6 articles in this selection

2010/08/11

In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world. As an idealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome process, the world's first user-friendly, true-colour photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace and understanding. Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war and the march of twentieth-century globalisation. They documented in true colour the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires; the last traditional Celtic villages in Ireland, just a few years before they were demolished; and the soldiers of the First World War — in the trenches, and as they cooked their meals and laundered their uniforms behind the...

2010/07/26

Her sinking with the loss of almost 1,200 lives caused such outrage that it propelled the U.S. into the First World War. But now divers have revealed a dark secret about the cargo carried by the Lusitania on its final journey in May 1915. Munitions they found in the hold suggest that the Germans had been right all along in claiming the ship was carrying war materials and was a legitimate military target....

2010/04/18

2010/02/07

Within that imposing spectrum, the technology of the early 20th century continued developing, pulling a weary world’s population into one of the most robust rebuilding periods in human history.In the arts, photography, specifically, was of major significance due to its way of attaching technological development to the way we looked at and regarded ourselves as a people.Photography became a new and important means of visual language, establishing itself as the most democratic of communication forms. The outbreak of World War I and its inherent violence engendered a new commitment by the world's photographers to document every aspect of the fighting, ending an era of In A Patriotic Mole, A Living Photograph, Louis Kaplan, of Southern Illinois University, writes, “The so-called living photographs and living insignia of Arthur Mole [and John Thomas] are photo-literal attempts to recover the old image of national identity at the very moment when the United States entered the Great War i...

2010/02/07

Big collection of Razzle Dazzle ship camouflage from the First World War.

2010/02/07

British Artist and naval officer Norman Wilkinson pioneered the Dazzle Camouflage movement (known as Razzle Dazzle in the United States). Norman used bright, loud colours and contrasting diagonal stripes to make it incredibly difficult to gauge a ship’s size and direction. It was cheap, effective, and widely-adopted during World War 1. Check out the incredible photographs....