View allAll Photos Tagged using
Real bumblebee wings. No harm was done to any bumblebee to obtain these wings!! The poor thing died of natural causes, right beside me, while I was sitting on a bench beside the road. I've also got a pair of house fly wings and a ladybug's wing.
My photostream on black or on white.
________
Free to use under creative commons attribution licence. If you blog an image or use it in any other way, please leave the URL in the comments. If you use one of my images in your art, I'd appreciate it if you give credit, link back & show your result (small size please) in the comments.
Do not harvest my images to sell in any way, nor to claim as your own (not even when slightly altered).
Also, every view, comment, fave, invitation and/or adding to a gallery is much appreciated :)) !!
in a row
bookshelf in the Auberge du Vieux village, built by a Sorbonne professor; I wonder if these were part of his personal collection. Some have the price on the spine, an interesting range. I presume the 100frs is 100 old francs, pre-1960 when the two zeros were removed.
Normally used on Manchester Victoria to Blackpool North services, one of the three-Car Newton Heath allocated Class 104 sets complete with its white bodyside stripe, was working the Kirkham to Blackpool South shuttle service on September 19th 1979. M53474 arrives from Kirkham along a route that was still double track into the magnificent station at St-Annes-On-The-Sea.
In less enlightened times, the fine station that should have been a show piece for the town, was destroyed in an orgy of official vandalism in the 1980's.
A less than perfect shot taken a very overcast day, apologies for the quality.
I'm used to a strange allotment of worth in my life. My truck barely worth the gas I put in it always has crazy expensive bikes and kites and skiing gear in it. But my work desk is normally pretty standard. I've got a few shiny Apple products for work and play, but recently I added a new desk ornament, which again throws off the value perceptions.
This is the result of many many many a long and stressful night spent on my Senior Design project at the University of Colorado. Basically, it is a just crazy fancy camera. I was tasked with building it up from scratch, starting with the sensor. That baby is a $5000, 5 Megapixel sCMOS sensor. It costs so much because it is more sensitive than any sensor in our pretty DSLRs, and reads out about 10x cleaner images. Oh, also it happens to read out at 100 FRAMES/SECOND, at full 16 bit resolution (higher than our fancy cameras too. The thing spits out gigabytes/second of data! This was my first time designing any electronic systems, so was pretty stoked when it finally worked.
Now, I have a few of these boards and 3 or 4 sensors sitting in boxes in my garage. At one point they were rediculously expensive pieces of cutting edge technology, now they're just pretty pieces of silicon. Makes for a cool desk decoration though! Perfect mix of nerdiness and photography for me, always keeps me motivated when it catches my eye.
Here's our little engineering site/blog in case anyone is interested.
More Places to find me: Zach Dischner Photography | 500px
Blog: 2manventure
Using only Manual Focus Lenses and Film.
Colorado National Monument
Nikon F4 & Nikkor 50-300mm f/4.0 ED ais
Kodak Portra 400
Lotta Rusty Steel in this photo...I used to bring my camera to work a lot and before I'd go on duty, if I had a nice day like this one, I might venture out of the shanty and walk up on the Halsted Street bridge and take some shots. On July 22nd, 2016, I was working a yard job and before work took this looking west into the meat of the yard. The "Garden" or classification tracks are 1-44, which start 2 tracks and a small road away from the NS power at right. The tracks number to 44, which leads off to the left after the yardmasters tower. There was a fairly good mix of power sitting around. Here is a rundown...
IHB 1521, humper, probably due service, in west end 6 pocket.
IHB 2143, 510 Center job power, (Always has an east facer), east end 6 pocket
IHB 4012-CITX 406, yard power, west end 5 pocket.
CSX 4534, Barr delivery power, east end 5 pocket
IHB 1516, yard power, 514 job.
2 NS 7500 series locos, east end of 3 north, NS 34J power.
I-57 can be seen in the distance spanning the yard as well as the hump tower at the west end. The South yard leads off to left. The North yard is at right and ends somewhere around the string of auto racks, where it turns into the west yard. A train on the main can be seen at far right. It would have been handy to have had this photo when I hired out. Standing at grade doesn't look the same....lol
IHB Blue Island Class Yard
Riverdale, Illinois
Looking west from Halsted Street Bridge
July 22nd, 2016
Use this image without my permission is illegal. All Rights Reserved ste.t.©
Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
•Sunset Blvd.
1950
Use without permission is illegal!
bikriderstar!!! before the chaos
“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”
Pablo Picasso
========================================================
To use this photo on your site, please insert an image credit with a link to www.unsellomas.com. Example: [Photo credit: www.unsellomas.com]. Also add a comment here with the link of your own post. Thanks!
========================================================
Para utilizar esta foto en su sitio web por favor indique como crédito de la imagen a con un enlace a www.unsellomas.com. Ejemplo: Example: [Photo credit: www.unsellomas.com]. También agregue un comentario aquí con el enlace a su propio post. ¡Gracias!
========================================================
Blog de viajes | Blog de viajes en Facebook | Blog de viajes en Instagram
Non usare le mie foto senza il mio permesso scritto.
Tutte le mie foto sono coperte da Copyright ©. Tutte le immagini pubblicate in queste pagine sono di proprietà dell’Autrice marialudovica. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Il contenuto di queste pagine non può essere riprodotto, copiato, pubblicato, trasferito o caricato, con nessun mezzo, nè interamente nè parzialmente.
Do not use my images without my written permission.
All my images are protect from Copyright ©. All the contents in this pages are marialudovica's property. All the rights are reserved. The contents cannot be reproduced, copied, published, transferred or loaded neither entire neither partially in whichever way.
************************
========================================================
To use this photo on your site, please point an image credit to www.unsellomas.com. Example: [Photo credit: www.unsellomas.com]. Also add a comment here with the link of your own post. Thanks!
========================================================
Para utilizar esta foto en su sitio web por favor indique como crédito de la imagen a www.unsellomas.com. Ejemplo: Example: [Photo credit: www.unsellomas.com]. También agregue un comentario aquí con el enlace a su propio post. ¡Gracias!
========================================================
Blog de viajes | Blog de viajes en Facebook | Blog de viajes en Instagram
Used as the exteriors of Gruber's in the Paddington movies, I was inside looking for gifts & the shopkeeper, recognising my accent (Australian) mentioned the terrible bushfires. This was on the 13th of November.
These fires have gotten much worse, & Our Prime Minister is completely useless. Only cares about himself.
He has gone to disaster zones just for photo ops, & was filmed grabbing onto a woman's hand to shake it, & when she begged for more help he walked away.
