And One Day We Will Die, page 3
“The Business of Photography for Ladies, a lecture by Mrs D. Armezzo,” – Invitation, The Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, 1:30, 8th January 1887.
One attendee describes Araminta as:
A curious personage—her skill in the photographic arts are evidently well-honed, but her capacity to associate with other women as equals leaves more to desire. She was by turns diffident and ingratiating—seemed, as she spoke, to court all of our favor, but turned away when we addressed her after the lecture. She cast down her eyes and drew up her veil, as if pretending not to hear, or very keen to leave […] Which she did, in great haste, after packing up her equipment harum-scarum, and rushing down the stairs of the club to greet her funny little husband, who was speaking fast Italian and seemed by no means pleased by his wife’s success. […] I suppose some of her strangeness might have stemmed from ill health […] The lady’s lips were very blue, which I have heard is a symptom of a failing heart.
If, as I theorize, Araminta’s identity was a celebratory assertion of Drawer’s queerness, a public legitimization of their union, a marriage won under false pretenses, every public appearance made by “Mrs Armezzo” would have been a risk. Consider the poignancy of Araminta’s initial desire to impress and connect with her fellow-women artists. Then, sensing scrutiny, the tremulous anxiety, her drawing up of the veil, avoiding her audience’s shrewdly trained gaze.
Anonymous, “Charge of Sodomy, Glasgow High Court,” Glasgow Herald, 23rd August, 1888.
Mr. Ward Drawer of 42 Gantt Street was indicted on grounds of public indecency and incitement to commit sodomy. The accused man, standing tall though very pale, denied the charges in a steady voice.
It is not recorded who these alleged crimes were perpetrated against; whether hushed by the outraged family of a photographic patron or anonymized by catching him in some ephemeral Saltmarket encounter. Drawer was sent down for twelve months.
Advertisements & Notices: “Stolen Nitrates of Silver,” Glasgow Herald, 12th January 1889.
The Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow requests that the perpetrator of a theft of some twelve pounds of silver nitrate salts return the substance to the laboratory at Gilmorehill. Understanding the nature of youthful scholars and their indiscretions, no charges will be brought in the event of the return of this and other discrete University Property.
A bizarre happenstance, so soon after Drawer’s indictment. R will argue this event has no bearing on the timeline, but there’s something. Twelve pounds—a highly valuable commodity, and a practically industrial quantity, at the time when Armezzo was missing his partner, and, seemingly, embroiled in a new and separate intrigue.
Photograph of a Young Man, Glasgow Saltmarket, c. 1880s.
Among the last of A&D’s social photographs. I suspect Armezzo captured this image alone in the Saltmarket—an unusual practice for the pair. They were more used to working in tandem. A melancholy and arresting photograph. Its composition also supports the idea of Armezzo as the compositor. He was the one interested in capturing shadows, in contrasts of light and dark, partially exposed forms.
A young man scowls out of a shadowed close, clothing dishevelled, collar pulled right up to his jaw. His face and hair are caught in a beam of light. He is pretty, albeit marred by a split lip and swollen cheekbone. A crescent-shaped cut on the meat of his cheek. The boy appears both furious and seduced, with his heavy-lidded, consumptive-glowing gaze.
Anonymous, “Missing Medical Student,” Glasgow Herald, 14th April, 1889.
The City of Glasgow Police request information in connection to the disappearance of George Colquhoun, aged 21, student of medicine at the University of Glasgow. They seek information on an Italian man, a known associate.
Is the Saltmarket photograph Colquhoun? The boy seems to sink without trace, and I have not found evidence that Armezzo was further pursued—if it ever was him.
Photograph of Araminta Armezzo (Possibly a Thanatograph?), c.1889.
