• • A TASTE OF ISSUE #8

    How Big Oil Conquered The World By James Corbett

    

    The story, properly told, begins somewhere unexpected. Not in Pennsylvania with the first commercial drilling operation and the first oil boom, but in the rural backwoods of early 19th century New York state. And it doesn’t start with crude oil or its derivatives, but a different product altogether: snake oil. “Dr. Bill Livingston, Celebrated Cancer Specialist” was the very image of the traveling snake oil salesman. He was neither a doctor, nor a cancer specialist; his real name was not even Livingston. … He went by “Big Bill”. Others, less generously, called him “Devil Bill”. But his real name was William Avery Rockefeller, and it was his son, John D. Rockefeller, who would go on to found the Standard Oil monopoly and become the world’s first billionaire.

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  • i

    A TASTE OF ISSUE #8

    THE COURTESAN

    

    Mrs Abington as Miss Prue, by Joshua Reynolds, 1771. The celebrity culture of the late 18th century, like our own, had a special fondness for louche characters. The sexual shenanigans of the famous featured heavily in lewd prints, in broadsheets and periodicals, ballads and books. Reynolds, for all his elevated friends, was fascinated too, from a personal as well as an artistic point of view. Two of the most talked about courtesans of the period were Kitty Fisher and Nelly O’Brien; Reynolds painted them both and rumour had it that his interest went beyond the strictly professional. Indeed the reviewer for the Middlesex Journal, when discussing one of Reynolds’s portraits of Kitty Fisher, insinuated, “I must do you the justice to say you have come as near the original as possible”.

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  • A TASTE OF ISSUE #7

    THE RIGHTS OF MAN

    

    Cartoon by James Gillray. “THE RIGHTS OF MAN; – or – TOMMY PAINE, the little American Taylor, taking the Measure of the CROWN, for a new Pair of Revolution- Breeches. Humbly dedicated to the Jacobine Clubs of France & England!!! by Common Sense – Published by Hannah Humphrey: May 23, 1791 Etching, hand-colored Gillray facetiously dedicates this print to the Jacobin Clubs of France and England, making it, according to Draper Hill, “the first anti-Jacobin satire published in England.” As Hill points out, the name “Jacobin” was widely adopted in England after 1793 to refer to revolutionaries in general and to their principles. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) had helped pave the way for the American Declaration of Independence. In March 1791, Paine responded to Edmund Burke’s denunciation of the French Revolution with the first part of his Rights of Man, dedicated to George Washington. The book caused a sensation, went through eight editions in that year, and was quickly reissued in the United States and distributed by the Jeffersonian societies. Gillray alludes to Paine’s trade as a maker of corsets by equipping the revolutionary with scissors; his tape is inadequate to measure a gigantic royal crown. Paine wears a French cocked hat with a revolutionary tricolor cockade inscribed, “Vive la Liberty.”

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  • ISSUE #7

    Jack of Cape Grim

    

    In 1642 in the manner of the time, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had innocently bestowed this name to honour, and perhaps accrue favour from a powerful figure in his world, Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. For English convicts however, and indeed for free settlers, it resonated with more sinister suggestions. In a colony where transported felons often outnumbered free settlers, where law and order were fragile and relative concepts, and brutality the resort of prisoner and gaoler alike, ‘demons’ were in plentiful supply, augmented by a lurking fear of those shadows in the bush, the original inhabitants.

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  • ISSUE #6

    Caire, Nicholas John (1837–1918)

    

    John Caire arrived in Adelaide with his parents about 1860 and soon after realised his passion for photography. Townsend Duryea was his mentor and John was soon taking good pictures, which was no easy task using the wet plate technology of the time. 1865 saw him criss-crossing Gippsland capturing pictures of Aborigines at Lake Tyers and beautiful landscapes of the Strzelecki Ranges. He moved to Talbot, near Clunes, Victoria, before moving to Melbourne in 1876 and buying T. F. Chuck’s photographic studio in Royal Arcade. John used the new technique of vignetting to great effect and people flocked to his studio when more conventional photographers were still printing family portraits at full length. When dry plate technology revolutionised the art of landscape photography (1885) John gave up his city work and devoted the rest of his life to ‘plein air’ photography, specialising in the bush, the gullies and the mountains of South-Eastern Victoria. Full of vitality and enthusiasm, he wrote articles for Life and Health magazine extolling the virtues of pure mountain air, he also gave lantern lectures urging people to share his delight in the bush and wrote to newspapers on the same theme. His pictures show a sensitive and artistic approach to photography and a deep appreciation of the bush. He insisted on perfect conditions and so usually took only one or two pictures a day, the quality of these images fetched high prices, enabling him to keep himself and his family in some comfort. He spoke fluent French and was very fond of the Australian poets; many of the titles of his pictures coming from Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. One of his best known series, illustrated the rewards and hardships in the daily life of the first settlers; many of his pictures show their huts in romantic settings of tree ferns and giant eucalypts. He photographed isolated men struggling to establish themselves before women came to Gippsland in such studies as ‘The Sick Stockrider’, ‘Down on his Luck’, ‘Sunday at the Splitter’s Camp’, and ‘The Ranger’s Cabin’, all taken on his lone explorations to these areas. John Caire left many albums of prints collected under subjects such as waterfalls, rivers, fern gullies and sea caves along the Victorian coast. Sadly few of his negatives have been kept and most of his glass plates were cleaned off during the shortages of World War 1 by Caire who needed glass for framing his pictures. John Caire an unsung hero of Australian photography died in 1918. By Jack Cato