Half a billion animals have been killed, & our PM did not bother to do anything to prepare the country for these bushfires, even though he had so much time to do so.
I only mentioned these fires in this post because of the discussion I had with the shopkeeper back in November.
Nikon F4. AF Nikkor 14mm F2.8D lens. CineStill 50 35mm C41 film.
Used leaf blower to clean sidewalk out to driveway. Bitter cold last night around 6 degrees below zero F.
Using call-sign 'Ascot 2712', Royal Air Force Airbus Voyager KC.2 ZZ337 makes an early crossing of the South Coast while passing FL270 on her way South
Note the wing-mounted Hose and Drogue refuelling pods
276A0087
Deep in the West Virginia wilderness, a well-used, 3-Truck Heisler Locomotive from a nearby lumber mill is pressed into service dragging freight loads down the disused C&O Greenbrier Division for interchange in the yard at Cass, some 8 miles to the south, circa 1940.
This image was captured on a 2021 photo charter, near MP 89.1, in the small town of Hosterman, along the Greenbrier River, on trackage that's been recently rebuilt, after lying dormant for 35 years. Washed out during flooding that occurred in 1985, the rail link between Cass and Durbin, WV is slowly being restored, with a tentative completion date sometime in late 2021. The track may be new.....sort of.....but it still looks like Heisler Country and the speed limit is not likely to approach 45 mph anytime soon. There's not much in this frame to give away the fact that this image is not 80 years old....except the track probably looked better back then. It is difficult to believe that back in the 1970s, the Greenbrier Scenic Railroad actually ran fan trips on this very track, using Reading T-1 #2102.
I get a decent number of questions asking me what I shoot with, do I use X or Y or whatever... so to make it easier I recently just took a photo of what's in my camera case, and then dumped it out so folks could get an idea of what tools I use (admittedly some more than other's).
This is what I keep my camera gear in... if you want to see the contents dumped out see this photo where it's easier to see everything as in this photo there is a lot of stuff that is buried under something else.
Click here to see it larger.
Click here to see a close up of the bottom section of the case.
Camera Bodies:
Canon 5DMkII
Canon 5D
Canon 50D
Canon 20D
Canon Elan 7
Lenses:
Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye
Canon 35mm f/1.4L
Canon 50mm f/1.4
Canon 85mm f/1.2L MkII
Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro
Canon 135mm f/2L
Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 MkII
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS
Lensbaby Composer (w/ lens diaphram set)
Flash / Lighting Stuff:
Canon 580EXII x3 (w/ foot stands)
Pocket Wizard Plus II x4
Sekonic L-358 (w/ Pocket Wizard Trigger Module)
Canon Remote Shutter Release Cable (to trigger camera via Pocket Wizards)
Pocket Wizard Mini to PC Sync Cables x4
Canon CP-E4 Camera Battery Pack (filled with Maha Powerex 2700mAh batteries)
Canon ST-E2 Wireless Trasmitter
Film / Memory Cards:
SanDisk Ultra II 2GB x 9
SanDisk Ultra II 4GB x 1
SanDisk Extreme III 8GB x 2
Fuji Pro400H and NeoPan Film
Gepe Cardsafe Extreme Cases x3
Accessories:
Lastolite White/Grey Card
x-rite Colorchecker Passport w/ no case (recieved it as a beta tester for the product)
Business cards, Canon CPS Calendar, Pen
Large and Regular Sized PhotoClear Cleaning Cloth
LensPen, Giottos Cleaning Brush
Hot Shoe Level
Extra Battery for Canon 5DMkII and for the ST-E2 Transmitter
Battery Chargers for Canon Camera's
Hoya CP Filter
Case:
Pelican 1614 Hardshell case w/ rollers and adjustable dividers
Pelican 1609 Lid Oranizer for 1600 Case
Pelican Silica Gel Pack (for removing moisture, able to be used over and over)
Tech Details: If your curious how one takes a photograph of all of one's photo gear the answer is you borrow a friends camera from down the street (a Rebel XT/350D with a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens).
Lighting provided by one White Lighting X1600 to camera right difused through a large softbox, with Westcott 42" Silver reflector to camera right to just bring in some fill light. A short roll of White Savage Seamless just hanging off the knuckle arm of an Avenger C-Stand (easier and quicker than getting out a big background stand). Triggered by a good ole-fashioned sync cable connected to a Nikon AS-15 on the hot shoe since the RebelXT/350D lacks a PC Sync connector.
Using the gardens at the Victoria Inn, Holkham, Norfolk to grab a creative portrait shot for Alex & Chad
I will be using this camera in week 338 of my 52 film cameras in 52 weeks project:
www.flickr.com/photos/tony_kemplen/collections/72157623113584240
"This man used Le Page's Liquid Glue in the wrong place. Unequaled for repairing wood, leather, glass, ivory, china, jewelry, metals, &c. Sold in bottles and in cans. No loafers allowed here. Hold on! It's no use pullin' I'm stuck with Le Page's Glue. Awarded gold medal, London, 1883. Forbes Co. Lith."
A Victorian-era advertising trade card that humorously illustrates the consequences of misusing Le Page's Liquid Glue.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
DO NOT use my pictures without my written permission, these images are under copyright. Contact me if you want to buy or use them. roberto© All rights reserved.
DO NOT use my pictures without my written permission, these images are under copyright. Contact me if you want to buy or use them. roberto© All rights reserved.
My first move from number taking to photography was too black and white using a Hanimex Compact non SLR “point and shoot” camera with a 40mm lens of dubious quality around the edges of the frame. Here we see 31001 standing in the locomotive yard at Liverpool Street station circa 1974/early 1975.
Locomotive History
31001 is one of the twenty Pilot Scheme Type 2 locomotives built by Brush and was originally D5501. These twenty class 30 Pilot Scheme locomotives entered traffic during 1958. They did not have the headcode box mounted on the roof above the cab, were "non-standard" in having Electro-Magnetic multiple working control equipment (denoted by the orange circle clearly visible above each buffer) and had a maximum speed of 80mph. They were allocated to East Anglian sheds throughout their service, ending there days allocated to Stratford. They were built with Mirrlees JVS12T 1250bhp engines and Brush electrical equipment, but the engines were not a success and in 1964 a programme of works commenced to re-engine the fleet with the 1470bhp English Electric 12SVT engines with D5501 receiving its new engine during March 1969. The re-engined locomotives became Class 31/0. Being non standard with the rest of the class 31 fleet these twenty locomotives were early casualties being withdrawn in the latter half of the 1970’s with 31001 being withdrawn in July 1976. It was broken up at Doncaster Works during January 1977.
