There's a lot of really interesting things to see there besides the sites themselves. The obvious one worldwide is that this is before the mass commercialization of clothing + planned obsolescence of such, which seems to have a very negative outcome.
But one thing not so visible that's really interesting to see is how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd. But that sterness is regularly belied by things like a couple of guys in their 40s happily putting on a fake fight in front of the camera, falling on their asses, and just basically playing around like school boys having a great old time - a far rarer site now a days.
kmarc · 5h ago
> how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd
FWIW, the fake smiles and hidden gazes, to me the least, were always a North American thing.
In fact, in Switzerland we have its opposite, the infamous "Swiss stare" :-)
Super interesting. I recently learned that a lot of foreigners moving to Germany find that Germans are staring. It’s called the German stare. I wonder if staring is a Germanic thing.
I actually don't like his tone in the article. Why should the Swiss even care what is perceived as rude other countries, staring or whatever? There's this common view that immigrants from poor countries should adapt and integrate, but if they're from western(er) lands they get to judge?
tough · 19m ago
they're tourists and treat the places they visit like human-zoos
pjc50 · 1h ago
We're all "media trained" now from a young age to behave like people being filmed or photographed "should" behave.
And if you don't quite fit the look, the camera AI selfie mode can tighten up your face for you.
aa-jv · 13m ago
>sternness
I really enjoy observing this and other changes in social tone visible through the ages in archaic videos .. One of my favourite idle pasttimes is to watch videos on Youtube of digitized film from a bygone era, especially of cities I've lived in, or visited and with which I am familiar.
For some reason it is just so interesting, for example, to visit the streets of Vienna from 100+ years ago, and see how folks were living back then. So many well-dressed Viennese, looking sternly at the camera, or merely walking in a steady plod along streets I, too, in the modern era, enjoy.
Vienna is particularly interesting because it has a long history with film, and some of them go back to before the widespread adoption of automobiles. It struck me just how easily we overlook the fact that Vienna was built for walking, originally, and all the crazy car life that the city suffers now was grafted on top of routes originally designed to be navigable by foot - or hoof.
Its just so interesting to see how the city has evolved over the century, but also very interesting to see how it hasn't changed much at all, too!
These days I walk many of the streets depicted in these videos, and having binge-watched all the videos I can find on the subject, it has given me a much deeper appreciation of the trials this city has weathered.
(I've got another set of videos for Los Angeles, another city in which I've lived and loved, and it too is very intriguing to see the city evolve over time .. but I'm yet to find a film as old as 1896 for the region, strangely enough..)
h2zizzle · 7h ago
>The painter naturally visited Nadar’s studio fo a portrait; it captures an artist of fierce intelligence:
As true as it might be in many cases, I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance. A brief meeting is bad enough, but a single photo? It's poetic to think that they tell us more about a person than they do.
godelski · 6h ago
> I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance
I find this odd to hear. Not because I think we should base our opinions on someone's appearance but because I thought it was a common belief that we shouldn't. Or rather that you would be committing a faux pas by making such a statement publicly. That people at least wanted to paint the image of themselves as upholding this virtue, despite it being clear that society operated under such biases.
Growing up (American millennial) it was routine to see public service announcements to tell people to not judge others by their appearance. It was the lesson of not just children shows but a frequent trope in popular movies. Such as James Bond entering a fancy resort looking like a homeless man, being treated as such by some staff, only for that staff member to be chastised for not treating him with the upmost respect. "Don't judge a book by its cover". "The ugly duckling".
Have things changed? Is this no longer a social taboo? To at least feign this virtue?
nindalf · 6h ago
I think people are taught not to look down on others based on appearance, but not to avoid looking up at them.
godelski · 4h ago
This is a fair enough distinction. Though I still think there is more contextual nuances at play. Shallow Hal seems to fit both cases. To be vapid or shallow. We certainly don't just critique those for exclusively caring about other's appearances but also those that only care about their own.
