Photo
September 22, 2012
3,463 notes
letmypeopleshow: Sad Dog: In 1863, the director of excavations at Pompeii, the city buried by a volcanic blast in 79 A.D., developed a way to make casts of the victims—or, better put, the voids left where their bodies had disintegrated. The ghostly plaster forms, documented by Giorgio Sommer and others in haunting staged photos, were a worldwide sensation, making visible a previously vanished population. These pictures, along with art inspired by them by Robert Rauschenberg and Allan McCollum, are part of “The Last Days of Pompeii,” an inventive, “anti-archeological” show at the Getty that examines how the doomed city was imagined centuries later in art, literature and film. Read more here.  Giorgio Sommer, Cast of a Dog Killed by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, ca. 1874, albumen silver print.   © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. I can’t stop looking at this. It’s so wondrous and haunting. Also I want to go hug my dog now.

letmypeopleshow:

Sad Dog:

In 1863, the director of excavations at Pompeii, the city buried by a volcanic blast in 79 A.D., developed a way to make casts of the victims—or, better put, the voids left where their bodies had disintegrated. The ghostly plaster forms, documented by Giorgio Sommer and others in haunting staged photos, were a worldwide sensation, making visible a previously vanished population. These pictures, along with art inspired by them by Robert Rauschenberg and Allan McCollum, are part of “The Last Days of Pompeii,” an inventive, “anti-archeological” show at the Getty that examines how the doomed city was imagined centuries later in art, literature and film. Read more here. 

Giorgio Sommer, Cast of a Dog Killed by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, ca. 1874, albumen silver print. 

 © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

I can’t stop looking at this. It’s so wondrous and haunting. Also I want to go hug my dog now.

Tags: volcano pompeii mount vesuvius plaster cast dog

Photoset
June 21, 2012
8 notes

What’s the Biggest Archaeological Find in History?: 

Our choice for biggest archaeological find in history is not a stone, a scroll or a skeleton — it’s Pompeii, an ancient city located on the plain of Campania in southern Italy (find out how we chose Pompeii over all the other amazing places we could have chosen).

A little bit of context: Pompeii was founded in the 6th century B.C. and became incorporated into Rome by 80 B.C. As a Roman colony, the city bustled with life and activity, supporting somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. Then a series of man-made and natural disasters struck the city. First, in A.D. 59, a riot between the Pompeians and the Nucerians erupted in the amphitheater. Next came an earthquake, which destroyed much of the city in A.D. 62. Finally, on Aug. 24, A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii beneath nearly 9 feet (3 meters) of ash, pumice and other volcanic debris.

The city lay undiscovered — and almost perfectly preserved — for almost two millennia. Formal excavations began in 1748 and have continued to this day.

Don’t stop learning here. Read on to discover much MUCH more.


Tags: archaeology Vesuvius Italy Pompeii history volcano travel