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Will Brooker on the Similarities Between My So-Called Secret Identity and the New Batgirl
by Julian Darius | in Interviews | Fri, 20 March 2015
Dr. Will Brooker has published studies of comics and pop culture since his Batman Unmasked in 2001. In 2013, he launched the comic book My So-Called Secret Identity, which he writes. The series, illustrated by Suze Shore and Dr. Sarah Zaidan, has been widely embraced as a positive example of a female super-hero comic. Brooker has put his money where his mouth is, donating the comic's profits to charity. I and others here at Sequart have tried to trumpet the series, literally since its launch. Brooker has also contributed to Sequart. We sat down to discuss the similarities between My So-Called Secret Identity and the new direction on DC's monthly Batgirl, written by Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher, with art by Babs Tarr.
DARIUS: The idea that there might be similarities between My So-Called Secret Identity and the new Batgirl isn't a new subject to me. For one thing, they're both super-heroines (without super-powers) written in a feminist mode, which is a very rare thing in itself. Their stories are both also generally upbeat, in contrast to the dark super-hero stories that sometimes seem to dominate the market today. There are more specific aspects, which we can get into later.
I've also been reading the annotations of this new Batgirl that you and Sam LeBas have produced for Multiversity Comics. They've been fascinating, in great part because you and Sam are so intelligent and know your stuff. You've deftly tackled issues of representation in the series, and the two of you were particularly strong in your critical but kind discussion over the series's depiction of a transgendered villain. To their credit, the series's creators listened to this criticism, by you and others. But along the way, you and Sam have sometimes used My So-Called Secret Identity as a reference point, gently pointing out some of the similarities between your approach and the new Batgirl.
Artistic similarities can be a sensitive subject. So before we get into any of the specifics, perhaps we should clarify that you haven't said that the new Batgirl stole from My So-Called Secret Identity, or anything of the sort. I'm not sure what kind of relationship you have with Stewart, Fletcher, and Tarr, but you seem to admire their work (as do I). It doesn't seem like you're criticizing them for any of these similarities. Did I get that right?
BROOKER: That's right. I have met the creative team once, at the Thought Bubble convention, and I've had friendly exchange with them on Twitter, plus more extensive correspondence with Brenden. From what I know of them, I think they are great people. I think they have integrity as well as intelligence and talent. They're very generous in their interaction with readers, and they've been very warm towards me. I also really admire, respect and enjoy their Batgirl.
It's clear to any reader that despite some similarities, the Batgirl reboot is also very different from My So-Called Secret Identity. One of the major differences stems from the fact that I set my story in the period I associate with the greatest Vertigo comics, the early-to-mid 1990s. As such, there's minimal internet, one mobile phone, no apps, no social media. Batgirl is all about social media, formally and thematically, and as such it's very current, very 2015. Both stories are about finding yourself, discovering your identity, dealing with insecurity and trauma, across an arc of approximately the same length (5-6 issues of 22 pages) but there are multiple differences in the way those stories are told.
There are, I think, undeniable overlaps in tone, concept and detail, to the extent that people now approach me every time I give a talk, asking if I've seen the new Batgirl and whether I think DC ripped it off from me in some way. I think both start from a similar point, and what they do intersects to an extent. But I couldn't have written that Batgirl arc. It is different to what I could have done. I think they have achieved something unique and special.
DARIUS: I have the same favorable impression of the Batgirl creative team, and I've been especially impressed with how they've handled controversies, listening to readers and openly acknowledging missteps. Do you happen to know if any of the current Batgirl creators have read My So-Called Secret Identity?
BROOKER: No. I would be very interested to know for sure if anyone at DC who had any connection with Batgirl had read or was acquainted with My So-Called Secret Identity, because clearly there seem to be echoes and it would be fascinating if that was pure coincidence and synchronicity. I've heard that DC has people who look for trends and identify patterns, and it would seem plausible that they could easily find my article from 2011 that ends "We are building a better Batgirl. Look out for her," and follow it from there. But I genuinely don't know.
Some of it, I think, is undeniably, unambiguously chance, despite the remarkable parallels. There are aspects of MSCSI, such as my early pitch about a "Batgirl and Oracle" storyline, following the first arc — with Oracle as Batgirl's digital assistant — that I don't believe ever circulated publicly [so no one at DC could have seen them].
A shopkeeper wears a bunny head in Batgirl #36.
Happy Kitty, which coincidentally featured a similar design.
When I read Batgirl #36 and saw the shopkeeper of a manga emporium Robot Pony wearing a pink rabbit head, I was startled as I'd written something very similar into the script for MSCSI volume 2 — a teen girl-gang member called Surprising Delight, with a Hello Kitty-style head mask. But I didn't see theirs, and nobody saw mine. There's also a comic from Absolution called Happy Kitty that echoes the same visual concept. Some ideas are just floating around waiting for people to grab them, and sometimes different people grab them at around the same time. For what it's worth, you can see I was developing that idea myself in the two-page Stylist strip we published in Spring 2014, with the first appearance of that character: she's got a Hello Kitty backpack instead of a full head mask.
Surprising Delight, from My So-Called Secret Identity. Art by Jennifer Vaiano.
From the Stylist strip. Art by Rachael Smith and Sarah Zaidan.
So, every single example of possible crossover between MSCSI and Batgirl could be just like that.
DARIUS: Would it bother you if the current Batgirl creators explicitly said they'd taken inspiration from your comic?
BROOKER: No, I would be very flattered and gratified.
DARIUS: You described a process of inspiration and coincidence, sort of mixing in a creative flux. People sometimes think only in terms of borrowing. But sometimes two creators have a similar interpretation, especially when they're both springboarding off of an existing trend, or what's wrong with a character's history, or a popular story. In fact, you've been open about the fact that My So-Called Secret Identity was inspired by Batgirl, to some extent. I knew the series had started, in part, with some observations about Barbara Gordon originally being a graduate student and observations that you had about women in graduate programs. But I don't think I was aware that My So Called Secret Identity also stemmed from a 2011 Batgirl pitch that you made to DC. Was that an unsolicited pitch? What was the process there?
BROOKER: It was both an unsolicited and unsubmitted pitch. I started to develop it around the time I wrote the article "Killer Moth to Killing Joke" [linked above], a critical history of Batgirl, in Autumn 2011. The original idea was to put something together that would demonstrate how Batgirl could be done differently, and implicitly, better. I was planning simply to write a pitch, complete some sample pages of script, design a logo and commission a portfolio of artwork, and publish it online as a kind of thought experiment, to provoke debate and make people think — like an alternate universe, alternate-history, "what if we did Batgirl like this" concept. It was essentially Barbara Gordon finding out who she was by moving to a hip neighbourhood, sharing a house with people who were also secretly superheroes (Black Orchid, Shade the Changing Man), and hanging out in a kind of Greenwich Village milieu, with an aesthetic and feel that focused on wearable fashion, alternative music, relationships and identity.
Logo from Brooker's unsubmitted Batgirl pitch.
From Brooker's unsubmitted Batgirl pitch. Art by Jen Vaiano.
Solicits Will Brooker wrote for his unsubmitted Batgirl pitch, which include a new Oracle.
As I continued to work on this, I realised it was actually an idea with real potential, and the artwork that was coming in from Jennifer Vaiano, Suze Shore and Clay Rodery was really exciting me and prompting me to see it as something more, something larger.
The whole point of my article and the alternate-Batgirl pitch was a response to the New 52, which at least at the time was very glossy, very teenage-boy, in my opinion, with a lot of covers and interior art featuring women like Supergirl, Catwoman and Starfire in skimpy outfits and sexualised, soft porn poses.
