Vadim Stein, Aizhan Mukatova I, 2016. Unmanipulated Photography / Film Photography / Light Painting on Paper, 38.1 x 30.5 cm.
The history of movement within photography is inextricably linked to the study of techniques, having the purpose of overcoming the "limits" of the oldest pictorial art, which, before Cubist and Futurist dynamism, had focused on immortalizing motion, fixing it in a very precise and "static" time frame. When said can be seen in the wild dance of de la Goulue in Bal au Moulin Rouge, a canvas by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, in which the protagonist has remained with one leg raised from about 1890 until the present. To be sure, the rendering of the idea of movement is given to us by the awkward and unnatural pose in which the dancer was "frozen," but these "standardized" modes of expression turned out to be a bit narrow for the photographic medium, whose technical peculiarities provided, with a natural predisposition, rich insights into the ways of depicting dynamism. Before delving into the ways in which three key artists in the history of photography investigated the rendering of movement, it is good to simply describe the innovations of their work, comparing them with their "cousin art" of painting. In order to make this narrative project concrete, it is possible to start from the observation of three masterpieces of art history, such as: Henry Thomas Aiken's Full cry over fences (early 19th century), George Stubbs' Bay Malton with John Singleton up (1767) and Théodore Géricault's The 1821 Derby at Epsom (1821), paintings in which the galloping of horses, stopped at a precise instant, seems to immortalize a specimen intent on flying like the mythological Pegasus, rather than running like Winning Bre. At this point it is imperative to reach the figure of Leland Stanford, an industrialist and equestrian lover, who commissioned Eadweard Muybridge in 1872 to investigate the motion of the horse during galloping through experimentation with his photographic art. Despite the commitment date, due to violent personal vicissitudes, the artist did not return to the aforementioned project until 1877, a period in which he brought to life a series of photographs, which, taken at Standord's Palo Alto racetrack, documented the movement of the horse Sallier Gardner in succession, becoming clear evidence of how, throughout the galloping motion, the horse could actually detach its hooves from the ground in moments of prolonged momentum, an action capable of making it look just like the aforementioned mythological stallion.
Eadweard Muybridge, sequential shots of Sallier Gardner, 1872.
Étienne Jules Marey, horse in motion captured by a single image.
The investigation into the dynamism of the horse continued in the experiments of Étienne Jules Marey, a French physiologist, cardiologist and inventor born in 1830, who succeeded in crystallizing, for the first time in the history of photography, the sequence of movements of the said animal, within a single image, rather than mediating the succession employed by the aforementioned English "colleague." At this point a spontaneous question arises: compared to the great innovations of photography in the late 19th century, what does contemporary art offer regarding the vision of the same mammal? If previously the horse was predominantly chosen as the symbol par excellence of work, vitality and dynamism, the artists of our times have attributed to the animal an unprecedented and mournful meaning, which, through the depiction of its lifeless body, wanted to allude, in a way rather trivially, to the most dreaded death. Indeed, while Giovanni Fattori and Theodore Gericault had already addressed this theme, it has encountered more public attention in modern times, namely through the controversial work of artists such as Berlinde De Bruyckere and Maurizio Cattelan. Finally, returning once again to the dynamism investigated by photography, it is impossible not to mention the innovation brought by the twentieth-century movement of the hands of the Cellist (1913), captured by the lens of the Italian master Anton Giulio Bragaglia, an Italian film director, film critic and essayist linked to futurism, a movement with which he shared experiments on dynamism. In fact, from a year prior to the aforementioned shot is Giacomo Balla's Le mani del violinista, a painting that the Italian master designed after a meticulous investigation of movement, aimed at being represented through the repeated depiction of the limbs of the aforementioned musician, who appears intent on clutching the handle of a violin. In conclusion, current photographic technologies, aimed at capturing the dynamism, are due to the inescapable work of the three masters of the lens mentioned above and, in some cases, also to their connection with pictorial world.
D-A Woisard, Flashback, 2010. Film Photography on Paper, 60 x 50 cm.
Angie, Fun III, 2022. Digital photograph on paper, 30 x 40 cm.
Muybridge, Marey and Bragaglia: the photographic techniques of movement
The mere description of the work of Muybridge, Marey and Bragaglia does not render the weight of their innovations, which, in the field of photography, take precise terms, linked to specific technical procedures. As we have anticipated above, motion photography originated from the experimental studies of Muybridge, who scientifically demonstrated that it is possible to perceive the dynamism of a subject through a series of images viewed in sequence. This discovery was made through the use of a series of twenty-four cameras arranged one behind the other, whose shutters, positioned along the path of the aforementioned Palo Alto track, were activated by the breaking of wires attached to the camera, induced by contact with the hooves of the moving horse. If these were the ways in which Sallier Gardner's iconic and revealing images in succession were created, Marey, who recorded on a single plate an entire sequence of moving shots, is credited with the invention of the chronophotograph, a device capable of recording the different positions that would make up the final image, thanks to the regular and continuous opening and closing of the lens shutter. Finally, speaking of Bragaglia, it is essential to highlight how the movement of his Cellist was captured, in a totally innovative way, by means of a single photographic shot, made by recording on the plate the movement of a gesture, having a prolonged exposure for the time necessary to accomplish it. This procedure generated figures that were moved and, at the same time, multiplied along the wake of their dynamism, aimed at condensing into intermediate stations of the gesture. Finally, the history of movement in photography reaches to the present day, well exemplified in its richness of forms and techniques of expression by the work of Artmajeur artists, such as, for example, Roz Delacour, Sergio Capuzzimati and Ömer Erdoğan.
