grasswire

I have 123.555 reasons (without spaces) for not posting lately and a conference in Budapest instead of one of those cherries for the top. The deadline for my thesis in coming round fast, but here is a little quote I’d like to share with you. Pics from Budapest will follow.

In his unfinished Passagewerk (Arcades Project) Walter Benjamin notes down a following paragraph from Louis Figuier’s La Photographie: Exposition et historie des principales decouvertes scientifiques modernes:

Hours after Arago reported Daguerre’s invention to the Chamber, the optitian’s shops were besieged; there were not enough lenses, not enough dark rooms to satisfy the zeal of so many eager amateurs. The sun sinking on the horizon was followed with a gaze of regret, taking with it the raw material of the experiment. But on the following day you could see great numbers of experimenters at their windows in the first hours of daylight, striving with every kind of nervous precaution to induce onto the prepared plaques images of the nearby dormer window, or the view of a population of chimneys.

Photographic technologies change, but in some ways, it still feels like 1839 in Kamnik. Only, it’s not chimneys but blossoming cactuses. Well, the general shape is about the same :)