Photoflash

Photoflash (pronounced foh-tuh-flash)

(1) An alternative name for a flashbulb (mostly archaic), a lamp which emits a brief flash of bright light; used to take photographs in a dark environment.

(2) Of or relating to flash photography (industry use only).

(3) The precise point at which a flashbulb illuminates.

1925–1930: The construct was photo- + flash.  Photo (phot- the prevocalic) was a clipping of photograph.  Photo was from the combining form φωτω- (phōtō-) of Ancient Greek φῶς (phôs) (light).  The –graph suffix was from the Ancient Greek suffix -γραφω (-graphō), from γράφω (gráphō) (to scratch, to scrape, to graze), probably best known in the derived from -graphy.  Flash was from the Middle English flasshen, a variant of flasken or flaskien (to sprinkle, splash), which was probably of likely of imitative origin.  In the sense use in photography, it was probably of North Germanic origin and akin to the Swedish dialectal flasa (to burn brightly, blaze) and related to flare.  The Icelandic variation from the Germanic was flasa (to rush, hastily to go).  The word photoflash has a long history as a technical term in photography and the manufacture of photographic equipment but three syllables was just too much for general use and the public used “flash” for just about all purposes, the odd necessity like “flashbulb” embraced to avoid confusion.  Photoflash is a noun; the noun plural is photoflashes.

The industry however needed to be more precise so photoflash became a frequent modifier, required because of the modular nature of the flash equipment, originally not part of the camera assembly proper and even at the tail-end of mass-market analogue photography, not all cameras featured built-in flash-lamps.  A photoflash unit was the whole, packaged flash assembly which included the flash-lamp, housing and mounting bracket which attached the unit to the camera body.  Originally the units were designed to accommodate replacement lamps but in 1960s, single-use units were developed, styled usually as rotating cubes which permitted use for four shots.  The photoflash capacitor is used not only in cameras.  It is an electrolytic capacitor designed specifically to provide a pulse of high-voltage energy for a very short duration and as well as the use in conventional photography, they’re installed also in devices using solid-state laser power supplies including optical readers and some printers.  Whatever the hardware to which they’re attached, the purpose is always a brief illumination.  Because of the requirements for feeding a very high current for a precise length of time, the greatest challenge during the development process was to ensure a reliable high discharge pulse without excessive heat generation and thus the physical expansion of components.

Three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.

Photoflash composition has two meanings: (1) The pyrotechnic material which, when loaded in a suitable casing and ignited, produces a flash of sufficient intensity and duration for photographic purposes and (2) the collections of techniques used by professional photographers when shooting in light conditions where the use of a photoflash is required.  This involves considering things like the available ambient light, distance, the angles of surrounding surfaces & their reflective properties and the need for any filtering.  For professionals, photoflash devices (known variously as flashes, speed-lights, studio strobes and a number of other terms) are adjustable to an extent those used on consumer lever cameras typically are not, the relevant metric a product of the relationship between the distance between the subject & light source and what is called the focal length (dictated essentially the lens aperture).

RAF 4½ inch (114 mm) Photoflash Bomb (the only fundamental design change was the use of narrower fins on the Mk II version).  The cardboard tubular body was closed at the tail by a dome while the nose was sealed by a diaphragm with a bush, into which was inserted the fuse.  A defined measure of flash composition was loaded between the front and the rear diaphragm while a central tube extended between each, filled with gunpowder.  As soon as a fused flashbomb was released from an aircraft, the fuse was operative, triggering the gunpowder at the desired height which burst the body of the photographic flash, simultaneously igniting the flash composition.

