The second photographer in our series about the players of Comet is Jack Metzger. He was born in Lucerne on 7.10.1918, so he could celebrate his hundredth birthday on Sunday.
Manneken-Pis, a strange, hybrid object
In our little series on the occasion of the Year of Cultural Heritage, another bronze sculpture in the urban space follows today. The “peeing boy”, created by Jérôme Duquesnoy in 1619, is a well-known fountain figure in Brussels. Catherine Emerson describes the figure as a strange, hybrid object:
225 years Louvre
The dream of a public art museum had already been cherished by several ministers of the ancien régime a few decades before the French Revolution as the Musée du Louvre in Paris was inaugurated on 10 August 1793 at the height of the revolution. Andrew McClellan writes:
The Comets: Björn Erik Lindroos
We know relatively little about the photographers who worked for the photo agency Comet Photo AG from 1952 to 1998. Self-portraits or portraits of the ‘Comets’ are also rather thinly sown in the collection, as they usually stood behind the camera themselves and photographed
Joan Miró, on the occasion of his 125th birthday
Today, April 20, Joan Miró would have turned 125. His often humorous paintings and sculptures made the Catalan one of the most popular artists of the 20th century.
Nautical Ex-Voto
During his stay in Copenhagen in September 1958, the Comet photographer Hans Gerber took pictures of the famous Grundtvigskirche and in its interior with a model ship hanging from the ceiling.
On the 50th anniversary of the death of Yuri Gagarin, First Man in Space
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin had made history through his first manned space flight on 12 April 1961 and was considered a national hero when he died on 27 March 1968 during a routine flight with a MiG-15 fighter jet.
Monogram, label and stamp: Clues to the fate of a rare book
Many rare books have had a long and exciting journey on their way to a safe haven in a library. These works have for example seen continuous change in ownership and travelled through many countries over the centuries. The fate of these ‘travelling books’ has often been documented: thus handwritten notes, stamps and labels have assumed the role of storyteller, in many cases leaving unsolved mysteries in their wake.
125 years Diesel engine
Today, 125 years ago on 23 February 1893, Rudolf Diesel received the patent for the diesel engine in Berlin. What is interesting from a Swiss point of view, is the connection between Rudolf Diesel and Maschinenfabrik Sulzer AG in Winterthur, where the young inventor had already completed two internships.
The terror of frogs and the birth of the novel Frankenstein
Many thousands of frogs fell victim to Luigi Galvani’s scientific curiosity, and all because the anatomist observed how the leg of a dissected frog began to twitch as if from nowhere. This occurrence took place in Bologna in 1780 and led to one of the most important discourses in scientific history – and to the birth of the novel Frankenstein.