Which I can see a deterioration of the vapid criticism as social media capitalizes on this nature. Not just with people, but we do seem to care more for form over function now.
tough · 18m ago
There's actual studies about how easy it is to get a job, or do well professionally, if you're handsome
the human brain is hardwired to assume beauty equals -better- some how
Noumenon72 · 7h ago
A non-groady interpretation might be that we know Manet was intelligent, and the portrait captured that well; you might not be able to judge food by its photograph, but a photo that makes it look delicious when it actually is delicious has managed to capture the deliciousness.
Personally, I don't find it groady anyway; pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein. I can imagine a species that evolved to conceal the appearance of intelligence, but in humans I think it's more something natural selection would try to broadcast.
atoav · 3h ago
> pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein
Yeah maybe, however as a life-long photographer and former freelance DoP I would heavily caution on then using those images to infer a persons intelligence from that picture. Because in my experience the number of false-positives and false-negatives is high.
There are extremely intelligent people who always look like shit on camera, because they constantly move, so you always capture them with their mouth half open, mid blink. And then you have complete hollow-brains who look deep and dashing whenever a camera is around, but god forbid they open their mouth.
So if anybody decided to make machines decide who is intelligent based on pictures (sounds like modern eugenics), the amount of false classifications would be exhorbitant and have real consequences for real people.
And let's not forget that appearances can be altered, so once you use such a system those deemed to be most intelligent will be those who game it best. So judging intelligence directly is probably the more reliable way.
scott_w · 6h ago
I’d say it’s not that the man is intelligent and you can tell just from a photo. It’s instead saying that the photograph is framed in such a way as to make the subject look intelligent.
A comment on the artistry rather than the subject.
alexey-salmin · 6h ago
While this prediction isn't very precise I'm sure it must be better than random. A mistake would be to still rely on the visual appearance when stronger data becomes available
greggsy · 4h ago
In case anyone in Australia is wondering, grody/groady is basically a less versatile version of ‘grotty’, which has the added benefit of being used as a noun (ie. ‘what a grot!’).
fn-mote · 9h ago
A fascinating tour of 19th C France through the the photographs of one man.
Captivated me much more than reading about the AI-enhanced-startup du jour.
3abiton · 5h ago
I wonder if we can actually quantify this effect: humans painting are "richer" in meaning than AI. But then once that is decypher the next step is to put an "AI" on top of it.
Koshima · 1h ago
It's fascinating how much body language and facial expressions differ across cultures. While some societies value open, expressive interactions, others lean toward reserved or neutral expressions. I’ve noticed this in my travels, a simple nod or slight smile can mean very different things depending on where you are.
I wonder if these cultural norms around eye contact and facial expressions have roots in deeper societal structures, like the emphasis on individualism vs. collectivism, or even the pace of life in different regions.
What do you think? Could these small, often overlooked gestures reflect much larger cultural attitudes?
tomatotomato37 · 1h ago
.
"[Photography] is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, an art that excites the most astute minds -- and one that can be practiced by any imbecile."
I like this quote.
tough · 16m ago
Fits [software engineering] too
heh
falcor84 · 2h ago
I'm ashamed to say that while I enjoyed the article and particularly the photos, I still can't quite parse what "cannot even look" means; does not understanding what it means make me one?
lblume · 8h ago
I cannot really explain why, but I feel like each of these photos captures so much more about the respective person than a modern colored photo ever could.
akomtu · 7h ago
Portraits are like long exposure photos where the artist watches a person and captures the right elements at the right moments.
nwhnwh · 3h ago
Why I have to sign up first?
gpvos · 3h ago
I did't have to. I don't know what you saw, but you can probably click it away.
umvi · 8h ago
> and to slow the predatory opening of Japan that had begun with American warships’ arrival in 1854.
There's a lot of really interesting things to see there besides the sites themselves. The obvious one worldwide is that this is before the mass commercialization of clothing + planned obsolescence of such, which seems to have a very negative outcome.
But one thing not so visible that's really interesting to see is how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd. But that sterness is regularly belied by things like a couple of guys in their 40s happily putting on a fake fight in front of the camera, falling on their asses, and just basically playing around like school boys having a great old time - a far rarer site now a days.
FWIW, the fake smiles and hidden gazes, to me the least, were always a North American thing.
