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The Palermo Shooting

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Oxide Blu

Guest
Looks like an interesting movie. I just checked the imdb info on it, looks like it just being released in the US on Jan 20, '09.

I've seen a couple other movies about photographer that were pretty good but I can't remember the titles. :(
 

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
Blow-Up is the finest film about a photographer made to date. See if you can find a CD of it. If you've seen it you would remember it.
 

jonoslack

Active member
Blow-Up is the finest film about a photographer made to date. See if you can find a CD of it. If you've seen it you would remember it.
I guess I saw it 40 years ago - and I still remember how splendid were Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles and David Hemmings.

I don't think I remember any other film as well
 

simonclivehughes

Active member
I always liked "Under Fire" with Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy & Gene Hackman. Fictional but well done. "War Photographer", the documentary about James Nachtwey is an incredible movie.

Cheers,
 

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
I guess I saw it 40 years ago - and I still remember how splendid were Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles and David Hemmings.

I don't think I remember any other film as well
It will stick in the memory. Nor can I think of any film which address so well the ambiguity of the photographic process. Everyone speaks of photographs as looking "so real." When they are anything but. I sometimes think photography is the most abstract of the arts because it is built on the illusion of the "real."
 
O

Oxide Blu

Guest
I sometimes think photography is the most abstract of the arts because it is built on the illusion of the "real."

It was probably not intentional but you are paraphrasing what Ansel Adams said in explaining why he printed daytime landscapes with black skies; reality is not as appealing at the illusion of reality.

Something else Adams said: "Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."

Obviously said before the advent of digital photography allowed the image of a scantly clad babe standing on the moon with angel wings. :)
 

jonoslack

Active member
It was probably not intentional but you are paraphrasing what Ansel Adams said in explaining why he printed daytime landscapes with black skies; reality is not as appealing at the illusion of reality.

Something else Adams said: "Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."

Obviously said before the advent of digital photography allowed the image of a scantly clad babe standing on the moon with angel wings. :)
I think you can be pretty sure that John was 'intentional' - if nothing else!

John, as you say (although I'm not sure about 'abstract'). It seems to me that photography aims for 'convincing' (and we all know how little that has to do with reality :ROTFL:)
 

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
Photography is "abstract" in that each step of the process be it film or digital is an abstraction from one modality to another. To start with we don't capture an "instant" of time but period of duration of light. The quanta of that light in the case of film triggers chemical processes in a three dimensional film. In the case of digital those quanta are filling "holes" in photo receptors. We then take the film and remove some of the chemicals and leave some. As we move to printing we continue this process of quanta reaction and chemical addition and removal. This is a true abstraction, the reduction of information from a starting observation.

Digital is even more so with it's destruction-reconstruction of color in the Bayer process, the transformation of quanta events in the ones and zeros and mathmatical transforms which when converted to light or dyes fool the eye with an illusion of something real.

In a photograph we have a total abstract image in which the signifier replaces the signified.
 
O

Oxide Blu

Guest
Photography is "abstract" in that each step of the process be it film or digital is an abstraction from one modality to another. To start with we don't capture an "instant" of time but period of duration of light. The quanta of that light in the case of film triggers chemical processes in a three dimensional film. In the case of digital those quanta are filling "holes" in photo receptors. We then take the film and remove some of the chemicals and leave some. As we move to printing we continue this process of quanta reaction and chemical addition and removal. This is a true abstraction, the reduction of information from a starting observation.
Any chance you could reword that using common words of one, maybe two syllables at the most?!? :D
 

johnastovall

Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
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