Re-scanned from original negative 16th July 2020
Hanimex Compact, Ilford FP4
You have permission to use these textures freely when you incorporate them into yournon-profit artwork, please be sure to follow the terms below:
- Image must be altered/incorporated into your artwork in some way.
- Please credit/link to me when using my textures.
Copy & paste this code for an easy credit:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
<b>FREE Textures </b>provided by: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrysti/">Chrysti </a>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- If you wish to sell your images using these, please contact me for written permission first: note I will ask to see the finished work, and your use (print, article, etc) before granting permission.
Under NO circumstances may these textures be used for:
- CD collections that you sell, website stock that you offer, collage sheets or any other collection whether for profit, or not.
- Website backgrounds, sold, offered or used as an individual image. Link to my set if you wish to share these with others :-)
One last important note:
Only the images in my photostream with the terms of use clearly stated, and a CC license applied to them, are offered for your use. All other photos and artwork are off-limits for any downloading. I retain all copyrights to my work. Thanks!
If you use these, I'd love to see how! Feel free to leave a SMALL sized photo with it in my comments so I can visit easily!
Hope they inspire you & happy creating!
Thank You. Have a question? Just ask!
Reached Flickr Explore on Feb 4, 2008 #26
I've used what is called 'Exposure Lock' in this shot. This is something I don't usually need in my general Landscape photography.
Usually, if you compose the above shot & press the shutter button, you will get a rounded sun & completely underexposed foreground. This is because when the camera does the average metering process, the foreground(camels) will be ignored because they occupy little part of the frame(maybe 15% only). So for this shot I pointed the camera for the foreground only and pressed the 'Exposure Lock' button on the cam. Kept pressing it while I re-Compose the shot and point the cam up to the sky, and finally press the shutter button down to take the shot.
You could find a Youtube tutorial explaining what I've just explained: The Second Most Important Button On Your DSLR
Technical Specs:
DSLR: Canon 600D
Lens: Tamron SP 10-24mm 1:3.5-4.5
Exposure: 1/160 seconds.
Aperture: f/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Filters: Polarizer
All photos are exclusive property and may not be copied, downloaded, manipulated or used in any way without my expressed, written permission.
My Photostream | My Profile | Oman Set | Facebook | View My most interesting photos on flickr
Press "L" for better view . . .
إضغط على "م" بلوحة المفاتيح لعرض أكبر للصوره.
Used the new rogue figure for the body ( handy wolf insignia! ) not entirely happy with the face. Had to paint the hairpiece. Oh for a dimensions witcher set!
Runa Photography © 2012
© All rights reserved, don´t use this image without my permission.
En septiembre de 1942 se instaló en la montaña de Chacaltaya una de las estaciones de la red meteorológica, por el Dr. Ismael Escobar que posteriormente fue designado catedrático de la UMSA.
Al finalizar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el físico brasileño Cesar Lattes se unió al grupo de investigación en Bristol (Gran Bretaña) dirigido por Cecil Powell, del que formaba parte también Giuseppe Occhialini, y fueron de la idea de llevar las emulsiones nucleares a sitios elevados.
En 1947 llega a Bolivia el profesor Lattes, trae consigo las emulsiones nucleares que expone en Chacaltaya, las placas al revelarse muestran trazos de mesones dobles, dando lugar al descubrimiento del mesón Pi predicho teóricamente por Yukawa en los años 30. El descubrimiento hace al profesor Hideki Yukawa del Japón acreedor al Premio Nobel de Física en 1949 y al Profesor Cecil Powell acreedor al mismo premio en 1950. Los trabajos científicos publicados en la prestigiosa revista Nature, bajo la autoría de Lattes, Occhialini y Powell hacen conocer Chacaltaya a todo el mundo.
Chacaltaya ocupa una situación geográfica ventajosa, por su altitud de 5200 msnm, en la que se encuentran las instalaciones del laboratorio y su posición justo al frente del centro de la Galaxia, asimismo Chacaltaya está situado sobre el ecuador geomagnético, lugar ideal para estudiar las variaciones temporales de la radiación cósmica y observar fuentes puntuales de rayos cósmicos en ambos hemisferios.
En 1951 el Rector de la UMSA y el Consejo Universitario aprobaron oficialmente la creación del Laboratorio de Física Cósmica de Chacaltaya, su primer director fue el Dr. Ismael Escobar.
Entre 1952 y 1954 llegan a Bolivia expediciones científicas de todas partes del mundo: EE.UU., Brasil, Gran Bretaña, Japón, India, Italia, Francia, Argentina, URSS, etc. Entre 1960 y 1962 se inician en Chacaltaya los Proyectos BASJE y la colaboración Brasil-Japón, el grupo inicial estaba compuesto por los destacados científicos Hasegawa, Koshiba, Nishimura, Niu, Oda, Suga y Fujimoto. Entre 1970 y 1973 la UMSA decidió convertir el Laboratorio en Instituto de Investigaciones Físicas, al mismo tiempo se agregan dos nuevos grupos de Investigación, el primero de la Universidad de Saitama encabezado por el Profesor Tsuneo Matano, el segundo de la Universidad de Torino dirigido por el Profesor Gianni Navarra.
Durante los años 80 y hasta la fecha, los grupos de investigación BASJE y SYS estuvieron dedicados al estudio de los rayos cósmicos y rayos gamma de energías mayores a los 10^14 eV y a la estructura de cascadas de los chubascos atmosféricos extensos con un equipo combinado de emulsiones nucleares y detector de chubascos. Tanto desde la perspectiva de la astrofísica como de la física nuclear, queda aún un importante potencial de investigación en la materia de rayos cósmicos, en este marco Chacaltaya puede aún contribuir de manera sustanciosa.
The full video is available on YouTube via link.
studio.youtube.com/video/fRXAQvsD5d4/edit/basic
Text revised and up-dated on 27 Dec 2022.
McKinney’s Old (GNRI) Railway Bridge
The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) (GNR(I) or GNRI) was an Irish gauge (1,600mm - 5'- 3") railway company in Ireland. It was formed in 1876 by a merger of the Irish North Western Railway (INW|), Northern Railway of Ireland, and Ulster Railway. The governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland jointly nationalised the company in 1953, however the company was liquidated in 1958.
The Great Northern Railway (GNR) which ran from Omagh to L/Derry crossed the island of Island More (Corkan) via two metal railway bridges. The 'Red Bridge' which is located
to the North of the island at Glenfad near Porthall and is still accessible but predominately used by the farming community and the river bed aggregate extraction company while the bridge onto Island More to the South was demolished by the British Army during the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' as where many small cross-border unapproved) roads.
