In Germany as well as in many other countries, images of extreme floods often found their way on postcards. Here is a selection of postcards. (click on the image to find the online source)
1909
1910
1914
1920
1920
1929
2002
undated postcard from Tokyo, Japan
undated postcard from Panama, probably 1924
A street in the city of Bonn with the Rhine river in the background, January 2024.
Ryan Goslings 2014 movie “Lost River” is most of all a portrait of urban decay and our fascination with decay in a broader sense. The film juxtaposes the stylized display of bodily mutilation and destruction in a Grand Guignol style cabaret on the one side and the at once slow and dramatic decay of urban environments in the US rust belt on the other.
While buildings on fire – an image particularly indicative of the Detroit situation in the 1980s and 1990s – or urban structures overgrown by vegetation are the two main visual ciphers for urban decay in the movie, a flooded town also plays a central role.
As one protagonist explains, the town is called Lost River, because a section of it was once purposefully submerged when a water reservoir was built. Beneath the river lie the remains of that city and also a prehistoric theme park. Pre-historic monsters are said to live in the deep water. The idea of a prehistoric past lurking underneath the water’s surface is reminiscent of J.G Ballard’s 1962 novel “Drowned World“, where global climate change and flooding causes nature to regress into an early state of evolution.
The movie pays little attention to this submerged town. Instead it effectively uses one rather simple image in several scenes: the street lights that stick out of the water and create an eerie sense of displacement and confusing proportions.
Jan Asselijn (1610–1652): “Breach of St. Anthonis-Dike near Amsterdam”, 1651.
“During the night of 4-5 March 1651 the Saint Anthony’s Dike was breached near Amsterdam. Jan Asselijn portrayed the fiercely flowing water with a strong sense of drama. The billowing cloak of the man at the left shows that the storm is not yet over, however the squalls are already moving on at the right. The vivid red contrasts sharply with the bright blue of the parting clouds.”
(from the website of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL)
Kota Ezawa (*1969)Flood, 2011
© Courtesy the artist and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt a.M.
The Bavarian city of Nürnberg (Nuremberg) has been flooded quite often over it’s history. The flood of 1909 is particularly memorable and the most severe flood that has been documented in photography. The visual similarity to Venice, apparent in pictures like these, has been noted quite often by contemporaries.
In an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 2023, contemporary British artist Emma Stibbon exhibited her own wood carving “Collapsed Whaling Station” alongside a selection of works from the Royal Academy collection. All art works depict extreme weather events or ruination or other kinds of disasters. In this nice video she talks about her fascination with these kind of images, referencing explicitly the current climate crisis and it’s effects.
The image shows the painting by painter William Daniell of the Eddystone Lighthouse off Rame Head in Cornwall, England during the ‘Great Storm’ of 1824. Daniell exhibited the painting for the first time in 1825.
“Statues of Memnon at Thebes, during The Inundation”, a lithography from 1848 by Scottish artist David Roberts. It appeared in Roberts book on the Nile region entitled “Egypt & Nubia” published in London the same year.
The flooding of the Nile has been an important natural cycle in Nubia and Egypt since ancient times. It is celebrated by Egyptians as an annual holiday for two weeks starting August 15, known as Wafaa El-Nil. It is also celebrated in the Coptic Church by ceremonially throwing a martyr’s relic into the river, hence the name, The Martyr’s Finger (Coptic: ⲡⲓⲧⲏⲃ ⲛⲙⲁⲣⲧⲏⲣⲟⲥ, Arabic: Esba` al-shahīd). The flooding of the Nile was poetically described in myth as Isis‘s tears of sorrow for Osiris when killed by his brother Set. (source wikipedia)
For a similar rite see my post on the Venetian holiday “Lo Sposalizio del Mare” (the Marriage to the Sea) here.
In times like these, what the world needs is good humor and good counseling. And this company apparently offers both. Because if you name your business consulting company after a city that spectacularly sank into the sea as a punishment for the hubris of it’s citizens, you have to have a really keen sense of humor. And these guys have been at it for 30 years! So they must be doing something right after all.
😁
And yes indeed, they are:
For this Greek company, Atlantis is not only a quirky choice of a name, but also a commitment to cultural heritage on the one hand and to the ocean on the other. In their own words: “ATLANTIS Consulting implements projects aiming at the promotion of culture, “blue” technologies and the exploitation of the underwater wealth (cultural and natural) for the benefit of the European economy. ATLANTIS is pioneering internationally on the issue of the protection and sustainable exploitation of the cultural heritage.”
So if I ever happen to amass enough finance to seek the services of a finance consulting company, they will of course be my first choice. And until them, I’ll keep researching the odd paths of cultural heritage of sunken cities and of Atlantis in particular. (Note: Atlantis is actually not an uncommon name for finance enterprises. I guess the lure of untold riches is a stronger allegory than a notorious demise.)
