HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2024-09-13T12:05:13.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Who was Lee Miller? The model-turned-war correspondent who photographed WW2 horrors
items: Fake news: 8 of the most notorious photograph hoaxes, from fairies to UFOs
items: 10 photographs that made history
items: In pictures: erotic postcards of the early 20th century
items: Earth from space: How pioneering photos changed our view of the planet
items: No Man’s Land: Women photographers in the First World War
items: In pictures: The photographs of William Henry Fox Talbot
items: Where did the famous portrait of Che Guevara come from?
items: 5 photographs that (you didn’t know) changed everything
items: In pictures: early Victorian photography

Who was Lee Miller? The model-turned-war correspondent who photographed WW2 horrors
type: item
date: 2024-09-13T09:03:49.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Photography
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: The biopic Lee, starring Kate Winslet, tells the story of the revered war photographer Lee Miller, exploring her unique lens and unyielding pursuit of truth of the human cost of the Second World War. We spoke to the film’s director, Ellen Kuras, about what makes Miller and her work so vital…
encoded: In a career that went from gracing the cover of Vogue to capturing the horrors of war zones and Nazi death camps, Lee Miller is remembered for defying expectations at every turn. Once a model, muse and photographer for the surrealist art movement in France, the American blazed a trail as a fearless war correspondent during the Second World War. She used her camera, and surrealist compositions, to create some of the most striking images of the conflict as well as document some of the 20th century’s most harrowing moments. Now, Miller’s wartime work and staggering photographic archive is the subject of the biopic Lee, starring Kate Winslet in the titular role. We caught up with Ellen Kuras, making her feature directorial debut, to learn more about the real Lee Miller and the challenges of portraying her life on film. Who was Lee Miller? Born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller received an early education in photography from her father, Theodore, who. He taught her the rudiments and used her as a model for his work. In her teens, she developed an interest in theatre – studying lighting, costume and set design in Paris, then joined an experimental theatre group in Vassar College, New York – before she was spotted on the streets of Manhattan as a prospective model. Miller’s big break was due to a near-death experience, when the famed publisher Condé Nast stopped her from being hit by a car. He offered her a job and soon the 19-year-old beauty was on the cover of American and British Vogue. Read more | 10 photographs that made history By 1929, Miller had moved back to Paris, where she became the muse, collaborator and lover of the American surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Her modelling soon gave way to a burgeoning talent behind the camera, and it was in these years that she experimented and cultivated the techniques that would define her later work. Surrealism played a key role in her photography, even as she transitioned from fashion pho…

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Fake news: 8 of the most notorious photograph hoaxes, from fairies to UFOs
type: item
date: 2023-05-09T14:36:27.000Z
creator: Charlotte Hodgman
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Photography
subject: Video shorts
description: A picture tells a thousand words, so they say. But it doesn’t always follow that those words speak the truth. Charlotte Hodgman explores the stories behind some of the most remarkable hoax photographs that have been taken since the advent of the technology in the 19th century
encoded: The Cottingley Fairies, 1917 When cousins Elsie Wright (above) and Frances Griffiths produced photos of themselves seemingly interacting with sprites, gnomes and fairies, they achieved overnight notoriety and sparked widespread debate. The validity of the photographs divided opinion for more than 60 years, until Elsie finally confessed to the Cottingley Fairy hoax, in 1983: the fairies were, in fact, drawings secured in the ground and to branches with hatpins. Read more | The supernatural interests of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Grow your own... giant vegetables, 1911 In what is surely every gardener’s dream, two men struggle to squeeze a giant root vegetable through a cellar door. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages1139684193-0580196-e1682501769526.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="'Will It Go In', 1911: two men try to push a giant vegetable through a cellar door (Photo by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr./Wisconsin Historical Society/Getty Images)" title="'Will It Go In', 1911: two men try to push a giant vegetable through a cellar door (Photo by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr./Wisconsin Historical Society/Getty Images)" /> Despite their jaw-dropping size, these giant veggies were actually the work of photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson, who was known for adding oversized produce to staged photographs to create ‘tall-tale’ postcards that promoted Wisconsin’s agricultural abundance. Spirit photography, c1862–75 In the wake of the American Civil War, ‘spirit photographer’ William H Mumler claimed he could reunite grieving sitters – on camera at least – with their deceased loved ones one last time. It’s unclear exactly how Mumler achieved such ghostly effects but, despite scepticism and accusations of fraud, there were many willing to pay to have their likeness taken with their dearly departed. Read more | The rise of spiritualism after WW1 The ‘Drowned Man’, 1840 In 1840, a bitter feud was playing out between Hippolyte Bayard and…