Photoflash composition was of critical importance in the photoflash cartridges used in photoflash bombs which were specialized forms or ordnance perfected during the early years of World War II (1939-1945).  Dropped from aircraft passing over enemy territory, they were fitted with a photoflash cartridge timed to detonate at a height chosen to optimize the spread of light over the area of interest.  The development of the devices had been encouraged by research which confirmed only a small fraction of the bombs dropped by the Royal Air Force (RAF) were coming within miles of hitting the target zone.  For many reasons, the inaccuracy was understandable given that night bombing over distance was a new aspect of war, carried out by inexperienced aircrew in the cold and dark of night, while under fire from night-fighters and ground-based guns, all while trying to locate blacked-out targets.  In the early days, for navigation the crew could rely on little more than maps, mathematics and the visual recognition of physical ground-features.

RAF photograph taken from Vickers Wellington, Berlin 1941.  The ground is illumined by the flash while the unusual light patterns are from ground-based searchlights, the shapes a product of the camera's exposure length.

There would later be electronic innovations such as devices designed to let bombardiers “see through” cloud but the photoflash bomb (always in the RAF known as “flashbombs”) was a relatively simple approach which scaled-up existing technology, the flashbombs essential huge versions of the flashbulbs used on cameras.  Given their size, they were capable for short periods of producing intense light of sufficient dispersal and luminosity to permit either a pilot accurately to position his craft for a bombing run or for surveillance aircraft to take aerial reconnaissance photos at a safe height.  Of great utility at the time, flashbombs are no longer part of the military inventory because of improvements in night-vision optics, radar and satellite imagery.

RAF photograph taken from De Havilland Mosquito (pathfinder), Hamburg 1943.  The shape at the bottom-left of the photograph is the flashbomb exploding. 

The allies used a variety of flashbombs during WWII all with basic but effective engineering and a method of construction which would have been familiar to fireworks makers.  Typically, a flashbomb was a cardboard tube, capped on both ends with metal stoppers and filled a flash powder charge and a fuse set to trigger after a certain time, the length of the fuse determining the detonation height.  Being a camera’s flashbulb writ large, the flash lasted only around 200 milliseconds but this was ideal for aerial photography and could be enough for a pilot’s visual orientation although flashbombs were often dropped in staggered clusters, providing an extended duration of visibility.

Three months apart, great minds thinking alike.  The much re-printed photograph (right) of Sofia Loren (b 1934, left) looking at Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967, right), Romanoff's restaurant, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, April 1957 and Shirley Perdew (1939-2020 right), looking at Jayne Mansfield, Garden of Allah Hotel, Hollywood, July 1957 (right).

Ms Loren's sideways glance, one of the most famous in Hollywood's long history of such looks has been variously interpreted as “sceptical”, “disapproving” and “envious”, the latter a view probably restricted to men.  Ms Loren herself explained her look as one of genuine concern the pink satin gown might not prove equal to the occasion.  On the night, there were several photographers covering the event and images taken from other angles illustrate why that concern was reasonable.  There has never been any doubt Ms Mansfield's “wardrobe malfunction” was “engineered and rehearsed”.   Ms Perdew had just been crowned “Miss Hollywood 1957”) and, as a former “Miss Photoflash”, Ms Mansfield had been invited to join the voting panel.  The hotel was built in 1913 as a private residence before in 1926 being converted into a residential hotel; it was demolished in 1959.  In her pomp a significant figure in popular culture and a genuine celebrity, Ms Mansfield was a model & actress and what would later come to be known as a “multi-media personality”.  When young she won a number of sponsored beauty contests including being crowned “Miss Magnesium Lamp”, “Miss Fire Prevention Week” and “Miss Photoflash” but it’s reported she drew the line at becoming “Miss Roquefort Cheese” on the grounds it “just didn’t sound right”, something on which she seems not to have expanded, the chance to be “Miss Prime Rib” later also declined.

Macabre

Macabre (pronounced muh-kah-bruh, muh-kahb or muh-kah-ber)

(1) Gruesome or horrifying; grim; ghastly; horrible.

(2) Of, pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death, especially its grimmer or uglier aspects.

(3) Of or suggestive of the allegorical dance of death and related works of art.

