Christian Metz noted that film and photography have a
technical similarity but have different relations to time, framing and
objecthood. For Metz, the photograph belongs to the past, while
film unfolds in the present as we watch. I disagree with this notion, because not all photos capture the past. For example, if you take a picture of a object every year, and that object never changes then that object isn't part of the past, and is actually part of the foreseeable future.
With film, we watch it in the dark and we watch someone
else’s life unfold. For the most part, is used for entertainment. Some may say
that films are harder to access than photography, however I dispute this claim
as illegal streaming sites now exist and we can make our own films through our
phones. Moreover, photos are also used
for entertainment because people enjoy looking back at them, and just as film
can cause emotions such as fear and excitement, photos can cause nostalgia.
This lecture also looked into whether photography can make
time tangible. Bill Morrisons work, for example, can show time as being
tangible as it shows lots of images of a day out in a fairground. Sam
Taylor Wood, in my opinion, also shows time as tangible as her work shows the
process of food decaying. I found her
pieces quite unnerving because although it seemed like it took a long time for
the food to start decomposing, once it began, the process began to quicken and
we saw how easily life and death intertwine.
I think Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photos also make time tangible as
the cameras shutter was open throughout the whole of whatever film was being
shown in each image. In the photos we can see the beauty of the American
cinemas (called theatres) which is unusual as normally when you watch a movie
you watch it in the dark and don’t appreciate the surroundings. Also, it shows
how time passes through history as cinemas used to be the only form of technological
entertainment, whilst nowadays, we have TVs and other forms of entertainment.
Etienne-Jules Marey tried to capture movement, except he did
it on one photographic sheet. It looks like lots of translucent layers on top
of each other.
Idris Khan records time in a different way. There isn’t much
portrayal of time in his actual photographs, but it is more the extent of time
Khan had spent photographing subjects/objects. He’s collapsing the time the
viewer takes viewing the original photos. For example, the original photos of
the Becher water towers take a while to look at, however Khan puts them all on
one image.
In ’24 Hour Pyscho’, Douglas Gordon slowed down the frames
of the movie ‘Pyscho’. It makes it less dramatic however now we can study each
scene in more detail that causes new meanings to come apparent.
Gillian Wearing made an hour long still portrait of a group,
and by the end of it people's poses started wearing down. This is similar to the
Victorian era where it took an hour to make photos of people, which is why the
subjects often look bad-tempered.
Links to Advertising:
-The concept that both photos and film can cause nostalgia
links to advertising as there are adverts which use film to make an emotion
campaign, for example this iPhone6 campaign. What is interesting about this
particular advert, is that both the people in the advert, and the audience
watching the advert, feel the same emotions. Moreover, the subjects are
watching what the ‘outside’ audience watch, and this feeling can seem quite
surreal.
-The link between advertising and time generally is an
interesting concept, even when we think about ads and specific time-slots. It’s
interesting to see how much of an impact time slots make to the reception of
ads. Although twenty years ago the time the advert was shown would have been
vital, e.g. if you wanted a specific audience to see the advert, we can
argue that nowadays time-slots are less important as we have 24/7 access to
adverts on YouTube and other streaming sites.
-Advertising and time is also intriguing because as time passes, society changes and therefore advertising also changes. What was acceptable fifty years ago may not be acceptable today. For example, a hundred years ago people may have turned a blind eye to sexist adverts, or just not have considered them sexist at all, whilst today sexist adverts receive more of a backlash.
-Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photos also link to advertising, as just as we can take in the beautiful cinematic surroundings, which normally we don't when we watch a movie, we can also take in the surroundings when we see ambient advertisements. Unlike TV advertisements, where you take in what the screen shows you, ambient ads require you to take notice of what surrounds the ads, as you interact with the advert.
-Douglas Gordon's '24 Hour Pyscho' also links to advertising because just as the slowed down version gives new meanings to the scenes, when we study advertising in more detail different meanings also become apparent. For example, when we analyse an advert, we can see traces of myth, or surrealism, which we wouldn't have noticed with just a glance/on face value. For example, the Skittles 'Touch' advert seems like a fun, unusual, memorable advert for skittles, but when you study it, you can see how mythology (King Midas and his Golden Touch) has actually influenced it.
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