Frozen Desire

   Property/casualtyinsurance is the lottery in a mirror.  Both imagine acataclysm of vanishingly small probability, value it in money and distribute it around apopulation so as to mitigate its force:  inone the event is good, a prize of cash oran annuity or, as in so many of the Dutch municipal lotteries, furniture or silver or a carpet; in the other, it isthat fire will break out in a baker’s shop andburn your house to the ground, or a storm run yourships aground.   The law establishing the London Chamber ofAssurance in 1601 describes, inundisguised delight, how a mere ‘consideracon of Monyto other persons’ ensures that ‘upon the loss or perishing of any ship therefollowthe not the undoinge of any Man, but thelosse lightethe rather easile upon many, than heavily upon fewe, and rather uponthem that adventure not than those that doe adventure.’

"Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned”Barbon aka “Praise-God Barebone” (1598-1679).

    Faith in God is displaced by faith in credit : faith that the lottery promoter or insurancecorporation will not abscond with your ticket or premium and beyond that in theability of the community to enforce public and private debts. The mental shift is evident in England in a single generation.  NicholasBarbon, whose father, Praise-God Barebones, MP, had preached hell-fire in Fleet Street in the 1630s, lucidlycontrasts the advantages of mutual and share-holder-owned fire insurance in hisLetterTo A Gentleman of January 26, 1684

 

NicholasIf-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon (1640-98),the father of modern fire insurance.



    Life insurance takesthe mental procedure one step further.  It was Johan deWitt,among others, who showed that the chances of death, if they couldsomehow be tabulated, could be combined with anallowance for compound interest to give the present value of alife annuity; and those could be sold either by private promoters or to finance the state.  In other words, moneycould not defeat death, as Witt’s murder showed in peculiarly ghastly fashion,  but it could dull its effect on a man’s survivor’s andposterity.  O death, where is thy sting?  A burgher’s wife could be as richly left as Portia with all theacres of Belmont.  What a property of money:  that it could take aman’s affection for his wife, freeze it, and then, after his death, to thaw it out to succour the grieving widow!

Attributed to Jan de Baen, The corpses of the brothers De Witt,on the Groene Zoodje at the Lange Vijverberg in The Hague, 20 August 1672., 1672-1702,Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.  In 1671, Johan De Witt published his Waardije van Lyf-renten naer Proportie vanLos-renten ('The Worth of Life Annuities Compared to Redemption Bonds').

 

Edmund Halley,Estimate of the degrees of the mortality of mankind, 1693.

     The mathematicalwork was done by Edmund Halley, the great astronomer and discoverer of the famous comet,working from the bills of mortality ofthe city of Breslau in Silesia for the years 1687 to 1691; and the whole process clothed, in the unctuous language of acompany promoter of 1712, in terms of common sense.  The man who did not provide for his posterity:

"ought to forfeit the name of aRational Creature, and be no more ranked among Men; or who  there .. . who can think of leaving a near Friend, a dutiful child, or a tender Wife unprovided for, without the utmost Grief that HumanNature can suffer."

 -- James Buchan, Frozen Desire, pp 113-14

Grave of Edmund Halley(1656-1742)  St. Margaret'sChurchyard, Lee, Lewisham.

Age Pyramid, Breslaw1691. Data from Edmond Halley's AnEstimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind (1693), table p.600.* (As the source does not distinguishbetween the male and female population, the diagram offers only a halfpyramid.)

NOTE:    

At the suggestion ofthe poet TomClark, Ihave been reading James Buchan’s book Frozen Desire (New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997), a study of the history and meaning ofmoney.  As Tom pointed out, this is a book of tremendous value and actual profundity and a highly originalwork.   Buchan, a British novelist andjournalist,  is also the grandson of the famous Scottishnovelist, lawyer, politician and diplomat John Buchan, who is probably best remembered as the author of The 39 Steps.  As with all works of real intellect andimaginationwhere every page brings a new door and window-on-the-universe opening, Buchan’s book is both exciting andenervating.  Reading it in these sharp, scraping andstraitenedtimes makes me jumpy.  Interested readerscan easily find copies on abe.com.  For extra enjoyment (and maybe extra jumpiness),please see below for Edmund Halley's Hollow Earth (link).

Crime Club (Weldon Kees)

No butler, nosecond maid, no blood upon the stair.
No eccentricaunt, no gardener, no family friend
Smiling amongthe bric-a-brac and murder.
Only asuburban house with the front door open
And a dogbarking at a squirrel, and the cars
Passing. The corpse quite dead.  The wife in Florida.

