In 1909, French wealthy banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn commissioned four photographers, Leon Gimpel, Stephane Passet, Georges Chevalier, and Auguste Leon to travel to the five continents of the globe and capture coloured photographs. Like the National Geographic ones of 1920 Egypt, them too used a then-relatively new technique, Autochrome Lumière — developed in 1903 and patented in 1904 by Auguste and Louis Lumière (the Lumière brothers) — in order to bring colour, and life, to the white and grey photography world.
The ambitious project took many years to complete and gave birth to around 72,000 Autochromes. The following are some of what they captured in the City of Love & Light, taken from a collection at the Albert Kahn Museum in Paris. This stunning photo documentation began before the outbreak of WWI which had put an end to La Belle Epoque.
I also added the BBC documentary, The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn, at the end of the article to help you travel back in time even more. Enjoy.
A Parisian family posing outside their home
A horse pulling a cart filled with rubble resting on the road under glorious skies
A vegetable garden (jardin potager) on the banks of the Seine with a view of the Statue of Liberty (La Statue de la Liberté) and the Tour Eiffel
The old Trocadéro Palace seen from underneath the Eiffel Tower
A French airplane
Early cinema Aubert Palace at Les Grands Boulevards
The entry of passage du Caire, 33 Rue d’Alexandrie
The famous Moulin Rouge before being destroyed by a fire in 1915
A boy pushing an overloaded cart through a picturesque square between Rue Sainte-Foy and Rue d’Alexandrie
French soldiers probably awaiting deployment atBoulevard Exelmans, Station Auteuil
A young flower seller and her wagon
Place de la Republique, 1918
Fruits vendors and their carts
Flower sellers at La Madelaine
A general with a wooden leg wearing his medals and standing next to a cannon
A homeless man napping by the Seine
A young girl riding a scooter down Avenue Hoche
A flower seller standing in front of a Zig-Zag poster
Hôtel de Ville, City Hall of Paris
8 and 10 Rue du Montparnasse
Palais des Gobelins, Cinéma Pathé — Avenue des Gobelins
A bright yellow zeppelin
Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis and La Porte Saint Denis
View over the Seine with Notre Dame in the distance
Le Grand Cinéma Plaisir at 95 Rue de la Roquette showing a poster of the 1911 film Zigomar
Quai d'Orsay, 1923
The gorgeous flower market at Les Halles looking like a painting
Having electricity in a hotel was like having Internet nowadays, Rue Mouffetard
Look at those colourful posters
Esplanade des Invalides during l'Aéro Club Grand Prix, 26 September 1909
Hot air balloons in the Grand Palais, a historic exhibition site
If you religiously follow the news and all your social media posts are about “what’s going on” in the world, you may want to know that media studies have shown that bad news far outweighs good news by as much as seventeen negative news reports for every one good news report.
The reason behind this is that us humans have adapted to seek out news of dramatic, negative events. Our brains have evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment where anything novel or dramatic had to be instantly attended to for the sake of survival. This is what makes a charging bear more noticeable than a beautiful sky.
Based on what evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists have found, propagating fear and negativity becomes a state of the art if you ever want to make the media and “current affairs” more appealing to the masses. This means more views, which means more advertising money.
Another reason why people like to follow the bad news is to feel better about themselves, to have some sort of scapegoat. When you’re watching T.V and you come across all the things that are going wrong in the world, you kind of feel grateful this isn’t happening to you — even if it’s on the subconscious level. You consequently become contented with the status quo of your surrounding environment, whether it’s your city, state, country, or overall reality.
An additional reason why many people obsessively follow the news is to cure their boredom. Again, Today’s news offer non-stop 24-hour drama, which naturally gets people anxious. Anxiety is known to be one cure to boredom.
Just like our addiction to drugs, alcohol, and food, addiction to news also changes our brain chemicals. This often leaves us anxious and depressed. Simply because most of the news is recycled, repetitive, depressing, and even useless.