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10 photographs that made history
type: item
date: 2019-06-05T09:17:12.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Photography
description: We asked 10 leading historians to select what they consider to be some of the most important photographs of all time. From the bombing of Hiroshima to Ali's victory in the ring, here are 10 images that shook the world...
encoded: A lone protest in Tiananmen Square Beijing, 5 June 1989 When this image of a lone protester standing before a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square first appeared on newspaper front pages, its message seemed simple. Here was a powerful regime brutally dealing with protesters, and this was the point at which that regime would, and should, end. Except it didn’t collapse or democratise; instead China became a huge economic superpower, making this image hard to interpret as part of a liberal historical sequence. This photo pulls together the factors that have shaped not just events in 1989, but the whole trajectory of Chinese history: the supremacy of the state; the continuing impact of conflict; and the enduring power of the individual to re-emerge. Rana Mitter is professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Oxford Earthrise Apollo 8, 24 December 1968 Few would argue the importance of this, one of the first images of Earth rising over the Moon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission – the first manned voyage to do a full lunar orbit. The image was soon circulated around the globe, allowing people to see the planet in a way that earlier generations could only have dreamt of. But its significance in our understanding of Earth as more than just somewhere we inhabit was slow to sink in – arguably it is still doing so. Photographing Earth from space was a feat in itself, but its influence on our views of Earth as a living organism that connects us all, is ongoing. OA Westad is professor of international history at LSE Ali floors Liston Maine, 25 May 1965 In the words of Malcolm X: “The revolt of the American negro” was part of “the rebellion against oppression and colonialism” that characterised the postwar world. It’s this rebellion that the image of the 23-year-old Ali, standing exultant over the defeated Sonny Liston during the rematch to retain his world title in May 1965, encapsulates. When Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) first defeated reigning heavyweight champio…

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In pictures: erotic postcards of the early 20th century
type: item
date: 2019-05-12T13:09:25.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Photography
description: By the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of images had become available showing women in varying degrees of undress. Printed with postcard backs, in Britain the trade in these erotic cards was hidden, and they were often sold 'under the counter' in tobacconists, newsagents and bookshops...
encoded: As historian Nigel Sadler reveals, in earlier years the aim of such images was to capture the female form rather than to titillate, and photographers could only produce images of the female nude for use by artists. In Erotic Postcards of the Early Twentieth Century, Sadler explores the changes in social attitudes, fashions and technology through the medium of erotic postcards, and charts the journey from the partly clad to full nude. Writing for History Extra, Sadler summarises the history of erotic postcards, and shares some of the most fascinating images from his book… For centuries, artists have depicted naked females. Therefore, it was not surprising that when photography was introduced, some photographers gravitated to the female nude as their subject matter. The idea was to capture the female form rather than to titillate. However, as the genre progressed images became more risqué: clothing left on but unbuttoned; furniture added to suggest a bedroom; the model interacting with the camera by gazing at it. Bettany Hughes on the symbol of Venus In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome History’s most fascinating muses The authorities wanted to control the production and sale of these images. With daguerreotype images (the first photographic process) in the 1840s and 1850s this was easy, as there were few photographers, and in France photographers had to register with the authorities and could only produce images for use by artists. As photography became easier and cheaper, more studios opened and some, mostly in Paris, started to produce risqué postcards. At this point the authorities lost control. The heyday of the erotic postcard was between the 1890s and the 1930s, but in this instance the term ‘postcard’ is a misnomer: even though many were printed with a postcard back, they were intended to be collected rather than sent. The postcard size made it easier to hide and sell the cards ‘under the counter’. For studios the priority became maxi…

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Earth from space: How pioneering photos changed our view of the planet
type: item
date: 2018-02-19T11:39:52.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Photography
subject: Space
description: It’s over two millennia since Greek philosophers proposed that the Earth is round – but just 50 years since the first photos showing the whole planet were taken. Christopher Potter explores the history and impact of the first images of Earth from space
encoded: In 1948, the British physicist Fred Hoyle wrote that “once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose”. For millennia, human beings could only imagine what the Earth might look like seen from the viewpoint of the heavens. Some ancient Greek philosophers had suspected that the Earth was probably a sphere. Plato even thought that the Earth might be a brightly coloured sphere – but, being Plato, he had in mind a Platonic ideal of the Earth rather than the Earth itself. By the second century AD, the astronomer Ptolemy knew from scientific considerations – by observation and measurement – that the Earth is, indeed, round. But knowing is not the same as seeing. Where was the visual evidence? From the late 18th century, hot-air balloonists first saw the Earth from a perspective that was not part of the Earth itself – not from the top of a mountain or a cathedral spire, but from the perspective of another medium. And in 1935, as part of an expedition sponsored by the National Geographic Society, Captains Albert Stephens and Orvil Anderson of the US Army Air Corps ascended in a gondola attached to a helium-filled balloon named Explorer II, reaching a record-breaking altitude of 13.7 miles (22km) – higher than any commercial jet aeroplane is permitted to fly even today. As the craft sailed high above South Dakota, a photograph taken from the balloon gondola captured a panorama stretching 330 miles (530km), revealing the curvature of the Earth for the first time. At last, here was visual rather than merely intellectual proof that we live on a vast sphere. To see more of the Earth’s curving horizon, though, pictures would have to be taken from a higher vantage point. And to rise higher would require not balloons or even planes but rockets. Back down to Earth: the legacy of the 1969 moon landing The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the Moon At the end of the Second World War, Amer…

