Professor Butter Beard and Stillman’s “Acropolis of Athens”
“Nothing beside remains
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck,
Boundless and bare.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelly, “Ozymandias,” written in 1818
Percy Bysshe Shelley composed this famous sonnet on the transient nature of human undertaking after visiting the 1818 exhibition in London of a monumental head from ancient Egypt. The narrator of the sonnet shares the moment when he met “a traveler from an antique land” who found himself standing before a massive statue reduced to ruin. Shelly wrote these delicious sentiments almost two decades before the invention of photography in 1839. Andrew Szegedy-Maszek, professor of classical studies at Wesleyan University, writes that this sonnet “conveys some of the most enduring impulses underlying photographs of ancient monuments and sites: awe at the sheer magnitude of the remnants combined with bittersweet recognition of mortality.”
My two friends Mark and Jill independently realized their dreams of visiting and absorbing Greece this past month. I swooned when they texted me their photographs including glorious ancient landscapes at sunrise and sunset, statues I have studied for decades including The Charioteer and those of my boyfriend Hadrian, and carved stone columns growing from the earth towards the gods. The professor in me travelled back in time to the 19th century, imagining American classical scholars viewing their passions in a daguerreotype photograph for the first time. Paintings and etchings now were alive with clarity, and depth and truth.
In 1870, the London publishing firm of F.S. Ellis, issued a folio-sized volume of twenty-five photographic views of the Athens Acropolis by William James Stillman. According to Szegedy-Maszek, Stillman is one of those nineteenth-century figures whose “industry and accomplishment continue to astonish.” Born in Schenectady, New York into a very modest family, Stillman was originally educated as an artist, but subsequently converted to the profession of journalism, working primarily as a war correspondent in Crete and the Balkans, where he served as his own photographer. In 1868, while living briefly with his family in Greece, he made the decision to focus his camera on the inside as well as the outside of the Parthenon.
Stillman’s long-suffering wife had just committed suicide and he was left to raise his two daughters and ill son on a meager journalist’s salary. Just as my other photographer hero Timothy O’Sullivan had done in order to retrieve his soul after the American Civil War, Stillman turned to capturing healing images with his camera for solace. He wrote, “I was myself nearly prostrated mentally and physically, and unfit for anything but my photography.”
In January of 1869, Still wrote to his friend William Rossetti, “I am, in fine weather, amusing myself by taking a series of photos of the Acropolis; not only picturesque, but to show the technical characteristics of Greek architecture. It will comprise about twenty small views.” The resulting published work contains twenty-five full-size images each appearing alone on the right-hand page, accompanied by a brief descriptive comment by Stillman on the facing page. He titled the work: “The Acropolis of Athens: Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography.”
In my favorite of the Stillman photographs, a male figure stands at the far end of the portico with his back to the camera. Other humans have occupied space within the collection, usually dressed in Greek peasant clothing of the period. But here the figure wears identifiably western attire. He stands somewhat dwarfed by the stone columns, adding perspective to their immense height and mighty girth. One reviewer noted that if this figure is in fact Stillman himself, it may be an affecting metaphor for the distress he had to endure at that time.
With the publication of Stillman’s photographs, the Parthenon and the entire Athens Acropolis was made available to the world from an entirely new and exciting perspective. Mark Twain wrote, “The place seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian heroes of twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old temple they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.”
Photographs contain power. I know this to be true. They have encouraged me many times to step out of my dreams and challenge myself to embark on a new adventure. This week, the challenge was to face my fear of macarons. Known only to me through photographs, and maybe one or two or forty consumed while in the city, they intimidated me with their perfection. I took a leap imagining them as the carved stone drums used to build the Greek columns higher towards the gods. I flavored them with sun-kissed ginger and powerful vanilla seeds and filled with white chocolate ganache. Thank you, Mr. Stillman for inspiring my courage and self-confidence. I owe you one. Or forty.
Ginger Macarons Filled with White Chocolate Ganache
30 filled cookies (60 individual cookies)
2 ¼ cups sliced almonds, toasted, cooled and finely ground
3 cups confectionary’s sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
7 large egg whites, divided equally in half
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
13 ounces of white chocolate, chopped (or purchased morsels)
1 ¼ cups heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla paste
1) Toast the almond slices and let cool.
2) Prepare a template using a 1 ½” biscuit cutter to draw twenty circles on a piece of parchment the same size as your baking sheets. Space the circles at least 3/4” apart. Then line three baking sheets with parchment paper cut to fit the pans.
3) Grind the toasted almonds to a fine mix (the texture of cornmeal) and, in a medium bowl, whisk them together with the confectionary’s sugar and ground ginger.
4) Pour half the egg whites over the almond mix and fold together with a spatula into a thick paste. Set aside.
5) Place the remaining egg whites in a smaller bowl and add the granulated sugar. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and gently whisk until the sugar is melted and the mixture reaches 150 degrees F. (I use a digital thermometer.)
6) Pour the egg white/sugar mixture into the bowl of a standing mixer and whisk on high speed until the mixture transforms into a glossy meringue. This could take between three to five minutes.
7) Gently fold the meringue into the almond paste. Start with ¼ of the meringue to lighten the paste and then fold in the remaining meringue.
8) Slide your template under the parchment on your first baking sheet. Use a piping bag with a round tip to pipe the mixture, filling the circles. If necessary, wet your finger and gently tap down any tips on the piped cookies.
9) Gently slide the template out and follow the same procedure to pipe the circles on the second pan and then the third. Leave the pans, uncovered, for thirty minutes to dry the tops of your macarons before baking.
10) Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Bake one pan at a time for fifteen minutes, rotating after nine minutes. Leave the macarons to cool completely on the baking sheets.
11) Heat the 1 ¼ cups of heavy cream to a simmer in a small pan. Pour the hot cream over the white chocolate and let sit five minutes. Add the vanilla paste and gently whisk until the ganache is smooth and silky. Let cool completely to a piping consistency. This could take an hour or so.
12) Using a piping bag with a star tip, pipe a little ganache into the center of half the cookies leaving a narrow space around the edges. Sandwich the cookies together and refrigerate the finished cookies until you are ready to serve.
