The pictured glass plate photos seem fake to me, i.e. they seem to be recent pictures which have been photoshoped to look like glass plates:
If you go to the gallery you'll notice the 3rd picture contains some cables at the bottom.
These cables seem to be attached to the building by a *transparent* piece of material.
Which would be plastic I guess?
And transparent plastic wouldn't have been used for attaching cables to buildings back then?
It also says "Photograph by Tomas van Houtryve", and that person is still alive according to Google. If it really were glass plates he would probably be dead already?
>they seem to be recent pictures which have been photoshoped to look like glass plates:
If you click Tomas's name and scroll down some you see on his profile "Photographer Tomas van Houtryve captured the 19th-century grotesques, or chimeras, with 19th-century equipment: under a dark cloak, on glass plates, with a wooden camera he picked up in a Paris antique shop."
I have no clue about the process but if I had to guess I imagine it has something to do with the chemicals not being evenly distributed either by inexperience, some sort of mask used before chemical exposure to achieve the effect, or the process is just prone to doing that.
It's a combination of things - uneven application of the likely hand applied chemical coating, handling the plates by the edges while loading and processing, unevenness of the metal frame surrounding the plate in the camera, older lenses which had vignetting and lower sharpness at the edges, processing chemicals seeping into the edges of the coating, etc etc.
There are quite a few people shooting with vintage equipment and techniques. They do it for many reasons - for a specific aesthetic, to evoke a certain time period, to achieve technical qualities not readily doable with modern equipment, because it's fun to play with old tools, because there's a market for art using older techniques, etc.
I have a friend who's business is producing images - portraiture and landscapes - on very large glass plates for example.
I have another friend who is a high-end commercial photographer by day, but for his personal art, he shoots with large format view cameras - which would be using glass plate negatives - in this style of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.
I am curious how you arrived to "fake" as conclusion where there is absolutely no sign or reason for faking anything.
I think that it is obvious, to casual observers as well, that this is a modern day photographer using vintage equipment. No need to resort to detective work to notice the obvious modern wiring (which is present in every picture except for one, the elephant), or that the author is still alive, when that information is just in the captions.
And the reason why it's done is obvious, too: It's a great artistic choice that meshes well with the subject's aesthetic.
A wonderful article. As a lover of art history, Notre Dame is an interesting example of European living art. As a former Catholic now atheist, I just don't know exactly how I feel about it's symbolism.
I never had doubt that the cathedral would be rebuilt, though. A few years to rebuild is merely a wink in the time it took to, "finish" it.
> Animal bones found at the village show that the workers were getting the best cuts of meat. More than anything, there were bread jars, hundreds and thousands of them – enough to feed all the workers, who slept in long, purpose-built dormitories. Slaves would never have been treated this well, so we think that these labourers were recruited from farms, perhaps from a region much further down the Nile, near Luxor.
Although your examples are pretty bad. Roman Polanski is still alive, lives within the same legal boundaries of my world and should face the same repercussions for crimes. I may elect to not watch his films in favor of another artist as I certainly do not condone his behavior.
A historical church from the Middle Ages built by generations of anonymous builders - maybe a different situation.
Funny enough I think this was the common view when they were introduced as well. They were a necessary kludge to get certain interior features and through age and context they've become appreciated for their own sake.
They are necessary to prevent the massive weight of the roof from pushing the walls. The benefit of having flying buttresses as opposed to traditional buttresses is that it lets much more light go through the windows. So you can have a higher and larger nave, with larger windows that receive more light.
The key to understanding this architectural choice is that cathedrals are meant to be seen from the inside and from the front, mostly.
I was fortunate enough to visit it the year before it caught on fire.
It's just a cathedral, I thought, just an attraction to check off from my 'list of things to see' so I visited it on a whim really on a lazy Sunday afternoon while I was around the area. Oh man, there is something about it, the grandness, the structure. The rebuild appears to going for a very faithful reconstruction of what it was before.
They hold (held?) small, intimate classical concerts in the chapel infrequently during the summer which gave the audience a glimpse of what it must've been like to live like royalty. The experience was sublime.
La Sainte-Chapelle was far better than the Notre Dame for me. I went to mass at the cathedral but the art and design of the Saint-Chapelle was more beautiful to me. I grew up catholic so maybe huge grand cathedrals don't really inspire much beyond reluctance and memories of suffocating in stuffy cathedrals my whole childhhood.
It is a beautiful piece of history, but that's the extent of it for me. Cheers to those to find the cathedral moving or breathtaking.
I was in Paris for only a day in 2015 and saw Notre Dame from the outside but did not have the time to wait in line. I fondly remember everything I was able to experience walking up and down the Seine that day, but a small part of me regrets being so close and not going in.