Known locally as 'McKinney's Bridge' it crosses the River Foyle which forms the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, hence the reason why the bridge was demolished and is now unusable as a crossing point.
Anthony Freire Marreco (b.26th Aug 1915 d.4th June 2006, aged 90)
When growing up, I knew Islandmore or Corkan Island as 'Marreco's Island', named after Anthony Freire Marreco who was a British barrister and who had maintained a georgian
house at Porthall, near Lifford, Co. Donegal, on the banks of the River Foyle overlooking the island.
Anthony Blechynden Freire Marreco was born in Leiston, Suffolk, England on 26th Aug 1915 where his father's regiment was stationed at the time. The only son of Geoffrey Algernon Freire Marreco (b.25 Feb 1882 d.15 Sept 1969) of The Old Court House, St Mawes, Cornwall and his wife, nee Hilda, Gwendoline Beaufoy Francis (b.1 Dec 1887 d.9th June 1967) from Hampshire. Both parents are buried at St. Lucadius Church of Ireland, Clonleigh Parish, Lifford, Co. Donegal, Ireland.
The Freire Marreco’s were of Portuguese origin; Antonio Joaquim Freire Marreco (b.1787 d.1850), Anthony's great-grandfather was an interesting fellow. Born in Penafiel in
Northern Portugal he left for Brazil in 1808, together with King João VI and the Portuguese Court, who fled the invading Napoleonic troops and settled in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1820, the King returned to Portugal and Marreco returned with him. Antonio established himself in business in England in the early 1820s as a wine importer and in July 1834 married Anna “Annie” Laura Harrison (born in 1806) of Newcastle, the daughter of his English business partner, William Harrison, at St. Botulph's Church, Aldgate in London. He became a naturalised British subject. Freire was the original Portuguese surname, Marreco was added by the grandfather after a trip to Brazil were at that time it was popular to add the names of flowers and bird, Marreco being a type of duck.
Geoffrey, Anthony’s father worked for Richard Garrett & Sons a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, steam engines and trolleybuses, the factory was located in Leiston, Suffolk, England being founded by Richard Garrett in 1778.
Education
Anthony initially attended a private school, Allen House in Woking (founded in 1871), before attending the Royal College of St Peter's, Westminster from 1929 to 1934 where his lifelong interest in human rights began. His headmaster, Dr. Crossley-White had invited leading personalities of the day to dinner. At the age of 17, Marreco met his childhood hero, T.E. Lawrence (b.1888 d.1935) and also Mahātmā Ghandi (b.1869 d.1948).
Stage Career
In 1934 he joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), but was expelled after being spotted by the principal's wife at the Epsom Downs Derby, when he should have been attending classes. From 1935 to 1937, he began a career on the stage, playing in Shakespeare and forming friendships with figures such as Noel Coward (b.1899 d.1973) and
Johnny Weismuller (b.1904 d.1984). He joined Northampton Repertory and was stage manager at Crewe Repertory and later the London shows at His Majesty's Theatre, Daly's
Theatre, the Arts Theatre and the Theatre Royal.
Military Career
In 1940 he joined Royal Navy as a rating, Commission, Sub-Lieutenant (A) Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve R.N.V.R. and when the Admiralty learned that he had a pilot's licence,
Certificate No:14851 issued on 24 April 1937 by the Great Britain, Royal Aero Club Aviators at Airwork School of Flying, Heston Airport, Hounslow, Middlesex, which was taken
using an Avro Club Cadet Gipsy Major 130. He was later commissioned to fly a Fairey Swordfish (a biplane torpedo bomber). He received his wings on 6th October 1940 and was
appointed to train observers at R.N.A.S. Arbroath in Scotland.
In 1941 he was temporarily released from Naval duties on appointment, as Assistant Counsel to the legal department of the Industrial Export Council and was later promoted to
Lieutenant. In the same year he was appointed to the Royal Naval Air Service (R.N.A.S.) at Yeovilton in Somerset as Instructor, Fighter Direction School.
In January 1942 Marreco was appointed Fleet Fighter Direction Officer, Staff Commander-in-Chief, H.M.S. King George V (41) the flagship of both the British Home Fleet and
Pacific Fleets. In May 1941, along with HMS Rodney, King George V was involved in the hunt and pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck, eventually inflicting severe battle
damage which led to her being scuttled in the North Atlantic on 27 May 1941.
In April, Marreco was lent to US Carrier Wasp as Flight Deck Officer (FDO) to fly Spitfires off to Malta and in June 1942 was appointed to the Naval Night Fighter Development Unit.
In June 1943 he was appointed Flight Deck Officer (FDO) on an American built 'Attacker class' Escort Aircraft Carrier, which took part in “Operation Avalanche”, the codename for the Allied landings near the port of Salerno which was executed on 9 September 1943, part of the Allied invasion of Italy.
In December 1943 he was appointed Flight Deck Officer (FDO) of the American built Aircraft Carrier, USS Pybus (CVE-34) which was renamed Emperor (D98) by the Royal Navy.
In January 1944 he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and appointed Flight Deck Officer (FDO) Aircraft Carrier Formidable (67), which was involved in Operation Mascot, an
unsuccessful air raid against the German battleship Tirpitz at her anchorage in Kaafjord, Norway, on 17 July 1944. The attack was one of a series of strikes against the battleship, launched from british aircraft carriers between April and August 1944. Tirpitz, was eventually sank during Operation Catechism on 12 November 1944 off Håkøy Island near Tromsø, Norway.
Formidable was subsequently assigned to the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) in 1945 where she played a supporting role during the Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg
where the Allies assembled the most powerful naval force in history. Formidable. later attacked targets in the Japanese Home Islands. She was hit twice by kamikaze aircraft
on the 4th and 9th of May. In both instances, she was saved by her armoured deck and was able return to flight operations rapidly. The ship was used to repatriate liberated Allied prisoners of war and soldiers after the Japanese surrender and then ferried British personnel across the globe through 1946.
Later in June 1945 Marreco was discharged for passage to the UK to take up an appointment at the Admiralty as advisor on Kamikaze suicide fighters during the pending final assault on Japan. He left his ship and flew to Sydney, Australia and as Senior Naval Officer, he boarded an old P&O liner call the 'Randi' which requisitioned by the Admiralty on 27 August 1939 and converted on 23 October 1939 to an armed merchant cruiser to carrying Japanese prisoners of war back to Southampton. Marreco, as part of his job aboard,
describes the trip, "I had to get up at 5.00am and bury my brother's and sister's who had not survived the night”.
