A School in Afghanistan

In the New York Times July 18, Op-Ed columnist Thomas Friedman has written about his presence at the opening by Greg Mortenson of a new school in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. The title is "Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No." Here is the link. The school will educate both girls and boys.

The need for women’s education in Afghanistan is demonstrated by infant and maternal death rates. In the New York Times July 28 it is reported: “Afghanistan has the world’s second-highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth (only Sierra Leone’s is worse). For every 100,000 births, 1,600 mothers die; in wealthy countries the rates range from 1 to 12. In one remote northeastern province, Badakhshan, 6,507 mothers die for every 100,000 births, according to a 2005 report in the medical journal Lancet. In all, 26,000 Afghan women a year die while pregnant or giving birth."
The article continues: “The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.” Girls education is an essential component for change.

Pashtoon Azfar, advocate for change and president of the Afghan Midwives Association.







For recent mortality and education satistics, and maps of ethnic and cultural divisions see this BBC link.

Reviews plus Catching Up with Greg Mortenson

This month brought two encouraging reviews of Himalayan Portfolios, Journeys of the Imagination. One was in the latest issue of Appalachia (2009, Vol LX No. 2, p153; Summer/Fall issue). The review by Malcolm Meldahl in the “Books of Note” section outlines the five portfolios. He then adds “No less a part of the book is the ambitious essay on the history of Western engagement with the Himalaya.” He comments on the composition of the photographs and notes that the strength of the large format approach is that it makes each photograph a deliberate act. The Karakoram portfolio is chosen for further comment: “The most otherworldly image among many is the distant view of K2 over a snow saddle at dawn on page 29.” The review concludes:
“Each portfolio is a marvel. This is a book to pore over and to engage intellectually. This is indeed a pilgrimage that Kenneth Hanson has put into our hands.”
(for more see the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)

Appalachia is published by the Appalachian Mountain Club: “America’s longest running Journal of Mountaineering and Conservation”. In addition to these topics, Appalachia contains articles on AMC history, poetry, ecosystem preservation, Accidents and Books of Note. The present issue includes the regular Alpina section describing mountaineering in the Himalayas and elsewhere by Jeffery Parrette. His articles are always rewarding. I found his essay 100 Years of Life and Death in High Places, that appeared in the 2000 (LIII#1) issue, and another on 50 Years of Climbing Everest (2004, LV#1) extremely valuable when I was writing my book. The current issue also contains a fascinating interview with Rick Wilcox, Himalayan climber and mountain guide (he is based in Conway, New Hampshire). The year of his Everest climb, 1991, was a year after I had taken a course with Mark Chauvin his associate in the International Mountain Climbing School. We made a midwinter ascent of the headwall of Tuckerman's Ravine and camped beneath a full moon near Lake of the Clouds. It was remarkable cold and incredibly still. Other articles in the issue bring back memories, such as the crossing of the Punta Union Pass in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru.

The other review is in BiblioBuffet, an on-line literary journal: Writing worth reading. Reading worth writing about. The editor, Lauren Roberts, received Himalayan Portfolios as a judge for the Benjamin Franklin Awards (see June 2 blog below) and decided to write about it in her column. She refers to its glorious black –and-white photography, explains the portfolio divisions and illustrates the conjunction of people and mountains by discussing the photograph of Namche Bazaar. This Sherpa center, elevation about 11,300ft, and shown on page 103 of the book is perched in a hanging bowl on the mountain side above the Bhote Kosi.

"More than a fine art photography book, Himalayan Portfolios aims to educate the Himalayan admirer about the mountains, the culture and religion, the people, the impact of the world coming to its doors, the importance of photography in discovering the Himalayan story, and much more. …It is also a tribute to something ultimately unexplainable, something beyond the ken of human attributes."
(for more see the on line article or the Book Reviews section of my Web Page.)


Finally: Catching up with Greg:



Kenneth Hanson and Greg Mortenson at BookExpo America, New York, May 2009 (Greg wrote the Foreword to Himalayan Portfolios and is the co-author of the international best seller Three Cups of Tea.)