I've had people tell me it's just a church. Course they've never visited. I was there for the first time in 1975. It took my breath away, there's definitely something spiritual you feel to your core. I felt extreme joy, awe and happiness.
The only other time that I've been such moved is when I visited Dachau. But it's a different feeling one of darkness and extreme sadness.
Both are worth visiting to experience the true arc of human experience.
I visited and while I found the scale somewhat awe-ing, it didn't have nearly as much an impact on me as you've described. What did have such an impact, however, was La Sagrada Familia
> I've had people tell me it's just a church. Course they've never visited.
It's kind of the opposite. Every city of significant size in France (and more widely, in Europe) has a cathedral, and many of them are comparable to Notre Dame.
I totally get it. As a non-Catholic, I still fell in love with Notre Dame, my wife actually was so moved at our first glance she cried. You never forget a traveling experience like that!
And if you are in Paris and can't visit Notre-Dame because it is under renovation, maybe go see some other gothic cathedrals that are less than an hour away by train, such as Beauvais' or Chartres'.
For what my opinion is worth, I was awestruck by Beauvais' cathedral personally (even though, or especially because, I visited a fair number of period churches). Its nave is incredibly high, high enough that the aisles vaults by themselves are higher than some entire churches. It's also only halfway done, which is somewhat disappointing from an architectural perspective but fascinating from an archeological perspective: half the Carolingian cathedral is still there, which is a rarity.
Another beautiful cathedral around Paris is Amiens.
It's a more recent cathedral than Notre-Dame, and consequently higher, nearly as high as Beauvais in fact, but this one didn't collapse (even if she needed a very costly iron belt to stay that way).
It's also located near the quite nice Saint Leu neighborhood with tons of restaurants near the main canal. And right next to Saint Leu, you have the Hortillonnages (crisscross of waterways and small gardens) which are also worth a visit (it's possible to rent boats to visit them).
It's only ~1 hour away from Paris (Gare du Nord) by train, and definitely worth spending a day there in my opinion. Just don't be afraid by the sight of the tour Perret when exiting the station at Amiens ^^.
The Sagrada Familia was my first thought too. Definitely worth a visit! I think it very much carries on the spirit of Gothic cathedrals. Those builders used the best construction techniques of their time to create breathtaking buildings, and Gaudí did the same with the techniques of his time (and those who picked up the work after he died did the same). The interior with the tree-like branching columns is especially impressive...
Probably buildings that gain historical significance - that's a very hard thing to predict but I'd guess the next important site is probably going to be where Ukraine and Russia sign a treat to cease violence - assuming that happens and that it happens on Ukrainian soil.
Some sites of historical significance were intentionally destroyed, particularly if the memory is painful. Most notably it has been very hard to preserve what remains of the Berlin Wall as a memorial.
That's an interesting contrast with places that are important but not honored - I know that some concentration camps have been preserved as museums to the horror but the Berlin wall is kind of a great counter example because not only does the city not want the wall there anymore (obviously)... but Berlin is also specifically opposed to trying to preserve the path of the wall since it'd reinforce the division in the city.
There is, from the Berliners I've spoken too, a strong desire to make sure the memory of what the wall did isn't lost - but all but the most minute physical presences of the wall were actively removed.
I doubt any of the all-window-facade building will be able to stand the test of time. On the other hand, the parisians wanted the ”useless and monstrous” Eiffel tower torned down after the exhibition (as was the plan) so I think it is inherently difficult to guess.
> A lot of these Cathedrals managed to survive long period of neglect with minimal to no maintenance.
If by "minimal maintenance" you mean frequent rebuilding after fires, refurnishing, extension of the building and stylistic changes, and almost continuous restoration effort, they you're right, of course.
No, many buildings in this style really were left virtually unmaintained for centuries at a time. The only really essential maintenance is clearing the gutters, and that's only necessary in certain biomes. Of course they needed full refurnishing afterwards, but the shell of a solid stone building is pretty resilient, being, well, solid stone.
Technically an extension of a much older building, but I think the glass pyramid of the Louvre in Paris, completed in 1988, is iconic enough that we will want to keep it around. It's also easy and practical to maintain compared to other structures we value.
Due do usefulness maybe a few very significant pieces of infrastructure, but I don't there's such a thing as a new sacred structure because there's nothing that is sacred, period. An interesting observation is that artefacts which were moved from their places of origin (which are still sacred) in the ME to say museums as an explicit act of modern conservation, these were the first artefacts to be destroyed during the recent wars in the region, while anything still stuck in its 'unsafe' places has survived. The defining feature of modernity is that everything is replaceable.
