Esther Johnson
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, Esther
has been working as a filmmaker, photographer and writer. Her work
has appeared in film festivals, art galleries and publications in
the UK and internationally, with selected works distributed via vtape
in Toronto. Current projects include commissions for the Site Gallery,
Sheffield as well as new film works in London and Buffalo, NY. She
has also recently organised the 4th Hull
International Short Film Festival www.hullfilm.co.uk
click on the thumbnails below for the full image
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"It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding
world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo
the fact that we are surrounded by it"
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing p7
Introduction
Whilst sifting and cataloguing the colossal number of images in the
Study Collection, I was struck by how differently artists have represented
their work in still images... 'A picture is worth a thousand words';
but how best to illustrate a moving image work with something fixed?
Should one choose the most striking frame, or perhaps the one
which summarises the themes and content of a work, or the clearer
production still taken during the shoot, but which does not appear
in the actual work itself? Different stills suit different purposes;
a publicity poster or a postcard or an image supporting a critical
piece of writing. There is a substantial difference between a still
photograph, a description in words (ideas and abstractions) and the
ability of the film in question to communicate precise information
about an unfolding action in space and time. A sequence of moving
images can denote meaning in a number of compelling ways which the
extracted still presented on its own cannot. Nevertheless the strength
of the still lies in its ability to encapsulate a moment with a powerful
sense of the overall, and to single out and abstract a particular
theme and present it in a new light.
For this exhibition, I decided that instead of following a theme,
I would show the diversity of material in the Study Collection. The
images chosen were those I instinctively found interesting and striking.
They include artists' drawings and collages, animation sequences,
photographs of the mechanics of film-making, production stills, images
containing historical, nostalgic and political subject matter (documentary
and gritty realism particularly pertaining to Industrial Britain),
publicity material such as posters, contact sheets, artists' interventions
on the actual paper image, imagery containing strong text elements,
and finally, portraits of the filmmakers themselves.
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Many images in the collection
are both arresting and intriguing - the stills make one want to see
the film itself. Mineo Aayamaguchi's Inner Colour (1984, col)
is a video piece which also became an installation, performance and
photographic work. Jez Welsh noted in an ICA booklet accompanying the
exhibition of Aayamaguchi's Kaleidoscope (1988) that the director
"is video art's equivalent of an impressionist; the central concerns
of his work are light, colour and form
" In the still from
Inner Colour one instantly gets a sense of Aayamaguchi's celebration
of the aesthetic qualities of video. Using a hand-held lightweight camera,
he has chosen simply to film himself, resulting in a self-portrait;
the familiar being focused on in an unfamiliar, even extraordinary
manner. The artist has stated that in Inner Colour he was "exploring
the use of primary colours and colour construction with the video monitor
using the human body to create coloured shadows and to create a mask
from the human face." The still presented here, like many other
images in the Study Collection, is in black and white whereas the tape
is in colour. The collection of black and white images were originally
largely used in printed matter such as screening pamphlets, preceding
today's cheaper and more widespread use of colour.
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Some of the images I came
across emanated a haunting mystery, such as Sarah Pucill's Cast
(1999, b/w) which focuses on a carefully choreographed composition of
the body, with the legs of what appears to be a slumbering ballerina.
In an application to the Arts Council for funding for this film, Pucill
wrote that she was interested in "trying to strike a balance with
where there is a person [in the film space], so it is not just a camera
looking
[but] a person in a place: being situated." The image
belongs to the realm of fantasy, both sexual and fairytale.
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In Martine Thoquenne's First
Communion (1986, b/w), youth and religion are intertwined to create
a curious, hazy still of ritual and passage.
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A still from John Blake's
Bridge (1974-75, b/w) employs the blur so that an image that
could have been an ordinary picture postcard, becomes something new.
In a book of notes on his work, Blake wrote that "To view the (documentary)
subject, the viewer was forced to 'stare through' the material (film)
base, to 'recover the object' so to speak" (this quote comes from
notes made by the film maker, which are held in the Study Collection).
A film that takes the viewer on a gentle drift down the river is here
struck still.
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Through the use of blur,
Lis Rhodes' in Just About Now (1993, col) reproduced on an Arts
Council publicity postcard abstracts the video image in a painterly
fashion. Video as a palette of shape, form and colour is powerfully
translated into such stills.