1370s: From the French macabre, from the Middle French danse (de) Macabré, of uncertain origin.  It may have been influenced by the Medieval Latin chorēa Machabaeōrum (a representation of the deaths of Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers) but there’s no documentary evidence (the Maccabees a “liberation movement” who in the second and first centuries BC established Jewish independence in the Land of Israel),  In the popular imagination, the biblical Maccabees became associated death because of the doctrines and prayers for the dead in 2 Maccabees 12:43-46 in which is discussed Judas Maccabeus sending money to Jerusalem as a “sin offering” for those of his soldiers who had fallen in battle while wearing idolatrous amulets, forbidden by Jewish law.  Theologically, the passage is controversial because not all accept the interpretations which focus on the significance of a Jewish belief in prayer for the dead and the concept of Purgatory as a place rather than conceptual imagining.  The notion of “prayer & payments” as the means by which the dead could be “loosed from their earthly sins” so in Purgatory their souls would undergo purification after death did become embedded in Christianity, later associated with the rampant corruption of clerical indulgences which would play a part in triggering the reformation.  The alternative suggestion for the etymology is the French form was (via the Spanish macabro) from the Arabic مَقَابِر (maqābir) (cemeteries), plural of مَقْبَرَة (maqbara) or مَقْبُرَة (maqbura).  Borrowing from the Arabic in plural form was not unusual (eg magazine, derived from the plural مخازن (maxāzin) of the Arabic singular noun مخزن (maxzan) (storehouse; depot; shop) so etymologically the theory is possible but, like the Latin link, evidence wholly is lacking. 

The abstracted sense of “characterized by gruesomeness” emerged in French in the 1840s and that was picked up by English by at least 1889, dictionaries noting a racial sense from 1921.  The sense of “a comedy that deals in themes and subjects usually regarded as serious or taboo” was what extended the figurative use, suggesting “something morbid”.  The origin of that, although contested, is most associated with the French left and new wave of the late 1950s (pièce noire, comédie noire) which may have been the source of the terms “black comedy” & “dark comedy” in English.  Words similar in meaning include spooky, ghastly, ghoulish, grisly, morbid, gruesome, weird, frightening, grim, lurid, cadaverous, deathly, dreadful, frightful, ghostly, hideous, horrible, offensive & scary.  The first known reference to “danse macabre” dates from 1376 in the poem Respit de la Mort: Je fis de macabre la dance (Spared from death, the dance of the macabre) by Jehan Le Fèvre:

Je fis de Macabre la danse,
Qui tout gent maine à sa trace
E a la fosse les adresse.

I danced with the Macabre,
Which all people follow in his footsteps
And send them to the grave.

The poet used it as a noun, inspired presumably by a near-death experience but when it in the early-mid 1400s came into common use it was as an adjective and during the Romantic era it assumed also the meanings some distance from death (grotesque, tragic etc).  In the late Middle English the spelling was Macabrees daunce (reflecting the influence of the Church) and the French pronunciation (with mute “e”) was a misreading of the Middle French forms.  Macabre is an adjective, macabreness is a noun and macabrely is an adverb.  The spelling macaber is now so rare as to be functionally extinct and in popular culture macabre is used as a non-standard noun (the plural “the macabres”, on the model of the disparaging “the ghastlies”).  

Dance of Death

Danse Macabre of Basel (circa 1450), a memento mori painting by an unknown artist, Historisches Museum Basel (Basel Historical Museum), Barfüsserkirche, Basel, Switzerland.

The Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) was an artistic genre of allegory dating from the late Middle Ages; exploring the universality of death, it made clear that however high or low exulted one’s station in life, the death ultimately will visit all.  It was a popular artistic motif in European folklore and the most elaborated of all Medieval macabre art.  During the fourteenth century, Europe was beset by deathly horrors, recurring famines, the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) and, looming over all, the Black Death, an outbreak of bubonic plague which between 1346-1353 may have killed as many as 50 million, making it one of history's most lethal pandemics.  In reducing the population of Europe by between a third and a half, its demographic, political and economic implications were felt for centuries.  In these difficult times, when death not infrequently would strike just about every family in some regions, the Danse Macabre culturally was assimilated across the continent, an omnipresent chance of either a sudden or lingering, painful death spurring not only a religious desire for penance but also an urge to make the most of whatever time was left to one.

