Tracing the Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinema
Abstract
The author discusses the transformations of modernity, focusing initially on matters associated with movement and mobility and the production and distribution of goods. He notes that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century, cinema – the first entertainment industry on such a massive scale – is becoming one of the factors intensifying these changes. However, one must not forget that the place and status of the moving image in the new logic of circulation were preceded by the dissemination of still photographs. The author analyzes the ontological properties of photography and shows that it is thanks to them that it could contribute to such a profound transformation of identity and body image in modern experience. He notes that both still and moving images are characterized by a fundamental contradiction – at the same time they strengthen the sense of fragmentation and speed and also the need of control, stability and predictability. These phenomena manifest themselves in a particularly vivid way within criminologists’ practice and detective and crime literature. In his exploration of those areas the author demonstrates that photography is one of the major tools of power used for classifying, tracking, analyzing, discipline and supervision of the individual body.
- The text is a translation of the chapter Tracing the Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinema from the volume Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Leo Charney, Vanessa R. Schwartz, University of California Press, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London 1996. Copyright © 1996 by the Regents of the University of California.
Due to copyright restrictions the article is available in the print version only.
Keywords:
early cinema, photography, bodyReferences
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Authors
Tom Gunningkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Chicago United States
Profesor filmoznawstwa na Wydziale Nauk Humanistycznych Uniwersytetu w Chicago. Jego zainteresowania ogniskują się wokół problematyki historii i teorii wczesnego kina oraz jego związków z szeroko pojętą kulturą modernizmu. Zajmuje się także amerykańskim kinem awangardowym, teorią kina klasycznego oraz fotografią. Do jego najważniejszych publikacji należą książki: D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (1991) i The Films of Fritz Lang (2000). Autor ponad stu publikacji w periodykach i antologiach filmoznawczych.
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