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No Man’s Land: Women photographers in the First World War
type: item
date: 2017-11-09T10:25:36.000Z
subject: First World War
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Exhibitions
subject: Photography
description: A new exhibition exploring female perspectives on the First World War has opened at Impressions Gallery in Bradford, featuring images taken by women working on the frontline, as well as contemporary artists directly inspired by the conflict. We talked to Dr Pippa Oldfield, curator of the exhibition, to find out more… Please note this article contains images of a sensitive nature
encoded: Irene ‘Winkie’ Gartside-Spaight in no man’s land. Photograph by Mairi Chisholm, c1916. (The National Library of Scotland) Q. What was the inspiration for the exhibition? A. We wanted to commemorate the centenary of the First World War at Impressions Gallery, but take a different angle. We decided to look at women’s experiences of the First World War through their photography. There has been quite a lot of focus recently on women’s roles in the first world war, but their contribution to war photography seems to have been ignored in favour of photos made by men. As a curator, what I was interested in doing was finding out what kind of pictures women took and how their use of photography would express their own experiences and perspective. That was the question that kicked off the project. Q. What do these photographs tell us about women’s experiences? A. Women couldn’t join the armed forces as soldiers during the First World War, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get involved in other ways. While many women worked on the home front, others volunteered for overseas positions. The women in our exhibition – Mairi Chisholm, Florence Farmborough and Olive Edis – were all working overseas during the war and taking photographs coming from different angles. Mairi Chisolm is a particularly interesting case study. She was this intrepid ambulance driver who volunteered to join the Flying Ambulance Corps when she was 18-years-old. She then went with her friend Elsie Knocker to set up a first aid post in Belgium just yards away from the trenches, and she used a snapshot camera to take photographs of the kind of things she was seeing and experiencing. Some of her images are horrific – particularly those depicting dead soldiers and no man’s land – but they also depict plenty of fun moments too. There are quite a few photographs that she took that show Elsie joking around with the Belgian soldiers. Her images show how people can make the best of difficult and traumatic circumstances…

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In pictures: The photographs of William Henry Fox Talbot
type: item
date: 2017-02-20T09:00:10.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Photography
description: More than 1,000 early Victorian photographic images captured by William Henry Fox Talbot, the British ‘father of photography’, have been made available to the public in a new catalogue from Bodleian Libraries…
encoded: William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) created some of the first photographs ever made and is regarded as the British ‘father of photography’. He also recognised that negatives, with their ability to make multiple prints on paper, would define the central path of photography right through to the digital age. During his career, Talbot and his collaborators created more than 4,500 unique or distinct images; approximately 25,000 of his original negatives and multiple prints from them are known to survive worldwide and are held across a range of international institutions and private collections. Now, the Bodleian Libraries have launched a web-based resource that brings together the complete works of the British photographic pioneer. Currently featuring over 1,000 early Victorian photographic images, the catalogue will grow to 25,000 images by 2018. Here are some highlights… The Open Door, [wide shadow], April 1844 This is one of Talbot’s most iconic and instantly recognisable images, taken at his home Lacock Abbey in April 1844, after many months spent perfecting his technique and the layout of the scene. It was given its title by Talbot's mother, Lady Elisabeth Feilding, who was actively interested in her son’s photographic endeavours. (National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library) Articles of Glass [on three shelves], June 1844 This is another of Talbot’s most famous photographs, featuring glassware placed on three shelves which were set up outside. Photographing glass gave Talbot the opportunity to experiment with light and reflection. The glassware depicted in this photograph is held by the Bodleian Libraries - part of the recently-acquired personal archive of Talbot. (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) The Fruit Sellers, probably 9 September 1845, Lacock Abbey This posed shot shows Talbot bringing together family, servants and collaborators to make a tableau scene called ‘The Fruit Sellers'. It was taken in the grounds of Lacock Abbey and required …