Macabre montage: Three images from Terry Richardson's (b 1965) suicide-themed shoot with Lindsay Lohan, 2012.

Especially during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the theme was a source of the vivid and stark paintings on the walls of churches and the cloisters of cemeteries and ossuaries.  Art of the Danse Macabre was typically a depiction of the personification of death summoning the doomed to dance along to the grave and they featured characters from the exultated to the most humble; popes, emperors, lawyers, laborers & children all appearing, the popular motifs in the works including hourglasses, skulls and extinguished candles.  Although the art was moral and allegorical, many also had a satirical tone and, reflecting the mores of the times, although they made clear death finally would claim rich and poor alike, the living usually were arranged in an order following the the conventional sense of precedence, popes, cardinals, kings, dukes and such at the head of the queue, blacksmiths, fellmongers and farm workers knowing their place; the “cold gradations of decay” in the phrase of Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)).  The pieces were also among the multi-media productions of the medieval period, appearing variously in manuscript illustrations, printed books, paintings on canvas, wood & stone, engravings on stone and metal, woodcuts, sculpture, tapestry embroidery & stained glass as well as in prose & verse.  They were produced as mementos mori, a Latin phrase translated literally as “remember you will die”.  That wasn’t intended to be thought macabre but rather a gentle reminder of the brevity of life and the fragility of earthly existence, hopefully inspiring folk to live lives more fulfilling and purposeful.  The tradition, although it became increasingly detached from its religious associations, never died and has enjoyed periodic resurgences over the last six-hundred years, notably after horrific events such as epidemics or World War I (1914-1918).  The COVID-19 pandemic seemed not to stimulate similar art; popular culture’s preferred platforms have shifted.

The lure of macabre collectables 

It's macabrely ironic the market for bits and pieces associated with RMS Titanic (1911-1912) continues to be buoyant and although for decades after the end of World War II (1939-1945) the trade in Nazi memorabilia flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, in recent years such collecting has attracted increasingly strident criticism and in some jurisdictions the (public) buying and selling of certain items has been banned,  There remains some tolerance for the trade what which would otherwise anyway be collectable (aircraft, armoured vehicles and such) and items of genuine historical significance (such as diplomatic papers) remain acceptable but the circulation of mere ephemera with some Nazi link is increasingly being condemned as macabre and the higher the prices paid, the more distasteful it’s claimed to be.  Nor is it only material tainted by an association with the Nazis which is condemned by some as “trading in the macabre”.

French racing driver Pierre Levegh (1905-1955) in Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (chassis 0006/55, left), the wreckage after the fire finally was extinguished (centre) and the surviving Elektron panel (right).

In 2023, a battered metal panel from the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S, chassis 0006/55) which crashed during the running of the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hour endurance classic sold at auction for US$37,000.  That would have been unremarkable except it was in the aftermath of that crash that more than 80 spectators were killed and many more badly injured; it remains the most lethal single event in the history of the sport and one which led to some profound changes, many of which remain in force to this day.  Footage of the crash is available on-line and it will shock those accustomed to modern safety standards to see the cars continuing to race despite the carnage in the grandstand only metres away, the driver’s corpse lying on the track and the wreckage of the 300 SLR continuing to burn, the water used by fire-fighters making the intensity worse because of the exotic Elektron (a magnesium alloy) used in the lightweight construction.  The surviving panel (a cover placed for aerodynamic advantage over the passenger-side of the cockpit) was retrieved by a track marshal and it remained in his family’s possession until offered at auction by his nephew who inherited it.  Based on the unique underside markings, the factory confirmed the provenance and the auction house described it as “an authentic relic” from one of the “most exclusive models in the history of the automobile”, its special significance coming from involvement in “one of the most significant events in the history of international motor sport”.  Some though it macabre to be trading in something which gained its notoriety from so much death but the interest in such stuff in long standing, the Austin-Healey also involved in the incident in 2011 selling for US$1.3 million although it subsequently had been repaired and continued to race so anyway would have been a collectable on the historic racing circuit though doubtlessly it would have commanded a lower price.