Starfire, as seen in the early New 52
So submitting this unsolicited idea to DC at the time didn't seem right, to be honest. It was a reaction against what DC was doing. It wouldn't have fit their direction in Autumn 2011 at all. It was implicitly saying, "this is what you're doing wrong and here's how you could be doing something different (better)." More specifically, Gail Simone was writing Batgirl, and I think doing a great job of it. I don't like most of what the New 52 was about in 2011 but I have a lot of respect and admiration for Gail and her work, and Babs is really her character more than anyone else's. She was back on Batgirl and she was the best person to handle that, after years of writing Oracle and obviously caring about Babs a great deal. Having said that, it was also clear even to a reader that Gail was having to negotiate a lot of push and pull within the company. Her Batgirl was obliged to take part in Batman crossovers that I feel compromised and interrupted the storyline, and you'll remember she was even taken off the title, then hurriedly reinstated.
For all manner of reasons, then, I didn't think I would get very far with submitting this pitch to DC, three and a half years ago.
As such, I had to consider whether I was going to just continue to treat this as an experiment, a hypothetical portfolio for a comic — which I imagine would be fair use in copyright — or approach the owners of that copyright with the idea, or change direction and develop it as something distinct. I made a deliberate decision, at a specific point — it really was a decision I made in a moment, after considering the options for a few days — and went back to the pitch document and started to rework it.
In making changes to various details about the city, the costumes, the characters and so on, inevitably one thing led to another and the whole pitch altered. If you move a story out of an established universe, you have to develop a new universe. You have to develop a new fictional history and politics, and an understanding of how powers work in this world, and the role costumed heroes occupy. It's not just a question of filing off the serial numbers. In that process, I gained a lot of freedom in terms of saying something distinct about celebrity and culture, and various aspects took shape that wouldn't have if this remained a DC pitch: for instance, Cat's helmet, which I based on the Beano character Katie (cousin of Billy the Cat), was now part of her policeman father's uniform, and her logo became the Urbanite's stencilled sign, flipped over and adapted. The original pitch was for a story called "My So-Called Lives," and that evolved into "My So-Called Secret Identity." So in many ways, moving outside of an established universe forced me to come up with a lot of ideas, which ultimately enhanced the story and its world.
My So-Called Secret Identity #5
DARIUS: The most recent issue of My So-Called Secret Identity, issue #5 (which wraps up book one), has a cover that's an homage to Batman: The Killing Joke. We've talked a lot about The Killing Joke lately, due to the recent Batgirl variant cover fiasco. It's a polarizing work, and it's certainly colored Barbara Gordon's history. I feel like a lot of Batgirl's subsequent development has been an attempt to undo or redeem that story, in one way or another, in some very tangled ways. In fact, the new Batgirl has done so too, as you and Sam LeBas have addressed in your annotations.
Personally, I think MSCSI #5 is my favorite issue so far, and I can't help but wonder if it's your own attempt to show a healthier alternative to the gore that was inflicted on Barbara Gordon — to address the idea of trauma inflicted upon a super-heroine but do so in a less voyeuristic way that also keeps her own story and humanity at center focus.
Put another way, we've talked about how Batgirl's history helped inspire Cat's creation. But did Batgirl's history, including potentially its missteps, also help inspire the overall shape of the narrative of Cat's story?
BROOKER: Yes, MSCSI #5 was meant to be, in part, an anti-Killing Joke, or an alternative Killing Joke. The sequence with Cat opening the door to Carnival, which ends issue 4 on a cliffhanger, is a deliberate echo of Babs opening the door to Joker. From there, we go in a different direction, and the storytelling in issue 5 is shaped by the fact that Cat's in a hospital bed on morphine, and the news, in her universe, that they've confirmed the existence of alternate earths. So her mind is wandering, and we see visions that we can't entirely trust as "true": her father visits her, Dahlia reveals her secret, and Cat imagines a version of events where she responded quickly enough to shove Carnival's nose back into his brain with the flat of her hand. I thought that was a cathartic and important image, as really — I've always felt — Batgirl opening the door to Joker should have resulted in her disarming him and forcing him into submission within the two panels before he fires. She's Batgirl!
Although we understand that that specific image is only Cat's fantasy, the chapter focuses on her survival and resolve, and the fact that Carnival failed to beat her. He thought she lived in her face and in her looks, as a 'pretty girl' — he didn't realise she lives inside her head, somewhere he can't touch. By the end of the story, she's back and she's turned the tables.
So yes, structurally MSCSI is a response to various patterns I'm uncomfortable with in the Batman mythos, including the dependent relationship between Batman and Joker and the fact that they need each other and so continue to sustain each other, and specifically the collateral damage to people like Barbara.
DARIUS: Maybe we could talk about a few specifics. Both My So-Called Secret Identity and the new Batgirl have the heroines move to a hip neighborhood. I like the idea, I think because it kind of gets into what's fashionable without being overt or sexist about it. Also, it's not something we've really seen before, at least not in any way that a hip, trendy setting feels important to the story and its tone. Usually, we just get uber-rich Bruce Wayne penthouses, or dirty alleyways, or working-class houses, but we seem to skip that hipster / bohemian upper middle-class vibe, including some ethnic diversity. What inspired this in your pitch and the resulting comic? What does it add to the story, and does it work similarly in Batgirl?
BROOKER: I was thinking in part about what I enjoyed in the Vertigo comics of the early 1990s, and partly about my own life at the time, when I was around the same age as the characters. One of the main inspirations was the shared house that we tour around at the opening of Sandman: A Game of You, with various diverse characters who all have their own secrets and stories. There's a similar situation in the earlier Doll's House arc, where Barbie, the main character in A Game of You, is first introduced. And this was, give or take some stylisation and fantasy, the kind of house I shared while I was reading those comics. That is, minus the superpowers, the kind of life I lived: a life of part-time work, walking around the city, hanging out with interesting people, buying vinyl and seeing bands, shopping for vintage clothes, experimenting with styles. A little later, I lived around 116th Street in New York while I was researching my PhD at DC Comics, and some of that experience also fed into MSCSI — Gloria University is like I remember Columbia University, and there are scenes of street basketball games, independent cinemas, beatnik shirts and bagels, based on that neighborhood and Greenwich Village. So I wanted to capture that sense of openness, freshness, possibility and exploring. Almost the vibe from the cover of Dylan's Freewheelin' album.
So in a way I was writing a 1990s scene that felt a little bit 1960s, and maybe the cycle's come around, because the Burnside scene in Batgirl, set in 2015, has a similar feel. To me, having seen that kind of Beat culture when it was revived the first time, Burnside feels a little pretentious and try-hard hipster, like Hoxton in London, but I think that may be partly intentional from the writers, and it's just a sign of my jaded, aged attitudes anyway. Again, I think it gives Babs' new adventures a sense of fresh possibility, and of course it also allows the creators to bring in their own settings, stores, brands, supporting cast and guest villains, rather than being tied to Gotham's geography and rogues' gallery. It also gives them the opportunity to include a more diverse cast, I think, and they've really embraced that: the most obvious example might be Frankie, a bisexual woman of color with a disability who looks as if she's going to take on the role of Oracle, but there's a range of characters of various ethnicities and sexualities in the book so far, which I think is refreshing and also, importantly, realistic.
DARIUS: You mentioned gloria University. Another element in both comics is that both Cat and Babs are grad students, and we see them at school, including each of them dealing with an older male professor. I know that Barbara Gordon was originally a graduate student. You riffed on that history in creating Cat, right? Could you expand on how graduate school works in your story and in the new Batgirl?
