EXTRA SESSION WRITING ASSIGNEMENT

Writing text on my research process / photographic process

Writing specifically about the technique and the gesture.

1. The gesture of rewinding and pulling the film
2. Moving through space, the photographer's body
3. The still objects and the movement

This is an extract of my self-directed research

3 Body Techniques and the photographic gesture. For anthropologist M.Mauss, each society, group and individual possess specific techniques of the body. Mauss considers the body as the first and most natural object and technical means of man. Every technique has a specific form. We all learn to walk, eat and talk, but every technique is linked to a specific education, tradition and transmission. How did I learn to take pictures, hold and use a camera? Did I receive a photographic education? How do we transmit those techniques? What is the place of the body in our vision of the world?

For Desmedt, the photography gives body to the gaze. Because I am not using a viewfinder I have the feeling that my process is more driven by intention and imagination. I can only imagine, with great difficulties, what the result will be. The movement of my body, both as a displacement in space and time and as a technical gesture to take the picture, is constitutive of the image. In a way, my photography is based on physiology and observation (Desmedt). “The activity of observation is, in fact, inextricably linked to our way of thinking, imagination, memory of past experiences and our ability to combine these elements” (E.Brignante).

For the moment I see my practice as mainly structured around two simultaneous gestures: the movement of my body in space in relation with still and moving objects and the particular technique of pulling the film in front of the lens. Both actions form what I consider to be my photographic gesture. There is a hierarchy and a reciprocity between the both. I consider the pulling of the film gesture to be the most influential. The movement of my body is influenced by the way I have to make the image, but the image is also influenced by the movement of my body.

3.1 In most case, I am holding the camera near my chest with the left hand and pull the film with the right hand. The pull the film in front of the lens I use a small crank on the top-right of the camera. The film is loaded on the left side and moves laterally. The crank is operated manually, allowing a greater variation of speeds and exposures. The pace of the film is a way to control the exposure and the subject’s representation. An object in front of the lens appear sharper when the film movement match the object’s velocity. At this point the matching of speeds is more of an intuitive guess than a mathematical calculation. Once, in a train circulating at high speed, I managed to record some trees on the film that were barely visible with my eyes. At that precise moment, the speed of the film was probably close to the speed of the train. To a certain extend this means that in this process where the photographic surface is always moving, the subject should always be in movement to allow his figurative representation. The subject’s movement in front of the lens is also determined by the position of the photographer’s body in space and time. The subject or the camera must move if one want to avoid abstraction or motion blur. This process seems to promote and encourage movement, as oppose to the fixity ruling on mainstream photography

3.2 Body, Performance, Meaning in motion Moving in the space = Multiple point of view VS renaissance uni-perspective

“The making of strip images, as mentioned before, is actually a performance. It is a performance in which the movements of the camera, the film and the artist are collaborating with the environment in the making of the photographic image” (M.Vanvolsem).

To develop>>