Cities & Films by Helen Clarke
Todays lecture looks at the city as a figure in both film and photography
The city is Modernism, The possibility of an urban socially, The city as public and private space, The city in postmodernism, The relation of the individual to the crowd in the city.
George Simile- German sociology.
Dresden Exhibition 1903.
How the body adapts to new surroundings, for example modernism in the city, getting used to traffic.
Herbert Bayer Lonely Metropolitan 1931.
Urban Sociology, the resisitance of the individual to being levbelled, swallowed up in the social tecnological mechanism.
Architect Louis Sullivan- Form Follow Function (1856-1924)
Creator of the modern sky scraper.
Details from Guaranty Building.
Carson Pririe Scott store in Chicago (1904)
The Skyscrapers represent the upwardly mobile city of business opportunity.
Fire cleared buildings in Chicago in 1871.
FILM : Manhatta (1921) Paul Strand and Charles Scheeler
Paul Stand is photography, most famous imaged are taken from that short film that we cannot watch.
Charles Scheeler
Ford Motor Company's plant at rive rouge, Detroit (1927)
Steal forms
Fordism: How the factory environment, how it effects that people that work there. How the doy becomes apart of the machine and the factor. The moves that the men make working at the factor is very much the same turning then into a machine themselves. They work in this manor to produce the most amount of goods. The workers get enough money to buy them also, so they are affordable goods. We end up getting this cycle.
Modern Times (1936) Charlie Chaplin
Man with a movie camera by Vertov 1929. Shows Russia in film.
Flaneur
The term Flaneur comes from the french masculin noun flaneur.
The nineteenth century French poet Charles Baudelaire proposes a vision of the term Flaneur- That of a person who walks the city in order to experience it.
Walter Benjamin. Adopts the concept of the urban as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle as seen in his writings. Heres where we get the idea of the city but protect from the elements, your are inside and outside at the same time. Not letting the weather stop your consumerists desires
A Photographer is is an armed version of the solitary walker... Stalking. Someone who is stealing images. They are looking for moments to identify that will hopefully make a good photo.
Flaneuse- the female Flaneur. What is the experience of a woman in the city? The invisible Flaneuse. Woman and the literature of modernity.
Jane Wolff.
Theory, Culture and Society November 1885.
She's not saying that she's trying to bin everything but she's trying to expand on what that female might experience.
Arbus/Hopper
Woman at the counter smoking. N.Y.C (1962)
Almost like a film shot. Theres a stroy there that qwe want to know, we get the change to make up that story.
Sophie Calle Suite Venitienne (1980)
She records a mans evey move and it turns into a stalking relactionship. At the end of january, she lost a man who she ended up meeting in person that evening.
Venice- City as a labyrinth of streets and alleyways in which you can get lost but at the same time will always end up where you began. Don't Look Now (1973) Movie, mother loses her child, the film plays with grief.
The Detective (1980)
Wants the provide photogenic evidence of her existence
Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Stills (1977-80)
Here is New York book/exhibition
A book made of photography professionals.
Theres around 3000 phoros in the book.
Weegee (Arther Felig)
Photographer who would always turn up at murders and photography them. He would turn up at the scene of a crime minuted after it happened because he had a police radio.
The Naked City, a book that featured his work. There is always a murder and a female figure in the movie that was made. Echos in the video game...
La Noire (2011). Set in LA. trying to solve a series of cases related around murder.
This also appears in famous films like Cities of the Future/ Past- Fritz Lang (1982/ 2019) LA
Ridly Scott in Bladerunner (1982/2019)
Lorca Di Corcia Heads (2001) NY
Whren someone would walk over a particular spot in New York the camera would be triggerd. An idea that you are alone in a crowd of people.
Public/ Private. A man took Lorca Di Corcia to court because the photo he took was said to separate the difference between Public and Private.
Walker Evans Many Are Called ( 1938)
Photographer took pictures underneath his trench coat to capture people unaware in their own world.
Postmodernism City (Film).About people getting lost in the city.
Postmodern City in photography : Joel Meyerowitz. Broadway and West 46th Street NY 1976.
Photographs give you a large amount of information. If the city is familiar, you won't look at it, but if it isn't familiar, you will observe everything.
Man on the floor:
THE PROSUMER : 9/11 Citien Jornalism: The end of the Flaneur? Liz Wells says that phrase is first seen in an article by Stuart Allen online news.
Surveillance City: Cameras that were used to catch the bombers from 7/7. CCTV. We use machines to look at photos on our behalf. We are always being watched.
Stills from the video, Untitled, 2003, by Runa Islam shows in the intension exhibition 2003. Shows BBC footage of the world trade falling, what she does is she reverses the footage so it shows the towers being re-built.
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