In 1946, Marreco was demobilised and return to civvy street, he soon accepted an offer to attend the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal as part of the British delegation where he
spent a number of months. During October 1946 he was appointed Chief Assistant to Deputy Chairman, Government Sub-Committee (Control Commission) for Berlin and later in April 1947 was appointed Director of the same.
In October 1947 was appointed British member, Directorate of Internal Affairs and Communications; Chief Staff Officer to Political Adviser to Military Governor. During December 1948 he resigned from the Control Commission.
Legal Career
Having passed his first Bar Examination in 1938, he was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1941 during his absence on war service. He continued his law studies and took his Bar Finals at Twatt on a remote island in the Orkneys, invigilated by a chief petty officer. He was later a pupil of the distinguished Irish lawyer Brian McKenna in Walter Monckton's chambers in the Temple located at 2, Paper Buildings, London. Marreco never returned to the Bar, and instead went on to become a human-rights advocate, helping co-found Amnesty International.
Publishing & Banking
In the 1950s he was a director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, established 1949, a British publisher of fiction and reference books. He also worked as an investment banker for SG
Warburg & Co founded in 1946 by Siegmund Warburg (b.1902 d.1982) and Henry Grunfeld (b.1904 d.1999).
Olympic Games – Germany 1936
Anthony received an invitation from Otto Christian von Bismarck (b.1987 d.1976) who was counsellor at the German Embassy in London (1929 to 1937) to attend the 1936 Summer
Olympic games in Germany as part of an official party. On attendance with some others were, John Beverley Nichols (b.1898 d.1983) English author, playwright, journalist,
composer, and public speaker and Mangal Heppeelipol (New Zealander) there was a mix up with their seats and it looked like they would not get in, however a German SS officer
frantically beckoned them upstairs to some fine seats. Minutes later Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels along with their respective wives arrived and took up their seats directly in front. The party was in the charge of Ernst Hanfstaengl (b.1887 d.1975), nicknamed "Putzi", who was a German-American businessman and became an
intimate friend and confidant of Adolf Hitler who enjoyed listening to "Putzi" play the piano. Hitler was the godfather of Hanfstaengl's son Egon (b.1921 d.2007).
Marreco witnessed the display of fury that Hitler showed when Jessie Owens (b.1913 d.1980) won the 100 meters (Owens won four gold medals, the long jump, 100 meters, 200 meters and 4 × 100m relay). Marreco also remarked how Helene Bertha Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl (b.902 d.2003) who was a German film director, actress and Nazi sympathizer
jumped up with her camera and filmed Hitler from every conceivable angle every time he spoke. She was commissioned by the German Olympic Committee for $7 million to film the Games and directed the Nazi propaganda films “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will) and “Olympia” (video documentary of the games). Both movies are widely considered to be the most effective, and technically innovative, propaganda films ever made. Adolf Hitler was in close collaboration with Riefenstahl during the production of at least three important Nazi films during which they formed a friendly relationship. Some have suggested that Riefenstahl's visions were essential in the carrying out of the Holocaust?
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal (1945 to 1949)
Marreco takes up the story. "I had returned from the Navy and I was back in my London chambers when one day in March 1946 after coming out of the dining hall of the Inner
Temple, about three months into the trial, Hartley Shawcross (b.1902 d.2003), the Attorney-General, (he was a sailing acquaintance of my father), fell into step beside me and
he said, "Good to see you Marreco, how are getting on? I’m fine”, and then he asked, "Would you like to go to Nuremberg?" Marreco replied, “Give me 24 hours”, I went back to my chambers and discussed the proposition with my colleagues who advised me to go. He arrived in Germany, just as U.S. Chief of Counsel, Robert Houghwout Jason
(b.1892 d.1954) was cross-examining Hermann Göring (18 March 1946). Marreco was briefed by the head of the British team, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (b.1900 d.1967), 1st Earl of
Kilmuir.
Members of the British Prosecuting Counsel at Nuremberg included: Chief Prosecutor: Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, Deputy Chief Prosecutor: Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, Leading Council: Mr. Geoffrey ('Khaki') Dorling Roberts (b.1886 d.1967), Junior Council: Major J. Harcourt Barrington (b.1907 d.1973), Major Frederick Elwyn Jones
(b.1909 d.1989), Mr Edward George G Robey (b.1900 d.1983), Lieut Col. John Mervyn Griffith-Jones (b.1909 d.1979), Colonel Henry Josceline Phillimore (b.1910 d.1974), Mr. Airey
Middleton Sheffield Neave (b.1916 d.1979), Sir Clement Raphael Freud (b.1924 d.2009) & Peter John Ambrose Calvocoressi (b.1912 d.2010).
In all, six organisations, including the SS, the Gestapo and the high command of the German army were also accused. 199 defendants were tried, 161 were convicted and 37 were
sentenced to death, including 12 of those tried by the International Military Tribunal (IMT).
From March to Sept 1946 Marreco was Junior Counsel of the British Delegation, his first task was to join a subsidiary tribunal to sort out the witnesses, convened under Airey
Neave who was the first British officer to escape from Colditz Castle on 12 May 1942. The defence called more than 400 witnesses. Marreco was present when they made their
depositions and cross-examined them on behalf of the prosecution. He also describes how he helped draft the trials' forensic closing speech delivered by the head of the
British team, Sir Hartley Shawcross.
Marreco recalls, "In the six months I was in Nuremberg, I got to know each of the Nazi defendants, and with one notable exception, I never liked any of them. Particularly, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the former ambassador to Britain who sat ashen-faced and was the most unpalatable character. Wilhelm Frick (Reich Minister of the Interior) was a horrible little man, Walther Funk (Reich Minister for Economic Affairs) was another dirty little shit”. He loathed Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz whom he vividly remembered being "brought into the courtroom clanking in chains" and who paced up and down, giving the impression of a madman. But with Hermann Göring, Hitler's number two, there was something about his attitude and the way he took charge of all the defendants that was, for me, totally compelling."Göring, who sangfroid throughout the judicial process and on one occasion when a particularly attractive military wren was standing next to the dock, Göring reached out and pinched her bottom. "She was so incensed and complained to the judge, but Göring knew he was going to die and he didn't care".
Britain’s legal team was tiny compared with the 300-plus American one, but Maxwell Fyfe told Marreco that the American's had got bogged down because the German defence counsel had surprisingly called more than 400 witnesses, many of them SS guards who had previously been at the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Belsen.
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) announces it's verdicts on November 1946. It imposed the death sentence on 12 defendants, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Martin Bormann.
3 are sentenced to life imprisonment, Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk and Erich Raeder. The only one of them to serve their entire life in prison was Rudolf Hess who died on 17 Aug 1987, he was found strangled to death in a cabin in the exercise yard at Spandau Prison, Berlin. Apparently, he choked himself to death with an electrical cord. Some suspected foul play.
