Victorian photocollage
slideshow at Slate (click image to advance to next slide)
“A year or so after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859), English ladies started cutting up photos of their friends and relations and pasting bits and pieces of them (particularly their heads) into alien landscapes and onto foreign bodies. Was it just a new pastime, like staging parties or playing the piano–yet another way for Victorian women to show off their class and their wits? Or was it more?
To judge from an exhibition called “Playing With Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage,” organized by Elizabeth Siegel for the Art Institute of Chicago and now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the answer is: It was more.”
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March 6, 2010 at 8:27 PM
Strange and exotic animals have played a huge role in politcal history.
Egyptian Pharoahs, Darius, Alexander, Caesar, Pompey, the Medici, Cortez, Rudolph 2, Napoleon and countless self styled potentates including Patty Hearst’s grandpa have used rare animals as pawns in their quest for power and prestige. Lorenzo di Medici traded a giraffe in exchange for making his illegitimate sons future Popes. Keeping exotic animals was a sign of power. This tradition carries on to this day, witness the gift of Giant Pandas after Nixon’s China visit. Now China only leases them at millions a year to a few US zoos. The political power of the rare beast continues. Just today, after much discussion, three new elephants were added to the Dallas Zoo. The Fort Worth Zoo only has two, so we win again.