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Photo Minute: Stunning 1913 original colour photos of beautiful teenager Christina O' Gorman

The original lady in red: Haunting collection of one-hundred-year-old images starring strawberry blonde teenager revealed to be among the earliest surviving colour photographs

• Photographer Mervyn O'Gorman was 42 when he snapped the pictures in 1913

• Mervyn was known as an early pioneer of colour photography and used the Autochrome process

• His teenage daughter Christina O'Gorman posed in red swimsuit at Lulworth Cove, Dorset 

• Autochrome photography process used dye and starch to create the melancholy tone

Creating romantic, sepia-toned images is a cinch now that we have Instagram filters to play with.

But back in the early 21st century, taking a picture was an entirely different process, requiring patience, precision and a very talented eye.

Dreamlike snaps of a young woman in red posing at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, in 1913 have now been revealed as some of the earliest surviving colour photographs.

The ethereal images were taken on the beach at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, when Malcolm was 42

The images, which are currently on display at the National Media Museum, Bradford, are among a collection of the world's oldest surviving photographs.

The woman in question was teenager Christina O'Gorman, posing for her father, electrical engineer and photographer Mervyn O'Gorman back in 1913

Mervyn was 42 at the time when he took the images of his daughter, who languidly sits, in an array of vibrant red outfits, including a swimsuit, a cloak and a shirt.

The teen, characterised by her long strawberry-blonde hair, poses in different scenarios on the beach at Lulworth Cove in the English county of Dorset and appears unaware of her father.

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The strawberry-blonde teenager wore red, probably at the request of her father as the vibrant colour captured particularly well via the autochrome process

Mervyn was known as an early pioneer of colour photography and used the autochrome process to capture the haunting images.

Patented in 1903, the process involved using glass plates covered in potato starches grains to filter pictures with dye. 

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Mervyn was known as an early pioneer of colour photography and often used the autochrome process, which involved using glass plates covered in potato starches grains to filter pictures with dye

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Christina's life remains a mystery as there are no recorded detail of the then-teen's life

The National Media Museum explained: 'The comparatively long exposure time has given the sea a glassy quality and the large aperture setting and narrow depth of field has put Durdle Door in the background into soft focus.'

The repetition of the red attire was due to the fact that the vibrant colour captured particularly well in an autochrome process. 

Mervyn died in 1958, with his wife Florence passing 27 years beforehand in 1931. As to Christina's life, there are no recorded details.  

Maybelle Morgan

Marcus Cicero and a nation divided - the enemy within (part 2)

As the establishment remained preserved and intractable after 1916, and the murdered Irishman that died by firing squad, were interred, the world beyond these shores woke up while little Ireland turned on itself. The killing had begun in earnest. By 1922 and after being given a quasi -independence, they called the killings a civil war where being civil was the last thing on anyone’s mind. Though the nation became divided, the spoils of war was all that was left to divide after they ran out of bullets. A new order was created and with it a shared constitution with a religious order: the Irish republic and the Catholic church. Some even called it a democracy. Institutional corruption along with raw nepotism slowly wound it’e way around the green flag and one as old time itself. 

Marcus Cicero would describe this state of affairs best (106 BC-43 BC) almost two thousand years earlier than 1922: 

 “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” 

The last elected leader that stood for something in this country is almost forgotten now and his son- in law would make sure that any good that he intended would be interred with his bones. This son-in law of Sean Lamass was woven from a different cloth, and any new clothing would have to be in silk. He saw the political landscape and the veneer of democracy always as Benjamin Franklin described it: “Democracy is like two wolves and a lamb sitting down at the dinner table discussing what they will eat for dinner.” 

Before Charles Haughey had a real chance at that menu, Rome burned just across the border of the six counties in 1968 and 1969 as the pogroms against the nationalists that remained fettered to the six counties were attacked en-mass and their houses burned and razed to the ground. The Irish Republic held their nerve simply because it did not have one. 

And the demands of these nationalists were equal to the African American, through there they got those right before the Irishman did here. These demands in the north were simply this: One person, one vote; an end to the gerrymandered local government boundaries; an end to discrimination in the allocation of housing; and end to discrimination in employment; and the end of the repressive Special Powers act. Pretty basic stuff you might ask but a matter of life back then.

The B-specials had replaced here in the north the black and tans that once ran amok in the south forty five years before, and were backed up by the Northern Police force and the British army. But that was not important in the south. Going to Mass was and and in a place where gulags up and down the country were not locking up criminals, but children and unmarried mothers. 

Still, Haughey  was planning bigger and better things as a pale and wan neurosis overtook the general population of the republic that had once boasted courage as a virtue and cowardice as a crime punishable by death. These ancient ancestors believed it better to die standing while living swiftly as a lion than living a little longer as a sheep. By 1971 it could be safely said that the cries of the sheep who could be heard all across the land of the republic as the wolves devoured the north. The echoes of 1916 had long since died away in the distance..........

Barry Clifford (to be continued.....) 

1916 as it was happening below 

The 1916 rising: an enemy within (part 1)

In the photo above taken during the 1916 rising, take a look at these Irish men in their ill fitting uniforms, cobbled and knitted together quickly from curtains and coarse linen by mothers and sisters to give them dignity and legitimacy as they fought for the freedom that they hoped you would have today.  They were wrong.

Though their idealism and courage was unsurpassed, and for many the ultimate sacrifice was given for they could not give any higher, that which was their life, again their hopes would never be realised. Another enemy was waiting in open view: the enemy within. 

As this republic came into being it had inherited a country fractionalised, not only by religion, but polarised by the landed gentry, their Irish supporters and the real poor. Sixty five years after the mass starvation of a nation, for the famine never existed except in the minds of the ignorant and brainwashed, things had not changed all that much. The penal laws, what was left of them, were still used, not only by the British, but by the Irish to club and subdue their fellow man.   

Many an Irishman was bought off by a few acres of stony land and for many more, a lot less to help a less common enemy to some, the British. The more innocent gave their lives to fight for the British in 1914 in the cruelest and bloodiest conflict to have ever raged in history until then in the hope that England would give Ireland their freedom, but it was going to be everything but free instead.

The reactionary forces that forced Irish men to dress up in soldiers uniforms and coloured them a symbolic green to fight and die for the scraps left, died in a river of blood. Before they died, they were spat on by Irishmen and women long bought off by the queens shilling; and to ensure they died, newspapers led by the Irish Independent, cried out for their legitimate murder as they lay wounded and dying on stretchers where they insects and lice feasted on them first. The establishment must and would be protected at all times no matter how rotten to the core it was. As the political landscape changed the protection of the establishment would survive above all others, at least until now.

To be continued……….

Barry Clifford