REPORT Neurology of the Arts Mansell Bequest Symposium at the Medical Society of London 30 April–1 May 2001

Philosophical instruments were designed to examine phenomena experimentally, rather than by naturalistic observation alone. In the nineteenth century, some instruments were called philosophical toys because they provided popular amusement as well as experimental assistance. They were applied widely in natural philosophy, but attention here is directed particularly to manipulations of perceived space and time and their influence on art. One of the earliest instruments, which had a profound impact on art as well as science, was the camera obscura. It assisted image formation in art before it was applied as an analogy to the eye at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Later philosophical toys were used to address visual perception of motion and depth. Development was initially driven by the need for stimulus control so that the methods of physics could be applied to the study of perceptual phenomena. The principal instruments were invented in the first half of the nineteenth century, and they consisted of simple contrivances that manipulated time and space in ways that had not previously been appreciated. They included thaumatropes, phenakistoscopes, stroboscopes, anorthoscopes, stereoscopes, tachistoscopes, and chronoscopes. Several of these philosophical toys proved to be phenomenally popular, particularly when combined with photography.     

The Legacy of Nineteenth-century Replicas for Object Cultural Biographies: Lessons in Duplication from 1830s Fife

The St Andrews Sarcophagus and Norrie's Law hoard are two of the most important surviving Pictish relics from early medieval Scotland. The entanglement of their later biographies is also of international significance in its own right. Soon after discovery in nineteenth-century Fife, both sets of objects were subject, in 1839, to an exceptionally precocious, documented programme of replication through the enlightened auspices of an under-appreciated antiquarian, George Buist. This well-evidenced case study highlights how and why replicas, things that are widely prevalent in Europe and beyond, are a ‘thick’ and relatively unexplored seam of archaeological material culture that we ignore at our peril. These particular replications also offer new insights into the vision, intellectual and practical energies of early antiquarian societies, and their web of connections across Britain and Ireland.     

One image,multiple nationalisms: Face to Face and the Siege at Kanehsatà:ke

Iconic news photographs, particularly those taken during wars and national crises, provide visual synopses of important historical events – events about which stories of triumph and tragedy are superimposed. In this paper, we systematically trace the appearances and discussions of a single, iconic image, given the moniker Face to Face, over time. In the twenty plus years since its initial publication, media discourses around the image referenced Kanien'kehaka /Mohawk, Indigenous, Quebecois and Canadian nationalisms. We conclude that discourses surrounding war and conflict imagery can be read as reflecting plural nationalisms and that while a dominant meaning can be projected onto such imagery, this is neither singular nor fixed.     

Integration of geophysical surveys,ground hyperspectral measurements,aerial and satellite imagery for archaeological prospection of prehistoric sites: the case study of Vésztő-Mágor Tell,Hungary

An integration of geophysical surveys, ground hyperspectral data, aerial photographs and high resolution satellite imagery for supporting archaeological investigations at the multi-component Vészt?-Mágor Tell, located in the southeastern Great Hungarian Plain, is presented in this study. This is one of the first times that all these techniques have been combined and evaluated for retrieving archaeological information. Geophysical explorations, specifically magnetic gradiometry and ground penetrating radar methods, have revealed shallow linear anomalies and curvilinear rings at the Tell. The use of remote sensing images has confirmed the diverse anomalies with respect to geophysics through photointerpretation, radiometric and spatial enhancements. Moreover, several indices from ground hyperspectral data also have revealed stress vegetation anomalies. These integrated results were used to map the main areas of archaeological interest at the Vészt?-Mágor Tell and plan future excavations. It was found that these multiscalar data can be used efficiently for detecting buried archaeological features.     

‘Resemblances to archaeological finds’: Guido Boggiani,Claude Lévi-Strauss and Caduveo body painting

In 1942, Claude Lévi-Strauss published an article on Caduveo body painting in the first number of the surrealist magazine VVV, with the editorial assistance of André Breton and cover by Max Ernst. In the article, Lévi-Strauss uses the photographs of the Caduveo women taken during his fieldtrip in 1935–36, together with drawings of facial designs collected to reflect on their ‘strong originality’, which ‘evokes a very ancient culture, and one full of preciosities’. Amongst these illustrations, there is an engraving taken from Guido Boggiani’s book, I Caduvei, published in 1895. Boggiani, an Italian landscape painter who visited South America in 1887–93, was captivated by the Caduveo graphic art, which he sketched in detail. In 1896 he returned, travelling to Paraguay, this time equipped with a new tool to help his ethnographic research: a photographic camera. Over a period of five years, Boggiani completed more than 400 photographs on glass gelatin plates of various sizes. For Lévi-Strauss, as for Boggiani, the originality of the Caduveo graphic art remained enigmatic, evoking a very ancient culture; it was a topic to which he would return in several of his most influential works. In this article, I focus on the visual images (engraved, drawn, photographed and filmed) that depict the body painting of the Caduveo people in central Brazil by Boggiani and Lévi-Strauss in order to explore the ways in which they enabled an ephemeral art – delicate arabesques painted on skin – to be studied as archaeological vestiges. In the process, I trace the aesthetic sensibility of Boggiani and Lévi-Strauss that provided them with the imaginative tools to do so.     

