Behind the Scenes Minis: Photography Innovators

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio, Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We finally talked about Louis de Geer this time did a little Overdoe. I feel yeah, particularly considering how much he really has changed our world. Would someone else have done that? Eventually, probably he gets the credit. Um, there was so much I had no idea about regarding his life story. Yeah, I knew nothing. I mean, I absolutely zero. It was so fun to research him. I certainly did not know that he was the party boy of Paris and seemed like the most fun person to I would love to hang out with that person. Um. I didn't really think about the fact that he was living at the time when the French Revolution began. I had not quite connected those dots. If you had asked me, woken me from a dead sleep and said, Holly, when was the gear alive, I'd be like, right after the French Revolution started or something like later, like a decade or two later. I just didn't Time is more compressed than we think Historically, that happens all the time, But this was one where I was like whoa. Yeah, his parents really loved Louis the sixteenth and Rantoinette. That is wild. Um, I marvel at his creativity, Yeah, marvel at it. Literally, all the stuff about the diorama really reminded me of when we were in Paris, and as one of like our it was not it was not what a thing that the group did. We had some solo time in Paris, um, and I went to the Van Go exhibition where the it's all projected up on the walls and you feel like you're sort of inside the painting, and so the descriptions of the diorama really reminded me of that, And honestly that exhibition was one of my very favorite things we did the whole time we were in Paris. So I understand, I think, uh, why people found it so appealing to Yeah, we um, we did that exhibition when it was here in Atlanta. Did you do the VR part of it? No, I can't do VR. I wasn't sure. Um, that was my favorite part of the whole thing. But I have a rabid love of VR soum, and thankfully my body cooperates with me in their mind does the opposite. Yes, I recall being on some amusement park rides, so we're a little troubling for it was very bad. I think there was I remember being in Iceland. There's a whale museum in Iceland, and I feel like there was a thing where you could put the headset on and you could look around and see whales, and I feel like that went okay, But a lot of what you were looking at was like empty ocean. You weren't surrounded by a lot of stuff, so it was not quite as there wasn't quite as much disconnect, that tiny little disconnect between what you're seeing and what how you're moving. Right, there's also just that thing where it is. VR is a lot like when you first put on a headset, unless it is something very very placid, like huge vast piece of ocean with whales, and even if it tracks pretty perfectly in terms of movement to visualization, your brain is still aware that like, okay, that looks far away, but it's also right up against my face, like there's a whole thing there that Sometimes I've never gotten um you know, nauseated or dizzy from it. But I have those moments where I'm like, oh, I almost feel a little like I would like to sit down for this experience for a minute. But I love it very much. Uh. Here is my confession. I have been spelling de garottype wrong for my entire life. My entire entire life. There's an E in there that I have not been including in it. It sure does exist. Well. I don't know how many times in my life I've had to write out the word garattype, but I had to write it at least two times when sending an email to you, and both times I had left out that E and couldn't figure out what I had done wrong and just had to write click on it and have Outlook tell me how to fix. Yeah, I am. I'm oddly reassured that you have had the same problem. It's just an extra vowel that doesn't seem like we need it. Yeah, I understand that goes there. UM. One of the things that's also very interesting in talking about the Gear, and particularly the end when he was monetizing this invention, uh, is the shifting way that he is characterized with regard to Nieps's family and particularly his son, because some are like, well to Gear just put his name on everything, and like he ran the show in terms of making all the deals, and others are like, yeah, but he didn't leave them out. He still cut them a deal where they would make money off of it forever at a time when their family really needed the money. And I we have so little information about his inner life and the way he thought about things and the way he was processing that it is all left up to interpretation. So it's very fascinating to watch how different people perceive his behavior. Yeah. Well, and I totally understand being hurt. That's something your father worked on and then your father died, like was then named after the other person with with no mention of your father, Like, I get that totally. Um. But then we talked about like multiple pieces of it that really were to Gear's work. It seems like the two of them were really necessary to have it happen. Yes, Like I can see multiple sides to it, Yes, And I think that is why, like you'll read different, different ones, different you know, kind of characterizations from Louis de Gear. There are only a few pictures of Louis de Gear taken by other people. Will talk in that upcoming episode about about portraiture and how that kind of came to be, But it is very interesting. He looks like a sweet little dude, because of course he was in his sixties by the time those pictures are being taken in a lot of cases late fifties, so um. But yeah, it's a I really We always talk about what somebody who invented a thing historically would think of the world today, and I just can only imagine the VR level meltdown he might have walking down the street and watching people just take pictures of themselves cavalierly over and over, be like, what is what's happening? Well? And and when I was getting a Deguara type of him to send to you in the email where I couldn't spell de garat type, I got really confused because it you know that it lists the subject, it also lists who took the picture. And for some reason in my head it was definitely going to be a self portrait. It did not because I had not read our forthcoming episode yet we're going to talk more about self portrait. I just sort of assumed that the Garrett took a Degara type of himself. At some point he seemed to have no interest in taking his own picture, which is probably indicative of that slight shyness that gets mentioned sometimes. Sure. Uh, and like the fact that he didn't want to give the