We are constantly striving to find out what is ‘real’ and accurate in this world, photography and cinema being primary examples of areas we look to for answers. Photography, which is by no means the honest ‘decisive moment’[i] it once was, and Cinema, this very ‘unreal space, to describe a very real world."[ii]
Contemporary photographic artist Gregory Crewdson works in a seemingly cinematic way to question whether or not it is possible for a constructed photograph to more successfully affect meaning than a traditional photograph, while AES+F’S Last Riot also confronts narrative cinema by being disjointed, pairing linear with non-linear to add to confusion and leaving us stranded between a photographic and a cinematic space.
We must question what sets these two spaces apart. Is cinema no more than a quick succession of arranged photographs? Or does it do something else, something in addition? Do motion pictures autonomously engage with us rather than a photograph which requires our cognitive thinking?
By examining the works of Chris Marker, Douglas Gordon and Hiroshi Sugimoto we may be able to gain some answers. Each of these artists has recontextualized conventional cinema in order to shift away from its indirect illustration of time,[iii] simultaneously bringing emphasis back to the ‘still’ photograph.
Can time ever be ‘real’ in an image, moving or not, or is it just a representation and manipulated manifestation? Can it ever be real at all?
In what ways do photography and cinema attempt to represent truth? Is one more successful in doing so than the other?
Perhaps it was not until the invention of cinema (which could be described loosely as moving photography) that photography needed to be defined as still photography. Photography, a revolutionary device which seemingly allowed for the ‘capturing’ of a single passed moment, was something which automatically afforded the assumption that it was of course, still.
In 1877 Eadweard Muybridge developed a scheme for motion picture capture using multiple cameras in order to prove that there was a point in a horse’s gallop at which unsupported transit[1] occurred. Fifty cameras were placed along a track, and then triggered sequentially by the horse when contact was made via trip wires along the ground.[iv] From this he obtained a series of sequential images, one of which did in fact did prove his theory of the horse leaving the ground completely.
While Muybridge was initially working to capture a single action from ‘real’ moving time, he consequently created a gradational series of images which could then be shown in rapid succession to give the illusion of movement. Through the projection of images from a rotating disc in his contraption, the Zoopraxiscope [see fig.2] it seemed evident that the ‘motion picture’ had been born.
At this point in time, I argue that photography did in fact somewhat aid Muybridge in seeing the truth; for to call his images ‘false’ would not suffice. If we think of ‘truth’ as a value[v] which can be assigned at varying degrees, he has provided us with a sense of real time and shed light on the previously misconceived notion that it was impossible that a horse was completely off the ground at any stage. Muybridge may have been using photography as a technological device to facilitate scientific discovery but in doing so he became a pivotal figure in terms of the creation of moving image, thus allowing us to examine the traditional photograph for all its verisimilitude and, eventually, use photography and moving image collectively.
The traditionally scientific-focused moving image made way for the cinema, in the same way photography was already beginning to stretching the truth, and it where these two disciplines, photography and cinema overlap that I see interesting things beginning to emerge.
When examining photographic artists whose work is often associated with cinema it is imperative that we look at why they are said to be doing so. Is it the image reminiscent of a segment from a larger story? Is it the ‘actors’ playing out a scene before us, or perhaps the foreboding lighting? What defines a cinematic photograph?
Until recently my understanding of cinematic photographs was strictly and synonymously tied to what is narrative. I was then involved in a discussion where the following points where made:
If Photography = Documentary
and
Cinema = Narrative
Then
Still, photographic images that are narrative in style, are inherently viewed and understood as cinematic.[vi]
This was pivotal in terms of how I viewed cinematic photographs. My previous understanding was that cinema did not need to be narrative; it could be structural, non-sensical and abstract, but then I realized perhaps I was thinking of all moving image as cinema, plenty of which is not narrative. So presumably what makes a moving image 'cinematic' is narrativity however non-conventional and non-linear it may be; it just has to engage with the concept of narrative time, and viewing it in this way essentially means that a photograph could be more deemed more “cinematic" than some moving image.
Understanding that not all moving image is cinematic and things which are narrative in style can be cinematic is crucial to this understanding, though I argue that photographs which appear to lack narrativity can still be cinematic based on their connection with the aesthetic of cinema. One image in question I found by photographer Cary Dolan looks cinematic; it has an artificial ambiance from the unnatural lighting, the building lit from within as though there is human presence, and causes me to feel as though something is meant to happen. It may not appear narrative, but my understanding is that this photograph affords the title of a cinematic image based on its artificial lighting pertaining to cinema and its sense of duration.
In comparison, Gregory Crewdson represents a photographer who is unmistakably known for working towards a very cinematic agenda. He simultaneously draws on documentary style photography and the deliberate artifice of cinema to give authority and a narrative tone to intricately constructed scenes of a suburban dystopia.
