Audubon’s “American Flamingo” & “Snowy Heron” - a blind flaneur

Search
About the Flaneur

I walk through my blindness the way I saunter down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, enchanted and engaged by the raw material of the senses. I am a blind flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. If you don’t find me on the street, take a look in the Fair Use Lab. You can browse the archives or contact me.
Brendan the Navigator

"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. Read more.
ADA 20th Anniversary

On its 20th anniversary, pundits will debate what the Americans with Disabilities Act has accomplished. I still believe what I said in a TV interview after the ADA signing ceremony in 1990. “The ADA will not end disability discrimination overnight. But in a nation governed by the rule of law, getting it in writing is the place to start.” So what is the ADA's legacy? A Generation of Problem-Solvers.
Re-Imagining Accessibility

Re-imagining accessibility through the transformations of culture -- particularly the transformative promise of accessible technology for people with disabilities -- is the work of the Fair Use Lab. What does Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster have to do with accessibility? Read more: Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
Fair Use Lab
Blind Photographers

In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.
Photo Flânerie
Not This Pig

If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).
Café Mouffe
Imaging Paris: Dada Muse

The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.
Archives
Yellow Springs 2.0

What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Linking Out
- AFB Blog
- Amy’s Anomalies
- augmented illusions
- Buzz Machine
- Cold Holler
- David Morley
- Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña
- Henry Jenkins
- Jafabrit's Art
- Kaitlin Foley
- Planet of the Blind
- Reading in the Dark
- Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir
- Richard Florida
- Tim O'Brien
- Yellow Springs Arts

Audubon’s “American Flamingo” & “Snowy Heron”

0 August 5, 2023 at 6:38pm by Mark Willis

The modest little heath hen drawn for a bank note made me think of John James Audubon’s grander bird portraits of the American Flamingo and Snowy Heron (Snowy egret). Both images come from individual plates from Birds of America in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The NGA identifies the artists as “Robert Havell after John James Audubon” and the media as “hand-colored etching and aquatint on Whatman paper plate.” The engravings were made in 1838 and 1835, respectively.

According to Wikipedia:

The Birds of America is the title of a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing paintings and scientific description of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series of sections between 1827 and 1838.

The work consists of hand-colored, life-size prints made from engraved plates measuring around 39 by 26 inches. The original edition was engraved in aquatint by Robert Havell Sr. and son, Robert Havell Jr.; known as the “Double Elephant folio”, it is often regarded as the greatest picture book ever produced. A copy in excellent condition sold at Christie’s in March of 2000 for $8,802,500, is still (as of 2007^[update]) a world record for any printed book.

All 435 of John James Audubon’s known extant watercolors preparatory for Birds of America are housed at the New-York Historical Society in New York City. There are 119 complete copies of the Double Elephant Folio in existence today; less than a dozen of these are in private hands.^[1]

See the University of Pittsburgh digital edition of The Birds of America.

Tagged Naturalist at Large

0 Comments

There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.

Leave a Comment