The Great Barrier Reef of Australia - 1893

September 27, 2018 8:20 AM

"While naming and arranging corals in the Natural History Department of the British Museum, William Saville-Kent daydreamed of seeing the beautiful grey organisms in front of him “in their native seas and wonderful living tints.” Years later he would realise his dream at the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland" - here are 16 full-colour lithographs from William Saville-Kent’s The Great Barrier Reef of Australia (1893).
posted by ChuraChura (3 comments total)

O my god those are fabulously beautiful and the photographs are even better.
(I'd have a comment on the poignant nature of the repressed Englishperson's longing for colour and the tropics if only I could put it together. Offset by remarking on a contemporary longing for greyscale graphic precision that's informed by a parallel sort of nostalgia for that kind of image. Like, the florid romanticism and the vintage granularity are parallel yearnings. Apologies for being so prosy)
posted by glasseyes at 12:07 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

That was as wonderful as I needed it to be to wash away the taste of this horrible day.
posted by acrasis at 5:21 PM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sad, in a way, to see these beautiful corals in an old book knowing that future generations will see these as roughly contemporaneous with the destruction of these ancient colonies by warming seas.
posted by metasunday at 7:58 PM on September 29, 2018