of which are the unidentified woman.

The search also returns 28 digitised newspaper articles, none of which appear to refer to Pamela Bromley-Smith, nor have photographs of the unidentified woman nor Pamela Bromley-Smith.

Now, let's approach the solution from a different direction. Let's search Trove for Pamela Bromley-Smith. There is 1 irrelevant photograph result, and 43 digitised newspaper articles.

I inspected each of the digitised newspaper articles until I found this one:

(ref. Prizewinners in Miss N.S.W. Quest. (1947, November 22). The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved November 17, 2011, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55894727)

And there, on the right, is Pamela Bromley-Smith.

Wouldn't you know it, the same woman as the unidentified partner of Valentin Zeglovsky here and here.

Puzzle solved. 

( More on Valerie Lawson here. )

 

 UPDATE - 21 November 2011.

It seems that Valerie Lawson is not convinced that the photograph of Pamela Bromley-Smith in the newspaper item I've shown above is the same person as the mystery dancer in the Max Dupain photographs.

Valerie writes on her blog:

"Bob, the newspaper photo does look like the woman with Zeglovsky. I had seen it on Trove but was not completely certain as the photo is grainy and she seems to have dark hair whereas Pamela is blonde in the Dupain photos. But this is the closest we’ve got to identifying her so far."

and the State Library of New South Wales people are also unimpressed with my findings:

"Thanks Bob, we've investigated Pamela Bromley-Smith and aren't convinced. This woman is probably a ballet dancer as her ballet poses in other photographs with Zeglovsky look professional."

I'll have to do a bit more work then.

Valerie Lawson also mentioned on her blog that Pamela Bromley-Smith and Valentin Zeglovsky had two sons, Mark and Paul Zeglovskis who attended Holland Park School in London.

I'm trying to contact the family in London.

Valerie also mentioned that Pamela Bromley-Smith also at times used the stage name "Pamela Bromley". 

Searching Trove for that name also gives us an article on Page 16 of the Australian Women's Weekly magazine of Wednesday 4 July, 1951 about the London production of Kiss Me, Kate  which includes a phorograph captioned, "Dancers, led by Pamela Bromley, who comes from Neutral Bay, New South Wales, wait in the wings."

It's accompanied by this photograph:

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55461438

The photograph looks like the mystery dancer to me, but is a little bit too small to be certain.

The search continues for more evidence.

UPDATE - 24 November 2011

I have managed to contact Mr. Leo Zeglovskis in the UK. I asked him if he could identify the photographs on Valerie Lawson's blog post here:

http://dancelines.com.au/valentin-zeglovsky-on-stage-backstage-and-at-the-studio-of-max-dupain/

which contain, amongst others, photographs captioned as:

- Valentin Zeglovsky and unidentified dancer, photo © Max Dupain, ON247/705, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

- Unidentified partner of Valentin Zeglovsky, © Max Dupain, 1947, ON247/710, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

- Unidentified partner of Zeglovsky, photo © Max Dupain, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, ON247/712

- Unidentified partner of Zeglovsky, © Max Dupain, 1947, ON 247/709, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

He wrote back:

"These pictures are all of my mother Pamela Bromley-Smith."

 

 

Did Flickr scoop the Washington Post and the New York Times on the Obama-McChrystal meeting?

Early today I saw at Flickr's Whitehouse Photostream that President Obama had a meeting with Army General Stanley McChrystal, the Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.

I was just checking Google news a short time ago and the story from the New York Times about this secret (or at least previously unannounced) meeting has the Google News time stamp " 8 hours ago" and the Washington Post story has the Google News time stamp " 6 hours ago".

The Flickr entry for the photograph is not precisely time stamped, but as I'm writing this now, the first comment below the photograph is time stamped 23 hours ago.

Now, I don't know how accurate the Google News time stamping is in relation to when the story actually appears on the home newspapers website.

And I don't know if the story was offcially embargoed (perhaps for war or Presidential security reasons); and if it was embargoed will the news outlets be a tad upset that the pics were posted on Flickr way before their stories made it to the internet?

ADDED:  There is this comment below the photograph time stamped "12 hours ago"

which states "Saw this pic on ABC news this evening!"

So I think more likely than not that the Google News site time stamping is a problem.  More input from Google News afficionados needed.

Just saying.  A few unanswered questions.

ADDED:  There's this comment below the photograph on Flickr which is timestamped "12 hours ago":  "I just saw this pic on ABC news!"

Which leads me to think that either there is a wide error in the Google News time stamping, or the two grand newspapers of the USA's fourth estate are lagging so far behind TV news (and Flickr) it is not funny.

#CommonGround @ the Powerhouse Museum. Part 3. Where did the Ashfield bandstand come from?.

I'm celebrating the generosity of the National Library of Australia.  

The people in the Pictures Branch of the NLA have sent me a high resolution copy of an image to use during my talk next Saturday night.

It's not this one, but here's a photograph from the Powerhouse Museum's Tyrrell photography collection of a bandstand in Ashfield:

It is an extraordinary structure.  I've never seen anything else like it being used as a bandstand in Australia.

