Source: https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/robert-capa-d-day-omaha-beach/ (1)
US troopsâ first assault on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings by Robert Capa, 1944
Capaâs photographs of the US forcesâ assault on Omaha Beach on D-Day (June 6th 1944) are an invaluable historic record of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France, which contributed to the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control a year later.
This event resulted in the loss of 2,400 American lives by the end of the first day. Capaâs legendary documentation of the event saw him join the soldiers as they advanced, experiencing the landing on Omaha Beach alongside them as he photographed the scene.
His art lay in risking where to be and when, in how he built and conducted the relationships that enabled him to be there, and in how he shaped and presented the narrative of events he witnessed.
His power as a communicator depended too on his mythic status as narrator, or more specifically, on being considered the âgreatest war photographer everâ.
He combined exceptional courage in fully playing the role of the photographer-as-hero with a deep understanding of the value and purpose of doing so.
The following are quotes from Capaâs written account of June 6th 1944 titled Slightly Out of Focus:
"Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background - this was good enough for the photographer"
âIt was still very early and very grey for good pictures, but the grey water and grey sky made the little men, dodging under the surrealistic designs of Hitlerâs anti-invasion brain trust, very effective.â
âAbove the boots and faces, my picture frames were filled with shrapnel smoke; burnt tanks and sinking barges formed my background.â
A week later Capa learned that his photographs were the best taken of the event. Due to a darkroom error, only 8 of 106 were salvaged, the rest were heat blurred. These were all captioned, âCapaâs hands were badly shakingâ.
I think the fact that Capa has titled his memoirs Slightly Out of Focus would imply that he is satisfied with the motion blur that a lot of his pictures have. Although they have this blurred quality, they perfectly capture the chaos and the fear thatâs within the atmosphere of the setting. These pictures would not be the same without the blur, they are emotive and thought-provoking.
Sources: https://medium.com/photos-we-love/robert-frank-elevator-miami-beach-1955-jona-frank-for-photoswelove-8d90a2c38d1d (2)
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/oct/16/photography (3)
Elevator Girl by Robert Frank, 1955
The elevator girl is stood between the two blurred figures, waiting for the man and woman to leave before she begins her next ride and for her to join the others in their purposeful march onward.
However, her posture suggests that before she moves on, she has to go up and down. She is stuck here in the elevator where she can create her own dreams in the hope that one day she can move on.
Jona Frank writes, â She makes me think about a time when I was so stuck I just watched time drift past not knowing how or when I would join the accomplished and directed. I like to think she is not lost in the photo. Instead she is caught-up in a wide-eyed reverie.â
I think Jona Frank really captures the essence of the Elevator Girl in this quote as it can be seen as a failure to advance when the world around you continues to succeed and move on. It also has a sense of just waiting for the right moment to take hold of an ambition, which Frank desrcibes as her âwide-eyed reverieâ.
Geoff Dyer also comments on this saying, âAn elevator door is about to close, like a shutter that will open again, for a moment, not on another floor but in another building or another city.â This references both the physical elevator in the photo but also the spirit of the road trip that Frank took when he took this picture which is included in his photobook The Americas, published in 1958.
Frankâs intetntion was that, in some respects, he was travelling down the ever-same road as Lange and Evans. But, in doing so, he was not just observing how what is seen from and on the road has changed; he was actively bringing about a change in perception.
Frank had a fondness for what he called "in-between moments" which is shown clearly in Elevator Girl. He has stopped time to feature only his elevator girl and tell a stroy about her alone. The blurred figures have been captured to add narrative, but they are only mere accessories to the true story, which is that of the girl stuck in her mundane life.
The Americas is one of the most influential photobooks in photographic history which changed our conception of what a photograph could be.
Sources: https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-7 (4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY3nGoZqw9U (5)
The Photo Book published by Phaidon, page 446 (6)
Carpenter Center by Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1993
Sugimoto says his work is a combination of concept and vision together. He thinks about what he will do and then imagines the way he will photograph the scenes.
In Theatres, Sugimoto decided to practice his photography by bringing his camera into the movie theatre.
