Contents

07

Foreword and Acknowledgements

09

Marking Time: Photography, Film and Temporalities of

the Image

23

Real Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary

39

Stillness Becoming: Reflections on Bazin, Barthes, and

Photographic Stillness

David Green
Mary Ann Doane

jonathan Friday

55

Thinking Stillness
Yve Lomax

65

Portraits, Still Video Portraits and the Account of the Soul

joanna Lowry

79

Melancholia

Kaja Silverman

97

Posing, Acting, Photography

"3

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

Film-Still

David Campany

john Stezaker

127

Frame/d Time: A Photogrammar of the Fantastic

Garrett Stewart

151

The Possessive Spectator

165

Possessive, Pensive and Possessed

Laura Mulvey
Victor Burgin

179

Notes on Contributors

183

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
10 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.
It 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.
Yet 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 if 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.

Joanna Lowry
David Green

Ma rking Time: Photography, Film and Temporalities of the Image

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 in 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



",, 1,,\

Allecl,:s, 1993

that once brieAy Aicke red ac ross a cinema scree n. Life is given to the
photog raph th ro ugh the death of the fi lm.
Anyone in the least fa mil iar with wri tings on the history of ci ne ma and
with some of the abid ing rudimen ts of fi lm theory will immed iately
recognise the set of discurs ive term s that Sugi m oto's Theatres photogra ph s
put into play and which my description of the m is inte nded to evoke. Mos t
conventio nal histories of the o rigins of cin ema, fo r exa mple, tend to privilege
its relatio nship to photogra phy. Whatever arguments may be mu stered o n
behalf of cinem a's debts to literature and thea tre, the technological bases of
fi lm have guaranteed photography a primary role in any account of its earl y
development and perhaps continue to inAect an unders tanding of film as
be in g - first and foremost - a pre-e mi nently visual m edium . But the fact
th at ph otography and film have always been seen as closely intertwined has
also proved to be the spur to differentiate between them . That this process
of the differentiation of photogra phy and fil m has revolved arou nd a
polJri sat io n between the still and the mov ing im age, and the d ifferent
tCIl'lJo ralities asso ia ted with eac h, sholl id come 'IS no su rpri se.

One of the clea rest exa mples in the realm of film theory in wh ich
photography and fil m are both seen as being in tim ately technologically
" nd aesthetically connected yet ul ti m ately o ntologically distinct is Siegfried
Kraca uer's Theory of Film: The Redemptio" of Physical Reality. Fi rst publis hed
in [960, though largely dependent upo n his extens ive bod y of wri ti ngs o n the
cinema fro m the [930S , Kraca uer makes plain his co mmi tmen t to the notio n
o[' un ique and determ inate pro perties of the medium early in th e book .
Significantly fo r my pu rposes here the openi ng chapter is devoted to, and
sim ply entitled , ' Photog raphy' and Kraca uc r uscs it to layo ut h is own version
o /" mediu m s pecificity. Medi ums d iffer, according to Kracauer, in te rm s of
'the degree of the elus iveness of the ir pro pe rties'. Somewhat surpri s ingly he
" rgues th at pain ting d monstrates, th rough its historically varying modes of
" pproach , ' to be leas t de pe ndent upon fixed mate rial a nd tech nica l fac tors '.'
The prope rties of photograp hy, on the other ha nd, have proven to be ' fairly
s peci fi c' and have therefo re dema nded compliance with a set of bas ic aes thetic
principles, the s ingle mos t im portant being its 'realistic te nde ncy'. Withi n
Ihc parameters set by pho tography's 'real istic tendency' Kraca uer goes o n to
Iden tify four mo rc pa rticu lar pro pe rties that defi ne the medium a nd which
liP call s its 'a ffi nities'. The fi rst of th ese is the capacity 'to re nde r nature in
Ihe raw, natu re as it ex ists indepe nde ntly of us' .' Th ro ugh thi s intrinsic
,<, I"tionship to ' un staged rea lity', photogra phy comes to lay stress upon
' Il ,e fo rtuito us', furthe r sti ll ' to suggest endlessness' a nd fi nally to revea l a
1,'lldency towards the 'i ndetermi na te' and all that is ' uno rga n ised and diffuse'.
Whilst reading Kracauer it is di fficult to ignore the ins istent claims fo r
li lt' camera's unique abili ties to ' record and reveal phys ical reali ty',J the re is a
II<'cd to cou nter the arguments of those who have dis missed hi s pos itio n as
Iklt of a ' naive rea list' . In the subtle shift, for exam ple, from cla im ing th e
I'l lotograph's natu ra l affin ity to 'un staged rea Lity' to the descri ptio n of its
II lnate proclivity for the aleatory, ' fo r fragments rather than wholes', a nd for
II,e fact of its inevita bl e incom pleteness, there is the recognition that the
" I,olograph fundamentally tra nsfo rms that which exists before the ca mera,
.II Ie1 lhat in its inabi li ty - o ne mi ght say its failure - to match rea lity the
" llotograph is revealed in its difference: ' Its fram e m arks a provisional limi t;
li s content refers to other contents outside the frame; and its structure
d"lIoles something that can not be encompassed - physical existence." Thus
" Ihe photograph is - as Kraca uer claims at one point - ' the text of nature',
II is the potential ambivalence of that phrase that needs to be grasped.
Th is appl ies eq ually to how Kracauer develo ps these a rgu me nts with
" 'gard to film . Shari ng with photography its technological bas is in the optical
..IId mccha n ica l o peratio ns of the camera , film inherits fro m ils hi s to rical

1 Krd(d Uer ThcolV

..II-tlm- III!" Rl'dnMptl on

"I RI'O/,Iy, Ox rord

IJlllvel'Slly P'C"''), '960, P I)

2 IbHl, p.18

predecessor its 'affinities' with the 'unstaged', 'fortuitous', 'indeterminate'

and sense of 'endlessness '. However, the si ngle most important factor that
distinguishes the two mediums is, of cou rse, that film 'represent[s] reality as
it evolves in time" an d thi s tem poral dime nsion is indissociable from film's
ability to captu re movement.
There is a sense that for Kracauer film is able to achieve a higher
synthesis of the features, that is the 'a ffinities ', that photography itself
possesses but that in the end the difference between the two med iums is not
simply relative but absolute. What is denied to photography is seen as the
defining characteristic of film and gives rise to a set of unique possibilities
for representing 'physical real ity' in aLi of its contingencies and transience.
To this exclusively fi lm ic mode of representation of the raw material of
experience Kracauer gave the term - and, as we shall see, it is a significant
one - 'the flow of life'. Indebted to the phenomenology of Be rgson and
Husse r! , the notion of ' the flow of life' was intended to unite Kracauer's
theory of what was specific to film as a med ium with hi s bel ief in the
cinema's natura l propensity for the actua l and th e everyday. The motif that
encapsulated this convergence of form and content was that of the street.
In a passage that directl y summons to mind the writing of his one-time
friend and associate Walter Benjamin, Kraca uer notes:

Apart from the opening chapter of Theory of Film the only other
substantial text by Kracauer devoted to photography is an essay first
published in ' 927. Kracauer begins his essay by contrasting two
photographs, one of a you ng film diva found on the cover of a current
magazine, the other of a woma n of si milar age but taken sixty years befo re
and whom he identifies now to be a grandmother. Possibly his own. The
glamorou s film sta r, li ke the illustrated publication on which her ima ge
appears and the profession to which she belongs, seems to embody the
mode rn. She belongs to a contem porary conscious ness, and the time of
the image is lodged firmly in the present. By contrast the other photograph
is 'essentially associated with the moment in time at which it came into
existence'. 7 Whilst the woman that it pictures may still be known to those
around her, the photograph itself ca n on ly testify to what once was. In the
ever-wideni ng gap between then and now meaning di ssolves into
' particu lars' such as the woman's costume that may appear to us in its
anachroni stic unfashionab ility as 'comica l'. At the sa me time, however, those
who gaze on such an image may also fee l a 'shudder'. For what strikes the
viewer is not only the inesca pable fa ct that what has passed ca n never return
but also th e in evitability that the material contin gencies of the presen t will
similarly be engulfed by the Row of ti me and with it himself:

The street in the extended sense of the word is not only the arena offleeting
impressions and chance encounters but a place where the flow of life is bound
to assert itself Again one will have to think mainly of the city street with its
ever-moving crowds. The kaleidoscopic sights mingle with unidentified shapes
and fragmentary visual complexes and cancel each other out, thereby
preventing the onlooker from following up any of the innumerable suggestions
they offer. What appeals to him are not so much sharp-contoured individuals
engaged in this or that dejinable pursuit as loose throngs of sketchy, completely
indeterminate jigures. Each has a story, yet the story is not given . 1nstead, an
incessant flow casts its spell over the flaneur or even creates him. The flaneur
is intoxicated with life in the street -life eternally dissolving the patterns which
it is about to form'

Those things once clung to us like our skin, and this is how property still
clings to us today. We are contained in nothing and photography assembles
fragments around a nothing. When Grandmother stood in front of the lens she
was present for one second in the spatial continuum that presented itself to the
lens. But it was this aspect and not the grandmother that was eternalised. A
shudder runs through the beholder/ viewer of old photographs. For they do not
make visible the knowledge of the original but rather the spatial configuration
of a moment; it is not the person who appears in his or her photograph, but
the sum of what can be deducted from him or her. It annihilates the person by
portraying him or her, and were person and portrayal to converge, the person
would cease to exist. g

As much as this might be read as a description of the kind of visual and

sensory encounters of the urban milieu that are seen as synonymous with
modernity it is also clearly intended to evoke someth ing of our experience
of fi lm itself. The restlessness of the city street find s its direct analogy in the
relentless movement of the film, in the fluidity of the camera and the rapid
spatia l transitions of montage. The 'flow of life' encompasses the flux of
rea li ty and its appearance on the screen. The question is where does this
leave photography?

Kracauer goes on, howeve r, to suggest that the belief in the presentness
of the images that fill the contemporary magazine is me rely a veneer behind
wh ich we try to shelter from the inevitable:
That the world devours them is a sign of the fear of death . What the photographs by their sheer accumulation attempt to banish is the recollection of death,
which is part and parcel of ever memory-image. In the illustrated magazines
the world has become a photograph able-present, and the photographed present
has been entirely externalised. Seemingly ripped from the clutch of death, in
reality it has , ,,cCLImbed to it all the more."

7

KIJ(,Ill'P

Ir.JlI<;

I h,)r.;.I'>

'f I CfI,,(ollllq!lIry. 1<J.

SP'U1t' I I')S. I' 4 ... g

1111111"11

II,Hd
New

These passages could have been written by Barthes who - fifty years later
- commenting on a photograph of himself noted that: 'Ultimately, what I am
seeking in the photograph taken of me .. .is Death: Death is the eidos of that
Photograph'. 10 Later in the same text, however, he extends the sentiment to
the photograph in genera l, noting that 'however lifelike we strive to make
it (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an
apprehension of death), Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind
of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made up face beneath
which we see the dead.' 11 There is no need here to pursue in any deta il the
complex and often enigmatic nature of Barthes' morbid reRections on
photography's intimate relationship to death which have given rise to
countless commentaries. What needs to be stressed, however, is that in the
course of writing about death as the eidos of photography, Barth es elaborates
an argument about the distinctive nature of the temporality of the photographic image, one which he describes as resulting from 'a perverse
confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live'. He continues:
... by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously
induces belief that it. is ali.ve, because of that delusion which makes us attribute
to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting t.his
reality to the past ("this has been"), the photograph suggests that it is
ail'eady dead. 12

Thi s paradoxical coexistence within the photograph of the ' Real' , the
authentication of a past-present, and the ' [jve', the illusion of a presentpresence, Barthes later describes more simply as the simultaneity of the
'this will be' and th e 'this has been' or, in more macabre fashion, as a state
ofa future anterior 'of which death is the stake'. The latter provides the cue
for Barthes' response to a photograph of his mother with yet further and
more direct resonance with the words of Kracauer: 'I tell myself she is going
to die: J shudder, like Winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which
has already occurred. Whether or not the subj ect is already dead, every
photograph is this catastrophe.' I \
As I argue below, Barthes' attempt to account for ti,e distinctive
phenomenology of the photographic image through such contortions of
grammatical tense as that of the notion of a future anterior has not always
led to discussions of photography with such equally complex analytical
ambitions. What needs to be stressed in th e present context, however, is that
Barthes reRections on photography contained in Camera Lucida and which
in essence are concerned with time (as much as they are inseparable from
the sub ject of death) are conducted in direct dialogue with the medium of
film. Indeed, those passages of the text in which he tackles the issue of the

photograph's temporality contain repeated references to the cin ema and it is

clear that fo r Barth es it is only in the comparative distinction with the moving
image that photography finds its inimitable identity. The term s of this
argument had been laid out much earlier in writing on photography in The
Rhetoric of the Image where he had described the unique temporal register of
the photograph as being forged in 'an illogical conjunction between the herenow and the there-then. ' From which he goes on to deduce that
the photograph must be related to a pu.re spectatorial consciousness and not
to the more projective, more magical fictional consciousness on whi.ch film by
and large depends. This would lend authority to the view that the distinction
between film and photograph is not a simple difference of degree but a radical
opposition. Film can no longer be seen as animated photographs: the havingbee n-there gives way before a being-there of the thing... "

Bartlles' own preferences fe ll sha rply on one side of this divide. Hi s

dislike of narrative forms, which demand of the reade r th at he submit to
the irrevers ible Row of lin ear time, is in stark contrast to his fascination
with the stasis of the photograph th at allows for a n unrestrained mode of
co ntemplation. Thus when Barthes chooses to write about film he directs
his attention to the film-sti ll , the individual photogram , that - once isolated
from the Aux of its apparent a nimation - 'scorns logical time'. 15
Leaving aside these persona l prejud ices Barthes writing on photograph y
needs to be understood in terms of what it ta kes [rom, and gives ba ck, to film
theory. As regards the former there is the unacknowledged debt to Andre
Bazin. Like Kraca uer's Theory of Film, Bazin's major work What is Cinema?
opens with an essay devoted to photography. 'The Ontology of the
Photographic Image' serves to lay the theoretica l foundations for Bazin's
particular theory of cinematic realism. Products of th e same technical means
of image production, photography and film partake in the unprecedented
ability of the camera not only to reproduce the mere appearance of something but to capture the thing itself: 'No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or
discolored, no matter how lacki ng in docum entary value the image may
be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the
model of which it is the reproduction ; it is the model.' '" This said, however,
photograph and film diverge as to realism's relationship to time. Photography's realism is one that assumes a particular spatio-temporal character,
one that Bazin implies through opening his essay with reference to the
origins of the visual arts in the primitive 'practice of embalming the dead'.
Just as such funeral effigies attempted to preserve the appearance oflife 'to snatch it from the Row of time' - so the photographs in a family album
testify to 'th e di sturbing presence of lives halted at a set moment in their

14 RoLuld H.J rlhc';, 111('

RIlf'IOII! elf the Im,lgl'> II til',.

Stephen ! h',llb, IlIlIIe!' M!I\II

/, \/ I tlnl,lIIil. lfJ77. P

l sl?nl.1Il0 B;u\ IH',> I hr llilid

1\.1\'.1111 u. Ibid

P./IX

16 Andrp Bcl/Ill 1 h(' OntDlugy

of til!' Phologriplll( IlTIdgl',

III

lilt,

(01/11'0

J. Wlltmg\ 1)11 rw,'nfll"l/l

Ct 'JIm'll PI/()lolglCllliry Vohm c
VWL-I'I

C'd Perlin III R. P{'trwk, Dullol\.

New YOlk, p.14).

duration, freed from the destiny'." 'Film', on the other hand, 'is no longer
content to preserve the eject, enshrouded as it we re in an instant, as the
bodies of insects are prerved intact, out of the dis ta nt past, in amber. The
film delivers baroque arirom its convu lsive catalepsy.''"
If all of this foretells arthes, hi s own formulation of the having-been-there
of the photograph as oPlsed to the being-there of the fi lm , was taken up by
his one-time student Chstian Metz. Seizing on Barthes' notion that the
photograph can neve r teify to the presence of the obj ect but only to the
fact of its once havi ng bm prese nt, Metz adva nces the a rgument tha t fi lm
ove rcomes th is lim itatioand presents us with an im pression of reality
which is so much more ivid': 'Th e movie s pectator is absorbed, not by a
"has been there", but by sense of "The re it is"'. And the reason that film
is able to convince us o[Je actua l presence of something, Me tz argues, is
because of th e appearan' of move ment. The reasons that Metz offers for
this are main ly twofold. lrstly, by presenting us with successive images
of ob jects existing withi 8pace, movement le nds the m a greater sense of
corporeality (which for m is the meas ure of the real) . In addition, however,
Metz argues that whilst e might assu me that, ra ther as the photograph can
only offer a trace of wha1aS been, so the film can on ly be 'the trace of a
past motion', spectator always sees movement as being
present' ." The reason fothis, Metz agues, is that whil st the differentiation
between materia l propeJt:s of a n object and the form in which th ey appear
within visual representa>n are easily proven to exist - the latter cann ot for
example be touched, an(actility for Metz is the most obvious means by
which we ca n distinguis between the object a nd its image co py - such a
distinction 'dissolves on le threshold of m otion." Motion, as it were, ca n
never be represented, it always motion_
Because movement is ,ver material but is always visual, to repmduce its
appearance is to duplite its reality. In truth, one cannot even "reproduce"
a movement: one can .ly re-produce it in a second production belonging to the
same order of reality,J the spectator, as the first. It is not sufficient to say that
film is more "living", "re "animated" than still photography, or even that
filmed objects are mor:materialised". In the cinema the impression of reality
is also the reality of irr.-ession, the real presence of motion. 'I
Wh ilst for Metz - ag)r Kracauer and Bazin - cinema is technologically
and aes thetically depenot upon photography, ulti mately it is seen as
ontologically quite The differences between the two mediums
appear as stark a nd abs(lte: on the one hand we have movement that not
only is prese nt but also 1ds to the inlage a 'presence' that is associated
wi th life. and . on tit ' otlr hand , we have a moment frozen in time and a n

immobili ty that is lodged within an ever-receding past that can on ly testifY

to an absence that carries with it the s pectre of death.
This perception is not limited to writers discussed here. No r is it, I think,
simply confined to the relatively rarefied domains of film and photographic
theory. Yet clea rl y it is an orthodoxy that is open to being ch allenged, and
perhaps necessa rily so. In the case of the belie f in the ' presentness' of film
this is easily don e. Film s hares the same temporal properties of th e index
with the photograph and for all of its illusion of' here and now' the filmic
image is equa lly prey to the passage of ti me and the slow bu t inevitable
recess ion from now to the n. Consequen tly the s pectre of dea th hau nts the
moving images of Greta Garbo (if not the screen characters she played) as
much as it does the photograph of Barthes' mother.
The dominant perce ption of the 'pastness' of the photograph has proven
more intractable, pa rticularly in the shadow of th e cloying melancholi a of a
post-Ba rth ian era of photograph ic theory. El sewhe re I have argued tha t one
of the poss ible ways of countering this tendency lies with understanding the
photogra ph as a kind of perfonnative utte rance, a mea ns by which things
are not so much represented as simpl y designated. n The idea that the powe r
of photography is as an act of oste ntation , which bestows sign ificance on
something by poin ting to it, has consequences for how we conce ive of the
temporality of the image. An n Banfield has suggested that Barthes' attempt
to acco unt for the photograph in te rms of 'a n illog ica l conjunction between
the here-now and the there-then' might better be reform ulated as 'Th is was
now here'. " However, th ink ing of th e photograph's particular kind of
referentiality as analogous to deixis a nchors mea ning to the immediate
spatio-tem poral context of the com municative act and to that which is
immediately present. In other words 'This now here'. Thi s m ight lead us
to conjecture that it is poss ibl e to conceive of the ph otog raph as occupying
what has been referred to as an 'eternal present tense'. But perhaps be tter
still we m ight abandon the notion of te nse altogether and conclude that
what the photograph offers us is pLUely and simply 'This'.
Another way of exploring th e relationsh ip between time and the
photograph has been s uggested by Peter Wollen, who is also dubious as to
the exclusive association of the photograph wi th the past tense: 'Clea rly th ere
is no intrinsic 'tense' of the still image, any 'past' in contras t to the fi lmic
'present' , as has often been averred_ Still photography, like fi lm _.. lacks any
structure of tense, though it can order and dema rcate time.''' In his short
essay Wollen tentatively lays out a schema for the analysis of various kinds of
photography us in g what linguistic theorists refer to as 'aspect'. What theories
of 'aspect' allow fo r, accord in g to Wollen, is the description and analys is of

photographs in terms of 'states', 'processes' or 'events' in which notion s of

change and duration, of the ordering and dema rcation of time, of narrativity
and so forth , are still available but without necessa rily being enmeshed in
the ri gid polarisation of pas t and present tense. As Wollen implies, and what
many of the essays in this volume also s uggest, is that photograph y's
relations hip to time is a far mo re complex affai r than is often gra nted.
Something of that complexity might be glea ned from the study of those
phenomena in which one encounters the direct juxtaposition of the filmi c
and the photographic, of movement and stillness, as with Raymond Bell ou r's
analysis of the occurre nce of the image of the photograph in the certain
exa mples of class ica l narrative cinema. Whi lst Bellou r grants that photographs re presented as ob jects with in a film are used to adva nce a story
and that they are the refore caught up in the tim e of an unfolding narrative,
their appearance nonetheless is pro blema tic for the film 's dieges is. In the
exam ples he gives, the photograph is used as a n em blematic motif aro und
which the plot of the fil m might h inge (often at poi nts in the na rrative in
which th e pa ssage of time is being marked through acts of re membrance),
yet at precisely th is moment the temporal Aow of the film is a rres ted , its
narrative momentum sus pen ded , albei t brie Ay. At this point in which 'the
film seem s to freeze , to s uspend itself', the viewer is made aware of two
kinds of temporali ty, that wh ich belongs to the fi lm and the intrinsic forward
movement of the narrative, and that which is the time of viewing the film
and wh ich carries the phenome nological force of the here and now. Thus
paradoxically it is the photograph caught on fi lm that directs our attention
to the present - even as it fun ctions within the narrative of the film in
accordance with its predominant cu ltural form s to symbolize the past.

II

11"
\\ .1, AliI I,.

The p"esence of the photograph, diverse, diffuse, ambiguous. thus has the effect
of uncoupling the spect.ator from the image, even if only slightly, even if only
by virtue of the extra fascination it holds_ It pulls the spectator out of this
imprecise, yet pregnant force: the ordina,y imaginary of the cinema ... {tJhe
photo thus becomes a stop within a stop, a ji-eezeji-ame within a ji-eeze1mme;
between it and the fil m from which it eme"ges, two kinds of time blend together,
always and inextricable, but without becoming confused. "
Extending this argument, Garrett Stewart notes that Bello ur's analysis
is constrai ned by the cinematic phenomena he uses . The placing of a
pho tograph as an identifiable ob ject within the illu sory space of the film ,
even where that object may be co-extensive with the screen frame, whilst not
without ramifications for film's narrative spatio-temporal diegesis, u ltima tely
leaves it in place. What Stewa rt contrasts with thi s phe nomenon of an
i," al4l'-within -an -image is the in s t'ln C oftlw Inlc freezc-frame, where

'11... difference in question is between imaged motionlessness and the

" IIIIti o nless' image: '" It is only in the case of the latter, when the elemental
IIIIil of film itself - a s ingle photogram - is isolated and then multiplied and
l" I>j('cted that the critical interrogation of 'the ord inary imaginary of the
,1I11'1I1a' is trul y engaged. Since the freeze-fram e is actual stas is, and not
' II<'r.-iy its rep resentation, its appeara nce on the screen is a momen t of
III.IllI s. not on ly in the tempo ral momentum of the film' s narrative bu l also,
1"''''lIlially, in the illus ion of rea lity to which it is bound . The freeze-frame,
.1> ,'.II(,S Stewart, allows the possib il ity of cin ematic reAexivity; although
IIII O'r('stingly thi s is ach ieved thro ugh something that might be deemed not
III 1,,long to the medium of film and one tha t may ta ke us outside of the
1.11>1. With the freeze-fram e the fi lm images itself: Th e film has become,
',I> III s peak, trans pa rent to itself, bu t on ly in the m oment , and at the price,
" I ,I s G,ncelled succession, its negation as a moving pictu re.' 1.7
The notion o f reAexivity, whethe r one is concerned with film o r photoI\ ,.'pl, y or painting or whatever, has been central to theories of the medium ,
""1" '( i'llIy to ideas about medium s pecificity. Indeed, we can observe that il is
,n dy Ihrough reAex ivity - o r as Clement Gree nberg ca lled it a process of ' self
",ll( ism' - that il has bee n thought poss ible to identify those prope rties and
I 1,. II.I r leristics th at are peculiar and unique to it, in othe r words, to define its
I'ss' lI ce'. Yet, it wou ld seem from Stewart's exam ple of Ihe freeze- fram e that
1I'11 "xivity in fil m is bes t. or perhaps only, poss ible through the de ployment
II I " dl'vice that does not 'belong' to fi lm , one that run s counter to co mm on
,,,SI II II pi ions abou l the mediu m and the central ity of movement to it. Stasis
" ' VII Ilial stasis in va rious guises, ra nging from the lack of movement of the
" lIlIvr;r to the fixity of objects placed before it, has always been regarded as
III" II " 'matic, as for example in the case of the appea rance of th e ta blea u in
",I ' Iy l' ille ma, as well as later fi lms by Dreyer and Pa solini . But the sudden
,Ippv;rrance of the freeze-frame is, acco rdi ng to Stewart, such a fund amental
rr'[lime in the filmic text, that it creates a kind of acinema. But if th e freeze1, ,, " 1<' "I' the film does not belong to cinema is it photography? Or is it neither?
I Ihink that it would be fair to say both BelloUJ-'s and Stewart's arguments
' '' I'I,(;,l e the key assum ptions concerning the differences between photoII' ''1 ,h y and film that I have outli ned here. Botb, however, also suggest a
II iI '. 1I IS of movi ng beyond the counter-posing of these two mediums by means
II I ., 1I r:,noeuvre through which each becomes open to critique and analysis by
lill g il to le rms of reference drawn fro m the other. By proceeding on
II ... 1,.lSis ofa dia lectic rather than mere distinction the relationships between
1'1,,'hlWal'l,y and film , between the s till and Ihe moving image, are revealed
III ,I III'W li gh t. Ph ilippe Duboi s ma kes the poinl succin ctly:

26 GarrC'tt Stewart, 'Photo

gravUle: Death, Photography

Jnd rllm N arrative', W,df

Angle. Vo1.9. no.6. 1987. p.17
Stewart expanded the
fi rst ralc;cd In thiS [',>say In hi S
I.Her book Brtwei'IJ Film and
Srfr.CII Modern;sm 's PltolO
Sytl/l!rsis. UnlvNslty o( Chicago
Prcs,>, 1999. See dlso fHS essay
If1

till '> vo lun1e .

27 Ibid . P 19

, It

',I"",

I'"

'"

I think we have neIVer been in a better position to approach a given visual

medium by imagiming it in light oj another, through another, in another, by
another, or like ancother. Such an oblique, off-center vision can frequen tly offer
a better opening om to what lies at the heart oj the system ... The thing is to
practice this kind OJJ oblique, sideways approach deliberately. We might begin
with this simple id,ea: that the best lens on photography will be Jound outside
photography. Thu s;, to grasp something oj photography we must enter through
the door oj cinema' (though it may end up being rather the opposite). In short,
we must insert ourselves into the Jold (in Deleuze's sense), the intersection that
relates these two mledia so often deemed antagon istic. For example, is there
anything that tells us more or in a better way about the fUndamental stakes oj
the photographic i,maginary than, say, Antonioni's Blow Up, the hallmark
film i.n this area? (Or anything more central than Chris Marker's La Jetee Jar
understanding phOJtographically the nature oj cinema (and vice versa?). And
in theoretical and ,aesthetic terms, is the film frame (photogramme) not somewhere near the healrt oJthe Jold, in other words beJore an "un-nameable" object
that is simultaneOlusly beyond photography and beJore the cinema, more than
the one and less th,an the other, while being a little oj both at the same time. '"
What Dubois adwoca tes here as critica l method can I think be readil y
transposed to describe the practices of a number of contemporary artists
whose work might b,e described as exploring what lies 'between' photography
and film and the inters tices of the s ti ll and m oving image. Whi lst the
foundations for suchl an exploration were laid by a generation of artists
working within the p>aram eters of 'structura list' or 'materia list' filmmaki ng
in the ea rl y '970s, tme poss ibilities opened up by the technological
development a nd grea ter access ibil ity of video in the 1980s proved crucial.
As has often been noted the domestic VCR had a sign ificant impact upon
the premises and halbi ts of cinema spectato rship and te levision viewi ng. As
a recording dev ice true VCR freed viewers to watch what they wanted, when
they wanted. But in a.ddi tion to this ca pacity to 'time-shift', video machines
soon also offered the' means to manipulate playback. The abili ty to fast-forward
or reverse the Row off images, to vary the speed or freeze an individual 'frame',
or Simply to be able t(O easily and immediately re-view someth ing, fundamentally
altered our relationship to the screened image. In the hands of artists in
partirular the V CR b<ecame a tool with which to dismember the moving image
and, through that prrocess, produce new temporalities. It is not without
sign ificance that within the possibilities for the manipu lation of time opened
up by video it is expltoration of the processes by which the cinematic image
is slowed down or emtirely stilled that seem to have been a primary focus of
alieni ion amongsl con le mporary artisls. "J

More rece ntly digital technologies have further eroded the boundaries
I",lween the still and moving image in terms of their production, distribution
.1I1e1 rece ption. Whilst the same camera (and even most cell phones) is
" '1'able of recording movi ng and still images, perhaps the more far reac hing
,,, " seq uence of sud1 developments is th at we are more likely to encounter
1>,,1h kinds of image through the 'inte rface' of an electronk screen. Since
II is a rguable that a conception of photography in term s of the atomisation
"f li me, its freezin g of a singu lar mom ent isolated a nd abstracted from the
!\-Illporal Rowand posited as past, is coi ncident wi th the form of the
pholograph ic print as a pa lpable obj ect, we might as k what is the effect of
lIti s 'dematerialisation' of the photograph? Is it that stripped of its tangible
1l1,IIL'ria l support a nd its 'objectness' as someth ing that can be held in th e
1, ,11 1(1, the photograph as it exis ts on the mon itor screen appea rs to us
pnhaps as so mething more animate, more present?
Ii is clearly th e case tha t the rapid and dramatic technologica l cha nges
1i',11 "ave impacted u pon both the m ea ns for the production a nd
dISsem ination of the image have ma jor implica tions for the way in which
w,' ,'xperien ce and conceive of time, It also seems possible, pe rhaps likely,
11 1,,1 Ihe distinctions between the filmic and the photographi c, betwee n the
Illovillg and the sti ll image, that have dominated the domains of both fi lm
, II III photography theory until recently, will wither in the face of these
I"" found shifts in the complex technology of the visual. However, for the
""""cnl- and it is poss ibly both a brief and fragile moment - the notion of
II I<' ' ph otograph' and the 'film' remain with us and it would seem that with.in
II" s s pace the concept of the medium remain s necessary and useful.

Rea l Time: Instantaneity and the Photographic Imaginary

Marl' Ann Doane

-III 1898 Henri Poincare wrote, 'Whence comes the feeling that between
:lIl y two instants there are others?' Ironica ll y, this question , which takes for
granted the reality of the concept of the instant, emerged in the cou rse of
,III essay cha llenging the Bergsonian argument that we have an intuitive
' " Ide rstand in g of time, particularly of the notions of duration and
s ill1ultaneity, that ca n act .s the ground of a scientific epistemology.' But
11,0 instant, for Poin ca re, along with ou r notion of time in general , was a
Illoroughly psychological concept and remained unproblematic only so long
.IS it remained within subj ectivity, within consciousness. An in stant was a
' rl'lI1embrance capable of classification in time.' It had nothing to do with
11 1l' present but was in stead steeped in memory, the antithesis of life and
I'rc'scnce: 'It is only wh en tbey tbus have lost all li fe that we can classify our
II ",mories in time as a botanist arranges dried fl owers in hi s herbarium."
0 111' slrong sense of the continuity of time is based on a wager that our
II " '1I10 ries are finite and can never blanket tbe whole of time, that between
" " r rne mories o f any two instants, there will always exist more.
II is striking that Poincare aligned the instant so intimately with memory,
d, alil . the inorganic, and the past at the moment wh en the cinema was
1"' llSfo rm ing the past instant of photography into a form of scin tillati ng
1" "so nce, of fluid and life-like mobility. Until ,895 it was photography that
W.IS Ih c privileged representational technology for the visualization of time,
II ", illdexical guarantee, as Roland Barthes would have it, ofa 'that-has11''1"11 .'' But the cinema, with its celebrated ability to record movement,
'WI i:dized photographic instants, in1buing them with an invisibility crucial to
II,, IIlaintenance of its illu sion. Th e instant - embodied in the fi lm frame II II lSI di sappear in order fo r movement to emerge. Nevertheless, I will arg ue
11,.11 11 01 only is the stiLi image the material substrate of the film medium but
liS .IS pi ralion to in sta nta neity, its id eologica l investment in transforming time
1111 " a Iypc of property, a langible co m modity, shadows the cinema and
1".,, 1,,, 0111 to inform a contc mporary di gitali zed u nd ers tanding of
II 'tllpora lil y we ll.

I Henri PO Il1(MC. I

M('a'iw('

or, In1<',

Jav Gould ed

Itl

S lC'phl'l1

1I1!' V(lI'H' oj

Snfl1(T'

oj

HUlli Poimflrt:, The Modern

Ilbr'HY. New Yo rk. Jon\. p JlI

3 Rol.Hld Banhts (milt III

IUlldo, Ir,lfl, Ri( h,uJ
Ilow.lrd. Hili and Wang,
NL'W YOlK, H)R'. P n

Figure 2

Oag Alveng , The Photographer

Shoots Hims elf. 1981 .

I" II
II

,.,

III

Instantaneity today seems most persistently and compellingly incarnated

in the concept of 'real time', which is ubiqui to us, used primarily to convey
a sense of the ca pabilities of new media, of new computer technologies
wi th specific and di stinctive relations to tem porality. Th e Oxford English
Dictionary (Second Edition , ' 989 ) defin es real time as 'the actua l time
during which a process or event occurs, esp. one analyzed by a computer,
incontrast to time subsequent to it when computer process in g may be done,
a recording replayed, or the Hke.' In othe r words , rea l time is the time of
the now, of the 'taki ng place' of events - it is specifically opposed to the
subsequent, the 'after.' Idea ll y, in rea l time, there would be no gap between
the ph enomenon and its analysis. Current defi nition s of real time tend to
emphasize speed of respon se or reaction time, sugges ting th at in te ractiv ity,
or the aspiration to interactivity, is what distinguishes computer real time
from film or televi sion real time e.g., ' rea l time operating systems are
systems that respond to input immed iately"'; 'Real time is a level of computer
res ponsiveness that a user sen ses as s ufficiently immediate or tha t enables
the com puter to keep up with some external process ..." However, these
de finiti ons of computer real lime also expansively include those of film
and television as well. Rea l time in di gital terms would then include both
continu ity (the one to one relation between film time and everyday time
promised by the cinema) and instantan eity (the speed of access, the
simultaneity of event and reception prom ised by television) . But in addition,
digita l real time, thmugh the concept of interactivity, welds the user's time to
the concept of rea l time. The lure of the inte rnet is the lure of connectivity,
of being in touch, of synch ronicity, and of ava ilab ility - 24/7/365: 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In this way, although the space of th e
internet m ay be superbly virtual, its time lays claim to the real.
The concept of real time is itself. of cou rse, a denial of med iation, of the
very presence of the technology. Indeed, it is arguable tha t the concept of
th e real, and hence of real time, only emerges with capitalism's historical
in sistence upon an intensified mediation . ' Real time' is compensatory - it
makes up for a lack produced by represen tations at a distance, deracinated
representations, which appear to circulate freely. ' Real time' allows the
s ubject to experience the time of the event's own happening, any technical
te mpora l difference bei ng reduced to a ba re minimum. The very idea of a
time that is real presupposes an unreal time, a technologically produced
and mediated time. ' Rea l time' suggests that represented time (whether
mechan ica l, electronic, or digital) can be asymptotic to the instantaneous with no delay, no di stan ce, no deferral. And , as Jacques Derrida has pointed
Oil!. only lechn ics ca n bring out the ' re:,( tim e effect.

An extraordinarily extended tech nical re producibility selves to mimic

living Aux, the irreversible, spontaneity, that which carries singularity away
in the movement of existence withou t return . When we watch televis ion , we
have the impression that something is happe ning only once: thi s is not going
to happen aga in , we th ink, it is 'living,' live, rea l time, whereas we also know,
on the other hand , it is being produced by the strongest, the most
sophi sticated repetition machines."
The difficulty for Derrida, of course, is th at thi s effect of real time is only
an intensification o f that which always already characterizes our sense of the
present moment or presence in general: the play of diffi rance is the guarantee
that this presence is always riven by delay and deferral. The ques tion is,
however, what constitutes the historica l s pecificity of thi s techno logically
mediated rea l time, what is the lure of its prom ise of instantaneity, of its
disavowal of repetition, its insistence that events happen 'only once'?
The hi storica l predecessor of tl,is desi re for instan taneity is undoubtedl y
photograph y, but not photogra phy in its ea rl iest forms, with its e mphasis
upon the impress ions and durability of tracings of light but photog raphy as
it strove for the reg is tration of the smalles t unit of time, the fa stest poss ible
shutter s peed, and the fix in g of movemen t in th e constrain ed framework of
the ins tant. Around 1880, the introduction of gelatin-silver bromide plates
made possible snaps hots with an exposu re time of 1/25 of a second, reorie nting photogra phy towa rd the instan tan eous, those mome nts of time or
of movemen t that were not necessa rily ava ilable to the naked eye. For Walte r
Benjamin, the quintesse nti al actio n of modernity was the sna pping
of th e cam era :
Of th e countless movements of switching, inserting, pressing, and the like, the
'snapping' of the photographer has had the greatest consequences_ A touch of
the finger now sufficed to fix an event fo r an unlimited period of time. Th e
camera gave the moment a posthumou s shock, as it were.'
Yet, for Benjamin , the re was something obscene about the
insta ntaneous, the contraction of time to a point, tl,e speed and consequent
oblivion associated with bolll urban space and modern technologies - hence
hi s nostalgia for th e daguerreotype with its relentless duration , as Illough the
slowness of an etching were required to do justice to the pecu lia r qualities
and texture of light. The daguerreotype was a los t object for modern ity,
,,(ways already historical and of anotl,er age; it not only took time but it
(' ndured in the midst of an era already committed to the ephemeral. its value
was a fu nction of the slowness of its exposu re, its status as a kind of work.
For Benjamin th e re was something pre-modern about the sheer length of
I illlc required fo r a sitt ing: 'Th e proced ure itself ca used the s ubject to focu s

()ernd,.
<Hid BCffWd

[liIOf,/ilI'JIII S 1J

rrrt'l"

lor

JrmHff"1 BJlor('k
Polity PII''JS. Celmbrlrlgl'
UK)o
PP 13L1 8<)

trd"

7 Walll'1 Bl'fllJmlf
1IIIIIIII1I(1/I(Om, Iran" H
Lohn.5rho<kE'n I\I,'W
York 1I)fJl). pp 174 II'

111'.1

1t1,11I

III ,

"I, IK6,

his life in the moment rather than hurrying on past it; during the
considerable period of the exposure, the subject as it were grew into the
picture, in the sharpest contrast with appearances in a snap-shot.. .'. The
da guerreotype could still be classed with that which lasts: 'the very creases
in people's clothes have an air of permanence', he noted.' The technique
itself of the sna pshot, on the othe r hand, its slavish em brace of speed and
the momentary, fits well with a throwaway cu lture and the reduced life span
of its information.
Beyond the question of tbe speed of the apparatus, the power of
instantaneous photography has always been aligned with the question of the
re presenta bility of movement. More sensitive em ulsions and faster shutte r
speeds enable the division of movement a nd gesture into their smallest
possible incre ments. Perhaps this is why instantaneous photography has
been consistently allied wi th a form of quasi-scientificity, a desire to analyze,
dissect, and break down movement into its barely recognizable, alien
co mponents - Mach's bullet, Muybridge's horses, Marey's birds. Muybridge's
photographs of horses in motion struck observe rs as ungainly, unaesthetic.
the obverse of notions of the beautiful - th eir uninviting authe nticity being
Ih eir most salient feature. Marey's obsession with the legible in stant led to
Ihe excision of any background detail and the reduction of the body to a
skeletal framewo rk in geometric chronophotography.
Yet the irony of in stantaneous photography is that its celebra ted capability
of representing movement is attained at the expense of movement's
petrification and paralysis. The perfect express io n of movement becomes
movement's own an tithesis. Perhaps this paradox explains why instantaneous
photography propelled mechanical reproduction into the era of the cinema ,
where movement looked like movement and a ny aspiration to scienti ficity
was sacrificed. Instantaneous photography both reveals and hence corroborates
Ihe stillness of the photogra phic image and acts as the condition of poss ibili ty
of the filmic illusion of movemen t.
In an attempt to unravel the complexity and the specific ity of photogra phi c temporality, Thierry de Duve argues that th ere are two apparently
se parate ca tegories of photographs th at in rea li ty merge and inform our
ex pe rience of any photograph: the snapshot and the time exposure. The
sn"pshot, in its punctual suddenness, is 'event-like.' The time exposure is
mos l exemplarily the funerary portrait (but could be any portrait), in which
'1I,e p"sttense freezes in a sort of infinitive.' The subject is dead, but forever
Ih ere, presen t. The time exposure is always haunled by the past, by
,'c rll el1lbra nce, by a work of mournin g. The snapsl,ol, on Ihe other ha nd,
" II, "odies" form of Ira lima lin ked 10 Ih c' ill "(lI'ss i"i lily " rlh l' presen l - we

.!

lilt

"I
'I'''I!V

,II.)
",pily
..

()o

,-"lilly

111,,,,

view the event or movement re presented before it is completed and

simultaneously long after it has happen ed. The discus that is being thrown,
frozen in the air, will never land, yet it has nevertheless already landed . The
trauma of the snapshot is hence ' the sudden vanishing of the present tense,
splitting into the contradiction of bein g simliltaneously too late and too
ea rly," much like Barthes ' reading of Alexander Gardner'S r865 Portrait of
Lewis Paylte: 'H e is dead and he is going to die ...'HI
Two pairs of photograph s help to layout these di stin ctions made by
de Ouve. In Oag Alveng'; The Photographer Shoots Hi msel{(r98 1), the
photogra pher'S nude body hovers precariously over a vast body of water,
perched on a clifT and seemingly headed in a dive [or the wa ter, his hand
gras ping the remote shutte r release that he has apparently just activated
(Figure 2). The pose is, indeed, an imposs ible one: a body on the edge,
defying gravity, in a position accessible only to instantaneous photography.
Or perhaps more accurately, this is the antithesis of a pose, since it ca nnot
be held for any length of time. Jul ia Marga ret Cameron's 1867 Portrait of john
Herschel (Figure 3), on the other hand, with its soft focus and attentiveness
to the com plex fea tures, Ja rticu larly the liquid eyes, of its subject, invites
extended con templation. Time is written into the image and it promises more
to the studious gaze. It is as i[the re were a depth to which the stillness of
the face gives access, but only through the expenditure of time. In Aaron
Siskind's Terrors and P/.easures of Levitatiolt (1961) the re is nothing to be
ga ined by prolonging the look. Th e photograph is grasped in an instant, its
signification exhau sted almost immediately (Figure 4). The body, like that in
Oag Alveng's image, is sus pended in mid air, never to be grounded. Without
background, it is furth er d isengaged from any natural order - simply there.
The shock of the instant lies in its implausibili ty. On the othe r hand , the
woman in a midnineteenth century daguerreotype (Figure 5) exudes
co mposure and stability, as though she had 'grown into the picture' in
Benjamin's terms. This :s a pose for a portrait and requi res all the stillness
the subject can muster. But in a sense this image, in its promise of
pe rmanence and endurance, anticipates and already instantiates her death.
While the sna pshot cakes movement as its refe rent but betrays it through
its petrification , the tim e exposure has stiLlness or dea th as its referent but
transforms it into a reCLrrent tem porality of m ourning or nostalgia. The
in stanta neity of the snapshot is like a blow: 'The snapshot steals the life
outside and returns it as death. This is why it appears as abrupt, aggressive,
and artificial, however cJnvinced we might be of its realistic accuracy.''' The
aes th etic o f the s napshot is sharpn ess of focus - the fas te r the shutter s peed,
th e ri ' per the outline or th e body in nlOVL'rnl'lI\' th e more strikin g its

Figure 4
Aaron Siskind, Terrors and
Pleasures oj Le",jtat;on, 1961.

111 pture of time's Aow. The so fter focu s of the time exposure, on the other
1!:lnd , is a sign ifier of time's du ration, of the tim e of im prin ti ng that
slIpports the leisure of con templation. According to de Ouve, our experience
or the photograph does not resolve this polar opposition between modes of
looking but ini tiates an oscillation , more or less weighted as the photogra ph
"'lIds toward the snapshot or the time exposure. The as piration of
IIlStantaneous photography, from this point of view, would be the dra ining
oi" all traces of the past and the atta inment of an impossible presence in the
,,,rill of an uneasy, stuttering balance between the past and tb e future.
Th e cinema, however, rejects the petrification of the snapshot by
'" lIcca lin g its ow n de pendency upo n the still image, the photogram. The
. I,, toric that greeted the cinema celebrated its inscription of movement, its
'tI ,.likl' prope rti es. It wa s life that was th e obsessive concern of biology and

The irreversible tempo ral Aow of fi lm ensures that its gras p by the
s pectato r IS never sure, that it constitutes only a Reeli ng memory that never
s labilizes. Much like life. The rei fied terms 'li fe-like', 'true-to-life', and the
"ppealto 'life itself' constitute the ultimate rebuttal, ce nsoring all argum ent,
"p pea it ng to a un iversal, undifferentiated, and undeniable experience s hared
I)ya ll .