ISIS,
ISIL, DAESH, ANSAR BAIT AL-MAQDIS, HAMAS, FATAH, JIHADISTS, MILITANTS,
AL QAEDA, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, OSAMA BEN LADEN, IRAN, MUSLIMS, THE WAR ON DRUGS,
THE WAR ON TERROR, THE RED SCARE, GUATEMALA, THE JEWS.
When you read and reread the above words all over mainstream media, you may
start believing that everyone other than you is the enemy. Having
enemies is an important tool to control populations
because you scare them. Once people are scared, they give in and allow certain entities to help them through their fear. By doing so, they lose
their freedom. They also lose compassion to others and start hating
them. And all this because of the relentless work of mass media, which seems to routinely lie to people and fabricates a reality antithetical to
verifiable facts just to keep them irrationally fearful, enslaved, and wanting even more news.
So what happens when you stop following the news?
Well, that’s quite the radical game-changer. You actually have time, clarity, and energy to do more constructive things. Because your brain isn’t full of fears and drama you literally become healthier.
Personally, I haven’t read, listened, or watched the news for more than six years. And that was one of the best decisions I have taken in my life. What I do, however, is create my own headlines — my own reality.
Yet, I still can’t help but remain in the loop when I check my Facebook feeds. That is because people love to talk about who got killed where and what went wrong how, which eventually gets too much if one wants to lead a peaceful, and perhaps even conscious life.
It is not like I choose to live in a bubble or a cave. But it is because I don’t deny that many horrible things exist in this dual world we’re living in, though I willingly choose to live away from all these low vibrations. Call it selective ignorance, if you will. More about it is covered in a different list-article: Things I Got Rid Of To Become Happier.
In summation, if you are always plugged to the matrix, it will be radically hard for you to lead a peaceful life. Since nowadays we are surrounded by an overabundance of news sources and channels, it may be equally hard to unplug. Yet it still remains doable and sincerely worth it. If one must remain in touch with whatever is going on in the world, then I suggest to be ruthlessly selective in choosing your sources. In a world consumed by lies, fakery, and deception, being our own researcher seems like the only rational solution there is.
1- Saudade (n): A Portuguese word for a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound
melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves, which carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing may never
return .
2- Sehnsucht (n): A German word for the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what; a
yearning or craving for a far, familiar, not-earthly land one can identify as
home.
3- Hiraeth (n): A Welsh word for homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed; a mix of deep longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest
desire for the Wales of the past.
4- Boketto [ぼけっと] (adj. or v.): A Japanese word for gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking or doing anything.
5- Uitwaaien (v):A Dutch word for taking a break from the activities of the daily life to clear one’s head; lit. to “walk in the wind”.
6- Tacenda (n): A word from Latin origin for things better left unsaid; matters to be passed on in silence.
7- Ostranenie [остранение] (n): A Russian word for defamiliarisation, which is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in a strange, wild, and unfamiliar way in order to enhance perception of the familiar, so they know it on a different or deeper level.
I specifically like this word because it describes that which I constantly had in mind while writing my book. Naturally, it is found in there.
8- Vorfreude (n): A German word for the joyful, intense anticipation which comes from imagining future pleasures.
9- Cynefin [ˈkʌnɨvɪn] (n. or adj.): A Welsh word which, as a noun, means habitat, and as an adjective means familiar. It is used to describe the state of being influenced and often determined by our experience; by the multiple pasts of which we can only be partly aware. It can also refer to fleeting moments in time; a place or the time when we instinctively belong or feel most connected; a place where nature around one feels right and welcoming, and where a person or even an animal feels it ought to live.
The latter meaning of Cynefin echoes with one more word with no direct translation to English: Querencia (n): A metaphysical concept in the Spanish language. The term comes from the Spanish verb ‘querer’, meaning “to desire, love”; from Latin quaerere ‘seek’. Querencia describes a place where one feels safe; a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn and where one feels at home.