Ward Drawer was released in late 1889. No coincidence that a photograph of Araminta resurfaces around this time. She is laid out on a white bed surrounded by cut flowers. In all particulars, the photograph resembles a deathbed, or postmortem photograph, of the sort taken for remembrance. She wears a white shift. Almost every part of her exposed skin is covered with sores, which no one has taken time to powder over or conceal. Their redness rendered gleaming black. Their shape distinctive. Crescent-like. Burns? They are unsettlingly reminiscent of human bite marks. But so many? Covering her, down to her drawn, pallid cheeks.
I have considered that these were injuries sustained by Drawer from other prisoners when they were imprisoned. I have not been able to find prison records of any such attack. Yet—consider the finality of Araminta’s maimed body in the photograph. A lost sister? Or a sister self? Maybe Drawer survived their calamity, but in the shamed aftermath of their imprisonment, left Araminta behind. In Armezzo’s hand, faint pencil on the paper facings: wife. Union. Or could it be reunion?
Anonymous, “Suicide of Glasgow Photographer by Drinking his Own Chemistry,” Police Illustrated News, 24th September, 1889.
The lurid woodcut illustration renders a melodramatized Ward Drawer, far neater and more fashionable than any of his photographs document. Armezzo—portrayed in a decidedly xenophobic style—reaches outstretched hands towards him, in a staged gape of shock.
The gentleman was heard to cry out to his companion, “You’ll burn for all you’ve done! The reckoning of my body will redouble on your soul!’ So saying, dashed back the glass of proprietary chemicals which he had earlier prepared to take an image, and collapsed, clawing his throat. Attempts to revive the unfortunate man at the infirmary were unsuccessful.
Photographers like Drawer, who mixed his own chemistry, were secretive about their recipes. However, there are any number of chemicals in the process that could make someone die. Grain alcohol; potassium cyanide as fixer; silver nitrate itself in high concentrate, corrosive.
Anonymous, “S. Davide Armezzo,” Journal of Psychical Research, 1889.
Those who attended Signore Davide Armezzo’s displays of psychic “astralism” in the early years of this decade will note a disappointing diminishment of that gentleman’s powers. Indeed, we have cause to wonder whether the powers in question were ever those of recalling cherished spirits to this plane, or whether it is his capacity for chicanery which has gone into decline. […] He called a certain name, then called it again. Armezzo seemed then to experience a convulsion of some sort, and fell, covering his wild head with his arms to evade the beam of light. The crowd hesitated, wondering whether this was a necessary part of Armezzo’s presentation, or a breach of it. There followed a convulsion of such violence that we could be left in no doubt of the veracity of the man’s complaint […] We have sometimes heard of fraudulent mediums who munch cheesecloth in their cheeks, or spit concoctions of milk at their audiences. At least in this we can be assured: no man could fake the quantities of blooded tears upon his face, nor sputum on his lips. However convenient the timing in bringing his unsuccessful conjuring to a close […] We advise Armezzo to return himself entirely to the practice of photography and engraving, in which arts he will surely rediscover that methodical lucidity which his mediumship has sadly lost.
I wonder all the time whether the “certain name” was Araminta. Or Ward.
Anonymous, “Chemical Explosion in Glasgow Photographer’s Studio,” Illustrated Police News, 8th January, 1890.
In the engraved illustration, the flames are rendered white negative space against a richly crosshatched, smoke clouded tenement. Text reads:
Bystanders noted Armezzo’s habit of smoking cigarettes in both studio and darkroom, a highly risky activity which likely ignited the flammable substances of his trade.
There were numerous casualties from the tenement. Parts were found—lurid illustrations accompany subsequent editions of the IPN, reporting the inquest. Armezzo’s corpse was assumed to be among them. It is here, with the double tragedy of Drawer’s suicide and Armezzo’s accident that the history of Armezzo & Drawer is usually brought to a close.
Yet, I have found something other; something more.
Patient record of “John Warder,” Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum [now Gartnavel], 1890.
First photograph: “John Warder” is photographed front-facing, in the recognizably carceral style used in this era to capture prisoners and patients. Hands beyond the frame pull down on his lower lids, pupils rolling backwards. They are trying to expose something unusual about the eyes, something the camera can’t quite capture.
