Points of View

Calling all flookers

Do you know about flook.it?

Flook is a 'location browser' that enables iPhone users to discover and share what they see around them.

Imagine you are standing by the British Library in Euston Road. You can use flook to find out what your fellow flookers have said about nearby attractions. Maybe good cheap eats, places to visits, forthcoming events, sites of infamous past events. These messages take the form of flook cards.

Cards have a full-screen photo and some text. The point is that they're geo-located - placed at a specific location for you to find when you're nearby. Over time, flook learns which cards people like most, and then shows them to you first.

As an experiment we've got together with flook.it to display the 'London 1870s and now' photos from this blog. Find out more on the flook.it website.

Please let us know what you think.

[CW]

London 1870s and now - 16: Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster

This is the 16th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

This is Queen Anne's Gate, in an exclusive residential area of Westminster between Parliament Square and St James's Park.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the photograph in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The photograph shows the statue of Queen Anne, and on the left a portion of the Square built in her reign, and named after her, Queen Square."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. Apart from the hoardings and the parked cars, the square looks virtually identical to its appearance over 130 years ago.

[RA]

London 1870s and now - 15: Banqueting House, Whitehall

This is the 15th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

This is Banqueting House, Whitehall, perhaps the most striking building on the grand boulevard, now a visitor attraction and venue for events.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the photograph in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "The Banqueting House was built from the designs of Inigo Jones in 1619-1622. The ceiling... is decorated with pictures painted by Rubens at Antwerp. (Sainsbury's Rubens, 183-186; 191-205.) In its early days Masques were performed at the Banqueting House; it is now used as a chapel, though it has never been consecrated. It was restored in 1831." He also noted that King Charles I "...was beheaded on a scaffold before the front shown in the view."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in February 2009. Apart from the a few flagpoles and yet another tree cluttering up the austere views of Dixon, the facade is identical to what the 1880 passer-by in an omnibus would have seen.

[RA]

London 1870s and now - 14: 185 Fleet St

This is the 14th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows a section of Fleet St, on the north side, just between St Dunstan's Church to the left and Fetter Lane to the right.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the photograph in 1880, Alfred Marks commented: "Aubrey tells us that Michael Drayton, the poet, 'lived at the bay-window house, next to the East end of St. Dunstan's Ch. in Fleet-Street' (Lives II. 335). Tradition claims for the house shown in the middle of the photograph the honour of having been the residence of the author of Polyolbion. The Great Fire stopped, on the north side of Fleet Street, at Fetter Lane, sparing St. Dunstan's and the intervening block of houses. The house certainly dates from before the Fire, and it agrees with Aubrey's description."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. Though there's a glancing similarity to the widths of the buildings, and the street numbers tally (the middle building is No. 185), they have all been rebuilt and bear little resemblance to their predecessors. Only a small visible part of St Dunstan's Church, in the top left, links the two images.

Henry Dixon must have taken his photograph from the first floor of No. 43, opposite. That is now occupied by the IT department of Hoare's Bank, which let us come up to take our picture from exactly the same spot, and bought us a cup of tea. Thanks to David and Pam for their assistance.

[RA]

London 1870s and now - 13: Lincoln's Inn

This is the 13th in a series of posts comparing photos of London taken by Henry Dixon in the 1870s and 80s with the same view today.

Use our Google map to see where they were taken.

It shows the Old Square of Lincoln's Inn, just inside the west gate off Chancery Lane. One of the four Inns of Court - the training-grounds for Britain's legal profession - Lincoln's Inn is a tranquil and picturesque series of squares in the heart of the bustling centre, perhaps the nearest London has to Oxbridge's college quads.

The top picture is Dixon's. A zoomable version of this image is on our Online Gallery. Writing about the photograph in 1880, Alfred Marks drew our attention to "a tradition that Ben Jonson, fresh from his college at Cambridge, wrought as a bricklayer on the buildings of Lincoln's Inn, when having a trowel in one hand, and a book in his pocket."

Below it is the same view as it appeared in August 2009. As with surprisingly many of Dixon's photos, an abundant tree now blocks some of the view that the 1870s afforded. And as with unsurprisingly many of Dixon's photos, much has changed, even in such a timeless-feeling place as Lincoln's Inn: only the diamond pattern on the brickwork to the right, and the edge of the chapel on the left, give a fix between the two eras.

[RA]

'William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography'

Information on a forthcoming conference follows:

'William Henry Fox Talbot is usually remembered as a photographic inventor and influential early voice on photographic aesthetics, but like many of his contemporaries Talbot’s interests covered a wide range of intellectual endeavours.

This two-day interdisciplinary workshop will bring together historians of science, art historians, and practitioners of the many scholarly fields to which Talbot contributed. Featuring new research based on Talbot's manuscript collection, recently made available at the British Library, the workshop will present the opportunity to explore Talbot's participation in the wider networks and institutions of Victorian science and scholarship, and to rethink the relation between photography and these other fields.'

A programme will be available at a later date.

Thursday, 24 June to Saturday, 26 June
Location: CRASSH

Convenors:

• Mirjam Brusius (History and Philosophy of Science,  University of Cambridge and the British Library)
• Chitra Ramalingam (Mellon/ACLS Fellow, CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
• Katrina Dean (Curator for the History of Science, British Library)

[KD]