The word is originally applied to the bullfighting ring: It is the place where the bull feels comfortable; where he prefers to be. In a broader context, it is the place where one feels most at home; lair, home ground. It can also means homesickness and longing for home.
10- Dérive (n): A French word for a spontaneous journey where
the traveler leaves their life behind for a time to let the spirit of
the landscape and architecture attract and move them.Lit. “drift”; unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travelers, with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.
11- Meraki (adj): A Greek word for the soul, creativity, or love put into something; the essence of oneself put into that which they love doing.
12- Fernweh (n): A German word for wanderlust; yearning to see distant places; craving for traveling.
13- Natsukashii [懐かしい] (adj): A Japanese word for sudden euphoric nostalgia triggered by experiencing something for the first time in a long time; the state of feeling nostalgic or a fond, sweet memory.
14- Orenda [oʊrɛndə] (n): An Iroquois Indian word for a mystical power inherent in people and their environment; remarkable invisible power which pervades in varying degrees all
animate and inanimate natural objects as a transmissible spiritual
energy capable of being exerted according to the will of its possessor.
“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in”
One day I came to find out that Bruce Lee’s nunchaku video which
went mad viral some years ago isn’t real. Because it’s flawlessly
executed, many people still think it’s legit, and I was one of them. It
actually has more than 24 million views on YouTube and counting. So I
thought of sharing the Aha-Moment herein with you.
The
table-tennis video is actually a digital creation intended as a viral
advertisement for the Nokia N96 Limited Edition Bruce Lee cell phone. It
was produced in 2008 — thirty-five years after Lee’s departure — by the
Beijing office of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. The
occasion was the inspiration behind launching the campaign to pay
tributes to the legend.
The agency
employed a Bruce Lee look-alike actor pretending to play ping-pong
against an opponent, then against two. Their movements were seamlessly synchronised
to the sounds of a genuine table tennis match, before the final audio
and the visual image of the ball being added to the clip in
post-production.
Now back to being water, my friends. Here is the full video:
2- Lennon and Che
I once shared this Lennon-Che photo on the blog as part of the Rare Historical Photos collection and received a message from a reader,
informing me that this is a fake image.
The photograph,
allegedly taken in 1966, has been doing the rounds on social networking
sites, but has recently been ousted as a fake because of a few
discrepancies.
One, the real photograph (below)
was taken in New York City and is actually dated closer to 1976, nine
years after Che Guevara’s death. The Beatles released their first album
in 1963 and there is no way Che would be playing guitar with Lennon in
the next 4 years as Che died in 1967 when fighting in Havana and
Bolivia. Also, in 1963 Lennon was merely 23, and in 1967 he was 27. But
this is way ahead for a 27 years old Lennon — this is probably when he
was at least over 35.
Two, it is known that Lennon didn’t need glasses till 1967.
Three, he used to cut his hair to that length up until 1970.
The guitarist on the right is actually Che’s face impressively
Photoshopped onto Wayne Gabriel’s body. The real photo is of a brighter
tone with less contrast. 3- American Flag
In 1958, a history teacher assigned Robert G. Heft (January 19, 1941 – December 12, 2009) and his classmates at Lancaster High School to each redesign the national banner to recognise Alaska and Hawaii, both nearing statehood. Heft, who was 16 at the time, crafted a new flag from an old 48-star flag and $2.87 worth of blue cloth and white iron-on material.
The teen’s creation earned him a B-minus. Though his teacher changed it later to an A after the flag was sent to Washington, D.C., and selected by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Heft was one of thousands to submit a flag design with alternating rows of five and six stars. But apparently he was the only person who actually stitched together a flag and shipped it to D.C.
The design became the official national flag in 1960. 4- The Man Who Saved The World
50 years ago at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
second-in-command Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov(30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused
to agree with his Captain’s order to launch nuclear torpedoes against US
warships and setting off what might have well been a terminal
superpower nuclear war.