Second photograph: the same pair of hands, plus a second pair, pull down on Warder’s jaw, fingertips pushing on his lower front teeth to expose a distended and blistered tongue.
Delusions. Melancholia. Chemical burns (tongue and esophagus). Argyria (25 years).
Argyria, poisoning by silver. Known in extreme cases to turn the skin blue. 25 years, the duration of his photographic career. Photographers did have above average exposure to colloidal silver—through the permeable skin barrier, or through invisible microcuts—but not in such quantities that would bring on pronounced, visible argyria.
Silver is antiseptic; disinfectant. Rich patients bought opium tablets coated in edible silver. Silver nitrate, the same chemical Ward Drawer used daily in his photographic practice, was used to treat several medical conditions. It was best known in Drawer’s era for epilepsy, but applied to myriad other conditions, including venereal disease. Its application in the medical records is sporadic, vaguely dosed, almost superstitiously experimental. Irresistible comparisons might be made with silver bullets and the writings of saints.
Did Drawer perceive some medical cause for ingesting this silver? Consider the disappearance of the medical student faintly connected to Armezzo, and the incident of the stolen silver salts. Perhaps the couple believed it might have some prophylactic effect, forestalling whatever was amiss? Strange näiveté in Ward's faith in the silver that he handled daily, to purify his insides; make it right. Did he sip it casually? Chug it down? Did it taste of something? Or nothing? (NB: find out).
Only six grains of silver nitrate in solution to mix a silver bath. However many more to drink the substance daily? Given the expense of such a practice, what did they face that made it seem worthwhile?
You'll burn for all you've done.
The reckoning of my body will redouble on your soul.
One of the medical journals describes argyria: “a subdermal photograph;” photosensitive exposure under the skin. If “John Warder” of 1890 is another alias of Ward Drawer, the symbolic agonies are almost as strong as the physical. The Gartnavel record captures the patient's carceral agony. But, as a patient of argyria, he is himself a living photograph. The blue spectrum is not captured by the UV-sensitive orthochromatic process. His body is, instead, its own document. “John Warder” can only be seen very white, very distorted, very pulled open and apart.
Supervisor Comments
This is a strange draft. You hint at too many things, yet never explicate. It is one thing to investigate the felt knowledge of historiographic queerness, another to make insubstantial claims. You seem, at points, to drift into a mysticism worthy of Armezzo’s lantern show. Consider the cautionary tale we heard in that viva workshop, about the researcher who cited mediumistic communication with her subject as a source! At a formal level, a couple of notes—decide on a personal pronoun for Drawer and stick to it—you undermine your certainty about the Ward/ Araminta double identity by shifting. Please beware of sentence fragments. Multiple instances in the submission of trailing off as if interrupted mid-thought.
- R.
Dear R,
I am writing to you in my official capacity as your supervisee, in case I face a charge for yesterday’s events. I want to get as clear a record as I can, because these events evade any attempt to rationally sequence them.
As I conduct my research, I’ve been cataloguing as I go. I've digitized those items as requested. I seriously advise that my recent entries should be kept to the backend, invisible to the public. A harmful material tag or a trigger warning is frankly insufficient. But I doubt the gallery will go for it. They seem positively gleeful; keep talking about “riding the true crime boom.” There’s talk of an exhibition. Sick.
The main point, though, is how those photographs made their way into my portfolio. The security guard found them at bag check last night. How can I explain?
I know what fresh silver-collodion staining looks like. I took David's workshop last autumn, and Doug's glass plate retreat in Inveraray before that. I think it was Doug who said, collodion will eat through everything that isn't glass. It's a distinctive stain. It lingers. That's how I know. And it was wet. My portfolio was wet and stained, inside and out, silvery, seeping stains. They’ve turned brown and black now, the same shades my hands turned after those workshops, no matter how careful I was with the gloves.