4 receive prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years, Karl Dönitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. The court acquits 3 defendants: Hjalmar Schacht (Economics Minister), Franz von Papen (German politician who played an important role in Hitler's appointment as chancellor), and Hans Fritzsche (head of Press and Radio).
The death sentences were carried out on 16 October 1946, with two exceptions: Hermann Göring committed suicide shortly before his scheduled execution, and Martin Bormann,
who was sentensed but was absent during the trial. The other 10 defendants were hanged, their bodies cremated at Ostfriedhof, Munich, and their ashes deposited in the Iser
River.
Video - Nuremberg Executions 1946 - What Happened to the Bodies? (Mark Felton Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=At7IA19fXHc&ab_channel=MarkFe...
Video - Joachim von Ribbentrop (Mark Felton Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-q6pdTyE0Q&ab_channel=MarkFe...
Video - Hermann Göring's Mysterious Death (Mark Felton Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IMhFW7539s&ab_channel=MarkFe...
Hermann Göring's Special Train - Exclusive New Footage (Mark Felton Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMc3Kw9aNEs&ab_channel=MarkFe...
Video - Rudolf Hess: The Last Prisoner of Spandau (Mark Felton Productions)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9lM-aaCHJU&ab_channel=MarkFe...
Video - The hanging of Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz (Alan Heath)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3C4njP5J2o&ab_channel
Post in Germany
As Chief Staff Officer to the Political Adviser to the British Military Government of Germany, and as British Member of the Directorate of International Affairs and Communications, Allied Control Authority, Berlin, from 1946 to 1949, Marreco assisted in the creation of new democratic and legal institutions in Germany.
Political Career
Marreco contested Wells in Somerset as a Liberal candidate in the 23 February 1950 general election obtaining 9,771 votes however, he was unsuccessful being beaten by the
Conservative representative Dennis Boles (b.1885 d.1958) with 20,613 votes. Again, in Goole in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the 25 October 1951 general election he obtained 17,073 votes being beaten by the Labour representative George Jeger (b.1903 d.1971) with 26,088 votes.
Amnesty International
In 1960 Flora Solomon (b.1895 d.1984), his neighbour in Shepherd Street, told Marreco that her son, Peter Benenson (b.1921 d.2005) was founding an organisation which was
later to become Amnesty International. Marreco, who had twice stood as a Liberal candidate for Parliament, supported him vigorously.
In 1968 he became Honorary Treasurer and had set up an Amnesty International Development Inc. (AID Inc.) in 1970 in the United States, which was totally separate from Amnesty
International and which could send funds to families of Greek prisoners. This was strongly opposed by Amnesty International USA. Outspoken in all his opinions, Marreco
conducted several investigations for Amnesty, notably during the regime of the Greek Colonels, when he went to Athens to interview Stylianos Pattakos (b.1912 d.2016), one of the Junta leaders of 1967 to 1974, about allegations of torture and the curtailing of civil liberties.
In 1971, Marreco investigated allegations of torture by British troops in Northern Ireland and subsequently resigned. Amnesty, he said, "refused to go to Belfast and even see these people", he added that "it was also a bizarre circumstance" that Amnesty's chairman, Sean MacBride (b.1904 d.1988), was the leader of Clann na Poblachta (Irish
republican political party) from 1946 to 1965 and was a former Chief of Staff of the IRA from 1936 to 1939. He also implied that he had received treats from the IRA when living at Porthall, County Donegal.
Mayfair Residents Association
For 13 years he was chairman of the Residents Association of Mayfair (RAM), steering it through turbulent times when it was opposed by the Association of Residents of Mayfair (ARM). When the two merged in 2004 he was appointed Honorary Present of the Residents’ Society of Mayfair and St James’s. He resigned on 13 January 2004. He was also a member
of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and of the Garrick Theatre, the Royal Thames Yacht Club and the Beefsteak Club. He was also a Director of Aldbourne Craft Trust
from 4 August 2000 until he resigned on 4 June 2006.
Institute of International Criminal Law
In 1983 he proposed setting up an Institute of International Criminal Law, to be established in association with the Irish Universities. He offered Port Hall to the Irish government as a study centre, where "the hideous violations of human rights, which had disfigured the 20th century" could be researched. His ambition was to set up a television archive of the Nuremberg Trials to be used by lawyers and peace researchers from all over the world. The Institute never came to fruition, possibly because Marreco also remained energetically committed to sorting out the legal and domestic problems of the Mayfair intelligentsia.
In his last years Marreco retired to Greenhill Bank Cottage, Aldbourne, in Wiltshire, with his wife, Gina, who was a brilliant hostess and an unforgettable cook.
Relationships
Anthony Marreco was married four times, but to only three women and had numerous affairs with other women but he had no children.
Lady Ursula Isabel Manners (b.1916 d.2017)
Lady Ursula Isabel Manners was born 8th November 1916, being the elder daughter of five children of John Manners, (b.1886 d.1940) 9th Duke of Rutland, by his wife the former
Kathleen Tennant (b.1894 d.1989, aged 95). As a 20-year-old she acted as one of Queen Elizabeth's trainbearers in Westminster Abbey and received international media attention after a photograph of her from the coronation on 12 May 1937, standing alongside the British royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace which was circulated in the news.
The reports, focused on her beauty and distinctive widow's peak, leading to her being nicknamed "the cygnet" by Winston Churchill while she accompanied the king and queen on a 5-day royal tour to France in 1938.
On 25 July 1943, Lady Ursula married Anthony Marreco in the chapel at Belvoir Castle, Grantham, Leicestershire, a man she barely knew and who threatened to commit suicide if
she refused to do so. The swiftness in which a wedding was organised prompted the minister to place a chair for her to sit on at the altar as he assumed, she was pregnant, this, she admitted, had infuriated her. Marreco left her to serve in the British Armed Forces in Asia and lost communication with her until 1946. During this time she had entered into a brief relationship with Man Singh II (b.1912 d.1970), the Maharaja of Jaipur, whom she met through her friend Jawaharlal Nehru (b.1889 d.1964). Lady Ursula and Marreco divorced in 1948.
Lady Ursula resumed her maiden name, and married secondly on 22 Nov 1951, Robert Erland Nicolai d'Abo (b.1911 d.1970), the elder son of Gerard Louis d'Abo (b.1884 d.1962), by whom
she had two sons and a daughter. In 2014 she published her memoir titled “The Girl with the Widow's Peak: The Memoirs”.