The US had been dropping depth charges
near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware it was
carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact
with Moscow, concluded that World War III had begun, and two of the
officers agreed to “blast the warships out of the water”. Arkhipov
refused to agree — unanimous consent of three officers was required — and it never happened.
His story is finally being told, and the BBC is airing a documentary on
it. It also made it to Hollywood in the 2002 movie K-19: The Widowmaker, featuring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
Now let us raise our glasses and say thank you to Vasili Arkhipov: The Man
Who Saved The World.
5- The K9 Air-Raid Early Warning System
Gunner (born c. August 1941), a small black and white stray male Kelpie is one of the unsung heroes of
World War II. Gunner had the remarkable ability to warn allied air force personnel of the
approach of enemy aircraft; he developed this knack after being injured
on February 19th 1942 — the first wave of Japanese attacks on Darwin in Australia.
The pup was only 6-months old and suffered from a broken leg when it was found whimpering under a destroyed mess hut at Darwin Air Force. Leading Aircraftman Percy Leslie Westcott was one of two men who found him, he took him to a field hospital and eventually the leg was repaired. Wescott then became the canine’s master and handler.
It took six months for Gunner to get over the shock of the bombing. Then one day when with the airmen in the field, he got agitated and began whining and jumping. A little bit after, the airmen heard the sound of approaching airplane engines. A few minutes later, a wave of Japanese raiders appeared in the skies above Darwin and began bombing the area.
This scenario was repeated several times in the following days before the men realized that the dog’s hearing ability is beyond extraordinary. His hearing was so acute he could alert them of approaching Japanese aircrafts up to 20 minutes before they arrived and before even showing up on the radar. The bedazzling is that he only acted this way when he heard enemy aircraft as he could differentiate the
sounds of allied from enemy aircraft.
When 18 months later Westcott was posted to Melbourne, Gunner stayed in Darwin, looked after by the RAAF butcher.
The story of Gunner has been documented in a book which pays tribute
to animals that have worked alongside Australia’s fighting forces.
We often find the terms “Hippies” and “Bohemians” used interchangeably. Why is that so? And what is the link between flower children of the 60s and people from Bohemia? For someone residing in Venice Beach — a Bohemian neighbourhood full of Hippies — who is jokingly called a Bo-Bo, I was keen to know the answers.
Let us first begin with the definitions.
In its literal sense, Bohemian means someone from Bohemia, the region in the Czech Republic.
The secondary meaning of Bohemian, the one we’re interested in here, is: A socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in arts and its various forms; a writer or an artist living an unconventional life, usually in colonies or communes with others.
The synonyms of ‘bohemian’ in Oxford are: Nonconformist, unconventional person, beatnik, hippy, avant-gardist, free spirit, dropout, artistic person.
Informal: Freak.
In Merriam Webster, Bohemian is a vagabond, wanderer; especially: gypsy.
According to Wikipedia, Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic, or literary pursuits. In this context, Bohemians may be wanderers, adventurers, or vagabonds.
Sowhat or who is a hippie?
In Merriam Webster, a Hippie (or Hippy) is defined as someone who is usually young and who rejects the mores of established societies by dressing unconventionally or favouring communal living and advocates a non-violent ethic, especially in the 60s.
A slightly more stereotyped definition of a Hippie appears in Oxford: A person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads, associated with a subculture involving a rejection of conventional values and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.
And according to Wikipedia, a Hippie is a member of a subculture, originally a youth movement which started in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world.
Now let us review the history and origin of ‘Bohemian’.
Bohemianism first emerged in France in the early nineteenth century when artists and creators began moving to the lower class, lower-rent Romani neighbourhoods; first it was the Latin Quarter then expanding to Montmartre. Bohémien was a common French term for Gypsies and Romani people of France, who, in fact, were mistakenly thought to have reached France in the 15th century via Bohemia — the only protestant and therefore heretic country among Western Christians at the time.
