And when you get home and browse your photos, you come to think: are these really images of Paris? Or are they images of my own images of Paris?

Anyway, that’s the conditions of tourism: you travel both in order to experience something new and to be confirmed in what you already think you know. And of course Paris is lovely – n’est-ce pas?

Lovers, Rue de Fürstenberg, Paris

More photos from Paris kan be seen on Flickr

My task was to tell the history of working hours: from the 10-11 hours workdays, dictated by the employers in the 1860’s, through the demand for an 8 hour day, raised by trade unions in 1899 and realized in 1919, until today’s 37 hours working week. We also discussed the reasons for lowering the workday throughout the 20^th century. Finally I was asked about my view on future working hours: especially the actual, political proposal by the left to increase the work week with one hour.

The program is available (in Danish) on the “Apropos” website – or through direct download

Der sidder en smuk, nøgen kvinde i et badekar. Fotografiet er taget 1. maj 1945, og motivet og kvindens positur giver associationer til tidens typiske pin-up billeder. Kun to ting forstyrrer: foran badekarret står et par møgbeskidte militær-støvler. Og på karrets kant står et portrætfoto af Adolf Hitler.

Det sidste skyldes, at badekarret faktisk har tilhørt den netop afdøde Fører. Støvlerne tilhører derimod kvinden i karret. Hun hedder Lee Miller, og er selv fotograf. Billedet er taget af én af hendes kolleger. De er netop begge to vendt tilbage til München, efter at have besøgt Kz-lejren Dachau dagen efter, at den var blevet befriet men stadig fyldt med udhungrede fanger. Miller forsøger nu at vaske snavset væk – bogstaveligt, men formentlig også i overført betydning. Hendes liv efter krigen tyder på, at det sidste aldrig rigtig lykkedes.

Miller blev født i USA i 1907.  I 1920’erne og 30’erne gjorde hun karriere på begge sider af kameraet: som model og fotograf. I perioder opholdt hun sig i Paris, bl.a. som assistent for Man Ray. Som fotograf kunne hun dog sagtens stå på egne ben.

Miller blev en del af det internationale, surrealistiske og venstreintellektuelle kunstnermiljø i 1930’ernes Paris. I en periode er hun gift med en Egyptisk rigmand, og opholder sig dels i Frankrig, dels i Cairo. Hendes billeder fra denne periode er fyldt med legelyst, charme og overskud – som f.eks. hendes på en gang uskyldige og stærkt erotiske parafrase over Manets ”Frokost i det grønne”.

I dag ved vi, at det er billeder af livet umiddelbart før tragedien. I 1939 fotograferede Miller Leonora Carrington, en surrealistisk kunstner som dannede par med Max Ernst. Carrington ser direkte på os med et fast og selvbevidst blik, og fylder hele billedet ud med sin tilstedeværelse. Af billedteksten fremgår det imidlertid, at blot få uger senere havde krigen skilt hende fra Ernst for evigt, og hun var politisk flygtning, psykisk nedbrudt og tvangsindlagt.

Under krigen opholdt Miller sig i England, og i 1944 fulgte hun med de allierede styrker til det europæiske fastland, som en af de få kvindelige krigsfotografer. Hun fotograferer krigens gru fra forreste linje. Som nævnt er hun blandt de første, der fotograferer i de netop befriede KZ-lejre. Andre billeder viser nazister, som er blevet slået ihjel af deres tidligere fanger eller har valgt at begå selvmord.

Efter krigen vender Miller tilbage til førkrigstidens motivkreds: portrætter af kunstnere og intellektuelle. Det legende og lystige kommer stadigvæk frem i små glimt. Men det er som om det bliver overlejret af en anden, dybere grundtone: Hendes portrætter bliver mindre eksperimenterende, mere alvorlige, eftertænksomme – ja, ind imellem nærmest sørgmodige.

 Som person trækker Miller sig ind i sig selv. I løbet af 1950’erne holder hun op med at publicere sine billeder. Hun plages af depressioner, og lever et mere eller mindre excentrisk liv. Da Miller dør i 1977, er hun gået i glemmebogen som fotograf.

