“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” brings together hundreds of nude photos from an era we normally associate with old-fashioned prudery. In fact, nude photos were incredibly popular at that time. They had existed since the earliest days of the medium, and by the 1880s it was getting much cheaper to reproduce photographs. This led to a boom in the distribution of all photos, nudes included.
Soon nudity could be seen in magazines, advertising, postcards, collectible cards found in cigarette packs and large-format posters. The exhibition looks at a range of different styles and purposes of nudes, ranging from artistic studies to the blatantly pornographic. Rural images and scenes from Classical myths were also popular, as were photos of the nudist movement, which was seeing its first wave of popularity at this time.
%Gallery-187444%The explosion in nudes led to society questioning their traditional assumptions. The marks that corsets left on the flesh made some question whether they should be worn. Homoerotica became more widespread and the first homoerotic magazine, Der Eigene, started in 1896 and published many male nudes.
People who wanted to buy or sell nude photos had to skirt the law. By dubbing the images “for artistic purposes only,” they could claim their interest wasn’t prurient, a bit like how head shops nowadays label bongs “for tobacco use only.” The police did make frequent busts, and one of the largest collections of nude photos from this era is housed at the Police Museum of Lower Saxony, which supplied many of the more risqué photos for this exhibition.
Then as now, there was a continuous debate over what was or was not obscene. Simple nudes were generally considered acceptable, especially if they were artistic studies or images of “primitive” peoples. Surprisingly, images of nude children were also more acceptable than today since they were considered images of innocence. While some child nudes are on display at the museum, none appear in this article.
“The Naked Truth and More Besides Nude Photography around 1900” runs until August 25.
Government cutbacks have affected travel in a number of ways. Passport applications and renewals are taking longer, as is the process for requesting a visa. Traveling abroad, less security at U.S. facilities means less protection for Americans. National parks have closed some facilities and delayed opening of others. Now, even the Smithsonian Institution in Washington is feeling the impact of budget cuts.
“A reduction in a contract for security that supplements the Smithsonian security force affects some museums. The safety and security of the public and our collections will not be compromised,” said a notice on the Smithsonian website.
While no major exhibitions will be closed, the commons in the Smithsonian Castle, one room in the African Mosaic exhibit and sections of the permanent collection galleries in the Hirshhorn Museum will be unavailable for a short time.
On a positive note, the Smithsonian, a top budget travel destination, has a number of new exhibits underway of particular interest to fans of space travel that are unaffected.Extraordinary Voyages: 50 Years of Exploration is a NASA-supported lecture series at the National Air and Space Museum that started with a story that began 50 years ago when Mariner 2 flew by Venus and became the first successful mission to another planet. Upcoming events include a live webcast of the Exploring Space lecture, Vesta in the Light of Dawn on May 7, 2013. This program continues also because of support by aerospace contractor Aerojet.
Melbourne-based Intrepid Travel – known for its cultural and food-focused trips to remote corners of the planet – is now offering 20 percent off over 350 of their trips, including the newly-launched Food Adventures. The discount is good for all trips departing before August 31, 2013.
Last fall, Intrepid partnered up with The Perennial Plate, which documents these culinary adventures in bi-weekly video clips. If that’s not inspiration enough, check out these “Summer of Adventure” trips on offer: Northern Spain (Barcelona to San Sebastian), India (Delhi to Goa), and Vietnam (Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City).
The trips run from four to 14 days, and have been designed in collaboration with renowned chefs, cookbook authors and other food experts, including Susan Feniger and Tracey Lister. Trip prices include accommodation, ground transportation, a local guide, activities listed on the itinerary and, in many cases, cooking classes, meals with locals and trips to local markets.
The Courtauld Gallery in London has opened a new exhibition of two of the smallest Bibles you’ll ever see.
“Dess Alten Testaments Mittler” and“Dess Neuen Testaments Mittler” are tiny illustrated Bibles produced by two sisters from Augsburg, Germany, in the late 17th century. It was a time of increased private devotion, when people looked for more from religion than the rituals in the church. Personal Bibles and images hung in the home became popular for those who could afford them and were used as the individual’s way to reach the Divine.
Tiny Bibles like these were generally for children, but the fine quality of the engravings on these examples hint that they were for adults. If you won’t make it to London this summer, you can turn the pages of one of the Bibles and admire the detailed yet miniscule artwork at this webpage.
The exhibit is part of the “Illuminating Objects” series, prepared by postgraduate students on their area of study. “Dess Alten Testaments Mittler: Dess Neuen Testaments Mittler” runs from May 1 to July 22.
Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the first American to summit Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on the planet at 29,029 feet in height. That successful venture came ten years after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent of that mountain, but in the decade that had followed only four other climbers had managed to stand on top. The 1963 expedition would not only put an American on the summit for the first time, it would also open an entirely new route that had never been climbed before. That expedition would also go down in history as one of the most daring and successful ever, setting the standard for those that would follow.
Ironically enough, the expedition was actually led by a transplanted Swiss climber by the name of Norman Dyhrenfurth. He took a team that consisted of 19 Americans, 32 Sherpas and 909 porters carrying 27 tons of gear and equipment to the mountain. In those days there was no airport in the Everest region, so that trek began in Kathmandu and covered 183 miles on foot. It took a month just to reach Base Camp, which was where the real work would begin.
In the early weeks of the expedition the team concentrated on acclimatizing to the altitude and preparing for the challenges of climbing the South Col route pioneered by Hillary and Norgay. Those efforts payed off early on when 34-year-old Jim Whittaker of Seattle, WA, and his Sherpa guide Nawang Gombu, planted the U.S. flag at the summit on May 1. It was a huge day for Whittaker personally and an even bigger one for American mountaineering.But the expedition was far from over. On May 22, three weeks after Whittaker’s historic climb, four more Americans would head to the top of the world. Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad would once again go up the South Col while their companions Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld would attempt a difficult new route along the West Ridge. No one had ever approached the summit from that direction before and it would be a true test of their skill and endurance. Not only did Hornbein and Unsoeld successfully manage to complete that route, they met Bishop and Jerstad on the summit. Those two men had endured an eight hour climb in high winds to reach the top as well, and while there they managed to capture the first ever video footage from the summit of Everest.
Any mountaineer will be quick to tell you that the summit is only the halfway point and the four men still had to get back down safely. They started to descend just as the darkness of night settled over the mountain, making an already treacherous experience even worse. At one point, the two groups became separated and Bishop and Jerstad had to stand in place for several hours, calling out to the companions in an effort to help lead them with the sound of their voices. Eventually they were reunited, and the descent would continue, but after stumbling along in the darkness for several more hours they decided to risk bivouacing for the night.
Using a rock outcropping as shelter, the men huddled close for warmth. Without tents or a sleeping bag, they knew their chances of survival were slim, but they didn’t relish the idea of falling down the South Col in the darkness either. The high winds subsided some, bringing a small measure of comfort. But they were all freezing, exhausted and hungry. Their chances of survival looked grim.
But survive they did and the dawn brought them new hope. Resuming their descent they came across teammate Dave Dingman, who had abandoned his own summit bid to search for his missing friends. Dingman and a Sherpa brought bottled oxygen for the team and then helped to safely lead them back down the mountain. Unsoeld and Bishop had suffered severe frostbite to their feet however and would need to be evacuated as quickly as possible. In the end, Unsoeld would lose nine of his toes and Bishop would lose all ten, plus the tips of his little fingers.
When it was over the expedition set a new standard for high altitude mountaineering. The U.S. team had put five climbers on the summit, more than any other before it. It also opened a new route along the West Ridge, which remains one of the greatest achievements in mountaineering history. The summit push marked the first time that two teams simultaneously approached the summit from different routes as well, something that others would do in the years that followed.
The five-minute video below was released by National Geographic following this important climb back in 1963. It spotlights some of the difficult conditions the American team faced while on Everest. Today, there are hundreds of successful summits each year on that mountain, but back then it remained an elusive and deadly challenge.