The works they found on me aren’t just uncatalogued. They are new. Someone put them in there. They smell of lavender, varnished surface still tacky to the touch. Just finished. But the gallery doesn’t believe me. They’re levelling vandalism, as well as theft. All this because they're custodians of a collection they don't understand.
I have analyzed Armezzo’s features in photographs, in sketches; I’ve sought his hand at the edge of the frame, his fingerprint test on plates. I’ve searched for his trousered legs peeping out beneath the camera cover in a tiny, unlooked-for mirror cameo in a photograph of a client. I’ve noted his shadow stretching on Saltmarket cobblestones. I know this man’s features like my own, and somehow cannot shake that what is being done in this photograph made yesterday is being done to Davide Armezzo (fl.1865–1890).
The images very nearly emulate his forays into the mediumship game. But no. The tones, the textures and especially the midtones are all wrong for that. And blood, under UV, reads as black. And there is so much black.
The gallery has taken back the originals, of course. They're not digitized—obviously not, since I contend I've never seen them. The photographs are Muybridge-esque—sequential, like those series of men boxing, or running, or the famous one of the galloping horse. There’s a narrative there. A second set of hands blurs at the edges of the composition, indicating processes enacted. This is something being done to someone, not something happening organically. The first, hands pour a liquid from a beaker into a glass, beside the subject’s face.
True, I can’t see the color of their fingers, but I know what it would be.
You'll burn for what you've done, is what Ward Drawer reportedly said.
Did you know that while digital photography pixelates and laser dot printing springs apart into separate points of color, when you magnify it enough, collodion’s reaction with silver nitrate forges a bond at the chemical level? One could reduce that format down to atoms, still they would be irrevocably joined.
I do not want to describe to you what's being done to the subject’s mouth. The things being put in him. The excess of things coming out.
I proposed this project because I thought the studio of Armezzo & Drawer an effective metaphor for illicit liaisons and alternative selves. I thought they loved each other. Whatever they were to each other, what they ultimately became, tells otherwise. All the theory I've read can't nuance it so sensitively as love.
I'm sorry for how I reacted on Monday, when you brought up the temporary withdrawal. You were right. It's not a failing to take time out. My reaction was unprofessional.
I used to think it was a wonderful coincidence, living so close to the Gantt Street site. But it’s getting bad. I dream in tenement rooms, enclosed spaces and explosions. Spectres interlace with glass plate fragments, and partial prints, and the filmy skin of too-thick exposed collodion as it peels off tin. Imagine how many invisible impressions overlay that place.
I dream the photographers' studio as a double-exposure, shimmering above the empty space the explosion left behind. I see stumps in the walls, which used to be stairs and struts. I dream silvery structures, adjoining translucent walls. In the semi-opacity of 42 Gantt street, Armezzo moves at a meandering distance through the studio, leaving streaks of light from his lit cigarette on the empty space, like a long exposure.
You and the gallery got your wish, I guess. My research questions are no longer open-ended and interpretive. They're very actual: How can a freshly made plate exposure be old? Why do I find glass shards in the floor of my shower, black stains in my bed, and jolt awake with phantom chemistry in my nose?
I want time to stop until I can put things back in sequence. But you probably hear that a lot from supervisees.
Please see my withdrawal form attached, for your approval.
The Polyamorous Heart of Death
INSPIRED BY “HOLLAND, 1945”
M. LOPES DA SILVA
You took her story like an organ removed in the night by a stranger she thought she knew. Victorian mummy unwrapping parties move in parallel to the kind of destruction you casually did. Your colonizing fingers made ghosts weep. Some of them are still weeping. You put roses in her eyes and plucked them out again. The petals fall on me every night as I hold him close. I blame you for that. I always will.
The painting was still unfinished: the underpainting vague with potential. Dark sepia shadows searched for a subject on the stretched canvas, hungry for meaning. Alex frowned the metaphors away. Squeezed the back of his own neck, hard. The point was that he needed a model, and Olivia was perfect for the job.