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Comparisons to Vermeer's
paintings of interiors can be seen in Margaret Warwick's Still Lives
(a drama in three acts). (1981, col). The grainy video image evokes
a distant memory or stasis of the present. Warwick's synopsis of the
tape states, "A woman who works as a librarian, completely out
of character; decides to enter a competition - 1st prize, a trip to
Egypt. On winning the prize she cannot bring herself to make a trip
for fear of the tangible reality destroying the fragile imaginings inside
her head." This still life of an interior also elicits the narrative
of a larger story at work.
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In addition to photographic
blow-ups of single film frames, photographs taken from the television
screen and video grabs, moving image works can be represented via a
blow-up of the successive frames of the film strip, exactly as they
would pass through the projector. The sequence of stills from Jeff Keen's
Marvo Movie (1967, col), also includes the audio track on the
edge of the strip. Keen's work shows the cinema of condensed imagery
comprising of graphic 'lowbrow' B-movies and pulp fiction, which are
recontextualised into a new kind of pop cinema.
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Hints of narrative are clear
in the four stills selected from the film negative (but not relative
and subsequent to one another) of Alia Syed's Fatima's Letter
(1994, b/w). The film, shot entirely in Whitechapel Underground station,
tells in Urdu (with deliberately out-of-sync English subtitles) a story
that takes place in Pakistan. The images shown in this sequence reflect
the restless hand-held, grainy black-and-white nature of the film. We
catch glimpses of commuters, silhouettes, shadows and reflections which
populate the story being told, appearing as if in a memory or imagining
of a story. In an interview with Bruce Haines at inIVA, Alia Syed explains
that Fatima's Letter is also a romantic as well as a political
film. It is about travelling in London and feelings of isolation, but
also about how you watch people and fabricate stories about them, trying
to make connections. In public spaces, there will be some people who
look familiar - they remind you of home
It is to do with occupying
more than one space at a time."
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Animations can be characterised
by one of the many drawings or collages created for the film.. Vera
Neubauers The Mummys Curse 1987, b/w is an image
of an endearing and playful childish drawing.. This still is taken from
a publicity postcard; a drawing on a notepad being a witty method of
representing her ideas. Here the drawing is not necessarily an actual
still from her film, unlike the sequence of stills from Anthony Gross
and Hector Hoppins animation Joie de Vivre (1932-33, b/w).
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Joie de Vivre was
an experiment in arabesque created by the moving line (Gross,
The Listener, 1960). Gross drawings are clear fluid lines
which represent a short fantasy concerning the pursuit of two factory
girls by a workman through a variety of settings. This is clearly seen
in the specific stills that show the progression of the narrative..
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Similarly the still from
Vicky Smiths Fixation (2002, col) is directly from the
film, in which she animated sequences using her solarstain
technique. Smith explains in a note, Fixation is a series of animated
camera-less shadow-grams.. The solarstain is a collage of objects, whose
'breath of light' is cast onto photographic paper by exposure to solar
energy...The stained paper is then fixed, forming a landscape of self
and the boundaries of the body, where brown suggests blood, white evokes
bones.
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Sunset Strip (1996,
col) by Kayla Parker is made up of colourful collages directly stuck
to celluloid, which is double-exposed with animated footage of the progression
of the sun tracking the sky.
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In Judith Goddards
Luminous Portrait, (1990, col) for the Arts Council/BBC2 One
Minute TV scheme a collage of imagery is used with a fragmented
figure set in an illusory setting.
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From collage composites and
illustrations for animated films, filmmakers have also represented their
work through preparatory plans and sketches. Chris Welsbys series
of drawings for Estuary (1980, col), the still is also a greetings
card are precise and carefully planned illustrations of panels for an
exhibition. The artists working methodology with drawings detailing
weather patterns and landscape is as carefully thought out as the construction
of his films.
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Janus Szczerek shows a plan
for his eight-screen installation Roll Around the Monument (1986),
initially filmed by eight cameras. The piece documents the initiation
of a group of actors working together on a play of Kafkas The
Castle.
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The drawings from Bruce McLeans
Urban Turban (1995, col) are from 35mm slides that constitute
the basis of a published book and also show the artists compositional
method for the film. In the book Bruce McLean states that The
film is a collection and synthesis of some of the concerns I have been
involved with
social positioning, posturing, non-verbal communication,
the gesture, architecture, it is a glass work not class work
It
is didactic, informative, explanatory, using real language borrowed,
commentary stolen, real people, real places
probably the first
architectural movie.
