An item of living history
Macro Mondays 21.06.2021 "Matchstick"
When it comes to history, we used to learn the dates of battles and victories, but it's often small details that truly bring a dry narrative to life.
These matches turned up only this year in a house in Lower Austria. The owner was complaining that it was difficult to get them to strike properly. How old they were, and where they had come from, she did not know, much less did she understand the double-meanings of the printed warnings.
These are matches that were issued to the US Armed Forces during the allied military occupation of Austria (1945-1955). "Fraternising" as they called it, was frowned on, but nonetheless a fact, and the health of the troops was of course of prime importance. The offer of a cigarette (American ones were sought after) was a usual opener, so what better place to print a word of caution than on a match-book!
The atmosphere of occupied Vienna in the immediate post-war years is well-captured in these videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=75tiRL_n-GU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBS-6CbnE9o
Just to add another note of (photographic) history, I used a lens that in all probability also came to Austria during the years of occupation - from the USSR. In my camera collection there are two beautiful Russian Leica copies: a Zorki C and a "Zorki Zorki" (the name is engraved both in cyrillic and roman lettering) - this is the lens of the latter, an Industar-22 1:3.5 F=5cm. It's a collapsible lens, so when mounted on extension tubes (here on original Leica tubes from the early 1930s), it becomes a rather versatile macro with a good focal-range and excellent image-quality. (Camera: Sony A7C)
With the lighting I tried to create an atmosphere appropriate to the subject.
Erklärung: "V.D." ist die geläufige Bezeichnung für Geschlechtskrankheiten.
P.S. If you would like to see an excellent film that truly captures the atmosphere of Vienna in the years of allied occupation, I can highly recommend "The Third Man" by Graham Greene, with Orson Welles , Joseph Cotton and Trevor Howard in the leading roles.
HMM - and don't get burned!
(Horizontal measurement less than 7cm)
An item of living history
Macro Mondays 21.06.2021 "Matchstick"
When it comes to history, we used to learn the dates of battles and victories, but it's often small details that truly bring a dry narrative to life.
These matches turned up only this year in a house in Lower Austria. The owner was complaining that it was difficult to get them to strike properly. How old they were, and where they had come from, she did not know, much less did she understand the double-meanings of the printed warnings.
These are matches that were issued to the US Armed Forces during the allied military occupation of Austria (1945-1955). "Fraternising" as they called it, was frowned on, but nonetheless a fact, and the health of the troops was of course of prime importance. The offer of a cigarette (American ones were sought after) was a usual opener, so what better place to print a word of caution than on a match-book!
The atmosphere of occupied Vienna in the immediate post-war years is well-captured in these videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=75tiRL_n-GU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBS-6CbnE9o
Just to add another note of (photographic) history, I used a lens that in all probability also came to Austria during the years of occupation - from the USSR. In my camera collection there are two beautiful Russian Leica copies: a Zorki C and a "Zorki Zorki" (the name is engraved both in cyrillic and roman lettering) - this is the lens of the latter, an Industar-22 1:3.5 F=5cm. It's a collapsible lens, so when mounted on extension tubes (here on original Leica tubes from the early 1930s), it becomes a rather versatile macro with a good focal-range and excellent image-quality. (Camera: Sony A7C)
With the lighting I tried to create an atmosphere appropriate to the subject.
Erklärung: "V.D." ist die geläufige Bezeichnung für Geschlechtskrankheiten.
P.S. If you would like to see an excellent film that truly captures the atmosphere of Vienna in the years of allied occupation, I can highly recommend "The Third Man" by Graham Greene, with Orson Welles , Joseph Cotton and Trevor Howard in the leading roles.
HMM - and don't get burned!
(Horizontal measurement less than 7cm)