Crewdson himself takes on the role of director for the shoot, and construction of an entire film set also helps allude to the fact he is working in a seemingly cinematic approach. He commandeers entire small American towns, bringing curious residents into the mix, rigs lighting, constructs soundstages and employs actors and film crew.
Essentially he is making a photo, rather than simply taking a photo.
It could be said that the significance of Crewdson’s constructed tableau vivant ‘realities’ rests in their ‘heightened visuality’ and ability to impact on the viewer [vii].
The stand out aspect of his images is the visual saturation, the intensity of the image which becomes a hyperreality; the ‘simulation of something which never really existed’[viii], that blurs the line between fantasy and reality.
To view one of Crewdson’s images is as if viewing one frame from a movie; we are left thinking, ‘what the hell has happened here?’ A figure will any minute step out into the dusty light of the streetlamp, a car will swerve around the corner, or something other-worldly will plummet from the sky. On the other hand there lies a dark undertone, a sadness in the eyes of the characters whose lives we have become witness to and a fear of perhaps living amongst the silently chaotic suburbia.
It could be concluded from this emotional simulation that the feelings Crewdson is presenting through his photographs are more truthful than the image itself.
In the preface to Gregory Crewdson’s Twilight (2002), Rick Moody states that the artist creates a world "in which opposites repel one another anew, in which civilizations embrace their obverses, in which paradoxes dance wildly…"[ix] – the paradox of the real and unreal. The images may be portray a surreal fantasy, but also elicit a synthetic emotion which feels real, therefore perhaps coming across as somewhat of a representation of reality.
“The image to come” is Henri Cartier-Bresson’s term to define film-making as opposed to photography[x], though it may be said that, as a cinematically driven photographer, Crewdson’s constructed ‘realities’ provoke the ‘image to come.’ Similar to going to the cinema, we engage cognitively with Crewdson’s photographs in search of their underlying meaning. Because there seems to be a before and/or an after we can place these images on some kind of narrative timescale; each is a still frame, but remains part of a bigger picture. It may not afford the autonomous engagement which propels us through the story we experience when at the cinema, but we actively imagine the ‘movie’ behind the image. I argue that this does not at all suggest stillness, but foreshadows movement in the way cinema does.
Crewdson is a prime example of how contemporary artists have begun to explore the way in which the boundaries between photography and cinema are merging indefinitely, and is an incentive for my work to date.
In 2008 I created The Plot Thickens; a series of images which explored the relationship between cinema and photography.
Like Crewdson, I became a director to each photo shoot, planning the scene and staging the character’s actions in attempt to falsify the ‘decisive moment’[xi] of documentary photography. In addition I was working with artificial lighting, painting with flash[2] and heightened colour. The construction of the images was achieved in layers and I was attempting to draw on reality, playing with space and time. An excerpt from my artist statement:
‘The cinematic aspect is created through the interaction (or deliberate disconnection) of characters. We do not know who these characters are, but we do know the story they are telling because we have seen it all before.
The frozen motion; a scene of transcendence and a new reality lying beyond the ordinary range of perception, illuminated in the artificial light of the night.
Something is lost, something is missing, and something is gone.’[xii]
The works became somewhat over-developed, highly dramatized, bright, loud, each reminiscent of a cliché scene from a movie. They were easily recognized as a staged fantasy rather than reality and I was faced with a series of six images which in retrospect would have worked better individually. While the semblance of truth was not crucial to The Plot Thickens, I believe a stronger foundation in reality would have connected on an emotional level with viewers in the way that Crewdson’s work does, therefore reuniting it with cinema once more.
Throughout 2009 I have been working more to explore the subtleties of cinema, and discover artists whose work rests in the space between cinema and photography.
AES+F group provide a good example of this collision. Their work is something I have looked to for inspiration many times, but until recently I have only viewed and understood them as still photographic works. Experiencing them now as moving images they become something completely different.
Last Riot (2007),comprises a three-channel video work which has a highly stylized computer game aesthetic, and the real and virtual meet.[xiii]
The work focuses on the self-propagating expanse of the virtual and the rise of “...a mutated world frozen in time.”[xiv] It appears at first as a linear narrative, moving through animated landscapes then on to a scene of conflict between multiple characters wielding weapons, though it is not long before one does realize there is no resolve, no conclusive ending. Last Riot is not just a simple continuous video projection operating via cinematic technology. It utilizes a program which essentially morphs still photographs into one another, making the work appear as though it is stopping and starting, or even moving backwards at times. The disjointed narrative does not progress much to our disarray, and moves in circles. There is this constant anticipation of action, the interplay between characters is somehow strained and you can’t help but wish that there was some kind of impact or resolve.[xv] Perhaps it is through this work that we can identify this kind of response we have as viewers, this expectation that a seemingly narrative moving image must have a beginning, middle and end. Is cinema so deeply ingrained in society that we just take its structure and verisimilitude for granted?