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The actual components of
a performance at the Serpentine Gallery (the raw material for the film
version) are exhibited in the still from Rose Finn-Kelseys Glory
(1983, col) The paper maquettes clustered on a large white table are
representations of politicians, heroes, film stars and the toys of war.
These were used as pawns in a performance and ritualistic wargame, re-enacting
past historical moments with Finn-Kelcey as the puppet-master wearing
striking red gloves.
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Documentation of installation
work is also represented in the Collection with stills of Susan Collins
Vitrine (1996) and Lulu Quinns What are you looking
at? (1981).
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Here representation of the
space in which the project is viewed by audience/spectator is integral
to understanding the work itself.
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The mechanics of filmmaking
are seen in the filmstrip from Len Lyes Trade Tattoo (1937,
col) where characteristically the artist has painted and stenciled his
abstract imagery directly onto shots taken from found documentary footage.
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In Annabel Nicolsons
Slides (1971, col) the edges of scattered film frames are seen
collaged within the frame of a finished filmstrip. The normally off-screen
sections of film have become subject matter to re-film and optically
print.
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Jill Eatherleys Hand
Grenade (1971, col) experiments with moving light drawings created
by a small torch in a darkened room. Eatherley explains in an interview
by David Curtis for Illuminations TV that, with the help of Malcolm
Le Grice they ...ran the film through the printer, ran the negative,
offsetting the negatives on top of the other, superimposition
turning
it upside down, playing with it and having a good time; and that was
how Hand Grenade was made, purely that.
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Steve Farrer's Ten Drawings
(1976, b/w). For each drawing, fifty equal lengths of clear
film were laid out to make a rectangle, onto which a pattern was drawn,
after which the strips were joined together, top to tail. Ten of these
drawings constitute the work. This image is one of the rayograms Farrer
made from the drawings before splicing the strips together to make the
film, which he sometimes exhibited beside the projected work. The image
has a directness and simplicity of mark-making resulting in a film of
linear geometric abstraction and predictability. Farrer has stated that
the surface marks can manifest themselves in three ways: as a drawing
of a film, a film of a drawing and a sound of a drawing.
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Production stills can be
a compelling way to sum up the world and ideas of an entire film. These
stills may not appear in the film but are created with publicity in
mind. A still from the press pack for Derek Jarmans The Last
of England (1987, col) encapsulates many of the ideas of social
change and despair which Jarman worked with. There is also a strong
reference to fine art, seen by way of composition and light which is
echoed through the film being named after Ford Maddox Browns painting.
The image is indicative of dramatic cruelty, poverty and decay. As the
accompanying press release says, Here is a man who sees to the
heart of the malaise which afflicts us and who has something of vital
importance to say.
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Social commentary is also
represented in a provocative still from Pictorial Heroess Hebburn
Skins aka World of Skinhead (1995, col). The choice of angle
in showing the backs of skinheads, a union flag wrapped around their
shoulders, is a variation to the usual confrontational front-on image.
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Politics and the ubiquity
of video in the 1980s are embodied in the first work of Gorilla Tapes
(Gavin Hodge, Tim Morrison, John Dovey and Jean McClements), Death
Valley Days (1984, col). Here the political use of imagery in scratch
video is created through the manipulation of information from
the mass of television news and entertainment. Accepted material is
deconstructed and re-worked/structured to music. The image of Margaret
Thatcher is taken from one of the four sections of Death Valley Days,
titled Commander-in-Chief, relating to tabloids and the news, appositely
chosen as major concerns of the time.
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An overview of Britain is
pertinent in Patrick Keillers Valtos or the Veil (1987,
b/w) the country symbolized by a power station in the North of England.
Many of these stills are relevant to a particular time and place and
evoke the documentary. Keillers film uses narrative and location
to create associations through image and voice (story), attaching layers
of meaning to imagery collected on a journey through England.
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William Rabans Thames
Film (1984-86, col) also shows a particular image of England as
seen through a camera scanning the Kent and Essex shores from a boat
on the Thames.. The modern scene is interwoven with archive material
from a time when the river was the busiest waterway in the world. The
film is about perceptions of time - time regulated by effects
of tide, daylight and seasonal change. Traces of present compared to
records of the past (Lifting Traces Filmwaves,
Spring 1998).