Nitrate ruins: the photography of mining in the Atacama Desert,Chile

A photographic album entitled Oficina Alianza and Port of Iquique 1899 illustrates the industrial development of nitrate mining in Chile. From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, British capitalists dominated the extraction of Chilean nitrate and its export as a fertilizer and an explosive. The Oficina Alianza, a nitrate works at the centre of British monopoly of the trade, is, as other oficinas across the Antofagasta and Tarapacá regions of the Atacama Desert, a ruin. This article considers the correspondences between Alianza’s photographic album, a record of a working nitrate oficina, and its abandoned industrial structures. It examines the ruin and the photograph as Benjaminian allegories.     

PHOTOGRAPHS, SYMBOLIC IMAGES, AND THE HOLOCAUST: ON THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF DEPICTING HISTORICAL TRUTH

Photography has often been scrutinized regarding its relationship to reality or historical truth. This includes not only the indexicality of photography, but also the question of how structures and processes that comprise history and historical events can be depicted. In this context, the Holocaust provides a particular challenge to photography. As has been discussed in numerous publications, this historic event marks the "limits of representation." Nevertheless there are many photographs "showing" the Holocaust that have been produced in different contexts that bespeak the photographers' gaze and the circumstances of the photographs' production. Some of the pictures have become very well known due to their frequent reproduction, even though they often do not show the annihilation itself, but situations different from that; their interpretation as Holocaust pictures results rather from a metonymic deferral. When these pictures are frequently reproduced they are transformed into symbolic images, that is, images that can be removed from their specific context, and in this way they come to signify abstract concepts such as "evil." Despite being removed from their specific context these images can, as this essay argues, refer to historical truth. First, I explore the arguments of some key theorists of photography (Benjamin, Kracauer, Sontag, Barthes) to investigate the relationship between photography and reality in general, looking at their different concepts of reality, history, and historical truth, as well as the question of the meaning of images. Second, I describe the individual circumstances in which some famous Holocaust pictures were taken in order to analyze, by means of three examples, the question what makes these specific pictures so particularly suitable to becoming symbolic images and why they may—despite their abstract meaning—be able to depict historical truth.     

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Survey with Commercial-Grade Instruments: A Case Study from the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey,Iraq

Low-altitude photography in archaeology is now common practice at the scale of excavations; however, landscape-scale applications are a relatively new endeavor with promising analytical potential. From 2014–2016, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mounted camera was used to document sites recorded as part of the Eastern ?abur Archaeological Survey (E?AS), an archaeological reconnaissance project in western Dohuk Province, Iraqi Kurdistan. The E?AS team documented over 70 archaeological sites with the UAV, from single-phase artifact scatters, to archaeological remains with standing architecture, to tells that cover more than 30 hectares. Representative examples from this survey are presented here to outline the project workflow and primary output data layers, including digital orthomosaics and digital elevation models. The quality and utility of results are then assessed in relationship to available satellite-based data. Methods for analysis and interpretation are then considered to demonstrate applications in landscape archaeology. An A) orthomosaic and B) shaded relief model with surface collection area (in red) of site EHAS-C045 created from photographs taken from a UAV.     

A cohort of trees,photographs, scientists,an artist and a curator: the collaborative study of environmental change

ABSTRACT

I explore how a historic image archive can be re-worked through collaborative artistic-scientific practice, and how photography can be ‘re-performed’ as a strategy to observe an environmental change. The focus is on a project by the photographer Chrystel Lebas, who between 2011 and 2017 worked in collaboration with botanists from the Natural History Museum, London. The collaborators used historic and contemporary photographs for seasonal observations in the field. Their specific interest was in the potential for using historic visual ecological records to investigate environmental change as observed now.

The paper explores the hybridization of technical, aesthetic and embodied knowledge, the application of montage and the tacit creation of a visual framework for observation. It draws attention to the potential inflexibility in interpretation inherent in the accepted systematic practice of placing ecological records within a herbarium in a natural history collection. Secondly, it illustrates the neglected potential of photographic collections within scientific research.     

Obtaining meaningful informed consent: preliminary results of a study to develop visual informed consent forms with children

This pilot study explores children's understanding of informed consent (IC) and the potential of participatory visual methods for improving the IC process. Strategies used to improve the IC process have generated mixed evidence as to their ability to increase understanding and willingness to participate among potential research participants. Two workshops with 13 children aged 8–12 years were held to discuss the content of IC forms, particularly confidentiality and voluntary participation, and the children took photographs to represent these concepts. Simplified written IC forms generated boredom, disengagement, and/or anxiety for some children. Preliminary results of this pilot study indicate the potential to enhance the IC process by using participatory visual methods with children to make visual IC forms.