A Sore Calamity (2024)

‘The kodak has been a sore calamity to us. The most powerful enemy that has confronted us, indeed.’ — Mark Twain, ‘King Leopold’s Soliloquy’, 1905 

In the pamphlet ‘King Leopold’s Soliloquy’ (1905), Mark Twain assumes the persona of King Leopold II, bemoaning the arrival of the camera, the ‘incorruptible kodak,’ the only witness he ‘couldn’t bribe.’ To the King’s horror, this new technology is able to bear witness to the atrocities he is committing in Congo, expos (…)