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Image and subject-matter
in some films, as with Jeff Keen's Marvo Movie (1967, col), are
concerned with a nostalgic referencing and framing of film history.
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Cordelia Swans Ritas
Dream 2000 references the familiar and iconic cinematic history
of actress Rita Hayworth,
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whilst George Snows
Muybridge Revisited (1987, col) is a colourfully textured homage
and new interpretation of Eadwaerd Muybridges seminal pre-motion
picture sequences.
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Sometimes the publicity tools
such as posters and postcards contain imagery that is completely extraneous
to the actual work. Denzil Everett uses an Edwardian image on a postcard
promoting his tour with How to Confuse Bavarians date unknown;
mid 80s
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Whilst Stephen Littman creates
a handmade poster for his exhibition Smile (1984, b/w).
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The Study Collection also
contains contact sheets of images from particular works such as 3am
(1991, col) for the Arts Council/BBC2 One Minute TV scheme
by the feminist punk filmmaker Vivienne Dick. Here the contact sheet
is comprised of a number of photographs taken of a television screen.
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On the other hand an artists
intervention onto prints of photographic stills is seen in Judith Higginbottoms
Red Sea (1983, b/w) dramatic marks denoting direction of action.
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The conflation of text and
image in particular films can result in a playful use of a still. Text
frequently emphsises the narrative implications in the still, as with
Jean Matthees Neon Queen (1986, col). Here the combination
is of nostalgic femme fatale film imagery with romanticised
text.
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Mona Hatoums Measures
of Distance (1988, b/w) juxtaposes written Arabic with a shadowy
figure, connoting fear, imprisonment and unrest, resulting in a layered
dialogue between artist and viewer.
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In his two-screen film and
slide work, Orphan Shots (1983, b/w) David Parsons juxtaposes
imagery with a narrative explanatory text, creating a complex and mischievous
relationship between word and image.
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Humour is also seen in Steve
Hawleys Love Under Mercury (2001, col) a film about transformation
and science. The apparent dimensions of a car are disturbed by the intervention
of a hand holding a model, playing with scale and indicating that what
you see isnt always as it appears.
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Tien (1991 col) for
the Arts Council/BBC2 One Minute TV scheme by Rosa Fong
and Mei-Ling Jin, illustrates a letter F through a picture
from a childrens alphabet. The bold still uses the figure to address
the spectator face-on through interpreting image and reading text.
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Likewise John Smiths
Associations (1975, col) is a clever film which plays with literal
transpositions of the image. The film, in which image and word work
against and with each other, is represented by four pictures: an ass,
a sewing machine, the sea and a group of Asian women, creating the title
As-so-ci-ations when strung together.
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Link (1970, b/w) by
Derek Boshier also creates a visually dynamic relationship between images,
this time of similar sculptural shapes: the dome, the square and the
triangle are described through various forms in these shapes such as
a mosque or pyramid.
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As well as imagerys
relationship to text and form, we see that in David Cunninghams
This Moment (1991, col) for the Arts Council/BBC2 One Minute
TV scheme the striking simplicity in language and image connection
results in a film deconstruction of the constituent phonetic parts of
the spoken phrase This moment. Here the image is endowed
with meaning as much as the sound of a word.
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Finally, the use
of stills by an artist is at its purest when representing the alter-ego
of a filmmaker and the practice of filmmaking. David Leisters Lacing
Film (1993, b/w) is about fascination and obsession with celluloid
and harks back to an era of home-movie making, connecting the filmmaker
with an established style. |
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Further self-portraits
by artists at work are the still of Tim Cawkwell, his hands working on
pictograms scratched into black film leader for The Fish Variations
(1982, col), and, lastly, a portrait of the legendary animator Norman
McLaren. |
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Conclusion
There are many ways in which artists can illustrate their work as
well as multiple usages for these images, from publicity in the form
of postcards, posters or press packs, to images functioning as accompaniment
to published essays or funding applications, and preparatory material
for a future work. The still can be wholly representative of a film
in tone, theme and content, or it can be abstract and show few visual
similarities to the finished work, instead offering a metaphoric connection.
Those exhibited here illustrate the breadth of representations of
a moving image work through a defining still moment.
© Esther Johnson 2005
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