Roz Delacour, Ombres n.3, 2022. Film photograph on Plexiglass, 80 x 60 cm.
Roz Delacour: Shadows No. 3
Roz Delacour's black-and-white photography can be described by relying on the poetic vision of the world, to which it itself refers us: a girl, intent on walking idyllically by the sea, is depicted through the signs, that is, the footprints, that she leaves of herself on the sand, together with the reflection that her body generates by mirroring itself on the surface of the ocean, which has come to bathe, with rhythm and constancy, the shores of a silent beach. In this context, the idea of movement, aimed at omitting the expedients of image repetition, chronophotography, blurring, the more current Motion blur, etc., is given to us by a simple and strategic shot, aimed at exploiting the "streaks" naturally produced by the images reflected in more or less salty waters. It should be noted, however, that such a dynamic result is possible to achieve only when the reflective surface turns out to be itself in motion, since, in a "similar" city shot by the pioneer of Street photography, Vivian Maier, aimed at capturing a man and two children walking, we find the presence of the more static reflection of a puddle. In any case, the idea of harnessing water in order to generate photographs with greater points of interest, unites Delacour's artistic investigation with that of photography's best-known nanny, as Maier, throughout her life, looked after several children, just like a genuine Mary Poppins equipped with a Rolleiflex!
Sergio Capuzzimati, Study after an Hong Kong cityscape, tribute to francis bacon2, 2022. Digital photography on paper, 60 x 42 cm.
Sergio Capuzzimati: Study of an urban landscape in Hong Kong, homage to Francis Bacon 2
Francis Bacon, the iconic Irish painter born in 1909, is known, among a thousand other things, for his multiple expressionist reworkings of Diego Velázquez's famous portrait of Pope Innocent X, a masterpiece that the 20th-century artist limited himself to analyzing through photographic reproductions of the work, categorically refusing to go to see the original preserved in Rome. In his 1953 interpretation of one of the aforementioned Screaming Popes, Bacon makes concrete, through the screaming face of the effigy, the drama of the hellish existence to which man is predestined, approaching the introspective work of Edvard Munch. On the other hand, from a purely stylistic point of view, the drama is also repeated in the way the stylized seat is depicted, aimed at turning into a sort of trap, accompanied by the execution of vertical brushstrokes, which, multiplying throughout the work, give the idea of an energetic flow aimed at "elongating" the figure. It is precisely this latter aspect that turns out to be "reproposed" by the effect that Artmajeur's photographer, Capuzzimati, chose to employ in his photograph, conceived precisely to make clear reference to the subject widely investigated by the aforementioned Irish master. Thus, the Hong Kong cityscape was realized through the technique of ICM (intentional camera movement), aimed at generating a multiplication of "lines," due to the movement of the camera during exposure. This creative effect, which generates the continuous superimposition of images on the same focal plane, has its earliest origins in the futurist experiments of the 1930s, led by Filippo Masoero, who, in 1934, devoted himself to aerial photography with long exposure in free fall.
Ömer Erdoğan, Time, 2022. Digital photograph on paper, 30 x 40 cm.
Ömer Erdoğan: Time
The study of movement, rendered by the "blur" of the framed subject, has not spared the interest of Street Photography, a photographic genre aimed at pursuing the intent of capturing spontaneous subjects and situations, taking place in public locations, capable of highlighting the most routine aspects of our lives. It is important to specify, however, that these everyday moments must actually present good framing and accurate timing, capable of generating images of decisive moments rich in pathos. This quest finds its earliest origins in the era covering the late 19th century and the 1970s, as it is necessarily linked to the spread of portable cameras. The home of Street photography turns out to be Paris, the city in which the fathers of this photographic genre operated, among them, certainly Henri Cartier-Bresson, a 20th century photographer mainly focused on capturing the movement of people, just as demonstrated by the famous shot: Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare (1932), a "spontaneous" masterpiece taken at Place de l'Europe, that is, outside the Saint-Lazare (Paris) train station, through the use of his faithful Leica handheld camera. At this point, if we try to imagine Cartier-Bresson positioned in a strategic place, intent on waiting for the right moment to capture a man intent on jumping on wet ground, perhaps we can also "see" Erdoğan standing still capturing time passing in front of a streetcar stop.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
