scholarly journals ‘And I still see their faces…’: Wilhelm von Blandowski’s photographs from the collection of Museum in Gliwice

2009 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Leszek Jodliński

Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822-1878) was born in Gleiwitz, Prussia (now Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland). From 1862 through 1868, Wilhelm von Blandowski may have taken up to 10, 000 photographs. Though only a portion of his photographic accomplishment has been preserved, the existing photographs provide an insight into their content and character, as well as providing us with the better understanding of the work of their author. The main emphasis in the paper will be on Blandowski’s photographs presently in the collections of Museum in Gliwice. It will focus on his portraits with reference to some of the formal experiments Blandowski carried out, such as photomontage and narrative photography. Attention will be also drawn to his creation of documentary-like and realistic photographs. Both the commercial nature of the photographic business run by Blandowski, as well as his personal interest in picturing the human condition, had a strong influence on his photography. He put the person at the center of his interest. This was reflected in Blandowski’s attempts to capture the natural world of the Prussian borderlands in the 1860s. Blandowski depicted a place inhabited by Germans, Jews and Poles ‘the promised land’ of early industrialization. Witnesses of these days, the known and anonymous characters look at us from the hundreds of prints taken by Blandowski. Among them one can see wealthy industrialists, priests and doctors, workers and peasants, children and women, the rich and the poor, persons of different professions, nationalities and confessions. The article concludes with a discussion of the influences that Blandowski has had on his contemporaries and also of his place in the history of early photography in Poland.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
Ms. Cheryl Antonette Dumenil ◽  
Dr. Cheryl Davis

North- East India is an under veiled region with an awe-inspiring landscape, different groups of ethnic people, their culture and heritage. Contemporary writers from this region aspire towards a vision outside the tapered ethnic channel, and they represent a shared history. In their writings, the cultural memory is showcased, and the intensity of feeling overflows the labour of technique and craft. Mamang Dai presents a rare glimpse into the ecology, culture, life of the tribal people and history of the land of the dawn-lit mountains, Arunachal Pradesh, through her novel The Legends of Pensam. The word ‘Pensam’ in the title means ‘in-between’,  but it may also be interpreted as ‘the hidden spaces of the heart’. This is a small world where anything can happen. Being adherents of the animistic faith, the tribes here believe in co-existence with the natural world along with the presence of spirits in their forests and rivers. This paper attempts to draw an insight into the culture and gender of the Arunachalis with special reference to The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.


Author(s):  
K. K. Yadav ◽  
Kumud Dhanwantri

In the present age of industrialization and unregulated urbanization, the Aravali ranges in India are facing deforestation and degradation. The major reasons behind this are the needs of the poor, and greed of the rich. Therefore, part of the Aravalli Ranges falling in different sub-regions of the National Capital Region, has been taken as case study. The chapter intends to provide an insight into the scenario of forests and wildlife in the sub-regions; the challenges, responses, and immediate initiatives taken up by the constituent state governments. It also discusses ways forward to engage the governments and local communities in the protection of forests and wildlife. The conclusion strives to provide probable strategies that can be adopted to transform the transitions of Aravalli into a positive one and ways for engaging government machinery for better governance to escape the grim future we foresee.


Author(s):  
Charles Lowney

In this paper I address some of John Dewey’s more generally applicable criticisms of the philosophic "tradition," and show how his criticisms stem from his naturalistic approach to philosophy. This topic is important because Dewey gives great insight into discussions that are relevant today regarding the role of philosophy. In 1935 he anticipated many of the criticisms of the "later" Wittgenstein regarding the establishment of post facto standards as a cause, the separation of language from behavior and the privatization of mind—yet Dewey still finds use for metaphysics or "thinking at large." I believe the essence of Dewey’s criticisms are found in a few key distinctions. Therefore, I cover the history of philosophy with blanket criticisms of the blanket categories of "classical" and of "modern" thought. For Dewey, the fundamental error characteristic of both Greek and Modern thinking is the artificial bifurcation of our thoughts, feelings and actions from the natural world. As I see it, the heart of this metaphysical mistake is captured by the distinctions he draws between the "instrumental" and "consummatory," and between the "precarious" and "stable."


