Your Best Side

Ah, those crazy Victorians (quite literally, what with lead in the pipes and arsenic in the wallpaper...)

Finally broke the 40,000 mark on Still Life. I would have gotten there sooner, only I took a break to write fairytales.

It's not all doom and gloom in the world of postmortem photography. Well, mostly it is, but I'm also exploring the early world of photography in general. It's quite incredible how something we take for granted today, which has become so point-and-click, took so much painstaking skill in the early days. 

Thirty years after the invention of the Daguerreotype and collodion processes, we were still taking pictures in a similar way to the way we still use the internet today. It looks a bit flashier, runs a bit faster, but, essentially, we're yet to achieve the Polaroid or the digital camera. 

It provides an interesting, and contrasting, insight into how technology moves forwards in spurts, interspersed with long periods of normalisation as existing technology catches on with the masses. 

40-45k is roughly half a novel, but it's taking a lot of time as there's so much research required. Some days you can type a couple of lines then disappear into Wikipedia for an hour. 

When I began this, I didn't really have much of an interest in photography. It was really the mortality and memento mori side of things that drew me. Since then, I've really come to appreciate just what went into creating early photographs, and what we might have lost with the invention of digital photography. 

Antiartists

Recently finished reading an excellent debut novel, Antiartists, by author Ralph Pullins (website, Twitter):

What do you do when you don’t know who you are, when who you thought you were, who you thought you would become, is destroyed? This is the story of young man, Chris, seeking an identity after the seemingly catastrophic collapse of his life, seeking what it means to be a creator, and, ultimately, seeking a glimpse of hope and recovery after a rock-bottom event. 

During his search, he comes to the conclusion that instead of creating beauty for an ugly world, he wants to destroy beautiful things. Because of his background and education in art, Chris knows of a secret: Michaelangelo’s David has a fatal flaw, a weakness that if struck correctly would shatter the marble into fragments. What will Chris and his newfound group of society’s rejects do with this knowledge?

Antiartists is both bleak and darkly comic, playful and serious. It is about broken people doing broken things, and about trying to find a reason to carry on when there seems no escape from the downward trajectory of one’s life. It is, in the end, about redemption and hope, about finding a way to keep living when everything seems lost, about finding a light in the darkness. It is the story of an outsider coming to terms with his differences. This story is ultimately about believing, once again, that it is worth carrying on - that even after seeing rock bottom, life can be beautiful again. 

The book begins with the warning:

This is a story of broken people doing broken things. If there is anything in the pages that follow that seems like a good idea, please seek appropriate help.

I really enjoyed it. It played to my dark sense of humour and fascination at how far people will go in desperation. It reminded me a bit of DBC Pierre's Lights Out in Wonderland, in its exploration of addiction and self-destruction. 

Very much looking forward to whatever he writes next.

Freelance Report

The Creative Industries Federation in the UK have released an interesting report into the state of the creative arts freelancing industry. It explores the experiences and obstacles faced by freelancers in the creative industries, including a lot of input from writers.

Download Report (PDF)

Proper Dead

Another week, another questionable search history.

I've just returned to writing Still Life, a novel about the history of photography, and postmortem photography in particular. It's been an interesting journey, but you do have to be a little bit careful. Not everything is quite what it seems.

Whereas this gentleman in the centre is absolutely dead...

...the little girl at the top of this post isn't. Though the circumstances of Lewis Carroll taking a photograph of her sleeping may in themselves appear somewhat creepy, it's not an actual death photo.

And the slightly queasy feeling you might have in your stomach right now is precisely why I've been looking into all of this. People do strange things, and it's interesting to try to work out why.

Unlike anything else I've ever researched, Victorian postmortem pics seem to have the greatest amount of misinformation. There were many photos I looked at and thought, these people don't look dead. It's been really nice to discover this Pinterest page, which lists the most commonly circulated pictures which are actually either forgeries or modern photos of people who are alive. I've seen a lot of them on postmortem sites.

There's also a helpful website about Victorian postmortem photos.

Some of the telltale signs it's not a postmortem photo:

• The subject is slightly blurry or soft-focused, especially in relation to the furniture around them. When photography was first invented, exposure times could take over a minute. It's quite hard to sit absolutely still for that length of time, and any movement would result in blurring. The image of a truly dead person is usually very sharp compared to anyone living in the photo.
• Because of the need to remain very still during exposure, stands were often employed: headrests for sitting poses and taller poles for standing. This was common in living photography and not to prop up a body, which was usually lying down.
• Closed eyes don't automatically mean dead. Pretending to sleep was a popular pose.
• Look at the clothes of the people in the picture. Mourning traditions were strict in Victorian society. If they're not dressed in black and wearing mourning clothes, the person they're posing with probably isn't dead.

It's an interesting piece of history. We've certainly got better at making people look more lifelike in death, even if we're taking fewer photos. Though mobile phones are seeing a resurgence in postmortem photographs.

Transgressive

DevilHousePress, also related to Black Bile Press, Urban Graffiti and Go Fuck Yourself Press, have been exploring the theme of transgressive by interviewing authors to ask what they feel it means. Here's my tuppence worth.

The Constant Editor

Had a lovely day editing in the CasaKeza garden with cheesecake and too much coffee. Then came home to continue, but ended up sitting through a four-hour blackout. Thank goodness for Paperwhite's screen lighting. Reading a stunning book at the moment. Looking forward to posting the review soon.

These are the three novellas: Wolfish, Red & White and Skin.

"Just one copy?" I said to the guy at Right Click as I waited for it to print out.

"Yes. It's almost four hundred pages."

"Oh."

Going to take me a few days to get through this, in between editing jobs for other people (one of which I get paid in cat food for, so it's a top priority for the kitties). I think I probably am going back to finish off Still Life after this. Then on to something slightly different. Feels good to be creating again.

Common Voice

Project Common Voice is a really interesting idea by Mozilla (the guys who brought you Firefox).

Voice is natural, voice is human. That’s why we’re fascinated with creating usable voice technology for our machines. But most of that technology is locked up in a few big corporations and isn’t available to the majority of developers. We think that stifles innovation so we’re launching Project Common Voice, a project to help make voice recognition open to everyone. Now you can donate your voice to help us build an open-source voice recognition engine that anyone can use to make innovative apps for devices and the web.

Read a sentence to help our machine learn how real people speak. Check its work to help it improve. It’s that simple.

You can donate you voice by reading out words, and listen to what other people have recorded to vet it. Nice idea. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it.