All That Jazz - Library of Congress Posts Iconic Photos of Jazz Age Musicians on Flickr

via flickr.com

Writer and essayist Gerald Early once said, "when they study our civilization two thousand years from now, there will only be three things that Americans will be known for: the Constitution, baseball and jazz music." I imagine that the Gottlieb Collection will be cited as source documentation. These are such stunning photos.

Equipped with a bulky Speed Graphic camera, William Gottlieb, a young self-taught photographer and columnist for the Washington Post and later a writer for Down Beat magazine, photographed jazz musicians and performers, capturing iconic images. Gottlieb photographed the jazz greats from 1938 to 1948. Per Gottlieb's wishes, these photos entered the public domain in February, 2010. (Please note, additional rights of privacy and publicity may apply.) The Library of Congress will continue to add more photos each month, until all 1,600 from the collection are included.

Celebrated jazz artists come to life in photographs by William P. Gottlieb. His images document the jazz scene in New York City and Washington, D.C., from 1938 to 1948, a time recognized by many as the "Golden Age of Jazz".

Gottlieb was both a notable jazz journalist and a self-taught photographer who captured the personalities of jazz musicians and told their stories with his camera and typewriter. His portraits depict such prominent musicians and personalities as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and many more.

Previous sets of Library of Congress photos uploaded to their Flickr Commons Colection, include Baseball Americana, Farm Security Administration Favorites, Abraham Lincoln, News in the 1910s, World War I Panoramas and more.

Why Historians Love Twitter

There's a great post by Julia Baird over at Newsweek.com. It's about the implications and importance of the recent news that the Library of Congress will acquire every tweet, ever. I applaud the move. Social networking is just that, social. It's not inherently private. In the future, historians, researchers, reporters, genealogists and political operatives are going to pour over those tweets. No doubt, some one running for political office will one day be haunted by something embarrassing they once tweeted. If you can't wait to read my archived tweets, you may follow my twittering ephemera, here.

Politics and junk, self-aggrandizement and social activism, the phony and the genuine, the mad and the sweet. This is the history we are hammering out, daily, in the online world that we consider ephemeral and intimate and yet that is rapidly becoming more concrete and public.

From the Newsweek article, Our True, Tweeting Selves.

Photo: Soldiers with their girls in front of the Greyhound bus, Indianapolis, 1943

Esther Bubley: Soldiers with their girls in front of the Greyhound bus, Indianapolis, 1943, originally uploaded by trialsanderrors.

Indianapolis, Indiana. Soldiers with their girls in front of the Greyhound bus. Photograph by Esther Bubley on assignment for the Office of War Information, September 1943.

From the FSA-OWI Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress

[PD] This picture is in the public domain.

Four and a Half Minutes That Changed Film History

Orson Welles' Touch of Evil has an opening scene that changed the way films were shot. Welles used precise timing, mind-boggling coordination, and a crane, to film an amazing four and a half minute tracking shot to open his 1958 film.

The shot starts on a bomb being placed in the trunk of a car. The camera follows the car into the street. As the camera moves back we pickup Charlton Heston walking with his date. Though we’re concentrating on Heston, the bomb is still in our minds. The sheer length of the take heightens the tension for the payoff at the end. On its first release Universal placed the opening credits over the shot, which severely retracted from its power and suspense. In a re-release Welles original version of the scene was re-instated.

Literally changing an aspect of film making, the use of tracking shots have sometimes been used to try to one-up it, Psycho, for example. The opening shot of Robert Altman's The Player is a loving homage to the Welles shot. The opening of Joss Whedon's wonderful film Serenity begins with a five minute tracking shot that introduces us to the ship and the crew. Technically it's two tracking shots, spliced in the middle with some CGI, but I'll cut him some slack. (Whedon also did a great 6 minute tracking shot in an early episode of Angel, though I don't remember which one.)

My favorite tracking shot has to be in Children of Men*, but you can't beat Orson Welles for sheer genius and innovation. Mental Floss has a good list of others you can check out.

YouTube - Touch of Evil Part 01 of 11

You can watch the rest of the movie here.

*This clip is R rated and contains spoilers. If you haven't seen it, go rent it now! It's one of the best films this decade.

Really Amazing Color Photos From Pre-Bolshevik Revolution Russia

The Denver Post shared these photos on it's blog. The photographs of Russian chemist and photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, show Russia on the eve of World War I and the coming of the revolution. From 1909-1912 and again in 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii traveled across the Russian Empire, documenting life, landscapes and the work of Russain people.


Man and camel loaded with packs; between 1905 and 1915 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Old church of Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, Nyrob; 1910 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Georgian woman standing on a carpet, outside, near a tree; between 1905 and 1915 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Dagestani types, Man and woman posed outdoors; between 1905 and 1915 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

To learn more about the Prokudin-Gorskii, the process he used to create the color photographs, and see his collection, you can visit the Library of Congress, who purchased his glass negatives in 1948.