Cinematic photography.

The new extra photography brief is titled ‘The Image To Come: How Cinema Inspires Photography’. It goes something like this: “This brief invites you to explore the connections between the two visual arts and how, in particular, the photography is informed by the memory and imprint of Cinemas vast image bank. … Your response should establish a narrative and do more than simply replicate an existing filmic work.”

The first step was to do some research into photographers whose work has a particular cinematic quality. A kind of tableux vivant take on photography, capturing narratives in static scenes. The photography tutors made some suggestions, some I’d heard of before and some that were new to me.

I’d stumbled on Gregory Crewdson before, in the photography gallery at the V&A, and was immediately taken with his work.  His photographs are elaborately staged with the aid of a professional crew. Aside from looking dramatically beautiful, it’s the scenes that he portrays: eerie suburban landscapes with a surreal sense of foreboding. There are hints of David Lynch in his pieces. From what I’ve seen, his work seems to follow two main strands: bedroom scenes (indoor) and abandoned car scenes (outdoor). The colours are fantastic in both. Admittedly, I’m less partial to the bedroom scenes but I love the car scenes. There’s a beautiful mystery to them.

Then there’s Cindy Sherman’s work in her Complete Untitled Film Stills collection. More of a Hitchcock quality.

Alex Prager is another photographer working in a cinematic style. I quite like her images of women, again quite Hitchcockian but also with elements, I think, of Pedro Almodovar thrown in – the vivid, highly saturated colours; the melodrama of the strong female characters.

And speaking of Almodovar, his films also take beautiful photographic stills.

And finally, here’s an image that a street photographer snapped in a laneway in Melbourne. Very noir.

So what’s my plan for the brief? Well, I was thinking of capitalizing on the fact that I’m back home in Australia for 3 weeks and doing something out in the bush. I was thinking of a deserted highway scene, something like a breakdown far from any civilization. When you drive a couple hours or so out of the city, you see a lot of this:

There’s something awesome (as in ‘that which inspires awe’) about that vast amount of space. The colours are vivid. It’s dangerous and lonely, yet teeming with the movement of wind in the trees and small creatures scuttling. So the plan is to drive out one day with a model (ie. probably my sister), do a bit of a recon to map out some shots and hopefully get something usable.

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