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Where did the famous portrait of Che Guevara come from?
type: item
date: 2015-08-21T12:16:10.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Communism
subject: Photography
description: On 5 March 1960, the revolutionary Che Guevara was attending a memorial ceremony for 136 people killed in an explosion in Havana harbour the day before
encoded: The French freighter, La Coubre, was carrying munitions from Belgium to Cuba – where the Argentina-born Guevara had been instrumental in putting Fidel Castro in power a year earlier – when it exploded. Castro was quick to blame the Americans in his speech given at the service. Che Guevara: face of the revolution How should history remember Fidel Castro? The photographer Alberto Korda was there, trying to get a snap of all the notable people milling about. Guevara, who was keeping a low profile, had been obscured by other men around him, but suddenly, a gap appeared and Korda was able to get a couple of quick-fire photos. No one appreciated the image at the time – it certainly didn’t immediately strike anyone as iconic or particularly impressive. Korda liked it, however, and put it up in his home. Birth of an iconic image The photo wasn’t even published abroad until August 1967, when Che Guevara’s last revolutionary message “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams” was broadcast as he fought in Bolivia. Two months later, Guevara was shot by Bolivian high command. This solidified his legacy as a revolutionary martyr. So when leftist Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, visited Korda, he was drawn to this previously unseen photo and bought a print. Back in Europe, he started circulating the image of Guevara. Its fame spread, becoming known as Guerrillero Heroico or The Heroic Guerrilla Fighter. The Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick was inspired to develop it into a high contrast drawing. Thus the iconic image we know today was born. Fitzpatrick told the BBC he was “Determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation” so that Guevara’s name will “never die”. It is perhaps ironic that one of the most commercialised capitalist images is of a man who fought bitterly against capitalism, and hated all it stood for. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine

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5 photographs that (you didn’t know) changed everything
type: item
date: 2015-02-20T08:00:49.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Photography
description: Five seemingly ordinary photographs that transformed the world as we know it…
encoded: In BBC Radio 3's February 2015 show The Essay: The Five Photographs That (You Didn’t Know) Changed Everything, experts in photographic history revealed the significance of five images dating from the 19th century – from an 1866 photo of a butcher taken in Australia that reformed British law, to an aerial image that changed the spaces we live in. Here, writing for History Extra, five experts explore the little-known photographs that transformed the fields of medicine, architecture, astronomy, law and cultural history. Anna Bertha’s hand by Kelley Wilder, De Montfort University X-ray images have become so much a feature of our daily lives that we don’t really think of them as photographs. And there is one that changed everything, revolutionising the way we practise medicine, archaeology and astronomy. And when the first X-ray was produced, it was shocking and quite unfathomable. Step into the shoes of Anna Bertha Röntgen, the first X-ray subject: in her husband’s university laboratory she placed her hand between covered tube and a paper-wrapped photographic glass plate. Little did she know it was about to become the most famous hand in physics. Conrad Wilhelm Röntgen took the X-ray photograph of Anna’s hand on 22 December 1895. Instead of the blacks and whites of modern X-rays, the skeleton is picked out in browns, but it clearly shows how the rays penetrate the soft tissue to show the bones. Until the X-ray came along, doctors could only see what was going on inside their patients by taking the drastic step of cutting them open. X-ray promised to change all that. Less than a year after Dr John Macintyre had verified Röntgen’s findings he opened an X-ray unit at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary – the first of what we today call the ‘radiology department’. But the real excitement around the announcement of X-ray photography was around the striptease and titillation it appeared to promise. Newspapers railed against the revolting indecency of the X-ray. Humorous poems were writ…

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In pictures: early Victorian photography
type: item
date: 2015-02-02T06:30:59.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Photography
description: An exhibition exploring one of the earliest forms of paper photography – salt prints – opens at Tate Britain this month, with some 90 rare examples on show. Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the mid-19th century, the salt print technique involved soaking paper in silver iodide salts to register a negative image that, when photographed again, created permanent paper positives. The works displayed are among the few salt prints that survive.
encoded: Cantinière [woman attached to a military regiment], by Roger Fenton, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography Base of the Obelisk, by James Robertson, c1854 © Wilson Centre for Photography Mother and Son, by Jean-Baptiste Frenet, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography Fruit Seller, by George Kendall Warren, 1860 © Wilson Centre for Photography The Fruitsellers, by Calvert Jones, 1843 © Wilson Centre for Photography Elizabeth Rigby, later Lady Eastlake, with Cupid Statuette, by Hill & Adamson, c1845 © Wilson Centre for Photography Newhaven fishermen, by Hill and Adamson, 1844 © Wilson Centre for Photography William Morton, One of Dr. Kanes’s Men, by John S. Johnston, c1857 © Wilson Centre for Photography Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840–1860 is on show at Tate Britain, London from 25 February–7 June 2015. Find out more at www.tate.org.uk

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