presentation. I really believe he was like, oh my tummy and ran away, like I don't. I have to suspect even if he did feel unwell, I think it was probably nervousness rather than than actually having some malady. But that's again purely speculative. But I I really loved researching this one because we just I invoke his name so often in our work and outside of it, and yet I didn't know very much about him, so it was pretty delightful. We finally talked about history's most handsome photographer, Robert cornelie Is this week. He's been on my list for a while. Yeah, because that picture of him does pop up pretty frequently. And again we said it in the episode, he doesn't very handsome. Um, but I did not mention it in the episode because I thought it would be funnier here. There is another portrait that he took of himself that you can find online. It's not nearly so handsome. It's like he just kind of looks like I'm not I don't want to judge anybody's appearance, but he's very striking in the first one, and then the next one he just kind of looks like a nice nerdy dude like dad. Well, just for me personally, the first one is enhanced a lot by having like a demeanor that really just does seem like Mr Darcy comes out of the mist like that. It is so Jane Austen evocative. It's not even funny. It's like, you know, it's it's from a little a little later than she actually lived and wrote, but still, uh, it really conveys that tone to me. Yes, I actually had originally written of it in the outline is saying it looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel. And then I was like, I'm a little worried people will think I'm saying that that was the same time, and I didn't that. I didn't write a way around it. And I just was like, like a romance novel for you, that's great, that's great. Um, yeah, it's it's really interesting. I also love how if you sift through papers of the day talking about his studio, it seems like everyone was so worried that it was scary to sit still and have your picture taken. Because it is also very reassured, like You're gonna be fine, It's fine, And I just think of all of the things like that people do in their day to day lives. Even then, that would have been much more, i don't know, difficult, harrowing, stressful than just sitting quietly for a few minutes. And I say that as a prof senal wiggler, I cannot keep still very long at all. But I don't think I would have found it frightening, although it would have been totally new. So maybe it's like when we were talking about the snowflake pictures and and how sometimes he would exhale and it would cause all of his work to melt. It's the same kind of thing, like like if when when I'm getting a mammogram and the text says stop breathing, I immediately just want to breathe so bad. And if I got to sit there in a portrait chair and not move at all, I'm probably going to be like, now, my nose itches the most it has ever itched in my life. Oh yeah, that's definitely true. Although if I'm in a situation where I have to um breathe a little or as shallowly as possible, I have a whole counting thing I do in my head that helps, But I do initially have that old gracious everything itches. I'm somebody, Oh no, I can't, Everything's gonna misfire. I think I have restless leg syndrome. Right this get like I just I understand completely. My workaround has been to learn to count my breath on the inhalein exhale, which works great for me. I really really love, obviously, because I have talked about it a lot lately. Um, the art of photography, and one thing that working on these two episodes kind of in tandem made clear to me. And it's obvious, but like how fundamentally important photography is to our everyday lives in ways we don't even think about. Like everybody likes to point out, like, oh, Robert Bernelia has invented the selfie, and it's like yes, but like do you understand, Like you're take moving pictures out of the equation, take television out, take film out, et cetera. So much of our lives is dependent on being able to take and look at pictures, whether that's online, whether that is a reference material in a book, whether that is you know, if you want to buy a house, you usually want to see pictures of it before you even step foot in it. Like so much of what we do every single day is about captured images. That I just had that moment where I was kind of blown away by the progression and then in a microcosmic sense, by how quickly people started to innovate. Yeah, in eighteen thirty nine, like in that one year where it was like, this is our gift to the world that people weren't really because I just improved it yesterday, like it was like flipping a little card, and like a week later it was a different thing entirely, um, which to me is just mind blowing. I love it. I love it. Thank you all of you photography people that developed all of these processes, because I love photographs and I used them all the time, right, I take pictures of recipes and cookbooks so I can go to the store and have the list of that having to write all of the ingredients on a separate piece of paper. Simple stuff like that. That is you know, at the heart traces all the way back to to gear and people like Cornelius who were hastening the way that all worked and the digital age would blow their minds. As I've gotten older, sometimes when I need to read tiny, tiny type on like a medicine bottle or something, I'll take a picture of it on my phone and zoom right in. Oh. Yes, all the time, all the time. So I hope uhone does not mind me waxing rhapsodic about how amazing all of this is, because it's, like I said, it's part of every single, every single day of my life. Certainly, I'm sure there are people that don't look at imagery all the time. I think it might be difficult to locate them, but I'm sure they're out there. But I think for most of us the opposite is true. We're always always engaged with the visual medium, and particularly photography. Game changer did to gear have any idea. No, I do not think he thought it was great and cool. But I don't know that he went to his grave going, you know what, I changed the world? Doubt it. Doubt it. With that in mind, we hope that you have a fabulous weekend, whether you're trying to change the world or not. If you have time off, I hope it is smooth this silk, and that it is RESTful and fun. And if you don't. I'm so sorry, but I hope everything goes also smooth the silk and is maybe even fun, and that everyone is a delight to you and no one is a crab. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic, and then Monday there will be a new episode and a new topic and we'll go through all of this again. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.