Heldigvis er Millers billeder kommet frem i lyset igen, bl.a. takket være hendes søn. I ”Portraits from a Life” ser vi et bredt udsnit af hendes portrætter, kronologisk ordnet fra 1930 til omkring 1960. Portræt skal her opfattes i bredeste forstand: fra det formelle til reportage, men hele vejen igennem med mennesker i fokus. Billeder, skabt af et fascinerende menneske, hvis kunst og personlige skæbne afspejler sin tid.

Richard Calvocoressi: Lee Miller – Portraits from a Life. 176 sider.
Thames & Hudson, London, 2005.

Getting older means getting a past. And more and more of it. Children, you once knew, are now adults. Adults, you once knew, are now dead. Countries, you have stayed in, does not exist anymore. Movements, you took part in, has been dissolved long ago.

Did we change the world just a little bit? Did the world change us? That much is certain: something has happened. That is probably what they call history….

Children in Mjølnerparken, a housing area in Copenhagen, late 1980’s.

Poul Bundgaard, with a fellow actor who’s name I have forgotten. 
Backstage, Skive Theater, late 1970’s.

More retro-photos can be seen here

People have spun yarn and woven fabrics through thousands of years. It was a production which was predominantly carried out as homework or crafts. During the 1700s, though, a revolutionary process was started in England: work became concentrated in large units, equipped with machines powered at first by water wheels and later by steam engines. The industrial form of production spread from England to the European mainland and from there eventually to the rest of the world.
Industrialization changed not just production processes but also working conditions and the composition and living conditions of the labourers. Men, women and children were recruited to the factories in their thousands. Cities grew. Traditional forms of organizing and thinking about work became obsolete and new organizations and ideas were created. This is the story that is told in a new publication: “The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000″. The book, which is 860 pages, is the result of an international research collaboration, launched at the initiative of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

Textile industry is interesting because it was where industrialization began. But also because it is a global phenomenon. The book’s first part consists of articles on textile production and textile workers’ history in 20 different countries worldwide – including Denmark. With due respect for national differences, the story is told from the times of pre-industrial production, throughout the industrial breakthroughs and peaks until today, where the textile industry is being phased out in the areas where it started: Western Europe and the USA. But textile industry is still, indeed, a reality. On a global scale, there is probably more people employed in the textile industry than ever before in history. Now its largest parts however are centred in Asia, especially in China.  The second part of the book consists of a series of thematic articles where the authors draw comparisons across countries. For example, there are themes of globalization, labour recruitment, work organization and the gender division of labour.

I have contributed two articles. The first deals with the history of textile work in Denmark. In global perspective, Denmark has never played any significant role as a textile producer. On the contrary, the Danish industry almost exclusively produced for the domestic market, while the technology used was imported from England, Germany and other major European textile nations. But Denmark, however, was a pioneer in another area, namely in the way the workforce organized itself, which led to a relatively early development of highly institutionalized and regulated industrial relations. Something, that became the basis for the subsequent development of the welfare state. This is the perspective in the article which is titled “Denmark: the textile industry and the formation of modern industrial relations.”

My second contribution is for the second part of the book, for which I have written an article entitled “Institutions in textile production: guilds and trade unions” to compare the development such institutions in different countries in a global perspective. This article is based on the other national overviews, in conjunction with general theories of unionisation. As the national overviews are written from quite different perspectives, it is not at comparative work in the strict sense. Nevertheless, I think there are grounds for some cautious conclusions, including that the role of the state and the relationship between the classes is probably more important than differences in production methods and technology, in explaining the variations in scope and aim of labour organizations.

As the title indicates, the book is published by Ashgate publishers. The complete table of contents, as well as information about price etc., can be found on the publisher’s website.

(Cross-posted from blog.nyeretid.dk)

I have written the article “Den modern arbejderklasse – bidrag til en skabelsesberetning” (“The modern working class – contribution to a genesis”). It is an attempt to combine a Marxist concept of class with Anthony Giddens’ theory of modernity. I describe how the working class was constituted historically in Denmark and how it came to express its own proletarian form of modernity.

The journal is in Danish, but with a short English abstract for each article. It can be ordered directly from The Society for Research in the History of the Labour Movement.

Not in my world. I agree with the words of Bertolt Brecht (in my inept translation): “Pretty boots will kick you just as ugly ones. We don’t want new masters – we want no masters”.

