The artist is Pierre Fix Masseau, who designed posters in the period after WW2.
Here’s another one with a train…
There was the first of a terrific two-parter, on BBCTV4 yesterday evening, about the story of American Blues music.
You can watch it, here, on iplayer…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01kc7bh/Blues_America_Woke_up_this_Morning/
Or, on Box of Broadcasts.
There were lots of good things here…Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker for starters. Then, there were some pale kids who came later: Mick and Keith, the Kinks, and Eric Clapton.
The film began with a few shots of old American trains – this was brilliant for me. The trains made the point that Blues music is always connected to a kind of movement or diaspora…as the slaves of the Confederate states tried to find new work, and establish new communities. Because of white American anxieties, the black Americans were always moved on…It’s Biblical really.
The two main ports-of-call were Chicago in the north, and the Delta to the south. Both these places offered jobs…and, they were connected by the Chicago to New Orleans railway. One of the most important lines in the USA. The place names along the line, including Memphis and Jackson, amongst others, frequently turn up in songs…
The first film was about the Delta, so I’m guessing the second part will be about the city…
The agricultural development of the Delta provided work for many unskilled labourers – building the levees, clearing the ground, felling trees, and so on. The concentration of people, attracted by the work, also allowed a specific musical tradition to build up – based on field calls, chants, and simple musical instruments. The absence of electrification and amplification also meant that a booming voice was always part of the early Blues.
I was interested in the people who explored the Delta looking for songs and singers…chiefly W C Handy. This was a name I recognised from a Joni Mitchell lyric…but, I had no idea who he was. It turns out he was the first person to document the Blues and to make a fortune from it.
This was easier said than done. Because the spirit of the Blues is indigent and because people are always moving, looking for work and so on; they were hard to track down. It would sometimes take months to catch-up with singers as they moved around the Delta. It’s amazing how we take a fixed address, and a mobile phone, for granted.
The BBC will be scheduling more Blues music around these films later in the week.
The existentialist writer, Albert Camus, famously said that everything he had ever learnt about humanity and moral education came from playing football.
I express similar sentiments about the adventures of Tintin.
This is the poster for an exhibition in Belgium about Tintin’s train rides…actually the exhibition is about the meanings that attach to technology, movement and modernity – a bit like this blog!
My friend and colleague Stephen Hayward teaches on MA Industrial Design at CSM.
The course has just been awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize. Congratulations to Stephen and to the course team, and to the students…
I saw this railway photograph on the cover of an album by Max Richter.
I love the idea of speed and machinery that is implicit in this image…
Terrific.
Here’s another sleeve. This time, with tradition and technology in pleasing visual proximity. The platform made from planks reminds me of Once Upon a Time in the West (that’s always good).
There was a short film about Paul Smith yesterday evening on BBC TV2. The film was timed to co-incide with the big PS retrospective at London’s Design Museum.
Part of the programme was about Smith showing some of his favourite bits and bobs. One of the things he showed was a trainset in a suitcase. The story is that he used this during meetings in Japan…when he’d reached the point when he couldn’t go on; he’d open up the case and watch the trains go around.
The Japanese loved him for this and everything took off. Brilliant.
It’s October, so off to the Leas Cliff Hall to visit the annual Folkestone Model Railway Exhibition. I’ve posted about this before…
Every year, there is a different selection of big layouts. The best thing I saw today was an old doormat, turned into a corn field! Brilliant and lifelike.
My friend and colleague Dave Hendley, photography tutor at CSM, is travelling in Japan. Mostly, he seems to be letting the train take the strain…Good thinking!
This is the inside of the bullet-train express. It looks like the shuttle in 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Here’s the front-end
The Japanese also have trains that are more familiar in shape
I usually watch the BBC4 TVs documentaries about railways and steam trains. In amongst the old photographs and film footage, you can usually see a bit of how posters were displayed on the platform and around the station. That’s especially interesting to me.
It’s clear that no sensible person would go around filming or photographing poster displays. Luckily, steam trains are much more photogenic and interesting for most people. So, there are lots of films and photos of station platforms, with their poster displays in the background. Quite apart from the mechanical beauty on show, there is all the romance and feeling of adventure and departure.
You can imagine my excitement when I saw this yesterday…
If you look carefully, the poster, second from right, looks interesting. It’s a railway platform safety poster by Tom Eckersley. It shows how someone could be knocked over or injured by people opening the doors of the train as it comes into the station.
Obviously, this kind of image and message has disappeared nowadays. The doors on trains are controlled automatically and you can’t jump of the train before it stops.
I recognised the poster, because it’s included in my book, Modern British Posters.
It’s always interesting to see the historical context of poster display. This poster is from the very early 1960s. You get a real sense of how different and exciting this kind of graphic communication could be – on a railway platform in rural Wales.
PS
You see some terrific advertising in the backgrounds of early Hitchcock films – often associated with railway stations and esacape.
Here’s a terrific photograph of a streamlined railway locomotive from the 1930s. It’s from a book about the development of commercial photography in Britain during the 1930s. There are groups of images relating to fashion and industrial objects.
There are loads of old photos of trains. Partly, it’s because lots of people had cameras with them when they were travelling – the glamour, the sophistication! But also it was because lots of people like trains!
However, most train photos are pretty much the same…it’s a question of how you can take a picture safely.
From a commercial perspective, the railway train was an excellent challenge. The machine is outdoors, moving at speed and is pretty big. Getting a good shot quickly and so that it would reproduce really well on the page was tricky. This was especially the case in the days of large plate cameras, poor lighting, and slow film speeds.
The commercial photographer was trying to produce an image that could be reproduced and printed in magazine advertising and so on. Even in the 1930s, this was more difficult than it sounds.
The simplest solution was to get down low and close to the track. The resulting point-of-view managed to make the machine look big and quick; so the image was both dramatic and dynamic, against the powerful diagonal of disappearing perspective.
It still took courage to get a good shot.
These kinds of dramatic point-of-view shots were greatly facilitated by the new, hand-held, cameras of the 1930s. Further afield, the Soviet pioneer, Rodchenko, was the master of these new perspectives in photography.
I’ve posted before about various aspects of railways and photography. You can just check the archive.