Ben Franklin (Act 2)

Benjamin Franklin meets “Britain’s Got Talent”

See April 24 Blog. On arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel Ballroom on Thursday last we encountered the book display for the Benjamin Franklin Awards and realized that we were in a serious horse race. The significant contender was Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition — color photos of different parks and seashores, historical essays and linkages to various conservation groups. Delux slip cover. It was no great surprise when, cheered by a slap up buffet and fortified by wine, we heard the golden award in the ‘Coffee Table Book’ category go to Wildlands.

Instead Himalayan Portfolios achived silver status. A little sad, but then came Saturday — Susan Boyle lost out to an agile dance troupe on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Like her, we sing "I Dreamed a Dream" at full force and enjoy the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing that everywhere there is sympathy, and gee, an award is an award.

Finalists 2009 Benjamin Franklin Awards, Roosevelt Hotel, New York, May 28.

Question Time

The photograph documents the question time after my talk on The Making of Himalayan Portfolios at the Large Format meeting in Springfield MA on March 29 (see blog, March 9; photo by Marie Curtis). An account of this event, together with the above picture, is contained in the March/April issue of VIEW CAMERA (p 57). In the talk I recounted the evolution of my book from a gallery exhibit through the design process and essay writing to the epic struggle to achieve the best possible duotone printing.

The slide seen as a wall projection to the left in the photograph was added as a grace note. The original photograph, seen by me last year, is in the Darjeeling Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (founded by By Tenzing Norgay). It shows Oliver Wheeler, age 31, together with his two Tibetan assistants, on the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. He was seconded to the expedition as a photographer and surveyor by the Survey of India because of his experience with photo-surveying. The caption says that he is posed with a plate camera. That would be consistent with the idea that the camera was for survey use. In the course of his map making Wheeler discovered the East Rongbuck Glacier. Mallory’s climbing group had hiked right past the junction. Later Wheeler became Surveyor General of India.

One question remains: how did the picture captions in VIEW CAMERA get switched!

NOMINATION

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD NOMINATION

Once a year the Independent Book Publishers Association holds a festive jamboree in New York just ahead of the opening of Book Expo America. On that occasion they wrap themselves in the mantle of Benjamin Franklin, who is well know to have enjoyed gala occasions in England, France and America. He was an independent printer and publisher and, undoubtedly, would have qualified as a member had he applied. Therefore, in his name they hand out AWARDS to publishers for the “BEST BOOKS,” as judged by top designers and editors. Lo and behold, Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination (Fields Publishing), to which this blog is devoted, is one of three nominees in the category: Coffee Table Books / Large Format.

Ben Franklin was no stranger to awards. In 1753 he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society for his work on electricity – including the invention of the lightening conductor. In 2006 Fields Publishing received a Benjamin Franklin Award for their Ann Packard book. Gail and Charles Fields, designer and editor, and pre-press expert Glen Bassett, are anxiously awaiting May 28, the date of the gala. Will lightening strike twice?


Stay tuned for more information.

Darwin, Fox Talbot, The View Camera

JUVAT IRE JUGIS QUA NULLA PRIORUM CASTALIAM MOLLI DEVERTITUR ORBITA CLIVO

There are times when some piece of historical information fits exactly in place and locks in an argument already made. This occurred last week when I visited for a second time the exhibit Endless Forms: Charles Darwin and the Visual Arts at the Yale Center for British Art (the show runs until May 3.)

The pictures that caught my attention on the first trip were the watercolors by Joseph Dalton Hooker from his botanical and geological trip to Sikkim and Nepal in 1848-9. You will find a photograph of a rock formation that Hooker described in his Himalayan Journals on page 122 of my book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination. I called it “Hooker’s Obelisk.”

