Backtrack

I KNOW I said last week that some things were better in black and white, but sometimes you need a colour photograph to really get the full impact of the message.  In this case - early photography and national dress.

How many of you have seen black and white pictures of your great-grandparents?  Don't you wish you could see what their favourite colours were?

Ireland

Sometimes you don't appreciate how powerful red is until it smacks you in the face.  Metaphorically.

This picture was taken in the rural west of Ireland in 1913 and was probably one of the first colour photographs ever taken in Ireland.  It is part of the Albert Kahn Archive, just one of over 72,000 colour photographs commissioned in the first three decades of the 20th century in an effort to document all aspects of society and culture.  If you don't know much about Kahn and would like to know more, there was a BBC documentary tv series called The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn, which is well worth tracking down and watching.  There is also a book of the same name.

Here are some more photographs.

West of Ireland

China

Japan

Amazing still life

Macedonia

African colonial soldiers circa WW1

The Clothes On Their Backs

Riccardo Tisci's Givenchy couture offerings this season were all about Asian influence. It's little wonder, because Asia and all the rich facets of it's culture are slowly permeating Western consciousness. Asia also has a major commercial influence, what with Prada joining the ever-increasing ranks of companies choosing to list in Hong Kong as opposed to their home markets.

This collection draws on a LOT of Asian influences (butoh, Kazuo Ohno, anime, embroidery, cranes, dragons... the list goes on) but I'm really interested in (as far as my incredibly amateurish, untrained eyes can see) the samurai and origami influences.

Japanese samurai circa 1870

When you go on websites that feature this collection and the insano, day-glo Philip Treacy headgear, the comments section is inevitably clogged with cries of 'VIKING!' - you can really see the influence of the samurai helmets.  Irrelevant note alert - One of my favourite places to go in the V&A Museum in London is the Japanese section to look at all the samurai uniform.  It's all so intricate and well crafted.  Every aspect of the samurai uniform is carefully considered; every colour, every fold, every image has a cultural or practical significance.  Perhaps it's this attention to detail that aligns it so well with Givenchy.

Samurai circa 1880

You can really see the samurai and origami influences in the sharpness and angularity of the shoulders.  The pink motif above looks like it could be a representation of a samurai helmet (or a backpack in the shape of a bug if you think about it in a Rorschach kinda way).  I love the pristine whiteness of this dress.  It's like a fresh piece of paper begging to be folded into all sorts of magical shapes.

Origami samurai helmets

The headgear made so much more sense when I saw these mini samurai helmets made out of paper.  I know that it's supposed to be based on robots... but I like thinking it's an origami samurai helmet.  Let me have my wrongfooted delusion, ok?  Here is a link if you want to make a tiny samurai helmet and wear it on your finger.

I'm not very good at conclusions, so let me just say that the Givenchy collection is beautiful and batshit crazy.  Just the way I like it.

Prokudin-Gorskii - Pioneering photographer

Where do I start...

Sergei Prokudin Gorskii was a photographer and chemist who invented a method of developing colour photographs that resulted in an unusual vividness and clear colours. The photos below don't look so remarkable by mordern terms,but when you find out that they were all taken before 1915, your opinion might change.

The photographic process was extremely long and involved taking three photgraphs in quick succession under yellow, red and blue filters, and then combining the negatives onto one glass plate, which resulted in amazingly clear colours, but often slightly fuzzy outlines and double (or even triple) exposures if the subject sneezed or was an especially fidgety child.

Prokudin-Gorskii used these techniques to take a photograph of Tolstoy, which became very famous. Off the back of that, he was commissioned by Tsar Nicolas II to document pretty much everything that Russia had to offer, including ethnic and peasant costumes, art, architecture and religious paraphenalia. The result is a remarkable document of Pre-Revolution Russia (and you can see all 2606 slides online on the National Library of Congress website - possibly one of the best ways to while away a rainy day)  in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR! Fanfare please...










Loads more photos after the jump.