About
These are essays. They get revised more often than they get added to, and there will never be many of them in a given year.
Film
The film behind the front page is cut from four old films, then slowed, blurred and darkened. In the order it plays:
- La ville séfévide, the domes and minarets of the Shah Mosque at Isfahan, filmed by Frédéric Gadmer on 7 September 1927. CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Caravanes afghanes, camel caravans near Peshawar, filmed by Stéphane Passet in January 1914. CC0.
- Inside Tibet, a snow range mirrored in a lake, a yak caravan crossing the plateau and the Potala at Lhasa, filmed by Brooke Dolan on the American mission to Lhasa in 1942 and 1943 and made by the Field Photographic Branch of the Office of Strategic Services. Public domain, as a work of the US government.
- Caravane mongole, a Mongol caravan coming through a gate at Nankou, filmed on Albert Kahn and Alfred Dutertre's journey round the world in 1908 and 1909. CC BY-SA 4.0.
The three French reels are from Albert Kahn's Archives de la Planète, now at the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn. The copies used are on Wikimedia Commons, linked above. The finished loop is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.