But on my second trip to Endless Forms I noticed a rather small photograph labeled The Geologist by William Henry Fox Talbot (dated ca.1843, salt print from a paper 'calotype' negative.) In the inset I have cropped off a woman with a bonnet to the left (his mother?) The shadow of the walking stick implies that the exposure was relatively short. This picture was made at the point when Talbot’s ten years of research had created photography as we know it. The astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel had just recently suggested to Talbot that hypo would be a better fixing agent for dissolving unchanged silver chloride in nergatives and prints than alkaline potassium nitrate. The reducing agent Gallic acid had been introduced in order to convert silver chloride to silver (i.e. develop the latent image) in exposed paper negatives or prints. The camera obscura had become the view camera. All this progress was drawn together in the first photographic book The Pencil of Nature published in sections in 1844-46. Direct contact prints of leaves and other objects on silver nitrate imprgnated paper were probably made some decades earler by the circle that included the Wedgewoods and Sir Humphry Davy, but examples are lacking (see recent dispute.)

Those of you have read the essay in my book will realize that I have been intrigued by the linkage between Himalayan photographers and geology. In the essay I discussed the influence of John Ruskin (you will find a painting by Ruskin of a rock formation in the Endless Forms exhibit.) Ruskin’s Modern Painters appeared between 1843 and 1864, so Fox Talbot was not following Ruskin. Almost certainly he was responding to the publication of Charles Lyall’s Principles of Geology (1830-32) that appeared just in time for Darwin to take with him in the Beagle a copy of the first volume. It is also the point at which Fox Talbot began to explore the photographic idea. Lyall’s bombshell was that he made the case in popular form for James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1785). Hutton argued that the landscape we see had been formed by great forces of erosion, eruption and movement over vast periods of time. Fox Talbot’s photograph not only points to the existence of “deep time” but it has a second connection with “deep space”. Sir William Herschel had been interested on hypo because he wanted to use a telescope to obtain silver images of stars that could be assayed to measure relative star magnitudes. Ruskin's painting is about experience -- the quidity of rocks. Talbot's phtograph is about the process of interpreting the rocks.

What about the above Latin quotation? it appears on the title page of The Pencil of Nature. A little poking around on the Internet established that it is from Book III of Virgil’s Georgics. Fox Talbot studied Classics and Mathematics at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge (alongside exercising his scientific curiosity). He published in both areas. Virgil was part of the basic training in the classics, so the quote implies a context that a reader would be expected to fill in. The poem is concerned about Nature, including horses, oxen and goats, hence it fits well with the title of the book. But the specific reference is to Mount Parnassus, a mountain of barren limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi. Parnassus is dedicated to Apollo and is the home of the muses. The expanded quotation and a poetic translation are as follows:

sed me Parnasi deserta per ardua dulcis
raptat amor; iuvat ire iugis, qua nulla priorum
Castaliam molli devertitur orbita clivo.

But I am caught by ardent sweet ravishing desire
Above the bleak Parnassian steep; I love
To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track
Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring.

Fox Talbot was the first to walk the heights.
He made his own track.

COLLECTIVE ACTIVITIES

Valley Photo Center
Second floor of Tower Square
1500 Main St Springfield, MA 01115

Meeting sponsored by the
New England Large Format Photography Collective (NELFPC)
Sunday March 29th
1:00 pm:
Kenneth Hanson (this blogger) will be giving a talk on the making of his book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination. He will discuss both the development of the project and the mechanics of the process (as outlined in his January 5 blog).

3:00 pm:
Paul Turnbull, Executive Director of the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography in Turners Falls, MA will present a talk on how to successfully prepare and present work to galleries and museums.

Downtown Springfield, MA, is very quiet on a Sunday afternoon and there should be no problem parking in the street near the Tower Square building.

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Avenue - New Haven, CT 203-389-9555

Meeting of the Photo Arts Collective of New Haven
Thursday April 2
7:00 pm:
This blogger will jump right back up again and, having learned by experience, will give an improved version of the Springfield talk listed above. Those who attended the first talk will have had time to think up really difficult questions. They will be able to expose the confusion in his thinking. It should be an interesting evening. All welcome. No camera necessary, just curiosity.

There is a parking lot behind the gallery. Entry just beyond the gallery.