Humans on film
Mollie Hemingway ·
Oct 29, 2010 at 11:28am
This has nothing to do with politics, but I love this early photographic image of humans. When daguerreotypes were used, it was exceedingly difficult to capture humans or anything else that moved, for that matter. But you can see what looks to me like two black kids near the river in this picture of Cincinnati.
Other cool film links? Two time travelers. First, this cell phone-talking lady at a premiere of a Charlie Chaplin film. And a hipster transported to the 1940s.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Humans on film
Mollie, it gets wilder. In the hipster photo, you can clearly see Matt Drudge in the foreground, next to the automobile
Aug '10
Re: Humans on film
Fascinating. I enjoy the time-traveler feel one gets when studying old photos.
The hipster could have been photoshopped. The cellphone lady could be a delusional mentally ill woman engaged in conversation with an imaginary friend. She thinks she's holding up the old-fashioned hand speaker phones had in those days.
Aug '10
Re: Humans on film
In the 1800s photographic exposures were very slow, and movement of any kind resulted in a blur. It was this factor that was responsible for the stiff portraiture of the time, as subjects had to remain rigidly still, often for several minutes or more, but the extended exposures demanded by 19th century cameras were also sometimes exploited to remarkable effect.
Years ago at a photographic exhibition in Paris I saw a wonderful image from 1860 taken near the Champs Elysées-- the exposure was made over eight hours and, as a result, transitory elements such as people, horses, carriages, and so on, were not present long enough for their images to be recorded, and in the final picture this very busy street is spookily empty of any sign of life. It was a haunting picture, and I've never forgotten it.
As for ghosts, in the pre-digital early 1980s I was living and working as a photographer in Jerusalem and shot a series of late night photographs of the Western Wall. The site was virtually deserted, but in each image the plaza in front of the wall was crowded with ghostly figures.
"There's more to heaven and earth..."