Public employees in strike for equal wages – Denmark 2008

The women, who declared the 8th of March the international women’s day was in no doubt, that gender inequality and social inequality had to be struggled against simultaneously. The delegates of the second international socialist women’s congress, held in Copenhagen in august 1910, declared:

In accordance with the class conscious political and trade union organisations of the proletariat, socialist women in all nations takes steps to organize a yearly women’s day, primarily aimed at propagating women’s rights to vote. This claim must be seen in the light of the socialist viewpoint.

The Workers Museum has a brilliant web-site (Danish only) on the history and the women behind the international women’s day.

Another gadget in somewhat the same ballpark is the Lensbaby. It’s a lens, made up by a single piece of glass in a plastic tube, intended for mounting on a SLR. By squeezing the plastic tube, you can not only adjust focus, but also shift the axis relative to the sensor. The latter means that while some part of the picture will be in focus, other parts even in the same plane will be completely unsharp.

I think the cult of creating photos with technically inferior and/or unpredictable equipment is a little too much. However, I can relate to the fascination of not giving a damn about technical perfection and just start playing with pictures. I have considered buying a Lensbaby, but its a little to expensive for something, that might just be a short lived fancy. So, I decided to build my own trash lens. Of a certain class though: no less than a Leica.

At first I stripped most of the inner parts from an old Pentax SMC-A zoom optic. Then I took the optic from a Leica slide projector, and stuffed it into the remains of the SMC and secured it with some foam rubber. The result is a Leica Hektor with a Pentax K mount. It can be focused by sliding the Hektor back and forth inside the SMC – and the focal plane can be tilted much like the Lensbaby.

The last effect is used for this portrait: one eye is (almost) sharp while the other is completely unsharp, even though they are in the same plane. Since the original photo had dull colours and low contrast, I decided to desaturate it but raise the contrast.

If you don’t tilt the lens, it’s just not very sharp and have a very small depth of field – and a very blurry bokeh. The photo of the puppies has had the colours saturated quite a bit in post processing.

As a true photo-geek I had a couple of hours of fun from de- and re-constructing these old lenses. Does the result have any practical use? I doubt it….

Jochen Martin Gutsch
Journalist ved Der Spiegel – opvokset i DDR

På dagen i dag, hvor vi med rette kan glæde os over murens fald, må det være på sin plads at anbefale Ostzeit – geschichten aus einem vergangenen land. Her viser fem forskellige fotografer biller af livet i DDR, sådan som det tog sig ud bag forkortelserne. Vi er meget langt fra den ukritiske “ostalgi”. Men vi får et bredt udvalg af hverdagen i DDR, primært fra 1980′erne: gadebilleder fra Berlin. Reportage fra en ydmyg danserestaurant. Eksempler på, hvor forskelligt man kunne bo i element-byggeriet. Modefotos. En forunderlig serie om det, at leve sammen. Første maj reportage. Fodboldfans, dissidenter, kunstnere og minearbejdere. De spektakulære billeder fra “die wende”. Men først og fremmest billeder som viser, at livet også i DDR kunne leves på mange måder – og blev det.

Det er paradoksalt, at jo mere vi bekræfter hinanden i hvor skelsættende en historisk begivende det var, at muren faldt, jo mere synes historien om de der levede bag muren at blive reduceret til stereotypier. Ostzeit er først fremmest en fremragende fotobog. Dernæst er den et bidrag til at holde fast i historiens mangfoldighed.

En stor del af bogen kan faktisk opleves på nettet hos Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (ja, sådan en findes). Men billederne kommer altså betydeligt bedre til deres ret på tryk.

Fotoagenturet Ostkreuz: Ostzeit – Geschichten aus einem vergangenen Land.
Hantje Cantz, 2009. 288 sider, tekst på tysk og engelsk, 190 fotos i duotone. 29,60 x 26,70 cm.

Now fast forward to the future, which in the mean time has become the present:

Photograph © Chris Jordan

The picture shows an Albatros chick which has been killed by the bits of plastic its parents has fead to it, apparently believing it was food. Its not the only one. In the Pacific, an area the size of the state of Texas is filled with plastic waste. Se the rest of Chris Jordans photo-essay on the web-site of The Guardian.