Lady Ursula died on 2 November 2017, aged 100, she was one of the last surviving aristocrats to have participated at the Coronation of King George VI & Queen Elizabeth on 12 May 1937.
Louise de Vilmorin (b.1902 d.1969)
Marreco also became involved with Louise de Vilmorin through the late 1940s until 1951 who was a French novelist, poet and journalist. Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to the fortune of the great French seed company, that of 'Vilmorin'. (The 4th largest seed company in the world).
Louise was the younger daughter of Philippe de Vilmorin (b.1872 d.1917) by his wife Berthe Marie Mélanie de Gaufridy de Dortan (b.1876 d.1937)
From a child, she was afflicted with a slight limp, the result of Tuberculosis of the hip, however she compensated for her frailty with a flamboyant personality. She was a spellbinding talker who craved the limelight that she once flung a butterball to the ceiling when another guest at a dinner party wouldn’t allow her to tell a story.
De Vilmorin was never wholly sure of Marreco's devotion, as in Venice, in July 1950 her doubts were realised when Marreco went in successful pursuit of the somewhat unstable
Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia (b.1921 d.1993), who had fellen madly in love with him and who then took an overdose of sleeping pills and slipped into a coma, but recovered
after two days, allegedly after de Vilmorin removed him to Sélestat in France at the end of the holiday.
De Vilmorin's diaries are peppered with references to him. She was much taken by his style of dress, on one occasion a shirt with narrow blue and white stripes, a black silk tie with white spots, a black jacket and waistcoat, spongebag trousers, and black leather ankle boots. When he went out, he perched his bowler hat at a rakish angle, and carried a furled umbrella. Above all, she was impressed by Marreco's adonis-like looks, impressed that he could return from a fashionable ball at six in the morning, neither drunk nor tired, but invigorated with life, talking of beautiful women, fortune, society and success. "Beauty likes to shine, to dazzle," wrote de Vilmorin, "and above all to be recognised!" She was deeply saddened when he left her in New Year in 1951, conscious that she was 13 years his senior and that his career might place demands on him that would take him away from her. These concerns were replicated as Marreco at this time had political aspirations.
Again, De Vilmorin's fears were realised while she was staying with Paul-Louis Weiller (b.1893 d.1993), at his villa, La Reine Jeanne, with Marreco in tow. She awoke one morning and found him gone. He had set off to Brazil in pursuit of Lali Horstmann, whose book had recently been published to great acclaim.
Vilmorin's first husband was an American real-estate heir, Henry Leigh Hunt (b.1886 d.1972), the only son of Leigh S. J. Hunt (b.1855 d.1933), a businessman who once owned
much of Las Vegas, Nevada and his wife, Jessie Nobel (b.c.1862 d.1960). They married in c.1925, moved to Las Vegas, and divorced in the 1930s. They had three daughters,
Jessie, Alexandra, and Helena.
Her second husband was Count Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd (b.1890 d.1968), a much-married Austrian-born Hungarian playboy, who had been second husband to the Hungarian countess better known as Etti Plesch (b.1914 d.2003), owner of two Epsom Derby winners. Palffy married Louise as his 5th wife in 1938, but the couple soon divorced.
Vilmorin was the mistress of another of Etti Plesch's husbands, Count [Maria Thomas] Paul Esterházy de Galántha (b.1901 d.1964), who left his wife in 1942 for Vilmorin. They
never married. For a number of years, she was the mistress of Duff Cooper (b.1890 d.1954), British ambassador to France.
Louise spent the last years of her life as the companion of the French Cultural Affairs Minister and author André Malraux (b.1901 d.1976), calling herself "Marilyn Malraux". She died on 26 Dec 1969 aged 67 and is buried in Verrières-le-Buisson (Essonne) cemetery also the initial resting place of André Malraux.
Léonie (Lally or Lali) Horstmann (b.1898 d.1954)
While serving in Germany, Marreco, then aged 36, became the lover of Lali Horstmann, who came from a distinguished German banking family, the von Schwabachs, her father was
the banker and historian Paul von Schwabach (b.1867 d.1938) and her mother Eleonor (Elli) Schröder (b.1869 d1942). Lali was the widow of Alfred (Freddy) Horstmann (b.1979 d.1947) who was a retired diplomat, art collector and later the head of the English department at the German Foreign Office. Freddy resigned his diplomatic duties in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, rather than work for the Nazis.
As Germany collapsed in the face of the allied invasion, the Horstmann’s decided, against the trend of fleeing from the Russian advance, by staying at their Kerzendorf estate,
East of Berlin, an elegant eighteenth-century house which contained numberous antiquities, had a small park, avenues, statues and a garden. The house was destroyed one night
by allied bombers and the Horstmann's moved into the agent's little house in the park.
At first, the Horstmann's were able to anaesthetise themselves from the worst excesses through their wealth and possessions, but soon the valuable objets sought by Russian
soldiers ran out as they lived in constant fear of rape and pilliage. One day in March 1946, Freddy was taken away by the Russian Secret Police for questioning about his
diplomat duties, stating, "It is now Saturday, six o'clock, you will probably be back tomorrow at the same time, Tuesday at the latest."
Almost, two and a half years later, August 1948 at Berlin station, Lali was told that Freddy had died of starvation in a Russian concentration camp, (No.7 Sachsenhausen,
Oranienburg, Germany, which was only a few miles from their home) a year after his arrest and that he was buried at the edge of the camp with many of his companions. Others
had survived, a few had been released for no apparent reason, many of them were still, and are now, in captivity. My husband, like all the others, had never been questioned
or tried. He had never been given any opportunity to defend himself.
Lali later wrote a moving account of her search for him, 'Nothing for Tears' (1953), which has been described as "one of the most remarkable personal documents to come out of
Germany at the end of 2nd World War". Marreco's relationship ended in Berlin, but they remained friends, both in Berlin and later when Lali moved to London.
They met again in 1954 in Brazil only when Lali made her first trip to Brazil to meet friends who had settled in Paraná in the south of the country. Lali asked Anthony to drive her from Rio to Paraná. They stopped overnight in São Paulo, where Lali was found the following morning, unconscious in her hotel room, having suffered a massive heart attack. She was rushed to hospital where she died the next day, aged 56. Lali Horstmann was buried in São Paulo. Marreco inherited part of her substantial fortune, derived from her ownership of real estate in Berlin and her late husband's family publishing buisness, the newspaper the 'Frankfurter General-Anzeiger', which was published in Frankfurt from 1876 to 1943 under various names. As a result of this Marreco bought Port Hall in Lifford, Co Donegal in 1956 where he lived and farmed until 1983 when he sold the house as his money was running out.