If we were to take a step back and examine the work of Chris Marker, we may understand the cinema’s difference from photography in its ability to inscribe movement through time.[xvi] Similar to AES+F, In his film La Jetee (1962) Marker makes use of still images to depict movement (except for one sequence in which eyes flutter briefly) and can be viewed as a shift in the way we map time. Time is cut up and pieced back together in a mixture of linear and non-linear narrative. The story tells of a future invested in nuclear destruction and is mapped through the central character’s memory, reinforcing the engagement with our cognition. When the central character discovers the ‘image from his past’ is in fact the moment of his own death, the concept that time cannot be escaped is revealed. There is a sense that his bearing in the narrative lies outside of time itself,[xvii] as he has only images to map time. The film, devoid of any actual moving image, rests adequately in that space between cinema and photography, and reflects Deleuze’s theory of the time-image; ‘an image in which time ceases to be subordinate to movement and appears for itself.’[xviii] The movement stems from action, rather than relying on a ‘motion’ picture.
Marker has embedded the still image in a cinematic context which brings awareness to our assumption of narrative and expectation of full immersion in a film when we visit the movie theatre. He shifts his film away from that of movement-image as defined by Deleuze, which takes a linear approach to the representation of time through its simulation so that it appears to contain the spatial density of the real.[xix] The relationship between ‘action and reaction’ is imperative and narrative linear events are often an ‘illusion of time.’[xx]
This ‘illusion of time’ is what we are familiarized with in the majority of cinema, and we often hold as a point of reference to ‘real’ time.
Douglas Gordon’s work 24 Hour Psycho (1993) connects with this idea of illusional ‘real’ time, by manipulating and distorting it in order to provoke some degree of cognitive engagement from us as viewers.[xxi] Gordon’s work is a moving video piece which is screened at a lengthy rate of two frames per second[3], offering an extended version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller film Psycho, making it span out over a twenty four hour time period. While one could presumably watch the Hitchcock version in a theatre in less than two hours, it is highly improbable that one would stay and watch the whole twenty four hours of Gordon’s version to gain the full narrative story; instead viewers come and go in the gallery space, seeing only portions of the work at one time.
The resulting piece acts as an intervention into the well-known film by distorting the narrative aspect of it and rendering it completely unreadable in terms of our preconceived notion of what a movie motion picture should employ. Instead of autonomously viewing the film, it requires a more in-depth cognitive engagement in order to read it. Also comparable to AES+F’s Last Riot, the frustration of action anticipation appears to provoke an element of ‘voyeuristic pleasure’[xxii] as we scour the artwork in search of some indication of ‘real’ time. We want to make sense of things, putting events in a linear order helps us to understand them, something which 24 Hour Psycho confronts as it brings the ‘still’ frame is to our attention. Focus is taken away from the cinematic and given to the photographic.
In parallel to Douglas Gordon’s work, my own investigation into the singular images acquired from a film stemmed from my desire to understand how cinema can be stripped of its ‘cinematic’ identity. I began this exploration by scanning the frames from a film trailer reel in order to obtain single, photographic images. In doing this I was breaking down a cinematic piece into individual frames, and removing it from its prescribed screening environment.
I then printed six sequential frames onto transparency, layering them in order and lighting them from behind. The two dimensional space of the cinema screen then becomes a three dimensional object; it appears ethereal and almost illusionary, suggesting a relationship to the ‘illusion of time’ in cinema. Time is also disrupted and movement on a linear scale no longer seems to exist. The re-photographing of this work allows for a new representation altogether, it is brought back into a static photographic context in a two dimensional form as it was before as a film still, though the image has changed completely.
Time has been condensed through the printing of individual frames, then expanded through the layering of the frames, then once again condensed when re-photographed. As a work in progress, I aim to stretch this amalgamation of cinema and photography even further.
As a key influence to my work, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theaters (1976) also disseminates the illusional aspect of time as represented in cinema, and encapsulates the desire to find the veracity of experience by working with the duration of a motion picture film[xxiii]. Sugimoto walks into an empty movie theatre, sits down with his camera, opens the shutter and captures the entire movie in one single frame. The result is a luminous white rectangle of light where the movie screen once was, framed by the surrounding theatre, a context which we assign specifically to cinematic viewing.
The Theaters images bring emphasis back to the prescribed screening environment of the cinema by demonstrating a way in which linear time can be interpreted through the static medium of photography.
Time is initially splayed out through the moving image of the cinema, then condensed back down to a single frame within Sugimoto’s camera. In this process something irreversible has occurred, the image will never be the same as it first was. The still image collapses a whole film into single frame, capturing everything, every frame, yet it becomes blank. It appears blank, but it is actually the total accumulation of every split-second frame from the film which was being viewed. He has captured, say 120mins of emanated light. It could be understood as the sum of everything, and nothing at the same time.