BROOKER: Yes, the original prompt behind MSCSI was a panel on the first page of Barbara Gordon's first story, which confirms that she has a PhD — coupled with the fact that I was leading PhD induction sessions for new, mostly-female doctoral students, and the other fact that no women in the New 52 seemed to look or act anything like the women I was supervising. So Cat was, among other inspirations like Claire Danes and Molly Ringwald, based partly on students I knew — and still know — at Kingston University. One was a redheaded history PhD called Claire, who is now very nearly a doctor, and the other was an undergrad, now a graduate, actually called Babs.
Funnily enough, I think I encountered the same issue in MSCSI as the team did in Batgirl, which is that when a graduate student becomes a costumed hero, there's less time for study. Babs basically neglected — and literally lost — her research soon after beginning her enrolment at Burnside College, and we haven't seen much of her in an academic environment apart from being called in for an emergency meeting by her supervisor.
In MSCSI, Cat's treatment by her supervisor in the first issue is the catalyst for her to reclaim her "secret power," her intelligence, and admit to herself, before announcing to the world, that she actually is something special. She also returns regularly to the university library, and that sparks key points in her research and understanding of the city's superhero dynamics. But as she becomes engaged in the challenges of who Urbanite really is, what role Sekhmet plays, and how to stop Carnival, it would be fair to say she doesn't do any of the academic research she should be working on. She neglects her actual studies. Perhaps this is a problem superheroes have always had, at least since Peter Parker. In volume 2 we do return to the supervisor and he plays a central role — I was really hoping Batgirl wouldn't do this with Babs' professor Krupke, and fortunately it didn't — but it's inevitable I think that becoming a costumed icon, even on a local, community level, gives you responsibilities and places expectations on you that drag you away from your previous life.
Having said that, in volume 2 we also meet some of the faculty at Gloria University, who are mentioned in the Issue 1 MindMap and in Dahlia's conversations with Cat — Lance Oakes, Robert Wood, Nancy Colum and C. Leigh Harrington. They're all former costumed heroes, and bear a resemblance to characters from the mainstream comic book universe. Volume 2 opens out the scope and deals with superhero tropes more broadly. Ultimately it becomes a comic about women in comics, in a very meta way that I hope won't be too challenging and alienating (in the Brechtian sense).
DARIUS: I've always liked homemade super-hero costumes. The super-hero movie loses me when the poor kid home-stitches a costume that's clearly a product of multi-million-dollar Hollywood engineering. In MSCSI, you and your collaborators were keen to maintain this aesthetic, and the new Batgirl has a somewhat similar focus. Both even have a scene in which the heroine use a cut-out or stencil to detail her uniform. Usually, stripped-down costumes are associated with revisionism, or realistic super-heroes, like Watchmen or Batman: Year One. But both MSCSI and Batgirl seem to recast this idea as more of a homemade arts aesthetic. It's more of a hipster arts thing than a grim "this is real!" expression. Am I right to say that?
Brooker's spraypained Batgirl logo.
BROOKER: Again, there were various inspirations behind the logo. I'd been thinking about Batman: No Man's Land, with its motifs of graffiti, which were later picked up in the viral marketing for Dark Knight Rises, with the chalk-marks of the Batman logo signalling his return. My original pitch had a graffiti style Batgirl logo, in dripping yellow paint. The idea was a DIY aesthetic in keeping with that young, hip, slightly bohemian concept of local bands, fashion students and stylistic experiment. If Babs was a PhD student, then believe me, she was not going to be financially loaded. So she would, it seemed to me, put together an outfit from items she owned and could afford, which had the additional benefit of making it practical and escaping the cliche of the tight, revealing, spandex costume for female characters. The first designs by Jennifer Vaiano and Suze Shore had our Batgirl wearing a kind of balaclava cowl, a ribbed roll-neck black sweater, a rucksack and cargo pants, with big boots. It's sensible, it's engaging, it's an alternative to familiar sexist tropes, and at the time, in 2011, this was an original idea! The underlying concept was 'how would you make your own outfit on a budget?' It's real, sure, but not the grim-and-gritty kind of "real."
From Brooker's unsubmitted Batgirl pitch.
In fact, when I was a PhD student, and in one of my stir-crazy phases from being surrounded by Batman texts and memorabilia in little rooms all day, I did fashion my own costume, including a transfer of the logo from Batman & Robin onto a tight grey ribbed T-shirt. With hindsight, that sounds more like something you might wear to a certain type of club than an outfit for urban vigilantism.
DARIUS: I didn't know that, but that's awesome. Was the idea to put yourself in Batman's head, to prepare for a war on crime, or just to see how this would look and feel?
BROOKER: The idea was to wage war on street crime in Cardiff, which is a small enough city for one person to police. The Batman of Cardiff is, I think, a figure they haven't yet included in Batman Incorporated. Perhaps I should pitch it. He would have a much easier job than the Batman of Africa.
DARIUS: I don't want to leave the artwork out from our discussion. MSCSI and Batgirl both use some novel devices to depict their heroine's processing of information. Of course, there's also the emphasis on style, on fashion, and even on music, and this stuff gets integrated into the conventional panels in some novel ways. I also think that, because both stories are bright and bucking the dark super-hero trend, the art reflects this, visually communicating that we're not in the uber-dark world of, say, Batman. That's been done before with Batgirl, of course, especially with stuff like Batgirl: Year One, but it's definitely at odds with most of the New 52.
BROOKER: The artwork for MSCSI was explicitly meant to be different from the New 52. The idea was that people — especially people new to comics, and especially women and girls — might look at it and think it looked distinct from the mainstream, and give it a chance. I think the visual style of the dominant mainstream at the time was particularly off-putting, despite its supposed aim to bring in new readers.
It's Like This, Cat
So my inspirations, and the guide images I gave to the artists, were Tim Sale's work on Daredevil Yellow and Superman for All Seasons, with their watercolour look that almost recalls the Saturday Morning Post for me. There were more surprising images in the mix, too, like frames from West Side Story, the various covers for Catcher in the Rye and, coincidentally, a book for young adults called It's Like This, Cat. Overall, again, there was a sense of nostalgia about the aesthetic I wanted to convey: something a little 1960s in feel. I wanted a sense of illustration, rather than comic book art, and I think Suze and Sarah captured it brilliantly, especially in the scenes where Cat is just wandering the city.
Significantly, there's one scene in MSCSI where I did ask them to give it a New 52 feel, and that's the sequence in issue 2 where Urbanite bullies Cat — I wanted more digital effects, more glow, afterimages, smoke and reflection. That style literally sweeps in and knocks her off her feet, and dominates the next page.
For that sequence, I gave them the cover of Action #1 from the New 52, so it was a very deliberate choice.
A robotic Batman, to appear in the new Batgirl run.
DARIUS: You mentioned the Urbanite, which is kind of MSCSI's version of Batman. He's a sort of dark, armored vigilante of a super-hero — a version of Batman that borrows from Judge Dredd and other tough, arguably quasi-fascist characters. There too, there's a similarity, because the new Batgirl has this dark, robotic version of Batman.
BROOKER: Well, the new Batman has this dark, robotic version of Batman — and, like Urbanite, it seems nobody knows who he is inside the suit. The cover for Batgirl #41, with this towering RoboCop type figure targeting Babs, with red glowing lights and a shorthand command of "ELIMINATE," reminds me immediately of those specific scenes in MSCSI where Cat is overpowered by Urbanite. The dynamic and the visuals seem very similar.
