Category:
Photography and Photographers

Anti-Selfies

Artist Stephanie Leigh takes “anti-selfies.” This involves pretending to be dead in front of tourist attractions around the world. She posts the resulting photos on Instagram, under the username STEFDIES. She explains:

"A selfie has controlled conditions, specific lighting, makeup/hair/wardrobe, an agenda, and is focused on the individual personality — it is a contrived and manipulated image distorted to achieve a desired result. STEFDIES is the polar opposite — I get one chance to get the shot, if it doesn't happen, c'est la vie."

More info: thisisinsider.com









Posted By: Alex - Tue Apr 30, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: Death, Photography and Photographers

Ted Serios and his Thoughtographs



Theodore Judd Serios (1918-2006), a bellhop from Chicago who appeared to possess a genuinely uncanny ability. By holding a Polaroid camera and focusing on the lens very intently, he was able to produce dreamlike pictures of his thoughts on the film; he referred to these images as "thoughtographs..."


Full article here.

Collection of thoughtographs here.

Wikipedia page here.


Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 28, 2018 - Comments (4)
Category: Eccentrics, Freaks, Oddities, Quirks of Nature, Photography and Photographers, Unsolved Mysteries, 1960s

Messy Girls Gift Book





With Xmas just around the bend, the search for presents intensifies. Who wouldn't like a book of photos of women covered in foodstuffs?

More pix here at eBay for as long as the auction is up.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 21, 2017 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Food, Hygiene, Misbehavior, Rebellion, Acting-out and General Naughtiness, Photography and Photographers, Fetishes, Women, Body Painting

Photographer Leslie Jones

Leslie Jones (1886-1967) seems to have had a quirky sense of humor. I like his series of shots titled "Odd Fences."

You can see more at this link.





Posted By: Paul - Fri Nov 10, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: Architecture, Eccentrics, Photography and Photographers, Regionalism, Twentieth Century

The Art of Hayley Newman

Below are some of the captioned images that artist Hayley Newman displayed at her first solo show, "Connotations - Performance Images 1994-98".

Lock-jaw Lecture Series (1997/1998)
"Over the period of a year I was invited to give a series of lectures on my work. Before each lecture I visited a local dentist and had my mouth anaesthetised. With my mouth made immobile, I gave my feeblest apologies to the students and staff before attempting to talk on my work."



B(in) (1996)
"Sitting in a bin bag waiting for bin men to pick me up in New York. When the bin men arrived at 4pm, I jumped out of the bag and ran home."



Crying Glasses (An Aid to Melancholia) - (1995)
"Over a year I wore the crying glasses while travelling on public transport in all the cities I visited. The glasses functioned using a pump system which, hidden inside my jacket allowed me to pump water up out of the glasses and produced a trickle of tears down my cheeks. The glasses were conceived as a tool to enable the representation of feelings in public spaces. Over the months of wearing the glasses they became an external mechanism which enabled the manifestation of internal and unidentifiable emotions."



Spirit (1995)
"Soho, London: Dressed as a ghost for Halloween I ran into various pubs in London's Soho, stole a drink and then left."



Here's the punchline, which Newman revealed if you read the fine print in the exhibit guide:

The photographs in the series were staged and performed by myself with most of the images being taken by the photographer Casey Orr over a week in the summer of 1998. The dates, locations, photographers and contexts for the performances cited in the text panels are fictional. In all instances the action had to be performed for the photograph but did not take place within the circumstances or places outlined in the supporting text.


Image sources: Lock-jaw, Crying Glasses, B(in), Spirit

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 09, 2017 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Photography and Photographers, 1990s

Miss Photoflash

The first foto below is of the 1945 contest. Given that it was the "First Revue" of the sponsoring group, we can tentatively date it as the first such contest.



Original foto here.

The next foto is from 1968, and definitively labels the contest as being in its 24th year. Did it end then, amidst the tumult of the era?



Original foto here.

Here are the 1945 contestants again.



Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 16, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Photography and Photographers, Regionalism, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s

Photographing a mule at the instant its head is blown off by dynamite

Advances in photographic technology that occurred in the 1860s and 70s led to the invention of plates that had exposure times of a fraction of a second. This allowed for "instantaneous photography," as it was called at the time. Moving objects could be frozen in time by the camera.

Researchers immediately used this technology to study bodies in motion. Most famously, Eadweard Muybridge in 1878 took a series of images to study the galloping of a horse. Similarly, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot used instantaneous photography to study the muscular movements of his human patients.