Consider theclues:  the potato masher in a vase,
The tornphotograph of a Wesleyan basketball team,
Scatteredwith check stubs in the hall;
The unsent fanletter to Shirley Temple,
The Hooverbutton on the lapel of the deceased,
The note: "To be killed this way is quite all right with me."

Small wonderthat the case remains unsolved,
Or that thesleuth, Le Roux, is now incurably insane,
And sitsalone in a white room in a white gown,
Screaming thatall the world is mad, that clues
Lead nowhere,or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
Screaming allday of war, screaming that nothing can be
   solved. 

 

  
From:  The Fall of theMagicians (New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947).  Included in TheCollected Poems of Weldon Kees (Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 1975)

Arthur Rothstein Photograph Collection To Be Auctioned By Doyle New York In October

Note:  Coming across this press release from Doyle New York yesterday, I felt compelled to share it.  I first "consciously" discovered Arthur Rothstein's photographs over the last couple of years on  Tom Clark's Beyond The Pale blog, which has featured a remarkable history of the Great Depression literally seen through the lenses of the great photographers who were employed by various federal agencies during the period and charged with recording contemporary American history. 

I say "consciously"  discovered because, like many of these photographers, one couldn't grow up during the later 20th century in the United States without having seen a good deal of Rothstein's photojournalism.  I will try to attend the auction.  The prices look to be within reach of interested collectors and very modest for works of this quality and provenance.

 

Arthur Rothstein at work

NEW YORK, N.Y.-

Doyle New York to auction the Arthur Rothstein Photograph Collection on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 10am. The auction offers almost two thousand prints, vintage through 1980s, from the collection of his wife, Grace Rothstein. The images span Rothstein's long career as an award-winning photojournalist, and feature iconic Depression-era images including his iconic Dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma; as well as photographs of African-Americans in the rural South, England after the Blitz, Jewish refugees in Shangai, and stark images of rural China.

The Tennessee Valley Authority brings power to the South, Alabama, 1942

ARTHUR ROTHSTEIN

        Arthur Rothstein was born in New York City in 1915 and became one of the most prolific and influential photographers of the 20th century. The broad scope of his work parallels that of American life from the Great Depression through the Reagan years, as well as international events from post-War famine in China to May Day in Moscow’s Red Square at the height of the Cold War. From Welsh coal miners to the Reichstag in ruins, to the unique documentation of the Jewish refugee population in Shanghai after World War II, it was said of Arthur Rothstein that he went everywhere, saw everything and brought his camera.

        The images in the Arthur Rothstein Photograph Collection range from the historical events that touched us all – Roosevelt meets with Churchill, President Kennedy’s funeral procession – to images equally profound, if on a smaller scale. We see, in contrast to the national display of mourning for President Kennedy, the devastation of an anonymous personal loss as a father places his emaciated son, stricken by famine, in a grave in rural China in the forties. Who will bear witness to this tragedy, the photographer seems to say rhetorically. His answer: Now we all will.

Night view, downtown Dallas, January 1942

          And similarly, there is the power of the iconic Dust Storm, Cimarron County image, widely regarded as one of the most ubiquitous images of the 20th century. We also see dignity in the face of the unemployed black man in Alabama during the Depression, adjusting his tie in the mirror, getting ready for Saturday night. And the regal face of a young girl in the window of a mud shack in Gee’s Bend. But there is a subtle humor as well. Arthur Rothstein was a pioneer in the use of what he called the “third effect”, a message that emerges when an image contains the wry juxtaposition of the written word. A shoe shine man in New York City sits under a sign quoting Disraeli on the importance of being in the right place when opportunity knocks. And then there is the display of dazzling technical expertise as pitcher Eddie Lopat delivers a fastball, his arm moving faster than the shutter speed. The Arthur Rothstein Photograph Collection is stunning in its power, scope, technical prowess and beauty.

         Arthur Rothstein was a gifted student, graduating from Stuyvesant High School and enrolling in Columbia College at age sixteen as a chemistry major. He developed an interest in photography from the technical side, working with film development techniques and eventually becoming a founding member of the camera club at Columbia. Upon graduation he was offered a job by Columbia economist Roy Stryker. Stryker had been asked by colleagues in the Roosevelt administration to form a group of documentary photographers to work within what eventually became known as the Farm Security Administration. In addition to Arthur Rothstein, the FSA photographers included Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, John Vachon and Marion Post Walcott, among others. Together they produced some of the defining images of the 20th century. Many of the works in this collection are among them.