On the other hand, Urbanite began as a hybrid parody of Vader, RoboCop, Dredd and Batman — though he developed into quite a rounded character I think, almost sympathetic or at least pathetic — so I'm not sure if an ideas thief like me could legitimately claim that my ideas have been stolen. The French theorist Roland Barthes, you will remember, announced that the author was dead and that any new work simply compiles, edits and stitches together things that have already been said. It seems that to an extent DC is currently stitching things together in the same way I did, from similar material. If anyone at DC was influenced by my ideas, that's flattering. If not, it's a very interesting extended pattern and parallel. Anyway, I'm grateful to them for providing me with decades of stories and characters, for letting me use some of that material in an adapted form without giving me a cease and desist, and I hope they like the way I put those pieces together.
DARIUS: Continuing the subject of the artwork, I'm struck by how texture is such an important concern, not only in fashion (and how we craft and present our identities) but also in hipster culture. When I watch a Wes Anderson movie, my eyes are intoxicated by all the texture, yet I feel a weird kind of sensory overloaded, almost like I've got phantom limbs that are feeling all of these fabrics and surfaces I'm looking at. Without going as far as all that, it does seem to me that both comics have a certain focus on textures, not only in their homemade costumes but in these visual breaks from the conventional comics form.
I also think that texture is a gendered concern. In general, women seem more sensitive to texture than men. I know a lot of men who think a shirt's a shirt and a jacket's a jacket. Most men might notice color or pattern, but the idea that texture goes beyond hard or soft seems kind of foreign to them. To even care about texture feels culturally coded as somehow unmanly. Hipster culture's kind of changing this, but I like the idea of creating a female-friendly comic that's concerned with texture.
This may just be my own strange preoccupation, but I wonder if the idea of texture is something you've thought about, or that you see operating in MSCSI or the new Batgirl.
BROOKER: Very much so. I've given a few talks about MSCSI and there are slides that are just captioned "a sense of textiles… a sense of texture… a sense of tactility." One key aspect Sarah Zaidan provided was that feeling of collage, which was integral to the MindMaps in particular. I especially like the fact that we have Cat wearing a blue dress to her PhD tutorial, and then we have a swatch of that dress on the MindMap, as something she's considering as her outfit for the day.
A fabric swatch in one of MSCSI's "mindmaps." Art by Sarah Zaidan.
Sarah also did some wonderful work on the Community page of the website, where I asked her to take us into Cat's space. She chose a cubist approach to the perspective, but you can still experience — I say experience because like you, I do think we can almost feel it, not just see it — the pattern on her bedcovers, the cardboard donut box, the covers of books, the folds of the shirt she's wearing in issue #2.
From the MSCSI website. Art by Sarah Zaidan.
I really enjoy the fact that we see these things in the comic itself, as flatter space, and then we're brought closer to them on this page, as if they actually exist as things for us to touch. It's also a nice irony that this page features a prototype Cat logo t-shirt, which now actually exists in real life, and which a lot of our fans have bought and wear.
I think MSCSI also tries to convey a sense of scent and taste, more than most superhero comics. We see Cat eating, more than we usually see superheroines eating. That was deliberate. And there's a reference to what Urbanite smells like, though it's also a bit of a Frank Miller pastiche ("THE SMELL OF LEATHER AND DRY ICE"). I wanted to involve other senses, as well as just visuals. I wanted, with MSCSI, to suggest a whole world and experience.
Maris Wicks in particular has done wonderful work as colorist on Batgirl in this respect, and in annotating the reboot with Sam LeBas, we've spent a lot of time focusing in close-up on the textures of, for instance, Nadimah's scarves, and the brushwork. It's a great pleasure to examine and it has a really hand-crafted feel — again, far more like what we were aiming for in MSCSI than, for instance, Action #1.
DARIUS: We've talked about a lot of similarities between My So-Called Secret Identity and the new Batgirl. Creators seem to live in fear both of having their ideas stolen or being accused of the same. Instead, you've said that you'd be flattered if Batgirl borrowed from your comic, and you seem to find room in these similarities for coincidence, a kind of healthy mutual inspiration, and even synchronicity.
It occurs to me that there are lots of cases where we acknowledge these kinds of similarities, and we just hope that whoever was first gets some appropriate credit in the historical record. For example, people often point out that Battle Royale preceded Hunger Games. The same culture of originality places emphasis on what came first. And it does seem like you anticipated how at least how one successful new direction for Batgirl might work, in a way that was in tune with the times.
Do you think this is a fair assessment? And do you feel like the success of the new Batgirl is a vindication of sorts? Is it proof that your original pitch would have worked for Batgirl, had DC been in a different place, in terms of its offerings and culture? Put another way, do you feel like the success of the new Batgirl proves MSCSI was ahead of the curve?
BROOKER: There are lots of examples from cinema of the same idea appearing around the same time: Antz and A Bug's Life, Deep Impact and Armageddon, The Prestige and The Illusionist, Dante's Peak and Volcano. In some cases, as with Dark City and The Matrix, two very similar movies were released in fairly close succession, one made it big, and the other became more of a cult hit that some people claim has been overshadowed by or even copied by the better-known example. In this case, chronologically, there's little debate that MSCSI was released first, in Spring 2013, with the first articles discussing my new approach going online in October 2011.
That's fortunate for me, because if MSCSI came out now, it would simply look like a rip-off of the new Batgirl, rather than a reinterpretation, through analogy, of the Bat-mythos in a Vertigo mode, which was the original intention.
As I've said, I can have no way of knowing if MSCSI reached anyone at DC, though it was featured in national or international publications like Ms Magazine, The Guardian, Stylist and Times Higher Education during 2013 and 2014, so it's not really off the mainstream radar. I do admire the new Batgirl as a project that does something quite distinct from what seems a similar starting concept.
I wouldn't say it feels like vindication to see those changes at DC, as I really don't know the process behind what happened. It does suggest that I came up with an idea for Batgirl that would have probably hit the mark with the new editors in 2014, again in its concept, tone and aesthetic, and some of its specifics, rather than in every detail (such as the 1990s setting and lack of social media). At the very least, it means there's a new issue of Batgirl every month that I can thoroughly enjoy, and enjoy analysing and annotating; and though it seems I managed to predict most of their plot beats several months in advance, the team does continue to surprise and satisfy me with what they're putting out. I'm also really looking forward to the new Black Canary, which I think wouldn't have existed without the Batgirl reboot.
DARIUS: I want to circle back to how My So-Called Secret Identity was a reaction against the New 52, or at least evolved into that.
The cover to the New 52's Catwoman #1.
Personally, I feel like your characterization of the New 52 is, if anything, generous. It's important for readers to remember that this was a reboot of the entire DC Universe, designed to be accessible to new readers. At the time, DC made sounds about being more diverse, and how several titles would feature women and minorities (though they were not necessarily created by women or minorities). Yet the New 52 had several problems in its depictions of women. For me, Starfire was the epitome, but I also strongly remember a Catwoman cover with her literally dripping pearls over her reclining face and breasts. You didn't have to look hard to see what was really being sold, and its commonplace nature made it seem less like a pardonable oddity and more like a crass publishing agenda. I don't know that this was the intent, but it's certainly how the New 52 came off. It sure didn't look like it wasn't crafted with much thought given to how half the population might see it.
I think it's also important to mention that the problem wasn't simply sexploitative content, at least for me. It was crudely sexploitative content inserted into otherwise pretty standard, even unremarkable super-hero fare. It's a lot easier to defend Milo Manara, or Steve Moore and Art Adams' "Jonni Future," for their obvious artistic merits. Those examples are of works created as sexually playful and for more mature audiences. Yet in the New 52, a high-profile relaunch ostensibly intended for a diverse new audience, sexual images and poses were just kind of inserted into these super-hero titles, in ways that didn't make sense for the characters or for the story. I think it's an important distinction — especially because feminist critics are sometimes (often wrongly) smeared as prudes.
