Wednesday 1 November 2017

140-year-old images of Sydney Harbour win place in UNESCO's Memory of the World registry

Julie Power


Even today, the size of the glass plate photographic negatives produced by 19th-century gold miner Bernhardt Otto Holtermann in 1875 to capture the beauty of Sydney Harbour defy belief.
Each is the size of a contemporary wide-screen television, yet the plates were made less than 40 years after the invention of photography.  
Holtermann​ made his fortune on Hill End's goldfields, where he found the world's largest gold 'nugget', weighing 286 kilograms. It was there that he met two photographers whom he teamed with to design a photographic tower to capture Sydney in all its glory, including the future sites of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. 
Three of these images have been recognised by UNESCO as the world's largest 19th-century wet plate negatives and for the technological achievement they represented at the time.
Each is about 8 millimetres thick and a metre high. Two are 1.3 metres in width, with the largest 1.6 metres wide, making even the smaller two larger than any other 19th-century glass plate negatives in existence, said Margot Riley, the State Library of NSW's curator of research and discovery.
When the library first submitted the plates for inclusion in UNESCO's international Memory of the World project for their technological achievement, specialists "didn't believe they could possibly exist", said Ms Riley.  
"They queried the measurements, and said they couldn't possibly be that big," she said. 
After contacting many institutions, Ms Riley is confident that they are the biggest surviving glass plate negatives and images in the world. 
For decades the negatives were among thousands lost. They were found in a Chatswood backyard shed with the rest of Holtermann's collection. 
One of the three now recognised was smashed to pieces in the 1980s, but has now been restored using artificial intelligence mapping techniques. 
For Holtermann​, the photos of Sydney were part of a huge and expensive undertaking to promote migration to Australia and show what was possible, said Ms Riley. 
"He was a migration success story," she said. Holtermann took some of the plates on tour, and his entries in photographic expositions won a bronze prize in Philadelphia in 1876, and then silver in Paris in 1878.
He even took one of the glass plates to Germany but his aim of winning top honours eluded him. 
"He never got gold, but he has now in the photographic hall of fame," said Ms Riley. She said the library was delighted that his achievements, which had slipped from the public's consciousness, would now be remembered and celebrated. 
To take the photos, Holtermann built a house at North Sydney – that is now part of Shore School – with a tower big and high enough to capture the views across the Harbour. A room at the top was "designed and built like a large camera on stilts", said Ms Riley.
Even before being lifted to the top where they were put up against the window to capture the image, each of the 30kg plates of glass (used for shop windows usually) had to be imported and special lenses had to be designed.
State Librarian Dr John Vallance says these images represent the best in 19th-century creative photographic technology.
The giant negatives join only five other inscriptions from Australia on the Memory of the World Register.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/140yearold-images-of-sydney-harbour-win-place-in-unescos-memory-of-the-world-registry-20171031-gzbs4u.html

US should probe Manafort’s ‘Ukrainian trail’ rather than blaming Russia – Lavrov

US should probe Manafort’s ‘Ukrainian trail’ rather than blaming Russia – Lavrov
Months-long efforts of US investigators to find alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump’s campaign have led to the discovery of a “Ukrainian trail,” Russia's FM Sergey Lavrov said, suggesting Washington should now investigate Kiev’s role.
They have now found a Ukrainian trail in connection with Mr. Manafort and one of his employees. I suppose a Ukrainian trail should be investigated through Ukraine. [Kiev authorities] also have [things] to say about their standpoint during the US presidential campaign,” Lavrov told the media Tuesday.
The US investigators “have been working for many months... looking for a Russian trail.” Instead, their efforts “resulted” in the indictment of two former Trump campaign members in connection with their alleged dealings with a former president of Ukraine, Russia’s foreign minister pointed out.
Earlier this week, a federal grand jury indicted Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump, and his former business associate Richard Gates on a number of counts regarding Ukrainian lobbying in the US. The two individuals, who inter alia are suspected of having received payments from the party of ex-Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, have no apparent direct connection to Russia.



View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

 says Manafort’s alleged crimes are from ‘years ago’ and predate his presidential campaign https://on.rt.com/8r04 
The findings surfaced amid an investigation by US Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
However, “not a single fact” or shred of evidence supporting anti-Russia allegations regarding Moscow’s involvement in any election campaign have ever been presented, Lavrov stressed.
Without any evidence, we have been blamed for interfering not only in elections in the US, but in European states too. Recently, Moscow has been accused of making decisions on which minister to appoint in the Republic of South Africa,” Russia’s senior diplomat said at the press-conference, adding: “Fantasy has no limits.”
Over the past years, Washington has seemingly managed to find ways to blame any negative world events on Russia, “be it political protests, companies going bankrupt, or man-made disasters,” Lavrov said.
I’ve already heard we’ll soon be not only interfering in elections, but also manipulating the environment in order to create floods,” he added.

Claims of Russian interference in US election ‘dead & buried’ – George Galloway



 
Allegations of Russia exploiting internet giants to meddle with the 2016 US election are “dead and buried,” says former MP George Galloway. His comments follow a report by Google stating there is no evidence RT violated YouTube terms and conditions.
On Tuesday, Google published the findings of a probe into the potential of RT using the world’s biggest video platform for political purposes. It stated the investigation failed to find any substantive proof that the news channel manipulated videos or otherwise violated YouTube policies.
The US technology giant is due to testify, alongside Facebook and Twitter, before the US Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on Crime and Terrorism on Wednesday over Russia’s alleged use of the media platforms to influence the US election.
The Google report found that two accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-based NGO, spent a total of £4,700 on the search and display ads.
Unsure whether “to laugh or cry” over the meagre sum, Galloway said: “They [internet giants] are all doing this, ironically, to please another state – not Russia, but the US.
“It is an attempt to be on their knees as they go before the Congress later today,” Galloway said.
He added the whole situation is “demeaning and degrading to the companies and the people who fell for the earlier propaganda.”
Back in October, Google-operated YouTube yanked RT from its premium program amid concerns over the network’s use of the service.
Although Google admitted it found no evidence of wrongdoing just a month later, it failed to give RT the privileged status it had held since 2010.
Galloway said, in light of the new findings, YouTube it should “reinstate RT as a matter of urgency” if the platform has “any sense of decency.”
He called for the creation of more social media platforms to rival Facebook and Twitter that cannot be “so easily beholden to any government,” be it the US or Russia.