Author(s):  
Robert Shaughnessy

This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare’s best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare’s greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been imagined as a space of dreams. Beginning with the situation of the play in the context of early modern rehearsal and theatre practice, the book’s seven chapters successively examine the rich interplay between performance histories, changing relations with the natural world, and gender politics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
James Washington Alves dos Santos ◽  
Maria Chaves Jardim

O artigo este questão aborda duas temáticas que vão dar sentido a história do livro de Rute, a saber: a remissão e o sentimento afetivo. Ambas as características darão sentido a vida das personagens deste livro. Para além de um simples relato histórico, o que esta em jogo é a percepção de que para além da lógica do interesse pessoal e da manutenção da tradição é possível vermos o tema da afetividade tomar as cenas históricas narradas. Por isso fazemos uso de uma pesquisa bibliográfica sobre o livro de Rute buscando evidenciar os aspectos da lei mosaica que trata diretamente do cuidado com os pobres e o direito de propriedade inserindo neste contexto as temáticas do reconhecimento e do afeto com elementos que se entrelaçam as questões econômicas, culturais e politicas. REMISSION AND FEELING: THE HISTORY OF RUTE AND BOAZ THE LIGHT OF SOCIOLOGY OF AFFECTS The article in this issue addresses two themes that will make sense to the history of the book of Ruth, namely: remission and affective feeling. Both features will make sense to the life of the characters in this book. In addition to a simple historical account, what is at stake is the perception that above the logic of personal interest and the maintenance of tradition it is possible to see the theme of affectivity take the historical scenes narrated. For this reason, we make use of a bibliographical research on the book of Ruth seeking to highlight the aspects of the Mosaic Law that deals directly with the care of the poor and the property right, inserting in this context the themes of recognition and affection with elements that intertwine the economic, cultural and political issues.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Michael R. Dove

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how humans relate to nonhumans. The obstacle in this relationship is the individual human consciousness. There is a “curious twist” in the systemic nature of the human consciousness that necessarily blinds it to the systemic nature of the human himself or herself. Thus, there is a long history of animals playing a key role in the conception of the human self, in answering the question of who or what we are. Indeed, discussion of the nature of human versus nonhuman is central to practically all intellectual inquiries. For much of its history, some of the most important anthropological work on the human–nonhuman divide was prompted by matter-of-fact statements by ethnographic subjects collapsing the distinction. Metaphors, as well as syllogisms, have dominated the framing of these discussions. The chapter then looks at the principles of perspectivism, metamorphosis, and mimesis in achieving insight into the natural world.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Aurélien Montel

Abstract Given the lack of local sources, the history of Tripoli as a global Mediterranean city remains unclear until the Ottoman conquest of the 16th century. Given that documentary record, the exploration of the rich Arabic tradition written in al-Andalus provides a fresh insight into how Tripoli constructed its Mediterranean stature prior to the 11th century. First, the systematic analysis of Islamic biographical literature (ṭabaqāt) shows Tripoli was one of the most visited cities by the Andalusian scholars across the Islamic world. It also reveals they were in close contact with the Tripolitanian Mālikī networks. Eventually, The Tripolitanian elites took advantage, of that specific Andalusian connection, and using the rivalry between the caliphal powers at the dawn of the 11th century they assured the independence of the city for the first time while rejecting the Fatimid-Zirid power and recognizing the sovereignty of the Spanish Umayyads.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Gunther Pakendorf

Abstract The condition of exile and homelessness is one of the recurrent features of W.G. Sebald’s work. This can be seen paradigmatically in the lives narrated in Die Ausgewanderten (The Emigrants). Sebald portrays the history of the West repeatedly as a gradual and relentless decline through various catastrophes towards ultimate destruction. A persuasive metaphor for this perceived human condition of uprootedness and instability is the situation of people in transit in waiting rooms in airports and railway stations. This is best exemplified by the eponymous main character in Sebald’s last novel, Austerlitz, a work in which stations and waiting rooms in Brussels, London, Paris, Prague and other cities are a recurring locus. They are linked symbolically through a network of inter- and intratextual references and associations to Sebald’s major thematic concerns: the Holocaust, the destruction of the natural world and, ultimately, the end of all time.


1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document