Cities and Film
- Looking at cities being featured in photography and film
lecture looks at
- The city in modernism
- The possibility of an urban sociology
- The city as a public private
Georg Simmel (1858 - 1918)
Dresden Exhibition 1903
surealists influenced by Freuds
Urban sociology
Lewis Hine
- The resistance of individual to being levelled swallowed up in the social technological mechanism
- His relationship between the body and the city, there being both a literal danger and a mental one.
Architect Louis Sullivan
- coined phrase 'form ever follows function'
- creator of moder skyscraper
- guaranty building
- organic derovation inspired by arts and crafts movement
- follows idea of form follows function in his building designs
Carson Pririe Scott store in Chicago - 1904
- Skyscrapers represent the idea of upwardly mobile city of business.
- Fire cleared city in 1857 to make room for new skyscraper development.
Manhatta - Paul Strand and charles Scheeler
Scheeler is an artist/ photographer
-commisioned to photograph ford motor company
-photos represent industrial site in an abstract way
- arrangement of photos influenced by abstract art at the time.
Fordism : Mechanised labour relations
How facotry environment effects the people that work there.
- The body becomes almost part of the machine on the production line.
- Repetitive motions link the body to machines.
- improves productivity.
Charlie Chaplin - 'Modern times' (1936)
- Ctruggles being part of machine
- Causing havock
- He is making a comment on this aspect of modernity, looking in a critical point of view of the body being swalled by machine, very strong political message.
Stock market crash 1929
- Factories close and unemployment goes up
- leads to ' the great depression'
Man with a Movie Camera - film
Flaneur - Comes from french term meaning 'Strollers
Charles Baudelaire
- The idea that art should capture the personality of the city
Walter Benjamin
-Adopts idea of the urban observer as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle as seen in writings.
Susan Sontag
- writes about Photographers
- abouthow they are the armed version of the solitary worker
- steals individual images
connoisseur of empathy
- the Flaneur finds the world 'Picturesque'
Flaneuse - female version of Flaneur
- the experience of the woman in the city
- the figure of the flanure is male as women did not have the power
- Arguing to bring private experience onto the street
Susan Buck-Morss
- only figure of a woman on the street would be a prostitute / bag lady
Arbus/ Hopper
- Shows woman lonliness, giving idea of vaster space.
- Due from positioning on left hand side and the darkness around her it creates a sense of dred.
Sophie Calle Suite Venitienne
- Photographs tht map the smae man she is folling around the city
- turns into a visual romance story
- followed certain individuals around the city and takes photos of them as they travel the city.
- She hires a detective to follow her round the city, so he will be taking photographs of her while she does the same.
Venice
- How the layout of the city invites a certain relationship in film and photography.
- The labrynth type streets makes it easier to re find people you have lost.
- Dont look Now (1973)
Cindy Sherman Untitles Film Stills.
- Still shots
- Implied that there should be narration and context.
- lonesome figure of the woman.
- Photo of woman stood at base of twin towers
- taking a well known location but portraiting them in a way that they could look like they had been taken anywhere.
Here is Newyork book/ exhibition
- a group of photography from different people who had experienced the day of 9/11
- A democracy of photography
Weegee (Arthur Felig)
-Press photographer in New York city
- Always turned up at murders or accidents, that is how he got his name.
- He arrived on scene minutes after crime was commited.
This is because he was the only photographer who had short wave radio
- His photos were always chosen for news prints
- his photos developed into a book called ' Naked city'
- Later made into a film.
- L.A.Noire was the game that was developed from this
-First video game to be shown at the Tribecca film festival.
Cities of the Future/ past - Fritz Lang Metropolis
-Mixed images of futuristic and pst culture.
-Ridley Scott Blade Runner
Lorca di Corcia Heads (2001) NY
-Photos taken by trip wire on city streets that shoots when members of public walk infont of camera, they do not know they are being photographed so the images produced are natural and innocent.
- Law suit brought against him.
- it was said it was against peoples rights and religion to take their photo's and use them without their permission
- Court case was thrown out, by using a loophole and the fact the images were not being used for advertisement, then Corcia has the right to take these images even they were to be sold and profited from.
Walker Evans Many are called (1938)
Postmodern City
Joel Meyerowitz
- Views city and it's bombardment of information
- uses colour to throw information at you
- there is no specific area of interest
- We arn't sure what it is that we are being shown.
- Replicates the feeling and the confusion of pyhsically being in a city and the feeling we get.
- Focus is the center of the image with everyone staring at same aspect of the image.
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