At the same time, I really felt at the time — and still feel — like that was a watershed moment. Probably because the New 52 was so extreme in these depictions, a lot of brave critics started raising their voices. Kelly Thompson's 2012 "No, It's Not Equal" should be regarded as one of the single most important essays in the history of comics criticism. Of course, she and others who spoke up — for whom these issues were nothing new — got an unrelenting deluge of hatred and threats in response. And of course, this treatment was nothing new for women in comics criticism, or for women in geek culture criticism (as "GamerGate" would soon show the world), or even for women online more generally. But the treatment of these very thoughtful and passionate critics, most of whom were so careful in their language to offend male fanboys as little as possible, further helped the issue reach critical mass. Beforehand, everyone knew about feminist criticisms of super-hero comics, but they were rarely a part of mainstream coverage of comics. I feel like that kind of criticism really became mainstream, during and in the wake of the New 52, and I don't think that's changed since.
I hope that's permanent, and that we make female and feminist perspectives as welcome in comics as any other. That's part of our maturing as a medium, or should be.
So when you talk about how My So-Called Secret Identity was in part a response to the New 52, it's something I strongly identify with. There was so much frustration. We had this moment of kind of horrible comics, great and hopeful dialogue, and horrible backlash against that dialogue. Yet this dialogue didn't change the comics themselves very much, at least initially. So I felt that what you were doing with My So-Called Secret Identity was basically making the kind of comic you wanted to read, a super-hero comic that was friendly to female readers.
Since then, there's been something of a flourishing of female-friendly titles, such as Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Lumberjanes, and Bitch Planet. I think you were ahead of the curve there.
I'm not sure if your recollection of that period matches mine. Or whether you feel like you were ahead of the curve more generally, when it comes to setting an example of more diverse, female-friendly comics.
BROOKER: I vividly remember your criticism of that Catwoman cover at the time, and the way you identified the dripping pearls as a thinly disguised, soft-porn "money shot." This must have been around the same time as I went into my local comic store on a break from introducing the new female PhD students to the program, was faced with an array of glossy New 52 covers that looked like top-shelf men's magazines and a bunch of surly young guys running the store, and went back to class without buying anything. So yes, I think we had similar experiences.
I agree that there's been a backlash of a sort, and that there have been some changes, but personally I'd want to wait to see how permanent those changes are, and how deep they go. I'd want to see what happens with the new female Thor, for instance, and how Wonder Woman works out in the new Dawn of Justice movie. I'm not an expert on Wonder Woman, Lois Lane or Poison Ivy, but I know there are a lot of fans, many of them female, who feel those characters have been done a disservice in recent titles.
In terms of representation and diversity, I'm not entirely convinced that confirming Catwoman as canonically bisexual, for instance, is necessarily a progressive move — it depends on how it's handled. Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn's flirtatious friendship has often, it seems to me, been more about appealing to heterosexual guys. Constantine's bisexuality is very important to some fans, but it was marginalised in the TV adaptation. Batwoman wasn't allowed a same-sex marriage, and her title was cancelled. Innovative books like Gotham Academy, which, like Batgirl, include a culturally diverse cast, are also at risk of folding without a pick-up in sales. DC gets global publicity from announcing that a high-profile character will come out as gay, and then we learn it's the Earth-2 Green Lantern; a positive change, sure, but it's very much on the sidelines. So I remain cautious. I think things have improved, in the way you suggest, but let's see how it pans out. I'm very glad that we can now name more women in the comics industry, but that fact that Gail Simone remains journalists' go-to contact about what it's like to be a woman in comics suggests that there aren't that many others. The fact that she's always asked that question, still, suggests that women in comics are still an exception.
I think MSCSI was on that curve, and it's going to stay on that curve, and go further on that curve, because we're in a position where we can do that.
DARIUS: You've sure heard the announcement, this month, that the New 52 is ending, as a branding device, and that DC is interested in going in a more diverse direction. This could be read as DC trying to fulfill its promise that the New 52 would be friendly to diverse readers, which I think it's fair to say the New 52 did not accomplish. As part of DC's announcement, it plans to dedicate half its line to more experimental titles, or at least characters, concepts, and creators that aren't the big franchise super-heroes.
If I'm getting that right, based on what you've read, do you feel like this is a vindication of your approach? Because it does feel like My So-Called Secret Identity wouldn't have fit in the New 52, but DC seems to be embracing a lot of what made MSCSI different.
BROOKER: Again, it's hard to feel it's a vindication because I don't know if it's pure coincidence. It would be possible to trace the forthcoming change at DC back through Batgirl to MSCSI, but I don't know if that's entirely far-fetched.
DARIUS: I know you did some consulting for Samsung. I'm not sure exactly what that consisted of. Just out of curiosity, would you ever be interested in an editor's position, if it meant being able to supervise comics that reflected your concern for diversity?
BROOKER: I'm asked to do a fair amount of consultation for journalists and corporations, as a professor of cultural studies. I provided the promotional copy for a Samsung launch a few years ago, and last month they teamed me with a digital artist on a project to predict how cultural icons of classical Hollywood would look in 2015 — almost a combination of my Batman research with the new Batgirl, as essentially it was about drawing a prediction from past patterns into the future, and establishing what type of hipster or celebrity James Dean and Marilyn Monroe would be now. I've advised the BBC, worked for ITV as a film expert, and so on. I also had a couple of features on io9 at the time of The Dark Knight, where I tried to both predict the film from the comic books it was based on, and project ideas for the future of the Bat-franchise. I looked back at those this week and they were really pretty accurate. One of my ideas was very much like Gotham (and Gotham Academy) and another resembled the Bat-Affleck character in the forthcoming movie. So I think my training of cultural history and recognising and extrapolating patterns in popular culture has given me some unique insights.
I don't know if I would want to edit; I would certainly be happy to consult for comic companies on a more official and recognised basis. And I still want to write — fiction, that is, as well as my academic books. I have two more books of MSCSI that I want to publish independently, as they involve quite challenging ideas and I want to retain their integrity in that respect, but I'm also developing two more commercial pitches and this time I'm planning to actually put them in front of a publisher.
DARIUS: Thanks for doing this interview — and for putting up with my many lengthy questions! Readers can visit the My So-Called Secret Identity on website here.
Tagged Babs Tarr, Batgirl, Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, feminism, gender, My So-Called Secret Identity, Sam LeBas, sexism, Will Brooker. Bookmark the permalink.
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In 1996, while still an undergraduate, Dr. Julian Darius founded what would become Sequart Organization. After graduating magna cum laude from Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin), he obtained his M.A. in English, authoring a thesis on John Milton and utopianism. In 2002, he moved to Waikiki, teaching college while obtaining an M.A. in French (high honors) and a Ph.D. in English. In 2011, he founded Martian Lit, which publishes creative work, including his comic book Martian Comics. He currently lives in Illinois.
See more, including free online content, on Julian Darius's author page.
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Anna Ticho (; 27 October 1894 – 1 March 1980) was an Israeli artist who became famous for her drawings of the Jerusalem hills. Beit Ticho, the house in Jerusalem that she shared with her husband is now a branch of the Israel Museum and a café.

