photography: film: modern vision
Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904)
Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. Even if one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person‘s posture during the fractional second of a stride…the camera introduces us to unconscious optics… [Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1935]
x-ray photograph, ca.1895
―New vision‖, x-ray speculation, 1890s
In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial.
[Paul ValÊry, Pièces sur l’Art, 1931]
aura, photography and modernity [modern vision and subjectivity]
For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking in to a lens. [Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
unique in time, space, history authenticity aura
Donatello‘s David, c.1440
That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.
[Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
The desire of contemporary masses to bring things ‗closer‘ spatially and humanly…to pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‗sense of the universal equality of things‘ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction.
[Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
Eugène Atget, Paris, c.1920s
The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
[Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
Eugène Atget, Paris, c.1920s
For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ―authentic‖ print makes no sense.
[Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
Eugène Atget, Paris, c.1920s
But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice— politics.
[Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
John Heartfield, photomontage, 1933
―All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.‖
We have lost our capacity to grasp the reality of war. The horror of war is consumed as though it were a horror movie.” [Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, 1999]
―Security in Iraq,‖ U.S. Dept. of Defense
politics of the image [cinema and modern vision]
Dziga Vertov: from agit-prop to kino-pravda [film truth]
cinema of the everyday or ―life unawares‖
I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see. [Dziga Vertov ]
Vertov argued psychological film-dramas: ―prevent man from being as precise as a stop watch and hamper his desire for kinship with the machine.‖
Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope...now they have perfected the cine-camera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten. [Dziga Vertov ]
To the extent that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions—with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life—it creates the sensory foundations of mental life.
[Georg Simmel, ―The Metropolis and Mental life,‖ 1903]
Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second…with close-ups space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended…An unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. [Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
―By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.‖ [Walter Benjamin, ―The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,‖ 1935]
test one: review [what you need to know]
test one: review go to your tutorials this week‌
test one: review 10 multiple choice (.5 pt each) = 10 mins 5 short answer (1 pt each) = 15 mins 2 essay (5 pts each) = 30 mins ** plus 5 mins to review you answers
Total of 60 mins + 20% of final grade
test one: review • trust your instincts when responding [ your first answer is usually correct] • be specific in your responses [!] – don‘t just tell us what you think, tell us why you are taking a given position and how it relates to readings, lectures, and/or tutorial discussions • refer to specific authors, concepts, objects, critics, etc. to provide evidence in your responses • take a few moments before answering each essay question to determine your position (thesis statement) and how you intend to support it (evidence)