A more unusual application of the technology took place on June 6, 1881, when Mr. Van Sothen, photographer in charge at the United States School of Submarine Engineers in Willett's Point, New York, took an instantaneous photograph of a mule having its head blown off by dynamite. The mule was apparently old and was going to be put down anyway, so it was decided to "sacrifice the animal upon the altar of science."

The resulting photo


Eugene Griffin, First Lieutenant of Engineers, described the details of the experiment in a letter to Lieut. Col. H.L. Abbot:

On the 6th of June, 1881, an instantaneous view was taken, by your direction, of the execution of a condemned mule belonging to the Engineer Department. A small bag containing 6 ounces of dynamite and a fuse was fastened on the mule's forehead, the wires from the fuse connecting with a magneto-electric machine. The camera was placed at a distance of about 47 feet from the mule and properly focussed; the drop shutter was held up by a string, fastened to another fuse, which was placed in the same circuit with the first, so that both were fired simultaneously and the shutter allowed to drop. The result was a negative showing the mule in an upright position, but with his head blown off. This photograph has excited much interest and comment in the scientific world. A very narrow slit was used in the shutter, and as nearly as can be estimated the time of exposure was about 1/250 of a second. A 10 by 12 gelatino-bromide instantaneous Eastman dry plate was used, with a 4 D Dallmeyer lens, using the full opening.

Several months later Scientific American published an account of the experiment, including several engravings showing before and after scenes:

Scientific American - Sep 24, 1881

Posted By: Alex - Fri Sep 02, 2016 - Comments (0)
Category: Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses, Insane Villains, Photography and Photographers, Science, Experiments, Nineteenth Century

Auroratone

Auroratone was a "process for translating music into color" invented circa 1940 by Englishman Cecil Stokes. The music vibrated an emulsion of crystallizing chemicals, and this was then photographed by a color movie camera, producing a kind of psychedelic movie of shifting colors synchronized with music (but this was the 1940s, before the concept of psychedelics was known in popular culture).

The hope was that these auroratone films could be used to treat psychiatric patients, and they were experimentally shown to soldiers in an army hospital suffering from psychotic depressions. Conclusion: "Observation revealed that these patients were intensely absorbed in the films, that their span of attention to the films was appreciably lengthened after exposure to the films. Weeping and sobbing was observed in some patients. Many patients became more accessible to individual and group psychotherapy immediately folllowing exposure to these films."

Their effect was also tested on juvenile delinquents. One kid told the experimenter, "I think God must have painted those pictures."

A company was formed to commercialize Auroratones and guide their development. Investors in this company included the Crosby Brothers (Larry and his famous brother Bing). Bing sang the music for many of the auroratones.

Treating psychiatric patients wasn't very profitable, so there was hope to find more lucrative applications of the auroratone process. One idea was to transfer auroratone color patterns onto textiles and ceramics. Some silk scarfs printed with visualizations of Bing Crosby singing "Home on the Range" were apparently manufactured, but never sold.

Not many auroratones still survive, but an example of one can be viewed on YouTube:



The auroratone process reminds me of the Clavilux (or Color Organ) invented by Thomas Wilfred in 1919 (previously posted about here).

More info about auroratones: Wikipedia and Milwaukee Journal, Dec 6, 1948.

Also see: Rubin, HE & Katz, E. (Oct 1946). "Auroratone films for the treatment of psychotic depressions in an army general hospital," Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2(4): 333-340.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Sep 03, 2015 - Comments (9)
Category: Movies, Photography and Photographers, Psychology, 1940s

Cruise Ship Photos

Flashbak.com has posted an interesting collection of photos (titled "Love Boat Rejects") taken by official photographers aboard American, Norwegian, and Italian cruiseships during the 1990s. Check out the full gallery here.





Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 12, 2015 - Comments (5)
Category: Photography and Photographers, 1990s

Satanic cloud above Statue of Liberty

Over at about.com, in honor of the Fourth of July, I just posted The 10 Weirdest Moments in the History of the Statue of Liberty, one of those moments being the time in 1989 (or maybe it was 1990 - sources differ), when two Irish tourists on vacation in NYC took a photo of Lady Liberty. It was only when they got back home and developed the photo that they noticed a "Satanic face" in the clouds leering down at her. I'll let you decide for yourself what meaning, if any, this might have. But as far as cloud photos go, it's a pretty famous one.

Also, Happy Fourth of July!

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 04, 2015 - Comments (12)
Category: Photography and Photographers, 1980s

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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