He opened the shutter when the film began and left it open for 2-3 hours, whatever the length of the film is. When the end credits show up, the shutter is closed.
He has photographed entire movie images and then the film is processed. There is no movie image that shows, itâs just a white light left on the screen which highlights interiors of the theater and this reflects the light.
The people that were in the theater have disappeared. He wanted to say that too much information is really just ânothingnessâ. To show it, you have to have something surrounded by ânothingnessâ and in this case the movie theater is the case to hold this emptiness.
I see this series as an abstraction of what a film is. All of the components that go into this film are ignored and come across as being just merely incidental.
Sugimoto asks us how we should think of time. Most photography is instant and only deals with the here and now. However, Sugimoto has slowed time and held it forever within his pictures.
I think Sugimotoâs pictures are beautiful. He has shown the theater in a dream-like state which has proved it to be a fleeting experience. It holds only memories and stories and has no grasp on reality which shows the insignificance of a couple of hours within our entire lifetime.
Sources: https://wesely.org/2019/potsdamer-platz-berlin-5-4-1997-24-9-1998/ (7)
http://art.daimler.com/en/artwork/michael-wesely-potsdamer-platz-27-3-1997-13-12-1998-2000/ (8)
https://birdinflight.com/inspiration/experience/time-shows-ultra-long-exposure-in-works-of-michael-wesely.html (9)
Potsdamer Platz, Berlin by Michael Wesely, 1997 â 1998
The extremely long exposure times of Michael Weselyâs analogue photographs allow us to visually experience time and transformation. Between 1997 and 2000, he documented construction work at the Potsdamer Platz.
The exposures lasted up to 26 months which allowed Wesely to create temporal documentations of the process of urban development.
In his photographs you can see several individual moments all linked together which gives an overall picture of each stage of the construction process.
The buildings appear transparent which allow you to see both the scaffolding and the solid concrete.
Weather and time can also be traced by the movement of the sun across the sky burnt into the image several times over. This demonstrates the changing landscape both day and night.
His subject here is historically significant and highly symbolic. The site was condemned to wasteland and was cut in two by the Berlin Wall. When the wall fell it was the symbol of German reunification and the beginning of a new era at the end of the Cold War.
Wesely is the only one who achieves the shooting this long and produces quality, not light-struck shots. He keeps the details of his technology secret.
The photographer builds his devices for each project himself. âThese are not pinhole cameras and not industrially made cameras. All the parts of the cameras are handmade, except for the wide-angle lensesâ, says Wesely.
Using neutral filters and a very small diaphragm makes exposure thousands of times longer than usually. According to Wesely, he can make exposure endlessly long, 40 years if necessary.
To me, Weselyâs work is inspiring because this style of photography is a technique that takes patience. It is a process spanning over years with no certainty of what the outcome may be. However, if the image is successful, you end up with incredible shots that show architectural development and document the process like no other method can.
This image can not be seen by the human eye alone and it captures the changing universe in a new and informative way that will provide a historical reference in years to come.
Maarten Vanvolsem and Gareth Davies
Sources: http://kusseneerscom.webhosting.be/portfolio_page/maarten-vanvolsem/ (10)
https://www.luca-arts.be/en/nieuws/maarten-vanvolsem-experience-time-still-photographic-images (11)
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/Timeandphotography/vanvolsem.html (12)
https://www.tickpan.co.uk/ (13)
Silent Move 12 by Maarten Vanvolsem, 2007
A linear camera rides past a parade of shops in Kingsbury, North West London by Gareth Davies
The technique of strip-scan photography itself is based on a partial exposure of the photo sensitive material, which is moving in front of the shutter or visa versa.
The technique is probably first used in 1843 in a panoramic camera, but it has since been used in all sorts of âscientificâ fields. A shift can be noted from the non-scientific use to the meta-photographic use of the technique in which photography itself is questioned.
With this meta-photographic use of the technique it becomes clear, that the generally prevailing thought about photography and time, can no longer be applied to this kind of photography.
The temporal component of the images, previously often ignored or reduced to a fraction of a second, now becomes the main subject of the images. Vanvolsem says, â My work emphasises this notion of time that is inherently part of the strip images.â
This type of image is something which cannot be seen by the human eye without technology. Photos are often captured within a split second so this type of photography is trying to open up the view on photographic images.