Petra was abandoned and rediscovered in the 1800s and has really only emerged in the last 20 years as a destination, after being featured in Indiana Jones movie. Similarly Machu Picchu was abandoned and forgotten only to be rediscovered in 1909.
> Some of them being Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Machu Pichu, Petra, etc.
See:
> Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence or competition and greater odds of continued existence into the future.[2] Where the Lindy effect applies, mortality rate decreases with time.
With modern technology, we could probably take any building and through regular maintenance, keep it forever. On the other hand, we have weapons that can vaporize any man-made structure in an instant.
It is more about how significant it will be in the future, and we don't know. Maybe some random university building will be preserved for centuries because that's where the cure for cancer will be found. Maybe ITER, if it delivers on its promises, it will be of great historical significance, and maybe a bit radioactive. Maybe an airport or train station being built today that will become a major trade hub. An office building that miraculously survives a nuclear war. Some ugly structure that will be seen by generations as the most representative of 21th century art. Anything, really.
Probably a lot of early 20th century homes in towns around the US will be 'preserved' for a long time as it's become too expensive to tear down and build new homes for most buyers. People say that European homes last a long time because they are timber and stucco, but make teardowns expensive enough and with enough permitting issues, any town in a desirable location can be preserved indefinitely!
Assuming our society endures, I would say many skyscrapers likely to be preserved, especially the iconic ones, because there are economic reasons to keep them on top of historic ones. Destroying a house to build a larger building makes sense economically, but destroying an already large building to rebuild is less interesting in terms of space gained.
I often do image searches for cities I'd like to visit. The old European cities are more likely to be photographed from the street level showing the details of individual buildings, while newer cities in the Americas and Asia are usually photographed from afar as a skyline. I think this indicates a change in how we measure the look of a city.
Ornamentation on the 50th floor is hard to see from the street, while a medieval city is mostly flat (2-5 stories) from afar.
Architecturally ornamentation is out and rarely tried now, so individual buildings don't stand out from the street perspective. Rather, the use of monumental forms (China TV building, London's Shard) are what set a building apart from the city now. And indeed the city itself has become a composition via skylines.
So although the buildings we construct now are much more austere than in the past, the city as a whole has acquired a third dimension which is where the originality plays out. So instead of individual structures standing out, entire cities now stand out.
On the subject of glass boxes, I can agree that they are forgettable.
Answer: we don't know, but most structures from past centuries are gone and replaced by new buildings on a regular basis, so it would not be surprising that we keep doing the same thing in the future as well, with only very "monuments" kept as tokens of the 21st century.
Just to make this clear to everybody: there are no signs at all that this fire was arson. There are multiple explanations for the cause of the fire involving the construction site and some sort of negligence, which seem highly likely to be true.
Just to make it clear, there is no denying that people have been setting fire to Catholic churches in France. If you want to argue if this particular case was arson or not, fine. But there is no denying people are going around lighting churches on fire. So even if it didn't catch fire prior due to arson, it is definitely still at risk.
Also the ashes weren't even cold, heck the fire was still burning, when the prestige media that serves as most people's sole epistemological authority pronounced that the fire was absolutely assuredly accidental.
I recall being particularly impressed with the speed and rigor of that investigation.
I've seen news of churches (Catholic, as most Churches are in France) been set on fire maybe 2 or 3 times in the news here in France, that was a while ago... Not seen any news like that recently.
Are there any sources about the true numbers of these arson fires ?
I had the same conversation with someone living in the US at the time of the Notre-Dame fire, I couldn't come with more than 2 or 3 occurrences reported in the French press naming specifics cases with places names and all, while he, in the US would provide me with dozen of press reports of "Churches are burnings by numbers in France !" type of titles ... Many from a very specific side of the political spectrum.
And the "wave" was a handful of unrelated fires that happened near churches (not even in churches for most of them) over a few years and were mounted as a "wave of arson" by extreme-right websites during the height of Syrian refugees influx.
The original website that had a map of these events (that you had to look up yourself to see they amounted to nothing) isn't even online anymore as far as I can see, now this false fact is just a urban legend with a life of its own.
Besides for lack of evidence of arson and evidence of negligent construction practices, how exactly do you guess one could root out anti-church extremists?
Since the time that article was written, several problems have arised/surfaced concerning the restoration project (Le canard enchainé, June 26 2022, p.5):
- Some of the wood used in the foundational carpentry work (tabouret) was found to not meet quality criteria ( not dry enough ).
- An other lead sarcophagus was found on site in June. Georgelin refused to have archeologists extract and/or study it.
- The stacked bungalows used as life quarters for workers do not meet the security criteria and part of them are therefore not allowed to be used.