Significantly it is topped by a crown showing some sort of Royal connection.  This is an important clue.

Notes online at the Powerhouse Museum only date the photograph between 1859 and 1917.

Now, the suburb of Ashfield in New South Wales is certainly a grand place however it seemed unlikely to me that it had been the scene of a royal visit in the early part of the 1900s.  So the crown on the structure is therefore out of place.

A while back I decided  to find out more, and eventually tracked down a pamphlet issued by the Ashfield Council which stated that the bandstand had been used in Federation Celebrations as a pavilion for the welcome of Lord Hopetoun, Australia's first Governor-General.

It was recycled as the bandstand in 1903!

But what did it originally look like?

The best place to find out was to try and locate it on Picture Australia.

If we search for "Lord Hopetoun 1901"  the first result returned is "Landing of Lord Hopetoun, Sydney 1901", and we find out the image is at the National Library of Australia.

Going direct to the website of the National Library of Australia, we find an even better photograph composed of two images side by side to create a panorama:

( Landing of Governor-General, Farm Cove, Commonwealth celebrations, [1901] [picture])

The State Library of New South Wales also has a good view of the original pavilion here; and at Ashfield here.

An architectural mystery solved.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you.  You can't find this bandstand in Ashfield anymore.  It was demolished in the 1940s due to terminal decay.

My talk @ the Powerhouse Museum's #CommonGround event. Part 2: Requests for images.

I ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin'

As I said,  I've been asked to speak this coming Saturday night at the Powerhouse Museum's piece of the global Flickr Common Ground event.

There's going to be an outdoor image slideshow using giant projection onto the outside of the Powerhouse Museum's mothership building in Ultimo.  See the test projections here.  It's going to be big in every way.

I've been selecting images to project during my talk, which are from The Commons on Flickr.  All except for four images.

The images I want have to be in high resolution format so that they can make a reasonable showing on the giant screening surface. 

As you may know, the custodians of the such iconic photographic images usually licence the images for use at a fee.  Sometimes the fee is high, sometimes less so.

Since my speaking fee for this engagement is a big fat zero, I'm going to try to get the images I need for a commensurate sum.  Also zero.

The first two images I need are of Roger Fenton's iconic 1855 Crimean War photographs usually known as The Valley of the Shadow of Death.  Lots of institutions have a copy of one of his photos, but only one that I know of has both images with cannon balls on and off the road.  The photos I'm talking about are shown near the top of Erroll Morris's blog post for the New York Times here.

They are credited to the Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.  So I've sent a begging email to the Curator of Photography for high resolution electronic copies of the two photographs.  And I politely  requested expeditious consideration due to the time constraints.

Secondly, I need to use a wonderful image of 1901 Federation Celebrations.  This one held at the National Library of Australia.  So I've asked them to come to the party too.

The last non-Commons image I need is held by State Records New South Wales, our state archives.  It's one of Bennelong Point seen here on Flickr, and here at their Photo Investigator site.  And I ain't too proud to beg.  I know that State Records NSW is very interested in becoming involved in social media, so I'm quite hopeful they'll help spread the joy.  Check out their very fine blog, Archives Outside, including an example of dating a photograph by the length of shadows in the photograph.

Let's see how far the love spreads.

I'm tagging my blog posts on this topic here as #CommonGround.

You can also follow progress on twitter at #CommonGround.

Here's how the image projections are going to look in the forecourt of the Powerhouse Museum:

(Above image used with permission of Paula Bray )

Aunty Rae wearing her patriotic costume during World War One.

During patriotic festivals during World War One many young (and not so young) women in Australia wore patriotic dress to show their loyalty and fervor for victory.

[ Added 20 Sep 2009 : I've been thinking about what I wrote here earlier today.  It may be that this photograph was not taken during World War One.  There are other photographs on record in Australian cultural institutions showing similar costumes worn outside the World War One period.  I'll nedd to check more to narrow it down.] 

This is a photograph of a very distant relative wearing one such costume. Here wearing the Union Flag instead of the flag of Australia.  The riband on her left lapel says "FRANCE" and on her right lapel "ENGLAND".  The colours would have been red, white and blue, emblematic of the flag colours of all three allied countries.

The border of the photograph bears the handwritten caption, "Aunty Rae."

I have seen photographs elsewhere of women wearing similar costumes, but at the moment I'm unsure what it is called.  One scholar has told me it is related to the French Marianne - a symbol of the French Republic - but I am unsure at the moment how it came to be so popular as a patriotic display here in Australia as opposed to say, Brittania.

There is a photograph held by the Mortlock  State Library of South Australia of a group of women wearing patriotic fancy dress during World War I, (circa 1917) which shows some very similar costumes. 

Although you cannot tell from the view on this blog, Anty Rae is wearing long white gloves of very fine material - perhaps silk.  Her shoes are covered in material and have a bow on the top above the toes.  The bracelet around her left wrist has a motif in the middle of each disc. 

