These are not glass slides. They do not preserve images for later projection, on a white wall or canvas sheet. They are not for the public in a hushed room—they are certainly not for you. They are a love letter, a golem, the final aggregate of a buzzing isotope, a long distance radio transmission, and a mine that pierces so far it surfaces again, thanking its stars for sunlight. Three scientists impossibly in love, divided by space, spouses, time, children, wars, illnesses, domestic concerns—locks mended, pans scraped, post sent off—saw this as the only way. And so these images are meant to flick in rapid succession, flick one, two, three, one,two,three, onetwothree, till his glasses rest on her face and his eyes meet his eyes and their hands join up nervously, privately, endlessly by a trick of the light.
anon.
That’s the maigic of ‘magic’ lantern slides!
Pam
Photographic Research and Preservation Officer,
Special Collections