US film star James Dean (1931–1955) with 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (chassis 550-0055) shortly before his death, the 1955 Ford Country Squire with tandam-axle trailer the team’s tow vehicle (left), the wrecked Porsche (centre) and its salvaged transaxle in display mounting (right).

The Cadillac to Mr Dean's left is a 1953 model and, beyond both having four wheels, one of the few things it had in common with the Porsche was the availability of a manual transmission (Porsche at the time offered no choice).  The black Cadillac was probably fitted with the company's four-speed Hydra-Matic automatic transmission although, after a fire destroyed the factory, almost 30,000 were in 1953 equipped with Buick's famously smooth but inefficient two-speed Dynaflow.  After the end of production of the 1953 Series 75, almost three decades would pass before Cadillac again offered a model with a manual transmission although that didn't end well (among the Cadillac crowd the Cimarron (1982-1988) is never spoken of except in the phrase "the unpleasantness of 1982") but in a much more convincing way the option returned to the list in 2004 and by 2013, while one could buy a Cadillac with a clutch pedal, one could not buy such a Ferrari.  For most of the second half of the twentieth century, few would have thought that anything but improbable or unthinkable.   

The death toll need not be in the dozens for collectors to be drawn to relics associated with tragedy; one celebrity can be enough.  In 2021, the four-speed transaxle from film star James Dean’s 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder (550-0055) sold in an on-line auction for US$382,000.  Again, based on the serial number (10 046) & part number (113 301 102), factory verified the authenticity and of the auction lot and it was only the transaxle which had been salvaged from the wreck, the display stand and peripheral bits & pieces (axles, axle tubes, brake assemblies etc) all fabricated.  The crash happened on SR (South Route) 466 (now SR 46) near Cholame, California, en route to October’s upcoming Salinas Road Races and Mr Dean was driving to familiarize himself with his new 550 Spyder which, although mid-engined and thus with a preferable weight distribution compared with the rear-engined 356 which previously he’d campaigned, had characteristics different than he’d before experienced.  In the dimming light of the late afternoon, the Porsche collided with the passenger-side of a 1950 Ford Tudor (two-door sedan) which had just entered the highway, driven by California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed (1932-1955).  Mr Turnupseed (later cleared by authorities of any blame) suffered only minor injuries while Mr Dean, less than an hour later, was pronounced DoA (dead on arrival) at hospital.

The much re-printed photograph of Sofia Loren (b 1934, left) and Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967, right), Romanoff's restaurant, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, April 1957 (right), the "Mansfield crash" aftermath, June 1967 (centre) and a 1966 Buick Electra 225, claimed to be the car in which Jayne Mansfield died, Dearly Departed Tours and Artifact Museum, Los Angeles, California (right).

Ms Loren's sideways glance, one of the most famous in Hollywood's long history of such looks, variously has been interpreted as “sceptical”, “disapproving” and “envious”, the latter view likely restricted to men.  Ms Loren herself explained the look as one of genuine concern the pink satin gown might not prove equal to the occasion; on the night, there were several photographers covering the event and images taken from other angles illustrate why that concern was reasonable.  There has never been any doubt Ms Mansfield's "wardrobe malfunction" was "engineered and rehearsed".  In her pomp a significant figure in popular culture and a genuine celebrity, Ms Mansfield was a model & actress and what would later come to be known as a “multi-media personality”.  When young she won a number of sponsored beauty contests including being crowned “Miss Magnesium Lamp”, “Miss Fire Prevention Week” and “Miss Photoflash” but it’s reported she drew the line at becoming “Miss Roquefort Cheese” on the grounds it “just didn’t sound right”, something on which she seems not to have expanded, the chance to be “Miss Prime Rib” later also declined.