Below is a photograph taken, I would say, a few years later, of the young woman getting married.

The reverse of this photograph bears the handwritten dedication, "To alma & Jack With love from Auntie & Uncle."

I have another photograph dedicated by Aunty, where she calls herself "Ray", so there was some discrepancy within the family about how her forename was spelled.

Some Australian history for you...

ADDED:  

1.  The Australian War Memorial blog has a very interesting bit about a patriotic costume made for, and worn by, Mrs. Ratigan during World War I.

2.  The Queensland State Library has an outstanding comparison photograph of this patriotic fancy dress here.

sdf

Melvin Vaniman's panorama: Sydney from a balloon, 27 March 1904

Sydney from a balloon, 27 March 1904, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

It's impossible to really tell how wonderful this image is on the little computer screen you are looking at now.

There's just one way to find out. The State Library of New South Wales has made some large scale prints of this circa 1904 panoramic photographs of Sydney and put them on display in the Mitchell Galleries as part of the Nelson Meers Foundation Heritage Collection.

I encourage you to take a look. It would be particularly good for high school level students in the next two weeks' school holidays. when I visited the exhibition today a few tourists were enjoying it too.

It's free. Until January 2010.

Exhibition guide here.  If you can't get there, read this. And a beautifully designed guide it is too.

Exhibition home here.

On Flickr here.

ADDED 11 July 2009:  This exhibition at the SLNSW does appear to be slightly recycled from the similar 2001 exhibition held at the SLNSW entitled "A different perspective: Vaniman the acrobatic photographer".

Click on these thumbnails from the 2001 exhibition to get some good views.

Maybe the giant prints currently on show in 2009 are new, although the library's "Achievements 2002/02" report does refer on page 13 to "its giant panoramic scenes of Sydney and beyond."

The current exhibition is no less worthy for having been shown before, and has the added benefit of a current 2009 panoramic view of Sydney Town Hall and the Queen Victoria Building for a then-and-now comparison.

Sydney then and now: State Library of New South Wales

Then (between 1942 and 1983):  

[ Photograph used with permission of the State Records NSW, Digital ID: 12932-a012-a012X2442000009.jpg  and on Flickr ]

Now (2009):

Now, this is the reading room of the Mitchell Library, part of the State Library of New South Wales.  Not the one in Scotland.  The main reading room is located in a newer building nearby.

Sydney then and now: Lansdowne Hotel

Then, in 1926 by the commercial photograph Milton Kent, from the Warden Archive of the Powerhouse Museum, via the Photo of the Day blog entry by Jessica McLean:

Now:

The hotel was completed in 1926 and y0ou can see the NSW Heritage listing here.

Do you like a treasure hunt?

If you're in the USA or London, you may want to try Wikipedia Loves Art.

It's a research project disguised as a game.

You take you camera to 15 selected cultural institutions in the USA and London, take public domain photographs of selected works of art, post them on Flickr and "win".

There are also associated meet-ups for the socially inclined, and individual competitions in some of the participating institutions.

Read about it here.

Or here.

Is this the earliest known photograph of Abraham Lincoln?

[Abraham Lincoln, Congressman-elect from Illinois. Three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing front] (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Nicholas H. Shephed, photographer. [Springfield, Ill., 1846 or 1847]

Let's call the photograph above Image 1.

Or is this the earliest known photograph of Abraham Lincoln?

Copyright Albert Kaplan 1983

Used here in accordance with this rights notice from  Mr. Kaplan's website.    

Let's call this one Image 2.

The Library of Congress holds Image 1.  The LOC says about the precedence of the photograph:

Notes:
This daguerreotype is the earliest-known photograph of Abraham Lincoln, taken at age 37 when he was a frontier lawyer in Springfield and Congressman-elect from Illinois. (Source: Ostendorf, p. 4) 

Attributed to Nicholas H. Shepherd, based on the recollections of Gibson W. Harris, a law student in Lincoln's office from 1845 to 1847. (Source: Gibson William Harris, "My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," Women's Home Companion (November 1903), 9-11.) Robert Lincoln, son of the President, thought the photo was made in either St. Louis or Washington during his father's term in Congress.

Published in: Lincoln's photographs: a complete album / by Lloyd Ostendorf. Dayton, OH: Rockywood Press, 1998, p. 4-5.

Title devised by Library staff.
Gift; Mary Lincoln Isham; 1937.
Forms part of: Daguerreotype collection (Library of Congress).

Mr. Albert Kaplan holds Image 2.  Mr. Kaplan has an entire website devoted to proving his point both that Image 2 is of Abraham Lincoln, and that it is the earliest known photograph of him.  His website is here.

I can hardly do justice to Mr. Kaplan's case and the evidence he has put forward here, so go and read it for yourself.

Nor can I do justice to the scholarship and time which must have led to  the Library of Congress making the claim that Image 1 is the earliest known photograph of Lincoln either.

If you are interested, do your reading and decide for yourself.

Maybe we will need Erroll Morris to help find the truth.