First published in 1921, the same year as Vogue, French fashion magazine L’Officiel targets upper-income, educated women aged from 25 to 49.
A men’s edition of L’Officiel, L’Officiel Hommes, and many foreign editions are also published. The complete name of the magazine is “L’Officiel de la couture et de la mode de Paris”.
Take a look at these fabulous black and white photos to see the ’70s unique fashion designs for women published by L’Officiel in 1974.
These slightly terrifying ads featuring giant babies and tiny mothers are for Johnson’s Baby Oil & Baby Powder. They date from 1944-48.
In the ads, a giant baby exacts a vicious turnabout-is-fair-play revenge on his mother, who failed as a parent an a human being by using the wrong skin-care products on him.
In the early 1900s, William S. Marriott, also known by the stage name Dr Wilmar, was a British magician who became well known for exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. Pearson’s Magazine, which specialized in speculative literature, politics and the arts, commissioned Marriott to write a series of illustrated articles investigating mediums so that readers could “judge for themselves the pros and cons of this tremendously important subject.”
Alongside Marriott’s articles, he posted photographs of himself demonstrating several effects commonly produced during séances. Levitating tables were often raised by the medium’s foot to make it appear as though they were floating.
Marriott also discovered the methods used to create ghostly shapes and movements in the dark. Often, mediums were tied to their chairs to convince participants that they could have no possible involvement with the paranormal activity. In the dark, however, the restrained medium still had access to poles attached to objects, which he or she could move surreptitiously. An example of this is “spirit hands” that appear to surround the medium, however, with the lights on, it is possible to see the dummy arms attached to sticks and poles, which are being controlled by the medium’s hands, almost like puppets.
In his exposé, Marriott also debunked spirit photographs. Some photographers claimed to have captured evidence of a ghost on film, which materialized during the development processes. Sitters claimed no one else was present and yet a ghostly figure could clearly be seen in the background of portraits, family photos and so forth. Whilst many believed these were the result of a psychic force, sceptics suggested there may have been fluid on the plate of the camera, which produced the ghostly appearance. Marriott, however, discovered the truth about this fraudulent trickery.
At the same time that society was lapping up paranormal activities and psychic experiments, others set up the Society for Psychical Research in Cambridge to investigate and try to understand these events and abilities. In 1893, the world-renowned author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) joined their ranks and paid witness to William Marriott’s demonstration and explanation about spirit photography.
Marriott produced his own spirit photographs, all the while explaining to Doyle how he had manipulated the images to make it appear as though a spirit was present. Publically, Doyle stated, “Mr Marriott has clearly proved one point, which is that a trained conjurer can, under the close inspection of three pairs of critical eyes, put a false image upon a plate. We must unreservedly admit it.”
Unlike today where smartphones and digital cameras take a photo instantly, the oldest cameras involved using plates, special papers, development fluid and many more elements. If, for example, a plate was to be used more than once, it would pick up two different images, creating a double exposure. This way, photographers could take a photo of a “ghost” and combine it with another (ghost-free) photograph.
William Marriott demonstrating a method of producing fake “spirit” hands, 1910.
William Marriott with simulated spirit hands.
William Marriott demonstrating a levitation of an object with an invisible thread.
William Marriott with fake materialization spirits.
Here, Marriott with some of the “ghosts” that he bought from a catalog that sold tricks to phony spirit mediums.
Bari is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in southern Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples (and the third after Palermo, if Insular Italy is included), a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas. The city has over 116 square kilometres (45 sq mi).
Bari is made up of four different urban sections. To the north is the closely built old town on the peninsula between two modern harbours, with the Basilica of Saint Nicholas, the Cathedral of San Sabino (1035–1171) and the Hohenstaufen Castle built for Frederick II, which is now also a major nightlife district. To the south is the Murat quarter (erected by Joachim Murat), the modern heart of the city, which is laid out on a rectangular grid-plan with a promenade on the sea and the major shopping district (the via Sparano and via Argiro).
Modern residential zones surrounding the centre of Bari were built during the 1960s and 1970s replacing the old suburbs that had developed along roads splaying outwards from gates in the city walls. In addition, the outer suburbs developed rapidly during the 1990s. The city has a redeveloped airport, Karol Wojtyła Airport, with connections to several European cities.
These fascinating photos were taken by Leroy W. Demery, Jr. that show street scenes of Bari in 1981.
Bari street scenes
Bari trolleybus 755 (Line 8), working westward in the Sottopasso Luigi di Savoia
Bari trolleybus number 755, working Line 8 in Corso Cavour
Entrance to the Cattedrale di San Sabino
Facade of the Basilica di San Nicola facing Piazza San Nicola
Breathing In, Breathing Out is a performance piece by Marina Abramović and Ulay. It was performed twice, in Belgrade (1977) and Amsterdam (1978).
For this performance the two artists blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters and pressed their mouths together, so that one couldn’t inhale anything else but the exhalation of the other. As the carbon dioxide filled their lungs, they began to sweat, move vehemently and wear themselves out; the viewers could sense their agony through the projected sound of breathing, which was augmented via microphones attached to their chests.
It took them 19 minutes in the first performance and 15 in the second to consume all the oxygen in that one breath and reach the verge of passing out.
During the 19 minutes of the Performance at the Studenski Kulturni Centar in Belgrade, one hears the noise of their breathing in and out. Ulay commented on the Performance: “I breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.” Abramović: “I breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out carbon dioxide,” and Ulay repeated Marina’s sentence.
The second part of the Performance took place in November of the same year at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Here, breath as the giver of life becomes a symbol of keeping one another alive, of interdependence and of the interchange between male and female principle.
In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Marina Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They began living and performing together that year. When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. They created “relation works” characterized by constant movement, change, process and “art vital”. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritage and the individual's desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “The Other”, and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body.” They dressed and behaved like twins and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self-made available for self-scrutiny.”
The work of Abramović and Ulay tested the physical limits of the body and explored male and female principles, psychic energy, transcendental meditation and nonverbal communication. While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents’ military pasts. Rather than concerning themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In discussing this phase of her performance history, she has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.”
The architecture of the United States demonstrates a broad variety of architectural styles and built forms over the country’s history of over two centuries of independence and former Spanish and British rule.
Post office buildings of the United States in the early 1900s
Architecture in the United States has been shaped by many internal and external factors and regional distinctions. As a whole it represents a rich eclectic and innovative tradition.
As these pictures of post office buildings from Click Americana show, a lot of architecture from around 1900 was built on a grand scale. Take a look back to the United States Postal Service’s glory days at the turn of the 20th century when the post office buildings were stunning, stately and stylish, and a pride of every city’s downtown.
Production of postcards blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As an easy and quick way for individuals to communicate, they became extremely popular.
A real photo postcard (RPPC) is a continuous-tone photographic image printed on postcard stock. The term recognizes a distinction between the real photo process and the lithographic or offset printing processes employed in the manufacture of most postcard images.
Real photo postcards may or may not have a white border, or a divided back, or other features of postcards, depending on the paper the photographer used.
The last and current postcard era, which began about 1939, is the “chrome” era, a shortened version of Photochrom. However these types of cards did not begin to dominate until about 1950 (partially due to war shortages during WWII). The images on these cards are generally based on colored photographs, and are readily identified by the glossy appearance given by the paper’s coating. These still photographs made the invisible visible, the unnoticed noticed, the complex simple and the simple complex. The power of the still photograph forms symbolic structures and make the image a reality.
Here, below is a gallery of 40 stunning real photo postcards captured street scenes at night in the 1960s:
