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How they made an impact. A short selection of significant prints from the “History of Press Graphics. 1819-1921”
What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
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George Montbard II: Master of the Multipanel
From the early Eighties on George Montbard became mainly known for his illustrated travelogues from the Greater Maghreb. But he was also a wanted editorial illustrator, who managed to translate the blurred photographs and rough sketches of his collagues into exciting and catchy graphics. He developed a very special mastery in the field of the […]
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The Art of Louis Sabattier II: 1900 – 1918
Many of Louis Sabattier´s soft focussed photo-paintings for the French magazine L Illustration conveyed a ambiguous cultural – critical content. Especially his popular scenes of colonial tourism could easily be read as a subversive comment on the Eurocentric perspective of the oriental painting tradition of his teachers Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger. Exoticism and alienness, […]
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The Art of Louis Sabattier I: 1897 – 1904
The trained history painter Louis Sabattier was one of the most interesting press illustrators of the late 19th century. None of the numerous accredited special artists managed to catch the tense atmosphere of the spectacular trials against Alfred Dreyfus and Émilé Zola in a comparable subtle way. Many of his soft focussed photo-paintings for the […]
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Gustave Doré in the tradition of London – Reportage II: Dreadful Paris
Not translated: 3) Die Scheußlichkeiten von Paris 4) Praetorium 3) Die Scheußlichkeiten von Paris Die Idee, Dantes Pilgerfahrt auf zeitgenössische urbane Verhältnisse umzumünzen, war allerdings so neu nicht. Dorés Londoner Inferno hatte seine Entsprechung in Honoré de Balzacs literarischem Monumentalopus La Comédie humaine, das die Hölle Dantes in Paris lokalisierte. Der französische Dichter stellte […]
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John Thomas Smith and the Invention of Investigative Social Reportage IV: Inner Africa
Abriged version. For footnotes please see the more detailed German version. 6) Inner Africa For Smith, the street cries pictures had a decisive advantage in comparison to the costume book. It was a speaking medium associated with the acoustic notion of original sound meant to suggest directness and authenticity. Every vendor was attributed a unique […]
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“The Boy who Spat in Sargrenti´s Eye.” A postcolonial Melton Prior novel by Manu Herbstein. A review.
Special artist Melton Prior plays a leading role in a new novel by distinguished South African writer Manu Herbstein. Composed in the form of a fictitious diary, the historical background of the adventurous story is provided by the second campaign of the British Empire against the powerful Asante nation, located in the regions of present-day […]
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“Elegant and dignified military operations in the present age.” – The imperfect invisibility of collateral damage in late 19th-century metropolitan illustrated magazines.
Adapted (05/2014) with permission from the chapter of the same title: p. 205-232 of Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern (ed.s) Inventing Collateral damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire Between the Lines Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2009. ISBN 978-1-897071-12-0 This paper discusses some evidence of how overseas imperialism looked to imperialists at home, as the […]
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Death in the Shadows. “Black.Light Project”
The Black.Light project, which was initiated by war photographer Wolf Boewig and his companion, the travel writer Pedro Rosa Mendes, togehter with the graphic designers Henning Ahlers and Christopher Ermisch, is in many respects an adventurous one and, when it comes to openness and extension, without precedent: Ten comic artists, which are renowned for their fictitious work […]
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Journal de L’expédition des Portes De Fer (1839 – 44)
The well-known writer and literary critic Charles Nodier, who was a close friend of the Duc d´Orleans, who had died shortly beforehand, was responsible for the text. The illustration work featured three of the most prominent exponents of artistic Orientalism, the two painters Adrien Dauzats and Gabriele Descamps and draughtsman Auguste Raffet. But the work […]