Stillness and Time_ Photography and the Moving Image.pdf

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Contents

Foreword and Acknowledgements

Marking Time: Photography, Film and Temporalities of

the Image

David Green

Real Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary

Mary Ann Doane

Stillness Becoming: Reflections on Bazin, Barthes, and

Photographic Stillness

jonathan Friday

Thinking Stillness

Yve Lomax

Portraits, Still Video Portraits and the Account of the Soul

joanna Lowry

Melancholia

Kaja Silverman

Posing, Acting, Photography

David Campany

The Film-Still and its Double: Reflections on the 'Found'

Film-Still

john Stezaker

127

151

165

Frame/d Time: A Photogrammar of the Fantastic

Garrett Stewart

The Possessive Spectator

Laura Mulvey

Possessive, Pensive and Possessed

Victor Burgin

179

183

Notes on Contributors

List of Illustrations

Foreword and Acknowledgem ents

The s tarting point for this book was a conference bearing the sa me title

organised by Photoforum and held at the Kent Institute of Art and Design

in Canterbury in 2004. Th e m ajority of the essays publis hed here were

presented there for the first time. The thinking behind that ini tiative had

been to open up a s pace for recons idering the relationship between

photographic theory a nd the theory of the moving image as that has been

articulated in th e study of fi lm. Each of these areas had developed a rich and

sophi sticated body of ideas and modes of ana lysis during the 1970S and ea rly

'980s, inAuenced by semiotics, Ma rxism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism

;md

phenomenology. Yet whil st in evitably there had been some degree of

intercha nge between photog ra phy theory and fi lm theory each, neverth eless,

rema in ed fairly di screte from the othe r. I ndeed, as the introd uctory essay in

tli is book points out, the seminal writings by such figures as Walte r Benjamin,

Siegfried Kracauer, Andre Bazi n , Roland Barthes and Chris tian Metz te nded

focus upon wha t were seen as the essential diffe rences between the two

,"ediums of photography and film. Concepts of stillness, moveme nt and

lime were articu lated in a manner in which those differences cou ld be both

ide ntified and maintained.

seemed to us that thi s implicit understanding was in need of re-

<"valuation. The primary reason why s uch a re-evaluation was necessa ry -

and perhaps even made possible - is undoubtedly the impact of new image

I<"chnologies. Technologica l developments and the emergence of the digital

,nl erface have seen the progressive e rosion of the bounda ries between th e

sl il l and moving image. We now have the capacity at the Aick of a switch to

s low or freeze the mov ing image, or to animate a still one. The equipment

arollnd us is programmed for a bewildering multiplicity of tasks that makes

il progressively difficult to identify the photograph itself as a stable entity

wi lh a privileged existence_ The photograph no longer seems to cut into th e

Ilow o f time itself: instead it seems to present us with a moment selected

lrolll a te mporality that has already been digitally encoded. Thus ' the

pllolog raph' now exists as only one option in an expanding me nu of

lqlrl'scntatioml and performative operations presented by the technology.

Undoubtedly such technological developments demand new theoretical

frameworks that a re based on a dramatica lly different culture of the image.

Y they are also the spu r to look back at the formation of a theoretical and

cultural history that we had taken for gra nted, a nd explore elements of the

relationship between photography and film (and by extension video) that

might only now emerge as being significant. The essays in this book are

largely concerned with this project of critica l retrospection.

A number of themes stand out in the essays published here. On the one

hand there is a sense, in all of the contributions, that if we are going to

understand the impact of photographic and filmi c images in contem porary

cu lture we may have to loosen our assumptions about where the boundaries

between these two medium s are to be found ; whether that boundary be

considered tech nologically, culturally or psychically. There is also a strong

sense that we are searching for a term inology that might be more open to a

phe nomenology of the image, to the way in which the image is experienced:

concepts like 'becoming' and 'the event' return in these essays again and

agai n, signalling an approach to the image that is perha ps more he rmeneutic

than post-structuralist. Fina lly, it is also clear that wbat is at stake in our

discussions about stillness and movement, and the different temporalities o f

photography and film , does not ultimately rest with the issue of technology

pe r se. Thus it is not as

different technologies might simply be thought

of as mea ns of producing representations of time but as tech nological

ap paratuses through which time itself is constituted and experienced in all

of its multiplici ty.

The conference

Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image,

and henceforth this publication, was made possible by the generous support

of the Univeristy of Brighton, the Kent Institute of Art and Design and the

Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College (the latter two

in stitutions si nce almagamated into the University College of the Creative

Arts). We would like to extend our gratitude to these institutions for their

continued support of Photoforum . We are also extremely grateful to

Photoworks, and in particular David Chandler and Rebecca Drew, for their

commitme nt, time and energy that have made this publication possible.

Ma rking Time: Photography,

Film

and Temporalities of the Image

David Green

Joanna Lowry

David Green

Since

I976

Hiroshi Sugimoto has worked on an on-going series of

photographs entitled

Theatres

which have as their setting and immediate

subject matte r the ornate a rchitectural inte riors of cinema auditoria.

r:ollowing a carefully prescribed formula Sugimoto sets up his large-format

camera in an elevated position on the theatre's balcony, placed centrally and

directly facing the scree n. While the film is projected the camera's shutter

re mains open and the duration of the fi lm determines the exposure ti me of

Ihe photograph . Acting as the only source of illumination, the light reAected

from the screen reveals the space that surrounds it, drawing out of the

dark ness the theatre's cavernous inte rior and its decorative encrusta tion s.

Mthe same time the concentration of li ght from the film proj ector on the

s<reen itsel f results in the over-exposure of the photogra ph leaving an

IIl1ageless void at its centre. (Figure r) In some of the photographs from the

r/lI'r,tres series the white recta ngle of the cinema screen assumes a certain

dt"nseness and solidi ty and thereby evokes comparison to that paradigmatic

1<11111

of modernist abstract pai nting, the monochrome. In othe rs, however,

IIIl' outer edges of the screen are breached by the ligbt e manati ng from it,

dISsolv ing its rigid perimeters and threa tenin g to engulfall matter ca ught

wllhin its glare.

/\s with Sugimoto's other work, the

Theatres

series run s coun ter to

1',,'va; ling conceptions of photogra phy's relationship to instantaneity a nd

III II", photographic image as the record ofa bri ef and transitory moment in

11111. "

He re the photograph is, in a literal way, the embodiment of temporal

d," ,.li on - in a manner that has rarely been so since the infan cy of the

II ",di lll11 - and equally it would seem to demand of the viewer a form

" I ,lli L'ntion that also takes time. 111is sense of the extension of time as

I III" litutive of both the means of production and mode of perception of

i1,,'

pholograph is all the more significant

these images since it is achieved

•• 1

II", ,'x pense of ci nema and the medium to which photography is often

, 1111 '<

Il y contrasted. There is indeed a deep irony in the fact that each of

Theatres photographs exists as a r suit of the expi ry of a film ;

,',11 1,

ill

1:11('

borll frol11 th e tran siclil ex istcll cc oflh ousallds of olhe r images

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