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physiology in the ninetee nth century and movement was its prima ry
signifier. Marey, whose work was found ational for the emergence of ci nem a,
maintained that ' motion is the most apparent characte ristic of life ; it
manifests itself in all the functions; it is even the essence of severa l of
them.' '' The auto psy was therefo re incompatible with the study of living
systems; and ultimately, the dea th-like pose of pbotographic portra iture
resisted the desire to re present life. Life is an ti thetical to classification taxonomy is predicated upon the loss of li fe, th e dried-out Aowers of
Poincare's botan ist. Life is always aligned with that somewhat cacophonous
present that resists the red uction of complexity. In cinem atic projectio n, the
frameline that reveals the divis ion of time into distinct ins tants mus t vanish.
The eme rgence oflife as an epistemological category cen tral to modernity
is opposed by Foucau lt to a Classical period in which bein g is knowable
through an immense table of categories:
Classi.cal being was without flaw; lift, on the other hand, is without edges or
.,hading.... Being was posited in the perpetually analyzable space oj
representation; lift withdraws i"to the enigma oj a Jorce inaccessible in its
esse /l ce, apprehendable Dilly ill 11,. e.Do,IS il. makes here arid tltere to manifest
lIllll IIWill la; 1'I

itself1 \

Nevertheless, as has been provocatively argued by Garrett Stewart, the

' p<,ctre of death embod ied in the individual fi lm frame does not cease to have
'I s e ffects. " The hau nti ng of fiJm by photography is structu ral: as Deleuze
[lilillts out, 'the cin ema is th e system whi ch reprodu ces movem ent as a
IIIlI elion of any- in stant-whatever, that is, as a fun ction of equidi sta nt instants,
, .. lecled so as to create an impression of continu ity.' '' Technically, the cinema
W.IS h,stoncally dependen t upon the inve ntion of instanta neous photography.
1\ IIlllhroughout ,ts own history it has conSis tently returned to photography
.IS " pl'lvlleged gene rator of epi stemolOgica l di lemma s that cannot fail to
I' ",1:1I11inate film as a form as wel l. We may cons ider here fi lm s as diverse as
1\ "1 ,,"io ni 's Blow-Up, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Ho Uis Frampton 's Nostalgia,
,II ILl M,chael Snow's Wave/ength, where the photograph cons titutes the
I", ,,"ise ofa plu mbable depth but while offering only the opacity of an
III'lw ilelrable surface, reducible to increas ingly unreadable units.
Yd . in these film s, photography is theme, s ubj ect matter, or content.
,',. d.-l y_ell sconced with in the image or na rra ti ve, photography is dealt with as
" " II,k-rior discourse , the object of the film's more knowing analysi s. Films
Ii '.01 O' " acl the inextricabili ty of cine ma and the photographic, on the other
" ,II,d . rev.eal more expl icitly what is at stake fo r the cinema's inscription of
II II'l'o ral ,ty. The best known exam ple, perhaps, is Chris Marker 's La JeUe
("'(" .). whose narra tive about time, m emory, a nd a dysto pic future is
" "" I" i,,,<./ of a series of mostly still images, each instantaneo us, each
"'l'ly'" g a co ntinuing actio n or event, yet oruy one of which co ntai ns any
I""VI" " " " I: when the woma n of the protagonist's ch ildhood me mo ry, lying
II I",d. " pens he r eyes to behold the s pectator. This moment of imag istic
It''II ''<lI :''''C 'ly ma rks the event of movem ent as erotic in its presence and
II" " "'1"''' y. so mehow outside of time. The filmin g of ind ividual fram es of
Iii", III 1.11 Jl'li" ris ks an infinite mise-en-a byme, a vertigi nous oscillation of
'1IIIv" II"'III a nci s tilln ess. It is the ci nematic imitation of stasis, the
1II", .rI ". '1 i,," of Ih e cliche, 'ti me stands s till .' This apparently avant-garde
I IItll. dll l l , II()wcve r. characleri zes mom ents in even the m ost conventional of
IIIII' N, wl"' " "vl' r Ihe cine ma mim ics ph otog rap hy, sacrifici ng its tru mp card
" IIIII )VI' II" 'III 10 pa y hom age to sli ll ness. II is a rguabl e that thi s hap pens
III' III 'VI" 11,, 1''' is a close-up. an e nlargeme nl a nd. frequ e nll y a freezing o f

14 C,lrreH I)lewarf.

Between Fil,-n Dnd Screen

Modcrmsm's Photo Sytlthesis,

The Un iversity ofChrcago
Press. Chicago, 1999
15 Gilles Oeleuze, Cmemo

1;

The Movement Image,

Iran!> Hugh Tomlinson

cind BarbiuiI Habberlam

University of M IIlnesota
Press, Mmcapof.!>, H)86,

space at the expEnse of the forward movement of the narrative. In Rouben

Mamoulian's Q"een Christina (1933) , the final shot is a slow track in to an
extremely tight close-up of Garbo who, having lost both lover and country,
takes up her resolute position at the helm of the ship. All movement is
marginalized, only by the wisps of hair and collar blowing in the
wind, but the fa (e itsel f has the inertness of marble. (Figure 6) In its tightest
position, the c!o;e-up reveals a face whose mobility is not compromised by
the sLightest tic, thwarting even the blink of an eye that signifies cinema in
La Jetee. Here Wi are con fronted with the cinema's mimicry of photography:
in this case, of tpe time exposure discussed by de Duve. The close-up in this
instance blocks :he conve ntional access to interiority provided by the face
while making trat interiority more mysterious and desirable thIDugh its
unreadability, itl refusal to be written across the feature s.
More recenuy, some contemporary artists have directly confronted the
dialectic of stasS and m obility that informs photography, cin ema, and newer
time based technologies such as video, television, and digital media. For
example, Marti, Arnold's Cinemnesis series, especially hi s piece touchee
(19 8 9), directly engages with the radical tension between stillness and
movement whi,h subtends the cinema. Arnold uses a homemade optical
pri nter to disseit motion into its s mallest cinematic compo ne nts and to
experiment will varying speeds and with the repeti ti on of frames so that
movement seens to vibrate, to pulsate, to stutter. In piece touchie, for
instance, an 18,econd shot fro m The Human Jungle (Joseph M. Newman,
'954) is stretchld to fill the 15 minu te duration of the film. Arnold deliberately
chose one of most banal and familiar of Hollywood domestic scenes a husband retu'ning home from work, greeting and kissin g hi s patiently
wa iting wife. (Bgure 7) But everyday actions that form the banal infrastl1lcture
of narrative, su:h as opening a door and enterin g a room, seem interminable
as bodies moveforward and backwa rd in incremental stages, and photogramsinstead of smo.th ly accumulati ng in the service of the illusion of movement
_ see m to collile. The work of the optical printer translates each movement
into a potential catastrophe, a neurotic gesture revealing a profound psychic
di seq uilibrium Arnold describes the experience of watching another scene
['rom thi s film )Il a computerized projector, 'At a projection s peed of four
fram es per sec>nd the event was thrilling; every min imal movement was
tran sformed irto a small concuss ion.''' In dislocating the frame from its
II orma lized lin'ar trajectory, piece touchee reasserts the explosive instantaneity
"tthe hea rt of:inema tic co ntinuity. The recur renl fru stration of the
""co mpleted r,ovcment he re mirrors Ihal of Iltc inslanta neo us photograph.
i\n,o ld's work in il s perve rse rc-e mbodi' ''''III (If III\' d" sire IIf Marcy and

Mllybridge, seems to literalize Ben jam in's 'optical unconscious.' The goa l
I,('re is to see differently, indeed, to see more. Yet, in the process of
dismantling the deceptive naturalness of cinematic movement, the films
II'vcal that movement's grounding in a spastic mechanicity, a series of violent
Ilisia ntaneities masquerading as flow.
In a somewhat different vein, Ute Friederike Jurss, makes use of digital
'" ln positing to produce a video installation, You Never Know the Whole Story,
wllich models itself upon a series of still photographs derived from newspaper
jlllirnalism. The verisimilitude the piece strives for is a form of media
1I'"lism, a fidelity to newspaper photography. In a structure reminiscent of
" Ill/J/ea." vivant, the figures in the video (all played by Jurss herself) assume
IIi<- poses of the figures in the journalistic photos, appearing to be caught in
111 l' Inidsl of an event, on the brink of an action , much like the sub jects of
IIl sl:rlll ancous photography. Only here, the medium o f video imparts a sense

Figure 6
Film still, Queen Christina,

Rouben Mamoulian, '933-

11m

of prese nce through the slight wave rin gs and tremblin gs of the figures, the
occasio nal blink of an eye. It is strikin g that the presence or absenceofa
blink of th e eye should be so critical to texts as diverse as Queen Chnstma,
La Jetee, and You Never Krww the Wfwle Story and that it should act as the
primary s ignifi er that we are in the prese nce of a time-based medIum. For
the idiomatic phrase, ' in the blink of an eye', is colloqUially understood as
instantaneity, immedi acy. Fus ing the body and temporality, that bhnk IS the
corpo real measure of time's minimal uni t. You. Neve r Know the Whole StOlY
invokes the look of ' real time' or live broadcastll1g and alt ICulates It WI th
the stasis of journalisti c photography, which pu rpo rts to present s pecial ,
exem plary moments, poses that concisely stand in fo r the newsworthy event.
As Ursula Frohne points out, 'This "real time" effect IS evoked and even
deliberately manipulated by the superfic ial qu alities of the ima ges shown
here, but the promise is never delivered. For images that have the texture
of electro nic broadcasting m edia, but do not move , are an unusual
P. llIy By',,,,
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ex pe rience for us.' 17

Why does photog raph y find itself at the turn of the twenty-firs t century
the object of a sustained mimicry o n the pa rt of medIa that have apparently
s u rpassed it technically in the ir access to a heightened effect of the real?
Photographic ins tan taneity would seem to be antIthetICal. to what we call
timc-based m edia, which , beginning with cinem a then Vldeo and televIsIOn
'I!ld now di gital media have the dis tincti ve ca pability of represenbng
movement and duratio n. It m ight producti ve to look more closely at the

co ncept of instan taneity and its mea nings across the diffe re nt media. In
Glm and photograph y, ins tantaneity names the relatio n between the object
(u sually in motion) and its represe ntatio n - the time lag between the event
:rnd its record shrinks so tha t th ey becom e, ideall y, s imul tan eous. The event
'lIId its record take place in the sa me mom ent. Instantaneity here is a
1'lI1ction of the productio n of the image or ima ges . Yet in the context of
th eir reception, that pinpointed temporality orthe regis tratio n of the image
heco mes palpable as hi storica l trace, which is why photographs and lilm s
so visibly. This is tl,e pressure of de Duve's time exposure, where the
rderent of the photo is tinged by the past tense and dea th. There is a sense
III which ins tantaneity in ph otogra ph y and fil m is unreal ti me, beca use it
.dways confounds presence and pas tness (and this may be why the OED
III'lkes no m entio n of' rea l time' in film, des pite the fa ct that the te rm is
wid ely used with re ference to unedi ted film) . There is in each case the
present te nse of receptio n - I ca n hold this photograph in m y ha nds now
(li s tangibility readil y differe ntiating it fro m the cine ma) . Or, in th e case of
Irlm , I am the s pectato r of these images of movement here, now, with all the
prl'se nee usually acco rded to moveme nt. On th e other hand , th ere is also the
II ,,'vi table pa st ten se of a reco rdin g th at is a lso a reiteration , of inscribing the
I" ,ces of an event that can be circulated and witnessed fa r fro m the place
,lIld ti me of its o ri gina l occurre nce. Fo r Andre Bazin , thi s was the latent
"hsceni ty of the film mediu m: although all even ts are Singula r, they happe n
II IIl y o nce, film makes them repeatable. Ba zin links cine matic s pecificity to
,I sla ndal, that of the repeata bility of the unique: ' ( ca nno t repea t a si ngle
II lo rnent of m y life, bu t cine ma ca n repea t a nyo ne of these mome nts
IlILklinitely before m y eyes.''' Thi s is particularl y true, for Ba zi n , of dea th
.!IILI the sexual act, each ' in its own way the absolute negatio n of ob jecti ve
1"",,, the quali ta ti ve insta nt in its purest for m .' The mechan ical rep roductio n
.. I lli ese momen ts that are superbl y unrepeatable co nstitutes a violation , a n
IIllSll nity, not of a moral nature but of an o ntological on e.
Whil e instantaneity in photography and film names a relatio n of
Nllllilitaneity between the event and its recording, live televi sion conside rably
II,II "fo rms its purview. In live television (no lo nger ' real' but ' live' - a mark
111 till' depth and in te nsity as well as the ' nowness ' of its reality), the event,
ItKIl'cu rdin g, its tra ns missio n and its reception are virtuall y s imul ta neous.
I t " to ry is collapsed o nto the present mo ment. The confusion between
Plt 'St' llt " nd pas t in film a nd photog raphy is avoided by evacuating the very
" ''' 'gory of pas tness - he nce the oxymo ron ' telepresence' . Live televis ion
ll" II I,,,,t cs in st" nta nc ity as characteri s tic of both productio n a nd reception .
W,I" Ilili g " n eve nt live, pa rti cu larl y a cata s tro phic eve nl, is a q uali tat ively

18 Andre B,llIn, 'D('J\h Every

AftclIloon, trans. M ..uk A

Cohen. Riles oj

on COIpOfW/ Cirll,ltw
Ivone Margull1.''i, Duke

pd.

Ur1l'ver';!ty Press. Durhil1l1

Mid London, P30

.",,

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"II'
V.

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different experience thanltching it 'recorded ea rlier', underscoring the

televisual impression thalings happen 'only once'. Digital media, capable
of representing all previo1forms of real time, further intensifies the alliance
of instantaneity with receon through the phenomenon of interactivity,
in which the user, by sim pressing a key or clicking a mouse, can make
something happen seemily immediately. Benjamin's snapping of the
photographer has movedrm the realm of production to that of reception .
The event becomes that che user's engagement with the tech nology.
Yet, in all of these me of modernity and postmodernity, what is at
stake is some form of temral coincide nce, of si multaneity, as the mark
of the rea l. And tend to think of simultaneity as an ahistorical,
abstract concept, it is in c sense produced in the nineteenth century as
a function of industrializan, colonialism, and as the product of a new
physics as well as social [sics of time. In the r898 essay The Measure oj
Time mentioned previom Poincare contests the idea of a Newtonian
absolute time and insteaGpouses the idea of a mu ltiplicity of times, none
of which can be labeled <urate. One of the consequences of thi s argument
is that the concept of simaneity has no scientifi c groundin g beca use
we cannot 'reduce to oneld the same measure fa cts which transpire in
different worlds.''' To do requires the th eologica l hypothes is of an infinite
being who could see evening and class ify it all in its own time. Yet the
hypothesis is self-contradory since such a being would have to possess an
imperfect recollection of past - otherwise everything would be present to
it and it could have no ccprehension of time. According to Poincare, the
measurement of time is ,ays compromised , subject to forces we ca n never
fully account for, and wen have no direct intuition of simultaneity or of
the equality of two dura tis. Instead, simultaneity can only be the effect of
a rule governed structurene which is seldom acknowledged. According to
Peter Galison, Poincare'Sleculation s about simultaneity are inextricable
from the extensive materization of simultaneity in the nineteenth and
ea rly twe ntieth centuries Ie establishme nt of train systems, mapping
procedures, time-bearingbles, and the sta ndardization of time.'o With
global exploration and tholonialist enterprise, synchronization of clocks
beca me impe rative; time'erywhe re must be the same. Hence, just as
simultaneity is discreditot the scientific level, transformed into - as it
we re - a virtual effect, it comes an insistent and compelling cultural desire,
its lure a symptom of ca plist expansion, its fan tasy materialized in new
technologics of rc presenion such as photography and film.
Onc ollid arguc Iha lis desire and this fanta sy go back even further, to
Ih e adve nl ofprill ll l'chl1>gies , bUI in particular 10 the growth of the daily

newspaper (which ultimately becam e one of the most privileged domains

of instantaneous photography). According to Benedict Anderson, 'the
development of print-as-commodity is the key to the generation of wholly
new ideas of sim ultaneity'" that ultimately underwrite the imaginary
community of the nation and the ph enomenon of nationali sm. With the
secularization of time, a theological time of vertical simultaneity in which
cverything is known at once by Divine Providence is replaced by Benjamin's
'homogeneous, em pty time', in which 'simultaneity is, as it were, tran sve rse,
cross-time, marked not by prefigu ring and fulfillment, but by tem poral
coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar.''' This new time is
incarnated, above all, in the novel and the newspaper. The novel, in its
development of parallel times and its extended gloss on the term 'meanwhile',
depends upon a temporality inaccessible to its characters and existing only
in the mind of the reader. The logic of the newspaper's juxtaposition of the
IIlOSt varied and incompatible stori es resides in the fact that they all
happened on the sa me day, today (hence the rapid obsolescence of 'yesterday's
IIcwspaper'). In addition, the newspaper generates anothe r form of
sim ultaneity - that of its own rituali sti c reading: 'each communica nt is well
"wa re that the ceremony he perform s is being re plicated simultaneously by
Ihousands (or mill ion s) of others of whose existence he is confiden t, yet of
whose identi ty he has not the slightest notion.'ZJ The idea of temporal
sim ultaneity subtends that of an imagined but powerful national identity.
Time is said to be a preoccupation of modern ity, of Proust, Bergson ,
Thomas Mann, while what characterizes postmodernity, particularly in the
.1rguments of Fredric Jameson, is the erasure of temporality and history and
Ih e emphasis upon space. Indeed, postmodernity is said to mark the 'end of
h'lIlporality' and its reduction to a presen t whose incoherence is a function
"I' Ihe loss of any pa st or future to which it can be opposed. This is the era of
Il, c cell phone, that 'seeming apotheosis of synchronous immediacy', when
'some new nonchronological and nontemporal pattern of immediacies
I OIlICS into being.''' [t is somewhat ironic that Jameson find s the aesthetic
III GlI'nation of this fetishi sm of instantaneity in a film , a product of the
lIillcteenth century, rather than in a televis ion show or in digital media . The
ItllIl is an action movie, Speed (r994) , which consists primarily ofa series of
violent or thrilling moments - 'a succession of explosive and selfsufficient
pr('scnt mome nts of violence.''' Jameson refers to it as 'violence pornoH'" phy' to sugges t the well known te ndency of pornography to minimalize
1'101or na rrative in favor of vignettes of sexual activity. It is this dependence
"1'''" Ihe self-suffi cie nt instant that makes the fi lm symptomatic o f the
""1:"l ion o ft emporalit y spccifi c to bt l' ca pitalism.

2 1 Bt'npdl( t

Andp,.,on

Cmll/lI/lIlIlIt'S

Vl'r,>u Lundon.

23 II

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Yet, is n't this tendency to valorize violent in stan ts re mini scent of

ins tantaneous photography, of de Duve 's snaps hot with its abruptness and
aggressivity (rega rdless of content)? Of in stantaneous photography's des ire
for an imposs ible presence? Or perhaps it echoes the ex plosive instantaneity
at the hea rt of filmic continuity that sometimes eme rges as a forma l
mediation on th e photogram. What Jameson sees as a di stinctive trait of
postmode rnity - the reduction to the present and the body - ca n also be
located in the proj ects of Marey and Muybridge, for whom the probl em ,
approached by way of instantaneous photography, becomes how to theorize
the instant, how to think the poss ibility of its re prese nta tion . Both
photography and film deal with the problematic and co ntrad ictory task of
ardliving the prese nt - of producing the oxymoron that continues to hau nt
contempora ry media - a historic present. It is arguab le tha t our inclination
to thi nk of new periods (such as postmoderni ty) as a form of ru pture, as a
com plete break with the past, is itself a symptom of mod ernity, obsessed as
it was, or is, with pure presence and the annih ilation of tradition. The
problema tic relation to time that Jameson find s so spec ific to pos tmodern ity
e merged much ear li er in the technica l and psychi cal pursuit of in stantan eity.
What I have atte mpted to do he re is to trace a preh istory of the concept
of instantan eity th at rests on the re fu sa l to recogn ize it so lely as th e property
of our alleged postmodernity. To assume that real time is only the time of the
computer age is to e ffectively era se a hi s tory of fa sci natio n with the concept
toge th er with the ve ry process whereby time became potentia lly unrea l.
The logics of the televisual and the digital a re not so foreign to those of
photography and film; and the ce lebrated rupture of the poslmodern may be
no more than a blip on the screen of a modern ity that, from its beginn ings,
sought the assurance of a rea l s ignified by life and pursued a dream of
in stantan eity and a present without memory.

Sti llness Becoming: ReAections on Bazin , Barthes and Photographic Stillness

Jonathan Friday

Stilln ess becoming alive, yet still

Theodore Roethke

If one thinks of photograp hy, as it is ofte n tem pting to do, from a pe rs pective
in wh ich this m ed ium's qua li ties are primaril y ide ntified through a co ntrast
with cinema, then the s tillness of the photographic medium is almos t too
trivial a matter to merit se riou s exam ination. But th en the cinematic
conception can exe rcise s uch an inAue nce that it obscures other co nception '
of photographic stillness , blinding us to th e multifaceted natu re of this
'1 lla lity. Long be fore th e invention of cine ma, for exa mple, photograph y wa s
"ssociated with stillness in a way that oth e r pi ctorial media we re not. In th e
co ri y days of the medium , before th e wides pread adoption of hi gh-speed
cameras and film in th e 1890S, photograph s we re orten ca lled 'still s' in part
beca use photographers we re prone to shout "sti ll" to alert th ei r s ubjects tha t
Ihe shutter was abou t to be ope ned a nd that they were to hold thei r pose
withou t moving. The s tillness of these photograph s is cond itioned by the
lIeed of the ir subjects to pos ition themselves so as to rema in motion less for
,, " ywhere between twenty seconds and two minutes, imbui_ng the ima ge wit h
slIbtle signs of self-imposed avo ida nce of na tural motion, such as the stiffness
of' posture characte ris tic of many ea rl y photographic portraits.
The invention of cin ema, however, chan ged the conception of photo14raphic still ness at least as much as the invention of high-speed came ra s and
lilill. Indeed, from our position in an age in which the cinema is a mature
Ill cdium , it can be hard to shake off the conceptions of photogra phic stillness
111;,1 defi ne this property in relation to cinematic motion and to recover what
sl illn ess might have meant before the advent of cin ema - and indeed what it
Illight mean when freed of cinematic ways of thinking about photography.
II is interesting for example that it took many decades before photographers
hql" n delibe rately to blur parts of the image to suggest movement. This
Ilidica tes that photograph y was at least in part conceived of as still in the
"' lIse of being properl y conce rned with re presenting its subjects in the sort
III s'illn ess farniliar from the genre of still -life painting. The stillness achieved

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by removing an object from its ordinary setting in the world and picturing it
against a backdrop that isolates it from its natural context in the flow oflife is
another conception of photographic stillness clearly disti nguishable from a
stillness founded in contrast to cinematic motion. (See Figure 8) Likewise, the
stillness of some early landscape photographs has more to do with the lack of
any indications of life, human involvement or even indications of the actions
of climate.
There is certainly more that could be said about pre-cinematic conceptions
of photographic stillness, but I do not propose to provide such a history.
Rather I want to draw out another dimension of stillness not defined in terms
of the usual contrast with cinematic motion. We should remember in this
context that 'stillness' is always a contrastive concept, one that presupposes a
dynamic alternative against which the stillness is distinguished. If the notion
of photographic stillness doe, not have its sense in contrast with cinematic
motion, there must be some other dynamic dimension to underwrite its
mean ing. Both of the non-cinematic conceptions of stillness that I have
alluded to get their sense in contrast with the movement of objects in life and
experience, and both are important in the history of photography. There is,
however, another non-cinematic dimension of stillness that is worthy of
ex plora tion, not least because it is closely connected to the work of two of
the most significant realist photographic theorists : Andre Bazin and Roland
Barthes. As we will see, both of them show the influence of the cinematic

conception, though both wrestle with the nature of photographic stillness

in ways that point beyond cinematic conceptions of this quality.
I have repeatedly referred to the conception of photographic stillness
conditioned by cinematic thought about the photograph. We need to begin
by reminding ourselves of this conception. It has two main elements, one
of which is perhaps only a little less obvious than the other. First, what is
depicted in a photograph is not capable of movement within the pictureframe: it is a still image in contrast to cinema's capacity to depict objects in
movement relative to each other and the fra m e enclosing them. Secondly,
cinematic influences upon thought about photography have also resulted in
a conception of stillness as the extracted ness of an individual image from the
real or implied series of images that precede or fo llow it. An indication of
this extracted ness can be found in the term 'film still', which is sometimes
used to refer to a single image extracted from a strip of cinema film and
printed in isolation . The analogue in ordinary photography is the selection,
freezing and extraction of the exact moment in the existence of some object
when focused light from the real stream of events hits the film and the
photograph takes the first and most crucia l step in its creation.
Few images could be sa id to illustrate th is cinematic conception of
stillness better than Cartier-Bresson's famou s image of a man jumping
across a puddle behind a Paris railway station. (Figure 9) Trivially the subject
matter is frozen in relation to the picture frame, and the image is highly
suggestive of what came before and will inevitably follow. Estelle Jussim
makes this point when she observes that:
Surely we know that in the immediate past the man executing this improbable
jete must have been hunying to grab a taxi or catch a train, and in his
immediate future there would have been a considerable wetness of the lower
trousers and shoes. Past and future and present in the now.'
Indeed when Cartier-Bresson turns to explaining his notion of 'the
decisive moment' - of which this image is a great exemplar - be frames
it within a cinematic conception of stillness. For example, he writes that
Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things ....
We work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment of the
way in which it unfolds ... But inside movement there is one moment at which
the elements in motion are held in balance. Photography must seize upon this
moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.'
The immobility of the subject matter, its seizure and extraction from
the rhythmic movement of the world: this is the cinematic conception of
photographic stillness described and embodied in a picture.

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Much of the compl exity of the relationship between photography and

time that is so regu larly obse rved - for example in jussim's formulati on:
' Pas t and Future and present in the now' - arises from this extracti ve ele me nt
in the cinematic co nception of stillness. The Row of events we e ncounter in
experience is intimately connected with an awa reness of time and change
over time. A crude phenomenology su ggests events flow toward us from th e
future, throu gh a very brie f prese nt of immediate conscious ness, into a past
less distinct than the future, bu t not much so.' One reason the pas t is less
di stinct is that, un like the future, we have some of the mate ria l evidence
left behind by events that we re once in the prese nt. Among the evide ntial
re mnan ts of once present eve nts are photog raph s, and other pictorial
imprin ts of li ght re Rected from objects in the world , foc used through an
optical in stru ment a nd fi xed in a material image. No one denies that
photographs give us informati on about the past, but that does not di stin gu ish
photogra phs fro m a host of other record s of events now past But fo r ma ny
theorists, photographs are a uniqu e kind of his tor ica l record beca use they
enable s pectato rs to make pe rceptual contact with, or otherwise ha ve made
present to them , objects in the his torica l pas t. Ph otograph s. as Bazin for
example would have it, prese rve objects from tim e, by bea rin g their im print
and thus conveying somethi ng of the ir be ing through time but outs id e its
effects. The idea that a pi cture preserves a long past tempora l now of obj ects
and people th at con tin ue to persist in that now, but through the medium of
photography also ex ist in our temporal now, s uggests that photography is a
ve ry odd mode of re presenta tion. Add in juss im's cin e matic cl aim th at the
fu tu re as m uch as the past is implici t in photogra phy, and the result is a kind
of pi cture that depicts a once present now im plyin g both its past a nd future
and noneth eless now and past. It is no wonder that, as Lau ra Mul vey has
observed : The photograph pus hed langu age a nd its articu lation of time to
a limi t leaving the spectator so metimes with a sli ghtly giddy fee lin g."
We need an exa mple he re of the ki nd of theorist whose treatment of
photography and its stillness is conditioned by a contras t wi th ci nem atic
lIloti on, and there a re few more pertinent than Bazin. For he re peatedly
indi ca tes that photography is a fi lmic ersatz, a stage in the psychological
s tru ggle to create a m edium tha t wo u ld preserve rea lity in acco rd with the
ba roque idea l of an imated re presenta tion. When Lumiere was able to effect
the technolog ical and imagina tive tran sformation of photography into
cine ma, Bazin beli eved this ideal was finally achieved. Writing of the charm
of o ld (,"nil y photographic albums, he obse rves that the im ages convey:
Till' di' llIrlJ irlg presell ce oJli,ves halted ai, u , 1'1 I'll 0'" e ll I duration,
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does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from
its proper corruption'
But immediately he makes it clear that the impulses and processes that
gave birth to photography are only truly sa tisfied and completed with the
invention of cinema. He writes that with this invention:
Film is no longer content to preserve the object, enshrouded as it were in al'l
instant . .. The film delivers baroque art from its convulsive catalepsy. Now,
for the first time, the image of things is likewise the image of their duration,
change mummified as it were.7
Bazin does of course find a source of great value in photography and is
therefore not wholly disparaging of the medium, nevertheless his position
does amount to the claim that everyth ing photography does , cinema can do
better, because of the latter's embalming of temporal duration and animated
movement. In another essay Bazin repeats his in sistence on the priority of
cinema over its photographic progenitor, writing that:
The photograph proceeds by means of the lens to the taking of a veritable
impression il'l light - to a mo!<ld ... But photography is a feeble techl'lique il'l the
smse that its il'lstal'ltal'leouSI'less compels it to capture time ol'lly piecemeal. The
cil'lema ... makes a mouldil'lg of the object as it exists il'l time, al'ld furthermore
makes al'l imprint of the duratiol'l of the object.'
What interests me about these passages is that each indicates the way
in which photographic stillness is constructed through a contrast with
ci nematic motion .
Trivially, photographs (unlike cinema) are incapable of de picti ng their
obj ects in motion , and are still in that sense. But also, photograph s are
objects embalmed at an instantaneous moment in their pa st and extracted
from the flow of events affecting and affected by them . A moment, that is,
extracted from its destiny and the time and motion governing it. He re we
can see how the notion of photographic stillness as the extracted ness of the
image leads directly to problems articulating the photograph's relationship to
tim e - particularly if you share Bazin's realist view of photographs as sha ring
'a kind of identity' with their subj ect matter.' The photographic extraction of
being from the flow of events and the fixing of it into an image makes the
temporal connection between the now of the photograph and all subsequent
nows exceedingly complex. For the photographic preservation is of its subject
matter at a once present now, both extracted from time and persisting
throu gh time, past and present, there and here. Ifby contrast we do not
conceive of the photograph as extracted, but rather as the limit or origin of a
chain of events, the relationship of the photograph to time is far less complex,
being conn ected s imply to the time of it s genesis. This is a poss ibility that I

will return to in due course, but if I'm right then at least part of the difficulty
with articulating the relationship between photography and time can be laid
at the door of the cinematic conception of photographic stillness.
There is , howeve r, something else going on just below the su rface of
Bazin's discuss ion of photographic stillness, cinematic motion and the
respective capacities of these mediums to perpetuate the being of rea l objects
and people over time. I wouldn't like to speculate whether this something
else was a conscious element of Bazin's though t, and I am not particula rly
concerned whether the line of thought I will pursue is actually Bazin's, but
rather I wi ll use his real ist theory as a familiar backdrop against which to
bring to light a dimension of photographic stillness that goes deeper than
his cinema tic conception , while remaining closely connected with his realist
conclusions. To brin g all of this out of Bazin's theory will however require
a brief review of a very old philosophical problem that provides us with the
primary concepts necessary for formu lati ng a n alternative conception of
photographic stillness.
Much of what Bazin wri tes about photograph ic stillness and cinematic
motion is very suggestive of the ancient metaphysical contrast between th e
categorical concepts of being and becoming, or the immutable and the
mutable. Indeed, much of what is traditionally thought to be distinctive of
being, in contra st to becoming, is precisely what Bazin uses to characterise
photographic stillness. And moreover the flow of events, whethe r in the
world from which the photographic still is extracted, or some portion of that
flow emba lmed in the strip of projected cine ma film, has for Bazin the
attributes distinctive of becom ing. There is a very real sense in which Bazin's
favouring of cinema over photography with regard to realism boils down to
some perceived advantage of preserving a portion of being in the movement
of its becoming.
Before exploring this further in relation to Bazin's thought, it is worth
recalling the philosophical issue that gives rise to the distinction between
being and becoming. Every material entity we know of is subject to a more or
less apparent process of contin uous change over time, with some, like rivers,
managing to persist despite being in a condition of radical flux. But if rivers
and everything else are always changing, what of our capacity to think of and
refer to a river as having an identity over time? Indeed, given that it is a
necessa ry condition of language and communication that we are capable of
identifying ever-changing objects over time as the same thing, there must
be some ex planation of th is unity underlying change. So when Heraclites
famou sly remarked th at 'You can never step in the same river twice', he was
posi ng an appa rent paradox: the river you step in on two different occasions

both is and is not the sa me river. It is, for example, the Thames on both
occasions, and that mean s there mus t be some basis for our identification of
it as the Thames each time we step in it. Whatever it is that underwrites the
Thames' persistent identity through time is the being of the object, which is
a fundamental ontologica l category introduced in co ntras t to, and de fined in
te rms of the movement of, becoming.
The hi story of attempts to explain an immutable being that persists
through mutable time displays a remarkable degree of inventiven ess on the
part of phi losophers. With some degree of simplifi cation we can d ivide the
accounts into two sorts. Firs t, there are those that posit an objective or rea l
existence of some e ntity, substance or essence that persists and is indivi sible
beca llse outside the ordinary conditions of time and s pace. Plato, of cou rse,
provides the paradigm insta nce of an objectivist about timeless being.
Secondly, there are those that explai n being psychologically, in term s of
powers, operations, or structu res of human menta l and linguistic ca pacities.
Since the eighteenth century there have been few seriou s attempts to
formulate an objectivist account of being, but the debate be tween the various
broadly psychologica l explanations is hotly contested - including whether,
in addition to being, becoming s hould be construed psychologically or
scientifically. Thi s debate needn't concern us, however, since the phe nome non
of attributing to ob jects an identity that pe rsists through time is not in do ubt,
even though it is equally known that everything is a state of continual Aux.
Recognition of this phenomenon is all that is necessary of the philoso phica l
background to being and becoming for us to retu rn to th e iss ue of
photographic s tiJlness.
We have seen enough of Bazin's account of photogra phic stillness to see
that he conceives of this qua lity as contributing to the photograph's place
within the order of being rather than becoming. The photograph ena bles the
ph enomenological being of its s ubject to persist th rough time without being
subject to the mutability of becoming. Another indication of the association
of the photograph with timeless being is Bazin's whole mythology of the
urge to immorta lise that drives our psychologica l res ponses to photograph s.
A furth er indication of this comes in his brief account of the va lue of
photographic rep resentation, about which he writes:
Only the impassive I",s, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing, those
piled up preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes
have covered it, is able to present it il'l all its virginal purity to my attel'ltiol'l
and col1sequel'ltly to my love w
Or to pa raphrase, the photog raph gives us so met h ing of its sub ject
ll"Ia tl e r as il is in itse lf. oUlsi de s pace a" d ti,, " . a" d out si de it s ordinary

appea rance to us in the Aux and vicissitudes of experience. Photogra phic

representation , as Bazi n regul arly observes, ca nnot be reduced to the simple
idea of resemblance as with other non -photographic pictorial media . Rather
something of the pe rceptua l essence of the subject matter is encoded in the
photograph ic image in virtue of the imprinting nature of the process that
produces it. Th is essence is extracted from the Aow of becomin g and frozen
in the s tillness of being, providing the spectato r escape fi'om the Aow of
becom ing a nd an e ncounter with the world stripped of appearances, a naked
and immutable reality.
Of course all thi s is psychologi sed by Bazin , in the se nses that, first, it
is the concl usion of a phenomenology that seeks to identify what a photograph is by careful exa mination of how it presents itself in the experience
of hum an beings. Seco ndly, what a pholograph is in experience is in la rge
part the produCI of a deep un co nscious need in ma nkind to erect de/ences
against the passage of time, the decay a nd dea th that is its effect, and the
very conditions of existence with in relentless becom ing. Th is lalter sense
in wh ich Bazi n's account of photogra phic representation is psychologised
is particularl y important because it indicates th e degree to which the
phenomenologica l description is an elabo rate construction desig ned to s how
how photographs sa ti sfy a lon gstandin g, though evolvi ng, psychological
need. From the need for rel ief from beco m ing sprin gs be ing, a nd thi s the
imaginat ion is able to mos t easi ly lind in those pictures that are generated
by the kind of processes characteris tic of ph otogra phy. For Bazin, there fore,
the nature of th e photograp hic medium provides th e material unde rp inni ngs
for an imaginative placeme nt of photogra phs and their subjects within the
order of being, and beyond the e ffects of becom ing.
All of thi s applies to cin ema as well . but with thj s medium th ere is th e
added dimension of motion. Cinema transfe rs a photochem ical imprinting
of some in terval of becoming - of change, motion and tim e - into the order
of being. This added dimens ion makes cinema th e final answer to the
underl ying need to preserve from becoming, not mere inanimate being, but
a dynamic and imaginatively an imate portion of changing reality. No matter
how much, however, that cinema is capable of satisfying the underlying
psychol og ical urge more fu Uy than photography, the latter has qualities that
are absent, or at least diminish ed in th e cinema. Where photography often
ga ins in intimacy as a result of its stillness. duration and movement in cinema
are prone to smoother its subj ect matter with expectation. Or to put the point
in a manner that Bazin never would, th e cinema tain ts the preservation of
being wi th Ihe dynamism of becom in g, a nd thereby diminishes ou r sense of

an encounter with timeless being as the time it takes for movem ent to unfold
provides an opportuni ty for expectation s to influence experience.
In an age m ore attuned to Nietzsche's influence tha n was Bazin's, we are
apt to be suspicious of notions of bei ng that reside outside time; or, what is
the sa me thing, of notions of being defin ed in contrast to, rather than as a
mode of, becom ing. Everything that exists does so in ti me including those
things that our psychologica l constitu tion a nd imagination re nde r to unders tanding a nd experience as existi ng in sti ll ness ou tside ti me. Diag nosing the
psychological need that leads us to experience the photograph as preserving
the being of its sub ject matter is not enough. For this is a pe rfect ins ta nce in
which to fo llow Nietzsche and ask whe ther this is a need we ca n ove rcome
and dispose of; and if it is , would it be worth while doing so) To help us to
ove rcom e the primi tive psychologica l need that Bazi n pos its, and the reby the
manifestation of th is need and its satisfa ction in the imaginative association
of the photograph and in an imate be in g preserved through time, we need
only rem ember that photographs are pictoria l representations that - like
every other material object - travel th ro ugh time and a re th erefore subj ect
to inevitable change. Th e photograph s I was fam iliar with in my chi ldhood
in the [970S have changed ove r time; the fam iliar now of the earlie r
ex periences can not be recove red from the now compa ratively old, certainly
dated, im ages. The effects of time are palpable in these pi ctures, and although
the speed of change may be slower than the observa ble motion wi th which
we are m ost familiar, the subject ma tter of a photograph nonetheless changes,
grows old, as its only possible witnesses become ever m ore re moved from its
origin , and wiser or more ignorant about its subject matter. We m ight put
the point he re in the form of a va riation on Heraclites' well known aphorism :
you can never encounter the same subject m atte r of a photograph on two
se parate occasions. Photographs may cha nge over time at a ra te of nearl y
glacia l slowness, but they like everything else are in the flow of be coming.
The passage of a photogr aph through time and the phys ical chan ges
tha t it undergoes constitute a very diffe re nt ki nd of , movement' th an that
associa ted with the perception of motion in the ci nematic image. This
. moveme nt' of the photograph consists of changes to the photograph as a
ma te ria l object that stands in a certain kind of pictorial relationship with a
once rea l object situated in historical tim e. Time takes its toll , affecting both
Ihe ph otogra ph-as-object and its subject matter. These effects of time on the
actua l ph otograph may have so far proved often enough to be negligible for
pholographs s tored in idea l conditions, but pi gme nts fa de and materials
decay s li ch that ti me wi ll always ha ve a slow bU I inexo rable effect upon the m .
'r ran slo n n illg Inale rial phOlog rapl " ill io ill r:lg(' lile, offers a furth er

dematerialised existence, but of course all photographs are fated to slip into
non-exi stence and be forgotte n at some tim e in the near or distant future.
More im porta ntly, what the photograph is a pictu re of cha nges over time,
though this is not to deny the refere ntial natu re of indexica l photographic
representation. The referential or denotative as pect of the pictorial relationship
is fixed, but the sense, or connotative as pect of the photog raph cha nges as
the mea ning and significa nce of the rea l objects the photograph re prese nts
ch ange in meanin g and signi fica nce over time.
As these changes in the co nnotative mea ning of the photograph's subject
matte r over time indica te, the evolution in human understand ing and
responses over time are an important pa rt of the moveme nt of the photograph .
We can only understa nd and react to photographs fro m our position in the
here and now, and th is too changes over time, both individually and collectively.
If we cou ld stand in rela tion to photographs from the nine teenth ce ntury,
as their original s pec tators did , then the effects upon photograph s of thei r
lIlovem ent through histori cal ti me woul d ce rta inly be m inimi sed . But since
our expe rience of photog ra phs and everythin g else is necessarily conditio ned
by the background of experience, judgm ent, unde rstanding and purpose we
hring to the encounter with the photogra ph , cha nge in these conditio ns will
" frect change in the photograp h as it presents itself to us in ex perience. To pu t
Ihe point a diffe re nt way; th e s ubject matter of a photograph ch anges over
lime in ta ndem with cha nges in the backgrou nd conditions, and there is no
IIcutral pos ition ava ilabl e to spectato rs outs ide th e hi storic now from whi ch
we ca n iden tify some unch anged and au thentic unde rl ying being aga ins t
which to meas ure the cha nges.
But, given th ese arguments, what then are we to make of the n otion
III' photographic stillness? What poss ibili ty is there of a noti on o f s tillness
lormulated in contrast to such an all-e ncom passin g movem ent as that of
IIl exorable becomin g) What we need is to be able to iden ti fy so me feature of
11 1l' photogra phic m edi um that persists th ro ugh time without the possibility
" I change, and here Roland Barthes provides som e helpful clues. Barthes, of
\ (J llrsc, differs from Bazin in trea ti ng photography from a position in which
II II' mcd ium is independent of cinem a, and evalua tively privileged in relation
III it. Eve n so, in the section of Camera Lucida, entitled 'Stasis', the re are fain t
II ldicali ons of the cinematic conception having a grip on h is thought, but
1,,1'(' il is th e cinem a to wh ich deficiency is attributed, and ultimately the
, Idiliess or photograph y is defined in contrast to its mingling 'with our
lI "i sil's l everyda y life' as 'a n en igmatic poi nt of inactuality, a strange stasis,
II II' slas is of an a ITest,'" At Ihe sa me time, howeve r, th is notion of photoKl.lplr ic slili ness is give n a cine matic inAection by his observa tion that the

cinema has none of the completeness or to tali ty of the photographic image.

Barthes explains that:
Because the photograph, taker> i" flux, is impeUed, draw" toward
other views; i" the ci"ema, /"10 doubt, there is a photograplt<c reJere"t, but thIS
reJere"t shifts, it does "ot make a claim i" Javour oj its reality, it does
protest its Jormer existe"ce; it does /"lOt cli"g to me: II. IS /"lOt a spectre. LIke the
real world the film ic world is sustai"ed by the presumptlO" that, as .
says, 'the experie"ce will co"stantly continue to flow b!, the same constttutlVe
style", but the photograph breaks the 'constitutive style ... It 1.1 WIthout
JUtllre
...

11.
Motionless, the photograph flows back Ji"om preserttatlOn to retentIOn. ' .
Whether or not th is sta tement reveals trace elements of the CInematIC
conception of photographic still ness, it is one of the few places in Camera
Lucida where the concept of still ness is brought to the fore. On the whole, .
Barthes is less concerned with sti llness than he is with emphaslsmg va n e lles
of photographic motion. At the sa me lime, two of hi s most familiar themes
point towa rd an accou nt of photographic stillness that rcmal11s below the
surface of his tho ught , never be ing explicitly developed . These a re the
themes of the uniquen ess of photograph ic reference - alluded to the
passage just quoted , but developed at length ea rlier in Camera LUCIda - and
the inscription of dea th within photogra phs. From these Barlhes lan matenals
we ca n construct a conception of photograph ic stillness not exphcltly to be
found in Barthes, but stand in g in contrast to th e inexo rable movement of
photographs within the Aow of becoming.
.
In a well-known passage Barthes argues fo r the uniquen ess of
photographic reference. He writes:
Photography's ReJer""t is /"lOt the same as I.he reJereltt oj other systems .0J
representation. I call 'pllOtographic reJerent' Itot the optIOnally real Ihlrlg to
which an image or sign reJers but the necessa rily real thlrlg whIch has been
placed beJore the lens, without which there would be no photograph ... [I}n
photography Tcan never deny that the thing has been there ... And Slrlce
this constraint exists only Jor Photography, we must consider it, by reduction,

as the very essence, the noeme oj photography. Jj

This referential essence provides precisely the sort of Imm utablhty we
need to formulate a conception of photographic s till ness in contrast to the
movement of becoming. The identity of the photograph's subject m atter,. the
thing from wh ich reflected light imprinted itself upon film , is a referenlial
constant that ca nnot be cha nged. Time can have Its effect over wh at human
beings believe a photograph de picl s, and ove r th e connotative mea nin g of
Ih al s ubj ect malleI'. but the incl ex ica lil y of ph olOWa phl c representatIOn .
foreve r links th e image will,

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to time as long as the sign survives . From this unchan ging referential
relationshi p to its first and definitive cause, we ca n begin to construct a
conception of photogra phic still ness that gai ns its sense through a contrast
with the movement of becoming. The origi natin g imprint of re Aective light
from a real object is this first a nd defi nitive cause of a photograph , remaining
indexically connected to that ca use th roughout its existence as a picture. But
there is mo re to this notion of photogra phic still ness, because it is crucial
that the ob ject a ph otogra ph de picts is its first ca use, the cause th at brings
into existence an im age that im med iately begins its own journey through
mutable time. The photograph , that is, depicts its own tem poral li mi t, the
mome nt of origination after wh ich time begins to take its effect.
The unchangiJlg photographic reference to its ori gin ati ng cause, to the
tempora l limit of the photograp h's existence, the starting point of its becoming,
provides us with a concepti on of photographi c stillness very different to that
formulated in contrast to ci nematic motion. For exa mple, as the te mpora l
li m it of its own exis tence, th ere is no sense of th e extractedn ess from a real
or impl icit series of images that characterises cinematic conceptions of
sti ll ness. Rather th e subject matte r of a ph otogra ph is the beginn ing of
some thing altogether new wh.il st remaining simultaneously u nchangea bly
linked to its origin s through the d is pl ay of its own creation. The sti llness tha t
resu lts is less the 'arrest' that Barthes describes, tha n the insta nt of a start ,
a mo ment of originatio n with out a mea ningful past that gives sense to the
idea of it bei ng a s top as well as a start. Finally, un like the cine matic
conception of photogra phi c still ness as th e absence of motion, the prese nt
conception of sti llness posits this quality as a presence rather than an absence.
Photograp hic stillness fill s the image and di splays itself as unchan ging
pictorial reference to its originatin g cause, and thus photograph ic stillness
is not, as Bazin would have us believe, the enfeeb led lack of someth ing that
cinema possesses.
Stillness, so understood , ca n and does e nter into our experie nce of the
photograph. To be struck by this stillness is to be struck by the unchangi ng
persistence of th e photograph's pictoria l pointing to its own ca use. The sa me
uncanny sense of the past being made forcefully present that Bazin gestures
towa rd and that Barthes explores at length has its basis in ou r sudden
awareness of an object at the tem poral limit of the photograph, preserved
Ih rough time in the form of an iconic indexical refere nce to its own origin .
In the Aux of experience, photographs can strike us with this stillness,
d istractin g us fro m our now and making present an unchangeable
co nn ectio n with the past. For Barthes thi s experience of stillness is one
"i" :lston ishme nl. He writes that

Always the Pho;raph astonishes me, with an astonishment which endures

and renews itselnexhaustibly. Perhaps this astonishment, this persistence
reaches down il the religious substance out of which f am moulded ...
Photography hcomething to do with resurrection .....
Echoes ofBazhere, but in other places Barthes characterises the
experience of pho\raphy's unchanging reference to reality in a manner
less consistent wilBazin, such as when he observes that what we see in a
photograph 'is nolmemory, an imagination, a reconstitution ... but reality
in a past state: at ce the past and the real.' " These are just two of many
characterisations the experienced effects of attending to the referential
stillness of photo!,hic imagery that we ca n fi nd in Came ra Lucida. Barthes
also speaks of am, ment and ecstasy as qualities of the experience, but he
also writes at lengof how our awareness of death is both triggered by, and
part of, the experice of looking at photographs. Barthes never indicates that
he considers deatl stalking of the photograph to be an aspect of its stiliness,
or one of the the stillness of the referentia l relationship enters ou r
experience of the ,otograph. And yet the connection between unchanging
stillness and deat's readily apparent.
Di scussing ar.lexander Gardner photograph of Lewis Payne, a prisoner
condemned to del for his role in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln , pictured
in his prison cell,3fthes observes that a new kind of punctum presents itself
that is distinct fro the ea rlier accou nt in terms of a detail of the photograph.
He writes:
This new pumm, which is no longer ofform but of intensity, is Time, the
lacerating empsis of the noeme (,that-has-been'), its pure representation ...
The photograps handsome, as is {Lewis Payne}: that is the studium. But the
punctum is: lis going to die. f read at the same time: This will be and
This has been observe with horror an anterior futu re of which death is the
stake. By givirtne the absolute past of the pose ... the photograph tetts me
death in the f"e .If,
This rem indt')f death is to be found, Barthes argues, in every
photograph in vile of its noeme - its 'thathas-been' - or what I have been
G,lIing a photogrh's stillness in relation to becoming. Indeed, all of this
indicates a powe,l way in which photographic stillness of the sort we have
bccn ex ploring e,rs into the experience of photographs. As Barthes
obse rves . Ihi s ncpunctum
Ilion' or less b:red beneath the abundance and disparity of contemporary
p/lO/ografi/ls. Jisibly legible in historical photographs: there is always a
(/,;[.'0/ of Ti"," them: thai is dead (," (/I hal is going to die. Th ese two little

Figure 10
Anonymous portrait of a man.
Daguerreotype c.184S.

girls ... how alive they al'e! They have their whole lives before them, but they
II re also dead ... "
To experience a photograph in all its stillness, in its unchanging pictorial
"oi lli ing to its original cause, is to be pricked by dea th , whether it is of the
1"" 14 dead subject, or in the future for another subject, or indeed our own
<I, . ,lh . These thoughts of death provoked by the photograph are thoughts of
Idllle'ss. of a position at least partia lly beyond becoming; and si nce without

'7 ,

ego or experience, beyond the poss ibility of caring. All that survives are the
vis ual tra ces that uncha ngi ngly identify what is no mo re or soon will be no
more. Even as we are astonished by the conjunction of pa st and present in
the photograp h , we are horrified by its message of death, decay and loss.
Astonishme nt and horror are two of the classic characterisations of the
experience of the sublime, and although it is too late in this essay to pursue
thi s thought at length, it is worth obse rving th at th ere is a very great deal
in Barthes that is suggestive of the experience of photogra phy having the
quality of the sublime - a quali ty, which, of cou rse, is notoriously difficult
to put into words. Rathe r tha n purs ue this observa tion, I want instead to
close wi th a brief reRection upon one final dimens ion of this conception
of photographic s tillness. Aga in Ba rthes gives us the clue.
In one of the bleakest and horror-struck passages in Camera Lucida,
Barthes reminds us of the fa te that awa its th e photographs that are dea r to us.
He writes:

What is it that will be done away with, along with this photograph which
yellows, fades, and will some day be thrown out, if not by me, ... when I die? Not
only "life" (this was ative, this posed infront of the lens), but also, sometimeshow to put it? -love. In front of the only photograph in which l jind my mother
and fathe r together, this couple who I know loved each other, I realise: it is loveas-treasure which is going to disappear forever;fo r once I am gone, no one will
any longer be able to testify to this: nothing will remain but an indifferent
Nature. This is a laceration so intense, so intolerable ... "
What happen s at the death of the last pe rson who can identi fy, and
through that identification ca re abo ut, the hu ma n subject of a photograph?
(See Figure 10) This too is a kind of decay, but mo re powerful than the
e rosion of the material photograph, and typically more rapid. If there is
something of resurrection in photography it is both precario us and ultimately
doomed. Even the referential constant, the s tillness of the photograph, is
fated to pass away, but not befo re the subject suffers the indignity of los ing
his or her identity, being consigned to the nameless crowd , destined to
become ever more alien while slowly dis integrating. This inevitable e nd is
the final stillness of oblivion, and this too is inscribed in the pers istent visual
reference: that one day this persiste nce will give out, and a different stillness
will follow. While the photograph hangs on, rema ins with us still, pointing
IInceasingly to its origin at the temporal limit of its existence, it displays
it s s tillness becoming . It displays, that is, its pa radox and its pleasure, its
asto ni s hme nt and its ho rror. Its stillness IHakes us gidd y; it is a stillness
Ihat is sublirnc.

Thinking Stillness

Yve Lomax

I am almost lost for words: What can I say wi th respect to s ti ll ness' Yes,
what ca n I say when it see ms that for so long I have bee n tryi ng to think
movem en t; th at is to say, trying to think th e wo rld as cons isting of no thing
but movements and processes. I wa nt to say so meth ing; I wa nt to fi nd wo rds;
but, at th is very m oment, trying to think s tillness is like ban ging m y head
aga inst a brick wa ll.
How can I think s till ness in a way th at I have never th ought before? How
can I think stillness s uch that th e movement of my thinkin g is not brought
to a halt ' (Would s uch a cessation be the death of m e?) Now, s tillness ca n be
that warm summer's day whe n mind and body bathes in tra nqu illity; but,
today, I can find no ca lmness in trying to think s tillness and to say
something with respec t to these qu estions tha t a re ca lling out fo r wo rds to be
fou nd . Which is to say: I a m agitated.
So, there is agitation. Yes, I ca n say th is. But sa ying this makes me say
that my attempt to th in k s lilln ess has motion - agitatio n - as its starting po int.
I say 'starting point', bu t beginni.ng with that whi ch is in motion mea ns that,
s lrictl y s peak ing, th ere is no starting point and thi ngs a re already underway.
And this is exactly how the philoso pher Gilles Dele uze asks us to think as he
invites us to get into th inking movemen t. '
' Look on ly at th e movement.'
The words could be Kierkegaard 's or they could be Deleuze's , but it
does n't matte r. Wha t matters is looki ng on ly at the movements. And Deleuze
does look, and what he finds is an interesting coincide nce: ci ne ma appeared
;It Ihe very time philosophy was trying to think motion. '
Movemen t appears in images at the same ti m e that philosophy attem pts
10 have movement put into thought, and in both cases it is, fo r Deleuze, a
I" atter of movem ent ceasing to have recourse to anything beyond itself
Dl'ieuze refi.lses the transcendence that comes with such reco urse: 'When
YU II invoke so meth ing tra nscendent you ar res t movemen t...' J
Deleuze never stops attempting to put motion in to thought. How to keep
tllOllgitt mov;IIg? Fo r Deleuze, this is th e rea l ques ti on. Now, I do not wa nt to
IlilTI Ill y b;l ck a ll thi s ques lio n, but il docs in te ns ify my ag ita ti o n: How can I

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think stillness such that my thinking is not brought to a halt? And with this
question there comes yet another: How can I think the 'stillness' of the socalled 'still' photographic image without my thinking becom ing arrested?
I am still almost lost for words; however, I ca n say that for sometime
it has been unde rstood that a still photographic image never freezes the
movement of time, never arrests a present moment in time. Yes, it has been
understood that any such talk of freezi ng or arresting is born from the
spatialisation of time. When the s patia lisation oftime occurs, the movement
of time is made to continually stop at one of the numerable points that mark
and divide up the 'space' of a geometric ruler or, indeed , the face of a clock.
For sure, time never can be stopped but the spatialisation of time portrays
time - my life-time - as measurable and open to calculation, with which
comes prediction. Prediction, or, in other words, procedu res through which
time in its coming (ca ll it the future) is sought to be known and neutralised
- controlled - before it happens. Cutting a long story short, let me say that
what the spatialisation of time offers is not only th e notion of points in time
that are measurable but also the presumption that the time to come can be
calcu lated and controlled.
It was sometime ago that I first encountered the words of
Lyotard saying that what hounds and harasses human beings all the time
is the miserable obsession with controlling time.' These words have stayed
with m e, and I have referred to them often. What is more, I hea r the
philosopher Alain Badiou saying much the same thing when he says:
Our world does not favour risky commitments or risky decisions, because it is
a world in which nobody has the meal1s any more to submit their existence to
I.he perils of chance. Existence requires more and more elaborate calculations.
Life is devoted to calculating security, and this obsession with calculating
security is contrary to the MaL/armean hypothesis that tho"ght begets a throw
of the dice, because in such a world there is infinitely too much risk in a throw
of the dice. S
Is it almost impossible for us to side step the obsession with controlling
lime and calculating security? Perhaps I should put the question another
way: How can we maintain an uncontrolled time? Yes, this is the question I
wanl 10 s hout out: How can we nourish a time that brings to us the surprise
of Ih e unexpected without which life suffocates from banality? Indeed, how
can we enable chance and the unforeseen to be given a chance?
For Alain Badiou, it is a matter of co nstructing a time for thought that
is slow and le isurely; for what mark s our world is s peed . As the calcu lation
of srcu ril Ybecomes more and more l"ia bar:, IC" il also Olr" rs wilh grea ter
rapidily. I.ook all he specd wi lh wld,h 1l'c1 11, ollll\its all pr"J.\r,ssed 10 more

quickly determine the outcome before it happens, and also look at how with in
our daily lives we find ourselves evermore ru shing to know what is going
to happen next. Yes, our world is marked by speed; 'the speed of historical
change; the speed of technological change; the s peed of communications;
of transmissions; and even the speed with which human beings establish
connections with one another.'" For Baruou there must be a retardation
process that, in its slowing down, produces an 'interruption' within the
circuits and ever increasing acceleration of the 'calculus oflife determ ined by
security'. Indeed , in the face of the injunction to speed there must be a 'revolt'
that produces an interruption in which thinking can construct a time that is
its own.' It is in this time that thinking obtains the chance to ' throw the dice'
against the obsession with calculating security.
Now, it would be easy to say that Badiou's insiste nce upon a process of
retardation brings, to our speedy world, a 'sti lling'; but, if there is to be such
talk, let us not forget that such a 'stilli ng' is a construction of a (uncontrolled)
time for thought. And saying thi s makes me wonder: When hea ring a cry for
sti llness am I hearing a plea for a time that remains uncontrolled; a time that
is not spatialised and which, as such, is not sub jected to measure or anything
externa l to it?
I ask the question and wait for a response, but an answer does not arrive.
However, the waiting does make me think about questioning and turn to, yet
aga in, th e words of Lyotard.
Lyotard knows only too well that procedures for controll ing time are ever
increasing, but he does maintain - 'let it never be forgotten ' - that with the act
of questioning, thinking is in a positio n to resist these in creasing procedu res :
'To think is to question everything, including thought, and question, and the
process. To question requires that something hap pen that reason has not
yet known."
To question is to have thinking receive the occurrence of that which is 'not
yet' determined , and accepting this occurre nce for what il is, which dema nds
that it is not pre judged, is what, at least for Lyotard, deserves the name of
thinking. fn the question, th inking exposes itself to the 'not yet' determin ed:
there is no security bere and, what is more, time remains uncontrolled .
And now f find myself asking: How can a sti ll photographic image
resist procedures for controll ing tim e? By question ing? But how are we to
see questioning happening in thi s still image that is not a frozen moment
of time?
I'll risk saying th is: when we are open to understanding a still photograph ic
image as an event perhaps we will see, in this event, a throwing into question
of a present moment in time. Having sa id these words I know that I must

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141

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attempt to say more, and in saying more pe rhaps - who knows - I'll come
to think stillness in a way that I have never thought before.
In attempting to say more let me risk saying that in every question there
is a movement that throws the present tense into ques tion. Is the sky blue)
Let me suggest that th e moveme nt that throws the is into question pe rtain s to
'the turning of time'; indeed, let me s uggest that in the question time tu rns
the present into a question. I make this sugges tion but wou ld it be too much
to say that, in the question , time intenupts the present and, also, itseiP Too
much , perhaps; but, for now, let me say thi s and delve into what can be seen
in and with an interruption.
Now, I could see an interruption as a rupture, but thi s brings to mind
the image of a broken state, and seeing such an image, s uch a state, what
becomes ovcrlooked is th e inter of an interruption. And what the inter s peaks
of is not a broken state but, ralher, a between. In other words, an interval.
Now [ am seeing an in te rruption as opening up an interval in tim e;
however, it must be sa id that what I am seeing is not a n intervallhat (s patially)
CO mes between two moments in time. What I am seeing is when a present
moment in time gapes open; when, that is to say, the present itsel Fbecomes
an interval.
Whe n the present is interrupted, I see time s plitting in two directions at
once. I see time going in the directio n of that which is 'no longer' and, at the
sa me time, I see time going in the direction of that which is 'not yet'. Indeed,
with the interruption that I am seeing, what I am encountering is an interval
lhat is composed of and crea ted by a s plitting that goes between what is 'no
longer' and what is 'not yet' and which, as far as I can see, has nothing on
e ither of its sides that would limit or terminate it. I can't say where the interval
begins and ends just as [ can't say how long it lasts - has the ti me that clocks
tcll stopped worki ng?
Th e spatia lised time of the clock-face adheres to an image of a present
moment as a paint that moves along a line and which , every step of the way,
co mes to mark one present moment that has succeeded another present
moment. Here the present is a point that comes to separate before and after;
bu t when the present moment is thrown into question and itself becomes an
inte rval no such separation can be made. And that is to say: there is no before
or after to the interval that opens as time interrupts the present; in other
words, I am encountering an interval that goes on for aeons and is profound ly
immeas urable. It scares me.
Yes, the interval I am sec ing scares ,,.'c. But wai t, noth ing in the present is
act uall y taki"" place. Ind ecd, in tire- i"terv,,1 tlr "t g()es bctwcen what is ' no
IOll gl' r' and wh;,11 is ' 11 01 yd ' IIOll li li g i1'i :l\ III:dl y 11 ,IPPt',li lig ill th e prese nl.

Now, it would be easy to rush to the conclusion that here, in this interva l,
time has become suspended, frozen , stopped. Yes, it would be easy to think
that time has Came to a s ta ndstill; bu t is this so) To be SLlre, nothing is taking
place 111 the present, but I am not seeing, in the in terval that goes between
is 'nolonger' and what is ' not yet', a cessation of time. What I am see ing
's the opemng up of a n immeasurable time. Here I am not seeing the time
of Chro nos, bu t I am seeing the time of Aion , and thi s time is, at least for
Deleuze, the time that opens in events.'
For Deleuze, th e agon isi ng aspect of an event is that it is 'always and at
the same time something that has just ha ppened a nd something about to
happen; never so mething that is happeni ng.' HI In the coming about of an
event nothin g takes place in the present, yet what does take place is the
open ing up of a vast 'empty' time, and it is such a tim e that I am seeing in
the II1terva l oFtime's interruption of both itselFand th e present.
Deleuze once said that he tried in all his books to discover the na ture of
events ." And what he found is that events always involve a n amazi ng wa it. "
Indeed ; in each and every event th ere is a wait - a meanwhile - in which a
present momen t in time does not come to pass. Deleuze does not want to
miss this wa it, this mea nwhile. Yes, he wan ts to see it, even if it is unbea rable,
agonising; and, what is more, he wan ts us to see it. Perhaps it wi ll be too
much for me, but I'll tes t myself
Deleuze wants us to put our seei ng to the test a nd see the meanwhile of
l'vents. For sure, he wants us to see that thi s meanwhile, this entre-temps,
pertains to the empty time of Aion; yet, what he wa nts us to see is that th is
time - the meanwh ile - does not belong to the eternal but, rather, becoming."
I have been seeing an interva l - an event - in wh ich a vast empty
,,,ca nwhi le opens up, and now in this interval I am see ing becoming. And
what I am seeing is not a becoming that is a journey to a sta te of being; rather,
what I am seeing is becom ing in itself; that is to say, becoming in its 'pure'
s t"te. I am not su re if I really want to see this, as I fear it will be too much for
" ,e. However, even though I have my eyes shut tight, I cannot s top see ing it,
, ;"'not stop testing myself.
Seeing becoming in itself, what I see is that becoming is never what is.
t "deed, what I am seei ng is that becoming is always that which has just
I"'ppened and that wh ich is going to happen. Change is indeed 'on the move',
yr t what I am seeing is that becoming in itself is like a dance where there is a
"dl"s te pping of putting a foot down and the taking up a place in the present.
I.et', say that dancing is actually happen ing. What is is the dancing that
's L,ki" g place in the present; it is the dancing that is actualised or embodied
" " tir e dance-Aoor. But the becoming of dancing, in its ' pure' state, is what

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eludes actualisation in the present. Yes, you could say that the becoming of
dancing is when dancing - its next move - remains in question, as it were,
'up in the air'.
I am seeing th at becoming is never what is and , at the sa me time, I am
hearing Deleuze say that becomin gs - and events - are not part of history."
The living present, in which the definitive now of dancing happens, is wha t
brings abo ut the event of ' to dance'; however, the becoming of this event
brings out a time that differs fro m the living present or, indeed, the success ion
of moments that are made to measure the day and do not sleep through the
night. Yes, with every event, every becoming , there is what comes about and
perishes in history; but, on the other hand, there is what escapes this
historical time, which is the meanwhile th at belongs to becoming in its pure
state, which en joys a virtua l existence. Becomin g, in its pure state, is born
from history, but it is not ofi t.
In seeing becoming in itself, what I am seeing is that becoming never
comes to rest upon a fixed point. Yes, what I am see in g is that becoming
never stops where it is but always goes, in two directions at once, further.
Which is to say: I am seeing un stoppable movement. Moveme nt, nothing but
movement, yet this movement has noth ing whatsoever to do with a traversal
of space. Rather, the movement I am seeing is the movement tha t comes
about when the time of ch ange is on the move and anyth ing could happen
but as yet hasn't happened. And I will ri sk sayi ng that when ch ange is on the
move, and absolutely anything could happen , the movement involved is
in fi nite. And what such infinite movement si lently s peaks to me of is the as
yet un re presentable, the as yet to be determined; th at is to say, the time to
come that is coming but as yet has not actually arrived. I say that I am seein g
th is infini te movement, but I have to say: it is too m uch for m e.
I n the empty m eanwhile - in terval - of that part of the event that esca pes
hi story, Deleuze sees the whole of time occurring" Nothing is actually
moving in the unhistorical time of the interval, yet the whole of time is
a bso lutely moving. But seeing th is m akes me say aga in : it is too much for me.
The meanwhile that belongs to becom ing and wherein anything could
happen is like being at the edge of the world before the world is. It is like being
"tthe edge of a terrifyingly ancient void. It is like hearing the silent calls of a
people who do not yet exist. Intolerable? Almost. Unthinkable? Almost.
The mea nwhile of the event and becoming in itself is, as far as I ca n see,
hardl y liveable, yet I hea r Deleuze and Guattari saying th at this even t, this
empty mea nwhile, is pure reserve. H, Wou ld my th inking be going too far in
,ay in g that th is pure rese rve is potcn ti :.liil y it self? I wo uld be the firs t to ad mi t
that potential it y is the ha rci t st th int: to 'o!lsklt 'r: yl' t. !l OW, what I ca nnot stop

thin king is that, in rela tion to what is actually happening in the present,
potentiality itself constitutes an empty - nothing- time. With the time of
becom ing nothing is taking place in the present, and now what I cannot stop
thi nki ng is th at this 'nothing time' is absolute poten tiality. Indeed, with the
e mpty time of becoming, in which we are given neither this nor that, what
I now ca nnot stop seeing is the 'abyss of potentiality'."
I am seeing that becoming in its pure state never comes to rest upon a
fixed point and with this I see not only the a bsol ute movement of the time
that occurs when anything could - or could not - happen (pure potentiali ty)
but also a moment of grace whe re positions and oppositions don' t take up a
place. Indeed, in the em pty mea nwh ile - interva l - of becom ing what I see
is both absolute moveme nt and a mome nt of grace. And sayi ng this prompts
me to think again of still ness.
In the empty meanwhile nothing ha ppe ns or moves in the present and
th is 'nothing happens in the present' cou ld be a way to (re) th ink stiUness. To
think stillness in thi s way wou ld be, at the same tim e, to th ink the 'movement',
albeit virtual, of becoming. Indeed , thinki ng stillness in this way does not
hring my thinking to a halt; on the co ntra ry, it invites my thinking to go with
becoming in itself, which is nothing but the turning of time where chance is
given a chance, wh ich is what marks time's res is ta nce to bana lity.
Nothi ng of the present happens in the meanwhile yet what this e mpty
time does is to prevent becoming - and pure potentia li ty - fro m being
('xhausted in actua lisatio n; indeed , it ca n be sa id that with this e m pty tim e
th cre is a resista nce to the present that keeps becomin g - the emergence
of a new world - from never ending. Yes, in res is ting the present, what the
nlca nwhile holds in reserve is an inca lcul able and irred ucible 'not yet'. It
docs n't hold in reserve a historica l future, a prefiguratio n of what is to come;
ra lher, it holds in reserve what can only be called a n ocea nic future .
Let me risk saying this: in the mea nwhi le there is a stillness with respect
to anything happening or moving in the present, yet what this still ness speaks
')' is a res istance to the present for the benefi t not of a past but of the reserve
01 a ll ocea nic fu ture. To think stillness in this way gives my thinking a
)nornent of grace from what is, but the reserve th at stillness speaks of here
wil l always be too much for me to think, to bear. And it will always be too
)Ollch for me because the empty time and pure reserve takes my thought to
.)11 IInthinkable 'not yet': as Deleuze and Guattari would say, it takes my
tl)illk in g to the unthought within thought. This unthought will always be too
">I)eh for me; however, although it is what cannot be thought it is what must
1""I)oll gh!. " And it must be thought for doing so is what makes thinking
I,,)v.- 10 ex peri ment , and th is is what puts thinking - and practice - to the test.

17

)ec (. or 10

H"b,'n

B.I,{it;by. or (ontlflgt'rl{Y
PflIIIIJIfl/,tU1 Slmf"rd

lJnl.,,('I IV P.l., .... <il- Illlord.

C ,!ifnlnr.r, rqg'l, p_ r.,j.,

18 S( It! lV/WI
Pili

pi}

I hear Deleuze and Cattari saying tbat to think is to experiment, but I also
hear them saying that e",rimenti ng is always that which is 'in the process of
coming about.''" Indeed'y experimenting thinking preserves - and produces
- the unco ntrolled time ' becoming with wh ich the present remains in
question. Would it be tomuch to say that through experimenting thought
ga ins the means to beCQIe an ac t of res istance to what is? I hope not.
In experime nting, a:l kee ping the present in question, we expose
ourselves to an unimag.able ' no t yet', and does n't thi s exposure make us
open to having so meth.'g unkn own pa ss through us that, in effect, s hows us
the limits of - and m al<; us become strangers to - o ur tim es and ourselves>
I would be the /irst to a'[l it that becoming strangers to our times and
ourselves can be intolebl e yet, pe rhaps , it is what gives us the chance to
diagnose what is intoleble in our tim es.
Deleuze claims th;his tory isn' t experimental. ' It 's just' , he says, ' the set
of mo re or less negati,preconditions that ma ke it possible to ex pe riment
with something beyonhistory.'''' To be s ure, history gives expe rimen tation
' in itial conditions ' butis tory is what one leaves behind in order that
experimentation com,about. Experimentation maintain s becomin g in itself,
it puts thinking to the$ t in mak ing it go furth er than ima gin ed possible
and, what is more, it i.vhat s tops his tory from ending. Expe rim entation the time of becoming does not belong to history yet without it nothing
wo uld come about in sto ry!' Indeed , th e uni1i storica l time of beco ming is
what sa feguard s the fshness of every dawn .
And now, just as ese words are to en d, I see a still photograph ic image
before me, and now Jannot s top seeing this image as an interval in which
time interrupts itselfld nothing of the present ha ppe ns. Yes, now I cannot
s to p seeing this imas stillness as the am azing wait of an event wherein the
present re main s in Cfstion. Oh yes, now I cannot stop seeing this image's
s tillness as time's reHa nce to banality. But, perhaps, this is to see far too
much. Nonetheless, hat 1 am seeing - and thinking - is a stillness that is
acting for the bene /i,f the 'not ye t'. I don't know whether to laugb or cry.
But what I do know that here, seeing this, I am not fl eeing o r transcending
wha t the pho lograpl: image gives sight to; ratber, I am accepting a test and
Irying to go to whal within it unthinkabl e and perha ps, in relation to our
limes, inlolerable.
1 s hou laot be seeing un entre-temps in a still photographic
ill'3 14c; pe rhaps , al I.st as far as Deleuze is concerned, I should be seeing it
ill 11i(' ' illi e rs ii -t" Iii in modern cinema sometimes opens between images
(a lldio (II' vis ll :d) :lIlwhi ch is c;dl ed ' irraliona l' (following mode rn
III:tlh ('III :lIi lS) llt't!le it produ 'cs all illl t' l'v:d tll:ll, whilst se parating o r

' tracing a border', does not belon to (a s the

the other) that which it separales deli mits of one or the begi nning of
to go to the cinema' rather it is t'h t t h ' . It IS not that I would prefer not
.
' , a , a t , s moment I ca
tI k
th e std l photographic image that is before me_
'
nno 00 away from
.
TIme and time again, Deleuze s peaks orh v'
,
's someone who sees furth er than the can r a II1g us beco me a seer', which
y . eact, that IS, thll1k." He says that,
whereas th e media turn us ,' nt
o mere pass ive onlook . (
.
".
els or worse stlJI , voye urs),
the most ord inary events cas t us
b
. .
as VISlona rres ' and wi
VISIO nary what we accede 10 is a v' .'
,<
. len we
ecome such a
interval - of becomjng wll'ch . _ ISlon that unreml ttll1 g .ly sees the time - the
,
1
' S to see what IS w't h ' .
- to see." Now, I have let myself
t
d
, I . III II : too much - agon is ing
0war
vision; however what thl'S
go t1
s - and expe nme nt with - such
I

mea ns IS ' lal now I .

photogra phic ima ge as an interva l - e

t . calnnot s top seeIng a still
.
ven - Inw l lchap
t
.
tune remains in ql.les tiOll ye t h. t th. . .
resen mom ent In
,
,w a
IS experun t' h
10 do is to think s l'illness in s uch a
tl . d
e n as moved my thinking
contem orar i
'.
. _.
way. 1.It ema nds th at J ask: What
I p
Y mage pract,ces are s usta Ul lng a res is tance 10 the
>
may ha ve been slow in ettin he r
. .
presen t.
matters mos t: Whal in OIl" c g i g
e , bUI thI S IS th e ques tion that for me
.
"
o n empo rary ,m "ge . -f
present in favour of preservin tl '. d . -pI al Ices ,s resIs ting th e
re
in so dOing, maintai ning a til:e t;e t"
uClbd lty of that which is ' nol ye t' a nd,
la remall1s unco ntrolJed >

22 Sl'{> CIties
Clllillla:J: Tilt fllrlr./mage,
Ir<lrlS Hugh TOrlllmson

Mid Uobc/( CdINi.l 1 he

A!hl!lllf' P,(> ...... london
ICJK,). PI> 179 18.

'

Portraits, Still Video Portraits and the Account of the Soul

Joanna Lowry

The state oj our soul is one thing, the account we give oj it, to ourselves and
otlters, is another.... Our soul is a moving tableau which we dep ict unceasingly;
we spend much time trying to render it Jaithfolly, but it exists as a whole and
all at once. Tlte mind does not proceed one step at a time as does expression. I
In this passage Dide rot recognises the central difficulty impl icit in the
represen tation of what we mi ght today ca ll ' the subject': the tension betwee n
the time of ' the soul', as he te rms it, ex is ting in a s pace of duration and on
going presentness, and the intrins ic temporality of the conven tions of
re presentation or exp ression which always, in some sense involve a narrative
and invoke a time based sequence. What he gives voice to here is the des ire
that we have for a n account of the soul that will in some way be trans parent
to its presentness, and that will provide a means by which the boundary
between being and rep resentation might be possibly breached . What is
significa nt in his observation is the linking of this desire to a problem of time.
The problem of time has bee n central to discuss ion s about the way in
which photogra phy represents rea li ty, or, as we might say, intercepts it,
disrupting our commonsense understa nding of the relationship between
past and present, stopping the Aow of time a nd holding it in an u ncanny
stillness for years on end, revealing to us a present without a future. A
preoccupation with its odd temporality has been central to the key theoretical
texts about photography from Ben jamin to Barthes. Significantly the
discussion of the portrait has been central to many of these accounts . It
seems to be the case that the rep resentation of ' the other', of the subject or
soul, is situated at some kind of limit point of visibility, a place at which the
time of the subject and the time of representation are revealed as ineffably
different from each other. If Levina s suggested that it was imposs ible to
rep resent the face of the other, that the gaze of the other somehow presented
" fissu re in the fie ld of the visibl e, then photography is situated on the very
edge of that impossi bility, the time of the other not so much represented as
interrupted, and thereby revea led.

1 Dldl'l ot, II Hit " \ 1),

1'1 Minh, ( 1/11 (..111.'11 111011 by

P,wl Hl1t'p MI')'I-' /Jill, wi
SllUhr\ VII (I If 'I) P h4

quoted by MKh,wlllll'd
A/)\f1IPIIO/l

In

rlltl/ l /llll/fllllirty.

Pm/,'Illg 11m/ 81 Iwlrh I JH till'

Af" t'f Dill. H'I UIlIV(,f,>'ly 01
l fuc.q.o PII' ....... eb" .1\'0 ,I lid
I ondor1, ''1Xn Mdlly "I jl)f>
the' 11("'.> dl'V\'I'lPt'd Itl Ih,,>
01,1"

111l'1I 111 ,p'I,II11.Hl

10 I flt'lj'

(11<;(1)<'<,1011' . I!W\l1

llil' dr'vt lopll1en! Hf 1011(;;'PI<.

or IhClI Ii jd

!hpl! ourjllC; 1/1 ILl" IIlght", IIlh

t('rltwy ,Hid who'>I' IInp, IC!

(l".on.L1I'<; WlthUI dIP

.,\,11

hl'ld "I

ILm' Itt \,I.J\ IKC' lud,ry

tt.ll
1110111
1'I,It,,,n
'1'1

It is when we present ourselves to the camera that we become aware of

the need to make ourselves into a picture and to take co ntrol of the account
of our soul. Much academic interest, then , has focussed upon the notion of
the pose; upon the way in which, when we are photographed, we become
com plicit in the di scourse of photographic representation , gathering our selfhood together, performin g our identity, presenting ourselves to the camera,
holding ourselves steady in a mock tableau that mimics the stas is of the
photograph itself. It is in the pose that we both disguise ourselves and glVe
ourselves away, and the eloquence of the photogra ph is in its double-edged
revelation of precisely this ambiguity. The mechanised timing of the
photographic image undermines the process of self presentation: it is
invariably too soon or too late. We are always aware that it is a transaction
tbat has somehow been missed. And it always reveals something more than
had been offered, but also something less. By vi rtue of its automatism it
profoundly disrupts the skeins of attachment, meaning and interpretation
through whi ch we seek to bind ourselves to each other. It is the very fa ct that
the still image is a product of that traumatic rupture of the hermeneutic
contract between us that renders it fa scinating; it produces a sign that is
outside the domain of intentionali ty and its very lifelessness transforms
us into foren sic investigators of the sign. In the still image the subject in
process is translated into a fixed system of signs that we, the specta tors, scan
for indications of some nascent interior life.
In A Small History of Photography Walter Benjamin contrasted the auratic
presence of the sitters in the early nineteenthcentury photographic portraits
taken by Hill-Adamson and a photograph taken of Kafka as a child of six. He
is fascinated by the way in which the ea rly subjects in the photograph gaze
out of the picture, averting their gaze. The ' Newhaven Fishwife' lowers her
eyes, looks modestly away from the camera; Dauthendey's wife stands next
to him in the picture but 'her gaze reaches beyond him, absorbed into an
ominous distance'.' These two poses, taken in the very early years of
photography, when the genres of photographic portraiture had yet to become
fi xed, present to him something significant about the limitations of the
technology. The image gives us the woman, but she is somehow impervious
to it, and it can only indicate all those things we can never know about her,
only hint at her mystery. (Figure II) The women's refusal of the camera takes
on an almost allegorical force for Benjamin. These women stand, for him, at
the threshold of modernity, reminding us of a time in which the constitution
of subjectivity for most people had little o r no relationship to technologies
of representation, to th ex panded cllrrency of the irnage that those
lec h 1I010gies heral led. Mosl pl'opk IIl'VI'1 I'WI' saw pi' III rl'S of themselves;

Figure 11
Hill and Adamson, Mrs

ffizabethjahnsan, Newhaven,
C. 1846.

they lived their lives outside represen tation : The human countenance had a
silence about it in which the gaze rested" and this, Benjamin observed, gave
them a peculiar quality of self-abso rption that was quickly to disappear:
'There was an aura about them, an atmospheric medium, that lent fullness
and security to their gaze even as it penetrated that medium."
The aura tic presence that he discerns in the image of the Newhaven
Fi shwife is a function , not of photography, but of its limits, of her quiet
resistance to it. If aura for Benjamin was always associated with di stance
then it is the way in which her self-absorption creates a sense of distance
between her and ourselves that seems to him to be so distinctive. This
quality, which he sees as indicative of the passing of an historical era was
also a product of the state of photographic technology at the time. Long
ex posure ames mean t that it was important that the sitter be photographed
111 a qlllet secl uded spot where they could concentrate on acquiring the
lIecessa ry stillness demanded by Ihe pholographer:

4 IOld. P 141

1',.IfI1II)(

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'11:1.11\

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'The expressive coherence due to the length of time the subject had to remain
still' says Orlik of early photography 'is the main reason. why these photographs,
apart from their simpiicity, resemble well drawn or pam ted p,ct"res and
produce a more lasting impression on the beholder than more .
photographs.' The proced"re itself caused the subject to foc"s hIS life ,n the
moment rather thal1 hurrying past it: d"ring the considerable period of the
expos"re, the subject as it were grew into the picture, in the sharpest contrast
with appearance in a snapshot ... Everything about these early p,ct"res was
built to last; not only the incomparable groups in which people came together ...
But the very creases in peoples' clothes have an air of permanence. J"st
consider Schelling's coat; its immortality too rests aSSLlred; the shape ,t has
borrowed from its wearer is I10t unworthy of the creases in his face .'
In this passage Benjamin touches upon a very particular convergence.
between time, technology and subjectivity. What IS thrown mto doubt by his
reflection upon these photographs is the conventional notion of the stabilIty
of the photographiC sign. The time that is figured in the image through the
woman's state of plenitude and absorption is brought mto bemg through the
very slow and laborious processes of early photography. What is striking in
this passage is the way in which that technology seems to have provoked an
unfolding of time, causin g us to inhabit, as it were, the temporalIty of the
pose itself. It is this sense of the temporal that binds us , the readers of the
image, to the subject caught on the photographic plate. The distance that
Diderot remarked upon above between the lived time of the soul and the
fixity of its expression in representation becomes palpable.' The distance
between the photograph of the Newhaven Fishwife and a photograph of the
young Kafka , sharing in that new complicity with the image that followed
the democratisation of the image world, is, claims Ben)amm, vast.
.
This was the period of those studios, with their draperies and palm trees , their
tapestries and easels, which occupied so ambiguous a place between executIOn
,,,,d representation, between tOl1"re chamber and throne room, to wh,ch an
early portrait of Kafka bears pathetic witness. There the boy stands, perhaps
six years old, dressed up in a humiliatingly tight child's suit overloaded WIth
trimming, in a SOli of conservatory landscape. The backgro"nd is thick with
palm fronds. And as if to make these upholstered tropics even stuffier and more
oppressive, the subject holds in his left hand an il10rdinately large broad-.
..
brimmed hat, such as Spaniards wear. He would surely be lost ,n thIS sett,ng
were it not jor the immensely sad eyes, whiclt dominate this landscape
predesl.ilted Jo r I.hem."
III Ihi s paragraph d":lws (jU l' al l(, lI tion
stlldio porlra illlrl' wilh it s dl'\)l' lldvllu' IIpOt1

10

.
the ea rly history of
th ea tri cal propS and

conventions. In the midst of the paraphernalia of the display and the

contnved performance of social identiry he draws our attention to the selfawareness of the small boy's gaze, in which we already sense an awareness
of the constraints of self-presentation . Once the threshold of photographic
reproductIOn had been crossed we all became bound Up in a currency of the
Image that became increasingly fundamental to the constitution of subjectivity
m modern sOCIety. The difference between this small boy's pose and that
of the Newhaven Fishwife is, Benjamin indicates, subtle - but absolutely
slgmficant for an understanding of the impact of technology upon the way
III whIch we conceive of ourselves.
In drawing our attention to these two different su bjects, each addressing
us across the yea rs from therr separate moments in history through the
medlUm of photographic technology, Benjamin draws our attention also to
the complex variability in the ways that that technology produces both a
sense of time, and of subjectivity. What is encapsulated in these two examples
IS the pecuhar ambiguity of the photograph ic image, situated as it is between
subject and spectator, and engaged in a dialectic between resistance revelation
,",d identification. After photography subjectivity is performed
and the correla ti ve of this is that our sense of the presence of the other is
;dso transformed, mediated as it is through this performance to the camera.
Bill thIS sense that Benjamin was reaching for in his text, of the gu lf between
:I secret, absorbed self, captured almost against its will by photography and
Ili e self that IS constItuted for photography and that is performed for it, has
hee n central to the development of photographic portraiture. What is more
I" 'rtinent to my argument here is his observation that this has something
III do both WIth the orne of being and with the alienating mechanism of
111l' photographic apparatus - with the difference between existence and
II presentation. Our sense of the photographic image as a fixed textual object
III,ated In the here and now, as a set of signs inscribed on the visible, begins
It! seem Inadequate to the task of describing the problematics of this
Illscri ption of subjectivity in time through technology.
II IS thIS Issue of the relationship between time, technology and the self
III:II .IS central to recent practices in photographic and time-based arts, in
I'.IIII Cl.dar the phenomenon of the still video or film portrait, in which the
'IIII'i" I is posed as if for a studio photograph, and filmed for anything from a
i, 'w Sl'co nd s to an hour or more. Recent examples of the genre include work
I:y lIill Vio la, Gillian Wearing, Sam Taylor-Wood, Rineke Di jkstra, Thomas
Nlllilh . and Fiona Tan n. Thi s type of work takes on all orthe conventions of
IIII' ' Iill photograp h as its framing discourse, bUI extends it in time, refusing
II,, " 'Solll iion o f th e still image and pr 'servi ng Ih e temporal ilY orthe pose.

02 .

Whilst having historical precedents in experimental film work of the 19 6 0 s

and in the work of performance and video artists of that period who were
concerned with ideas of real time, duration and endurance, there is a strong
case for situating this more recent set of experiments within discussions
about photography. The adoption of a fixed camera position, the conventions
of the head and shoulder portrait or group portra it, the ca refu lly composed
presentation of the subject to the camera, all indicate an attempt to delineate
a space that is recogni sably ' photographic'. Thi s is a practice that seeks to
use the ava ilable technology to stretch or extend the photograph to Its bmlt,
through a testin g of the idea of the pose as a kind of pe rformance.
This kind of time-based portrait, 1 would like to suggest, provides a
peculiarly intense site for considerin g the triangulated relationship between
subject, spectator and time, and the tension between absorptIOn and
performance that Benjamin drew attention to in A Small History oj Photography.
Perhaps it is true to say that, wh ile Benjami n saw the distinction between the
two portraits he described as being in some sense absolute and separated by
historical and technological changes that were Fundamental and rrreverslble,
we might recogni se the extent to which our own fasci nation with the portrait,
photographic or film ed, continues to lie in the subject's Fundamental .
ambivalence in relationship to the technology of representatIOn , shifh ng
between a performative engagement with the spectator and a self-ab sorbed
resistance to the photographic sign. But what is significant in thIS type of
work is how the question of the subject's presence in relationship to the
spectator is changed by the framing of the encounter in time: that is by the
introduction of the notion of duration . The pose here is something that takes
place over time _ a time that, like the still photograph , is also marked out
and delimited by the operations of the technology - but nevertheless It IS
characterised by its ongoing presentness. In the filmed portrait we are always
witness to the subj ect, as Benjamin put it 'growing into the picture',
becomin g the sign: negotiating it, withdrawing from it, resisting it, claiming
it. What we see is a negotiation of the very terms of visibility itself, on a
plane of the visible that has been opened up by the technological apparatuses
of photography, video and film.
This process of negotiation can be seen in Fiona Tann's archival project
CO Lmtenance (2002). Taking as her starting point Citizens oJthe Twentieth
Cel1tury, August Sander's photographic survey of the German nation, begun
in ' 9 and first published in partial form in '929, Tann developed a parallel
'0
archive of film ed portraits of contemporary individuals and groups m Berbn 111
2002. Followin g the exalTlple of Sa nde r sir(' d('veiopcd a classificatory system
lor h('r porlrail s based un occlIl" llioll , I:IIl1 ily Iypl'. Ill' social i-\'0up. (Figure 12+13)

Her subjects were simply and artlessly filmed for around a minute at a time
(and played back to us someti mes for just a few seconds), just long enough
for us to have to the initial glance with which we assess an image in to
a gaze that mIght begm to interrogate it - and just long enough for the
mdivlduals to adapt themselves and submit to the temporal framing of the
film. Standing quite still , poised against the chance and haphazard activity of
therr surroundmgs - bysta nders walking pas t, the wind in the trees, the bustle
of the street - the subjects com pose themselves for the camera, gaze in to it,
adJust themselves, wa it awhile. They are seen in the process of taking on the
pose, In a kind of attentiveness to the moment that is made more significan t
because of the random and conti ngent movement around them.
These images are very knowing in their relationship to Sander's. The
participants in her project were informed about his work a nd made awa re
of the relationship between the two bodies of work. His work has come
in the literature on ph otography, to sta nd for that anxiety about the
in scriptio,n. of individuality within the photographic sign. As an ethnograph ic
proJ ect C,hzens was wedded to a pos itivist philosophy of description. The
photographs were des igned to revea l th e ex te nt to which th e social positi on
and irfestyle of the individual was engraved upon the m, not only in th eir
phYSIOgnomy but also in their expression, their stance, their clothing and
their rhetoric of self- presentation to the world . Th e photographs were
mes mensmg because of the way in which they pointed to the subtlety of the
pose and the ca mera's abil ity to revea l just slightly more than the subject
mtended. The stilled surface of the photograph provided a s ite for the fix in g
of a semIOtICof tlle subject in the visible. It provided a mechani sm for
turning the subject into a text that cou ld be read.
Tann's filmed portraits refu se that semiotic. By extendi ng the time of
portra it by just a few seconds they expose the insta bility of the pose.
I rOJected In sequence on three la rge screens in the gallery they di srupt
the Impltclt dynamic of power that norma Uy allows the specta tor to look at
the subject and that gives the former the advantage of time being on their
Side. (FIgure I4) For a brief moment tllese figures seem to look back and
to share in a kind of performed duration; they are not simply framed and
lil sta nced - their bodies reach out beyond the space of the screen and are
briefly intertwined, locked in an engagem ent with the spectator in the lived
moment' The issues raised here become clearer if we look at a more
I'xtre me exa mple of the stiU video portrait.
. l3elween 1996 a nd 2003 Thomas Struth recorded a series of large-scale
Video portraits that were to be projected onto hanging screens. These were
I'X ll ibiled in a numbe r of different venues, but this account is based upon

8 ThiS deslllplion It'!<ll{' .. to

111(' work.'l" It was <It

Moder!1 Art 0) ford.

200

r , /OQ/ .
. { Il't'll

their installation in Bordeaux at the Centre for Contempora ry Art in

3.
Once a ain there was an archival structure underptnn111g the work - the
included a number of distinct social types: anarch.tect , a d
. ..t dealer Struth's godson a little girl, etc. The sublects we' e not se ectle
on - ,
'
I
d'
Y peop efor the ir individuali ty but because, at some level, t ley were or tnar
tl
Ih eir histories were unimportant. It was their and

the ir em ptiness as potential spaces for the

)ro' ection o f fantasy that made them compe 111g.
I I
'd r these portraits at the level of surface, as
impell ed the spectator to cons. e
. ul
. ti,e Rat d. mensions of the screen. Without a sense of a partlC ar
occu py.n g
.n
d 'd fty
'ghl begin 10 oscribc somc mC<1 n. g an en. ,
h'
h
person to wI10m one m.
Ihe' ". ces Ih al were prese nled 10 lile slwllJIOr ,collld on ly . ..lSor er
I '. k 10 11,"" 1SclVl's TI,.,i . :t 1l c\ lI yool y ,,!tIS'UJ Oy n,l1' dt.ve codtn g
fl' a(IIIl g ) ,I C 0 11
....'
, .

of the time of the pose. The e mphasis on spectacularly large, formal and
simple screens with the apparatus of projection su btly concealed, also
encouraged the spectator to see these as modernist works of art, drawing
attention to the elusive materiality of the surface of screen itself, re inforci ng
the fact that, though it offered a re prese ntationa l depth the sc reen was also
an obj ect that was absolutely without depth, absolutely thin: one could walk
bebind it.
The subj ects sat for a whole hour in front of the camera, as still as
possible, their concentration occasionally inte rrupted by the blink of an eye,
a slight wriggle of the body or sh ifting of their pose. Under the imposition
of the rigid te rms of e ngageme nt they moved into a seeming trance-like
state, alternating almost impe rceptibly between a subtle self-co nscious ness
in front of the camera and a withdrawn meditative state, flicke ring in
between the place of bei ng and the requireme nt to become a sign . At times
it seemed that these peo ple were on the brink of becoming so self-absorbed
that they might slip out o f visibili ty itself, withdraw into some other
imaginary s pace and leave one only with the s urface of the screen to gaze
at. The relations h ip between the surface mate ria lity of the ima ge and th e
performance was absolutely fragile and thin. He re, as in Tann's pi ece , we see
the way in which the larger cu ltural question of how we can know the other,
how we can unde rstand the s ubject, is located in te rms of the rela tio ns hip
between technology and tim e. The performance of the pose becomes the
over-determined site for the defi ni tion of the subject's authe nticity.
If this type of portrait is about the way in wh ich we are constituted , as
subjects in a technologica l cu lture. th rough performance, it also ra ises
important questions about the gaze a nd the significance this takes on in this
con text. Stmtb's video pieces were projected onto a series of mammoth
screens sus pended from the ceilin g and bung, angled away from each othe r
so that they could only be looked at one at a ti me. Holding their pose as still
as possible for s uch a long pe riod of time and staring straight into the
camera le ns wa s certain ly an exe rcise in endura nce for the s ubjects, one
which had its own power dynamic in relationship to the mobile, shifting
audience that passed through the m useum hall s where it was insta ll ed. The
s pectator felt compelled to return the gaze, to watch back, bu t inevitably
could not meet the challenge - was out-faced, and turned to move on to th e
next encounter uncomfortably aware of his or ber irrelevance to the subject
tbey had left behind. Part of tbe discomfiture was of course related to the fact
that the gaze that seemed to be directed at the spectator, was not directed at
him at all , bu t at the came ra. Tbe very d irectness of the apparent form of
add ress was in fa ct a n illu sion ma sking the prese nce of the filmic apparatus.

The camera in this work represents a blind spot in the visual field. It is the
object of the spectator's gaze, but it is now absent and becomes a ki nd of
va nishing point for a gaze that can never be met. Though we stand, as
spectators, in the place it might have occupied, our own gaze can never meet
th e one that ap pears to be directed towards us.
In both these pieces of work - Tann' s and Struth's - we feel as though
we are engaged by the subject. Even as we look at them , they seem to be
looking at us or through us, but they do not see us. Yet we also feel as though
there is a sense in wh ich , in fron t of the image, it is we who are pOSitIOned
in the place of the visible. We are reminded of Lacan's discomfiture in his
anecdote about the sardine can bobbing in the sea, reflectmg the I1ght of the
sun , and not seeing him as he sits in the boat with the laughing fish ermen.
Now we become aware that the subjects of these works don't see us, and that
the s pace of the visible far from being a conti nuous plane is in fact uneven ,
fissured , fold ed, and that this space of visibility is peculiarly complicated by
the intervention of the apparatus. It is this fault-line in the visible, at the pomt
of the illusory convergence of these two gazes - the subject's and the
spectator's _ that defines the difference and the distance between us.
In The Visible arld the [rlvisible Merleau Ponty struggled WIth the
development of a theory of vision that would take into account our embodied
relationship to it, describing the 'chiastic' relationship between the vIewer
and the world, an intertwining through which the world was brought mto
a kind of visibility. What needed to be put into question and seen as
problematic was how the viewer came to be seen as separate from the world
_ how the visual ever became positioned as something other, somethlOg
differentiated and separate from the spectator. Stephen Melville sums up

I',HIII

'"
"

.,,1'

""I

the central issue thus:

Visiorl is the p!aee where our corltirluity with the world eOrleea!s itself, the p!aee
where we mista ke our eOrltaet fa" distarlee, imagirlirlg that seeirlg is a substitute
for, rather tharl a mode of touehirlg - arld it is this arlaesthesia, this
serlsdessrless, at the hea,t of trarlsparerlCY that demands our aekrlOwledgemerlt
arld pushes our dea!irlgs with the visual beyorld reeogrtitiorl'
Recent studies theorising the history of visuality have made us more
aware of its provisionality, and of the extent to which our relationship to
the presumed transparency of visuality is in fact the product of complex
hi storical conditions and cultural formations. Melvi.lle's comments draw our
attention particularly to the way in which the very definition of 'the visual'
is predicated upon the construction of a distance between the spectator and
the world _ a distance Iha t is main lained Ih rolll-\h the work of culture and
Ihrough the work Uf ll'ch ll" \OIlY' I'holoW"p\, i1 11'1 hIl0\0I-\i('s have provided one

key cultural mechanism for defin ing the place of the visual and positioning
It In relatIOnship to us. In representing the subject they also define the site
of the subject's visi bil ity, the place at which he or she can be seen. They cut
through the world, interrupt it, producing difference and distance and
projecting it onto the surface of the paper or the screen. They prod uce a
differentiated space of the visible within which the subject and the s pectator
are made aware of their otherness and their distance from each other.
There is also a case, I suggest, for co nsideri ng the way in which they
produce a particular temporality of the subject. Media such as these do not
' represen t' time as such; they playa sign ificant role in producing the cultural
phenomena th rough wh ich we understa nd time. Our experiences o f
temporality, of duration , presence, speed, e tc., in contemporary cu lture are
increasingly a fu nction of the technologies that support the infrastructure of
our society. In the types of work discussed here we see the of the
productIOn ofa way of understanding the concepts of presence and duration
in relation to being that is indissociable from the technologies themselves.
As Ma rk Godfrey says in an essay on Tann's work 'new technologies produce
new form s of subj ectivity""
The phenomenon of the absor bed, distracted subject, that Benjam in drew
ou r attention to in his example of some of the earliest forms of photography,
IS SIgnIficant because it reminds us of the extent to wh ich ou r understa nding
of the subject, and of the way in wh ich the subject is incorpora ted in to a
culture of visibili ty, is de penden t upon the technologies of representation.
The early tedmology of photography had a profound impact upon the way in
whIch we learnt to read the account of the soul, and to present that account
to each other. Benjamin, in his essay, noted the complex in tertwini ng of time
and performance that underpinned the photographic image; he noted the
extent to whidl the developme nt of photographic culture inte rcepted the
subject and drew them into a complicity with the time of the image. This
problema tic is still there, although changes in technology have caused the
terrain to shift. As so often is the case, and as Laura Mulvey has pointed out,
as technology develops and the discourses and regimes of production that
hold the very concept of 'photography' in place come under press ure, we
ironICally fin d ourselves returning to the very earliest momen ts in the
development of the medium: the technology may have cbanged, but the new
form sthat it takes may enable us to revisit and see with new darity, through
the prism of change, the impact of the photographic upon our understa nding
of the self. I I
The technologies that have brought us the still video portrait have played
" role In developlllg a space of the visible with in which the s ubject can

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UmverO:;lty Press. MJnchester

and New York. 2000

erform themselves and move between the two registers of selfhood .

identified by Benjamin, resisting the textuality of the stIli Image that m Ight
have fixed their account of themselves. They offer us a new enchantment
. th
..
I'ty and fragility of the pose and with the alternatIOn
wIth e provlslOna I
' d '
between absorption and performance that is central to our understa;. Illg d
of the self. But they also, through the very mechanisms of the recor Ill; an
projection process, provide the architecture for the space and :'::
hich the subject can be perceived ITI thIS way. They construc
:f visibility and distance across which we read the account of the soul.

Melancholia 2
Kaja Silverman

In this essay, I will be focusing upon James Coleman's extraordinary

projection, Background (r991-J994). Like Lapsus Exposure (J992-94).
I NIT I A L S (1993-94). and Photograph (1998/99 ), to which it is closely
related, Background is an allegory about the formal elements out of which _
il is made: language and photography. I It also privileges 'versification' over
denotation, and destabilizes the still image. Finally, in Background, as in the
olher works listed above, Coleman links the past to the present through a
s"ries of rhymes, and makes the photographic image the formal vehicle for
" larger meditation upon time.
In I NIT I A L S, Coleman emphasizes primarily the objective
dimensions of time. He does so by dramatizing the reciprocity of the relation
Ii liking temporali ty to photography; not only does the analogue image
pl"relure, but time itself also has a photographic consistency. Thi s giant
I'llolograph is not one which we can ever survey from an external vantagepoint, since we are ourselves inside it. It has, however, important psychic
J.Jmincations. It renders null and void the disti nction which is generally
."s llmed to separate reality from representation, and opens the door to an
" lIlirely new theorization of human finitude.
Bul Coleman is finall y much more concerned with the subjective than
IIII' objective dimensions of temporality. In Lapsus Exposure, time manifests
It ''l' lf' primarily through the language and images which every subject
1II IIt'riis from the past, and within which she must make her way, We enter
1"lIlporality affectively, and the vehicle of this entry is 'song'. In Background
Ii lid 1'1'IOI.ograph, Coleman shapes time as much to human desire as to the
11,JII"rni ssion of language. Signification emerges from a primordial loss,
III wlli ch it also always 'answers', Affect consequently figures even more
1l'lIlr:dl y in these two works . But this does not mean that there is no room
III 11"'11'1 fa r a more 'obj ective' time. For Coleman, as for Heidegger, there is
lill ,dl y lIothin g more worldly than affect. How the human subject feels at any
IIlvl'lI Ill ome nt in time has dramatic consequences for other creatures and
II dele rmines whether or not they ca n appear.

1 ThIS c"".ly derive., rrom ,I

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Background (See Figures 15-18) is suffused with melancholy, an affect

which has often been linked to allegory: Coleman not only acknowledges
this li nk, he also insis ts upon it. The most importan t vis ual representation
of acedia within the Wes tern tradition is of course Durer's Melancholia, Thi s
work clusters sign ifiers of so rrow and co ntem plation - a sleepin g dog, a n
hourglass, a setting s un, scientific instruments - around a gl oom y angel,
who is he rself the very embodime nt of black bile. A bell seem s on the verge
of tolling, and debris covers the ground . In a much later text - Theses on the
Philosophy oj Histo,y - Walter Benjamin also allegorizes melancholy through
a de jected angel - the angel of h istory. Where th e res t of us ' perceive a cha in
of events', this figure sees 'one si ngle ca tas tro phe wh ich keeps pilin g
wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feel. " And in anothe r
text, The Origin oj German Tragic Drama, Ben jam in offers a s usta ined
discuss ion of the relationship between allegory a nd melancholy, fi ndi ng the
latter to be the affect speci fic to th e former'
Bu t I do not mean to suggest that Benjamin's Theses on th e Philosophy oj
History and The Origil1 oj German n 'agic Drama are continuous with Durer's
Melancholia, or that Colem an's BackgroLlMd follows di rectl y from any of these
other texts. The melancholy which co ncerns Ben jam in is that induced by
h istory, not black bi le. He also offers a very different de finition of allegory
than hi s artistic predecessor. The tropes assembl ed by Durer - like those
earlier deployed by Pl ato and the Chris tia n Chu rch fathers - have a pregiven
mea ning, one underwritten by m imesis. Those upon wh ich Benj amin shines
his critical light have ne ither of these guarantees. They constitute the ' ru in s'
of signification - a ' petrified' landscape, in whicb meaning no longer resides.
Allegory is also not a fea ture of this la ndscape itself, but provides - rather a way of reading it. It rep resents the tragic hermeneutics through which
we impose an extraneous mean ing upon what once seemed to pu lse with
di vine Significance.
Altbough Colema n pays homage to Du rer and the medieval theory of
humors by situating a bl ack sloth at the center of the visual fi eld of Background,
he in no way subscribes to what E.M.W. Tillya rd wo uld call the 'G rea t Chain
of Being." Like the autho r of The Origin oJGe,man Tragic Drama, be is
conce rned with the ruins of signification. BackgrouI1d takes place in a
laboratory for the reconstruction and preservation of the skeletons of
prehis toric crea tures. At the same time, though, these activities are not an
end in them selves . Colema n ultimately seeks not m erely to 'catalogue' the
'sections' of the metaphoric sloth . but al so to brea the new li fe into the m.
Thi s project rcach es its C11 lm i" " ti o" ill P'ro/.ogml"" which e nds with the wo rd

'quicken', but already in Backgro,.u',.d Col ema" uses a ll ego ry as an age ncy for
th,nk,ng beyond dea th .

..

The au thor of Background, Lapsus Exposure, I NIT I A L S, and

Phol.ograpl1 m ,ght a lso be said to 're-motivate ' allego ry. He does so by bas in
,tupon the of corresponde nces that Baudela ire celeb rates in his
g
fa.mous and Prous t uses as th e organiz ing princi ple of Remembrance
oj Tlungs l ast. J baste n to add tha t Coleman does not offer a th eologica l o r
even a stab le accollnt of meaning. The metaphoric associations whi ch
Interest
b,m emerge on ly th roug I1 th eeetlng
A . echoes a nd reso nances wh ich
.
Imk words and vis ual form s to each other. It is also only via a particular
lIStener or seer tha t one te rm ca n be said to reverbe rate with in another. The
te mporalY and subJect,ve nature of these linkages, however, does not make
tile m a ny less true. Coleman he lps us to understand that it is only in fi nding
th e , hymes tha t are 11Idden within ou rselves that we ca n com ple te the
col/plet of Be,ng.

Figure 15
James Coleman, Background,

199 1-94

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more .... Some shells have rolled out into the hall oj minerals, and a
hummmgbird's nest is resting on the head oj a crocodile.... [But] the eye that
ranges over this mighty temple oj nature reestablishes without difficulty all that
a Jatal. agency has shattered, warped, and displaced ... look closely and you can
recognIze already the effects oj a restoring hand. Some beams have been shored
up, some paths cut through the rubble; and, in the general confosion, a multitude
oj analogues have already taken their place again and come into contact.00
Moreover, on the one occasion when Benjamin allows himself to meditate
openly upon this linguistic second-coming, it is in emphatically subjective
terms. To be human, he writes, is to name things, much as Adam did before
us." When we do so, we utter the words that let things Be; we complete
'God's creation'. We also produce th e signifiers for which the world itself
ca lls. Naming is , however, a strictly postlapsa ri an activity. What we
com municate when we say the word that inducts a thing or another creature
into its Being is not something already inherent within this thing or creature.
It IS, rather, our own 'mental being' or des ire.

In Background, Lapsus Exposure, and photograph, Coleman also complicates

the relationship between allegory and melancholy. He suggests that what
Baudelaire calls 'corresponde nces' are not a throwback to a moment before
the bifurcation of signifier and signified, but instead constitute a subsequent
stage in the allegorical trajectory. It is only after we have ceased to believe.
in the immanence of meaning that we are free to form such analogIes . It IS
also only as a result of the melancholy induced by the disi ntegration of the

, j

I"

, I

symbol that we are prompted to do so.

.'
.
Coleman is in implicit dialogue with BenJamm here as well, albeIt not
the one who wrote The Origin oj German Tragic Drama. In The Arcades
Project, Ben jamin links allegory not merely to the Baroque, but also to
modernity in some larger sense. The latter, he writes, 'has, for ItS armature,
the allegorical mode of vision.' Thi s is because allegory works to dI spel all
illusions that proceed from the notion of a 'given order,' whether of art of
life.'" German tragic drama achieves this goal for art by revealing the
arbitrariness of the sign - by teaching us that 'any person, and obJect, any
relationship can mean anything else." Capitalism - which i.s for Ben Jamm
virtually synonymous with modernity - does the sa me [or life by extendmg
the principle of arbitrariness into the economic domain. The value of the
commodity, capitali sm's object par excellence, functIOns much asmeanmg
does in Baroque drama ; it is extri"sic, the result only of the relatIOnshIp of
the commodity with another term. 'The singular debasement of thmgs
through their signification, something characteristic of seventeenthcentury
allegory', finds its contemporary equivalent in 'the singular of
things through their price', writes the author of The Arcades
Benjamin characterizes the arbitrariness of th e com modIty s value as
' progressive' at one point in thi s latter text. However, he also dreams there
and elsewhere about motivated meaning, and this dream takes the form of
the 'correspondences'. In Some Motifs i" Baudelaire, Benjamin meditates at
length upon this kind of analogical signification , and its ca paCIty to hght up
and exalt." Although obviously deeply attached to It, he relegates It to the past
_ to a moment before the full flowering of consumer culture. In the
Baudelaire section of The Arcades Project, however, Benjamin revises this
chronology. He represents the correspondences as the .'antidote: to the
arbitrariness of the sign - as our means for reassemblmg the pIeces that
mode rnity has torn asunder. He does so by quoLing at length from an
unidentified text by Jose ph de Maistre:
Once ca"Jor", a pelJeclly adec/IIllI e idea oJthe ,,,,ive/'se by co"sidering il. ",1(k,.
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Because of his comm itment to the principle of epiphenomenal similitude,

the author of Background does not hesi tate to evoke melancholy through two
metaphors of darkness, much as Durer did before him: a raven, and the black
skeleton of a prehistoric sloth. When the first of these metaphors is introduced
Into Background, via the voice-over, it is on the verge of dying. Rescued by two
boys, It ultimately survives, but only to be carried in a black box from room to
room. When the sloth is introduced into the work, through an image of three
characters stancling in front of it, it is practically as old as time itself. Colema n
"Iso situates it within a laboratory for the preservation and sectioning of bones.
ill S the pnmary representation in this work of'ruination'.
But these metaphors are only one of the form s through which Coleman
Ihemati zes melancholy in Background. The latter begins and ends with the
extinction of vision, and the sounds of a voice stra ngulated by the words it
ullers." This voice, which 'belongs' to a character named 'Tom', experiences
difficulty in speaking in part because of linguistic constraint: he is limited to
('choing what others have said before him. He does not want this verbal
legacy, we learn near the end of Background, but he cannot refuse it. No one
speaks ex nihilo in the universe of James Coleman .
Tom', speech impediment also has a more local determinant: the fact
Ih"l he ha s just re-expe rienced a loss which itself reenacts a more primal
loss. Mosl of th e first seq ue nce of Background is given ove r to the verbal and

)00, PP

, -1'

Figure 16
James Coleman. Background.
199 1-94-

visual articulation of this loss. lts second and most important image shows
a woman wearing a red suit standing between two men, one dressed in black
and the other in jea ns and a gray jacket. She is turned slightly toward the
man on the right, who extends his hand to her. Although he is literally
present, the man on the left seems to fall out of the field of vision . As we
look, Tom identifies the woman as 'Jill', the man with the outstretched hand
as 'Jo', and himself as the site of the 'fading' or 'aphanisis.''' He also tells us
that Jill has turned toward Jo in a negative response to his own request that
,I

she come to him.

Thi s refusal evokes the fai lure of another attachment - the end of the
childhood love between himself and Jo . ' I hoped ... it would last .. .f.. .forever...
fo rever ... Jo', Tom says at a key moment in this sequence. And although this
part of Background m arks the beginning of one relationship, as well the
frustration of another, later sequences will show how hard It IS to achIeve or
sustain a union , whether it be a marriage, a sentence, or the synchronization
of sound and image.
But this is far from delimiting the uses to which Coleman puts the affect
of melancholy in this work. The atmosphere of negativity which suffuses
Background also has a crucial conceptual dimension. In it, as in Lapsus
Exposure, I NIT I A L 5 and Photograph, Coleman both theorizes and ..
reinvents still photography. He reinvents still photography by temporaUzmg
it in a number of different ways. But his account of this form as It now eXIsts
also represents an expansion of our usual way of thinking about it,. since it
constitutes for him not only a technology, but also a perceptual lOgIC, and a
way of 'being' . Melancholy resides at the hea rt of all three because the still
photograph signifies first and foremo st 'mortification'.
The story which Background tells begins with what appea rs to be a
nostalgic conversation between Tom and JO about a group of photographs
documenting the origin of Jo' s relationship with Jill. Tom locates the latter
unequivocally in the past. However, the words he utters prior to the first
images are suggestive of an event taking place in the present somethmg
which need not be feared, since it will be over in a second. ThIS event IS
photographic in nature. ' In a fla sh ...it's o.k .... it's o.k.', is how his discourse
begins. There is a parallel ambigIlity about who is speaking at gIven
moment of the first sequence. A moment ago I attnbuted the vOIce-over text
to Tom , but it is clear that Tom often speaks for Jo as well , not only in indirect, ,.
but also in direct discourse. In later sequences, he will do the same for other
characters as well . Because of this, Tom's voice moves around spatially as well
as temporally. Over the course of BQckgl'Olwd, it becomes less and less his

'own'. In subsequent works, Coleman will stress even more the exteriority to
the subject of the words she speaks.
The term 'voice-over' also needs to be quali fied. Although Background
Lapsus Exposure, I N IT I A L 5, and Photograph all include
voices, and are, indeed, based upon a technology which precludes
syncl1Tonization , the relationship which they establish between word and
image defies the usual ca tegorizations. There is no 'outside' or 'above' to the
space and time .which Coleman's works traverse - no vantage-poin t from
whIch a metacntlca l d iscourse might be marshaled. The voices in these
works consequently do not speak 'over' the images to wh ich they refer but
ra ther from within them.
'
The author of Background emphasizes the all-encompassing nature of the
space hiS camera di scloses by never leavi ng the room housing the prehistoric
skeleton. Every linage III th is work was shot there; the apparent shifts of
scene are due only to different ca mera set-ups. Coleman gives time an
analogous circularity in Background. Not only does this work begin and end
with Tom's voice speaking in the dark, but the past also doubles back upon
the present,. hke a mob IUS stnp. Shortly after the evocation of an ongoing
photographIC seSSion , Tom proceeds to resituate this occurrence in the past.
In the next sequence, though, he reverts to the presen t tense, speaking first
f,om the perspective of a photographer coaching his subject, and then from
that of the one being photographed. Noth ing in the sound or image permits
LI S to sItuate the photograph ic transaction before the conversa tion about the
resulting images which takes place in the first sequence; ra ther, the two seem
to be happening at the same time. Later, Jill and Jo look at the photographs
which are ostensIbl y III the process of being shot, and Tom also situates their
verbal exchange in the present. Now we are asked to think the simultaneity
of three distinct moments. Thereafter, all verbal transactions transpire in the
present. This ImpiJes, however, not the abolition of temporality, but rather the
opcnrng up of the 'now' to include the past and the future.
In a ddition to staging the production of a photograph , Background offers
:' Ined,tatlOn on the nature of photography. As we learn in the first sequence,
,I photograph IS Illstantaneous, a 'snap'. It has no duration. It also arrests or
II ('czes movement. Paradoxically, though, it seems to provide the permanence
wilich human relatlons lack; unlike the love between Tom and Jo, it is 'forever' .
til both of these ways, the photograph immortalizes what it shows. It also
H'Vl'S LI S what it depicts in the form of a 'having been'. The flash of the light
hll ih With wh ich Coleman metaphorizes the production of a photo could be
, .lId to ma rk the happening of the present in the fo rm of the past. It iliereby
II IIdl' rrlllIl CS tempora lity frolll another direction. as well. Becau se the ph oto-

graph attests to the actuality of what it locates in the past, it constitutes a

form of proof. and he nce an agency of poss ible incrimination . Coleman
underscores thi s la st feature of photography obliquely, by having Tom say
threatenin gly at one point, on behalf of Jo: ' I have the ph ... photograph s' .

"I

, ,I

"I

"I'"
01.1111

So far, Cole man's account of photography echoes that offe red by othe r
theo rists of photography, s uch as Walle r Benj amin , Rol and Barthes and
Chri stian Metz." Where it goes beyond establi shed assumption s is in its
depiction of photograph y as a form of ide nti ty; a perceptual system: and a
negation of Bein g. Coleman begi ns thi s part of hi s discourse by stressi ng the
interpellatory nature of the photographic event. " A cam era s ummon s people
and things to pregive n places within space and ideology. At one of the points
in Background when Tom talks about standi ng in front of the ca me ra, ra ther
than behind it, he says portentously: 'we we re ... being posi tioned '. And at one
of th e moments when he see ms to be on the oth er side of th e camera , he
tell s Jo and Jill to 'come into ...the li ght'.
Photography can interpellate us formally as well as spatially or
ideologically. When someone reaches for a camera, most of uS freeze into
an anticipatory still. And even when a camera is not present, we often offer
ourselves to the look of those around us in the guise of the photograph we
would like to be.'" We do so by mea ns of the pose. The pose is one of the most
recurrent eleme nts of Coleman's work. Althou gh its role shifts from work to
work, it function s in Background primarily as a m eans of expanding the notion
of the photograph to include the bodily ego. By means of the stiff and studied
ways in which they hold themselves, whether they are looking at a photograph
of themselves, or being photographed, the characters in this work make
evident that they are playing to an internal as well as an external camera.
Cra ig Owe ns maintains in Beyol,d Recognition: Representation, Power, and
O,lture that posi ng takes place in the middle vo ice - that it is neither strictly
G
active, nor strictly pa ss ive, but somewhere between these poles This is
because the one who poses simultaneously dis plays something, and attempts
to be seen - because she is both subject and object. This is an extremely
help ful formulation . But in an important sequence in Background, Cole man
sugges ts that pos ing may also include a subsequent mome nt - one which
in vo lves a far more radical form of objectifi cation.
In thi s seque nce, Jill and Jo look at the ph otographs of them selves which
arc s imultaneously in th e procc'ss "f bei ll g shot. An elabo rate Airtation

,'lI s ues, in wh ich Jill gives herself via one o[the photogra phs to Jo, and th e n
loyly demands that he re turn her to he rself. At one mome nt Tom says, on
1,(, 1' beha lf, 'let's pose - freeze.' '' It is unclea r whether these wo rd s s ign ify
I,e r des ire to establish an absolute on eness with tbe images at which she and
10 arc lookillg, o r her wish that she might achi eve a s imilar uni on with a new
,llId better one, but in either case th ey reAect th e subordination of her bodily
q.;o to th e photograph.
But the pose signi fi es even more than the immobili zation or objectification
"I II", body, or its solicitation of the camera. It also implies the isolation of the
It"d y from the surround ing field of visio n. This is o ne of the ways in wh ich
( '" I("l11on uses it in Background. Both because of the seeming impermeability
"ll heir bodies to their sur rou ndings, and the co ntrast of their brightl yI ,, 10 11 red clothin g again st the drab wa ll s of th e room in which they stand , the
I 'I: III"I'S ill Ihi s work see m to have been cut o ut of another photogra ph , and

Figure 17
James Coleman,

Background ,

199 1-94.
18 I Jlh bv! tl\l'
lid Il" IlIddL' 111.11 11 ''0 JoJ
who 111 '" glVl:' hurl".l'IIIIi., (,-I
Ihl' phnlop,r'lrh tIl Jill. Inri

,i1

lit('n d"nl,lnci .. Itt,

tUIt'

, tlt.JI tH)tli (.hdLlcll'r'.Ht

Itlll1g lllj', '1'1 dIane' 11.,ly

pasted into the ones we see. This has the effect of underscoring their
isolation from each other, as well as their removal from time and space .
Coleman dedicates a whole sequence of the installation to this topic.
The sequence in question comes near the end of Backgrou/'Id. Four
characters appear in it - Tom , Jill , Joe, and a redhaired woman , who
also figures in several earlier sequences, and who appears to have been
romantically linked with Jo before his involvement wIth JIll. These four
figures are dressed in contrasting colours: Jill in red, the other woman m
green, Joe in black, and Tom in brown. Each also stands at a SIgn ificant
distance from the others; faces away from them; and occupIes a different
plane of the image. Now deploying a third-person narrating voice, Tom says:
'One eyejl...here ... the other. .. there ... each ... their own way'. Through the
.
parsing of his sentence, he mimics the atomization he descnbes.
Coleman teaches us that photography encroaches as fully upon Bemg
as it does upon identity - that it is an ontological as well as an egoic affair.
In Background, 'camera' signi fie s an affectless kind of human perceptiOn ,
as well as a machine for the automatic production of images. It represents
a kind of vision, that is, which is inimical to love. Coleman m akes this point
in two back-to-back sequences of Backgrou/'Id. The first of these sequences
immediately follows the one where Jill and Jo exchange the photographs,
of themselves. One of those characters says 'in images .... to Im-mort-alize ,
and the other adds 'our love' , extending death from what is shown in the
photograph to their feelings for each other.
.
In the second sequence, Coleman makes an even more overt hnk
between photography and the arrestation of passion. He uses the word .
'stoppage' to refer simultaneously to a snapshot and the relatiOnshIp of JIll
and Jo. 'Why are you ... sad?' Jo asks Jill (or Jill asks JO) . '\ was thmking ... of
our. .. situation ... l...am afraid ... stoppages', she (or he) rephes. Tom then
says, as much on his own behalf as on that of Jill or Jo , '\ closed my eyes'.
These last words also carry a double meaning - one bearing both upon the
photographs at which Jill and Jo have been looking, and the role played
by Tom' s look in the photographic transaction. With them, Coleman
characterizes photography as a blindness which is capable of afftICtmg
the human eye, as well as a represen tational form that seldom conforms

every day. Most of the times when our eyes are literally open, they are
metaphoncally shut. The meeting oflook and world occurs, imparting reality
to the real, only when a creature or thing steps forth, requesting to be seen
In a partIcular way, and is then apprehended both in its own specificity,
and from the singularity of a particular subjectivity." The look satisfies this
seemingly impossible mandate by establishing correspondences between
what it sees in the present, and what it has seen in the past. The more
complex and profuse these correspondences are, the greater is its love.
As should be evident by now, the kind oflooking I have just described
requIres tIme: the time it takes for a pulsa ting and shimmering creature or
Ihmg to disclose enough of its formal parameters to a seer to be apprehended
as somethmg other than an 'entity', and that unique and ever-changing time
wh ich IS at the heart of every sub jectivity, whose temporality is not the past,
lite present, or the future, but the past and the future i/'l the present. The still
Glm era signifi es a failure of vision for Coleman beca use it does not have
"ccess to this time.
In 0/'1 Some Motifs in Baudelaire, Benjamin also contrasts photography to
Ifll' kll1d oflooking which is creative of correspondences, and makes time the
flllnum ofthis opposition. Whatever is looked at photographically, he tells
li S . scems lIke 'food for the hungry or drink for the thirsty' - eminently
" Hl s".mable. We are under the impress ion that we could exhaust its meaning
III ,III In stant. To em bed a creature or a thing in an associative network, on
III!" olite r hand, is to tap into the infinitude of human desire. It becomes that
'" I wllich our eyes can never have their fill'.
We oft en look in a way that is photographic in nature because technology
, ,1111'01 1101 e ncroach upon the human look, and ours is a photographic age.
IIll1t'vn y lechnology, as Heidegger tells us, harbors a saving power. " If the
II/Ilk (;111 P"SS under the influence of the still camera , then the still camera
I Ii II ,d, ,, pass under the influence of the look; it can even become the agency
wlll'lt 'by lit e Being disclosed by one pair of eyes becomes available to others
I w,'11 III " sense, these are also the moments when the analogue image
11111111 IIIlI y rc,dl zes Its own potentiality. Is it not finally because of its capacity
III "how liS what no other form can reveal - the participation in tlhe event of
1111 1I 1'11(',II 'lli Ce of the world, as well as the look - that we find photography
" , Ildlt'NH ly fascinating and compelling'

10 our narcissistic desires.

The stoppage of love which the ca me ra signifies has ontological

rami fi cations. No creatu re or thin g ca n bc itself without the hbldmal
ill volvcmcn t or a itllman subjcct. Coleman characte ri zes fove in visuaftcl"l llli
bCGlli SC il is firsl an I rorclllosl a slOI ir "fr"ir be-ca li se it requires Ih
'11 1('(' ,ill p,' or or' ,is:-; ta" :llld 'l' Yl 'S,' Slllli :111 ('vv lll docs nOllra llNplH

III /III' '11", ,,,,d, Coleman breaks with photography as it is conventionally

1'1,' 111 ", 111 1111 li vl'd . li e does th is both verbally and formally. After making

19 ror a fuller elabo ration

of th iS Jrgument, sec my
Wmhl SpatQIOH Slarirord
Url1v{'rsr l y Pre"", .1000

20 tvLHtlil 11f',dCI'l'l'l

Til t,

rt" hrllllDgV 111 nil 91" \11i"1

fI'/ hltfilflJ.!Y 0110

01111' tr,tn .... Wrllr.lnl
('111( r'r/lHlI'

LOVitt I-LrllH'1

MIt!

II Ill( 1St n, 1911.

PP

Ruw I),HI
;11;;

11'.11
"

11',

h',11

"" m comment upon the interpellatory nature of photography by saying

... here ,' he has him add, by way of correction , 'no.:.not stand ... dance.:.
d ' 21 Coleman accompanies thi s remark WIth a senes of tableaux of hIS
doing ju st that. Through these tableaux, a crucia l althou gh almost
imperceptible transformation occurs: the still photograph mutates mto what
might be called the 'stilled photograph.'
. .
'No crime committed but. .. passion,' Tom says at another pomt m
BackgrOLmd, not only calling into question photography's status as
but also invoking the affect which the eye must enlist If It IS to look m t e
wa that permits it to meet tissue. The word 'passion' refers back to an
.
moment in Backgmuttd , where it emerges preCIsely in lelabon to the
look. ' I could .. .feel see in g,' the narrator says there: on behalf of oneor
. 0 f tllC wOI'k's'.clnnclL'rs
tl ndersco rtn g the affectIve bases
pc rlaps
mOle
'"
I
of th e trul y human look .

Coleman's final rhetorical break with photography is absolute. Tom

orders his companions to 'pack up ... the Nikon ... the latex,' as if to have done
with it altogether. This command follows immediately upon the heels of the
each 'eye/I' in its 'own way' meditation, making the latter an invitation to the
look to ass ume its difficult s ingularity, ove r and again st the easy automati s m
of the camera, as well as a description of the isolation to which photographic
articu lation leads.
Given that it is a temporal form, which involves actual movement along
with the re presentation of movement, cinema might seem to provide a way
out of the impasses of photography. The kind of movement which cinema
s hows us , however, is primarily physical in nature, and is genera ll y used to
ecl ipse rather than to disclose temporality. A short-hand phra se often used in
discuss io ns of ea rl y cinema - 'race to the finish' - can still be used to describe
IlIOSt contempo ra ry action film s; th ey encourage a prole psis whicll is inimi cal
to time, Coleman himself uses a variant of the phrase ' race to the finish' late
in Backgml.lt'Id, without naming cinema as s uch. He has Tom say that
1, 0 is afraid not only of time s topped , but also of' time ... racin g.' As will
become increas ingly clear in Lapslls Exposure, J N J T J A L 5 and Phot.ograph,
lit e kind of movement which rea lly interests Colema n is pe rceptual, not
pllysical , and for this he needs another set of teclmical coordina tes.
Background, Lapsl",s Expos"re, J N J T 1 A L 5 and Phot.ograph all require
lo r their viewin g the precise linin g up of th ree diffe rent s lide projectors, and
(,I I least in the form in which I saw these works) an audio cd., computer
prowammed to proceed in tandem with the s lides wh ich have been in serted
1111 0 th eir carousels. The proj ectors go on and off at planned inte rvals ,
Plojl'Cling the images onto a large scree n. Somel'imes wha t is shown is a
slide. and sometilnes a superimpos ition of two or three. At times,
ti ll" s lid e appears mid-way through the tenure of anothe r, and pe rhaps
oll l"' s ts it. At other times, a slide disappea rs almost as soo n as a seco nd ha s
IlI 'l'lI projected onto the screen n This system has the capacity to volati li ze
IIII' slill photograph. It is also ca pable both representing and activating
IIII' II ,,)vernent at the beart ofvision.'3 The spectator who enters the room in
wlll( II Background, Lapsus Exposure, I N IT I A L 5, o r Photograph is projected
IllId s 110 chair to sit on , and no limits on when she may enter or leave. This
M[ll ' lator must decide for herselfwhetber to stand, or sit on the Aoor, as
wI'II ,IS al what di stance [rom the sc reen; whether to look at the slides or the
1111i 'llo, king pro jectors which are projecting them; when to begin watching,
11 1111 wi" ' II 10 break off; and wheth e r to stay in th e same position, o r move
11 1111111. AlllloII gh cac h of th ese freedo ms migltl see m quite limited , togeth er

2:?

rot other

j{(OWlt.,

of

(olelllJn's lIll'dllHlI' ,('c

J?o'>rllirld Krdu<,,>. 'RC'lrIV('IHlI1g
lht.' Medlulll', Cnlll ollll(/Iliry,
Vlli. ]\,

no

7,

pp

lX,) lfl'), Illd

rlr.,llHl!"<': Inlrod'H \Ivn to

Illllcld(lO Anlwl!

Cult/11I111.

i.q,)Il''',

B,lr(elofll 1')Q'l. ppCl .",.

Ind R<I)'lIlund IkllolH. 'lc'.:o
rnort" VI\I,ml'>

(l'TIII!' Gt.'OII'C

l'ompIJ('11. Ifl'il> P il
rhl' 1'0111)11 nf .1 JlI('(JIlJIII 11,1',

tW(;'r1 al the Ilf'MI of rnuch of

Kr,I II........
fll''.l

work_

of the cc, ... ,ly\

111 rliC'

JI\lcd .Ihovt'.

11(' Nptore.. Ilw

challenge which photogr apby
to thl'> flotlon

23 And a':>

Kldll"5 <;lIggl' ... t'>

'Reuwentinc Ihe Medrum'

'the nlCdlLlrn Coleman
<;ecms to be' eldbor.ltlng

Hl

lust lthel pdr.ldo)(rc.df

bf'twf'en '>tillne""

(0111<;1011

and movement Lh<l\ the ')[alre

slide provokes right <II the

Inter strces of !IS changes"

op.cit., p 17. (my

they open the door to the experience of perceptual movement, as well as

providing for a singular viewing experience.
In Background , Coleman uses this set-up mostly to insert what appear
to be fades between images and sequences, although they are technically
dissolves. These fades are all linked to the longer periods of darkness at the
beginning and end of the work, and consequently serve in part as signifiers
of melancholy. But they also perform an important theoretical function , and
one which is potentially generative of a very different affect: they make
possible the production of what Coleman calls 'polaroids .. .fading.'
It is the nature of a photograph to constitute a persistent perception, albeit
of the past. Unless it is exposed to sun, or water, or some other element
which erodes its material base, an analogue image of a sunflower goes on
showing the same sunflower month after month , and year after year. We
human beings, on the other hand , have virtually no persistence of vision.
Although our conscious perceptions are often informed by unconscious
memories which can last a life-time , they themselves endure only long
enough to cover the line separating one film fram e from the next, once
a perceptual stimulus has been removed.
Earlier, I emphasized how important it is that what we see in the present
be informed by what we have seen in the past, both for ourselves, and for the
world; if we could not look in this way, there would be beings, but no Being.
Left to its own devices , though, the unconscious would forever project the
sa me mnemonic slide on the screen of consciousness , to the exclusion not
only of other memories, but also of the perceptual present. A particular past
would persist in the form of an eternal present tense. Although this is the
reverse of what a camera classically does, which is to capture the present
already in the form of the past, it would be just as effective in excluding time.
In order to challenge the kind of vision which immobilizes what it sees,
then, it is not enough to summon memory; we must also draw upon what
might be caUed the 'infidelity' of the perception/consciousness system. By
using his three slide projectors to fade 'in' and 'out' of the analogue unages
he shows us , Coleman does just this. He makes it possible for one worldly
form to cede to another, or to reveal another aspect of its own .

Colema n ends hi s allego ry about photography on a melancholic note,

as he begins it. In the hrie r on:d seqllc nce. Torn recounts the story about th e
black rave n h ing :lfril'(\ ill " gb ss elSP rroln room 10 room. The spectator
who is still sillillg ill 111l' 10,, 111 II Nh 'lI H In Illi s stn ry Croll l with in 3 darkn ess

akin to night. But we are not as far as it might seem from the kind of seeing
whICh can never have Its fill. It IS out of precisely such a darkness that this
look will later emerge.
Although Colemanian allegory culminates in joy, it is only made
pOSSIble by the melancholy precipitated by a primordial loss. The primary
Iepresentatlve In Background of this loss is neither the turning away of jill
from Tom to jo, nor jo's earl ier rejection of Tom. It is, rather, the sloth, who
has paId for hIS entry into the discourse of paleontology with his very life.
ThIS sacnfice is one which each of us has also made, by simple virtue of using
WOlds which, rather than referrIng to things, refer only to other words"
For the one emerging into the light for the first time after making thi s
sacnfice, the world cannot help but seem bloodless and reduced. It has,
after all, been transformed from unity and plenitude into a fores t of signs. "
We modern s are not the first to have registered the semiotic con sistency of
our surroundmgs; we are only the first to have apprehended the arbitrary
r.. latlon of SIgnIfier and signified. Our predecessors aLso felt tllemselves to
hl' inhabiting a domain of 'shadows' or representations of representations,
Iliit th ey could take comfor1 in the belief that the latter constituted a divin e
I.llI guage, or at least one with a stable signified .
For those of us for whom God is 'dead ,' it is often argued , there ca n no
looge r be any kmd of meaning. The signified 's lips' beneath the signifie r,
III I" ds altogether to appear. Ifit comes into play at aU, it is only becau se of
conven tIon. In Backgmund, [apsus Exposure, [ N [T I A [ S, and
I'/IO/ograph, Coleman duly registers the arbitrariness of the lingui stic sign,
hili he mallltams that it is only here that the real story of mea ning begin s.
WI ' :."C not conSIgned after the advent of the word to a far shore, like
U"llIlI son Crusoe on his island. The linguistic signifier is, rather, what opens
"l' li lt, poss lbihty for a rapport between ourselves and what surrounds us
Th('re can be nothing more fortunate than our 'faU' into language.
1I,,'l.lIlcholy generated by the loss of 'life' or 'presence' discloses the world
lil li S, , illce it is in an attempt to make good our loss that we first open
IlI lI Nvl vl"s to It. Our manque-a-e!re also conrers upon us the capacity to name
111 111 '1 I J"i';ltures and things, and - in so doing - to complete them. Whe n we
1IIII II y SlOp sea rching for what we have sacrificed to language, and embark
11 1111 11 II,,: life- long quest of sym bolizing it, we begin exercis ing this
Il il llI llI .III Vl' ca pa city. And at the moments when we do so, melancholy
I lvI', W. IY10 joy.
ANNilollid by now be cl ear, th e Engli sh te rm s 'a ffect' a nd 'state of mind'
1IIIIIId rio jllsti cc to th e co mpl exity of thi s last e motio n. If we wanl to
Iilll ll' lN t. llld till' killd o f rapture namin g afrord s. we mu st turn in slead to

24 I here upon J.tcquc,>

lilC.HI'<; dftOIJ!1l

of

\111'

Into whlrh io;

rntry
<,pl

tortll nlll.,t dearly III r0(11

111II,/(lItll"l1tfll

Contl"!"\ of
Pf.I ;UIi /2Cj

2S Of (Ollr'>(' Wf'

nt'vel

I'XPI'lll'l1ce thl'> IHlIty dl ld

pll'Jlluajl'

II(

h IIH'Y

(dfl'>illull J !.Ult<l'>Y

the German wo rd 'Stimmung.' In everyday speech, '5timmung' ge ne rally

. . ' fi es 'mood.' Etymologically, however, it m eans the attunement of one
to another and this meaning is still current in the ver bal form , ,
, f g en' Let benefi t from one of the m ost important lessons Coleman
s lmm'
d h ea r the echo of the past within the usage of the
has to teac h us, an
. '
d ' 't
t
resent If 'Stimmung' once m ea nt 'attu n ement ,' and late r mOO, I mus
certain moods constitute less a psychic state, tha n the ontological
adjustment of one being to another. 50 is it, in any case, with lOY,

Posing, Ac ting, Photogra phy

David Campany

A gesture carmol. be I'ega rded as the expression of al1 il1dividlwl, as his creation

(because no individual is capable of creating an original gesture, be/.ol1ging

to nobody else) , nor can it even be regarded as I.hat person's irlstmment; on
the cO l1.trary, it is gestu res th.at use LtS as th.eir as their bearers
and i'1.carnations.
Milan Ku nde ra I

I M!ldl1 KurHJl'I.\. '''IIIIO/I(/I,/y,

(,ICJVl'

P'C''>'., N,'w York. 1/)'1"

", I would say that no pictllre collld exist today witholli. having a trace of I.he
fi lm still in it, at least no photograph, but that could also be I.rll e ofclrawings
and paintings maybe,
je ff Wall'

Jl'ff w"tl.

I'1H'IVII'w/l t'l IllH

11,/. \{lIpl. VII !

Ill-lining photography ha s always been a matter of comparison a nd contras t.

Highl fro m the s tart it has been und ers tood through oth er media, Across
li S hi sto ry, painting, litera ture, scu lpture, theatre and cinema have offe red
dilfCrent ways to think about what photograp h y is. Not surp risingly different
"I, ';'s have e merged, Pain ting puts the e mphas is on ques tions of description
,,,,,I "ctuality; literature puts the em phas is on rea lism and expression;
"'I dplure em phasises qua lities of vo lu me and Ratness ; Uleatre e mpha s ises
II II' pcrformative; cinema u sually emphasises aspects of time and the frame,
Ill1'sl' ways ofUlinking are almost una voida ble , We see the m in all kind s
II I di scussion of photography, both popular and specialist. They can be very
1lI llI llinating, But they can also be artificial.
I:i rs l o f all, the comparing of media often lapses into 'technological
ril 'I"l'Il1ini s m', stress ing the mechanical fac ts ov&. social u se, Or m o re
1,, 'qlll'lIll y, what m ay seem like technical thinkin g often turn s out to be
1I II II II II ghly rooted in o ur always social understanding of media. Fo r example
1'111 lSi ia II Me tz' b rilliant essay' Photography and Fetish' is a n attem pt to
IIII lI p:lrc 'Ilid contrast photography and fi lm ,' He sees that the two share a
11 'l illl ic:ri simila ri ty but each h as its own relation to time, framin g and the
of obj ecthood. But as hi s argume nl unfold s it becomes clear that
I'" I'S r" :llI y al s lake a rc not lh c cliflc rc nccs o r s imilariti es between fi lm a nd

'110

VJ(

I 1

3 Chnstlan Mpll Photograph,

dr1d Fellsl

r til

Ot I(lLlt I, \4

rt'pllnl('d

ed.

Thf' (

Ifl

CHI'

tlwl/,/1(;;:,

nsay' vn UlIllr /llPQlIIly

11/lO/oglllfl/l\" 8.:ay P'L''><;

'::.t'.IHIc
I',,)

II

III'

"II'"
"'I!

'I"

photography per se, but between film in its popular narrative form and the
photograph as domestic snapshot. Film is not inherently narrative or popular,
photography is not inheren tly domestic or a snapshot. Metz' opposition starts
off general and technical but soon becomes a particular contrast between
quite specific social uses of the still and the moving image.
Secondly, simple bina ry con tras ts can overlook the fact that crossover
between media can be much more radicall y hybrid. The growin g convergence
of image technologies a nd their uses may often appear to make the idea of
distinctive medium s seem old fa shioned to us. Technologies are overlapping
and blurring while the once distinctive uses of media are being eroded
producing 'infotainment', 'docudrama', 'edutainment', 'advertorials' and the
like.' That sa id , such hybrid form s may also alert us in new ways to specific
differences between things. For exa mple we may grasp 'cinema' as a cultural
form now scattered across many sites and technologies - television, DVD ,
video, the inte rnet, mobile phones and posters, as well as actual movie
theatres. But the scatterin g may attune us to what is particular about each
e ncounter. In this sense the world of ' multimedia' is also a world of , m any
media'. And we come to know what media a re less by lookivg for their pure
centres tha n thei r dispu ted boundaries.
I want to take as an in stance of all of thi s the recurring fasci nation shown
by photographers and arti sts with the depiction of narrative gesture in the still
image. [ h ave in mind the staged photogra ph as it has developed in the art of
recent decades. It provides a useful way to think about th e way hybrid
practices attune us to differences and similarities.
I begin with a particularly rich binary: acting and posi/lg. Straight away we
may associate 'acting' with something unfolding or 'time based ' like cinema
or theatre. ' Posing' may suggest the stiUness of photography or painting. A
sharp reader will also be thinking of examples that complicate this: scenes
of arrest such as the tableau vivant in theatre, or cinema's close-up of a face
in pensive contemplation , or blurred movement caught but escaping a long
exposure, or as we shall see, th e narrative gesture performed for the still
photograph. Such things could be said to be exceptions that prove the rule
that actin g belon gs to movement and posing to stillness. But they are much
too common to be m ere transgressions. They are a fundamental part of how
makers and viewers have come to understand images.
Before turning to recent photography let us first consider a film made
ove r haifa ce ntury ago. In one of hi s ea rl y comedies Federico Fellini mak s
a li ght-hearted but perceplive com ment on cinemati c movement and the
slilln ess of photograph y. 1.0.), fin" Ilirlll ,.o (TIll" Whit;, .5I-I eikfl, 195 2 ) foll ows
Ihe maki np: of :ljilllIl"1I 0. 1'111111 ' 11 1 W, ' I',' <jlli ,k ly prodll c,'d phOlo-stories prinl ed

Figure 19
Film still ,

Th e Wh ite Sheikh,

Feder ico Fellin i. 1952,

on chea p paper. Read in great number by hungry film fan s they were
co mmercial spin-offs from popular fi lm culture, In the style of com ic books,
Ihey used sequences of staged photos to teLl filmic tales with the h elp of
captIO ns and speech bubbles . (Al though never very popular in Britain,
Illmetti were a staple of post-war popul ar cu lture in mainland Europe,
partIcularly Italy and France). [n The White Sheikh we see what looks like a
regular film crew settin g up on a beach. (Figure r9) They are about to shoot
" scene in which the gauche and chubby White Sheikh - a pale imitation of
Ill e silent movie h eart-throb Rudolph Valentino - slays his foe and rescues a
'ualTIsel in distress', Fellini shows us a fra ntic dir<"Ctor preparing his ragbag
\ rew while marshalling his second-rate performers who can't get jobs in the
II';1i Fi lm industry. They begin to play out the scene, Suddenly in a comic
II've rsa l of cinematic action, the director shouts "Hold it!" The 'actors ' freeze
III Ill eir postures, as if in some pa rty game. A cameraman - we now see he
:" " slill photographer - excitedly takes a single shot. The actors spring back
",I I) movement a nd the scene continues. Sometimes they pose themselves
.,s best Lh ey ca n, or they halt when the director yell s at an in stan t within the
IIIIW, Fe llini cu ls ra pidly betwee n the direclor, the "cl'ors and the sti ll s man
III" SI' lIling il all in hi s carnival SqllC, kn o ka bOil I slyle. Th e pac in ess may

be

why, unl ike the more self-co nscious films that have explored stillness (most
of which are ponderously slow films) this one is all but forgotten ' Nevertheless
the scene is a subtle and nuanced com mentary on acting, posi ng, movement

t i l l ...

and stillness.
No doubt Fellini gives us an unreali sti c account of how afometto would
actually have been produced. He models th e photo shoot too closely on
fi lmm aking. He plays it as a losing battle of arres tedness agai nst the
.
juggernaut of popular ci nema's momentum , as if a photog rap he rwe re tryltlg
to actuall y photogra ph during the m aking ofa moving film . In th is Felhl11
positions photography as a poo r relation of ci ne ma. In cultural, economiC a nd
artistic term s thi s was so, even by 1952. The inequa lity was not something
to be thought just at the level of the apparatus (the photograph as a primitive
ancestor of film). Felli ni was thinking in cultura l te rm s too. Photog raphy was
bei ng used to se rve and mim ic cinema.
.
Today thefometto has all but va nished . The des ire to possess a film In a
fixed form is no w satisfied by video and DVD. But photogra phy and Cinema
mainta in an uneve n relatio nship. Cinema continues to make use of the
s till photogra ph for publicity (an iss ue I wi ll return to later in thi s essay).
Meanwhile photogra phy in art has moved from the s pontaneous freeze of the
'decisive moment' (by wh ich photography was first compelled to dlffe renha te
itselffrom cin ema in the 1920S and 30s) to the slower narrative tableau that
we now see in advertising, documenta ry photogra phy, fash ion and photo.
journalis m as well as in art
The re is quite a variety of s tyles of acting, pe rformance and gesture In
comptemporary photography_ The more dramatic fo llow the preceden t set by
Cindy Sherma n and JeffWa ll , two artis ts who turned towa rd cinematICs m .
the late '970s- They began to expand what waS then a pretly narrow repertotre
of human express ion and behaviour in art photograp hs_ Technically and .
stylistically thei r pictures were highly accom plished from the start Departing
from the s imple use of photogra phy to docum en t pe rformance, Sherman and
Wall e ngaged explicitly with the idea of pe rformance Jar the image and .
performance as image_Their pictures were the result of a range of conslderal:Jons
_ not just gesture but framing, li ghtin g, costume, make-up, props, location
a nd so on. The craft com plex of ci nema was applied to photography_ This was
an ins tance of the 'reskilling' that followed the technica l reductions of photography in Conceptual Art. Since then , for one reason or another, Sherman's
and Wall's imagery has tended to revolve around enacting moments of SOCIa l
a ll d psychologica l dOllbt or di s lurbance , as we shall see. As a res ult there IS
olie n a del ibe rale gap bel wl'l'lI lir" III IC('l'lai lil y lirei r work pictures fo r us a nd

the certai nty of the images them selves - their sophistica ted rhetoric, th eir
control and ass ur ed handling of mise-en-scene.
This is perhaps most apparent in the peculiar character of the narrative
photographic tablea u. The tablea u is an inherently artificial s tructure_ It is a
constructed form , often on the border of naruralism . It condenses, dis places
and distils separa te things and moments into a fixed image. It is the n
cons umed by the viewer first as a pi ctorial whole then piece-by-piece as the eye
and mind roam around the image, assembling mean ings. In th is sense the
tablea u exists in an idealised rea lm of fanta sy in which everyday socia l laws of
tim e and space may not wholly or clearly appl y. So wh ile it might descri be th e
social present or pas t, the tableau image also belongs to the futu re_ It always
has, at least in part, a future tense. It is an imagining of the social wo rld _
Hence, the tableau ph otograph always has an inescapable odd ness about it.
A tension is created between the photograph as record o r evidence wh ich
locates it in th e pas t, and the idea l narrative organ isation of the image that
conjures an imaginary dimens io n_This tens ion, which ca n be made into a n
:Irtistic virtue, is most ac ute around the depiction of the human figure_
Des pite its regu lar dialogues with th eatre, pho togra phy's artis tic merit
was discussed almost excl us ively in relatio n to pa inting unlil the 1970SII was on ly when it was taken up in relation to cinema that its th ea trica l
condition was exa m ined prope rl y. At its inception cin ema inherited the
heho viou ral co nventions of theatre and developed its language from there_
Ci nema acting came into its own with the advent of th e psychologica lly
, harged close-up. Paradoxica ll y th e close-up requires the actor to act as little
,IS possible and te nd s to be rese rved either for moments of reactio n o r
,olliem plation . Th is makes th e close-up quite unci nema tic. It comes as a
I'Il'Js urable delay within a narrative film. As1 l.aura Mulvey has po inted out,
Ih .. close-u p arres ts time, abso rbs and di sperses th e attention and soli cits
1, 011 1 th e viewer a gaze that is m uch more fixing and feti shis tic than
II.IIT:ll ively voyeuri stic. It was also through the close-up that the 'star perso na'
\V,IS u-ea led. Stars are those actors tI,at are more than th eir performances.
I'l lI'y ha ve a sense of ,bei ng them selves' as much as playing their part. The
1'1" 'll omcnon of ti,e sta r is a recognition of th e arti fice of cinem a. It accepts
lli.ll Ihe re ca n or will be an excess beyond the part played _
Al l ho ugh it has become central to ma in strea m film culture, this excess
I,.IS IlOlibl ed ma ny fi lmmakers. The French director Robert Bresson, for
"X,lIllpl c, di s liked the idea of actors and preferred non- professiona ls in his
Id'll s. As we ll os avoiding close- ups he avoi ded the te rm actor and aU its
11'I', ill i,a l impli cat io ns. (Fi gure 20) He pre fe rred the idea oflhe model, a term
1i1 ,11 Il'c rll s Ih e s lill phologra ph o r Ihe P:li ll l(' r's silidio. l ie ha d his mod els

Figure 21

JerrWall. Volunteer. 1996.

7 wdll hlnl'w)f cll'scrtbes llip
IIll.JgC

tflu ..

'OHlbllf\/ I'> d

f,lt Imy !.U'IIC HI Wfllc

dra in their performances of theatre, insis tin g they pe rform actions over and
over in rehearsa l. Finally they could pe rform before the camera without
tho ught or self-consciousness . Bresso n writes in his on ly book:
No actors.
(no directing ofactors )
No parts.
(no playing of parts)
No staging.
But the use of working models taken from life.
BEING (models) instead of SEE MI NG (actors),'
1/',)

Later he notes 'Nine-tenths of our movements obey habit and automatism.

It is anti-nature to subordinate them to will and thought.' The result was a
s tyle of performarce in which both everything and nothing looked controlled.
Th e 'models' perform with an inner ca lm a nd appare nt s tillness, even when
moving. They 'go through the mol ions', as we say. Unfairly described as
aLl s lc re. th e res lraint in Bresso ll's r, lllI s G il' sc('m unapp roachable but
abso rbin g 100.

'>(lFnt'budy

JeffWaJJ's photograph Volunteer (1996) may owe a great dea l to Robert

I1 r0sson. (Figure 2 1) Wall hired a man to clea n the floor of a set built to
,,se mble a comm unity cen tre. He clea ned it for a month or so. Onl y after the
"""' had become unconscious and automatic in his actions was the image
II "Ide. Wall has many different methods to disti l a performance or narrative
I:["slure into a photograph, accepting that there is no single solution to the
\ I"IIlcnge. For Outburst (I986) Wall's models improvised situations between
., lyr:lI1t boss and his sweats hop workers. (Figure 22 ) These were recorded on
vill["o. The tape was then reviewed a nd frozen in playback to discover the
wslures needed. These were then restaged for the fin al image. Where
1/,,/11 II leer threa tens to become mundane in its flattened performance Outburst
1I11 [""le ns to swamp us in dram atic excess, to burst ou!.' But in their ges tural
I.'''gll ''ge both may strike us as curiously automatic, deadly robotic even.
10 beco me automatic is to enter into blank mimicry. Roger Callois once
III IIHd of mimicry possess ing an estranging force.' Similarl y the philosophe r
11 '"1"1 Be rgso n remarked that human s behavin g like automata or robots can
I", ., sOll rce ofun ex pected or unca nn y affect, even anxious humour.' So what
I II ,, rel ali on between huma n gestures that a re automatic mimicry and the
(. II11Na. which is il self an au loma tic, mimickin g machine? For a rt, the

Cf'lIdd

(oLlld 1)(, (I)r('m,m,

t'll' (rWllt'I,

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W,III!t'd 10

depK! II oJ'> Ir II was h.JPPf>IIOlg

11I'>l.lIll,Ulf'Ou<;ly so, for

tlw WlltTl,HI. who 1<;;

lIlt' objC'ct of IllS w,,,th, l'i

t"ntlfrly <'Idnll'd by II J ,,1"'0' ,IW
II ,1<' .J kInd ur !'XpJU\lurl'

jf'ff Wall 'My PhntClt" 'phle

11" VI,' flll{)fogHlI'Jru
HI Ii, r 11(1\\1\, II,,, kWI\f,
Produ(IIOn'

ldll.on Cant ... 19<)0

rt'IJ!lIIted 111 D.lvrd (.Hnpdny,

ed , Ar' /wd rfWfOpllph y,
Ph,udoll lunduIl,21103,

pp 249

8 Roger CillolS Mlmlcly,md

1 eg('ndMY p.,ycnClslhl'nld
01 fv/wr, 31, 198", pp 17-3)

9 t lel1ll Berg50rl, 'The- Iflt('n<;lly

of Psychic St,lles In flrl/f (111,/

Fret Will AI' EHay 011 III!

ImmedwlI' D(lt(l of
55, Ceol pc Allt-n
,md UnWin, london, 1910,

"I

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I
(I'HII

st rangeness of photographed m 'micry ha s often had a critical or analytical

impul se. It has been used to distance us from the familiar. Narrative P?se 111
photography can foreground arrestedness, setti ng up a space from wh ich to
rethink social convention s and stereotypes. Mass culture and dally life can
be reexamined through engagir.gly awkward images of ' petrified unrest', as
Walter Benjamin might have put it.
Excess in photography is usually thought to be a different m atter from .
excess in cinema. In his essay The Third Meaning. Some notes on E,senstell1
Film Stills' Roland Barthes looks for something between the two. 'O He is
attracted to enigmatic, unnameable meanings he senses lurking in the details
of frames from movies. These mea nings are beyond the consciou s control
of either the acto r in the im age or the director. Often for Barthes they derive
from those inert things that attach themselves to the Aesh and blood of the
li vin g body - hair, nail s, clothing and teeth. " These are things that belong.
ne ither to life nor to death. They are attached to the body but not stnctly of It.
They may express and animate but they are themselves inanimate. In the
slls pended frame their excess significa nce looms large. For Ba rthes It IS not
the acting that interests, rather it is the ca pacity of the extracted film frame to
illlerverie in the acting, to rub it against its own inten tions. The chOICe of slllis
from fi lm s by Eisenstein was delibe rate and quite subvers ive. Famously,
Eisenstein had championed a very different kind of third m ean ing. rutting
one shot after another in a cinematic sequence could implant a controlled
'third effect' in the mind of the viewer. Much more disturbing, Barthes' third
meaning resides within the si ngle shot oftbe film. It is released by it,
and wi ll always esca pe tight semiotic control. Barthes unea rths the II1s tablhty
lurkin g even within the tightly organ ised imagery of Russian avant garde film.
I n some ways Barthes' thinking responds to ways in which photography IS
an inherently theatrical medium , in the sense that it theatricalizes the world ..
Everythin g is alive and unstable in the image and as Barthes rightly noted thiS
aliveness, or polysemy, is usually contained and directed by text, context,
vo ice over, discourse or ideology." Barthes appea ls to the way in which the
a rrestedness of the single frame poses the world, or more accurately imposes
a pose on the world, making it signify in often unlikely ways. The philosophe r
(and photographer) Jea n Baudriliard suggests that something similar is at
work not just in the film frame but in every still photograph:
'TI,e pholo is itself; in its happier moments, an acting'Ol,t of the world, a way
oIgrasping the world by expeUi"lg it, and WithOll! ever giving it a
All abreacting of I.he 1V0rid i" ils 1II Os l abslnl se or bel11al forms , an eXOI'CISIII
by lIr e jIl 51(111/ fiction ofils rt'prrSl'Il/nli o ll ", ', II

He is right, I think , that photography can not but transform the world into
a world performed Or posed. This seems to be so even if it is a world of
objects and surfaces . Understandably Baudrillard him self prefers objects to
people in his own photographs precisely because there is then no confusion
of poses . A photograph for him is performance enough without human s.
It should be said tllat ' film s till' is quite an ambiguous te rm. For Barthes
it refers to an actual frame extracted from the moving film - a single frame,
twe nty four of wh ich conventio nally make up one second of moving footage.
However it also refers to stiU photog raph s, s hot by a still s cameraperson on
the fi lm sel. " Fo r these images the film actors run throu gh things again,
'once more for sti ll s', ad justing their performance slightly so that the scene
o r situa tion can be di stilled , posed almos t, into a fixed image closer to the
procedure of the co ndensed tableau. " Both kinds of photographs circulate
IInder the name 'fil m stil l' and both contribute to a 111m's publicity, which
in turn helps form the social memory of a fi lm. But each has its own very
diffe rent relation to acting, posing, stiUn ess a nd moveme nt.
Given this amb igu ity what might we make of Cindy Sherman's first
Inajor body of work, the Unl.il.led Film Stills' Nearly three decades on thi s
I.lndmark series still has the powe r to fascinate. I see the title of the se ries
playing very much on the ambiguity of the term ' film s till'. Are her lmages
II10delled on the film frame or on the restaging of the scene for the sti ll
" nn era' Does She rman pose or act, o r act as if posing, or pose as if acting?
Is s he posed by th e camera, or does s he pose fo r the camera? Or is it
s01l1 ething even more complicated' A few years after Sherman made the
' ,Ties the writer Craig Owens pointed out the s imilarity betwee n pos ing for
,I pllOtograph and the nature of photography: 'Still, I freeze as if anticipating
1111' s till I am about to become; mimicking its opacity, its still ness; in scribing,
,I1II1SS Ih e surface of my body, photography's "mortification" of the fles h'.'"
WIIl' n we pose we make ourselves into a frozen image. We make ourselves
111111 a photograph, in anticipation of being photographed. More importantly,
I'VI'II if we do not pose, the camera will pose us, pe rhaps in an unexpected
w.r y. I tcnce the anxiety we might have about being photographed , being
I'",,d by the camera without first being able to com-pose ourselves. He nce
11 1'11 ' III\, source of the great antagonism between the 'taken' and the 'made'
1'1 1lIllIgr;r ph . By turns political. ethical, aesthetic and intellectual, the
1I 111 'I[:ollisl11 has fundamenta lly shaped debates, artistic credos and popular
1I11111 'lS landings of the l11edium . (It also shaped camera manufacture as it
_pili 1lt'lwcen lightweight reportage equipment and larger format models for
11 m' III silldias). Whi le ' the taken' and 'the made' can never be totally separate,
JlII"I"S " "' s till sccm to Airt with th e distinction. The s taged photo-tableau

'4 'Fi lm slllI' IS the 1r,ln<,lallon

uo;ec! rOl BMlhc'j' French term
'photograml11(,' In Engho;h
'phologram' ha'> another
meaning d c.Hnerales,> Image
m,ld(' by pla( mg obWfl<;
dlleclly on to photogrctphlC
pdper before exposule
IS See John Stl'/,lker's

(><;,> .q

C'I<;ewh(>r(' In 11110; book

16 Crdl!, Owell'.> PU'jIIlI'

In

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yorlJ Rno '1IItll'/1

Rqlll \,'IJtmhJ/l, J'mvPl Olll)

CrJJ/II/t Un,vl'I',ity (If (.111101111,1

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92 pp. 01 }l7

Jlth

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has a coyness about it in thi s regard. The sense of thea trical dis play o rients
the scene toward the viewer. At the sa me time the ignoring of the presence
of the ca mera as pires to classical narrative cinema . Still photography always
seems to carry with it a sen se of frontality, a sen se that the wo rld will
recogn ise the presence of the camera and reconcile itself to it. When it admits
as much, it gives rise to 'direct address' (e. g. the pass po rt photo, the fami ly
s nap) but any photography that entertains indirectness seem s to end up
competin g with th e med ium in some way, for good or bad.
Craig Owen s' insight about th e parallel between posi ng and the still photo
seem s stra ightforward enough . Yet it may not acco unt too well fo r wha t is
going on in Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, no r indeed for the kinds of
behaviour that have evolved in the art of s taged photography si nce the 1970s.
Ir posing suggests consonance with the s till image, She rman inaugurated a
much richer dissonance. Coming at the e nd of th e 1970s, he r pe rfo rma nce
broke with what we traditionally think of as 'performance art' photography.
Thi s was usually premised on an auth entic, non-fi ctional , direct relation
between s ubject and ca mera , in which the image wa s ass umed to fun ction
as a transpare nt document outsid e of the performan ce. Sherm an's camera
is complicit in the perfo rmance, acceptin g that it wo uld always be at least as
responsible for pos ing as the human body. This, I th ink , has been the lastin g
inAue nce of those earl y images .
I have always been strucK by a certa in rese rve in Sh erman's work, des pite
all th e performance. Within the endless personae and masque rades the re is
" re markabl e withdrawa l and I think it ha s to do with the fa ce. With a rew
1I 0ta bi e exceptions Sherman's fa ce re mains almost neutral, very lim ited in its
ex pression . All about her there is thea tre, pe rfor mance and commu nication
yet her fa ce gives little away. (Figure 23) She refuses to act o r pose with the
1:lce, eve n when appea rin g to cry. Instead tbe face g ravitates towards a
lIles meris in g blankness, an immobili ty as sti ll and automatic as the image
itself. Th e photography poses and acts, the mise-en-scene poses and acts, but
She nnan re main s elusive and non-committa L" This bl ank ness is not the
( Iiche of th e artistic self portrait (arti sts, it seem s, will never smile whe n
ta kin g the ir own picture, unless it's ironic). Instead Sherman alludes to those
cool s ta rs of cin ema who ra rely smiled and made o nl y minimal gestures.
!lu t She rman 's bla nkness fo r the still image is of a very different orde r.
rhe o ppos ite of ove rt th eatricality is often thou gh t to be in tros pecti on o r
:lbso rptio n. While I was thinkin g about this I glan ced at the image o n the
(ove r of m y copy of 1/lll lllil"lfl liollS.
,"lt llol oJ.\y of Wa lte r Be nj amin 's essays.
(I'i gllfe In C isek' I'r(' ull I's portr:lit fro lll 19l9. Ik llj:lrtlin is thinki ng. O r
Ill' 'Il ts '.I S il" l,.. is Iltill kill g. I It .. is II, illkill ll lll :l ll,.. is Iltillkill g. O r ma ybe w('

'"I

. ,-,

think that beca use he is s uch a se rious thinker he mu s t be thin king. Maybe
Ih at IS how Benjamin thought he o ug ht to appea r. Or perhaps Freu nd caught
Itlm thlllKmg. 0,. she cau ght som ething that looked like thinking. We are so
lam oil ar With chll1 s troking, re ticence and spectacles as s ig ns of th e
Illtellectual that we do not give it much thought at all.
. Fre und 's ca mera is so close to Ben jamin that he must s ureJy be aware
" I II. Ther e IS nothing surreptitious here. He is eithe r pretending or he is
1':llhologlCa lly a bsorbed. We can relate th is to Michael Fried 's dis tinction
1,,"lwee n abso rption and theatrical ity in pain ting. OK Fried saw absorption as a
IIllIde In whICh peopl e are depICted either bein g or doing someth ing oblivious
10 lilt' prese nce of th e Viewer. They might be menta ll y active _ say, th in king o r
",, dlng o r kllliling - but outw" rd ly nol I11l1 ch is go in g on. Wh il e theat rica lity

Figu re 23
Cindy Sherman,

Unlilled Film Still 10, 1978.

h,H,:,1 Fr E"cI. AhHlI'1'1101I

/ld TI!Nllnw/sly. Pomflllg (lIld
tile Bt Imldel IIf Iht: Agl: CJ{
18 MI(

Dil/nol. Urllvel'),IY 01 Clllc;}go

P't
I,Ro

involves an explicit recogniti on of the presence of an audience, depictions of

absorption solicit a suspension of our disbelief. We imagine we are looki ng at
an unobserved scene. In photography the issue is slightly different since it is
quite possible to take a photo of an oblivious person , usually from a distance.
Any sen se of theatre would stem from the photographic act, the posing of the
scene as a scene by the camera. The 'authentic' photo of absorption at close
range ca n only be achieved, strictly speaking, either with a hidden camera,. or
with the subject' s familiarity or indifference. But it is easy to simulate lt wlth
the resulting image becoming a theatrical representation of absorption.
I am fairly sure about what this image of Benjamin mean s, but I am less
s ure what is, or was, really going on. Thi s may be why it holds m y interest. I
se nse mental move menl ben ea th his sti ll face and body. I sense too, a degree
of melancholi a in the pori ra il and hy nsion in Benjamin . Melancholi a
wa s a subjeci e nlrall u B"lIj:IIII ;II'" Il li llk;lI g :lIleI il is a di s positi on to which

he was himself prone." Melanchol ia has a very particular relation to photo

graphy because it is a state that exists on the threshold of self-performance
and withdrawa l, between social ma sk and nothingness, between thea tricality
and absorption. It is a condition not of the melancholic's conscious m aking
but it is experienced by them as a conscio us cond ition. Th e melancholic is
tra pped in a kind of attenuated self-performance - alone but feeling regulated
by the gaze of others, or by his or ber own imaginary gaze at the mself. The
condi ti on is lived from within and observed from without at the same time.
Obviou sly m elancholy ca n be coded in highly s pecific ways in photogra ph s,
and a numbe r of women photographers of the nin eteenth ce ntury refin ed
this, such as Jui ia Margaret Cameron and Lady Hawarden. Less closely
coded it sli ps in to a range of m oods - pen siveness, listless ness, boredom,
fatigue, waitin g. These are all states that seem to appeal to contemporary
photographers, not least because the actors o r models need not do very much.
As long as they do littl e and the ph otogra phy does a lot - in th e form of
'production values' - a good resu lt can be achieved. Na rrative ca n still be
present if e ntropic, whi le th e pitfalls of hammy performance - always
lemptin g in the face of s tillness - can be avoided . (Coin ciden ta lly at th e time
of writi ng th is essay, I saw an exhibition of Gregory Crewdson's seri es of
cinematic ta bl ea ux ph otographs Beneath the Roses. At the heart ofCrewdson's
spectacular over- production was the sa me basic human gesture, a sort of
ex hausted sta nding a round, slump-s houldered with th e vacant face of a
rbydreamer. The gap betweeen inactive humans amid th e grotesquely ove raCl ive photography was so extreme as to be comic. Although I'm not
Slire th is was intentional.)
_ This might also be the rea son why our galleries and art magazines have
01 late been populated with so many photograph s of adolescents standing
:rrou nd. The adolescent embodies so many of the current paradoxes of
pholography: the awkward fit between being and appearance; between surface
,1",1 depth; between a coherent identity and ch aos; between irrationality
,II lei order; between muteness and communication; between abso rption
.,"d Ihea tricality; between stasis and narrativity; between posin g and acting.
More significantly th is turn towards 'slow' , sedirnented photography
,oJ so chimes with the predominance of slowness in contemporary video art.
l'I, olugraphy has aU but given up the 'decisive moment' in order to explore
wlr:11 J moment is; video art has all but given up movement, the better to
IIII IIk wha t movement is. This is why just about all the current art and writing
111.,1 ,"xplores s tillness and movement really only considers slowness and
III ()Vl' IIl on!. Worked-up tableau photos and decelerated video art partake of the
N,II'1l" kind of exploration. But mu st th e speedy always be sacrificed in all thi s)

'9 On Ihe SUbWc. 1 of BC'rl)amln

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Need slowness be the only way> At this key point in the his tories of art and
media, I think it is a questio n worth posing. And a pose worth questlOntng.

T he Fi lm-Still and its Double: Reflections on the 'Found' Film-Still

Johlt 5 tezaker

As an a rti st wh o has often wo rked with found images th e latte r half of the
1970S offered m e a n unex pected bounty in the fo rm of ' fi lm-still s' - a type
of photographic image whose fu nctio n has been to double for a s in gle fi lm
frame in cine ma publicity. (See Fi gures 25 and 26) I wo uld li ke to emphas ise
Iho ugh, from the outset, that m y a im is not 10 throw lighl on some
previo us ly uncon s ide red genre of ph otog ra phy but rath er to in te rroga te a
mysterious opac ity of those images whi ch F,rst attracted me whe n bu nd les of
Ihem found the ir way into second-hand books ho ps as the res ult of a cris is in
fil m dis tributio n which res ulted in the clos ure of the large-sca le s ingle scree n
cinem as and th e consequent d ispe rsal of th e info rmal a rcl1i ves held the re
uf past publicity m ate rial (ofte n da ti ng back seve ral decades). Thi s cris is in
cinematic cons umptio n also heralded th e end of th is m icrocosm of pho too gra phy whose chie f fun ction was to adve rtise the film of the week with
'I" ite copi ous still re presentations of the narrative seq ue nce.
Originall y di s pla yed in speciall y designed wi ndows o n th e o uts id e of the
,inema (a nd iii at night) o r else in the foyer, these pictures we re di splayed
"' linear seque nces as s till ve rs io ns of Ihe cinema tic narra ti ve (without, o f
llI rSe, revea li ng the endi ng). T hey we re advertisements for the curre nt
(i lll' l11atic en tertainment o n offer and dis pl ayed alon gs ide a sm all er sa mple
" I Ihe next week's attractio n labeled 'comin g soon'. Those li ke m yself in the
'1)50 '5 fo r whom these images we re fi rst encou ntered as represen ta ti ons
"I ,III ex perience from which we we re pro hibited, at least te m po rari ly, will
1'," Slire tes tify to th e uni ve rsa l sense of di sa ppointment felt in the late r
I " " " "11 mation of these adul t (x-rated) experiences. And whil st the fai lure of
pi "d ucts to live up to the ir adve rtis ing im age is a taken-fo r-gra nted rite of
p,lssage within consumeris m , the fail u re represented by the film-still seem s
"cute. These im ages cl aimed to be sam ples ofa prom ised cin ema ti c
l'III (' ,lai nment but never seemed to actuall y appear on the screen . They
""rrkl,d fo r me a s pectral and s hadowy unde ,wo rld. Even when the film s we re
III (" Io ll r, the black and white stills suggested ' film no ir'. The other-wo rldl y
1J " ,dlly ur lhe fi lm -s l'ill (es peciall y the Briti sh o nes) beca me, fo r me , s paces of
III '.lI: II ""y habilalio n. Howeve r. Iili s a llra ur Ih e s lill ima ge wo "ld be in s l,lntly

"'"'l'

Figure 2.6
John Stezaker, The Trial, 1980

19

dispelled by the context of the moving image (and w ith the everydayn ess
of colour). Cinema tic encounter with the s till was Inva n ably dlSSllnulal1ve.
Part of thei r ap peal is the sense of disguise refl ected in the label 'filmstills', a term that more properl y belongs to the si ngle fi lm fram e (or
photogram) and with wh ich they are so metimes confused . Otherwise they
are (equally misleadingly) ca lled ' productio n shots ' or ' produ ctIOn stIlls',
.
labels that refer to the pre-history of the film-still in ea rl y c.i nema where theIr
function was to advertise the ftIm to potential s ponsors and for such reasons
were often shot prospectively. (The re exist many such 'fi lm-stills' for scenes
or sometimes entire films never shot). Besides this ea rl y history most films ti ll s were shot after or alongside the film itself at various levels of alignment
with the vantage point of the m ovie came ra. They were presen ted as 'free
sa mples' of the cinematic feast rather than as a menu. From nearly the
o utset, film -still s were made by anonymous photographers workmg alongs ide the fIlm production team. In America, where there has been some
"lte mpt to name the still photographers wo rkin g in Holl ywood, the 'auteurs'
discovered are usually recO\4nized for tlteir po rtrai lure or glamour photographs.

Tlte ir work on production sti lls, however, is likely to be regarded as too

IIlell ial to merit any serious attention.
Despite a con siderable va riation in corres ponde nce between the film-s till
,lIld Ihe ci nematic mome nt it re presents, the re is a remarkable uniformity in
l("r ll lS of the picto rial vernacular e mployed. The lighting, depth of fi eld , and
1(" lI ses employed amo un ts to a photographic protocol at any moment in tim e
,'v(l lvin g and only partly keeping up with the changing look of thei r cinem atic
\ ol llli e rparts. In Britain they re mained in black and wh ite lo ng after co lour
1I ,Id beco me the norm in film productions . The rigid vernacular and tona li ty
IlIlposed a sense of standardiza tion (and of interchangea bility) onto the
(1 1I (' III"li c sce nes they re presented. This unintentional sense of pictori al fixity
lit I Il4i dily is mirro red in a marked quality of stillness in these representatio ns
" I II Illveme nl. The source of m y fascination seemed to be in their failure: in
Wh,lllll cy "ccidentally revealed about the ci rcumstances of their production
(,I lid 11,,, 1 of the fi lm's production).
Sltol lypiGlll y as a 'seco nd-take' fo r Ihe s till cam era , they are mostly
1'11I11"1:"'ph s of 51ill or posing actors wlto It"v(' Ihe n reconve ned afte r the firs t
11111 '111,11, I"ke. The "clo rs who h" v(' :tr l("d for Ihe movie ca m(' ra , pose for Ihe

sti ll camera. They are predominately photographs of tableaux vivants

wh ich explains their rigid ity and th eir resem blance to early photographic
rep resentations of narrative where technical necess ity demanded an
impos ition of 'stillness' on the world it re presented . There is also a tendency,
wh ich film-stills s hare with early narrative photography, to attempt to
,o mpensate for th is sti ll ness wi th slight exaggerations of gesture and facia l
,xpressions . In addition to the te mptation to 'ove ract' in posin g, there is
"<[lIallya tendency to com press the actions and reactions of gesture or
('xp ression into s imultaneous represen tation s for the still cam era of what
wou ld be separated for the m ovie camera.
These estrangements of th e ci nema ti c image created by it's still 'double'
I",came the focus of my collection and it was in trying to find an in ternal
dr'lInatic representation of this quali ty of stillness and rigidity which lead me
",10 coll ecting cinematic images of blind characters or blindfolded figures.
I'li e presence of the blind character in ci nema tends to be associated with
' Ii ll ness and a fixity of posture (es pecially of the head) am id st the Aux of the
'''"'l11a tic. The blind - those excluded from the scopic reg ime of cinema - a re
II 'presented as arrested, as being absented from the momentum of evelyday
Ilk. II is also arou nd the stilled 'absence' of the bli nd person that cinema
''''' ' IIlS most to celebrate its access to the bustle of hfe. The blind person
''1'pcars stranded like an island within the Row of images and events.
Wil liin the film- still the problem is of how to draw attention to the stillness
wil l,out the ambient movement. These images of the blind in fi lm -stills are
I. lSl inating because they confront an impossi bility in terms of photogra phi c
IIpresenta tion. But somehow the attempt, within its failure (or mysterious
1(11 ,'ss) , seem s remini scent of the problems of represe nting movement
wlllii" a tradition of narrative representation that an tecedes both fil m
,II ,eI pliotography.
I\lIn(' Hollander also seems to recognise this affin ity between the film- still
.11,,1 II ", narrative art ofbarogue realism and Dutch genre painting. In her
h""k MOiling Pictures she makes a pair of pictorial juxtapositio ns between two
Idlll ' Iill s (o ne ' 940s, the other 30s) and two Dutcl1 genre painting.1 If the
pi I< <I llJ!, ra ph s are production film-stills the comparison which is being made
II" ,,, belwee n two still images of posing figures. Not that this inva lidates
IIII' I'oi ll l being made in the comparison which concerns the origins of the
1l lIl 'lIl "li c 'close-up' , in the tradition most associated with the seventeenth
11 '111111 y, cutting the legs just below the hip in order to frame the scene and
11 .,,,1. ' ,, se nse of' prox imity to it. (Figures 27 and 28) It allows, withi n the
" ,I.III V,l y Sl II ,dl sca le of Dutch genre pai nting, to give intimate access to the
II III III'S I(' presen ted. Both scenes lu wh ich the viewe r is given th is close-up

or

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intimacy are proto-cinematic images: Theodor Van Baburen's The Procuress is

offered as a seduction scene and the source of the cinema's kiss image, whilst
Georges de la Tour's The Payment appears as the prototype image of the
criminal underworld or low-life representation to be found late r in film.
Hollander illustrates the intimacy which this seventeenth century version
of a 'close-up' gives by projecting a cinematic reading onto a nother painting,
The Calling of 5t Matthew by Terbru ggen:
We approach Matthew as we approach the villain or the hero
playing cards in a Western saloon, during m oments when his challenger enters
and moves in on him. We see what's on the table as well as on the faces; we
come behind one or another shoulder and await th e next move. 2

It is wo rth remembering though , as Hollander pans around the scenes of

narrative painting, that it is her movie sequence which she is creati ng in this
'pregnant momen t'. She is the director of the cine-narrative. When the final
ingredient of temporality is added to narrative and with cinema, we relinquish
just that freedom to move around the image and participate in the process
of narration.
However, paradoxically, in looking at a tradition in painting that
Hollander sees as striving to overcome it's own essential stilln ess, she
recognises the essentiality of still ness to highlight movemen t in this and
other paintings of this time. The truncation of figures at the hip, in addition
to bringin g the viewer closer to the scene, also 'immobilizes the subject.
Without legs, he is seen to be both present and still, rooted in the picture,
where he must stay, having no mea ns of esca pe. He is yours forever while
you look at him'.' Hollander sees cine ma as a fina l realisation of this
intimacy with the dramatic scene that the 'close-up' in narrative painting
initiates. However it is also clea r that what is lost is precisely that 'forever
presence' of the image w'ith which intimacy is desired. This gulf between the
perception of still and moving images is what Hollander has to brush over
in this one-way representation of historical progress. In these term s there is
no way of accounting for the desire of artists to make the return journey in
sea rch of the lost intimacy of the pregnant moment on the ground of the
mobile image. Arguably constructed photography is making just such a
re turn; to still narrative Jrepresentation in cinematic terms. The film-still
seems to stand at the cross-roads between Hollander's idea of the painter's
attem pt to mobilize the essen tially still image and the contemporary artist's
alte mpt to return cinematic narrative to its still terms: to hold the cinematic
image 'there' - in Holla nder's te rms - 'foreve r' . Perhaps this is the des ire
Ihat m:lkes conternpo r:II'y pholograp hi c arli slS e mploy the same processes
all d siudio sc lups ;15 ( i""IIla 10 aniVI' al slilll'i l llll"(,s. 'lll e debt of much of

tnis work to the production film-still is I think self-evident. The quality of

frozen tim e is closer to the stillness of the film- still than it is to the more
spectral quality of arrested motion in the photogram or film frame . Fo r all
the cinematic references in constructed photography th is proximity to the
cinematic seem s onl y to enhance the qua lity of stillness in the images which
suggests an imposed arres t on the world.
In a different context, in wha t he terms 'late photograph y', David Campany
has noted the predilection of contemporary photographic art for images of the
aftermath of even ts in wnich stillness is seen as a reRection of photograph y's
own essential condition:' (Even in the context of cinema or television, such
'a fte rmath' images have the qual ity of still photogra phs: as suspended
instants of des truction their frozen momentousness makes them feel like
freeze- frames). Cam pany's observation is also pertinent to constructed
photography in which stillness is Similarly experie nced as a frozen qua li ty
but in this case the relationship is with the momen tousness o f the cinematic
image_There is a sense of return in this work to tha t staged qua lity of early
photography wh ich mainstream documen tary photography sough t to esca pe
in the 'decisive moment' . Cinematic co nstructed phologra ph y can be see n
to be a return to the scene of the prod uction fi lm-still and evokes a similar
fascination for the stilled reenactment of the cinematic momen t. This return
seems compa ra ble to the one described by Laura Mul vey in the context of the
'-reeze-frame: 'As the "nowness" of story-time gives way to the "the n-ness" o f
th e movie's own moment in history"
In these terms constructed photograph y can be seen to exploit the
indexica li ty of the still photograph (its quali ty of 'having been there') to
create an awareness of the constructed ness of the image. I would sugges t
Ihat this experience ofa return in the image and consequent Sense of the
constructedness of the image is available ready-made in the film-still.
When one looks at a film-still one is aware first a nd forem ost of actors
('nacti ng a role rather than of characters in the equivalent cinematic moment.
An d there is one im age within the iconography of the film-still (as well as
ill ci nema itself), where an indexical sense of the actors submitting to the
process of simulation is experienced most ambiguously: the kiss_ Virtually
synonymous with cinema itself - hence its frequen t appearance as a film -still
III cinema's pUblicity - the kiss is potentially the most th.reatening in terms of
I'xpos ing the constructed ness of the image and in revealing the impos ture of
lite fi lmic set-up. It is one of the cinematic images which Hollander saw as
1O:lvi llg its origins in the sub-genre of paintings of seductio n and undoubtedly
li S promine nce within ci nema is for sim ilar reasons: in the desi re to
Il"presenl Ihe potc nlial for intimacy in the pictu re. In publicity term s the kiss

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could compa rabl y be seen as a pro mise of consu mmatio n in the cinematic
image. Of course, precisely beca use of thi s promise, it is also the site for
experiencing the fa il ure of the image in just these terms.
Within th e ci nematic narrative the ki ss-ima ge ari ses either as a form of
narrative resp ite o r ste reotypica ll y as an end ing. It provides cinema's own
occasion for stillness. Perhaps partl y because of this inherent quali ty of
stillness, the kiss seem s pre-em inently trans ferab le from the m oving to th e
s till image. But thi s tran sfe r from nea rly sti U to photographically still can
often un intentionally betra y the rea li ty of th e act of simulation. In order
to kiss the actors and actresses must really kiss. And whils t th is mimetic
doubling in film acting is taken for g ra nted in most oth er acts, it can become
estran ged in the kiss. However ubiquitous as an image it focuses th e viewer
on the threshold between si mula tion and reali ty and ca n represent a moment
in whi ch the rea lity of s imu lation ca n take over from a sense of the rea lity
s imulated . As an image th e kiss is semiotically as ambig uo us as the
s imu lated act. It both stands for sexua l un ion and is (us ua lly) a part of it. It
is both symbol and rea lity. The s till ed ki ss ca n revea l this thres hold betwee n
s imulatio n and rea li ty to be a dange rously slippery on e. (Th e n torious
pol ygam y of fi lm actors testifies to th iS). Despite its pervas ive ness it is an
image whi ch potentiall y threa tens th e cinematic illu sion and that ali gned
' intimacy' with the cha rac te rs which tile kiss represents as cinema tic
co nsummation . Thus it th reatens to expose th e sacrificia l und erpinnings
of cinematic simu lation.
To compensa te for the da nger of a sti lled contemp lation of thi s
tra nsgressive boundary puncturing th e cine-s imulation, cinema often
co nspires to make this encounte r with stilln ess as momentous as poss ible
through the use of pannin g and rotati ng s hots. Th e ki ss between Mad elaine
(Ki m Novak) and Scotti e (J ames Stewart) in Hitchcock's Veli igo is precisely a
vo rtex of these devices. Yet, clea rl y the act see ms more difficult to negotiate
for the s till than the movie camera because fo r the form er it is an actor and
acll'ess (Stewal1/ Novak) who arc kissing for the photographer whereas for
th e latter it is characters (Scottie, Madelain e) caugh t up in the mom entum
of th e 'scene'.
However, my coll ection of cinematic kiss images wh ich includes photo1'0 1'11 ("" images reveals contrasting dan gers in tile enactmen t of the kiss for
the st'ill -photographer and acto rs. O n the o ne hand overacting can crea te
a predatory se nse of sacrifi cial violence. Und era cting, however, is more
s ubve rs ive - the posed alig nrllc lIl o rlips punctuates the image, expos ing it's
a rl ili cial ity. 130th ex lr,'II '('s ,'x poS(' II ", " " lSlrll(i('dll rss o rth e image and th e
satri licl' involvvd

ill i l s(O Il SII II ( I I O IL ,

Figure 29
Fi lm still. Kiss, Andy Warhol ,

19 6 4.

. SO
l mehow Warhol's Kiss manages to combine both extremes overat'on With th
II
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.
e co apse 0 s ' mulatlon . (Figure 29) In this fi lm Warhol
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d
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'fi '
Impose
e ss yartl (jaUy extend ing cinema's inte rl ude image to
'"' I>('ara bl e dura tio (, U
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';': sti Uness. In Kiss still ness, achieved through
" ,' IS felt as an Impos ition made g ratuito usly by th e film set-u 0
I" kdr of a voye urlst,c audience The ' .
.
d
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ill 'l'"slure. St illness (or slowness) in tll is context elongates t llS
1" '"l'o r,ml y beyond th e point wh ere it can remain convincin Tl u a Ion
I" " "" 'l'S th e seri al experience of watching the collapse of
,11111" " lid actresses a re sacrificed to thi s act. Isolated fro th ' .
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Jrom na rrati ve pretext Kiss represents a seri es of

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failure - becomes a kind of sacrificial spectacle. All of Warhol's 'still' film s use
the slowness of real time to subvert the compression of cinematic time. But
only in Kiss is this subversion used to challenge the voyeurism of the viewer.
Perhaps this is because Kiss is uniquely a found cinematic image - indeed an
appropriation of cinema's central image of stillness . In fact Kiss represents a
double appropriation of ci nema: firstly of the stereotypical image itself and
secondly the devise most closely associated with it: the slow-motion image
which Kiss enacts in 'real-time' .'
Warhol was not the first to see the idea of appropriation as a kind of
stilling or temporal elongation. From Duchamp's statements about his readymades, as well as in the titles he gave them and their representation in
associated works, it is clear that he saw them as interruptions within the
momentum of everyday encounter. He refers to them as 'arrests', describing
his original encounters with the ready-mades as analogous to 's napshots'.
His earlier paintings, which adapt Marey's cinematographic imagery to the
representation of the temporal dimension of everyday life, suggest a
metaphorica l connection between these two experiences of momentum:
cinema and the everyday. Within the amorphous Auidity of everyday
experience, the readymade represents an arrested fixi ty analogous to the
freeze-frame in cinema. For Duchamp a certain kind of visibility was
conditional upon a disjunction from the taken for granted vectors of life and
its cinematic representation. Hi s appropriation of the Paris Metro map in 19 14,
which involved the removal of place names, deprived the map of its function
in terms of movement but redeemed it as an image in a Network oJ Stoppages.
Through these meta phorical arrests of the Auid transparency of the
everyday object or image , the invisible is made visible in just the terms in
which Maurice Blanchot describes the effect of the surrealist found object,
'''those outmoded obj ects, fra gmented , unusable, almost incompre hensible,
pe rve rse" which Breton loved" Normally the utensil 'disappears into it's
use'," it disa ppears in to the vectors of instrume ntal encounte r, and
commodity turn-over. However in disuse the object or tool appears out of
the ground of its disappearance in momentum. 'The category of art is li nked
to this poss ibility for objects to appea r'JO according to Blanchot, for whom
this dou ble of the obj ect represented by the found object is a deathly
suspe nsion and fixity of the thing. The suspension of the obj ect's double
rrom the vectors throu gh wh ich it is integra ted into, and di sappears into,
eve ryday life is revelatory: the object becomes its own image (selfrese mbl ance) in thi s withdr;ow;o l from the world . At th is moment declares
I3I ;o nchot, like the orp"", tl \{' objl'ct wi tl,dr"ws int o it sel r <l nd a repressed
o r ovc rlooked " "' Iel'iali ly wl'lI s lip ill II", d isII Sl'd :"'n's led obj ect.

But what happens in these terms whe n the functi onal object or image is
designed literally to disappear into its use? This is of course the statu s of the
fi lm frame in relation to experience of film : 'Shot past the projectors ga te,
the photogram propogates itself as film only to vanish on screen'."
Di sappearan ce into use is made absolute. Cinema can then be seen both
as an intensifica tion of the powers by which images in cultural circwation
(the everyday) disappear into their use while also representing an acceleration
of their physical disappearance in terms of replacement by successors.
Cin ema , by this ana logy with the cwtural turn-over of images, can be seen
as 'obsolescence 24 frames per second'.
Paradoxically cinema makes this cultural blindness of ove rlooking (the
blaze) perce ptually absolute. Vision can never catch up with itself, trapped as
it is in a process of following the perpetually fu gitive image. The still image
is absorbed into (disa ppears into) the function of perceptual deferral. [n this
state of blindness the immobilized gaze is fixed only on the mobile center
of the image leaving the circumstantial detail s on the border of conscious
recognition . The image as a whole, as a framed formally composed and
constru cted entity, di sappears into cinema's double momentum of action
,md viewpoint.
The film-still is the main ready-made site for the return of this repressed
detail and , in certain terms, for the repressed visibility of the film image to
stage an appearance. By a process of cutting the temporal ties with the
eve ryday world: linea r narration , cultural circulation , historica l location, the
lou nd and defunct film-still ca n represent a confrontation with the material
ci rcum stances of the cinematic illusion . It seems to do this by bringing the
pe riphery of the cinematic image into an equal focus with is mobile center.
Th ere is often an excess of detail in this encounter. The still camera registers
Ih e fabric of the world which the movie camera leaves behind : the material
lextures of costumes, the cracks in facial make-up, the inadve rtent glimpses
of dusty comers of the film set. The film- still puts these details on an equal
f(,u ting with the momentous centre of narrative significance in a way that
IlI'lrays the simulations. Within this dispersed space of the film-still the
viewer seeks clues to what is happening. Deduction of narrative meaning
dl' mands intellectual reRection in a sifting of essential from extraneous detail
III J search for a mobile 'centre' hidden within the stillness of the photographi c image. Especially in the case of pre-war film-still s the compressed
( Iowdedness of their scenes seem often to te mpt their central protagoni sts
III "dopt exaggerated gestures and improbab le dramatic poses to compensa te
I" r Ihe unde rstat ed eve nness o f the 'a ble(H( x " nd to signed movement. This
,111"'''pt 10 ove rco rne th eir di s" ppl''' r" " Cl' will,ill II ", crowd of del"il s (o r

Carrctt Stewart Be/wren

Film ond SOUl!:
PI/Clto Urllverslty of
CllIl,lgO Press, Chi(dgO .JIld
london. 1999. PS.
11

1... I dill

11

extras) through styli stic exaggeration contributes to an estrangement of th e

image which brings about an awareness of its constructedness within the
physical circumstances of the real world.
In the found fil m-still fixity is do ubly a condition of the visi bili ty of
the image as an interru ption - both of the momentum of everyda y image
circulation and the mo mentum of cine mati c expe rience. It re presents a
double dis placement within th e cultural vectors of image reception. I wou ld
suggest that the vis ibility of the image is not only the product of a techni ca l
arrest of the cine matic image but of a more com plete series of es trange ments
and decelerations within the momentum of everyda y image experie nce. It
is difficult to conspire to crea te this estra ngement: it has to bejoultd.
In this essay I ha ve attempted to describe what is returned or 'found ' in
the film-still in terms of the fugitive vis ibil ity of the cinematic image. Claims
have bee n made for the film frame as a revelatory inte rruption from within
the world -view of ci nema . Stewart's apocalyptic di sclosure of 'first th in gs',"
Bellour's ' recoil' " in the freeze-frame as a gli mpse of cinema's own origin,
o r Mulvey's punctua tio n of the conti nuou s 'now' of cinema by the ' then' of
photographic indexica li ty"; each claims a retu rn in the photogram of
cinema's hidden pho togra phic s ubs tra te. And for eacll it is an interruption,
a murder, a stall ing of th e mechan ism of Aow. The decis ive mome nt of
photographic arrest return s as 'freeze-frame' .
The fi lm-still as th e photogram's simulation or double , I'd suggest, makes
possible a return to a pre-photographi c stillness, the one described by Bellour
as the 'pregnant momen t' of narra tive pa inting a nd which he di sti nguishes
from the 'decisive mome nt' of ph otogra phy. The pregnant or signifi cant
moment, whi ch Bellour adopts from Less ing, is 'the one that s upposedly
represen ts the ave rage and acme of a dramatic action thus expressing the
painting in its en tirety. In a painting the mea ningful instant doesn't refer
to an ything real, it is a fiction , a kind of image synthes is'." This seems also
to describe the sense of the ex panded moment of the film-sti ll.
Bellour also contrasts th e way that th e decisive moment is 'to rn from
rea li ty'" and comparabl y Stewart describes the freeze- fram e as a 'cut fro m
action rather than hold on if ." The fi lm -still, I'd suggest, returns u s to a
pre- photographic pre- filmi c 'hold on action' and to the inclusiveness of the
pregnant moment of narrative painting. It is also the reason, I suspect, that
cons tructed photograph y reRects a grea ter in te rest in the fi lm -sti ll than in
th c pho tog ram because of its ow n reactio n to th e 'decis ive moment' ethos
o rthe docume ntary tradition in photogra ph y. Th e film-sti ll represen ts a
poss ibili ty wit li in th c'

Cill l' ll l:tli l i lll :ql,t '

of revl'r!-' ion to the 'pregna nt

moment' of an earl ier pictorial trad ition that in I-i ollanc\crs terms is the true
source of clllema's wo rld view.
Th e des ire fo r stillness as an expanded moment , rathe r than as a n
int:rru ptive o ne, is described by Lessing as a still ness which allows an
unfolding with in the image: 'The longer we gaze, the more must Our
add; and th e more Our imagination adds, the more we mus t
believe we see.' IS It is s ign ifi ca nt that Less ing's pregnant momen t is
In relationship to the representation of a blind man litera lly
c"ught up In a na rra ti ve wlthlll which he is unable to intervene to save
hllllself and his sons because or his bli nd ness. Less ing argues that ra ther
tha n represc ntlllg the climactic moment of the priest's death (the
culmm atmg mo ment in Virgil's poem ) the sculp to r has chosen to represen t
" moment of repose befo re the end: 'the s igh of res ig nation' rather than the
open- mou th ed shriek' of the e nd. The moment of apotheos is is left to our
1I11ag lllatlon. We conte mplate it - as he does - in this s ti lled mom ent of
r<'pose before the e nd: ' the behold er is rather led to the conception of the
ex treme tha n actu all y sees it."')
. Thi s creates a bond b etween the blind protagoni st a nd th e viewer. Th ey
both forced to lI11agllle the end in the abse nce of an image of it. As in
<IIl ematlc represe nta tio ns of the blind there is pathos in the representat ion
IIf a blind per son as the still centre of visual mo mentous ness who is him self
obliVIOU S to It all. But while in cinema thi s marks a separat ion between the
Vl<wer and the bl ind, in th e sculpture it marks an identification between
til<' two in the s tilln ess of this ex panded moment. Lessing's s ti llness is
I.-dcm ptlve, s us pending th e dying figure from hi s fate as it saves th e viewer
11 11 111 the litera lness of the vis ua l image of dea th.
.IIC

Then , as now.w hat is a t stake in tbe s tillness of the image is the freedom
il f VIS ion to mobil ise Itself in a nd beyond the image.

18 G [

1 eS'ilng,

Loo'(lOfi. Ir.lnS

Bed<,ley, 18S3. PP_17

Frame/d Time: A Photogrammar of the Fantastic

Canett Stewart

To thi n k about 'still ness and time', when considering film , is to ponder not
two topics but one. Not ju st time em balmed , but 'change mummified', in
And re Bazin's deathless phrase: that's cinema for the phenomenologist. '
Temporal transform ation is preserved in all its unfoldin g duration. Change
itself is s truck offas imprint. But what is filmic tim e for th e materia lis t
student of the photogram , that smallest cellular unit through which
photogra phyas film-beco mes cinema) Along the serial s trip of film, in stead
of standing s till each timed image sta n ds, till erased by succession. Since the
publication of Between Film and Screen, which explo res the pro jection of
S Uell serial diffe re nce as screen motion , I have found additional confirming
l'v idence of fiLm' s tendency to disclose its photogrammati c ba sis at points
of' narrative rupture.' This evidence comes from a certain polarized vein of
rece nt intern ationa l fi lmm aking that includes, on the one hand , a European,
o nen transnationa l, cine ma of uncanny psychic di splaceme nt and, on the
o ili er, a Hollywood mode of virtual reality preoccupied with everything from
1',lIosts to ballucinated alte r egos to cyber-fig ments to d igita l repli ca nts. Each ,
Oil either side of the Atlantic , is a mode of the fantastic as inAuen tially
<i , fi ned by Tzvetan Todorov. '
Isolating the role of the photographic imprint in rece nt in stances of th e
1. ",lastic serves in part to locate the difference between the now psychological,
"O W ontologica l d isturbances to realilty induced, across th e polarized
Ii ',,<ic ncies of European and Hollywood practice, by their parting of generic
w, 'ys, Thi s is often because the moment of photography'S remediation by film
" '1111'11 5 us, in quite different ways, to film' s own differential basis on the
1I' IIIil o id strip, It is there that stillness s tands disclosed, or better stands
,'x lHlSed, as both the constituent and the antithesis of screen movement.
Milloriz in g the serial strip, projection elides the ra pid still into the framel d
JI "I\' ,,('screen motion , so tha t the wh is ked-away module reappears in its own
",,"",' " Iu m on screen as a spectral phase of advance. All links transpire in
11,, hlink s of " mechanica l eye. In a word, fan lastic. Not all film s of th e
III III, ,,,y I-\c nre lake up thi s ph enome non as th eme, of course, and least of
11 1111,0'" co nce rn ed with di stanl e leclro nic fulures. Bul man y do. And eve n

'The OlltolofY
of I h(' PllCJlogrdplHc
Irn,rge' 'Wlw/ eim'lIlo?,
trilll" Hugh Gr,.y. UlllvC',,>rty

1 Alldl' (3.17111,

of Cdldqrnril PJ('<,s

Berkeley. I<Jb7.

r

2 L,Hret St('Wilrl,

{,lIn (/llfJ ).,n'n, MOIJnlrrvt"\

P/wIIJ 5ynflll Unlvcr!>lly
of ChIC.If,O Pre'>o;, 19tjC)

3 f.!vetafl Todo!o\!, 111t

Fallln,llr A Slllll /IIml
A,'p,olldr to II LlfC/OI)'
Gtllll_ trdllS.
HOWMd. Cornell
Pit''''''' Ithi,fCd, hlY rC)75

.
.
I.
ea ns to close in, then , on the point of
avoidance IS revealmg. TllS essay m
I'ty nd narrative virtuality in the
inte rsection betwee n photOgraphicfte mpora I narratives on bo th s ides
.
d h t
wanl cal crux 0 numelous s
.
Impacte P oome
d' :d
I
des'lre often un cannil y reammates
A
1 ge nre IV1 e Wl e re
"
of the Euro- me [lca l .
I 'h ' the simulated ki netic image ofli vmg
a fi xed visual trace or, alterna te y, w ele
rese nce marks the death of the real.
.
.
d ' ent of filmi c
p It should be noted tha t wh enever the medlums peclfic ru elm
.
fil
1I d
. 1 such lanta sty m s,
motion in pholograph ic
techniq ue, a leftover
the d ls tancrng I
f intervening in the classic Iransparency of
m s a Itua way 0
h
from modernis
. .
. .'
solidatio n as a nar rative system , owever,
the cinemati c Image. BefOle Its con. . d ' sa il overt li lmic machination by
. '
l' I yea rs was pe rceive "
cinema rn ItS ea r les .
. d' t evocation of cinema's elusive
ils first s pectalors. As II an rn these sam e years in the latedifferential mohon comes down 10 uSr.fro
e medium 10 which theori sts 01
Victorian art criticism of dance, a per ormtha nc h e always known cine ma' s
. I'
oe Deleuze among 0 e rs, av
Ih e mech an lca lIna " '
,'
. I fi lm title from 19 24,
affin ity - and to wh ich Fernand Leger s er, self-enactin g
Ballet Mechaniqu e, pays dlrecttestam enst. In ds : '.;ti:g in 18 9 8 wilhin 1111'
.
f the Decadent cntlc Art h ur ymon ,
.'
f
language 0
.
,
. ' n b cu ltural consciousness, the thlill 0
flrs l decade of Cinema absol ptlo fr. Y . t . cated in material ti me, 1asls \IIrI\
lLln
dance is that each di sconlinuous, e eet'th
a van ishing tracl' , wi ill I,
lo ng enough to have been the re . I It IS e re as gone,
.
t ' I g enough to savour.
o nl y attent,on can re aln on I rfi t the frame itself, also lasts on ly 1(1 111
In cinema, the mcreme nta e ec,
h t I ave been surre nd ct'([\ , II, ,I
b
th e" only long enoug 0 1
e nough to have een er '..
d
it shi fting it as iffrom within . btt1111 ,.
is , to tl,e next rn Irne, aSS lm,htate to .. e from s lit-second to s plil -S .( .,"t!
0"

1'1' d

",

".. III

oJ

t"'lwd

IIIi

.1 '1,,1
,I A./lllIl
ulltl

Ii

I I'

"I
1111

Itl

'"If'11

"\\,,,rll< ,
11,,,1'11 '
I I,

its suppl em ent in the

perhaps. ulltil rl' III'W' ,I
moment to momen tu :
1 fi l . may obtrude with II11I I1', vl lll
.
narrative whe re t le mlc
by a g ive n screen
.'
.
0
fl
d by an on -s 1'('\'11
f
' th - the cmematIC - olten agge
purpose ro m WI In
fram e o n the tra ck_Vario ll s 111'1111
photograph within th e plot or a decades in the gen re 01 HI I II, Ih'
helve differe nt uses for such effec fi' d . t r-no-return ill lit, d 111 1'1."
.
.
I t aph marked a xc pOln -o
eV ldenl,ary p 10 ogr
.
t c. Seve r-,I o llll, ldcII I"
I
f tinchl bodies and env,ronm en s.

lechno ogy 0 3 r ,
.. I fl ' . de andlhe cu llur,, 1 :tllc , IIHllh III
. I ' -' y . re the structlll ,' '1' "' "
111' III t llS ,essa a Tl"lditio mlly lhe pho lographed hurnall body 1111, 111
UClle rrc li .llec lOIy. ,
,
.
I d1\ II
I.
t"
"
" . '
ll r havin g been S lIllU a l l' <-It{ Hl
c il fro ll'< hu rna ll a!'ctll YIII I. Ii >I II 'tllIl
bccil presc nllo , ep, esc ntdl lo ,
'crec tl 10 IIl C"S Il IC I1Ie 1.1
It
I I
I
0"

10 cy lJl) l j( ill

/lIIId"

P:IlI il.U !:1I s igll li( :lIl lt.' lIl p i lO IO)',raph y

Vt.s lt gl ,1 W

dys topia, not to mention within a cinema increasingly en hanced-or invadedhy the d igital. There are no faked or ambiguous or nostalgic photographs
;In ywhere in the Matrix trilogy (the Wachowski brothers, r999-2oo3)- Nor
docs the photograph serve to anwor or contest the digital artifice of VR snuff
Idlll s in a movie like Strange Days (Lyn e, '995). The transformation at stake
IS 1I0t just of genre but of medium.
Ye t, though the photographic benchmark of cinematic images has
"" r"a singly lost ground with res pect to the reflexive ironies of d igital sci-fi ,
c, li as not disappeared. For the most part it has s imply shifted genres : most
eellviolls ly when it leaves behind a con text in high-tech illusion for a narrative
I" , Illal of high-profile magic. In the Harry Potter film s, for ins tance, every
1<.lllll'd image in the land of wizardry, whether ancestral portrait or newsprint
II11C ,: s hot, can be found to writhe and speak within its curtailing rectangular
1<'111 1< ' " nd to do so precisely as a self-referential marke r of digital cinema's
jleewc' c 10 bestow such m agic animation in the first place _Sim ilar if muted
I II, " Is punctuate those less strictly fa ntas tic film s, as well , where plot tends to
I, IIe1"1 1''1 11iovocal e ither the ontology of its protagonists o r the epi stem ology
.lill" '11 vis ion, memory, and desire. As such , th e current spectrum of the
IIIIII '_ d or illlaginary runs from the blatant ghost stories and digi ta lized
111111111 101 1'\" of Hollywood trends to the often elegiac unca nn y of numerous
1,111111('01 11 fi lms. The present essay is a second venture on m y part to accou nt
1", III<'Nc' S<'l'm in gly parallel but in fact divergent narrative tropes, this time
1111 " " ""',' co ncerted look at the m oment of photographic in dexicality on
lilt 1111,.'lc plots so often turn_' For again and again the definitive stillness of
1,1'1I1" 111" I'II Y, figuring th e arrest of death or its overriding by desire, becomes
,I" ,It IIIIIIIJ: trI" rk of these fi lms at the emotional, and often m etaphysical ,
'"11 1111 1"" l1l s of their plots.
III II c'ssoI Y('nli ll ed ' From Presence to the Perfo rmative', David Green and
, ;11111 IIIW Iy rl'i urn to an as pect of indexicality in Peircian semiotics tha t has
,1111 '"1II,, 'd , :IS Ihe authors see it, by Roland 8arthes's elegiac em phasis on
11,,1 Ic ,'MIl<'c'II ' of Lhe photographed object' Peirce wa nted from the
I, I, Ii 1111,. 11011 " sense nol just of a trace left but of its point and manner
'" '1Ipll,,, c, wll:11 Green and Lowry stress as the performative index that
Illr lIN,, 'Ii'renlial counterpart. Togethe r, these functions delimit
'\' 'pll 'N IIllllor as well as mo rtal trace, o r wha t we might distinguish as
III , til" til"" "' lIcc to - as well as of - the ca ptured object, both moment of
, 1\ li N IC 'lorded mo me nt. When commuted inl o !i lm , this emphas is
I, il '" I" "II Ii ,,k . from Ihe photog ram matic ground up. that cur renl
"IIIIIIIHlh 1>:lrr:tl iv('s where poin l-of-view s hOls a rc '" lCho red e ithe r
I '''pl y " '11 1r, ' o r hy Ihe s ublractcd sub jpC I o r a virlual bo Iy.

.1 >1 1,

To clarify terms, l'U s tart with three divergent examples of indexical

aberrations that graduaUy zero in on the recent film pattern I'm trying to
establish , only the third of which will consti tute the fanta stic per se. In an
'alternate worlds ' form at, the fre nzied sprint across town of Lola to save her
boyfriend in the crime plot of Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (19 9 9) replays itself
three times in entire alternate versions, fatal and o therwi se. In the process,
it interrupts its three m ain vectors of racing action with dis junctive Rash
forwards to alternate lives of minor, unnamed characters whose path s Lola
happens quite literally to cross. In aU of these prole ptic inserts, six in total,the
performative indexicality of photographic record is evoked (without bem g III
any way narrati vely mo ti vated) by the overlay of shutter sounds o n the track,
cut by quick cut. The woman pushin g a baby carri age, for example, will
eventually have her child taken from her on the grounds of neglect (click) until
caught stea lin g another (click) ; and the young cyclist who later gets beaten
by thugs will end up having his wedding photo take n with his former nurse
(click). Either that - o r th e woman ends up winnin g the lottery and findmg he r
apotheosis in a tabloid publicity shot; o r the cyclist becomes your qUIck guess
is as good as mine - a homeless addict last seen as If 1I1 a poirce photo. Jumpcu t editing and soundtrack collaborate in fi guring ti me as a series of seized
still s _ thereby confirming Be rgson's complaint against the medium, ltS
pa rticipation in a wides pread cognitive error that life is lived not as imme rsed
duration but as a kind of mental photo album .' In none of this is there a c1 ar
baseline of rea li ty established from which a departure in to fantasy can be
marked. In Run Lola Run, time is entirely contin gent, up fo r grabs.
Moving close r to a fanta sy form at in which a certified rea lity and its dire I
reve rsal are clearly distin gui shed from each other, however, is the 2003 frlm
by Laetitia Columban i, La Jolie d'amour... pas du tout, or in English He loves
me... He loves me not, where the radica l alternatives of the proverbial peta lplucking game - installed by the film 's title and its first Roral shot - offer
the instigating clue to a structure that will rewrite an adultery plot halfwa y
thro ugh as the delusion of an erotomaniac. When the heroine kills hersel irl
despair over the married lover who has deserted her, a reverse actio n Ima ll\'
o f the entire narrative, beginning with her strictl y metaphonc rathe r tha n
technological Aatlining, drags her back to life to expose the fact that th

been no relationship at all , except in her stalker's Ima gma tlOn. Be rgso l1 S
se nse of the dea tll mome nt as a re play of elapsed duration is he re revcrSl'd
tir e ironi c tro pe of life figured as an exagge rated romantic m ov ie, hlll
a mov ie now goin g nowhN fa sl - a nd IXlckwa rd at tha I. '" The n, 100, lIlOIl'
Illan liIC , in lire f01'l11 of plol, is II l' rl'i>y I'! ri:l yed . as well by lir
ttlrll ill g poi lll til t' l'vo llil lo ll 0 1 IIIl ,qW le( 1!!lolngy. Whal we III

:'l'

('"'''1'''
11 11' 1111
1111'11

41"

1''',IIi''"'

lir e las t vesti ge of cinema's rotary motion in the form of a VH S reel. For the
I"'roine 's second chance comes not by reverse digitial scan but by mechanical
rl'w ind - even though spooling past us fa ster than any film strip cou ld.
In He Loves Me . . . He Loves Me Not, the gra in of the rea l is so firml y
I's l;lblished, if only in retrospect, that m iscues in the first ha lf ca n be
( 'JIlfidently set right in the second . Close r yet to the model offantas tic
lI:1rrabve, however, and this by sustai ning its ambiguity almost to th e ve ry
IlId . is Ozon's Swimming Pool (20 0 3) , which recrui ts the device
"I Iri ck beginnings as common to the thri ll er plot as a re trick end ings.
Swimming Pool opens behind the title with a misleading shot of blue wa ter
I ipp li ng across th e entire fram e. An upward pan soon reveals it to be a shot
IIi Ihe Tham es rathe r than of the pool in question. The film then cuts to the
lJ IId erground , whe re a reade r notices that the woman Sitting opposite her is
IIII' au thor whose picture is on the cove r of he r myste ry novel. Yet here too,
,,, I IIlar mys tery and deception seem to have set in. This photographic
"vlde nce is immediately deni ed : 'You mu st have mi staken m e with someone
1,1,,,' says the presumed author. 'I'm not the person yo u think I am. ' Index
d,,, ,s not guarantee identity. A throwaway moment, one assumes _ eas ily
"' plai ned away by the autho r's revealed panic over her current writer's block.
II, roll ghout th e rest of the film, however, we submit to an openl y voyeuristic
<llIdy in voye urism , only to find out that mos t of the characters aren' t who we
1IIIIIk lirey are either, but e rotic projectio ns of th e writer as s he hallucinates
I"'" drinto the world of her new murder m ystery. This is a fa nta sy s purred in
I,ll I, "I " fulcral moment of the plot, by th e writer'S di scovering what might
I""k " I fi rs tlr ke a photog ra ph of the sexually voracious teenage heroine in the
I1 l1l's di;lry. Yet thi s is a dated black-a nd-white image meant, instead, to sta nd
III 10r ;1 picture of the girl's dead mother - a nd form e r lover of the same
I'd,l llr lir e writer h erself is obsessed with. Th e re fere ntial index of the
1'11I110W"ph is compromised in this case by the genetic doppe lganger. The
'"WII, l, ' e ndin g arrives in alternating match cuts of a rea l and a fantasy figure
III 11 1l' write r's mind 's eye: the imagined sexpot Julie and her editor's actua l
I1i" '1I1Il l'I' Julia , each reaching out in s ilhouette as ifat the rea r-projection of
,III ,d''' '111 mo ther on the distan t balcony - a shot evoking the cla ssic ope ning
11 11" , "I Be rgman's 19 66 Persona. Shaken by this disclosure, we may be cast
h,11 k If} lir e frl m's trick beginning: that ontological dodge which now seem s to
IIIIVI' lIr1illra led th e entire film from both the (destabl izing) establishing s hot
11 111 1 II " , s lliJseque nt ph otographic mo ment of indexical denial.
1'001 is someth ing of a re negade in the Europea n context, closer
III li N, olll fi riioll S 10 recent Hollywood gimmicks. And instm ctive as such .
11," 11"1 I:lll'Op1" an plol s fa vouring prele rnatu ral accidenl tl,at re route narrati ve

from its expected destinations, Hollywood specializes lately in wholesale

reversals, final disclosures that require the total rethinking of a deceptive
narrative line. Compared to the loops or short-circuits of m emory and desire
in the Europea n cinema of radical coincidence, the protagonist of the new
Hollywood 'fantastic' may turn out to have been dead, or merely digital, or
only, so to say, 'fantasizing ' all along. The photochemical index is often the
li tmu s test of such unreality, either lodged at the threshold of narrative or
anticipated there by an associated fi guration that later find s its photographic
equivalent in the thick of plot. It takes awhile to see how - and why. To that
end, we need a structural definition of fantasy as a genre that would encompass
both tendencies of the 'irreal' I am trying to coordinate: preternatural
alignments offate in European film, with all its epistemological mystifications,
over against ontological subterfuge in Hollywood. the spooky vers us the

111'1)'"
111111
111\

11','

literally spectral.
According to Todorov, 'the fantastic ' is defined as the narrative span
of undecidability durin g which a reader is held in suspension between
incom patible explanatory options." If the strange events are resolved
psychologically in the end, then the fantastic is cancelled , because settled ,
by the uncanny (unheimlich). If otherworldly rules of the 'marvelous ' are
necessary for explanation, then fantasy is cancelled by the supernatural. On ly
in between, and for as long as that prolonged uncertainty can be sustained ,
does the genre of the fantastic persist. To give a classic exam ple in term s th;11
ca n distill Todorov's point fa irly succinctly, fantasy lasts only as long as we an'
s till wavering between preternatural and supernatural solutions , still asking
whether James's ghost-seeing governess in The Tum of the Screw is simply
obsessed or actually possessed. The European cinema of fateful coinciden c
g ravitates to the former (or uncanny) pole in resolution. Recent Hollywood
th rillers lean instead to the marvelous (or supernatural) pole, where lived
reali ty is rewritten by the laws of virtuality or afterlife.
Yet, anticipating resolution in one direction or the other, the fantasti iN
clea rl y a genre that would have every use for the frequ ent undecidability 01
trucage as Christian Metz defined it. " This is a tampering with o r 'tricking '
of the im age track (superimposition, lap dissolves, fades and ripples arc hlN
favoured examples) that has moved, historically, from diegesis into syntnx .
o r in other words from manifest s pecia l effect to sheer transitional dev iCt" AI
the mos l rudi me ntary (syntaclic) level, Metz sees trucage al.ready at pl ay wlll 'C!
o ne s hot makes ils predecessor magically va nish . A cinem atic fanta sy IIk, 'ly
10 rea li ze thi s d isappearing ;](1 wilhin Ihe plot. to lift the effect back fl'OIlI
nonnali z,cd aggra v:l lt.'d slrangcncss. In SWil't'J.I't'J.il1g Pool,
c\;III 14 hl e r is p!J;.II1l as lll all y di s pl :J"'d ,, 11111' I'll I. as ill fa cl all alo lll:\. by h\' 1

libidinal double. Likealliaborato ry manipulations acco rding to Metz, such a

syntactiC deVIce of ed ltmg is thereby returned again as I't would h
d
I' . ii i '
I '
, a v e seem e
01 1 m sear y VIewers, to an event of motivated m agic or spectrality in certain
lIarratlve contexts - or at least to uncanny figuration. In the films I'll b
:.'"lSldenng, the narrative occasion for this return of technique as m YS;erious
.ve nt IS often the mvaslOn of illusory mortal duration by a previous death - or
\ xposed delUSIOn .

1:1 Ihe first link be tween its theme o f the alter-ego and the m echan ics of
" 1'111 .11 Inve rSIOn, we see the hero ine of Kieslowski's Double Life of Veron; ue
(1 ')')1) f"scmated WIth a glass ball's upside-down estrangement of the
q
rac m g by the windows ofa train. (Figure 30) In this see mingly
I IHI! sSlveoptICal epIsode, the auto nomous 'sphere of vision' that turns th e
WI" lei IIpSlde down works to anticipate the action of the reflex camera in the
111'"1.",:d pIvotal scene. For it is there that the tourist Veronique snaps an
Il lI wllI llIg pictu re .of her Polish double, W erom'ka, a spectra l transcri ption
wll('''' processed Image goes unnoticed until much later in Paris. The
11111'l l II \" s . las t love
scene
.
. .
' long afte r the death 0 fWerom' ka, ta kes place m
I'wy' I,,, d ISSOCIatIOn while she is lookin g down he r bed toward the post1111 II lO ll S photo from Poland , discovered in her purse for the first time
IIY11\'1 love r: the Impossible photo of herself as the other. (Fi
)
'
\( ' . .1
k' h
. .
I( S IlWS I S
erome
IS quite literally beside hersel.f. Onegure
way 3in which the
111111111111 for Todorov, and indeed as the special and intensified case
1I111'. IiI.".ll y all told ,. is that, at some triggeri ng m oment, it does indeed take
1III1111. Ili VP se nse literally.' 1\ In Th e Double Life, a sensation like 'I'm so
It! 11111, '<1 I)y se li co nSClou s ness Ihal I I"e ellik e I' m ,'dways. 10 0 k'Ing on at myse,
If

Figure 30-31
Film still s, The

Double Life of
Veronique, Krzystof Kieslowski,

1991.

13

or that someone else is ' will materialize within the plot as an actual double
who must eventually forego such redundan t presence by dying, her difference
assimilated _ but never completely, Uncanny photography irrupts into
Kieslowski's plot as the perfect emblem of a conscious past that is never
e ntirely past, where instead the image is retained beyo nd the body as a trope
lo r the specta tor's (here the h e roine' s) own am bivalent psychic 'in corporation '
of the imaged subject. That's the plot climax, But, yet again, we touch on a
matter not only of genre but of medium,
In Todorov's view, fanta sy, suspended as it is between the immanent and
th e unreal, the possible and the impossible, is the purest state of the literary,
Such a meta textual understand ing not only applies equally well to films of the
lanta stic but coincides with Metz's proposal that trick effects are only a special
case of the cinem atic illusion all told , since 'Montage itself. at the base of all
cinema, is already a perpetual trucage,' \4 For Todorov, fiction is fantastiCbecause its referents are s trictly imagined, Similarly, all narrative c-inema is
hll1tastic because its presences and du rations are strictly ill usory, At points of
rupture or resis tance, however, the photograp h comes forward as the special
case 01 fanta stic temporality, In its cultura l function , the indexical mome nl
of photographic record is retrograde and pros pective at once, putting a sea l
o n the past and delivering it forwa rd to a future not its own, Todorov, in la I.
admittedly lifts the paradigm for hi s diffe ren tial defin ition - fantasy as Ih '
dividin g line between the uncanny and the marvellous - from philosophi (I I
de finition s of time present. For him the 'compari son is not gratuitous',' "
s in ce he m eans to evoke the instant. the "OW, understood as the definiti vr yr'l
vani sh ing line between the accumu lated past (of received understandinJ.l) 111111
Ihe nebulous future (of undreamt marvels), A yet stro nger claim, how WI ,
mery well seem invited, It is not just the accumulated knowledge of Ih e
Ih al wou ld explain away the marvellous in settling for an unca nny resolril li lli
r o r the uncanny, after all, is often the spectral retum of the past, the IiO ed
re pression of banned desire or recurrent fear. So between a haunlin g by 1111
past and a dalll1ting future of unheard-of wonders , between pre ternall il l.!
di s lurban ce and supernatural epiphany, the seesaw of fantas tic UII c rlil III
negotiates its plotline across th e dubious present of its prese ntalioll ,
And Ih e photograph? What is it, too , but the invis ible divi sio n bl' IWr'l II I'
pa sl li fe o r s pace or eve nt. arrived before the cam era, and a fui ll re illl:'I\I' lit,.1
will suppleme nl o r eve ntually s upplant its presence? The ima ge I, ll Iii.
1",SI in order to live on inl O ils own lulure, In this se nse ollhe ill lap.''
hn l;,slic babncill g act. dea lIr always e ncroaches fro m Ihe u nGll lll Y piliI' 111
pl" ,lograpIr y, imm orlalil y 1'1'0 111 III \, sl'lw rn ailireri. 111 lir e di scli rsiVl' 111 111111111
oril s t\('i xis, it s poi Il1 ing ,;\ pl, o\op,rapil :l IIIHHII I<"CS th all\J ;s hl' I'(' Will' lilt" ,..

someone then, Thus photography inscribes t h '

, ,
and futu re into an o bJ'ectifi d
e reoprocal vamshmg of pas t
t k
'
e presen t tran sferable f
a present reta ined foreve r witho
rom a er to recerver,

ebn dlessl y rehearsed as well as

a out a h uman rmage u d ' h
h
'
ea
n e l p otoc em IStry is also, therefore, what is
phantasmal abo ut it.

A photograph
Photographed
h has no
' m e mory, b
ut'IS one, th e material form of one,
uman Images enact a perpetu I d' I
s ubject to a subjectivity reco n figured b I k' a ISP acem ent, from an absent
is thereby the prosthesr's of
y 00 mg, 11,e photographed pe rson
t '
a m emory not belon '
gmg 0 It as agent, but only
altac hed to it as obJ'ect Wh
,
en, moreover such m d ' I
b
'
IIpon the doppelganger motl'f of K' I ' k"
e la rever eratlOn s converge
.
les ows I s Veroniq
,
Simplicity of the photogra phi c para
' bl e, An acoden
,
ta. llue,t we
k recogl1lze the
s ilbsequentl y unno ticed ph t
h f
'
y a en , processed, and
o ograp 0 one s double th th
' h"
,I general condition of psych I'c I,e
11
d
'
,
u e spe e out m unca e 0 e rbWit
I m, IS o nl y
III menta l experience , double ness 'ISc
'
nny
olten reglster-ed
'th voca u.ary, For
'

' I'cognized , psych ically imprinted without bein ac::'1

actually be mg
,,,,ked, one of the chief ;n
b h'
g
ow edged, ThIS IS,
u , erences
e md the p h ' t
"'lvpat hy of so many fantasti
'd'
syc IC respass and sexual
I"
c eprso es 1I1 recent European cinema
IIcorporatmg more obvious ele ments f
"
'
"
0 magIC realism than in
I( II'slowski 's film ' I
,
S, t l e prinCiple of coincident I tl'
po mes and co nvergent fates
I" " "Ti ed furthe r yet in th e C t "
Ian astIC cmema of Spa ' h d'
,
111 '1'/", Red Squirrel (1993) , the wuikel final reun ' I1IS rrector Ju uo Medem,
iJ"' " gIrI about through th
d"
Yr
Jon of separated lovers is
e me latron 0 photog
h'
,
111I1I a" in a shot that is literally pivota l TI h ra p IC magic at the film' s
1I ll'"l1 selfwith a fo rme r gi rl fi rend,
fixes on a framed s naps hot
I" II,1I'd o n a rock band T-s hirt B hi d I ' , Y er own ma gn 'fied Image
, e n tllS Image of th
I
111 11,1' " llolographic dis tance ,as th e h e lo
' d oes for the fie st
COLIP
f e we make
fi ou t
1111.'\"
image:
the
once
accid
t
i
d
r
ime
too,
aurthe
r
I
en a an now uncanny fi
r th
11 "1\1111' 12) Focused on in ra pi'd cIoseup (Figures
'
e new love r.
33 3 )gure
tl '"0
1< 111'''1' II II no ti ced presence U1
' th e pal'k th at day was -a 4,h li,-'
S 1S a "d
woman
Ilid I, ,," " onition , Under th e C,orce 0 f wlshfulfilment
'
sthee l ICOIllU ence1I111" "'II's " nci engulfs the he '
' e s lot now magically
ro s presen t space A '
t d '
IIIIIVI'IIII 'III , Ih e new lover an d h er e,ormer boyfrrend
', nuna
fir te mto
Ik blatera
h' l

111111'1 ""Ip lc (Figu re 35) and th en ass in a '

s wa
e md the
1111 11I '('sl,,"uing hero so that she p
,
slhlot/leverse shot exchange with
may Ievea t le necessary cl
h
' Cto er present
I10 11 ','\ ,," ,l s as body rathe r t'han 'Ima ge (F'Igures 36 ) I tl, ue
" 1111 ' " I slIllIre from WI' IIlin
' t'h e two
' d'Ime ns ,lo nal )Ian
-3,7' nI' liI S ,antastic
'
Ii 111111 11 1111'1' prl'viously Ih rea lened b d ' I '"
I , eo I' lotography, a
11 ,,1111 tll's irl',
y ea ll IS s lI bmllieci lo Ihe rea nimatio n

Figures 38-39
Film stills, Lovers of the Arctic
Circle, Ju lio Medem , 1999.

The cinema offantastic coincidence is even more obviously at work in

Mcdem's next film . Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1999). whose opening shot of
.Ilrashed airplane in a blizza rd is intercut with its front page image in the
",ws paper. read while cross ing the street by a woman run down in the
p" ,cess by a passing bus. Her long-separated lover (also her stepbrothe r)
III , I, es to her there. but only in time for a last fantasized embrace in the splitNl'lond of her death. The doomed nature of this reunion taps directly into th e
plill', incest motif, involving the first divorced (and then dead) mother for
wi,, ),,) all the hero's previous lovers have been a failed substitute. At the film's
1111 IIillg point. with the hero both boy and man in the same relived space. the
IIdlill son returns home to retrieve his camera and finds his mother's corpse
1IIIIId Ihe Ay-infested debris of her kitchen. In a double wrench of separation ,
.II >solute loss is backdated to a foundational lack that is marked by a
1" 1'11.11 match-cut from this scene of adult trauma back to his form e r boyhood
I ,'pili'" oflh e mothe r's living image (Figures 38-39): the taking of that very
jlillI llIW"ph wh ich the son keeps by hi s bedside during hi s s ubseque nl sexual

,lflle

affai rs. By the logic of the performative index. this photograph inscribes his
mourning for himself. once prese nt to he r. "s much as for her who was once
there fo r him. When tbe film retu rns in its clos in g moments to th e reAection
of the hero in hi s lover's dead eye (Fi gure 40 ), foll owed aga in by th e downed
plane. we rea lize that the whole nar rative may have transpired in Aashback
from the moment of dea th - and of hi s de<lth as much as hers, pe rhaps, since
he was pilotin g th e downed plane. For in that lingeringly held image of
reAected self in the death stare, what gets locked into place is the life-denying
need to find yo ur adult ide ntity mirrored in the eye of the maternalized
female other. Tom Gunning's interest in the nineteenth-centu ry idea that a
murderer's quasi-photochemical image is left as so-called 'optogramme ' on
the victim's eye find s a rea l-time but s till fixed, suicidally transfixed ,
equiva lent in thi s Liebestod va riant. "
In its maternal ove rtones. the moment is almost pure Proust. Raou l
Rui z's impure vers ion of actua l Proust, Le Temps Retrouve (1999) , begi ns
in the firs t scene with th e sli ghtes t an imatio n of fam il y photogra phs in the
palsied hand . and und er the shaking m agnify ing glass, of Ma rcel's optica ll yaided reve ry - one aftc r the other down through the ge ne ration s, including
'Mama ', un til th e arrival at 'et moi'. his own photo as a boy (Fi gures 41'42).
Fro m this all but inert photographi c ma rvel of a retrieved pa st, the first
Aashback sequence ca rries us to a POV shot of the young hero looking
through the viewfinders of a portable ste reopticon a t a felled WW I cava lry
horse, an image whose uncan ny de pth s hifts into sudden ci nematic motion.
Optical gadgetry is he re dis placed from the s light parallax of pai red ste reographic frames to the continuous an imatin g disjunction of the serial s trip,
one photogram after anothe r - and all th is witbin the aura of the past re found
as spectacle, its image trove re trieved at cinematic s peed.
In recent Hollywood fi lm. by con trast. optical tamperin g is morc likely to be
th ematized as violence than as nos talgia. Though no photograph mis represents
or betrays the relation of th e unna med na rrator to his viol ent sexual doubl e
ill Fight Club (Finch er, 1999 ), it turn s out that the latter, Tyler Durde n, works
lIi gh ts as a movie proj ecti onis t. When we see him s plicing porno footage into
fam ily films, fram e by photographic frame, we are thereby reminded of his
('"rli er irruption into filmi c prese nce - even before his en tra nce into plot. For
hi s own as yet unidenti fied image was at several poin ts s pliced in to na rrati ve
hy Ras h inserts - as if they were the extruded unconscious of the film' s own
sl ru cture. Against the insurgent undertext of projected filmic reality, the
lIormally sufficient labou r of sea mless continuity - namely realist cinema IS Ihe only true de fence. Film keeps a lid on the fi xated fetish of des ire,
here "s the de tached photogram or two of s pecu la r ob jeclhood.

16 Tom Gunning, 'iracing the

I ndiVidual Body: Photography,
DetectIVes, and Early Cinema',
in (memo alld the Illven/ion of
Modem Life, ed Leo Charney

and Vanessa R Schw<lrtz,

Univelslty ofCalifofnld
Press, Berkeley, '995, P)l

19

".
11 ,/00 1.

Another recent film of the HoUywood fantastic, The Sixth Sense

(Shyamalan, '999). builds toward its delayed twist in the plot - where the
hero himself is reveal ed as a ghost through the extrasensory perception of
his young patient - by tuming at one point on the fantastic ambivalence of
photography. Looking at a waJJ of her child's photos, his mother notices for the
first time that each image is streaked by a flare oflight near the boy's head almost like a refl ective glare on the lens, but hovering in free space (Figure 43).
A three-dimensional flaw, a ghost, an aura. By some unexplained transference ,
the child 's extrasensory vision thus seems displaced onto photography's own
alert viewer. The delayed shock of photographic recognition is even more
extreme in a similar narrative twist of The Others (Almena bar, 200r). The
infa nticidal heroine dead from suicide (we discover only in the penultimate
scene), who lingers on in a house she thinks haunted, comes upon a book of
nineteenth century memorial photographs: the dead artificially posed as the
living to preserve their souls (Figure 44). Worse, she later discovers that the
three family servants she has hired have been the subjects of similar mortuary
images (Figure 45) . It is as if photogra phy, in its evolved form as fi lm , has
indeed performed its su pernatural magic by keeping these subservient figures
in artificial animation before our own eyes as well as hers_ Either as part of the
protracted agony of her suicidal recognition or in the purgatory of postponed
"cceptance to which she is consigned, photography measures the past that will
1I0t depart, the past turned ghostly. In the process, and by extrapolation from it,
filmic duration - projected as ci nematic mirage - becomes an encompassing
ri gu re for the lingering time between the then and the eventua l: a limbo of
r'1I1 tastic materializaton.
In the recent convolutions of such Hollywood filmma king, not knowing
Iklt you are dead is only the obverse of not knowing, or failing to accept, that
you have never been alive. Neo in the Matrix trilogy must fight back this
dou bt about his own existence, just in case it really is hi s. The specta tor is
'! sked to share his doubts. By contrast, the robot hero of A.I. Artificial
IlI/ clligence (Spielberg, 2001 ) is known all along, at leas t by us, to be wired
1.llh er than nerved with desire, sheathed in unchanging plastic rather than
Ilvsh. Like a free-sta nding photograph. He is in fact modelJed , we di scover
h:Iif'way through, on the serial photos of the engineer's dead son (Figure 46) ,
II,, 1I10st recent translated into a fixed posthumous replica engineered from
II,, iIl side out. Virtual feelings in a virtual body: another version of a more
1" '1vasive digital paranoia that is backdated here to earlier anxieties ahout
" ,hol ics a nd cybernetic simulation.
I.ife conve rted to images in th e moment of its ca nceliation , and either
1'" 'Sl 'I'Vcci Ihe re <l rtinciali y (as in A. I. Artificial lnteUigellce ) or surrendered

in Hollywood's ontological fantasy, parallel to the digital go thic of virtual

agency, is a film , Identity (Mangold, 200 3), that goes so fa r as to revea l all its
characters as unambiguous (if long masked) projections of a psychotic central
figure, an 'inner chi ld ' long ago abandoned by his mother. As each facet
of a multiple personali ty di sorder is 'folded in ' - in othe r word s, brutally
mu rdered at the plot level - one among the splinter selves, a supposed police
detective, takes foren sic photographs with an off-the-rack camera as dis posable
as the disa ppearing bodies turn out to be. The images go undeveloped,
perhaps because th e radi ca l apparitions of psychosis have no use for the
eviden tiary temporal ity of the fi xed image in this fa ntastic plot. The re is no
time to be struck still in the present, viole ntly or otherwise, since the entire
fi lm is merely the haUuncinatory re play of past mayhem .

..
The hero of Vanilla Sky
under duress , is a famlhar contemporary trope. .'
.
h h d
(Crowe, 200 1) is eventuaUy disclosed as a post-su.ICldal sublec: w the
contracted for eventual resuscitation by evolvtng DNA techno ogy:
. tual reality that has been electron ically im planted in the meantIme
empty, the hero takes the l eap of fa ith ' into anon-programme
. .
um in from a skyscraper, hi s elapsed memon es are spun past tn a
deliberately metafilmic) strip of photograph s t
excer ts reca pitulating his own life and that of the medIa cen tury.. IS pas
p b
'dl that the difference between sti ll and movll1 g Image IS
sweeps y so ra pl y
hile the whole montage closes in and down
reduced almost to zero - even w
' .
on the home-movie foota ge of an artificially implanted Proustlan recovelY
whe re mother and son can be reunited at last (FIgure 47)
.
This moment is prototypical. In the new ontologICal dystoplas of .
Hollywood narrative, screen lives are over without havll1g really been hved.

Digital heroes . ghostly scapegoats, even

esrre
. out The latest stage
simulation s, the suspended anrmatlon 0 h
.
whil e its remaining options would seem to e t tnnrng

Figure 48
Fil m still. One-Hour Photo .
Ma rk Romanek. 2 0 0 2.

By contrast, another rece nt film , also centered upon childh ood trauma
.IIld its warping after-effects, turns specifically on the fanta stic of photograph y
Itself: namely, its power to diss imulate one past in order to repress a nother,
III still time and its ghos ts at once. Th e protagoni st of One- Ho"r Photo
(llnl11a nek, 2002 ) - reduced in the end to a di ssolving trace on the frame
sl ri p. followed by a fi xed but fantas tized still - is a superstore clerk who has
II "Idc illegal duplicates ofa fam ily's snapshots over the yea rs a nd covered hi s
w.dl s with them . fi lling his underfu rn ished life with surrogate fam il y pictures
("'>:III'C 48). After the police late r discover he has scratched out the face of the
I. ll iter in every one of his hundreds of photos (Figure 49). we are led wi th
11,, '111 10 sLl spect at the climax that he is about to take snuff pictures of the
I Itt':tl ill g hu s ba nd and his mis tress afte r corne rin g them injlagra l1te at

wi n,

Figures 50
Film stit!, One-Hour Photo,

Mark Romanek, 2002.

.
Ion a 0 have forgotten that the film is a
g g
" t ted by a question about what
knifepOint. By now, we may
fl as hback from police preCl pl a
k d th hoto developer s rage.
ep
have forgotte n IS the tra nsition from
has provo e
What we are more likelY ck begInrung ' answered to by the
shot anot h er n
b
.
hls to of still-image technology, we egIn
credits to opening
Mnoument As If replaYIn g the
ry
th fi lm roll exposed credit
we jump to
with the title seq uence laterally sdcrolh nflg pasatmone ra e
_ From
f f; m IO SI e a re ex c
dby arrowed cre It as I ro
hot of the protagonist. Into
th
t of piecIng-out a mug s
.
. h
tually disa ppears altogether, via
a digital ca mera In e ac
duphcatlOn e even
f
d
such a zone 0 secon ary
P
II's T 60 Peeping Tom, where a
the fil m's actlVated intertext, Michael has turned the adult son
father's continual film ed update of thIs them
10 to a voyeur and sexual psychop
.
t to have been subJected to, and
.
f0
Hour Photo turns ou
th o
th e proago nlst 0
ne
.
h ' hotogra phy. It is for IS
obJectified by, his father 's expliCItly pornograp IC p ate as a kind of cathars is
h
II bseque nt Images oper
t d subl'ect within the tell ta le
reason, we surmise, t at a su
If b
s reframed as a cap ure
k
until he himse eco me
fthe pohce mterrogatlO n tan
h t aphlc) dimenSIOns 0
rectangu lar (I e., p oogr
d I b the imagined insertIOn of
(Figlll e 50). From there he IS release on y ) snapshot that fades slowly
h (thiS time unta ken I,
h llllself Into yet anot e r.
t C'ntasy IS transacted across the
I k
1h " h sl lUln 0",
to a final b ac scree n.
......
.tn Itself. For th e transitiona l
I d n.llldll VeS p
I
rCVCJ e
(
"
, ii i IJl'Iw('(, 1I p syc h o ti C ;:t nd avun cu a r
chssolve is so slow Ili.illl " ' 11
' I nn or lhal s hee l d lrre le nce,
is 111 :l l lI ll'Ht Oil N( l t'l'lIl l llll 0

us ually invis ible as s uch, wh ich is the secret motor not only of all s hot or
scene change but of all image fl ow on screen. Metz's ultimate proposition _
all montage as trucage - has seldom been m ore eerily evoked. Furthermore, in
Ihe break from s utu red into purely hallucinatory space, the collapse of selr
into its double could hardly be more s harply focused around the very logic of
'projection ' in the psychoana lytic sense: the fa nta sy of self p rojected into a n
ilill sory gro up image (Figure 51)- One Hour Photo ends in wha t one tends to
(" II a Wish-fulfill ment fanta sy, m ateria lized by a trope of the med ium itself
!'he man for whom time bears always the pressu re of intole rable memory is
,lSs uaged by absolu te stasis, however unreal.
More often oflate, at leas t in Hollywood 's on tological goth ic, the unreal ity
pe rvasive and entirely un willed, imposed upon a protago nis t in th e form of
IllS Or her very negation. A recent essay, wishing to recuperate a wide array of
11,, 'se fi lm s in the modes ofhalJucinatory and digita l illusion alike, to rescue
II,, .., for ethica l weigh t, identifies thei r s hared prem ise as that of a
', I' ps tream rea li ty.' 17 But besides the content of s uch monitory fa bles, my
IltJllI1 is that both the s tructure of fantasy as genre and the manipulation of
11 "' 11 image as medium can mark ethical parameters as well - or their
1," I" il. The continuous equivocation of the real, even when it keeps viewers
1111 "dge, ca n blunt their sense of consequence. In the grips of the immaterial,
IIl1 lh ing fina lly matters. If the character we took to be a hero is only an
oI
" ' f! I,ary fi gment or a dream double Or a ghost, we leave the theatre with a
I "II" ill illdiffere nce, absolved of identifi ca lion, of credence. We accede to the
11 1111 ', .1 . wh ich is ill its Own W;Jy a highly polilica l acl. In eva lual ing the cu ltura l
IS

17 See N Katherine Hdles.

.Ind NILhol.l<; Cessl(,l. 'The
SlllJStleMl'l or Realities:
Un .. tdnlf' On tologie .. and
Senllotfr Markers' In 'Tilt
Tllil /enlll, Floor, Dark CIty.
II /Ill M llihu/f(lr!/j VfJLJ/', PMl A
May 1004 499

I t(llo,

.
one must look past cin ematic content to a
valence of the fanta stIC, then,
.
f a given plot as an axiom of
nfigure the premise 0
h
filmi c form that may recO
h fi lmic substrate ca n in th is way locate t e
the cinematic medium Itself. T e
. tu. l presence implem ented by screen
l Vir a
.
A d't
' l"pstream'o f nat
true an d d eepes t s I
. 1
1 g of all fanta stic illusIOn. n 1
f
us
mechamca
ana
0
mediation: tlle con IIlUO
. l'
. of the film itself. Such screen
by the m aten a lromes
d .
can be ma de to d 0 so
.
d 'tion as a fantastic eVlance,
1 t their own normative con 1
. h
o
1 . 1 mesis Photography vams es
narratives olten rep 0
;rition .
the medium reasserting itself as onto oglCa ne
.
fil ' h t as cmema. montage as app
.
1 . fantastic in its own nght. In
into ItS own mlC g os
P
But this is partly because photogra l y photography is, as noted ,
b
picturing that woman there, from way ac.
' perceptual future across
the moment of her transcribed past becommg my ted for capture. Duration
.
f time present ome presen
'1
the indexical insterstrce 0
. l' d
t 'ts aftermath as object. FI In
th th 'm age and dlsp ace on 0 I
.
I
is ca nceUe d Wl ln e '
. .
dation itself as visual object. I
then redoubles this function by glvmg US ur . f
of the photogram Iha l
.
fi d b that contllluOUS rea mma Ion
I
offers and IS de ne y,
th
t I vanishing and eventuat 0 11
,
.
I tl
erasure e mu ua
takes the form of ,ts re en ess S '11 'd fme is recirculated as time still : th\'
.
. th
ode of motIOn. tr e I
.
k
'
of Image In e m
.
ential registration. All cmema nowS
time of spectacle rather tl,an ltS
' t rather than just dependin g on Ii
Ihi s. Ce rtain fi lms find a use for s I is a second-order recognition
In Ihe presenl context, whal comes I doing Over and above th '
11 k ' to plot 'IS li s nn.' un
.
Ihal is often rou lee )aC III
. . ' I ' '.
. find in ci nem a the I
inherent unGInnin es:-;
photograph y. I IS, we

ur

ol' lh e slill illlaw

Examples of this recognition mobilized by plot keep coming, one after

another, in Hollywood's current retoolings of the virtual. Even turning the
paradigm of virtuality on end does not necessarily dislodge its strangehold
on the filmic stratum of cinematic effect. In Eternal. Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind (Condry, 2004), once again a trick beginning colludes with a twist
ending (here film ically iden tical) even while corkscrewing round to
undermine the plot's own premi se. The narrative leads off, mi sleadingly
enough, Witll the h ero waking to a chance encounter with the woman who
will become his lover - only fo r both of them , once the affair has gone bad,
to contract with Lacuna Corporation fo r selective 'brain damage ' to re move
the 'map ' (the graphically figured traces) of each other from their memories.
As soon as aU photographs of the fo rmer lovers have been confiscated,
according to contract, along with othe r tangible me morabilia, their brai ns
ca n tllen be electronically burned clean. Rather tha n being embalmed by
photography, erotic time must here be crema ted by a more advanced
tecllllology. But when tllat initial waking sequ ence is replayed in the
penul tima te scene. using the device of exactly repeated film footage, we
realize tha t, the fi rst tim e around, that scene had in fact been sometlling like
a proleptic flash forward to the couple's accidental seco nd, ra tller than first,
meeting, taking place now on the morni ng after tlle hero's electron ic surge ry.
Cutting tllrough these complications, the tlleme of digital e ra sure is
only a dystopian obverse of that digi tal fabrication explored in other recent
Ilims. In the ethics of the dystopian virtual, tlle real must be va lorized, in
Ih is case sexuaUy embraced, even if only after tlle fact. Which is why Lhe
IInconscious of the couple resists their delibera te decision to forget.
Electronic trucage dogs at the ir heels as they try desperately to seques te r
some pJeasant memory beyond tlle reach of surveillance and effacement with one whole mise en scene after anoth er being eaten away in sequence by
digital negations. Only the filmi c, rather tha n the electronic, could finall y
, orn e to their rescue, if ol1 ly ambiguously. On view in tl,e very last shot of
/:J.'rl'lal Sunshine is perhaps, along witll the final lap dissolve of One Hour
/' /10/0. the clearest d ivulgence of a fi lmic photogrammar in recent cinema.
A, th e hero and heroine fl ee into the dis tance ofa s nowy landscape, a
tw% ld loop begin s, taking its slipping hold on the image plane. Such
LdlOrJtory produced repetition offers a quintessential fi lmic disclosure from
With in cinema (at least from Soviet montage down to jus t before the era of
dll:,I :d imaging): an unevadable confession of tlle reprinted photogrammatic
I h.,ill . What its overt manipulation serves to image in th is case, whe the r as
J"dlilcination or metapho r or both, is the couple's urge to s tart out- a nd up -

- -----

all over again , and then again, in their willed escape. Yet this figuring of
revived des ire appears in a filmic manifestation so dubious that a potential
trope of renewal, at the level of ci nematic rhetoric, gets thrown back into plot
as more like another psychic recursion. As if violating Lacuna Corporation's
fir st contractual stipulation to surrender all photographs , this last staggered
thrust of desire seems unwilling, after all, to forego entirely the photographic
index of suspended time. Instead, it holds motion itself to sheer repetition at least until it fades to the pure white field not of snow but of projected light,
unimpeded by imprint. (Figures 52-53)
This last brazen trLlcage allows the fi lm's closing artifice of editing to
resist, or at least postpone, the normal mode of filmic erasure and its fading
traces. The resulting, snagged image hovers somewhere between the serial
photographs that cannot fin ally still time and the speeding track that cannot
really mummify its change in passing. In the plot-long effect of memory's
overlay on duration, then, editing in Bemal Sultshilt. tacitly participates in
the life_is_like-a-movie trope familiar from movies like Valtilla Sky, which
also closed with the whiting-out (rather than blacking-out) of its home-movie
footage . I n this latest fa ble of the digital unconscious, the vicious (or mitigating)
circle of the narrative's closing double loop offers a spliced succession
running in place to nowhere - until the replayed grain of the snow-hazed
ligures fades further into the tabula rasa of the narrative's ultimate title shot,
eternal only because changeless in its recurrence. Bleachiog out the whole
screen is a linal effacing brightness that figures the 'spotless' plane of an
entirely screened memory on the disappearing strip, safely invisible at last.
Here, then, is a case of frameld time stripped of all image: the photogram
ove rexposed in every sense.
And here is where all illqlli ry illio scree n genre ca n penetrate and rethink
11 11" plic
(, lIolov,y vI {",Ill,', "WlI ""'di '"'' or whe re, in other words, the
ll urll

forked paths of fantastic plotting maYU It'

mystique of photographic prese
T h Imately co nverge upon the tem poral
nce. at converge
k
process located always one I I d
nce, we now, points to a
.
eve own back b D
endtng that rounds back on fil'
'
'. e ore - or between. The twist
mhs own plastIC basis in serial imprint has
become almost a new sc
reen arc etype ta . th
unconscious of the mult'-f
d . : ppIng e collective and accretive
hi '
I rame StrIp Itself B
come-true as a fantastic photo ra h th
. . e ore ac evmg hi s dream pass, by lap dissolve. ;he e victim of Olte H OLlr Photo
p antasmal abdICatIOn of his own
real Image as a file of h t
b
p 0 ograms . Th e frequ n t
d"
y film, even within a partly digital ized cioem: reme JatIOn of photography
from one sense of frame to the th f
' reverts at such moments
't If c o er, rom screen to .
. c .
I se lrom proj ected rectangle t '
Imprmt. ,0ldIng back on
o rotary tncrement H
narra tology of mutually excl '
I
. ere too, then, is where a
uSlve exp anato
ti
what [ would want to ca ll
ry op ons (Todorov) closes upon
a narratography of'
..'
the simultaneous slippage and . f'
Inscnptlve Interva ls: attending to
images on SCfeen. No contestinggftlhPeO Imprthnt tnfi the illusory play of moving
..
sense t at 1m '
..
proJected aclto n is'. nor that l'tS ce II l tl ar ad va nce'
\C success Ion IS where the
I I
P lotogram by photogram . Th at mu ch IS
. ap
IS regu ar. y. masked as such '
I
sa me time, though and oft . I
. parent, even if tnvisible. At the
,
en tn eague WIth th h
.
e t ematlc overload of
foregro unded photographs'
' certatn screen plots d
h
o ocular response where th b d
.
rop us t rough to a stratum
f
..
e are unreality of th t .
a actIon, that fan tastic
appa rItIOn , may be brought to view.

The Possessive Spectator

Laura Mulvey

As the cinematic experience is so ephemeral , it has always been difficult to

hold on to its precious moments, images and most particularly, its idols. In
response to this problem, the fi lm industry produced, from the very earliest
moments of fandom, a panoply of still images that could supplement the
movie itself: production stills, posters, and above all, pin-ups. AU these
secondary images are des igned to give the fi lm fan the illusio n of possession,
making a bridge between the irretrievable s pectacle and the ind ividual's
imagination . Otherwise, the desire to possess a nd hold the elusive image led to
repeated viewing, a return to the cinema to watch the same film over and over
aga in that echoes Freud 's comment on children's pleasure in repeti tion, fo r
in stance, of play or of stories. With electroni c or digital viewing , the nature
of cinematic repetition co mpulsion c.hanges. As the film is delayed and th us
fragme nted from linear narra tive into favou rite mo me nts or scenes, the
specta tor is able to hold on to, to possess, the previously elusive image. In th is
delayed cinema the s pectator finds a heightened relation to the human body,
.l lId particula rl y that of the stars. Halting the flow of film extracts the image
01 the star easily from its narrative surroundings fo r the kind of extended
\ olltemplation that had on ly been previously possible with film stills. From
.1 theoretica l point of view, this new stillness exaggerates the star's icon icity.
The image of a star is, in the first insta nce, an indexical sign like any other
I'llot ographic image and an icon ic sign like any other representational image.
It IS also an elaborate icon , with an ambivalen t existence both inside and
oll lS ide fictional performance. The term 'icon', in this context, goes beyond
II,, sign of similarity in C.S . Pierce's semiotics to the symbolic processes of
Jt lil log ra phy and the iconophilia funda mental to the way Hollywood, and
1111 "'r mass cinemas, worked and work in their generation of star images.
II ii' cin ema harnessed the human figu re into the imaginary worlds of fiction ,
11111 II,, fi lm industry went much further, hanging its fictions onto a highly
wi II/l'd star system . Crea ting a star mea nt creating a name, sometimes
IIII 'Lill y a studio rebaptism as caricatu red in A Star is Born (George Cuckor,
11 1"'11 . 1,"1 a lways one that cou ld be recogni sed and na med. The star's
",," I.i1.ility introduces the thi rd. sym boli c. dime ns ion of Pie rce's trichotomy

of signs. The symbol is interpreted by the human mind and out of pre
existing cultural, rule-given, knowledge so that the instant recognisability of
Amitab Bachchan and Sean Connery, for instance, or Ingrid Bergman and
Nargis, would necessarily vary according to their s urrounding film cultures.
In this sense, the star is recognised and named within his or her s pread of
fandom, just as a Christian saint would be recognised and named within the
spread of religious art.
When a film industry streamlines the star system, they work hard to
create instantly recognizable, iconic screen actors whose highly stylized
performance would be enhanced by an equally highly stylized, star focused ,
cinema. Star performance is, not inevitably but very often, the source of
screen movement, concentrating the spectator's eye, localizing the development of the story and providing its latent energy. But the great achievement
of star performance is an ability to maintain , in balance, a fundamental
contradiction: the fusion of energy with a stillness of dis play. However
energetic the star's movement might seem to be, behind it lies an intensely
controlled stillness and an ability to pose for the camera. Rem iniscent,
figuratively, of the way that the illusion of movement is derived from still
frames , so star performance depends on pose, moments of almost invisible
s tillness, in which the body is di splayed for the specta tor's visual pleasure
through the mediation of the camera. In What Price Hollywood (George
Cukor, 1932), Constance Bennett, as an aspiring actress, de monstrates the
process of learning screen 'stillness'. After she fails her first screen test due
to an over eager, speedy performance, she gradually internalizes the director's
instructions on the stairs of her apartment building, and trains herself to
walk with slow - almost slow motion - precision down the steps towards a
final pose and a lazily delivered line. Female screen performance has always,
quite overtly, included this kind of exhibitionist display. But the delayed
cinema reveals that whilst the stillness and pose of a male star might be more
masked it is nonetheless an essential attribute of his screen performance.
Roland Barthes' preference for the photograph over film lies includes hiH
aesthetic pleasure in pose:
What founds the nature of Photography is the pose ... looking at a photograpll
I inevil.ably include in my scrutiny the thought of that instant, however hi'll:!,
ill which a real thing happened to be motionless inFont of the eye. / projc I
Ihis present pholograplt's immobility upon Ihe past shol., and it is this 'H'ml
t1wt constil.ul.e.' I.he pose. Tl,is explains IVI'IY I.he Photograph's noem e
deleriaral.", IVI" ", 1.I,is ph olograpll is (llIilll(lled Dlld becomes cinem(l : ill Illf
1'llOlogI"<I1'11 SOll"'II, illg I"" /1O,,.d illji'olll of II Ie lilly hole IIl1d lia S ren'lnillrti

there for ever ... but in the cinema, something has passed in Font of this same
tiny hole: the pose is swept away and denied by the continuous series of images.'
The delayed CInema revea ls the significance of the pose even when the
'something has passed by'. The halted frame, tlle arrest, discovers the
moment of immobility that belongs to the fram e and allows the time for
contemplation that takes the image back to the brief instant that recorded the
' real thing'. As the apparatus asserts its presence and the original indexicality
of ItS Images, the pose is no longer 'swept away and denied' but may rather
be enha nced by the performance of stardom . Pose allows time for th e cinema
to denaturalize tl1e human body. While always remaining 'the real thing',
the ICOIllC figure of the star is always on display, a vehicle for tl1 e aesthetic
attributes of cinema, a focus for Ught and shade, framing and camera
movement. The close-up has always provided a mechanism of delay, slowing
cmema down mto contemplation of the human face , allowing for a momen t
of possession in which the image is extracted, whatever the narrative
rationalisation may be, from the Row of a story. Furthermore, tl1e close-up
necessarily limits movement, not only due to tl1e constricted space of the
rram ing but also due to the privileged lighting with whim the star's face is
II sually enh anced. Mary Ann Doane has pointed out that the close-up is a key
Il gure for photogenie, tl1e ecstatic contemplation of cin ema in its uniqueness,
'"Id that the desire for the close-up has traditionally been marked by a
rejection of narrative's diachronic structure in favour of the synchroni c
'"oment itself. The close-up is tl1us treated:
... as stasis, as a resistance to narrative linearity, as a vertical gateway to an
irrecoverable depth behind the image. The discourse seems to exemplifY
a des"e to stop the film, to grab hold of something that can be taken away,
10 transfer the relentless temporality of the narrative's unfolding to a more
IIloltageable temporality of contemplation'
Th e star's visual apotl1eosis is no more material than tl1e light and
I, .,tlows that enhance it and the human figure as feti sh fu ses with the
I 11I1'lIla as fetish which further connects with the fusion of fetishism and
IIl 'sll I(' IICS that characterises photogenie. Here tl1e symbolic quality of film
1II'. ,I " II C5, even 'the more manageable temporality of contemplation', leads
lilW, lI'ds il s eternal , unavoidable, shadow, the psychodynamics of visual
pll '. lS lIr". The extraord inary significance oftl1e human figure in cinema ,
II,, SI" r. il s iconic sexua li ty, raises the question of how desire and pleasure are
II ' 11I1I.fi gured in delayed cine ma , both as stillness within th e moving image
Ilitl WIIIIII"I a changed powe r relation of s pecta tors hip.
III Vi" ",l Pleasure and Norml.;ve C;I'lel'lw I argued that th e cine ma , as a
1III'Ilillll' or s peclacle, coded sexua l diffe rCllce in relation to th e look whi le

111111.111

also creating an aesthetic of extreme anthropomorphism, of fascination with

the human face and human body. This coding was particularly apparent en
Hollywood films, so deeply invested in the cult of the star. The female star
was, I argued, streamlined as erotic spectacle while the male star's attributes
of control and activity provided some compensation for his exposure as a
potentially passive object of the spectator's look. The female figure's passivity
and the male drive of the narrative were in tension and difficult to reconCile.
As spectacular image, she tended to bring the story to a stop and capture the
spectator' s gaze in excess: 'Th e presence of woman is an indispensable
element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visua l presence tends
to work against the development of the story line, to freeze the flow of actIOn
in moments of erotic contemplation."
Watching HoUywood film s delayed both reinforces and breaks down
these oppositions. The narrative drive tends to weaken if the spectator is able
to control its flow, to repeat and return to certain sequences while sklppmg
others. The smooth linea rity and forward movement of the story becomes
jagged and uneven , undermining the male protagonist's command over the
action. The process of identification, usually kept in place by the relatIOn
between plot and character, suspense and transcendence, loses its hold over
the spectator. And the loss of ego and self-consciousness that has been, for
so long, one of the pleasures of the movies gives way to an alert scrutmy
and sca nning of the screen, lying in wait, as it were, to capture a favounte
or hitherto unseen detail. With the weakening of narrative and its effects,
the aesthetic of the film begins to become 'feminized' with the shift in
spectatorial power relations dwelling on pose, stillness, lighting and the
choreography of character and camera. Or, rather, within the terms of the
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema model, the aesthetic pleasure of delayed
cinema moves towards fetishistic scopophilia that, I suggested, characterized
the films of Josef von Sternberg. These films, most particularly the Dietrich
cycle, elevate the spectator's look over that of the male protagonist and
privilege the beauty of the screen and mystery of situation over suspense,
con flict or linear development. The 'fetishistic spectator' becomes more
fa scinated by image than plot, returning compulsively to privileged
moments, investing emotion and 'visual pleasure' in any slight gestu re, a
particu lar look or exchange taking place on the screen. Above all , as these
privileged mome nts are pau sed or repeated , the cinema itself find s a new .
visibility that re nde rs th e m specia l, meanin gful and pl easurable, once agal ll
confu sin g pi r%gelli,' all I fl"ti slriSin .
.
.
In tlri s rcco llfil4l1r'alioll 0 1 '1I"Iishi sli( sl)l"( lal orsirrp. the ma le fi gure IS
l'x lra Il'd 11'0111 dOlllill:lliliH lilt' .!llfOIl :llId 11I l'I'W'S iliin

th e image. So doillH

he, too, stops rather than forwards the narrative, inevitably becoming an
overt object of the spectator's look, against which he had hitherto been
defended. Stripped of the power to organize relations between movement
action and the drive of the plot, on which the whole culture of cinema
'
categorized by Deleuze as the 'action image' depends, the male star of a
Hollywood film is exposed to the 'feminization' of the spectator's gaze. As a
film's masculinity has to risk the castrating effect of delay and fragmentation,
thiS form of spectato rship may work perversely agai nst the grain of the film
but It IS also a process of discovery, a fetishis tic form of textual analysis.
When narrative fragments and its protagonists are transformed into still,
posed, images to which movement can be restored, the rhythm of a movie
changes. The supposed laws of smoothly distributed, linear cause and effect
are of minor aesthetic importance compared to another kind of, more
tablea u orie ntated, rhythm. Howard Hawks pointed out that a director
tends to concentrate drama and spectacle into privileged scenes so the
fragmentation of narrative continuity may also be the discovery of a pattern
that had been clouded by identification, action or suspense. But the human
body is of the essence in 'fetishistic spectatorship'. Performance and the
precision of gesture take on an enhanced value not only on the part of the
great stars but of secondary and character actors as well. Movement that
looks natural, even chaotic, at the normal speed of film turns out to be as
ca refully choreographed as a balle t and equally punctuated with pose.
. In his video essay Negative Space, Chris Petit commented on Hollywood
crnema's intrinsic ability, at its best, to produce a kind of 'silent' cinema, a
sys te m of creating meaning and emotion outside language itself. There are,
Ir c says: 'defining moments that stay in the mind long after the rest of the
IIrovie has been forgotten. ' He draws, particularly, on Robert Mitchum's
J!,ps lure and stance in Out of the Past, illustrating the way that his figure is
" lIhanced by film noir lighting and shadow. In Don Siegel's The Big Steal
(r,;)49) Mitchum's first appearance illustrates both the importance of the
pallsed moment in which the star is introduced to the camera and the
IIlIport'Ince of'masculinizing' that moment. William Bendix leads the fi lm
Ilr rough its opening sequence, during which he occasionally pauses, heavily
Irl III profile so that his 'tough guy' image is reflected in his shadow. As he
It/ rrsls open the door to Mitchum's room, the star swings round to face the
l .lIlI "ra , frozen for an extended moment in shock, and reflected in a
h:r<kground mirror. Thi s is a moment of the star on display, as exh ibitionist.
11111 Ihe risk of fe minizing the male star as specta cle is neutrali sed by
vrll l' lIce. by the gun in Bendix 's hand and his aggress ion. However,
IllIrrrrglrorrl Ihe film , Shol s of Mil chum recur in which hi s moveme nts are

similarly paused, overtly for narrative purposes but also producing a

characteristic pose for the camera. Like personal objets trouv"s, such scenes
can be played and replayed, on the threshold between cinephilia and fandom .
But in the process of stilling a favourite figure , transformmg It mto a pm-up
and then reanimating it back into movement, the spectator may well find, as
in the case of The Big Steal that the rhythm is already inscribed into the style
of the film itself.
The fetishistic spectator controls the image to dissolve voyeurism and
reconfigure the power relation between spectator, camera and screen,. male
and female. The question that then arises is whether these new practices of
spectatorship have effectively erased the difficulty of sexual difference and
the representation of gender in the cinema. What might the unconsclOUS
investment be in the spectator' s control over the cinematic image? In VISual
Pi.easure and Narrative Cinema I suggested that, as an active in stinct,
voyeurism found its narrative associate in sadism. 'Sadism demands a story,
depends on making something happen, forcmg a change m another
a battle of will and strength, victory Idefeat, all occurnng m hnear time WIth
a beginning and an end." This premise was drawn directly from Freud's .
equation of the active sexual instinct with masculmlty and Its oppoSIte With
femininity. Although it was key to his theory that the ll1stmcts were .
reversible, Hollywood cinema, as I understood it, by and large, ll1scnbed the
binary opposition quite literally into both narrative and the visual codes thai

I" 1,0"/

".,

IIII 1101

,.1 n 11/1'"

.'
..
organized the spectator's visual pleasure.
Among the many critiques of this hypothosls , an Important corrective 1111
been offered by analyses of cinema directed towards a female audience. III
her study of Rudolph Valentino, Miriam Hansen analyses the ambivalen -c
of his persona, which, on the one hand, threatened conventional mascu lill Iy,
on the other, had huge commercial advantages for an industry courtin g ;111
important female audience . Valentino , as well as other matinee idol type
of the 19 0S, upsets my assumptions about the gendenng of VIsual pi
2
Hansen points out that, as a primary object fora
,
audience, Valentino's persona incurs a systematIC femll1ll1lzatlOn , bill RIi,
ultimately revises the unequivocal binarism of Freud's passive and;1 Ilv('
opposition. In the process, she evolves a concept of female spectatol'sh lp 11 1111
is, in the fir st instance, specific to the Valentino anomaly, but also 111111101111110 .
theo retica lly the visual pleasures of delayed cinema. She begin s by SlIllf\l'HIIIIII
thai fema le vision benefil s from bein g incomplete, in co ntrast 10 Ilw 'flOIl I
orien lated disciplin e of Ihe one-eyed mascu lin e look. '" Sim il arly:
01'1 Ih e 'evd ojjiil-llic f'tW II( if.iI iOl' , 11'11' CO III'IO/.al,iorIS of Vo lelldtlo'.
'/o-l)f'-/ooked .OI,. /Il 'SS' llis OIVII g/(.HI CI' j" j/ s Vf: r y origi ll , h/lt!

vulnerable. to the temptations that jeopardize the sovereignty of the male subject
... The erotIc appeal of Valentino's gaze, staged as a look within the look is one
of reciprocity and ambivalence rather than mastery and objectification."
She goes on to analyse various points at which the Valentino movies fail
to conform to either narrative or visual norms oflater Hollywood, while the
presence of a strong female look within the diegesis grants legitimacy to that
of the female spectator. The unusual scopic attention invested in his star
presence both on and off the screen is the initial source of this destablization.
In the absence of narrative suspense, activity, physical movement and gesture
acqUlre extra slgl1lficance, and 'closure tends to reside in smaller units
cu tting across visual and narrative registers '.' Finally, Hansen points the
sado-masochistic themes assodated with Valentino, the 'interchangeability of
Ihe sadIstic and masochistic positions within the diegesis ... the vulnerability
Valentmo displays 111 hiS film s, the traces offeminine masochism in his
pe rsona' ,K which indicate a deviance from the male subject's sexual mastery
;l11d control of pleasure.
. Han sen's analysis prefigures, at many points, the spectatorship of delayed
11 nema, the weakening of narrative as well as transferred attention to detail
;1nd ges ture and finally the importance of star-presence for a sense of
oscillation between index and icon. Valentino's persona, his feminization
I,i s association with lesbians , hi s possible homosexuality, hi s foreignne ss: all
"d d to the uncertainty of both types of signs. However, in relation to sadism
,IIld masochism the picture is, perhaps, rather different. With the weakening
"I character IdentrficatlOn, the spectator's vicarious control over the plot is
"'plclCed by another kind of power as the spectator gains immediate control
IIw r the image. No longer the driving force of the movie, the star succumbs
III slillness and repetition. The desire for possess ion, only previously realized
,,"l.>lde the film, in stills and pin-ups, can now be fulfilled not only in stillness
1\1 II also 111 the repetition of movements, gestures, looks, actions. [n the process,
II,.. "llIslon ofhfe, so essential to the cinema's reality effect, weakens and the
" pp"raILis overtakes the figure's movements as they are inescapably repeated
Willi Iil echa nical exactitude. The human figure becomes an extension of the
111,1/ hill e, conjuring up the pre-cinematic ghost of an automaton.
Tll c. fragmentation of na rrative, the feti shization of the human figure , the
jl, lv "l'gl ng of certal11 sequences all return the question of sadism to Freud's
II IIIl"pl of re petition compulsion. Furthermore, the psychic economy of
MIIIlI sIli changes Il1 th e co ntext of Beyol1d the Pleasure Pril1cipie and Freud 's
1111,": '1'1 ",ilhe dea th in stin ct. As r ele r Brooks de mons trates so convincingly
III l'II'IId s Ma ster Plot', Ihe dea lh in slin cl, Ih e aim 10 return 10 an inorga ni c,
I II I lit" slalc, st ruclures Ihe drive loward s dealh in narra livc." Bul Frcud's

6 Ibid, P.279.

8 Ibid. p.287

9 Peter Brooks, 'Freud's

Master Plot" in Re(l(llIIgjor lite

Plot. On/gil (llld

NUI/(/fIV.,

IqX"

IIl /wII OII ill

VUlldl',('. New YOlk,

.'
ri inally aroused by the anomalous
interest in the death Itlstmct was 0 g
.
thus seem in gly to contradict
om pulsion to repeat unpleasurable expenences, .
c
I
' nciple in mental life.
the dominance of the p easure pn
h .
f ltl
' stinct in Beyond the Pleasure
Freud reconfigured his prevl0uS t eones 0 e med into one between the
.
h
. s opposItIOns are translor
PrincIple so t at prevlou
.'
In another essay he summarizes
li fe instincts (Eros) and the death Instmcts.
the

has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuOUS, ;nd Th

'tf! lfiLLs that task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwar s" 'h e'
, u
.
th' ti"ct for mastery or t e WI ll
. stina is then caLLed a destructive instmct, e ms .
. ,; h
I
:: power. A portio" of the insti"ct is placed directLy the oJ t e
.
t t part to play ThIS IS sa ISm ploper.
function where itltas an ,mpor a".
f' . lence aga inst the cohes ion

I"

... )( , o'
dlill

The possessive spectator commIts an act 0 and the vision of its

ora story, the aesthetic integnty thatdholds.'t tOtgect is expressed through thc
ifically the sa IStIC tnS m
creator. But, more s p e c ,
d ill to power In the role
.
t t ' des ire for mastery an w
.
possessIve spec a or s
d the diegetic look of the mal<reversal between the look of the spectallto r an .f 1 b th on and off the scret ll
th fi re that had been a powel u 0
protagomst, e gu
. I f on and possession Film performance
is now subordinated to rnampuda I .
begin to mechanical,
.
e
d by repetitIon an actIons
I
I S tran slorme
h . s take possession or 11C a 101

t
The cinema's mec amsm
compulSIve ges ures.
d
tu s become those of automala , 1111'
th .
. se repeate ges re
dd d
ges with the uncanny
or star and , as elf preCl , .'
c
between the hvm g an ea mer
uncanny IUSIOn
. ' he human body and the machillr .
between the organic and the morgamc: t
tal film-maker inAuenced I y
A ld the V,ennese expertrnen
'
I
Martm rno ,
. f
t fold Hollywood movi s 11 111 ,
Ihe work of Peter Kubelka , re-edlts ragmtenfseoUuloid figures inlO Clli PIY
tr
forms the movem en 0 c
In p,'e'ce touchee hc dra wH 11111
in the process, ans
d
th
b ' . g en or purpose .
'
hi h
n is waitin g, by rep ',11 11111
gestures W I no egmntn, .
, . tr ce into a room, m w c a woma
I
a man s en an
ff
fA ' k film s (See Figure 7), 11 K I Ii '

.
. milar to the e ect 0 IC er
rrames In sen es Sl
.
the woman looks lip 1'1'0111 III I
d
over and over aga m, as
man e nte rs th e oor
.
If '
eco nds are 51,<'11111''\ 11111
d
In a coup eo sCleen s
I h
rthe repea ted g'S IIIl I' III ,1,,0
magazine, over an over aga,
. . At th e sa m e tllne, the r l yt m 0
ove r mll1utes.
h ' I movements o r au tom "-'I'1
, . These
. CXIJ(' IIIIII 'III .
10 rese mble t he mec a nl ca
ld '
. nd its iconic II gurl's , SlIill'II' 11111
I
I erability or 0 Cinema a
.
I
accenlual e t le vu n
. ' ' . Ihe lose Ihe cinem a's grolllld lo'l II I I'
re pe lition 10 tlt e pOInt orabsu,d ,tY":1
Id " 1:"rll, cr ll lO rl'. 11t\' ,III" ,11,1
.
II ' . the ir l)rOleCI'vC r,cllon3 wor s.
tlld ex as we

_,

rc asse rlliH.' PIl''''''IH II I

I'ra ,nl'" Ihal rlongal e caclt ,illlIlIl

lil,n slrip. IItL' ilidi vid " "ll r,, " '" III II ' . Iilll \s 01 KII I",lku . IIIIYI 1111
1:lilkl'r film s' 1l'l)I' tilioll :llI d val'l:lI\ClII . as III

I(

necessary limit but revolve around an abstract pattern. As Arnold combines

stretched time with the manipulation of human gesture , he combines
re ference to the strip of celluloid with the presence of the cinema machine,
the uncan ny of the inorganic and the automa ton.
Some years ago, I digitally re-edited a th irty second sequence of 'Two
Little Girls from Little Rock', the opening number of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(H oward Hawks [953) , in order to analyze the precis ion of Marilyn Monroe 's
dance movem ents and as a tribute to the perfection of he r performance.
In addition to the artificial, stylized persona , evocative or the bea utiful
automaton , her gestures are orchestrated around momen ts of pose. In this
particul ar fragment, played to camera , she pulls up ti,e stra p of her d ress in
a pe rformance of an almost sluttish disorder of dress th at is completely at
odds with the m echanical precis ion of this and each ges ture. Even though
Ihe gesture was so self-consciously produced , it has. for me, something
or Barth es' punctum, and I found myself returning over and over aga in
10 these few seconds or fi lm. In the re-edit, I repea ted the fragm ent three
limes, freezing the image at ti, e moments whe n Marilyn paused betwee n
movements. In addition to her own precise and controlled performance,
dance itself demands a control of the body that pushes its natura l humanity
III the limits also alternating between s tillness and movem ent. The developed
I.:l's lure unfolds until it find s a point of pose and then unfolds juSI as the
dl' layed cine ma find s such moments through repetition and return. The 30" 'LUnd sequence ends as Marilyn moved forward into close-u p, throwing her
I"'"d back and assu ming the pose and expressio n of the essen tial Mari lyn
I,ill -up photograph. This paused image seem s to be almos t exactly the sa m e
.IS lloe Andy Warhol ' Marilyns' that he made after her dea th , in hi s silk'" ,('(' ned homage to the death m ask. The imaginary superimposition orthe
W.,rltol image on to the trace of the living Marilyn has a sense of de ferred
" ,,.lIlin g, as though h er death was already prefigured in this pose. An acute
I II " scious ness of her ' then' , before her death, condenses with the image as
11". ,110 ma sk and the poignant presence of the index as the ' this was then'.
Till' le tishis tic spectator, driven by a desire to stop, to hold and to repeat
Il lI's(' iconic images especially as perfected in highly stylized cinema , can
unex pectedly, encounter the index. The tin1e of ti,e camera, its
" d"d,"cd time, comes to the surface, s hifting from the narrative ' now' to
Iii" ,, ' Th c tim e orthe ca m era brings with it an 'imaginary' of the filming
1111" II II' mind 's eye, th e orr-screen spa ce of the crew a nd the apparatus,
" 11,,,1 II,, fi cliona l world cha nges inl o Ihe pro- filmi c even t. As fi ctional
tlt .'\dlll,l y declines, as dis be li eri s no longe r s us pe nd ed, ' reality' takes ove r
III' H" ' 1I1' :.ollcc lin g Ihe ico nic prese nc(' ol'lltc nlOvil' 51,,1'. Due 10 Ihe sl"r's

tan entially grafted onto a fictional

iconic status , he or she can only bde. I g the time of the fiction, the image
fthe Index ISP aces
. I d

th
tw reaisters but also to me u e
persona. 1f t h e time 0
'0
t I between ese 0 ,,. h
of the star shilts no on Y
.
d
ther information that m Ig t
.
t d by the stud IO an any 0
.
t of this kind of fusion and confusIOn ,
iconography construc e
be circulating about hIS or her hfe. Ou .
d become attached to the star' s
d . then fascmatlOn an
. d
th most achieved perform ance,
goss ip and scan d aI enve
phy Behm even e
.
.
d f
.
. '
extra-dlegetlc IConog ra
.
.
d' etic presence mtru es rom
t d fla sh thIS extra- leg
,
sometimes in an unexpec e
: .
ted vulnerability to a star s
outside the scene and off screen glvmg an unexpec
on-screen performance .
b' d with the passing of time,
This kind of additional knowledge, com me lr dy occurred' that Barthes
he that h as a ea
n photographed just before
brings the 'shudder at the catastrop
.
L ' Payne the young rna
.' Th' '11 be and this has been; 1 observe
mentions in relatIOn to eWls
.
,
d t the same tIme:
IS WI
.
his executIon. I rea a
f h ' h d ath is the stake: II Watehmg James
with horror an anterior future 0 w teenagers in Rebel without a
Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Milleo, th
Knowing the deaths of all
dd th trlggers ano er one.
CaLise, that shu er en
h
already taken place, arouses the
. t ce of the uncanny. Ove rllll,1
three, that were to come and that
f
th t Freud CItes as an illS an
.
. ' d fr
the photographic m edlunl
irrational sense 0f ate a
ny that IS denve
om
.
. I
t
'IS this other
'Icross the indexICa uncan
,
d
. d d any) star sys em
rder and force outside th nt
itself in the Hollywoo (or 10 ee , .
d
' ned life sublect to an 0
,
' 1 sense of an over- eterml
' .
. as it does away from th
the ordinary. But this kind of and gossip, ultimately glV\'"
image, to the semi-reality ofbiograp image on the screen is
e
way to the diegetic space of the story. c s
ce in gesture and action,
.
r hve by peflorman ,
inextricably woven mto nar a
d to the fiction alone and tl,,'
I
. n the screen ue
back into the tem poralit y II
In the last resort, th e star IS 0
c
d performer merges
nll
v
. f
'sts with that of mo - 'lI\'
iconicity of peflormance an
.
f th soli rame coeXI
the story. Just as the orne 0 e.
.
fthe image coexists with Lill' I III'
.
f h
era's regIstratIOn 0
II
,'md the lime 0 t e camr '
raphy 0 f sta r 'IS .m delibly stal1111cd 0111 11 I "
of fiction , so the symbo IC ICon,og d
. d These differe nt kind s
, ha racter a n as \11 ex.
or her presence as a e
laces with each other.
.
1'1'ICI, th e star is Iralllllillo. 1
signification OSCIllate and change P
.
I.
. that scenes In w
It is perhaps for Lli S reaso n
d'
t' prcsence into thc dkW,.I. "
.
.' . f his or her extra- lege IC
I'
I'rol11 the lCOIllClty 0
.
ft n ll<ed Lh ese mOnlr lll M III
.
1-l't -hco k 'I"lite 0 e o '
parlicu lar Inlportance. I L .
I, .t . ea nncc in Rear Willi/mi!, (,I
IT
f'" 'l'lnce II'l he r
.Ipp ,
.
tl,c clcctri c li ghl S 0 111' hy 11111
dramalic e ll ce\. '01 lO s"
. . . nd on
I
Kelly poses for 11C e \l1lCr,1 .1 ,
'
. I . , ' h 'rsrll' iro llicall y II I JIIIIII
. " .' t- lin \ /H ' as s il l' 1!lIl OC \.I Cl,;S
.
I ,
crl'a ll."s her ow n I'lllSi
1' 1' I'ly lor til e ai IlJa' !lU' , 11111 I
sllilll'
lin
(II
I
IIlIla
I<UII
'1
"
I'II)li
Sh'warl , w 1\l l't S .
.

or

If'

I' .

..

in Vertigo, Kim Novak pauses for a moment, in profile, for James Stewart to
look closely at he r and integrate both of them into the compulsive world of
his obsession. Perhaps the most remarkable example is Mamie, when Tippi
Hedren's face has been kept from the camera until the mom ent when she
throws back her newly blonde, wet, hair and looks directly at the audience.
These introductory shots are like re-baptisms when a star's name and image,
always instantly recognizable to the audience, are replaced by another name
within the order of the fi ction . A kind of shifting process takes place. Roman
Jaco bson has pointed out that sh ifters, in language, combi ne a symbolic with
an indexical sign: a word is necessarily symbolic while an index has an
existential relation to the object it represents, 1f sh ifters in language are,
therefore, 'indexical symbols', the screen image of a star would be an
' indexical icon' but with hi s or her integration in to the fiction, under a new
name, yet anothe r 'symbolic' rlimension open s up. The 'naming' that
accompanies the sta r's first appearance on screen gives way to the fictiona l
baptism but the strength of star iconography often renders this process
partial and inco mplete. The three forms of the sign according to Pierce me rge
III the star system while continually shifting in register, uncertain and
II II resolved . The iconic representation merges with its symbolic iconogra phy
,lIld both s hift partially the sym bolic register of the fiction. However, as an
IlIdcxical sign , the star is undiffere ntiated from his or her surroundings, all
,II I' all in tegral part o[the photogra phic medium , its apparatus and its ghostly
Il,ltC of reality.
In hi s '946 essay 'The Intelligence ofa Mam ine', Jean Epste in points
01 111 Ihat the cinema's fusion of the static and the mobile, the discontinuous
,1I \lllhe continuous seems to fly in the face of natu re, 'a transformation as
1lIlI"z in g as the genera tion oflife from inanimate things' .1l Human fi gures
p,, 'S\' rvcd on film embody these oppositions more completely and poignantly
11,,111 :Illy other phenomenon of representation. The cinematic illusion fu ses
IWII Illcom patible states of being into on e, so that the mutual exclusivity of
1111'111111 inuous and the discontinuous, pointed out by Epstein, is literally
\lI '" ,,"ified in the human figure , an inorganic trace of life. To translate the
NIIII, '" illlage into moveme nt is to see the uncanny nature of the photograph
1I IIIIHIormed out of one emotional and aes thetic paradigm into another. The
llillllll ll y or the indexica l inscription of life, as in the photograph, merges with
llilllll II Iy or lllcchan ized human movement that belongs to tl,e long line of
\I pili ,IS ;lIld automata, Howeve r interwove n these phe nom ena may be, the
11111, . IS ,I rcminde r that al the hea rl o fth c mediu m, these celluloid images
\I 11111 " 'pl icas bUI arc an actllal, Iile ral inscripti on or th e figurc' s livin g
III1'VI'II " 'IIIS . Furthcrmorc. Ihe CiIl CII\;1 h:ts co nsla llll y, Ih ro ugholll il s hi slory,

12 je HI! P'>i( III

l ntlC IlgICIK

rllHtI MdChlnf'

l:. ,Jh . , II

r 'mo, P.HI<j

074 P ',-,)

exploited its ghostly qualities, its ability to realize irrational fears and beliefs
in the most rational and material form , along similar lines to Freud's
assertion that belief in the afterlife warded off fear of death. While Rossellini
in Journey to italy, for instance, acknowledged the long history of the popular,
semi-Christian, semi-animistic, uncanny, he also demonstrated that the
cinema's uncanny lay in its contradictory materialization oflife and death, the
organic and the inorganic. For Rossellini , the more realistic the image, the
more closely it rendered the reality it recorded , the more exactly it could catch
hold of the human mind 's bewilderment in the face of these contradictions.
It is when the struggle to reconcile and repress these contradictions fails and
uncertainty overwhelms the spectator that the cinema's punctum can be
realized. The contradiction is dramatized in the final sequence of Augusto
Geni na's Prix de Beaute (I930). While Louise Brooks watches, enraptured, as
her image performs in the screen test that should make her a star, her jealous
husband slips unnoticed into the back of the room and shoots her. As she
dies, her filmed image contin ues singing on the screen, in a layered, ironic,
condensation of movement and stasis, jjfe and death and the mechanicized
perfection of the screen image. Similarly, the cinema's great icons still
perform and re-perform their perfect gestures after death.
Raymond Bellom, in ''' ... rait'' signe d'utopie', makes an analysis, or
psychoanalysis, of Barthes' various comments on the cinema, through his
use of the conditional tense (in French marked by the suffix 'rait'). In
relation to the concept of 'The Third Meaning' , evolved from stills taken
from Ivan the Terrible, Bellom argues that Barthes is unable to find a place
for the cinema between reverie on its still images and writing about them.
And he goes on to point out that this utopian place, inaccessible to BaMes,
would ultimately be realised with the advent of new moving image technologies and 'the art of "new images"', which deeply affected spectatorsh ip.
For Bellour, one of the great pioneers of textual analysis, this interactive
Iransformation had always been a condition for the existence of film theory,
l ie draws atte ntion to what one might call the 'theoretical punctum' in
Barthes' observation s on the cinema. Towards the end of Camera Lu cida
l3arlhes describes how he was suddenly and unexpectedly affected by a S (' II"
in Fellini 's Casa.nova, When he watched Casa nova dance with a young
"ulomaton he found himself overwhelmed by an inten se emotion
by del"i ls of her figure, clothes, her painted but all the sa me innocenl 'IC I',
IlPr sliffbu l accessible body. He found him self begi nning to think abOll1
phol ogra ph y because Ih ese f< l'/iligS were also aroused by photog raphs Iltlll
he luved , Bellollr obse rvl's: 'TII(' ligllrc's incomplete, jerky mov mClll s w, '"
I" a(k I"rolll stal k I osilio ll s Illal it s body bl'GI Ill C Oll l' with 111(' IIl 0Vl' II I4' IIIIII

the film , on which it left a kind of wound.' IJ It is as th

h th
the mechanical fi ure su
d
oug
e movement of
have remained th;t of thh e other, the projector, which should
.
.
es prelaces IS reflections On the t
Casanova by saying that he saw the film on the day that he had In
at photograph s of his mother that had moved him so much B Ueen 00 ng

,of the automaton not only the punctum

bod f h en photograph of hiS mother as a little girl, but also with the
b 0 t e old woman, alive but close to death. He links the relation
e een mot er and Son to the cinema itself: ' It may be that the artificial
body IS always too close to the mother's body. ' 14
BelJour suggests that 'a kind of wound' opened up by th
t
lead t th fil ' .
e au omaton
bea:ti:UI d:U m s mechanrsm, to the 'inside' that, like the inside of the
b'
d
' needs to be d,sgul sed to maintain its credibility. The film
su lecte to repetttton and return when view d

a

the fiLm Fra ment and

From this p!rspective,
prefi
th h
.

'.

1O

ano er metaphor, this process 'unlocks'

%ercehlaationsland revelations.
'

Olca movements

And she also acts as a figure for 'the wavering and confUSio: ::::::nts.

that cAharacterize the interactive

.

no ogles.

s It penetrates the film this new wa of

the coherent whole of narrative 'wo:nding'

lite site
tl scJ r a d

figure of the automaton returns in a double sense, first as

abon anxIety, thIS time threatening the 'body' of the film

II;' a ffrthagmen ted, even feminized, aes thetic

e Casanova auto t
d' h
percep on 0
1Il'lIour's interpretation, the Freudian uncann ofth
rna ,on an Wit
wi llt the now ageing body offi lm .
y
e mother s body merges

Possessive, Pensive and Possessed

Victor Burgin

The cinematic heterotopia

Earl y in the history of cinema, And re Breton and Jacques Vache spent
afternoon s in Na ntes visiting one m ovie house after another: dropping in at
ra ndom on whatever fil m hap pened to be playing, stayin g until they had had
enough of it, then leaving for the next aleatory extract. Later in the history of
cinema, Raoul Rui z went to see films set in class ical antiquity with the sole
desi re of surprising an airc raft in the ancien t heavens, in the hope he might
catch ' the eternal DC6 crossing the sky during Ben Hur's fin al race,
Cleopatra's naval battle or the banquets of Quo Vadis" - and Roland Barthes
at the cinema fou nd him self most fascinated by 'the theate r itself. th e
darkness, the obscure mass of other bodies, the rays of ligh t, the entrance,
the exit" Such viewing customs customise industria lly produced pleasures.
Brea kin g into and breaking up th e fi lm, they upset th e set patte rn s th at pl ot
the esta blished moral, politica l and aesthetic orders of the entertain ment
form of the doxa! Duri ng the more recent history of cinema, less selfconsciously resistant practices have e merged in the new demotic space that
has opened between the motion picture palace a nd consumer video
tech nologies. Few people outside the fi lm industry have had the experience
of 'freezi ng' a fram e of acetate film , or of running a film in reverse - much
less of cuttin g into the film to alter the sequence of images. The ar rival of
the domestic video cassette recorder, and the distribution of industrially
produced film s on videota pe, put the material substrate of the narrative in to
the hands of the audience. The order of narrative could now be routinely
countermanded. For exam ple, control of the film by means of a VCR
introduced such symptomatic freedoms as the repetition of a favourite
seq uence, or fixation upon an obsessional image.' The subsequent arrival
of di gital video ed iti ng on 'entry level' person al computers exponentially
"xpanded the range of possibilities for dismantling and reconfi gu ring the
' " lCe inviolable objects offered by na rrative cinem a. Moreover, even the
IIl ost routine and non- resistant practice of 'zapping' through film s shown
11 11 telev ision now offers the sede ntary equivale nt of Breton's a nd Vache's
.lIl1hllbtory derive. Their once ava nt -garde invention has, in Viktor

1 RUIZ, POt'llfflll
Clllbno, ParIS, DI\
VOir, 1995. PS8

2 Roland BMlhc'>, In

,>ortanl du Cln'm.l'

Commumcolrom, no .. \.
PariS. Seuil. 1975. II 1111, I
3 The term BarlhC",

appropna tes from Ar ... loll,.

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Shklovsky's expression, 'completed its journey from poetry to prose'. The

decomposition of fiction films, once subversive, is now normal.
Films are today dismantled and dislocated even without inte rvention by
the spectator. The experience of a film was once locah sed in space and time,
in the finite unreeling of a narrative in a particular thea tre on a particular
day. But wi th time a film beca me no longer simply something to be 'visited'
in the way on e might attend a li ve theatrical performance or visit a painting
in a museum . Today, as I wrote in a previous book:
... a :film' may be encountered through posters, 'blurbs', and other
advertisements, such as trailers and television clips; it may be encountered
through newspaper reviews, referen ce work synopses and theoretical articles
(with their :filmstrip' assemblages of still images ); through production
photographs, frame enlargements, memorabilia, and so on. Collecting such
metonymic fragments in memory, we may come to feel familiar with a film we
have /'tOt actually seen. Clearly this jilm' - a heterogeneous psychical object,
constructed from image scraps scattered in space and ti me - is a very different
object from that encountered in the context of jilm studies"
The 'class ic' narrative film became the sole and unique object of film
studies only through the eli sion of the negative of the film, the space beyond
the frame - not the 'off screen space' eloquently theorised in the past, but
a space formed from all the many places of transition between cinema and
other images in and of everyday life. Michel Foucault uses the term
'heterotopia' to designate places where 'several sites that are in themselves
incompatible' are juxtaposed." The term 'heterotopia' comes via anatom ica l
medicine &om the Greek heteros and tapas, 'other' and 'place'. I am remind '0
of the expression einer anderer Lokalitat by which Freud referred to the
unconscious. Although Foucault explicitly appl ies the concept of 'hetero toplll'
only to real external spaces, he nevertheless arrives at his discussion of
heterotopias via a reference to utopias - places with no physical substan
other than that of representations: material signifiers, psychical rea lity,
fantasy. What we may call the 'cinematic heterotopia' is constituted
the va riously virtual spaces in which we encounter displaced pieces of mnl"
the Inte rnet, the media , and so on, but also the psychical space of a
spectating subject that Baudelaire first identified as 'a kaleidoscope equiPJll,tI
wilh consciousness' .
Roland Barthes describes how one eve ning, ' half aslee p on a ballqlll'lI l' III
a bar', he tried 10 enum erale all th c languages in his fi eld of hearing:
co nve rsa lions, Ihe noiSl's o f chairs. of gla sses , an ent ire ste reo ph ony of wlill II
" IIlarkclpla " ill 't;l lI gil'rs ... is 1111 ' sil c'. li e co nlinll cs:

And within me too that spoke ... and th'IS speech

very

ll '

::e

bl
;;s::
yse was a publICplace, a souk; the words passed through m

maljrketPlace, this spacing oflittle that

and no sentence form ed, as if that

Eyes half closed, Ba rthes sees an homolo b
h
the cacophony of the
bar and hi s in voluntary thoughts wh
When Stanley Kubrick's film 'XC.;re e n s t at no 'sentence' forms.
Sh
b l ' e ut (19 99) was released on e
reviewer compared it u n f;
novella Dream Story' H dYto Its Source in Arthur Schnitzler's
. e Ouserve that Sch 't I '
.
series of di sconnected incidents which th nr .' er s narratIve consists of a
. e wnter nevertheless unrfies Into
a mea ningful whole through th
e conhnuous presence of th
'
The reviewer complained that Kubrick's r It"
e narrator s Voice.
the a bsence of this device and tI t
ete Ing of the story suffe rs from
disturbin I d . .
'
la as a resu lt the na rrative remains
.
g Y ISJoInted . The 'disjointedn ess' that th
.
C

Kubnck's film . h b
e revIewer lOund In
as
own s[eheenm a strubetural [refl ection withi n the film of its
,
'se-en-a yme 0 Its e t fl
'
traile r (or Eyes Wide Sh ut pi d' .
XIS en la settIng. A short
film was released. It : CInemas (or several weeks before the
a mirror whi le a pul sing rock rlrrnclpa/ actors e mbraCi ng in fron t of
g
fro m thi s sa me sequence appea red th son p aysho n the sound track. A still
.
roug h out l e CIty (Pafls
"
h'
Instance) on posters advertising the film. For sev I
k
In t IS

lYd

poster to trailer to film th ere

e wa s Iscovered em bedded in it. From

was a progressIve unfoldin . fJ
.
sequence, to concatenation of se ue nces _ .
g. rom unage, to
presentation of commercl'al . q
as If the pa tte rn of Industrial
CInema were taki ng
th '
.
structures: &om the most cursori l cond
on e unpnnt of psychical
to the most articulated consc'

ensed of unconsCIou s representations
IOUS lorms as If th '
.
f
in the most literal sense was conli
.'
e nOI se 0 the marketplace'
l3arthes' metaphor 0
d
ormIng to the psychological sense of
. pene onto Its outSide b tl
bl" .
spills its contents into the st
f
d Y Ie pu IClty sys tem the film
detritus of everyday 0 ay H e, where they join other
where no sentence forms.
ma syntagms, ends of formulae ') and
n,e sequence.image

Barth es on the banquette com pares his inner'

,.
.
.
IIl1mediately exte rnal surroundin s Phen
souk. WIth the nOIse of hIS
lorm a single co nti n uum whe g.
. omenologlca lly, 'Inner' a nd 'outer'
re perce ptIons, memories and fanta sies

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combine. Jea n Laplanche speaks of m emory and fantasy as a 'time of the

human subject' that th e individual 'secretes' independently of historical time
- the ci nematic heterotopia is also heterochronic, moreover its most atomic
elements are indeterm inate with respect to motion. For exam ple, here is
what I believe is m y ea rliest m emory of a film:
A dark night, someone is walking down a narrow stream. I see only fee t
splashing through water, and broker< reflections of light from somewhere
ahead, where something mysterious and dreadful waits.
The telling of the memory, of course, betrays it. Both in the sen se of there
being something private about the memory that demands it remain untold
(secreted) , and in the sense that to teU it is to misrepresent, to transform, to
diminish it. Inevitably, as in the tell ing ofa dream , it places items from a
synchronou s fi eld into the diachrony of narrative. What remains most tru e
in my account is what is most abstract: the description of a sequence of such
brev ity tbat I might almost be describin g a still image. Although this
'sequence-image' is in itself shar ply particular, it is in all other respects vague:
uniting 'someone', 'somewhere' and 'somethin g', without s pecifying who,
where and what. There is nothin g before, nothing after, and although the
action gestu res out of frame, 'somewbere ahead ', it is nevertheless selfsufficient. I ca n recall nothi ng else of this film - no othe r sequen ce, no plot,
no names of characters or actors, and no title. How can I be sure the memory
is fro m a film ? I just know that it is. Besides, the image is in black and white.
The m emory I have just described is of a differen t kind from my memory
of the ligure of Death 'seen' by the small boy in Ingmar Bergman's fi lm
Fanny and Alexander, or - from the same fi lm - my memory image of the
boy's grandmother sea ted in a chair by a window. These examples were what
fi rst came to mind wben I 'looked' in m emory for a film I saw recently. They
are transient and provisional images, no doubt unconsciously selected for
their association wi th thoughts already in m otion (childhood, the mother,
death) , but no more or less suitable for this purpose than other memories
I might have recovered, and destined to be forgotten once used. The 'night
and strea m' memory is of a different kind. It belongs to a small permanent
personal archive of images from films I believe I saw in early childhood, and
which are distingu ished by having a particular affect associated with them in this present exam ple, a kind of apprehe nsion associated with the sense
of ,so meth ing mysterious and dreadful' - and by the fact that they ap pea r
unconn ecled to other memories. If I search furth er in my me mories of
dli ldhood I ca n brin g 10 mind olh e r types of im oges from film s. What I
bl' lievc 10 be Ih e "rliesl of lh esl' an ' Illainl y ge lll'ricall y inle rcha ngea ble
picilires worl ill'" Ilri laili . TI I! 'Y lorlll " lihr,"'Yo f sl(' rl'otypes whi ch

or

represent what m ust have im ressed m

.
d e as a chl ld as the single most
important fact about the
to me as the reason for my me (not leas t beca use it was offered
" er s a sence) 1 M '
of enigmatic images and a j
lib
.. n a ltlon to a sma ll collection
Ii
.
,
arger raIY of lma
also retain other types of'
Ii
ges rom wartlme film s I
tmages rom vis' t t th
.,
. 1 S 0 e cmema 1Il later chi ldhood.
These are neither mysterious
events in m y personal histo n otrhgenenc: they tend to be associated with
.
ry. el er 1I1 drrect rea f
iii
thll1g tha t bappened shortly aft
.
c lOn to a m, or to som eeell1 g
I Can reca ll sequences from iii er sth h a fi lm. Later stilJ, from adulthOod,
.
ms at ave most i
d
c'
. mpresse me as exam ples
o f cmematic art, and from fi l
I. h I
m s seen lOr dlstractlo
SOon forget. The totality of all tl iii
n w ll c
expect I s hall
ms
contribute to the 'a lready re d lei d I have seen both deri ve from and
a , a rea y seen' ste ty. 1
.
reo plca ston es Ihat may
spo nta neously 'explain' an .
n
images of other kinds b : pos ter for a film I have not seen, Or
So far, tbe exam ples I have . y hancfe m the envrronment of the media.
gIven are 0 lmage
all d
and I have not spoken of th ' . I .
s rec e voluntarily,
.
elr Ie atlons to actua l pe' ['
Im ages derived from film s
I'k I
lcep lon s. But mental
a re as J e y to 0
.
h f<
association s, and are often provoked b
ccur III t e orm of involuntary
travelling by train through th F
h Yexternal events. For exa mple: I am
e renc co untrysid
.
c
.
London. Earlier, as I was wa itin [, h
.
e en loute from Pa n s to
a middle-aged couple had passegd dor t e htrarn to leave the Gare du Nord,

Own t e carnage rn who I I

..
Somet h mg
in th e wom.a n's lace
C
b roug I11 to m' d
lC 1 was slttlng.
.
The previous night seeki ng dl'st ' 1.'
C
U1 an lmage from a film.
,
Iac Ion I rom wO 'k I h d
.
.
I,
a swJtched on the
television. The channel I sel t d
.
ec e was passrn g .
to be broadcast in weeks to co . t. tI
rn cursory revIew some films
each. No doubt there was co me. a l e a few seconds of footage from
mm entary vOlx-o lTbut I h d I
young woman seen from beh ' d
'1J
a t le mute on. A
rn ,executes a perf< t d "
.
,
d
ec Ive mto a SWlmming
pool ; cut to the face of a midcl1
witnessed th is. I read woman who (the ed it tells me) ha s
who had passed down the ca g h danxlety III her expression. The woman
m age a an an'
I k
. XlOUS 00 . Now, as the train
slices through the Fre nch coun t 'd
flanked by trees on a green ;' ;:hmpse an arc of black tarmac
prompts the memory of a similar in car IS tracmg the curve. This
tile driver's seat of a ca r I had
d I
road, but now seen [rom
rente t le pre'
vacationing in a house with
.
.
VlOUS s ummer, when I was
a SWlmmlng pool My
'.
o[ road seen from the tr' . C 11
.
aSSOCIatIon to the glimpse
am IS 10 owed by
II '
who h ad passed me in th
..
. my reco ectlOn of the woman
II '
e cam age (as If the
the perception directly, without the rela o[ eCOon were provoked by
Images have different Sources l
Y e m Image). Although these
. .
m us t assume tha t th h
ongrn - a precipitating cause _ .
h'
ey ave a common
III somet lng unco
.
I
nsclOUS t lat has join ed

them. As 1 recollect these associations in order to describe them it seems

that they turn around the expression on the woman's face: 'something like
anxiety' , but what is 'like' anxiety. It seems that the persistence of the Images
.
is due to this en igma.
A train journey interrupted by a train of associations: a concatenatIOn
of images raises itself, as if in bas relief. above the instantly fading , then
fo rgotten , desu ltory thoughts and impressions passing through my mInd
as the train passes through the countryside. The 'concatenation' does not
take a linear form. It is more like a rapidly arpeggia ted musical chord ,
the indiv idual notes of wh ich , although sounded successively, vibrate
simultaneously. This is what led me to refer to my ea rliest mem ory of a
film as a 'sequence-image' rather than an 'image sequence'. The elements
that co nstitute the sequence-image, mainly perceptions and recollectIons,
emerge success ively but not teleologically. The order in which the; appear
is insignificant (as in a rebus) and they present a co nfiguratIOn - lexIcal,
sporadic' - that is more 'object' than narrative. What dIstInguIshes the
elements of such a configuration from their evanescent neIghbours IS that
they seem somehow more 'brilliant'." In a psychoanalytic perspective this
suggests that they have been attracted into the orbit ofunconscious
signifiers , and that it is from the displaced affect assoCIated WIth the latter
that the form er derive their intensity. Neve rtheless, for aU that unconscIOUS
fantasy may have a role in its production, the sequence-image as such is
neither daydrea m nor delusion. It is a fact - a transitory state of percepts of a
'present moment' seized in their association with past affects and meanIngs .
(I

I)

lilli/old

111),(,

Image, image sequence, sequence-image

The sequence-image is a very different object from that addressed by film
studies as the discipline aroused itself in the late 1960s and the ' 970s,
revitalised by its love affair with linguistics. Half as leep, Roland Barthes
hears hybrid mutterings that form no sentence. Barthes' account of hIs
reverie on the banquette appears in his book Le plaisir du texte, whICh was
published in 1973. Ten yea rs earlier he had been asked by the journal Cahiers
du Cinema whether lin guistics had anything to offer the study of film. He
replied that it did only if we chose 'a linguistics of the syntagm rather
a lingui stics of the sign'. In Barthes' view, a linguistically informed analysIs
of film could not be concerned with the filmic image as such , whIch he
co nsidered 10 be pure analogy, bUI only with the combination of images into
n'Irr"live sequences. As he ex pressed it: 'Ihe di stin ction between film and
phologr" ph y is nol simpl y" l11 all ('r ordCf\rec bill" r"di ca l opposition'. Such
a disl illclion belw('(, 11 i lll :!"," alld i,I' :QW :-it'(lIlt'lI({' il ;!S li s precursor In

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's differentiation, in 1766, between 'arts of space'

and 'arts of time'. Lessing's dichotomy underwrites the categorical separation
of the still and the moving image on the basis of a supposed absolute
difference between simultaneity and succession. Film studies and photography studies have developed separately largely on the basis of this assumed
opposition - even while, across the same period of time, there has been
increasing technological convergence between the supposedly distinct
phenomena of still and moving images, It accords with common sense to
ass ign the still image to photogra phy theory and the moving image to film
theory. But to equate movemen t with film and stasis with photography is to
confuse the representatio n with its ma terial support. A film may depict an
immobile ob ject even while the film strip itself is moving at 24 frames per
second; a photograph may depict a moving object even though the photograph
does not move,'" Writing in 197 1 the photographer and filmmaker Hollis
Frampton envisaged an 'infin ite film' that would consist of a spectrum of
possibilities extending from the stasis of an image resulting from a succession
of completely identical fram es, to the chaos of an image produced by a
succession of totally different frames." Cinema, 'the movies', inhabits only
part of thi s spectrum : that portion where movement - frame to frame
shot to shot, scene to scene - is intelligible, sentence-like, An interest 'in
movement for its own sake may be found in ea rly twentieth century avantgarde fi lm and photography, and in painting under the impact of film and
photography. The interes t is com paratively short-lived. It is not movement
as such that fa scinates most people but purposive movement, movement
with causes and consequences, What audiences find most interesting aboul
characters on the screen is not thei r movements (albeit these may have
their own, primarily erotic, interest) but their acts. Activity however is not
necessarily bound to movement. Peter Wollen illustrates this point with
reference to a book of photograph s by Andre Kertesz entitled On Reading,"
Wollen observes that although all the people in the photographs are
motionless they are nevertheless doing something - they are all reading.
Thus , he writes: 'We can see that activity is not at all the same thing

10 1", ". 111'1'(' 110,11,

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as movemen t." 3

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The disjunction of activity and movement was recognised early in the

history of painting. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a body
of doctrine was assembled in res ponse to the problem of how best to de pict a
narrative in a painting. With only a single image at his or her di sposa l. it was
agreed that the painter would do best to isolate the peripeteia - thai in stanl
in th e story when all hangs in the balance. It went without question Ih al th e
viewer already knew the story. The space in and between im ages is crossed

1'1,",/'II//,/ul

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II'" 1'1'-;1. P XI

with the always already known of stories. As Barthes writes, narrative is

everywhere 's imply there, like life itself.'" But our ready capacity to insert
image fragmen ts into the narratives to which they may be called is not due to
the mere fact that stories are everywhere. It is due to the fact that narratives,
like the languages in which they are composed, are articulated. In his book
Morphology of the Folktale, fi rst published in '928, Vladimir Propp reduces
the multiplicity of fairy tales he analyses to a finite number of basic 'functions'
which in combi nation make up the variously individual stories. In an essay
of 1969 Barthes argues that these functions may in turn be decomposed
into sma ller units: for example, 'it is because I can spontaneously subsume
various actions such as leaving, travelling, arriving ... under the general name
Journey, that the sequence assumes consistency.'" In hi s book of '970 , 5/2,
Barthes coins the expression 'proairetic sequence' for such series, taking the
term proairesis from Aristotle who uses it to name 'the human faculty of
deliberating in advance the resu lt of an action, of choosing... between the two
terms of an alternative the one which will be realized.'" The ' peripateian
moment' of academ ic history painting might consequently be considered
a 'freeze fram e' from a proairetic sequence, an image from an implied
narrative series. But the temporality of arrest in history painting is rarely
so straightforwa rd. For example, Norman Bryson observes that Poussin's
painting Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert juxtaposes within the same
image 'scenes of misery from the time before the manna was found, with
scenes '" from the time after its discovery' Y History painting routinely
exhibits thi s characteristic attribute of the sequence-image: the folding of
the diachronic into the synchronic.
Barthes' idea of proairetic codes allows us in principle to trace the lines
of latent narratives underlying manifest fragments - much as an archeologist
might envisage the form of an ancient dwelling, and a whole way of life
associated with it, from the indications of some pottery shards. But what
would it mean to see the fragmentary environment not (or not only) in
term s of an 'already read' determinate content, but in such a way that the
fragmentary nature of the experience is retained? In recollecting his reve ri e
on the banquette Barthes speaks of the 'spacing' of the elements that
penetrate from outside. The word he uses, echelonnement, may refer to eitli ' 1'
iI spatial or a temporal context, what i.s essentia l is the idea of discont inuit y,
of absences, of gaps. The te nde n y of narrative is to bridge gaps, to turn
disco ntinuities int o

continllum - much as 'secondary rev ision', in FrclId 'R

account of the dream -work, "",kes a drama out ofa picture- pu zzle. In lii s
reply lo ClIll ier,li dll Barilit'S dr(,w all intrall sige lll lin e bclwee ll 'iIlHlH\,1
'i lll agC' Sl'q lll ' lll l" nil 1111 ' h:lsis o j tlll 'if' SIISCt' ptihilil y to lingl lislic

:llId

Barthes' student Clu istian Metz most exhaustively demonstrated the extent
to which linguistic models may be applied in the theoretical description of
narrative films, and 1 believe that Barthes was simply wrong in asserting that
lingUistIcally denved modes of analysis cannot be applied to photographs.
But Barthes on the banquette remarked a field of experience in which a
kind of object may be discerned: 'lexical' but 'sporadic' and truly
outSide llIlgUistIcs'. As this object - the sequence-image - is neither image
nor Image sequence, it belongs neither to film nor photography theory as
currently defined. Indeed it may be doubted whether it can ever be fully a
theoretLcal oblect, so long as theory remains an affair of language. The early
Wittgenstein famou sly concluded, on the last page of the Tractatus: 'What we
cannot spea k about we must pass over in silence.' '' To which his coll eague
and, tra nslator Frank Ramsey added: 'What we can't say we can't say, and we
can t whistle It either.' The belief that much of what cannot be said may
nevertheless be whistled is foundational not onJy to music but to the visual
arts. In Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, at the edge of the ineffable,
Wlttgensteln writes:
It is as if one saw a screen with scaUered colour-patches, and said: the way
they are here, they are unintelligible; they only make sense when one completes
them Into a shape. - Whereas J want to say: H ere is the whole. (If you
complete it, you falsify it.) "

The same old story

How can that 'of which we cannot speak' speak to theories of ideology? In
thefilm studies reformation of the late 1960s and ea rly 1970S film was seen
as, In the words of Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, 'the product of the
Ideology of the economic system that produces and sells it'.'u Much of what
ca me after - first in film studies, then in photography stud ies _ responded
'" one way or another to this initial proposition. In the intervening years,
the politICS that framed the prem ise collapsed . In more recent years, a reengagement with film in terms of this premise and the questions deriving
I"o m It has emerged III the work of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegle r.
Sti egler reformulates the premise in the following terms:
Our epoch is characterised by a takeover [prise de contrale] of the symbolic
by mdustrtal technology, in which the aesthetic is at one and the same time
Ih e war. From this there results a misery
where condLtlOmng LS substLtuted for experience."

Sti egler notes that since the second half of the twent ie th century th ere
I" IS I, 'en an expo nentia l growth of indus tries _ film , telev ision , advert ising
,' lId poplll"r mus Ic - that produce sy nchroni sed collec tive stat es of

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consciousness through the agency of the temporaL object. The 'temporal

object' , a concept Stiegler takes from Husserl, is one that elapses in
synchrony with the consciousness that apprehends It. Hussed gIVes the .
example of a melody. For Stiegler, cinema is the paradIgm of the mdustnal
production of temporal objects, and of the consciousnesses that ens,ue.,
What most concerns Stiegler is the question of the productIOn of a we
(>lOUS) as a necessary sense of communali ty in relation to which an 'I' Ue)
may be produced and sustained. He argues that the communality produced
by the global audio-visual industries to which cinema belongs results not In
a 'we' (>lOUS) _ a collectivity of individual singularities - but in a 'one (0") ,
a homogeneous and impersonal mass who come to share an increasingly
uniform common memory. For example, the person who watches the same
television newS channel every day at the same time comes to share the same
'event past' (passe eve"eme>ttiel) as all the other individuals who keep the sa me
appointment with the same channel. In time, Stiegler argues: 'Your past, .
support of your singularity .. . becomes the same past conscIousness (pa sse
de eo"seie"ee) as the o"e (Oot) who watches.''' Those who watch the same
I 1" tl
Am" r.
television programmes at the same time become , in effect, the same person
I
IllIh I ,It
(La meme persOotne) - which is to say, according to Stiegler, /W o"e (perso"ne)2J
"I, I
III
Much the same point is made by Colin McCabe in defining 'normal
television': ' normal television is part of that regime of the image wh ich
,II ,I, ,tlll ,,111' rhI,1
erases our specific being to place us as part of a normal audience.'''
, ,1,1 dirt
Stiegler devotes a long chapter of his latest book to Alain Resnais' film
11,'111 Hoi \111'1'1"1
'I' 'l'IIIiI,,).qw I
0" COMait La Cha"sOlt (1997), which he sees as the mise-en-scene of 'the
'\'/" rull/" ,IIf' II,
unhappiness in being [maL-ttre] of our epoch'." His discussion turns on the
, "1 lI'll
fragment. The actors in this film lip-synch to popular songs as actors do
.1,,' .rI'l
in the films of Dennis Potter, to whom Resnais pays hom mage In hIS opening
"",dlll'/ JIll
titles. The characters in Resnais' film however produce only fragments of
tll,"'ln.bIHY.
songs. Resnais has commented: 'I'd say it's a realistic film, because tha,t's the
way it happens in our heads.' One of the film's two screenwnters, Agnes
I.',III"I'\'I/Jr
Jaoui, has said, ' ... we used [the fragments] like proverbs. "Every cloud has a
1'"'''''101"'
hl'I" 1I1II}"',jU' II,
silver lining" , "Don't worry, be happy" , readymade ideas , commonplaces that
'III
'I"!.! p.p
summarise a feeling and, at the same time, impoverish it.''' Asked how the
11111' \\IIIIII"".n.
songs had been chosen, the film's other screenwriter, Jean-Pierre Baeri,
II
1\1"II",j,IIIIII"1
replied: 'We looked for very fami liar songs with words that everyone can.
IIIII.UI' hllp ilp"'",11
.lr".lIlIn,,,rwl
identify with , les vraies re>tgai"es.' The sense of the French word "e"game IS
1111nll,'1I111rllll (1",,111
co
nveyed in the English version of Ihe title of Res nais' film: ' Sa me OLd Song'.
I\pll" \.1 phil!' II"
A rengaiM is so mething h;JCk npycd , Ihreadbear, fam iliar and inevitable - as
'II'
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,1.11 ..
whe n o ne says. tOlljor lrs 10 It If II II" rOlglirl e - ' II 'S a lways the sa m e old
slory' . Ber llard Sli",\kr II" ,'" lid " word in desc ribin g the "dve nl of the
I

IV'"

recorded as 'the most important musical event of the 20'" century'.

He wntes. The maJor mUSICal fact of the 20 '" century is that masses of ears
start listening to music - ceaslessly, often the sa me old songs (les
memes rertgames) , standardised, ... produced and reproduced in immense
quantities, .. : and which will often be interlaced for many hours a day with
global conSClOusnesses, producing a daily total of many milliards of hours
of consciousness thus "musicalised" :27 The re"gaines sung by the actors in
Same Old Song, songs their French audience are sure to know, conjure a
commonality that ultimately devolves upon no subject other than the subjectIn-law that IS the corporation that produced it. For Stiegler, this is a source of
the very unhappiness that the characters express in song:
'It is the already there of our unhappiness in being (Ie deja-Iii de notre
mal-etre) that certain of these songs express so welt, which are therefore
(these so"gs that we receive so passively) , i" eenai" respects, at the same
t,me the cause, the expression, and the possibility, if not of cure, at least
of a ppeasemen t. ,"
Agnes Jaoui defines quite precisely what she means when she refers to
a song as a rengai"e: 'U"e re"gai"e, it's something universal that touches the
collective unconscious and the culture of a generation, of a country, and at
the same time, for each one of us, it can evoke a moment, an event in our
Me: By 'collective unconscious ' I assume that Jaoui means that which I
prefer to call the ' popul ar preconscious': 'those ... contents which we may
reasonably suppose can be call ed to mind by the majority of individuals in
a given society at a particular moment of its history: that which is "common
knowledge": " Jaou i recognises the individual dimension of common
knowledge - the rertgai"e both touches the collective and at the same time
may evoke a personal experience. In another interview, Jaoui says that a
consensus about the choice of songs to be used in the film had been difficult
10 achieve, because what a particular song meant to one member of the
writing team was not what it meant to another. The perception that the
words of a song may have both public and private meanings is commonplace,
but nevertheless absent from Stiegler's description of the ideological
determinations of 'cinema' (the audio-visual in general). Although he makes
II bera l use of psychoanalytic terms in his essay on Resnais' film , he uses
lI e,ther the term preconscious nor unconscious, speaking only of
lO nSClousness, and 'consciousnesses' (a sort of 'collective conscious'). I
Iwl,eve Stiegler is both right andwrong in presenting cinema as a totalisin g
,1I,d potentially totalrtanan machine for the production of synchronised and
IIII1I ormconsciousnesses. It is no contradiction to say thi s if we di stin gui sh
II,,, polrtlca l from the ideological. Stiegler is right in em phasisin g th e cxtenl

27 Bernard !tw'/ripr, II, trr

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and London.

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to which industrially produced commodities have occupied not only real space
but psychical space. At least one aspect of this - the issue of copyright - is
clearly political. As Colin MacCabe has written: 'in a world in which we are
en tertained from cradle to grave whether we like it or not, the ability to
rework image and dialogue, light and sound, may be the key to both psychic
and political health.' 10 The sa me technology that has constructed the audiovisual machine ha s put the mean s of reconfiguri ng its products into the
hands of the audience. But when 'two thirds of global copyrights are in the
hands of six corporations'JI the tech nological capacity to rework one's
memories into the material symbolic form of individual testame nt and
testimony is severely constrained. We rarely own the memories we are sold.
Stiegler is wrong, however, to ignore the fact that whatever the audio-visual
machine produces is destined to be broken up by associative processes that
are only min imally co nscious." Conscious nesses may be synchronised in a
shared moment of viewing, but the film we saw is never the film I remember.
Resnais' musical fiction film is set in present day Paris, apart from a
brief opening sce ne, which takes place in '944 towards the end of the
German occupation of the city, and which represents an hi storical event.
General von Scholtitz receives by teleph one a direct order from Hitler to
destroy Paris. He sets down the receiver, and with a look of shocked gravity
on hi s portly face ventriloqu izes in perfect lip-synch the voice of Josephine
Baker singing 'J'ai deux amours'. The effect is simultaneously comic and
uncanny, clea rl y played for laughs and yet utterly chilling. Throughout the
light comedy that ensues the si nging voices that issue from the mouths of
Resna is' characters are indiffere nt to the gender, race and age of their host
bodies - in unequivoca l demonstration that we are witnessing the possession
of a subject by its object, here in the commodity form of the popular song.
I bega n by talking about the various ways in which a film may be broken
up, and its fragments dispersed thoughout the environment in which we
conduct out daily lives. Where subjective agency is involved in this, the
subject corresponds to what Laura Mulvey has called the possessive spectator. II
I then went on to describe some of the ways in which memory and fanta sy
may weave these fragments into more or less involuntary, insistent and
enigmatic reveries. The subject position here may be assimilated to what
Mulvey, after Raymond Bellour, has called the pensive spectator." Bernard
Stiegler's essay about Alain Resnais' film tells me that the fra gment that
haunts me may come to usurp the place of my form er singularity. To the
' possess ive s pectator' and the 'pens ive s pecta tor' we mus t now add th e
category of the possessed spec/lltor.

Notes on Contributors

Victor Burgin is Millard Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College,

University of London, and Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness
at the University of Californ ia, Santa Cruz. Burgin's books include such
theoretical works as The Remembered FiLm (2004), Tn/Different Spaces (1996),
The End of Art Theory (1986) , and Thinking Photography (1982), and such
monographs of his visual work as Relocating (Arnolfini, 2001), Victor Burgin
(Fundacio Antoni Tapies, 2001), Shadowed (Architectural Association, 2000),
Some Cities (Reaktion, 1996) and Between (!CA , 1986).
David Cam pan y is an artist, writer and Reader in Photography at the
University of Westminster. His current work includes a photographic
collaboration with Polly Braden; a book, Photography and FiLm, to be
published by Reaktion in 2007; and a treatise on the lens, the shutter and
the light sens itive surface. He has published essays on conceptual art,
reproduction, industrial photography, film stills, amateurism and painting.
He is the author of Art and Photography (Phaidon Press, 2003).
Mary Ann Doane is Professor of Modem Culture and Media at Brown
University, USA. She is the author of The Emergence of Cinematic Time:
Modernity, Contingency, the Archive (2002) , Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film
Theory, Psychoanalysis (r991), and The Desire to Desire: The Woman's FiLm of
the '940S (1987) . In addition, she has published a wide range of articles on
feminist film theory, sound in the cinema, psychoanalytic theory, television,
and sexual and racial difference in film.
Jonathan Friday is the author of The Aesthetics of Photography (2002) and has
written on various philosophical aspects of photography for a numbe r of
academic periodical s including the British journal of Aesthetics and the jOtlrlwl
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He was previou sly Lecture r in Phi losophy al
the University of Aberdee n bu t now heads the History and Phi losophy of Arl
departmen l at the U n ive rsily of Ke nt.

David Green is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art at the
University of Brighton. He is the editor and contributor to History Painting
Reassessed (Manchester University Press, 2000) and Where is the Photograph?
(Photoworks/ Photoforum, 2003). He has written widely on various aspects
of photography and contemporary art including most recently essays for
the exhibition catalogues of David Claerbout (Lenbachhaus Munich, 2004),
Visible Time: The Work of David Claerbout (Photoworks , 2004) and Laurent
Montaran (Centre d'art contemporain de-Noi sy-le-Sec, Paris, 2005).
Yve Lomax is a visual artist and writer who lives in London . She is author of
Writing the Image; An Adventure with Art and Theory (I.B .Tauris, London and
New York, 2000) and Sounding the Event: Escapades in dialogue artd matters
of art, nature and time (I.B.Tauris, London and New York, 2005). She is
currently the Research Tutor for Photography and Fine Art at the Royal
College of Art.
Joanna Lowry is Reader in Visual Theory and Media Arts at the University
College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham , Maidstone
and Rochester. She has written widely on contemporary photographic and
moving image practices. Selected essays include writing on Douglas Gordon
in Performing the Body, Performirtg the Text (1999) , Jeff Wall in Whatever
Happened to History Painting (2000) , Ori Gersht in Afterglow (2002),
David Claerbout in Visible Time: The work of David Claerbout (2004)
and Conceptual Art and photography in Where is the Photograph ? (2003).
Kaja Silverman is professor of Rhetoric and Film at the University of
California. Berkeley, USA. Her primary object of study is the field of vision.
which she approaches from a psychoanalytic and phenomenological point
of view. Among the monographs she has published are World Spectators
(2000) and The Threshold of the Visible World (1996). Although her earlier
work focu sed upon onema, her recent research has extended into the areas
of photography and time based-art and she has written a number of majo r
essays on the work of the artists James Coleman, Jeff Wall, Alan Seku la,
a nd Eija-Li isa Ahtila.
John Steza ker is Senior Tutor in Critica l a nd Hi storical Studies at the Roya l
College of Art. He is an ,artisl who lives and works in London. His work h;' N
recently b en scc n al Ih e Munich KunSl'vere in and The App roach Ga ll ery,
LOlldon . In January 2006. he hl"ld " onc-pe rso n s how in ' Whil e Columlls',
Ncw York :lnd :ll lhl" s:IInl" Iill,,' sll()wl'd work in Ihe Tatc Triennia l.

Garrett Stewart is James O. Freedman Professor of Letters at the University

of Iowa, USA. [n addition to h is work in the field of literature he has
published widely on various aspects of cinema and other visual media. He
is the author of Between Film and Screen: Modernism's Photo Synthesis (1999)
and of The Look of Reading: Book, Painting, Text to be published by the
University of Chicago Press in 2006.
Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College,
London . She IS the author of Visual and Other Pleasures (19 8 9), Citizen Kane
(199 2) and Fetishism and Curiosity (1996). [n addition to her numerous
writings on the cinema and film theory, she has also co-directed six fil ms
with Peter Wollen and her last film, co-directed with Mark Lewis was
Disgraced Monuments (1994). Her latest book entitled Death 24 x 'a second:
Stillness and the Moving Image was published by Reaktion Books in 200 5.

List of IUustrations

Figure 7
Still fram e from Martin Arnold 's pien' I""d, r ,
1989. Reproduced by permission o r III<' :III IHI.
Figure 8
Hugh W. Diamond, Still Life, Co" odi oll '" 111 1,
1860s. Courtesy ofNMPFT/ Royal "',oI O'l,nl'h
Society/ Science & Society Pi clu re I.ilm ll y

Figure I
Hiroshi Sugimoto Metropolitan, Los Angeles, 1993Courtesy the artist and Gargosian Gallery.
Figure 2
Dag Alveng, The Photographer Shoots Himself,
1981. Reproduced by permission of The
Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the artist.
Figure 3
Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait ojJohn Herschel,
1867. Carbon print, 30.3 x 2J.I cm. Reproduced
by permiss ion of Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco. Mrs. Milton S.Latham Fund.
Figure 4
Aaron Siskind, Terrors and Pleasures oj Levitation,
' 96 1. Gelatin silver print. 11.75 XII.75 cm .
Re produced by permission of San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Virginia Hassel
B" lI inger in Memory of Paul Hassel.
Aaron Siskind Foundation.

Figure 9
Henri Cartier Bresson, Gare So illl
1932. Courtesy of Magnum Ph otos,

I'm il

Figure 10
Anonymous portrait of a ma ll , l)al1'IC"'I'(lIYPl '
c.I845. Collection of th e auth or.
Figure II
Hill and Adamso n, Mrs Eli zlIbl'lh j n/" ",," ,
Newhaven, c.I846.
Figures 12+13
Fiona Tann, Countenance, Vlu"11 P' 01 '( I ,
190 X142 cm. Cou rtesy th e "rli sl 0,1(.1 Fillii ,' 1,,1
Gallery, London .
Figure 14
Fiona Tann , Countmall ce, 2002 . Vid eo I''' >it'l l 1I
each sccreen 190 x '42 cm . '" sloll al'()! , V'I 'W,
Courtesy the artist and Frith ' IrCl" ,, "'I"Y,
London.

Figure 5
i\ 1I0nymous portrait of a woman.

f)ague rreotype c.J850

,:iIlIlfC 6
1'ill1I slill , Queen Christ.ina ,
I(olll)('n Mamou lian, ' 933,

Figures 15-18
James Colema n, Backgro'.llId , ' 99 " 94,
Courtesy th e artist.
Figure 19
Fi 'm still, The Wi,it" Sli eik/, , !"edc'rico !,,'lI illi,

'9

2.

Figure 20
Film still , Pickpocket, Robert Bresson, '959.
Figure 21
Jeff Wall, Volunteer, I996 . Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 22
Jeff Wall, Outburst, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.
Figure 23
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still 10, 1978.
Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York.
Figure 24
Gisele Freund, Walter Benjamin, c. 1939, Gisele
Freund/The John Hill elson Agency. As
. reproduced on the cover of Benjamin's
Illuminations, Fontana Press, 1992.
Figure 25
John Stezaker, Blind, '979 .
Courtesy the artist and Approach Gallery, London .
Figure 26
John Stezake1, The Trial, 1980.
Courtesy the artist and Approach Gallery, London.
Figure 27
Film still, Peifect Understanding, Cyril Gardner, 1933.
Figure 28
Theodor Van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622. Oil on
canvas, 101.6 x 107.6 em. Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston. M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund 50.2721.
Photograph 2005 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Figure 29
Film still, Kiss, Andy Warhol , 1964. 2005
The Andy Warhol Museurn , PA , a
museum ofC.l rnegie Institllt e. All ri ght s reserVl'd .

Figu re 30-31
Film stills, The Double Lifo of Veronique, Krzystnl
Kieslowski, '991.
Figures 32-37
Film stills, The Red Squirrel, Julio Mendern ,

Figures 38-40
Film stills, Lovers of the Arctic Circle, Julio Mcdl'lIl ,
1999
Figures 41-42
Film stills, Le Temps RetrouIii, Raoul Ruiz I\lN '
Figure 43
Film still, The Sixth Sense,
M. Night Shyamalan, '999.
Figures 44-5
Film stills, The Others,
Alejandro Almenabar, 200 1.
Figure 46
Film still , A.I., Artificial IntelligerI ce,
Steven Spielberg, 2001.
Figure 47
Film still , Vanilla Sky, Cam eron Crowe, 200 1.
Figures 48-5 1
Fi lm stills, One-[-[oltl" Phot.o,
Mark Romane k, 2002.
Figures 52-53
FiJm stills, Ele,.",,1 SlmsiIilli' of IIII: Spolli'SS Millil,
Michel Gondry, 2004.