Biography

Anna Ticho was born in Brno, Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the Czech Republic). Her mother's name was Bertha. At the age of 15, she began to study drawing in Vienna in an art school under the directorship of Ernst Nowak.

In 1912, Ticho and her mother immigrated from Vienna to what was then the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Empire. Ticho's fiancé, ophthalmologist Avraham Albert Ticho (1883–1960), who was also her first cousin, had arrived from Vienna four months prior after learning that the Leman'an Zion eye clinic needed a doctor to run it. They married on 7 November 1912 in Jerusalem.

The Tichos were exiled to Damascus in December 1917, just days before the British conquest of Jerusalem. There Dr. Ticho entered active service as a medical office in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Anna worked as a nurse. She developed a severe case of typhus, and during her recovery, Ticho returned to her art by sketching landscape scenes, foreshadowing later mastery of this genre. After the war, the Tichos returned to Jerusalem via a long and circuitous route. In December 1918, Dr. Ticho established a private clinic north of the ruined Lemaan Zion building and Anna worked as her husband's assistant.

In 1924, the couple purchased a large house surrounded by gardens. Dr. Ticho saw patients in his eye clinic on the lower floor and the couple lived on the second floor. The mansion, known today as Ticho House, was built around 1864, apparently for the Nashashibis, a prominent local family. Before the Tichos lived there it was the family home of the antiquities dealer and forger Wilhelm Moses Shapira. The Tichos hosted local and British government officials in the house, as well as many artists, writers, academics and intellectuals.

In 1950, when Dr. Ticho retired, the couple purchased a home in Motza Ilit where Anna could concentrate on her drawing and painting.

Toward the end of her life, she willed the Ticho house, her art collectionincluding many of her own worksand her husband's extensive Judaica collection to the Israel Museum.

Ticho died on 1 March 1980.

Art career
Ticho had several solo exhibitions in Mandatory Palestine and in Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s. An even greater number of her individual exhibitions took place in the years following World War II.

While the dramatically different light of the Middle East and the starkness of the landscape inhibited her artistic pursuits at first, in the 1930s Ticho went back to drawing and painting. It was then that she produced many of the distinctive drawings of the hills of Jerusalem and portraits of local people for which she became well known. Today, Ticho's drawings and watercolors can be found in major museums around the world.

Awards and recognition
 In 1970, Ticho received the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award.
 In 1975, Ticho was awarded the Willem Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
 In 1980, she was awarded the Israel Prize, for painting.

Selected solo exhibitions
1959 - Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
1959 - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
1962 - Baltimore Museum of Art
1964 - Art Institute of Chicago
1964 - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
1967 - Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
1970 - Jewish Museum (Manhattan), New york
1972 - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England
1973 - Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1974 - Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1978 - Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1983 - Jewish Museum (Manhattan), New York
2010 - Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, Israel
2019 - Israel Museum, Ticho House, Jerusalem

See also
List of Israel Prize recipients

References

External links

1894 births
1980 deaths
20th-century Czech painters
20th-century Czech women artists
20th-century Israeli painters
20th-century Israeli women artists
Artists from Brno
People from the Margraviate of Moravia
Moravian Jews
Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the Ottoman Empire
Israel Prize in painting recipients
Israel Prize women recipients
Israeli portrait painters
Israeli women painters
Jewish painters
Sandberg Prize recipients

