"Cities and Film"
Helen Clarke
"Here is New York" Photographic Collection about 9/11
- Professional and Non-Professional Contributions
- Life Imitating Art or Art Imitating Life?
Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
- German Sociologist
- 'Metropolis and Mental Life' Essay was part of the Dresden Exhibition Trade Fair 91903) where
Simmel discusses the effect of the city on the Individual
- Investigation into how the environment will effect the individual
"The resistance of the individual to be levelled, swallowed up in the social- technological mechanism"
- Georg Simmel (1903) 'Metropolis and Mental Life' Essay
Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)
- Architect, creator of the Modern Skyscraper
- Influential Architect and Critical
- Coined the phrase 'Form Follows Function' which summed up the Modernist Revolution
"Guaranty Building" Design by Sullivan
- Decoration influenced by Arts and Crafts Movement
- Separated into 4 zones for functionality
- Organised and Structured design reflects his intention
"Carson Pririe Scott Store" Chicago (1904)
- Upwards mobile city of business opportunity- Rise of the power of the American Dream
"Manhatta" (1921) film by Paul Strand
- Celebrating the City Skyline
- Modernist interest in the City being a Commerical Force
- The workforce and the scale of man power needed to run the Industrial City
- Intermingling of People and Transport- Getting from A to B
"Ford Moror Company's plant at River Rouge" (1927) by Charles Scheeler
- Celebration of Machinary
"Americanism and Fordism" (1934) by Antonio Gramsci
- How the production is an illustration of people and the city
- Repetitive, Mechanical Movements
- People working to earn what they are making
"Spew out standardised, low-cost goods and affords its workers decent enough wages to buy them"
- De Grazia (2005)
"Modern Times" (1936) by Charlie Chaplin
- A critique on Fordism
- A triumph of Art over Industry
- MI5 followed Chaplin after the film's release believing him to be a Communist
Stock Market Crash (1929)
- Factories close and unemployment goes up drastically
- Leads to the 'Great Depression'
- Questioning the American Dream
"Man wit the Movie Camera" (1925)
- Recording the City
- Experimental approach to film- presentation of how everything is a machine
- Individual shots have a photographic approach- effect of city on people
'Flaneur':
- Term comes form the French masculine word for 'Stroller'
- Bourgeois literary figure- walks around the city taking it in
- Experiences the city from a removed point of few- observer
- Art should capture this
- Simultaneously, apart and part of the crowd
"A person who walks the City in order to experience it"
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin "Arcades Project" Essay (1927-40)
- Catagorising and Organising aspects of City Life
- Examination of Parisian Life through Unfinished Book
- Adopts the concept of the Urban explorer as an analytical tool towards the City
Photographer as Flaneur:
"The Voyeuristic Stroller who deconstructs the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes"
- Susan Sontag on Photography Essay
"Shinjuku District of Tokyo" (1980) by Daido Moriyama
- Repeat of grainy Black and White motif of the City
- Stumbling from one place to another
- Showing the darker side of the city
- Americanisation of Tokyo
Flaneuse:
- Janet Wolff- There should be a female investigation into the City
- Susan Bach- Morrs- The only female figure on the street can be a bag lady or a prostitute
- The strangeness of a lone woman in the City
"Suite Venitienne" (1980) by Sophie Calle
- Documenting Black and White Photography with a diary-style entry to accompany it
- People not knowing that they are being photographed
- Following someone to Venice- city is a labyrinth of streets and alleyways. A maze you can get lost
in but find your way back again
"The Detective" (1980) by Sophie Calle
- Private Detective follows her and she records it- Doubling
- Photographic evidence of her existence- both of their photos and notes are displayed together
"Untitled Film Stills" (1977-80) by Cindy Sherman
- Film Noir style- The city is Overbearing
- Recall an unidentified location
Weegee- Reporting of emergencies in the city
- Radio in car allows access to these event before anybody else
- The Naked City (1945) fim influenced Noir genre- paved the way for The Naked City TV Show
(1948)
LA Noire (2011)
- Tradition of Noire
- Incorporates MotionScan- technology central to the game's interrogation mechanic. Investigation is
based on how you judge a suspect to be lying.
"Metropolis" (1929) by Fritz Langs- City of the Future
"Bladerunner" (1982-2019) by Ridley Scott- Post Modern mixing of past ad future
"Heads" (2001) by Lorca di Corcia
- The individual and the face in the crowd
- Hidden lights in the pavement and he photographs them despite them not knowing
- Surveillance and public space in a private sphere
- Detachment of illuminating a single person- loneliness of the City
- Public/ Private Lawsuit- allowed the photos as they are art and not for consumption
"Many are Called" (1938) by Walker Evans
- Spying on people- unaware of being photographed
- Appear alone and separate despite being together
Ed Soja Lecture of "The PostModern City/ Bonaventure Hotel"
- Getting lost within the interior space- move in and through the Hotel
- Make you feel lost, dislocated and submit to its authority due to helplessness
- Buildings can structure our behaviours
"Broadway and West 46th Street" by Joel Meyerowitz
- Colour images and lack of direction- business of the City
- Overwhelming the chaos of an unfamiliar City
9/11 Citizen Journalism- The end of the Flaneur?
- You can't be a detached observer in an event of that scale
- Recording by ordinary people of extraordinary events merges the city and the person
"Jpeg ny02" (2004) by Thomas Ruff
- Digital Picture pixelated
- Exaggerating the lack of quality of the image
- Picture seems to fragmented and exploded, like the building, before our eyes
"Surveillance City" Essay by Liz Wells
"In the 21st century, we now seek machines to look at pictures on our behalf"
- Liz Wells (2009)
- Rise of the Citizen Journalist- Democracy of Photography- The content is more important than the aesthetic
- Photography in it's basic form
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