Loelia, Duchess of Westminster (b.1902 d.1993)
Marrero was subsequently the lover of Lady Loelia Mary Lindsay of Dowhill, Duchess of Westminster who was a British peeress, needlewoman and magazine editor. Loelia was the
only daughter of the courtier Sir Frederick Ponsonby (b.1867 d.1935), later 1st Baron Sysonby, and Lady Victoria Lily (Kennard) Sysonby (b.1874 d.1955), the well-known cook
book author. Loelia spent her early years at St James's Palace in London, Park House at Sandringham and Birkhall in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. As one of the "Bright Young
People", she met the twice divorced Hugh Grosvenor (b.1879 d.1953), 2nd Duke of Westminster. They were married on 20 February 1930 in a blaze of publicity, with Winston Churchill as the best man, but were unable to have children. Her marriage to the enormously wealthy peer failed and was dissolved in 1947 after years of separation.
Loelia's private diaries were likewise filled with anxious questions as to Marrero's love and loyalty. She encouraged Marrero to invest in Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and for some
years in the 1950s he was a financial supporter of George Weidenfeld (b.1919 d.2016).
Lindsay's 2nd marriage, to the divorced explorer Sir Martin Lindsay (b.1905 d.1981), 1st Baronet. The couple were married on 1st August 1969. Sir Martin, a devoted husband, died in 1981, and Lady Lindsay chose to spend her last years in nursing homes. Her memoirs, written in 1961 and titled 'Grace and Favour: The Memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster', a significant record of aristocratic life between the First and Second World Wars.
Regina de Souza Coelho (b.1927 - ?)
In 1954 Marreco went to Brazil for S G Warburg and while in Brazil he met Regina (Gina) de Souza Coelho, only daughter of Dr. Roberto and Roberto de Souza Coelho of Rio de
Janeiro. Marreco, consummated his second marriage with Gina on 19th November 1955, but the marriage was dissolved in 1961.
Anthony and Gina resumed their relationship in 1990, buying a cottage in Aldbourne, Wiltshire in 1997 and re-marrying in 2004. Very little is known about Regina.
Anne Wignall (née Acland-Troyte) b.1912 d.1982
Daughter of Major Herbert Acland-Troyte (b.1882 d.1943) and Marjorie Florence Pym (b.1891 d.1977). Anne was born in Kensington, London and had previously been married to the
5th Lord Ebury, Rennie Hoare (b.1901, d.1981), and also Lt-Col Frederick Wignall (b.1906 d.1956)
Anne first married, Robert Egerton Grosvenor (b.1914 d.1957), 5th Baron Ebury, son of Francis Egerton Grosvenor (b.1883 d.1932), 4th Baron Ebury and Mary Adela Glasson
(b.1883 d.1960), on 1 July 1933. She and Robert were divorced in 1941. Anne & Robert had two sons:
1. Francis Egerton Grosvenor, 8th Earl of Wilton (b.8th Feb 1934)
2. Hon. Robert Victor Grosvenor (b.1936 d.1993)
A keen racing driver, Lord Ebury died in an accident at Prescott, Gloucestershire on 5 May 1957, aged 43, while driving a Jaguar C-type - XKC 046 (Registration MVC630). He
was cremated at Oxford Crematorium, where there is a plaque to him and his 3rd wife Sheila, who died in 2010.
Anne's 2nd marriage on 23 December 1941 was to, Henry Peregrine Rennie Hoare (b.1901 d.1981) son of Henry Hoare (b.1866 d.1956) and Lady Geraldine Mariana Hervey
(b.1869 d.1955). Anne and Henry were divorced in 1947.
Anne's 3rd marriage on 13 November 1947 was to Lt.Col. Frederick Edwin Barton Wignall (b.1906 d.1956). He gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in The Life Guards and died
9 November 1956 and was buried in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels, Poulton, Gloucestershire.
Anne's 4th marriage on 25 September 1961 was to Anthony Freire Marreco (his 3rd marriage) and as Anne Marreco she was the biographer of “Constance Markievicz - The Rebel
Countess” (1967). She changed her name back to Wignall by deed poll in 1969 and died on 23 June 1982 in Tiverton, Devon and was buried in the churchyard at All Saints Church,
Huntsham, close to her father's ancestral seat, Huntsham Court.
Port Hall House
At Port Hall Marreco bred a fine herd of Charolais cattle and was immediately accepted by that flamboyant section of Irish society known as "The Donegal Group". Anthony was a
convivial host, a considerable raconteur, his hospitality was legendary being a generous host at Port Hall, with it's spacious library and hand-painted wallpaper and at his summer house parties in Greece and in his book-lined flat in Shepherd Market in Mayfair in London.
His many guests ranged from Henry MacIlhenny (b.1910 d.1986), millionaire owner of Glenveagh Castle, Co. Donegal to historian R.B McDowell (b.1913 d.2011), who for 13 years
(1956 to 1969) was dean of discipline at Trinity College, Dublin and once castigated future President Mary Robinson.
Port Hall house was owned by Anthony Marreco from 1956 until 1983. He had a strong interest in building conservation and carefully repaired and conserved Port Hall during the
1960s. This important building is one of the most significant elements of the built heritage of Donegal, and forms the centrepiece of a group of related structures along with
the warehouses to the rear, the walled garden to the south, and the other surviving elements of the site.
Port Hall House was built in 1746 on the banks of the River Foyle, for Judge John Vaughan (b.1603 d.1674) also of Buncrana Castle, who served as a Grand Juror for County
Donegal which was based at Lifford a short distance to the south-south-west of Port Hall. The house design is attributed to Michael Priestley (d.23 September 1777), an architect who was also responsible for the designs of the county court house and gaol (Old Courthouse) in Lifford’s Diamond (were John Half-Hung MacNaghten was held), Strabane Canal, Prehen House on the outskirts of Derry City and possibly First Presbyterian Church in Magazine Street, Derry City.
Marreco strenuously opposed salmon poaching, then running at a value of £1 million of fish a year. He became chairman of the Foyle Fisheries Commission (now known as the ‘Loughs Agency’) and immersed himself in every aspect of Ireland's cultural and political life. In the last year of his life, he had wished to make his own documentary, The Rule of Law, tracing the development of international law from the time of Grotius, the 17th century philosopher, to the present day.
Anthony Freire Marreco died on 4th June 2006 aged 90 years and was buried in the graveyard of St. Michael's Church, Aldbourne, Wiltshire, England. Donations were requested for
the RSPCA.
A video interview with Anthony Marreco recalling moments from his life at aged 82 is available on YouTube via link.