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how photography started
What was the first photography?
The world's first photograph—or at least the oldest surviving photo—was taken by Joseph Nicphore Nipce in 1826 or 1827. Captured using a technique known as heliography , the shot was taken from an upstairs windo
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What is the origin of photography?
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Why did photographers use dry plates?
What was the first photographic experiment that did not fade?
What is the process of wet plates?
How long do daguerreotypes have to be exposed to light?
Why did the camera obscura use a pinhole?
Why did the consumer take pictures and send the camera back to the factory?
What was the result of Niépce's experiment?
Evolution of Photographic Technologies
Why Do We Restore Old Photographs?
What was the problem with Niepce's plate?
What is a camera obscura?
Why did the Renaissance artists not use camera obscura?
Why did Giovanni Battista drop the idea of camera obscura?
How long did the exposure last in the movie "The Sun"?
What was before photography?
Why is photography important?
Why is photography considered a mechanical art?
What is the history of photography?
What are the characteristics of photography?
When was the first photograph taken of nature?
What is the most important control in photography?
What is the most important control in printing negatives?
What is Camera Obscura?
Why is the opening of a camera obscura so small?
Why is the Polaroid so popular?
When was the first 35mm camera made?
What is an inverted scene?
How long did it take for Talbot to print a calotype?
Why did the British want to document the war?
Can You Teach Yourself Photography?
How Much Should A Beginner Photographer Spend On A Camera?
How Long Does It Take To Learn Photography?
What is mirrorless camera?
What is the advantage of DSLR cameras?
What is a DSLR camera?
What is negative space?
Why did Daguerre and Niepce collaborate?
What did Niepce do with the engraving?
How did Daguerreotype work?
How long did it take Niepce to make a photo?
What was the purpose of the camera obscura?
When did the daguerreotype become popular?
What are the drawbacks of daguerreotypes?
How is a daguerreotype made?
Why are daguerreotypes so popular?
Why is studio photography called fine art photography?
Why did digital photography start?
What is the process of recording color photographs?
What are some of the most important inventions in photography?
What were the first advances in photography?
What is a full frame camera?
Why do zoom lenses pay for their convenience?
How many legs does a camera have?
What does a fisheye lens look like?
Why do we need lenses?
How to diffuse flashlights?
Why do you need to hold your camera steady?
The world's first photograph—or at least the oldest surviving photo—was taken by Joseph Nicphore Nipce in 1826 or 1827. Captured using a technique known as heliography , the shot was taken from an upstairs window at Nipce's estate in Burgundy.
The Technological Development of PhotographyJoseph Nicephore Niepce—The "Father" of Photography. Rebecca A. …Daguerre and the Photographic Revolution. During the mid 1800s,scientists and photographers were experimenting with efficient ways to take and process photographs.Henry Fox Talbot. …George Eastman and the Roll Standard. …Oskar Barnack and the 35mm Camera. …
The world's first photograph —or at least the oldest surviving photo—was taken by Joseph Nicphore Nipce in 1826 or 1827. Captured using a technique known as heliography, the shot was taken from an upstairs window at Nipce's estate in Burgundy.
The First Permanent Images. Photography, as we know it today, began in the late 1830s in France. Joseph Nicphore Nipce used a portable camera obscura to expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light. This is the first recorded image that did not fade quickly.
These dry plates could be stored rather than made as needed. This allowed photographers much more freedom in taking photographs. The process also allowed for smaller cameras that could be hand-held. As exposure times decreased, the first camera with a mechanical shutter was developed.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a portable camera obscura to expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light. This is the first recorded image that did not fade quickly. Niépce's success led to a number of other experiments and photography progressed very rapidly.
These wet plates used an emulsion process called the Collodion process, rather than a simple coating on the image plate. It was during this time that bellows were added to cameras to help with focusing.
To create the image on the plate, the early daguerreotypes had to be exposed to light for up to 15 minutes.
The first camera obscura used a pinhole in a tent to project an image from outside the tent into the darkened area.
The consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory for the film to be developed and prints made, much like modern disposable cameras. This was the first camera inexpensive enough for the average person to afford.
Niépce's experiment led to a collaboration with Louis Daguerre. The result was the creation of the daguerreotype, a forerunner of modern film. A copper plate was coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor before it was exposed to light.
Camera obscura is a forerunner to the present-day camera and played a vital role in the development of photography. This concept resembled a camera and was discovered around the 4th century BCE.
The French inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, invented the first permanent photograph in 1826. It was a breakthrough in the history of photography. As a result, he is credited with being the world's foremost photographer who invented photography.
Photography has grown tremendously in 300 years. Yet, no matter how improvisations and sophistication have increased manifold, the popularity of vintage-style cameras and polaroid cameras still lingers.
In a broader context, we usually see photographs that have been preserved and restored from important moments in history. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, and…
One of the problems with this method was that the metal plate was heavy, expensive to produce, and took a lot of time to polish. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce 1765-1833.
Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. Light coming in through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, like the wall of the box. The image is flipped and upside down, however, which is why modern analogue cameras have made use of mirrors.
The reason for not openly admitting it was the fear of being charged of association with occultism or simply not wanting to admit something many artists called cheating.
Giovanni Battista had to drop the idea after he was arrested and prosecuted on a charge of sorcery.
The exposure had to last for eight hours, so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west appearing to shine on both sides of the building in the picture. Niepce came up with the idea of using a petroleum derivative called "Bitumen of Judea" to record the camera's projection.
Before Photography: Camera Obscura. Before photography was created, people had figured out the basic principles of lenses and the camera. They could project the image on the wall or piece of paper, however no printing was possible at the time: recording light turned out to be a lot harder than projecting it.
An effective photograph can disseminate information about humanity and nature, record the visible world, and extend human knowledge and understanding. For all these reasons, photography has aptly been called the most important invention since the printing press.
In the early part of its history, photography was sometimes belittled as a mechanical art because of its dependence on technology. In truth, however, photography is not the automatic process that is implied by the use of a camera.
History of photography, method of recording the image of an object through the action of light, or related radiation, on a light-sensitive material. The word, derived from the Greek photos ("light") and graphein ("to draw"), was first used in the 1830s. This article treats the historical and aesthetic aspects of still photography.
As a means of visual communication and expression, photography has distinct aesthetic capabilities. In order to understand them, one must first understand the characteristics of the process itself. One of the most important characteristics is immediacy. Usually, but not necessarily, the image that is recorded is formed by a lens in a camera.
In 1826/27, using a camera obscura fitted with a pewter plate, Niépce produced the first successful photograph from nature, a view of the courtyard of his country estate, Gras, from an upper window of the house. The exposure time was about eight hours, during which the sun moved from east to west so that it appears to shine on both sides of the building.
The most important control is, of course, the creative photographer's vision. He or she chooses the vantage point and the exact moment of exposure. The photographer perceives the essential qualities of the subject and interprets it according to his or her judgment, taste, and involvement.
The photographer also may set up a completely artificial scene to photograph. The most important control is, of course, the creative photographer's vision.
Camera obscura is a Latin word meaning "dark room" and is also referred to as a pinhole image.
Making the opening very small can also affect sharpness due to diffraction. In practical applications, a lens is used in camera obscura rather than just a pinhole. A mirror can be used to project the image the right side up without being inverted. Drawing of a Camera obscura box. Image by Meggar.
The Polaroid quickly became a consumer favourite, as it eliminated the previous long-development process. Prior to the invention of the Polaroid, photographers had to wait a considerable amount of time for images to be developed.
A German engineer, Barnack joined the Ernst Leitz Optical Firm in 1911 and had finished the first prototype for a 35mm camera by 1913. It would be time before his efforts saw the light of day, however, as World War I ravished Germany, and the ensuing economic collapse delayed the production of the camera.
An inverted scene is produced which is the image, but it maintains the colours and perspective of the original scene. Illustration of the camera obscura principle. Image from Wikipedia, author unknown.
Talbot's calotypes could be exposed within one to two minutes. Importantly, unlike the daguerreotype, the calotype could be reproduced quickly through contact printing. This made reproduction easier than other methods, but as a result of the paper required in production, the calotype was never as sharp or clear as the daguerreotype.
Hoping to establish support for the war among its citizens, the British sought to document the war in photographs that would win public support.
Absolutely! You can teach yourself photography by just shooting photos or taking advantage of learning resources online. With some trial and error, you'll begin to understand what's needed to improve your photos. You'll just need to be self-motivated and hungry to improve.
Before sharing which cameras are best for beginners, how much can you expect to spend? There are hundreds of great cameras out there that range in price from a few hundred dollars to the price of a luxury vehicle. Luckily there's an easy place to start as a beginner photographer.
Although it's hard to give a specific timeline, it usually takes people around 1 year to learn photography. Even if you have all the basics down in the first couple of weeks, it takes time to build confidence while shooting. It takes even more time to build that creative eye to find the best shot in any situation.