Three months later and great minds are thinking alike: Shirley Perdew (1939-2020, right), looking at Jayne Mansfield, Garden of Allah Hotel, Hollywood, July 1957.  Ms Perdew had just been crowned "Miss Hollywood 1957") and, as a former "Miss Photoflash", Ms Mansfield had been invited to join the voting panel.  The hotel was built in 1913 as a private residence before in 1926 being converted into a residential hotel; it was demolished in 1959.

On 28 June 1967, Ms Mansfield was a front-seat passenger in a 1966 Buick Electra 225 four-door hardtop, en route to New Orleans where she was next day to be the subject of an interview.  While cruising along the highway at around two in the morning, the driver failed to perceive the semi-truck in front had slowed to a crawl because an anti-mosquito truck ahead was conducting fogging and blocking the lane.  The mist from the spray masked the truck's trailer and, the driver unable to react in time, the car hit at high speed, sliding under the semi-trailer, killing instantly the three front-seat occupants.  Although the myth has long circulated she was decapitated, an idea lent some credence by the visual ambiguity of photographs published at the time, while it was a severe head trauma, an autopsy determined the immediate cause of death was a "crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain".  The phenomenon of the “under-run” accident happens with some frequency because of a co-incidence of dimensions in the machines using the roads.  Pre-dating motorised transport, loading docks were built at a height of around four feet (48 inches; 1.2 m) because that was the most convenient height for men of average height engaged in loading and unloading goods.  Horse-drawn carts and later trucks were built to conform to this standard so trays would always closely align with dock.  Probably very shortly after cars and trucks began sharing roads, they started crashing into each other and, despite impact speeds and traffic volumes being relatively low, the under-run accident was noted in statistics as a particular type as early as 1927.

1966 Buick Electra 225 Custom four-door Hardtop. GM (General Motors) Buick Division publicity shot.

The Buick was sold to a Florida-based collector who for decades kept it in storage before it was obtained for exhibition by the Dearly Departed Tours and Artifact Museum in Los Angeles, California.  The museum, described by its founder Scott Michaels as “for two decades a Los Angeles fixture”, was located on Santa Monica Boulevard, across from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and was a “bricks & mortar” outgrowth of was a guided bus tour he’d previously conducted, taking tourists around the locations of tragic or horrific events which had transpired in the city; he had no shortage of sites.  Mr Michaels coined the term “Death Hag” and, as the ongoing popularity of “dark tourism” (variants including “atrocity tourism” and “holocaust tourism”) indicates, there is a market among those attracted to the macabre although motivations for the interest will be varied.  The museum had a focus on departed pop-culture celebrities and other exhibits included Mae West’s (1893–1980) false teeth, Rock Hudson’s (1925–1985) death bed, one of Sharon Tate’s (1943–1969) bras (32C) and a cigarette butt stubbed out by Carrie Fisher (1956-2016).

Dearly Departed Tours.

A thoughtfully designed site, as well as T-shirts and a gift store (blades of grass from the "grassy knoll" in Dealy Plaza, Dallas which made infomous by the assassination of John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963; a fragment of the timber from Rock Hudson's death bed; shards of the shattered windscreen of Jayne Mansfield's death car and much more), there's a helpful "Find-a-Death" lookup feature (described by the L.A. Times as "deliciously sordid").

Presumably, frequently Mr Michaels checks for updates on the the well-curated Dead People site and it’s unlikely he’ll soon run out of subject matter because the recent proliferation of platforms and distribution channels has meant not only are more celebrities than ever being manufactured but the churn rate has also significantly increased; his mantra: “Famous people die every day” more true now than ever.  Unfortunately, the museum was forced to close in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic but, with the same attention to detail, he moved “Dearly Departed Tours” online, an innovation which has enabled his catchment of the macabre to extend well beyond Los Angeles.

