tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post6027485527113412571..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Seeing Multiples: Ghosts of Jönköping ("We are somewhere else")Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-80053283625079565192014-07-14T03:07:41.396-07:002014-07-14T03:07:41.396-07:00Thank you, Michael. I suppose it's true those...Thank you, Michael. I suppose it's true those aspens did sacrifice themselves for a good cause, if one considers enlightenment good. <br /><br />And Edison be damned -- King Farouk never flew to Copenhagen to purchase a light bulb.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-8410891399483816052014-07-14T02:52:06.966-07:002014-07-14T02:52:06.966-07:00Wonderful!
Excellent!
I've been looking fo...Wonderful! <br /><br />Excellent! <br /><br />I've been looking forward to reading this post all week (while I was in Sweden, though not Jonköping). These photos still resemble the modern townscapes there, the same marked absence of people (seeing it with UK eyes). <br /><br />Matchsticks are never irrelevant. They are the flash photography of this ghost world. :)<br />Michael Peveretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17090710369630916194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50793981227619139752014-07-08T19:27:54.012-07:002014-07-08T19:27:54.012-07:00OK, we give up. Nobody gives a damn about ghosts a...OK, we give up. Nobody gives a damn about ghosts any more, obviously. So it'll be a quick tour of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thorstenflach/7985845670/" rel="nofollow">the Match Museum</a>, and have done with it. What do we notice first? The schizophrenic clock -- what time IS it, actually? And everything's so darn... what would the word be? clean? And the neat bike parked outside. Does it come with the Museum? Is it, in fact, actually, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabeth_at_landanna/9393922623/" rel="nofollow">THIS swell, spanking clean model</a>?<br /><br />And going inside now, a trove of wonders. We discover that toward the middle of the nineteenth century Johan Edvard Lundström (1815-1888) developed Swedish chemist Gustaf Erik Pasch's idea and applied for the patent on the phosphor-free safety match. Johan's younger brother, Carl Frans Lundström (1823-1917) was an entrepreneur and industrialist with bold ideas. Between 1844-1845, the brothers opened a safety match factory in Jönköping. Manufacturing of safety matches began in 1853 and sparked (do forgive!) great interest at the World Expo in Paris 1855. The Bros. from Jönköping were awarded the silver medal for managing to manufacture matches without the workers developing phosphorus poisoning. Safety matches were expensive to produce and it wasn't until 1868 that they became known throughout the world. These matches are still referred to as Allumettes Suédoises in France, Schwedenhölzer in Germany and Swedish Matches in England. We learn that for a long time, matches were manufactured by hand. They were made of aspen and a single log of aspen could produce 370,000 matches. That's a lot of lights, but if you were an aspen, would it be enough to give up your life for? Planing the matches by hand was heavy, time consuming work. The matches were then dipped in sulphur, which meant that the flame could easily be transferred from the head of the match to the wood. Johan Edvard Lundström later came up with a way to eliminate the smell of burning sulphur. The matches were dipped in wax or paraffin. They were then dipped in the match head substance that consisted of stibnite, gum, starch and potassium chlorate, and were then left to dry. Finished matches were packed into capsules or tubes of brass or shavings. Once the manufacturing of safety matches had begun, the Lundström brothers came up with a practical form of packaging that is still being used today, the modern-day matchstick box with an inner box and an outer sleeve. The sides of the outer sleeve were coated with a striking surface containing red phosphorus. Even matchstick boxes were handmade. A visitor to the Museum can view no less than 9,000 different export matchbox covers. There are plenty of enthusiastic matchbox collectors around the world, also known as philuminists. One of the most famous philuminists was King Farouk I of Egypt (1920-1965) who once flew to Copenhagen in a specially-chartered plane just to buy a matchbox cover. But there is no plane even a champion philuminist can charter that will fly out of the time dimension. I believe that was tried in The Langoliers. There were these huge malign meatballs from another dimension, see -- they hopped across microwave towers and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd7ALKWFEsc" rel="nofollow">ate the tarmac at the airport in Bangor, Maine</a>; what a coincidence that author Stephen King happened to be striking a safety match in that very neighborhood, on that fateful day. It's one of those movies that asks a question. Well, two questions, actually. And it's just possible that the answers to these questions are printed on matchbox covers... in another dimension, naturally.<br /><br />What happens to today when today becomes yesterday?<br /><br />And if you lived in yesterday, could you make it back to today, just by banging your disposable camera against your palm, with just the right degree of force ?TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-13951014667259864212014-07-08T18:38:59.223-07:002014-07-08T18:38:59.223-07:00I well, I guess the Match Museum was a bit of a re...I well, I guess the Match Museum was a bit of a red herring. But, just saying, we tried... and it always leaves one feeling a little deficient when so many posts in a row are certain to disappoint the backwoods lurker who shows up to pore over the comments in search of gossip, as, alas, there never is any.<br /><br />On the other hand, there's always (even less amusing!) the "content", as it were. <br /><br />These multiple-exposure images of Johan Larsson's have been haunting the mind for months now, making me think about the medium, or more properly, the media -- light and time. The spectral quality of the images brings to mind nineteenth century Spirit Photography -- and reminds that in many respects, photography is about death, for what it shows us is a moment that happened once, and (malgré the intriguing theory of Blanqui) will never happen again, in this or any other solar system. Coaxing multiple exposures out of the famously fleeting moment is a way of attempting to change the temporal equation, of playing with time, but in the end this merely reinforces the strange poetics of historicity involved in such images, which are involved in capturing what is already irretrievably gone; the sense that it has departed in stages eerily reproduces the gradual nature of all departures. The shadowy structures of Larsson's contemporary Jönköping seem to fade back into a past that is accidentally identified for us in the nineteenth century views; that which is vanishing superimposed, in this instance, upon what has vanished. As we're all busy doing, bit by bit, all the time.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14087198934696964792014-07-08T10:28:48.582-07:002014-07-08T10:28:48.582-07:00I had hoped someone might enjoy these views of Jön...I had hoped someone might enjoy these views of Jönköping -- over which great pains were taken, back in the time of Blanqui, by the unknown local photographer who produced the stereoscopic views seen here, and by the contemporary photographer Johan Larson, whose unique multiple-exposure technique (up to 20-25 exposures for the large shots, like the breathtaking lower image here) inspired the post in the first place. <br /><br />And lo and behold, it turned out that someone out there in the wide weird world actually WAS interested; and that that someone had actually BEEN there, and even paid a visit to the Match Museum (Tändsticksmuseet) in Tändsticksområdet, where the top large photo in this post was made; and furthermore, talking of miracles, has taken the trouble to send along this note: <br /><br />__<br /><br />Tom,<br /><br />Mirabile dictu, I once went to Jönköping, about 15 years ago, to visit the Match Museum, and it was well worth it:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.matchmuseum.se/tandsticksmuseet/english.4.6de903c12e48e6252980001220.html" rel="nofollow">Tandicksmuseet, Jönköping</a><br /><br />So for me this is a particularly engaging post.<br /><br />__TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41675776192479927422014-07-07T21:54:23.893-07:002014-07-07T21:54:23.893-07:00Translation of the Blanqui is by Mitch Abidor, wit...Translation of the Blanqui is by Mitch Abidor, with a bit of medieval tinkering intruded by beyond the pale.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com