Ideas from the Christmas book pile no. 1:
Is the idea of surveillance by camera or CCTV as old as the idea of photography itself?
'everything would then take place under the eye of the Police'
Use of the Camera Obscura,
The Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, No. XXXII , August 7,1824
The following article is contained Humphrey Jennings' Pandaemonium 1660 - 1886:
An occurrence originated in a Camera Obscura exhibited here during the Fair week, which shows the important use to which this amusing optical apparatus may be applied. A person happened to be examining, with great interest, the various lively and ever shifting figures which were pourtrayed (sic) upon the white tablet during the exhibition, when he beheld, with amazement, the appearance of one man picking another man's pocket. Perfectly aware of the reality of this appearance, he opened the door, and recognising the culprit at a short distance, ran up and seized him in the very act of depredation. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, that he was immediately handed over to the Police. From this circumstance, the utility of placing such apparatus in all places of public amusement and exhibitions, must be obvious.
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| One on every corner: Alfred Werner's camera of 1893 gives an idea of the scale of the camera obscura used in 1824 (photo: Eddie Chandler). |
Whether it might be proper to erect it in the streets of a populous city like this, and to place it under the inspection of an officer for the detection of mischief and crime, is a matter worthy of the consideration of the local authorities. Would it not be an eligible plan, indeed to employ the Camera Obscura of the Observatory, (which is not otherwise in use) to take a view of what is passing in the streets in town, and communicate the result, if necessary, to the Police Office, or the Jail, by means of a telegraph? If the Observatory be considered too far off, the apparatus could be fixed up near the top of the Tron or Cross Steeple. By this means, the necessity of sending out emissaries to reconnoitre the conduct of the lieges could be superseded, since every thing would then take place, as it were, under the eye of the Police; and, if any impropriety or misconduct were observed, it would only be necessary to send a
posse to te particular spot where it happened.
Humphrey Jennings was a British documentary film-maker who died in 1950 when, at the age of just forty-three. He fell from a cliff in Greece when scouting film locations. Jennings was a socialist, a champion of surrealism and one of the founders of Mass Observation. He was also a pioneer of neo-realism, coaxing extraordinary performances from non-professional actors in several of his works. His best known films are Fires Were Started, The Silent Village and A Diary for Timothy. Lindsay Anderson described Jennings as ‘the only real poet that British cinema has produced’.
Jennings first started the Pandaemonium project in 1938, initially as a series of talks for miners in South Wales when filming The Silent Village. But the anthology was not completed until nearly forty years after his death, in a collaboration between his daughter, Mary-Lou Jennings, and his former Mass Observation colleague, Charles Madge.
The title is taken from Milton's Paradise Lost:
There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top
Belch’d fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire
Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,
The work of Sulphur. Thither wing’d with speed
A numerous Brigad hasten’d. As when Bands
Of Pioners with Spade and Pickax arm’d
Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,
Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav’n, for ev’n in heav’n his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound
And dig’d out ribs of Gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wond’ring tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian Kings
Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame,
And Strength and Art are easily out-done
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toyle
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, 1667