Girlie show at carnival, Bozeman, Montana, Summer 1939

      One of the most extraordinary things about Arthur Rothstein was that he excelled in so many different photographic disciplines. He was not at all satisfied to be a documentary photographer alone, although he was a great one. He also excelled as a news photographer, a contract assignment photographer, a food photographer (often working with the food stylist Sylvia Schur), a commercial advertising photographer, and, of course, a pure visual artist, evidence of which is abundant throughout this collection. When asked what he felt his greatest strength was as a photographer, he invariably replied with one word: versatility.

      Arthur Rothstein served during World War II in the Army Signal Corps and was stationed primarily in what is now known as Myanmar, formerly Burma. After the war, he resumed his career at Look magazine, in the position of Technical Director of Photography, a title he held until Look ceased publication in 1970. In that capacity he continued to travel the world on assignment, often bringing his wife Grace, an accomplished portrait photographer in her own right, with him to assist. He placed particular emphasis on the word “technical” as it appeared in his title with his name on the Look masthead. This was a part of his personality that permeated his life: he was an extraordinarily self-assured and competent person and wanted to emphasize that at the core of his craft was a comprehensive technical knowledge. This technical emphasis, a vestige of his earliest interest in photography as a chemistry student at Columbia, never left him. He continued to explore and develop new photographic techniques, including the Xograph three dimensional photo system. Arthur Rothstein was renowned for his technical expertise, and film and camera manufacturers, including Leica, Hasselblad, Kodak and Polaroid, would often send him prototypes as a routine part of their R&D process. He authored numerous published books, some of which were compilations of his documentary and other photographs, but several of his books were of a purely technical nature.

Administering the Darrow photopolygraph test, Narcotic Farm, Kentucky 1930

        But beyond all of this expertise, or perhaps because of it, we can see in this collection the profound gifts of an extremely intelligent communicator. On a personal note, I can say unequivocally that Arthur Rothstein had the rare ability to speak in complete, fully formed paragraphs. If you asked him question, the response would start with a topic sentence, followed by a declarative exposition, and finally, a recapitulating conclusion. This, it seems, was a skill cultivated more in the education of people born a hundred years ago than it is today. It was the ability to improvise and compose simultaneously for the purpose of enhancing communication. We see this expressed in his craft, analogous to a great jazz solo: extemporaneous and visceral, but elegantly structured. Moments in time, fully formed.

Syringes seized from patients admitted to Narcotic Farm, Kentucky. 1930

        Throughout his life Arthur Rothstein sought to combine his prodigious technical and compositional skills in the service of compelling visual communication. He frequently referred to a quote from one of his influences, the photographer Lewis Hine, that the purpose of a photograph is “to show what needs to be appreciated and to show what needs to be changed.” The Arthur Rothstein Photograph Collection is evidence of his abundant success in advancing that ideal.

        "Because powerful images are fixed in the mind more readily than words, the photographer needs no interpreter. A photograph means the same thing all over the world and no translator is required. Photography is truly a universal language, transcending all boundaries of race, politics and nationality." -- Arthur Rothstein 

Migratory worker, Robstown, Texas, January 1942

Blue Turns To Grey (Constable/Jagger/Richards)

Well, now that she is gone,

You won't feel bad for long,

For maybe just an Hour or 

Just a moment of the day --

Then blue turns to grey

And try as you may.

You just don't feel good --

And you don't feel alright.

And you know that

You must find her

Find her, find her . . .

She's not home when you call,

So you then go to All

The places where she likes to be,

But she has gone away --

Then blue turns to grey

And try as you may

You just don't feel good --

And you don't feel alright.

And you know that

You must find her

Find her, find her . . .

Key:

Song:  Blue Turns To Grey (Jagger-Richards)

Performance Link 1:  Cliff Richard and the Shadows (1966)

Performance Link 2:  The Rolling Stones (1965)

Paintings:

Top:  John Constable, Study of Cirrus Clouds, 1822, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Middle:  John Constable, Sky Study With Shaft of Sunlight, 1822, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Bottom, John Constable, Cloud Study (Hampstead Heath), 1822, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

This post is dedicated to Beyond The Pale (www.tomclark.blogspot.com), which never fails to turn grey days into colorful ones.