In fact, in Switzerland we have its opposite, the infamous "Swiss stare" :-)
https://www.newlyswissed.com/about-the-swiss-stare/
https://www.zeit.de/campus/zeit-germany/2023/01/culture-face...
And if you don't quite fit the look, the camera AI selfie mode can tighten up your face for you.
I really enjoy observing this and other changes in social tone visible through the ages in archaic videos .. One of my favourite idle pasttimes is to watch videos on Youtube of digitized film from a bygone era, especially of cities I've lived in, or visited and with which I am familiar.
For some reason it is just so interesting, for example, to visit the streets of Vienna from 100+ years ago, and see how folks were living back then. So many well-dressed Viennese, looking sternly at the camera, or merely walking in a steady plod along streets I, too, in the modern era, enjoy.
Vienna is particularly interesting because it has a long history with film, and some of them go back to before the widespread adoption of automobiles. It struck me just how easily we overlook the fact that Vienna was built for walking, originally, and all the crazy car life that the city suffers now was grafted on top of routes originally designed to be navigable by foot - or hoof.
Just take a look at Vienna, from 1896:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aPvmD6ktZs
.. to Vienna, 1926:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGbTkQX6R0Q
.. pre-war Vienna (30's):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA9dHEKD-vM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QITjWb29JZ8
.. Vienna, 1939:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96umMf9r3E
.. post-war Vienna:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2VbXdrFXB8
.. to Vienna, 1964:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0WCigqJ_wU
.. and lastly, Vienna in the 80's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WttS-PP-r4o
Its just so interesting to see how the city has evolved over the century, but also very interesting to see how it hasn't changed much at all, too!
These days I walk many of the streets depicted in these videos, and having binge-watched all the videos I can find on the subject, it has given me a much deeper appreciation of the trials this city has weathered.
(I've got another set of videos for Los Angeles, another city in which I've lived and loved, and it too is very intriguing to see the city evolve over time .. but I'm yet to find a film as old as 1896 for the region, strangely enough..)
As true as it might be in many cases, I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance. A brief meeting is bad enough, but a single photo? It's poetic to think that they tell us more about a person than they do.
Growing up (American millennial) it was routine to see public service announcements to tell people to not judge others by their appearance. It was the lesson of not just children shows but a frequent trope in popular movies. Such as James Bond entering a fancy resort looking like a homeless man, being treated as such by some staff, only for that staff member to be chastised for not treating him with the upmost respect. "Don't judge a book by its cover". "The ugly duckling".
Have things changed? Is this no longer a social taboo? To at least feign this virtue?
Which I can see a deterioration of the vapid criticism as social media capitalizes on this nature. Not just with people, but we do seem to care more for form over function now.
the human brain is hardwired to assume beauty equals -better- some how
Personally, I don't find it groady anyway; pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein. I can imagine a species that evolved to conceal the appearance of intelligence, but in humans I think it's more something natural selection would try to broadcast.
Yeah maybe, however as a life-long photographer and former freelance DoP I would heavily caution on then using those images to infer a persons intelligence from that picture. Because in my experience the number of false-positives and false-negatives is high.
There are extremely intelligent people who always look like shit on camera, because they constantly move, so you always capture them with their mouth half open, mid blink. And then you have complete hollow-brains who look deep and dashing whenever a camera is around, but god forbid they open their mouth.
So if anybody decided to make machines decide who is intelligent based on pictures (sounds like modern eugenics), the amount of false classifications would be exhorbitant and have real consequences for real people.
And let's not forget that appearances can be altered, so once you use such a system those deemed to be most intelligent will be those who game it best. So judging intelligence directly is probably the more reliable way.
A comment on the artistry rather than the subject.
Captivated me much more than reading about the AI-enhanced-startup du jour.
I wonder if these cultural norms around eye contact and facial expressions have roots in deeper societal structures, like the emphasis on individualism vs. collectivism, or even the pace of life in different regions.
What do you think? Could these small, often overlooked gestures reflect much larger cultural attitudes?
heh
Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o&t=282s
Finally, those who can do both: life of Jobs
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