JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I am somewhere between the 16th and 20th centuries with this image--I see a bit of Pieter Bruegel (d. 1569) in this, one of his involved and diverse human landscapes set into a complex physical environment. In spite of its great and inquisitive artfulness, this photo was made to illustrate the streetlights of Central Avenue in Rio de Janiero for a speculative publication called Public Lighting for St, Louis, which was printed in 1908 and published to solicit opinion on the style of street lighting that was to take place in the city. Fairly mundane stuff, except that several of the photos used in that slim pamphlet are quiet little sub-masterworks of nothing. I think too that the perspective here of the horizon disappearing down the avenue and the sky being about the same color as the street lend a certain arrogance to the realism of the thing.
I also see the possibility of Rene Magritte (d. 1967) at work here as well--or a Dada-reconstruction of his Golconda, if you applied a heavier gravity a bit and placed all of those raining bodies from his painting carefully onto the streets of Rio. Or it is a combination of the two...in any event it is an evocative photo, buried up to its eyeballs in total obscurity in this 1908 pamphlet, and which probably has not seen the light of day in a hundred years.
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