It should also be noted that Georgelin is willing to do anything in order to meet the 2024 deadline, even if it means botching all the work.
"botching all the work" and "not meeting french quality criteria" are so far away. Almost as laughable as quoting le Canard Enchainé as more than a tongue in cheek rumour mill.
It has also revealed as many scandals that turned out to be pure libel. It is basically an anonymous postbox for journalists to publish papers that were turned down by their own editor.
If you ever know a subject well you'll see the Canard has the worst journalist and article for it, also they create controversy and outrage over the most minor thing.
> Some of the wood used in the foundational carpentry work (tabouret) was found to not meet quality criteria ( not dry enough ).
I would love to see your article, because I think their journalist just doesn't understand how carpentry works :)
In the case of Notre Dame, the works is _extremely_ difficult. We're talking about fitting a massive amount of Oak timber that used to came from 100+ years old oak trees into a monument.
Finding trees that are in good shape and -at least- old enough so they can be used whole for carpentry is difficult. Turning a tree into a single huge oak beam is difficult. Transporting a beam to Notre-Dame without damaging it is difficult. Assembling several beams together is difficult. And, of course, carpentry is often done with same-age trees cut at the same time so they can age together in place and dry on site for tighter fit. Getting that repeated x00 times is difficult.
If the oak was "too green", that's not an issue, as long as the rest of the oak is also "too green". They will bend and crack, and that's usual for oak carpentry.
It's getting hard because the water goes away. It means the wood shrinks, warps and cracks as fibers get closer to one another.
In the case of Oak, the wood is pretty dense already. The shrinkage stills happens, but less than green pine for example.
Also, green Oak has some pliability to it and is much easier to work on than seasoned Oak. Carpenters will use green Oak as much as possible and let it finish to dry on site, so joins are perfectly held in place and the overall fit is tighter. Of course, proper craftsmanship would have built the right tolerances for wood drying up directly in the work piece. So, you know, I think the carpenters there have some experience.
Using seasoned Oak - like what you would find in dead trees that are still standing - can be super unproductive. It is so hard that it will break your chainsaw / chisel if you're not careful and be otherwise full of pest / mushrooms.
That's why I think the Canard Enchainé is trying to spread some shit, just because they like the smell.
None of this sounds like botched work. It sounds like someone trying to maintain a strict deadline, willing to bend the limits of the work place norms and in this particular instance, I respect that.
Rebuilding "as it was", despite calls for modernization, is also something that happened after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Especially Christopher Wren, one of the most famous architects of XVII century, was supposedly very upset that his plan for a concentric ring-like city plan was rejected, in favour of rebuilding the city with all its tangled medieval street plan.
I don't think Wren's plan looks very concentric or ring-like. He also got to rebuild St. Paul's to a completely new design, in those years. Maintaining the original plot boundaries, as the city was rebuilt, naturally didn't interfere with the cathedral.
Thanks, never saw the plan just heard an anecdote. And it's interesting to learn London landlords could be as "assertive" in XVII century as they are now
Can the wood beams be seen in the cathedral? Do visitors ever tour the roof area? I'm trying to understand why it is so important to rebuild it exactly like the original, the benefits of this besides being faithful to the historical structure. Wouldn't it make more sense to innovate and make a new roof that would offer potential features to the cathedral?
Anyway I thought this part was funny
> “I see, monsieur, you have been contaminated by those who believe the president of the republic should not be interfering in the reconstruction of Notre Dame,” he boomed. “You have been contaminated by the party of slowness.” Georgelin is a good-humoured alpha type
Sounds more like a condescending way to avoid addressing the topic to me, personally. But that's just my opinion.
Nice little story about how the people burnt Notre Dame a couple centuries ago. This makes me think about how Notre Dame has been rising for a millennium, how are we supposed to believe it "took fire" exactly? Cause the article is clear: last time it burnt like that it was because people did it on purpose. Do you think whoever did this has been forgiven, or "is yet to be found"?
I wonder if there's any article keeping track of how much money the billionaires actually donated vs. the promise & pledge competition between them when the topic was still hot?
For anyone interested in the kind of timber framing used in these buildings, here are a couple of videos that I've been enjoying:
Carl Rogers & family are restoring an old French farmhouse and have a series of very well made videos about the process. There are separate 1-5 videos of this barn build, but here's a shorter version that's combined: https://youtu.be/K75pQ2HxRgM
Another good channel has this recent video showing a legit medieval castle being rebuilt in France using simple tools and traditional methods. There's a section on working with green oak where they use a side-axe to square up some lumber https://youtu.be/Ajqort8ldXA
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