This experimental short, about someone who may, or may not
be, a Crime Scene Photographer, was inspired in-part by Michelangelo
Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up, as well as the book Another Way of Telling
by John Berger and Jean Mohr.
The main theme of the short is the idea – as proferred by
Berger and Mohr – of the clash between the photograph, and the memory of the
moment that the photograph resembles, as well as the connection between the
camera lens and the human eye.
The film is pieced together from a variety of disparate
fragments of footage and photographs that I have gathered over many years on different formats. In
addition to newly shot footage and images, there are pieces of footage
originally shot for other projects from years passed by, as well as photographs
(and light-sensitive photographs) dating back to 1999. Stylistically the
film is a sort of 'visual collage', that combines the new with the re
appropriated old, which speaks to further themes of the short – namely the idea
of fragmented memory, how a picture is not viewed in the mind's eye as a whole,
but rather in individual elements that make up that whole picture. For example
– an alleyway is broken down into key images: the height and close proximity of
the surrounding buildings which created the alleyway, the old exterior light on
one wall, and the tangle of steel and barbed wire atop the locked entrance to
the alleyway.
The idea for the film initially came about when I dug out
from a drawer, an old stills camera that belonged to an uncle – a Zeiss Ikon Contina
I from the 1950s. I drew intrigue from the classic styling of the device, as
well as the mechanical consistency of the lens, shutter, and winding
operations, which ultimately fed not only into the editing of this strange
little experimental short, but also the underlying ethereal plot.
View the film embedded below, or directly via my YouTubeChannel HERE.
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