A mirrorless camera gets rid of the mirror system found inside of a DSLR and leaves the sensor exposed to light at all times. Without the mirror system of a DSLR, a mirrorless camera can maintain a much smaller size.
The big advantage of DSLR cameras is that they offer a real-time preview of your scene without any lag. When you're taking pictures, the mirror opens and closes between photos so you can see what's happening. Since there are no electronic parts to this, the light that passes through your lens reaches the viewfinder instantly. Especially when shooting sports, this is a huge advantage.
This is how you can get a real-time preview of your scene when looking through the viewfinder on a DSLR camera.
Negative space is when there is an absence of anything to look at besides your subject. This is extremely popular in cinema and is the main technique behind minimalist photography. Apple is a prime example of a company that uses negative space to highlight their products.
In 1829, he formed a partnership with Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed. In 1839, following several years of experimentation and Niepce's death, Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography and named it after himself.
Niepce placed an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen and then exposed it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image appeared.
Daguerre's daguerreotype process started by fixing the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He then polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light . Then he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image that would not change if exposed to light.
These heliographs, or sun prints as they were sometimes called, are considered the first photographic images. However, Niepce's process required eight hours of light exposure to create an image that would soon fade away.
By the mid-1600s, with the invention of finely crafted lenses, artists began using the camera obscura to help them draw and paint elaborate real-world images. Magic lanterns, the forerunner of the modern projector, also began to appear at this time. Using the same optical principles as the camera obscura, the magic lantern allowed people to project images, usually painted on glass slides, onto large surfaces. They soon became a popular form of mass entertainment.
The daguerreotype gained popularity quickly in Europe and the U.S. By 1850 , there were over 70 daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.
The drawback to daguerreotypes is that they cannot be reproduced; each one is a unique image. The ability to create multiple prints came about thanks to the work of Henry Fox Talbot, an English botanist, mathematician and a contemporary of Daguerre. Talbot sensitized paper to light using a silver-salt solution. He then exposed the paper to light.
A daguerreotype began with a plate of silver-plated copper, which needed to be artfully polished by a daguerreotypist. The daguerreotypist would then treat the plate with fumes to make it light-sensitive. Once placed in a camera, the plate would be ready to be exposed. Once exposed, the image was made visible by a treatment of mercury fumes. Finally, a chemical treatment was used to remove the light sensitivity of the plate and the daguerreotype sealed behind glass to avoid any blemishes.
Compared to Heliographs which more closely resemble a sketch, daguerreotypes create sharp, detailed images. It is perhaps for this reason that Daguerreotypes were the first photographic process to become widely available to the public. The only issue was that Daguerre's invention needed at least 30 minutes of light exposure to capture an image! Thankfully, there were plenty of would-be photographers working to improve the process.
Because the history of studio photography begins well before the history of studio photography lighting, early photography studios made use of painters' lighting techniques. In fact, this is where the term 'fine art photography' comes from.
Believe it or not, the development of digital photography started when it did because of the Space Race. Far from being all about putting a man on the moon, a big part of the space race was winning the ability to spy on your enemies. For obvious reasons, taking a bunch of photos on film in space didn't make for great espionage. While this race began in the 1950's, it wasn't until years later that the most important digital breakthroughs would be made.
The process, named interferential photography, is somewhat complicated but basically involves exploiting 'standing light waves'. A regular black & white emulsion is placed backwards into a camera, which comes into contact with a mirror of mercury. The effect is that color is recorded. While this was an incredible breakthrough that saw Lippmann awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, it was a very complicated process. Technically t is still the only direct process for recording color photographs, but it is neither widely used nor known.
Inventions such as the telegram, the space race, and attempts to capture color. These technologies, which are now taken for granted, are still present in most of modern photographic technology.
In 1841, William Henry Fox Talbot discovered the calotype, the first known method of multiplying an image. John Herschell experimented with fix-baths, discovering the uses of Sodium Hyposulfite baths. This chemical mix is still used to fix photo negatives today. Finally, and also in 1841, Hippolyte Fizeau invented short focal lenses, allowing exposure times to drop from 30 minutes to just a few seconds. All he had to do was replace Hippolyte Bayard's silver iodide with silver bromide. With Bayard's discovery, making a daguerreotype portrait became a relatively quick process.
6) Full-Frame Cameras are a type of DSLR that have a larger sensor than most others.
Zoom lenses pay for their convenience with reduced quality because of all of the moving parts inside that may or may not coordinate as well as a prime lens. Prime Lenses. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length.
They have 3 legs, which makes the camera very stable, especially for long exposures. They help a photographer keep the camera in the same position, so you don't have to re-adjust how you hold your camera for every shot. Monopods. Monopods are tripods with one leg.
A fisheye lens makes photos look like what a fish can see – a "bowl" that bulges in the center . This is because of how the lens is shaped – fisheye lenses are just very extreme wide angle lenses. Wide Angle Lens. 10 – 42 mm.
Lenses help change how the camera "sees" the environment around it. There are a lot of different ways to categorize lenses, which we will discuss in this step.
Use tissues to diffuse flashlights, as described under "Light Sources: Indoors: Flashlights." Then take the flashlights and put them in the holes of the crate, facing inwards.
When you are taking a photo, you want to hold your camera as steady as possible. This is to avoid blur. It is also very important in that it lets you position your camera upfront instead of having to re-adjust after every shot. This is where stabilizers come in.
Tags how photography started, What is the origin of photography, What was the first photography, When were photographs first taken, When were the first photographs
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Just over a month ago, it was the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth. There were public celebrations in her home land of Finland, and an exhibition at the Finnish National Gallery dedicated to the paintings, illustrations, and writing of this extraordinary figure.
I haven't been to see it, but my cousin and fellow Moomin-fan Ann - who lives in Norway - has. She describes how "Tove and Tuulikki built the house using materials they found washed up on the beach. The roof tiles, by the way, were made from cedar bark they found and cut into shape using nail scissors. Fish-scale pattern. And Moominpappa stands in his room which is equipped with maritime clutter, looking out of his window through his telescope. The small shy people are in tiny rooms in the basement."
But Tove didn't build this wonderful house to put in a museum. She didn't build it to market her books, or as a wonderful photo opportunity for social media. This house is a labour of love, a work of art, an act of pure creation by someone who felt compelled to write, draw and make from an early age, and for whom imagined universes arrived so fully realised in her head, they could literally be translated into bricks and mortar.
That house, along with so much else - like the sculptures and montages of scenes from the books they made together and put in glass cases - is for me a beautiful representation of why in some ways, Tove Jansson was the ultimate children's writer.
She wasn't just a children's writer, of course, not by a long stretch - but she was one of the greatest artists to write children's books.
In a famous 1961 essay, "The Deceitful Writer of Children's Books", Jansson writes that she writes for children not because she is particularly interested in them, or because she wants to entertain or educate them, but much more because she needs to satisfy "the childishness in herself".
This is not emotional immaturity or arrested development, of course - but rather a profound connection as an adult with the intuitive world of childish make believe and play, and a sad awareness at its passing.
Born into a somewhat madcap household of artists, from an early age Jansson was drawing, writing and making, at a dizzyingly prolific rate. It was like a compulsion, and I think any writer would - at certain times - envy that inexhaustible drive to produce and create. She developed her craft in all disciplines over many years, but in the 1970's, was able to sit down and build a toy house for her Moomins just as she might have done as a child at the beginning of the century.
Moominland is the world through the eyes of a child, captured with the skill of an adult, a synthesis of pure-make believe and acute, uninhibited natural observation, a perfect marriage of pictures and words. And it is a world of mystery tinged with an ineluctable sadness.
'I don't know,' Snufkin replied.
The genius of Jansson is her ability to take children so simply and so naturally on exciting night journeys down mysterious paths, never to deny the human impulse to grow and to wander - even if gallons of milk, berries and buns will always be waiting in a warm Moominhouse on your return.
The elegant drawings and poetic prose of the Moomins tread the finest of paths between an enticing retreat of warmth, family eccentricity and humour - that we know cannot endure forever - and the mysterious unknowable forest beyond. It's a path every child must take one day, and who better to guide you down that road than a Moomin? Which other cast of creatures so gracefully demonstrate the wonder, mystery and sadness of growing up?
If it is childish to memorialise childhood with such imagination and feeling, whether through a miniature blue house or the pages of a book, then let's always try and write for the childishness in ourselves.
Lovely! I wish I could see that house!
Such a beautiful post, Piers, especially about the link between writing for children and the child's playful state.!
Thanks Sue and Penny. My cousin invited me to go to the centenary exhibition with her, so wish I could have gone.
Oh, I love Tove Jansson and the Moomins. I actually first read the books as an adult, and love them for their descriptions of nature and landscape, and families. I like her short stories too - The Winter Book/The Summer Book. That house looks amazing. The amount of detail put into it is incredible.
Fabulous post - thankyou, Piers!
What a fantastic house! I was scared of the Moomins when I was a child but I think it is time to revisit them, especially as I have enjoyed other books by Tove Jansson.
I never read these as a child but all my children have adored them... I would love to see that house! Thanks for a great post!