Ephemeral

Ephemeral (pronounced ih-fem-er-uhl)

(1) Lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.

(2) In biology, a short-lived organism (usually defined as a life-span less then twenty-four hours) as with some flowers, insects, and microscopic life.

(3) In geology, pertaining to a usually dry body of water which fills for brief periods during and after rain.

1560s: From the New Latin ephemerus from the Ancient Greek ἐφήμερος (ephḗmeros), the more common form of ἐφημέριος (ephēmérios) (of, for, or during the day, living or lasting but for a day, short-lived, temporary), the construct being ἐπί (epí) (on) + ἡμέρα (hēméra) (day).  Originally from the medicine of antiquity as a descriptor of diseases and life-spans (lasting but one day), the extended sense of "transitory" is from the 1630s.  The evocative phrase from the Medieval Latin, memento mori, translates as "remember that you will die".  Synonyms are: short-lived, fleeting, transitory, short, temporary, brief, fugitive, transient, volatile, episodic, evanescent, flitting, impermanent and fugacious.  Ephemeral is a noun & adjective, ephemerality is a noun, ephemerally is an adverb and ephemeric is an adjective; the noun plural is ephemerals.  An ephemeron (ephemera the plural) is "a temporary thing"

Ephemeral art

Ephemeral art, as a defined movement, dates from the work of the Fluxus group in the 1960s.  Originally a platform created to disseminate political messages and critiques of materialist capitalism, the genre developed from the merely ephemeral to the concept of auto-destructive art in which objects existed only for the purpose of their own destruction.  It was perhaps the purest and most original art of the high cold war.

Recreation of Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive installation (1960), exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow, Tate Gallery 2004.

John Sharkey (1936-2004) and Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) were most influential in the development of Auto-Destructive Art and best remembered for the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966 although the first public demonstration of Metzger’s concepts was at the Temple Gallery, London, in June 1960.  Metzger preferred to describe auto-destructive art as “a public art for industrial societies” and for the installation used in 1960, he hid himself behind a pane of glass covered with a white nylon sheet.  As the exhibition began, he used a brush to apply a hydrochloric acid solution to the fabric and as the material dissolved, creating a swirling, glue-like coating on the glass, he slowly became visible through the holes.  The presentation also included waste in plastic bags and models for auto-destructive sculptures. The work was re-created in 2004 by the Tate Gallery for the exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow.

Table (circa 1958), one of Gustav Metzger’s non-ephemeral works.

Metzger’s had first discussed his concept of auto-destructive art in a manifesto issued in November 1959.  In this statement, he emphasized how the most robust, and apparently durable, mechanically-manufactured objects (and those in which he though society was vesting a dangerous faith) ultimately would degrade and eventually disappear, a process which humans might delay but not prevent.  A second volume of his manifesto followed the next March in which he elaborated, explaining that auto-destructive art existed to highlight society’s obsession with destruction and the damaging effects of machinery on human life.  Although he didn’t reference it, there were elements in the manifestos which echoed the warnings of the dangers inherent in an uncritical faith in technology made by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) in his final address to the court at the end of the Nuremberg trial.  As well as carrying an anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist message, in the context of the early years of the Cold War the anti-nuclear tone of Metzger’s auto-destructive art was blatant.  His views never changed but, after taking the concept to a natural conclusion of public interest, his work assumed more conventional forms although the political agenda remained, addressing the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, terrorism and climate change.

Photographers can emulate ephemerality even without post-production editing by using light to "overwhelm" the focus: This is a three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.

Albert Speer and the permanence of the ephemeral

Nuremberg Rally, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monometalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his expressions of contrition always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".

Nuremberg Rally, 1936.

Few though were unimpressed by Lichdom.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea of the searchlights to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead wrote his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.