Phillips Gamwell (1898-1916), two photographs

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Historical context, New discoveries

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I’ve found another two appearances of Lovecraft’s elegy for his adored cousin Phillips Gamwell, who died young. Lovecraftian sources have the poem appearing in the Providence Evening News on 5th January 1917. But here it is in The Cambridge Chronicle, 6th January 1917, possibly with new biographical details in the introduction…

gamwell1

gamwell2

The same poem appeared again in The Cambridge Tribune on 13th January 1917, under the simple title “Phillips Gamwell”, this time with a fine photograph of cousin Phillips…

phillips_gamwell

… and the following week there was also an addendum on the photographer.

We’re also informed by The Cambridge Tribune of 2nd January 1904 that Phillips Gamwell was visiting Providence. Lovecraft then age 13, Phillips aged around 6. Here is Phillips Gamwell aged six in 1904 in The Cambridge Chronicle…

phillips_gamwell_1904

Resembles the young Lovecraft, wouldn’t you say?

Lomig Perrotin

15 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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The New York Review of Science Fiction has published a Web and English-language version of “A photographic exploration of the world of H. P. Lovecraft”, by Lomig Perrotin. The series was displayed in November 2012 at Galerie 154: at 154 rue Oberkampf, 75011, Paris.

“There is resistance, opposition, even rebellion in the author’s inability to testify about the cosmic horrors that seem to watch humanity from beyond. To convey this resistance, I needed to explore the limits of the photographic medium. So I used cliché-verre, a technique of etching photographic material to create a mixed negative, blending the realistic aspect of photography with the graphic effects of drawing. Neither photographs alone nor illustration could reproduce this particular blend of horror and oneirism that characterizes the work of the master of Providence.”

Perrotin2012-colour

perrotin2012-mach

Looks great, even on a digital screen. They must look very fine when printed matt at perhaps 8″ x 8″ and placed in glass-less frames. ‘Photography meets woodcuts, via rough etchings’ seems a very fitting style for illustrating Lovecraft. And I’m pleased to hear a few of the series will be hopping across the pond to showing up at NecronomiCon 2013…

“Mr. Perrotin’s work will be presented at the Providence Art Club from August 13 to September 6 as part of NecronomiCon in Providence, RI. Mr. Perrotin will also be attending the convention in person in late August.”

Mystery Hill

12 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by in Scholarly works

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New long blog post from Jason Colavito on H.P. Lovecraft and Megalithic New England…

“H.P. Lovecraft almost certainly never visited Mystery Hill, which was not a tourist attraction at the time Lovecraft lived. It was private land in those days. The site did not open to the public until 1937, when William Goodwin purchased it, rebuilt it to resemble a European megalithic site, and gave it its longtime name.”

“It should be fairly obvious from their description, usage, and placement that Lovecraft’s stone circles [in “The Dunwich Horror”] were modeled on Old World examples”

Adams’ Synchronological Chart

09 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in Historical context

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A full composite of Adams’ Synchronological Chart of Universal History (1881), which Lovecraft used as a child and which he kept in later life.

adams

Lovecraft called it, in a letter about how he learned as a child, … “a marvellously graphic historic device called “Adams’ Synchronological Chart” — which I still have” (Lord of a Visible World, p.20). Elsewhere it is termed…

A huge and impressive twenty-three foot long chart showing 5,885 years of history, from 4004 B.C. to 1881 A.D. First issued in 1871, Adams put out several editions in many formats.