Among
English-speaking people The Romani are widely known by the exonym “Gypsies” (or “Gipsies”), which
some people consider pejorative due to its connotations of illegality
and irregularity. What I further found is that the origin of
the name came from the time when they entered Europe between the eight
and tenth centuries C.E; they were called “Gypsies” because Europeans
mistakenly believed they came from Egypt.
‘Bohemian’ then took the meaning of an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, withdraws from conventionality in life and arts. Though many participants regarded Bohemia as a state of mind rather than an actual place.
Terence McKenna had another view on why freaks are called Bohemians, and it goes back in history into the 17th century. In a 1996 Talk held in Mannheim, Germany, McKenna shares that Frederick The Fifth, who was King of Bohemia for only one year (1619-1620), and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart (Queen of Bohemia), the daughter of James the 1st of England and Ireland — also King of Scotland as James VI — had plotted a revolutionary alchemical renaissance.
“They were the center of a movement of alchemical reformation and revolution, that sought to take the Protestant Reformation an enormous leap forward into a new world of spiritual freedom, and to my mind, a very sort of psychedelic world.”
Despite the fact that this short-lived revolution didn’t end well for Fredrick and his wife, it had indeed triggered the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, which has later reshaped Europe. Since that time, ‘Bohemians’ meant outcasts with marginal political position involved with bizarre sexual practices, strange drug use, and ‘funny’ ideas.
After finding out that “Gypsy” originates from Egyptian I can now confidently introduce myself as a Bohemian Hippie Gypsy
The use of the modern sense of the word ‘bohemian’ first appeared in the English language in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalised and impoverished artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities. Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political and social viewpoints, which were often expressed through free love, frugality, drug usage, and, in some cases, voluntary poverty.
Bohemians rejected the comfortable bourgeois lifestyle and the strict moral values it embodied. They equally rejected materialism and the pursuit of money by leaving their middle class lives behind, having no permanent residence, and by living solely for the sake of art and literature. Living carefree, indulging in drugs — mainly hashish and opium — and alcohol, and adopting sexual freedom was their way to rebel against the status quo. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀
In some cases, they were associated with a more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic circle, which was sometimes referred to as Haute Bohème or conveniently, High Bohemians — we could call those the High2.
By 1850, the term began appearing in America when Bohemian nationals started to arrive to the country. In 1857 New York City, a group of some 15–20 young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described ‘Bohemians’ until the American Civil War took place 1861. Similar groups were also born in other cities, like the Bohemian Club in San Francisco.
Mark Twain, for one, was one of those American writers who self-identified as Bohemian; while Oscar Wilde was known to have attended the Bohemian Club in America as a guest speaker.
Further information about Bohemianism can be found on this informative Website.
The story of how “hippie”came to mean what it does is equally captivating.
It all began in the early 1900s with the word ‘hip’ — also ‘hep’ — which then meant “aware and informed” or “in the know”. Their exact origin remains unknown.
There are speculations suggesting that it derives from the word ‘hipi’ from Wolof, a language widely spoken in Senegal and The Gambia; its meaning is “to open one's eyes”. The problem with this theory, according to lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, is that Wolof does not use the letter ‘h’ and said word is actually spelled ‘xippi’.
By the late 1930s and early 40s with the rise of counterculture movements like the Beatniks then the Hipsters, — also called Hepcats — ‘hip’ replaced ‘hep’, and the more modern sense of ‘hipster’ was developed; it meant “stylish and currently fashionable”, “up-to-date”. ‘Hipster’ was commonly used among African American Jazz musicians.
At some point, the word ‘hippie’ made an appearance as a variant of hipster; and it was first meant to describe those who were not genuine hipsters, or hipsters wannabes.
However, ‘Hippie’, in the counterculture flower children sense, came to the limelight in mid 1965 as a Haight-Ashbury slang word.
Interestingly, ‘Hip’ lived on in the subculture world when it made it to Hip-Hop in the late 70s. Today, ‘hipster’ is back into the lexicon and it usually depicts a young educated bohemian.
More about the history of ‘hip’ can be found on this OxfordWords Blog.
