28 November 2011

Restoration of Notre Dame

A photo by Henri Roger-Viollet (1869-1946)
Born in a distinguished Paris family, he belonged together with his elder brother Ernest Roger among the age’s most prominent and prolific inventors... But photography was also among his many passions. Experimenting from the 1890s, he invented a number of procedures of trick photography, and until his death he tirelessly documented the life of Paris...
From a gallery of several dozen of his photos assembled at Poemas del rio Wang, from which I can't resist including this famous photo of a braking misadventure at Gare Montparnasse (1895):

4 comments:

  1. The train wreck shown is mimicked in Martin Scorsese's movie, "Hugo." Never knew that it was linked to a photograph...until today. I saw the movie yesterday.

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  2. More re the crash here -

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gare_Montparnasse#1895_derailment

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  3. My wife's hand surgeon (before he moved to a different office) had a patient room which had a 4'x6' photo of ironworkers sitting on a beam about 20 floors up, casually eating lunch. After a few minutes, I and my vertigo had to turn my back on it. I got the same feeling from the top pic in the pair.

    Lurker111

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  4. Just did a double take, too, as I saw Hugo just an hour or so ago. A real incident inside a photograph inside a dream inside a movie. The magic of photography in different layers.

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