Film and Movement

Photography, meaning “drawing with lights” in Greek, is an art as well as a science of capturing light and storing it on a medium with unprecedented accuracy. Yet, up until the late 18th century, history was mainly recorded through the techniques of painting and the press. These mediums unarguably contained a certain degree of a truth, though, it was not uncommon for events, such as war to be composed with glorified details, or an unfavorable bias from the artist at hand. Beginning in the 1830’s, cameras provided a revolutionary solution by combining the advancements in optics and chemistry. Consequently, the new medium of photography was established and forever changed how history would be visually captured. Unlike other methods, photography

Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the

Photography was an ideal medium with which to explore the payers of the unconscious mind. Modernist photographers experimented with double exposure and unusual new effects similar to those of visionary Surrealist painters and sculptors. A champion of the technique, Raoul Hausmann, called photomontage “the ‘alienation’ of photography”. By this, he implied that photomontage destroyed the role of photography as a medium of recreating physical reality. But the statement also suggests that by its dependence on fragmentation and dislocation, photomontage offered a visually and conceptually new image of the chaos of an age of war and revolution.

It is a debate that has been going on for years and years, especially in the twenty first century, of which medium in photography is superior, Film or Digital, Personally I use both, I will be discussing the issue over the length of this paper. Going through positives and negatives around both the processes, and techniques associated with the forms of photography.

No matter it’s effect, photography was and is very pivotal throughout society. Photography can be a beautiful but yet haunting form of art. It displays an image which is characterizing

To understand film as history or rather, history as film – is to be able to differentiate and acknowledge not only “[the] source or a document only of its aesthetic history, but of history in general.” Although some individuals may interpret history to come before film, the collection and portrayal of past historical events would have been difficult, if not impossible, without the invention of the kinetoscope in 1888, by famous persona Thomas Edison. “Kineto” to mean movement and “scope” to watch – it was originally to be viewed by a single person at a time, however, through the modern use of technology, films can be viewed by many around the world. The perception that film can function as history is not to be mistaken with the misunderstanding

Throughout the beginning of time people have used art to express themselves. With each major, and minor, there is an artist that captures the world as it is around him. There are also artists that create fiction to give the world and escape from reality. The medium of art that will be discussed in this essay will be film. Since the invention of Thomas Jefferson kinecto graph and the Lumiere brothers cinemtograph, films have continued to be the most popular entertainment methods in France and America. Since historical events have somewhat of an impact on the content in film, this essay will take a look at the effects of films years before and after World II. World War II was one of the major historical events to have

Photographs are also manifestations of time and records of experience. Consequently, writings on photographic theory are filled with references to representations of the past. Roland Barthes (1981, 76), for instance,

Ever since the camera was invented in 1839, the very nature of photography has been questioned. With the increasing advent of photographic technology, photography has become an egalitarian expression of society and community. With one press of a button, an image is captured for eternity, bringing to question the inherent artistic quality of photographs. If we can so quickly capture an image, can this be deemed art? Art is to promote fantasy, and dream, to incite anger and joy. Thus, surely photography is an art, as seen through its capturing of beautiful verdant landscapes, and the horrendous

He defines realism as conveying the essence . He states that “originality in photography lies in its objective character” , side also taken by Kracauer when we argues about film and reality.

Returning to Benjamin, he writes that, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space” (Benjamin II) which corroborates the speaker of the poem’s stance that, “Meaning takes place in time” (Solie 38). Although Benjamin’s thoughts focus more on the ubiquity and lack of authenticity that occurs with mass image production and reproduction, “Bitumen” shares some of these concerns, tracing the development of modern proliferation of images from the first imagining techniques of Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, to the “photochrome postcards” (32) of late 19th century, up to video- sharing websites. The speaker of “Bitumen” looks to construct a timeline of image mediation alongside the aestheticization of catastrophe. Even calamitous weather events, which “Bitumen” ties to the “unseasonable” (34) weather that results from global warming, becomes a sublime, photogenic spectacle with the ubiquity and quotidian character of modern image and film: “tornados on YouTube relieve us of our boredom” (“Bitumen” 33). The speaker of “Bitumen” argues that these mediations pacify rather than invigorate, and replace what should be fear and action with awe and

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

In the first episode of “Ways of seeing”, John Berger explores the change of people’s judgement and understanding of art after the invention of the camera. Throughout the video, Berger explains how a camera’s angles, distance and features, such as zoom-ins and zoom-outs can affect one’s perception of fine art and how art has become ambiguous. This essay is going to explore how the invention of the camera and its features can provide several interpretations to art pieces and images.

Art critic Robert Hughes once said, “People inscribe their histories, beliefs, attitudes, desires and dreams in the images they make.” When discussing the mediums of photography and cinema, this belief of Hughes is not very hard to process and understand. Images, whether they be still or moving, can transform their audiences to places they have either never been before or which they long to return to. Images have been transporting audiences for centuries thanks to both the mediums of photography and cinema and together they gone through many changes and developments. When careful consideration is given to these two mediums, it is acceptable to say that they will forever be intertwined, and that they have been interrelated forms of

Benjamin’s death in 1940 at the age of 48, is rumored to be a suicide when the Naza’s took office, but is still a mystery. His ideas and concepts however, would live on for decades to come. Much of what he wrote about when discussing art came essentially after the development of photography and film. In his work, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin addresses his perception of the changes in art and the aesthetic experience congruent with societal changes. He writes with concern of how the great artworks are viewed after the introduction of photography and film. His idea of mechanical reproduction changed the art world as society knew it, particularly in how the public views artwork and the value of that work as more and more people are able to own, view and discuss it. This paper will specifically look at aspects of Benjamin’s groundbreaking essay and how educators can relate his ideas to the practices in their art classrooms.