A colourful circle of Hippies
Now that we know the history of Bohemians and Hippies, we realise that the abundance of common similarities between both counterculture movements, and participants, makes it easy for an outsider to confuse both terms… as well as both groups of people.
Substantially, both Bohemians and Hippies consist of free-spirited nonconformist individuals who lead unconventional, alternative lifestyles. This seems to echo with the word with no direct translation to English: Nefelibata*, which literal meaning in Portuguese is “Cloud-Walker”. Nefelibatas are those who live in the clouds of their imagination and dreams. In literature, it may describe an unorthodox writer who does not follow, nor is bound by, the conventions of society, literature, or art.
As such, Bohemians and Hippies do not conform to the accepted societal norms and advocate hedonism. The two hold beliefs and values, which often come in conflict with the social mainstream and its established paradigms and exhausted ideologies. They usually also challenge the comfortable bourgeois existence by adopting a lifestyle of arts, drug usage, and sexual freedom.
When it comes to appearance, both Bohemians and Hippies reject the conformity of fashion and mock the mainstream culture. They fancy wearing a mixture of odd, colourful clothes and mix-and-match different fashions together. Though the final outcome seems to remain different.
Back in the late 50s & early 60s, the anti-establishment counterculture wave were the Beat generation — the Beatniks. Being a later manifestation of the original Bohemians, they were often referred to as Bohemians. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs are the prominent names that come to mind when pondering said years.
In general, The Beat was a literary movement whose participants led unique artistic lives where self-expression is of the highest value. Whether it is writing, acting, poetry, singing, dancing, or painting, they are centred around art and literature which are the main focus of their lives. The Beats used these focus points to rebel against the authority and the status quo.
The Hippies generation then followed in the 60s, also promoting an alternative lifestyle. Naturally, they were inspired by the older Beats while many of their ideas and ideals were borrowed from Bohemianism. Hippies were more into sexual experimentation — “free love” — vibrant psychedelic music, LSD and pot, gender and racial equality, peace and anti-Vietnam. They looked up to Timothy Leary and read up on Zen Buddhism. Many were vegetarians who dreamed about living communally and about travelling to India or Tibet. Hippies used their music as well as their appearance to rebel against authority and to define a whole generation.
All that said, Bohemians and Hippies had a significant influence on culture. Though it seems that Bohemians encompass the hippie lifestyle with their wider, more eclectic range of different tastes in music, fashion, art, and literature. They are more global and appear to be even somewhat more sophisticated than hippies; because part of being bohemian is to wander into unknown territories and coddiwomple around. As we all know, travelling the world is highly educational as it gives one depth. Perhaps also because the movement itself — and its ideologies — has been around for much longer.
Also, Bohemians are usually creative artistic people, which is not necessarily the case for Hippies. Music was still a big part of the Hippie movement, but as participators, they were not all into the arts as much as the Bohemians.
In summation, Bohemians and Hippies, the counterculture movements, may have died out by the mid 70s. As lifestyles and ideals, however, both remain alive and well to this very day. This simply shows how ideas never really die, particularly the compelling and convincing one. For they leave us with an everlasting impact on art, philosophy, music, morality, literature, fashion, and lifestyle. And when you consciously and wholeheartedly embody certain ideas, they become a mindset which ultimately shapes reality... ours and others’.
“The Hippies... recall the Bousingos of the 1830s. The takers of LSD descend perhaps from the Hashish-eaters of the 1840s. The modern student demonstrations sometimes recall the battle of Hernani and the wilder excesses of the Jeunes France. The behavior is similar, for the background is much the same.” — Joanne Richardson, The Bohemians
La bohème, la bohème. Ca voulait dire on est heureux
La bohème, la bohème. Nous ne mangions qu'un jour sur deux
*Nefelibata: From
Ancient Greek νεφελοβάτης (nephelobátēs, “one who walks the clouds”),
from νεφέλη (nephélē, “cloud”) + -βᾰ́της (-bátēs, “walker”).