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  • William Henry Dyson (1880-1938)

    

    Political cartoonist, was born on 3 September 1880 at Ballarat, Victoria. When he was very young the family moved to South Melbourne. Although Will Dyson was to become one of the most influential satirists Australia has produced, he was known initially in Australia only by his illustrations to Edward’s book Fact’ry ‘ands (1906), and his caricatures of Commonwealth personalities published in the Bulletin and the Lone Hand. He first submitted his self-taught drawings to the Bulletin in 1897, struggling with both drawing style and making a living. At 18 he met Norman Lindsay, with whom he formed a close friendship. The two went about the streets of Melbourne following likely types to draw; both were concerned with technical efficiency of draughtsmanship and the close observation of human character.

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  • William Blandowski (1822–1876)

    

    Also known as Johan Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski, Wilhelm Blandowski, Wilhelm von Blandowski or William von Blandowski. William Blandowski lived in Australia from1849 to1859. His contributions to natural history and the illustrations of Aboriginal life that he recorded on his expeditions were largely ignored for a time, as a result of what has been called his difficult personality. One cause of misunderstanding amongst his peers was his descriptions of species he collected and named after various prominent people, for instance, he described one specimen as, ‘a slimy fish that lives in the mud’ which was mistakenly thought to describe the person he named the fish after, as well as the fish.

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  • Gill, Samuel Thomas, 1818-1880.

    

    [...] In contrast to the detailed attention paid to traditional indigenous dress and custom in these volumes, S.T. Gill’s lithograph Native dignity offers a striking counterpoint. It is likely that Gill, like many of his contemporaries, saw indigenous Australians as part of a dying race, but I wonder whether this work was also intended as something of a critical commentary on the adverse impact of the encroachment of modernity upon both indigenous and non-indigenous subjects? Penelope Edmonds has argued that the colonial city was a charged site in which ‘issues of civilisation and savagery; race, gender and miscegenation were played out’. By the 1860s, images of indigenous Australians in the urban setting were increasingly rare, not because indigenous people were not present in Australian cities, but because their presence was a source of great anxiety amongst non-indigenous Australians. Beyond a simple racist stereotype, by picturing such a transgressive image of the urban frontier, Native dignity plays upon the full range of urban anxieties of about the non-indigenous colonial subject. Confronted with the realities of the urban frontier, the non-indigenous subject is forcibly cast into the role of both coloniszer and coloniszed. Although imbued with all the prejudices of its time, the very act of picturing this violence is, in a small way, an act of resistance against the imperialism of silence. Excerpt from an essay published in University of Melbourne Collections, no.10, June 2012.

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  • THE LAND BOOMERS

    

    This design was an entry for a competition held by the Temperance and General Mutual Life Assurance Society Limited in 1887, corner Swanston and Little Collins Streets, Melbourne] William Pitt. 1855-1918, (architect.) Published ca. 1887. Pitt’s entry was unplaced. The first prize went to Alfred Dunn, second prize to Charles DÉbro and third prize to Willima Salway. Architectural drawing: ink, watercolour wash on paper.

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  • Angus O’Callaghan & Ben Albrecht

    

    In 1941 Angus found himself in Syria training with his battalion preparing for what the politicians and generals of the day thought was the inevitable ‘blitz krieg’ by the Germans down into Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq)...a sergeant asked the men in his unit if any had experience as a photographer. Angus who had taken some pictures on a box browny before the war lied, and so began a short stint as an army photographer shooting at bridges and tunnels with a camera instead of a gun.

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  • Hunter S. Thompson

    

    1958 cover letter for a newspaper job In October 1958, a pre-fame Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun. The Ottawa Citizen published the quintessentially- Hunter cover letter, which also appeared in The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1). Here it is: TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN Sir, I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services. Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley. By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you. I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.) Nothing beats having good references. Of course if you asked some of the other people I’ve worked for, you’d get a different set of answers. If you’re interested enough to answer this letter, I’ll be glad to furnish you with a list of references - including the lad I work for now. The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you. Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews. I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations. I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of. It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip. If you think you can use me, drop me a line. If not, good luck anyway. Sincerely, Hunter S. Thompson

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  • Give generously

    

    Photo: Merideth O’Shea. Debbie outside Salvation Army op shop. St Kilda, Feb 2009

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