Monday, October 24, 2011
Paris Ground Plan
This is another ground plan of the expo published by L. Baschet (Paris)
Below is a screenshot of the Paris 1900 Ground Plan superimposed over a current Paris city map. This map is saved in the Harvard Worldmap program under dellhamiltonparismap.
Below is the original of the Paris 1900 Ground Plan
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Post-card source links
Wiki page on postcards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostcardGender-Bending in Postcards
http://www.glreview.com/article.php?articleid=845
Worcester Postal History
http://bob.trachimowicz.org/
October 7 and October 17 - Modern Life and Gender
This item is an interesting example of how postcards had gained popularity after they were first introduced at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. It is from A.J. Bradley who attended the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. At the turn of the century, postcards were gaining prominence and were not only used as travel souvenirs but also as political and social propaganda.
The years 1898 – 1918 became the “Golden Age” of postcards and describe a significant advance in modern life. This is due to the fact that historically, sealed letters were what were formally deployed to communicate intimate discourse between senders and receivers. In addition, postcard usage was initially resisted because the writer was concerned that it would allow servants to read the item’s contents. This anxiety was an early indicator garnered by the collapse between the public and the private spheres, colonialism, race and gender. Price was also a factor as the cost for mailing a postcard was the same as mailing a sealed letter (2 cents). It was not until 1898 when postal rates for postcards were lowered to a penny provided the the impetus for the start of the “Golden Age.”
Below is a deciphering of the written text. Periods have been inserted for clarity. A few words have been marked as illegible.
Was very glad to have a [illegible] from you in Mrs. [illegible] letter. For it is very pleasant to be remembered in that way when we are so far away. We are having beautiful weather now & I wish all my friends could be here to go with me to [illegible] Exposition. I am going to take a last look at it this afternoon as we leave for London tomorrow morning. Hoping that you are well and will have a pleasant summer. I am yours [illegible] A.J. Bradley, 7 Avenue de Trocadero, Paris, June 6, 1900.
While the description doesn’t make reference to any one particular aspect of the Paris Exposition, the writer does indicate that they plan to take a “last look” suggesting that it was the kind of experience that one needed to see more than once.
The warm tone of the letter indicates that the writer, A.J. Bradley, know the receiver of the letter well and was pleased to be thought in such a high regard as to be mentioned in previous social correspondence and interaction.
The Paris postal hand-stamp indicates that the carte postale was sent from Place du Trocadero, Paris 106, Juin 6, 8h 50s
Postcard is addressed to: Miss Mary Shirley, 7 Marelton Way, Worcester, MA. The Worcester postal hand-stamp indicates that it was received on June 7, 5:30 pm 1900
On the postcard side that includes the hand written details experience of the fair, there is also a postal hand-stamp indicating that the card passed through New York after Paris, and probably before it reached Massachusetts.
The image on the card is of the American Pavilion, which was situated on the Quai des Nations.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
October 3 - The Role of Technology at the Paris Exposition
The moving sidewalk or the “trottoir roulant” as it was also called was popularized at the Paris Universelle Exposition; its practical aim was to transport visitors from the Esplanade des Invalides to the Champs de Mars. Though the moving sidewalk was experienced as being awkward to get on and off of, cinema studies scholar Anne Friedberg writes in her article, “Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," that the apparatus established a “mobilised visuality." An interaction that was very different than the existing experience of looking at a still photograph or a stereograph. She asserts that "mobilised visuality" was new because it actually changed the relation of sight to bodily movement. In an age of expansive industrialism, visitors also ironically became “products” on a conveyor belt, watching and being watched by international spectators. In the article, she includes the following quote from an American reviewer:
“Plentiful means of transportation about the grounds have been devised chiefly between the Champs des Invalides to the Champs de Mars, where on a stretch of a couple of miles, a circular double elevated structure has been provided, accommodating an electric railroad and a double moving sidewalk, one-half of which travels about twice as fast as the other.”
Here is also link to YouTube footage detailing activities at the Paris Universelle 1900. Paris is one of the first places where "moving images", which we take for granted in the 21st century, were first introduced. Friedberg indicates that the opening sequence of this film is the probably films first vertical camera pan. This film was commissioned by Thomas Edison and shot by James Henry White for a film entitled "Panorama of the Eiffel Tower" housed at the Library of Congress.
Source:
“Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," published in Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital
(Stockholm Studies in Cinema) edited by John Fullerton and Jan Olsson, Indiana University Press, 2005Saturday, October 1, 2011
September 26 Assignment - Address how race impacted the Paris Universelle of 1900
Race played a crucial role at the Paris Universelle of 1900 under the direction of Thomas Calloway, an African American educator and activist, and noted African American sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois, who organized a pioneering exhibition called the Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique - the Exhibit of American Negroes. The exhibit included not only portraits of what Du Bois termed “typical Negro faces,” but also photographs of a thriving African American middle class as evidenced in the hundreds of professionally documented homes, businesses, churches, and school settings in Georgia. In the exhibition, Du Bois also included charts, graphs, and artifacts to further demonstrate the sociological advances of African Americans at the turn of the 19th century, a period that was just thirty five years after the end of the Civil War.
In Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race and Visual Culture, Shawn Michelle Smith states that Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition heavily influenced Calloway and provided him with the framework for the project. At that time, Washington, was the foremost post-slavery black leader and founder of Tuskegee University in Alabama. In this influential speech, Washington pledges the cooperation of “his race” and indicates that the “agitation of questions of social equality is extremist folly.”(Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 3, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974)
Smith writes that according to Calloway, in order for African Americans, particularly in the South to further leverage the excitement over their inclusion in the Atlanta Exposition as well the Tennessee Centennial of 1897, Calloway argued for a strategic approach to being included on the international stage. The two-pronged agenda was stated as the following: “African Americans need occasional opportunities to show in a distinctive way the evidences of their progress, and to prove their value to the body politic.” For Calloway, “the American Negro Exhibit could prove U.S. beneficence, and legitimize U.S. imperialism, by showing how much better off men and women of color were under the civilizing influence of the United States. “
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