Thursday, January 18th
5:00-6:30 p.m.
The District Lounge
4507 Brooklyn Ave NE at 45th St

This meeting will be organized around a discussion of still and moving images. What, exactly, does motion contribute to a picture? What does stasis contribute to an image, for that matter? How do both qualities affect storytelling and ethnographic potentials? What potential do techniques besides standard film and video contain for introducing motion? I am interested in these questions in part because I am working on presentations of some still photos and am drawn to the effects that can be achieved through slideshow techniques. To prime our discussion, we will view a (very) short segment of the film Powaqqatsi depicting workers in a Brazilian gold mine and compare it to still photos of the "same" subject by Sebastio Salgado. Then we will take a look at some prints of photos from Indonesia and consider them next to a digital slideshow incorporating some of the same images. You can see some old slideshows, made in the field, here and here (the first one is composed of about half images taken by street kids I worked with, and set to their music). [NOTE: these take a while to download; be patient.] Both are a bit long, and despite some fairly good content, boring. I will be working on something new.

By way of background and stimulus for discussion, here are a few other examples--not necessarily ethnographic in intent--of interesting techniques of presentation which start with still photos and introduce an effect of motion through the rapid succession of images:

This slideshow of images from Iraq reflects the capabilities of new technologies, viz digital cameras with high frame rates and nearly inexhaustible media storage. It is easy to imagine that the anticipated use of still images such as these affects the kind of material that was generated in the first place (I know that the next time i am in the field I will be sure to take sequences of images which can be assembled to show interesting progressions). I am not crazy about the slavish adherence to the musical beat, and these are not the best photos I've seen from Iraq--but this slideshow is definitely worth viewing nonetheless.

Here is an example of an entire short film created using a digital slr-type camera. Shooting at around 5 frames a second, the effect of motion is distinctive yet quite powerful, I think. Note how use of a camera with a very large sensor (compared to consumer videocameras) results in a very cinematic (ie, narrow) depth of field and a beautiful image quality, even at the reduced resolution of the web file. nb I am posting this link as a matter of technical interest only; i find the short film's story predictably abhorrent.

So with this as introduction, I hope to see you all on Thursday for a low-key yet hopefully productive discussion.

n.b. If any of you would like to add appropriate links to this page, email xtoph, or just open the page and add them yourself.