In Camera Lucida, Barthes sees photographic time as a linear structure. To the subject of the photograph, death is implicit; the end is inevitable. The photograph rests in the space between what has been and what will be[xxiv]. But where does this leave Sugimoto? Has he not freed his work from the boundaries of time and space?
By removing the narrative aspect and the evidence of a past or future tense it could be said that he has revealed photographic time and cinematic time in an overlap of each other, affording a new level of truth to the image. We can start to understand reality in a new way, unpack the world as it is presented to us through a lens, screen or image. As Sugimoto says 'The human eye, devoid of the shutter, is essentially a camera with long exposure.'[xxv]
My own artistic practice runs parallel with what I consider to be my reality, as I see it everyday through my eyes. Do I view the world around me in photographic or cinematic time? Can either medium ever be accurate in representing what we as humans see?
If truth is a value, and the existence of time itself is questionable, what is there for us to pin point as the correct way of representing what is ‘real’? An image, whether still or moving, can only ever be a representation; it is never the actual thing it is depicting, never the actual event that took place. The only actuality to which the image can be assigned is its indexical factor; that it is no more ‘real’ than the silver emulsion on paper, or the pixel on a screen. Thierry de Duve describes this analysis of the photographic image as becoming a ‘semiotic object, abstract from reality’, and no longer anything more than the resemblance of the event and a ‘representation of time in the now.’ [xxvi]
Everyday we redefine what photography has been, what it is right now and what it will become.
Photography’s affiliation with reality has historically been paired with our desire and fascination in ‘seeing’ the truth, as epitomized by documentary-style photography. Historically (and perhaps even pre-art schooled, in my own case) photography could essentially be viewed as a mirror of reality and the photograph as a captured moment of truth. Similarly, cinema was recognized as pivotal in terms of its depiction of ‘real’ time. In today’s world this is just not plausible. Through my ongoing explorations I aim to shed light onto this ever-changing concept.
While we may not be able to achieve anything beyond a representation, the artists in this essay have aided my understanding of cinema and photography in relation to one another, and provided the ultimate attest that ‘Truth’ is a loaded word, and one which will continue to provoke much discussion about its actual existence, requiring the ability to see it as something that, like time, holds debatable existence[xxvii].
[1] None of the horse’s hooves were in contact with the ground.
[2] Illuminating different areas of the image with an off-camera flash unit. This enables movement and ghosting effects without digital manipulation.
[3] Regular cinema has a frame rate of at least 24 frames per second.
[i] Cartier-Bresson, Henri“Images a la sauvette” (1952), in David Campany, The Cinematic, pp 43
[ii] James Voorhies in Zollinger Turner, Tracy, Artscape: "Of Other Spaces" & "The New
[iii] Martin-Jones, David. Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts.
[iv] Robert Bartlett Haas, Muybridge: Man in Motion
[v] Conversation with Bridie Lonie, April 2009.
[vi] Gillies,Rachel, Cinematic Overtones and Undertones in Photography, Thursday April 2nd, 2009
[vii] Green, Allison, Gregory Crewdson, Artscape.
[viii] Baudrillard, Jean, “Simulacra and Simulations:
[ix] Rick Moody. Essay in Twilight, Photographs by Gregory Crewdson.
[x] Cartier-Bresson, Henri in Serge Toubiana and Diane Dufour, “The Image To Come: How Cinema Inspires Photographers”
[xi] Cartier-Bresson, Henri, “Images a la sauvette” (1952), in David Campany, The Cinematic. pp 43
[xii] Hlavac-Green, Emily, “The Plot Thickens”, (October 2008) from artist statement.
[xiii] City Gallery
[xiv] AES+F Group, “Last Riot- Last Riot 2”, (2005-2007), from artist statement.
http://www.aes-group.org/last_riot.asp
[xv] Wolf, Dr Erika, “AES+F’S ‘Last Riot’” Seminar and Screening at ANZAAE Conference, Otago school of art, April 23, 2009.
[xvi] Doane, Mary Ann, The emergence of cinematic time: modernity, contingency, the archive, pp 24.
[xvii] Lupton, Catherine. Chris Marker: Memories of the Future.
[xviii] Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 2: The Time-Image.
[xix] Bazin, André What Is Cinema?: Volume II
[xx] Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image.
[xxi] Monk, Philip. Double-cross: The
[xxii] Ibid.
[xxiii] Hasegawa, Kanae ,Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time
[xxiv] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard. pp 57
[xxv] Ibid
[xxvi] de Duve, Thierry, “Time Exposure and Snapshot: The Photograph as Paradox” (1978), in David Campany, The Cinematic, pp 52-61.
[xxvii] Alex Lovell-Smith. Discussion on the 13th November 2008. Time not recorded
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