Tata Vislevskaya is a young director and screenwriter currently living in Moscow. Explore her photostream over at Flickr.
Previously on Skandalon: The most popular snowflake in the world, Snow Crystal by Wilson Bentley.
“Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley (February 9, 1865 – December 23, 1931), born in Jericho, Vermont, is the first known photographer of snowflakes. He perfected a process of catching flakes on black velvet in such a way that their images could be captured before they either melted or sublimated.” (Wikipedia)
“Though produced in considerably primitive conditions, the photographs are masterpieces of the intricate, infinite patterns in nature, never before imaginable. Wilson A. Bentley captured the astonishing beauty of what he called “gems, wrought by blizzards.” Today, the knowledge we have, in large part, about the complexity and the beauty of the snowflake is due to the scholarly efforts of this remarkable pioneer. Bentley’s prodigious body of work, SNOW CRYSTALS, was published in 1931 in New York, N.Y., by the McGraw-Hill book publishers. That same year, less than a month after the book’s release, Wilson A. Bentley walked home in a raging snow blizzard to make yet more photos of his beloved form of precipitation, and, contracting pneumonia from that walk, died two weeks later.” (Hammer Gallery)
“Every snowflake has an infinite beauty which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it. Consequently, photographing these transient forms of Nature gives to the worker something of the spirit of a discoverer. Besides combining her greatest skill and artistry in the production of snowflakes, Nature generously fashions the most beautiful specimens on a very thin plane so that they are specially adapted for photomicrographical study.” Read the full essay by Wilson Bentley at his official website.
Those instructions are from the book The Boy Mechanic Vol. 2 1000 Things for Boys to Do also available over at ChestofBooks.com and on Amazon. The book was published in 1948 by Popular Mechanics Co. Here is a description of it’s content: “How to construct devices for winter sports, motion-picture camera, indoor games, reed furniture, electrical novelties, boats, fishing rods, camps and camp appliances, kites and gliders, pushmobiles, roller coaster, ferris wheel and hundreds of other things which delight every boy. With 995 illustrations.”
From the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-14) collection of photographs : “In 1911 a group of scientists and adventurers left Hobart under the leadership of Dr Douglas Mawson. They were bound for Macquarie Island and the then unknown parts of Antarctica. The scientists of the expedition produced information that later made an major contribution to knowledge of the region. The exploration of new lands established precedence to claims, formalised in 1936 as the Australian Antarctic Territory.”
About F. H. Bickerton : “Treasure-hunter, Antarctic explorer, soldier, aeronaut, entrepreneur, big-game hunter and movie-maker, Francis Howard Bickerton not only made a major contribution to the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14 but was also recruited for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s “Endurance” Expedition; he fought with the infantry, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force in both world wars and was wounded on no fewer than four separate occasions. According to his obituary in “The Times”, “His loyalty to his friends, his gallantry… and the unembittered courage with which he continued to meet the difficulties of a world which gave little recognition in peace to men of his mould - leave to us who shared in one way or another his various life the memory of a rich, rewarding and abiding spirit” (Wikipedia)