What we see in these images is an evolving time with continuous changes along a horizontal line. This causes sharpness and blur and gives us the real importance of the photograph which is not the subject, but the dynamic time.
Silent Move 12 has a series of dance moves which is visible in the change of position. You get a front, side and rear view in one picture. I think this is an impressive style of photography which captures space as well as time and forces you to evaluate the preconception that time in photography has to be instant.
Alternatively, Garteth Davies uses slitscan to create panoramic photographs. He uses self built roatating panoramic cameras.
In comparison to Vanvolsem, his photographs contain far less motion blur and instead give the feel of compression instead. For example, in the image above, the cars and buses appear to be squashed and compacted.
I think I prefer Daviesâ work because it captures a much longer chain of events occuring across a whole system of a location and really shows the character of a place. Vanvolsemâs images are far more fluid and I like the idea of a busy panorama without the chaos of motion blur.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ1fEC67GO4 (14)
Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai, 1994
On the opening scene of the film Chungking Express you get the feeling that you are in Hong Kong.
The most notable and recurrent technique used to dramatise moments in this film is step printing. This is where you shoot the scene in lower frame rates, then duplicate or triplicate them and project it at a normal 24 frames per second.
Kar Wai says, âit delivers something textured, it feels like itâs very speedy but actually itâs very slow.â
The point of this effect is to make it seem as if everything is speeding up while also slowing down. Two things are communicated visually from this.
One is that the subject seems detatched from the world around him and secondly when the subject is in slow motion it emphasizes the importance of that moment in particular.
Kar-Wai often requires his actors to perform as if they are in slow motion in order to drastically achieve this effect.
For Kar-Wai, time is always percieved differently, either objectively or subjectively. The speed of the frames and the manipulation of time are what allows us to appreciate and depreciate every moment. Time seems to elongate and isolate the characters in their own world.
A reader for A Void In Frame describes the film like this, âIt speaks to the lonliness and the desperate need for company, an escapism of boredom, but at the same time it is a warning to distractions, the call for attention to things that truly matter in our lives.â
I agree with this statement as I see the motion blur in this film as the chaos of a busy life surrounding someone who already has their own business to contend with. You see the people passing by so quickly yet the character is there alone, progressing slowly.
Sources: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-space-providence-rhode-island-ar00350 (15)
http://www.gerrybadger.com/francesca-woodman/ (16)
SpaceÂČ, Providence, Rhode Island by Francesca Woodman, 1976
This black and white, square format photograph is a self portrait of the artist. She is dressed in dark clothing and occupies an empty room with white walls. Light enters the room from the window shown on the right of the image.
Woodman appears to lunge forward in this photograph. She is oriented away from the camera and although her feet are in focus, the rest of her body from the ankles up is blurred and this obscures her face.
This photograph was taken in Woodmanâs studio and she was experimenting with exposure time by setting her camera on a slow shutter speed and manipulating the light in order to capture the movement of her body, which blurred her hands and face.
This photograph is part of a series where all the images feature the artistâs body in a similar interior space. For this particular image she blurred and distorted her body, while in others she encased herself in glass display cabinets.
The title of the series, SpaceÂČ, indicates a concern not only with the dimensions of space but with the way in which space is flattened by photography.
Gerry Badger analyses her photographs. âCoupled with a dissolution of corporeal solidity, we have a voice which speaks longingly of fleeing from the earthbound confines of the flesh, bridging the gap between material physicality and immaterial spirituality, and giving poignant articulation to her own sense of mortality.â
In other words he believes that her photographs speak of breaking free of a space, specifically the body, in order to truly understand its workings both spiritually and with the perception of life and death.
It is also thought that there may be a feminist message behind her images too, and that Woodman believed the odds were stacked against her sex and no matter how she tried to escape the restrictions placed on her gender, she could only be truly free by art.
Badger sees the work of Woodman as combining âpersonalised psychodramas with the temporal and spatial displacements of long exposures and blurred movement.â She commited suicide at age 22 and Badger believes her emotional state can be seen visually through the time and space she portrays in her work.
