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Catherine beats Jules and Jim.
The race itself lasts barely half a minute, but this photo of Catherine at the end of her sprint across a pedestrian railroad bridge, ahead of both her suitors, Jules and Jim, is arguably the single most iconic image illustrating the hell-bent, headlong energy of the French New Wave. It was made by Raymond Cauchetier on the same 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ Rollei that he had bought a decade earlier while serving in the French Air Force in Indochina.
Continue reading ‘Raymond Cauchetier’s “New Wave” — Part Two’
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He’s a world traveler who has created photo books on the ruins of Anghor Wat in Cambodia, and of the tympana sculptures in Romanesque churches from Norway to Coptic Egypt—but he lives in the same apartment in Paris’ 12th arrondissement where he was born in 1920. He is a photo autodidact who did not acquire his first camera until he was over thirty years old—yet he became the set photographer for many of the French New Wave films from 1958 to 1968. At a time when most photojournalists were shooting with 35mm Leicas—he chose a much larger format 2 ¼ Rolliflex. He is, even today, according to writer Marc Vernet, unknown by the general public in France—anonymous, even though he created dozens of the most iconic movie photographs of that era, images that are embedded in the film consciousness of generations of his countrymen. He fell into motion picture set photography by an accident of geography—but abandoned it when he became discontented with the poor remuneration and the struggle to control his own work. This happened during a time when the movement’s Young Turk critic/directors were defining and practicing the “politique des auteurs” for themselves and for marginalized American filmmakers—yet he, a “stills man,” possessed little authorship of his creations. These are some of the intriguing dichotomies in the career of Raymond Cauchetier.
Continue reading ‘Raymond Cauchetier’s “New Wave” — Part One’
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Hillhurst Avenue, in the heart of Los Angeles’ Los Feliz Village, was, until a few years ago when a number of hip restaurants and shops opened, one of those quiet streets that begs you to cross mid-block on foot, with impunity. Today, you scramble for a parking space on the heavily metered streets. Set back from the bustle of the nearby restaurants is a barely noticeable apartment complex just north of Franklin Avenue. A gated, second story, cozy apartment on the west side of the street is both home and office to 3-D film scholar and 3-D photo buff Ray Zone.
Ray Zone in 3-D. Got glasses?
Continue reading ‘Ray Zone and the “Tyranny of Flatness”’
The nineteenth century era of colonial exploration and discovery fronted a desperate race among the leading world nations to take a stake in the rapidly diminishing spoils of a shrinking planet. Children of every generation since that time have thrilled to accounts of the adventures spawned by this headlong rush to claim the yet unknown parts of planet earth. But there is one such story that once it caught fire in the public imagination, has never burned out. It is more than a tale of colonial greed. It is one of sacrifice and heroism and its hold on the public imagination is due largely to this young man:
Frank Hurley, self portrait, 1911, age 26.
Continue reading ‘Frank Hurley: The “Endurance” and Paget Color’
She is a percussionist, a Scottish master of dozens of mundane and exotic sound-making devices, many of which cannot be called instruments in any normal sense. But she makes music with all of them. Here she is performing at the Moers Festival in 2004.
Glennie at the Moers Festival, 2004.
Continue reading ‘Evelyn Glennie, Musician’
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