I think that Badgerâs analysis of Woodmanâs work may be correct. The fact that the room she is in is so bare speaks to me about an emptiness in this womanâs life and her blurred movement shows she wants to escape from it. I can also see the thought behind the feminist interpretation in that she is entirely blurred and obscured besides the high heeled shoes.
For this exercise I decided I would photograph the same subject as my previous work so that I could compare the effects afterwards.
I photographed my sitter yawning again, but this time I used a slow shutter speed to capture the yawn in motion.
For these photos my camera was set to ISO-100, with an F-stop of f/36 and a shutter speed of 1 second.
I set my camera up on a tripod and as the subject opened his mouth I took photos until he had finished yawning. The pictures capture the yawn at various stages of the process.
On my contact sheet you can see that some photos have a closed mouth and some photos have an open mouth, but all of them show a transition from one stage into another. My contact sheets show some of my thoughts and the photos I selected and rejected.
By having a slow shutter speed I was able to capture not just a freeze frame of a moment, but a continuation of this and a development of a movement.
I altered the brightness slightly of my photos to correct the exposure and make them all the same in Photoshop.
If I compare the effects of a fast and a slow shutter speed, I can see that they both have different qualities. The photos using the faster shutter speed work nicely together as a set, because it makes an interesting collage of portraits but the photographs with a slow shutter speed work better individually, because they capture the whole sequence in one.
Hand written notes and print-outs:
D-Day and the Omaha Beach Landings. (n.d.). Retrieved from Magnum Photos: https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/robert-capa-d-day-omaha-beach/
Frank, J. (2016, May 17). Robert Frankâs âElevator â Miami Beach, 1955â â Jona Frank for #PhotosWeLove. Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/photos-we-love/robert-frank-elevator-miami-beach-1955-jona-frank-for-photoswelove-8d90a2c38d1d
Dyer, G. (2004, October 16). The road to nowhere. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/oct/16/photography
Sugimoto, H. (n.d.). Theaters. Retrieved from Hiroshi Sugimoto: https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-7
Bryan, L. (2009, November 10). Contacts: Hiroshi Sugimoto 2. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY3nGoZqw9U
Jeffery, I. (2000). The Photography Book. Phaidon Press.
Potsdamer Platz, Berlin (5.4.1997 â 24.9.1998). (n.d.). Retrieved from Michael Wesely: https://wesely.org/2019/potsdamer-platz-berlin-5-4-1997-24-9-1998/
Michael Wesely. (2010). Retrieved from Daimer Art Collection: http://art.daimler.com/en/artwork/michael-wesely-potsdamer-platz-27-3-1997-13-12-1998-2000/
Gramovich, M. (2015, May 26). Time Shows: Ultra-long Exposure in Works of Michael Wesely . Retrieved from Bird In Flight: https://birdinflight.com/inspiration/experience/time-shows-ultra-long-exposure-in-works-of-michael-wesely.html
Maarten Vanvolsem. (n.d.). Retrieved from Kusseneers Gallery: http://kusseneerscom.webhosting.be/portfolio_page/maarten-vanvolsem/
Vanvolsem, M. (2015, March 26). Maarten Vanvolsem: The Experience of Time in Still Photographic Images. Retrieved from LUCA School of Arts: https://www.luca-arts.be/en/nieuws/maarten-vanvolsem-experience-time-still-photographic-images
Vanvolsem, M. (2008, November). Motion! On how to deal with the paradox in dance photography. Retrieved from Image and Narrative: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/Timeandphotography/vanvolsem.html
Davies, G. (2019, May 14). Panoramic Photography by Gareth Davies. Retrieved from Tickpan: https://www.tickpan.co.uk/
A Void in Frame. (2017, March 15). Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express - Speed and Time. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ1fEC67GO4
Ateer, S. M. (2013, November). Francessca Woodman SpaceÂČ, Providence, Rhode Island 1976. Retrieved from Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-space-providence-rhode-island-ar00350
Badger, G. (2012, September). Francesca Woodman. Retrieved from Gerry Badger: http://www.gerrybadger.com/francesca-woodman/