Photography, Cinema, Memory: The Crystal Image of Time

by Damian Sutton

Overview

A philosophical investigation into the differing sensations of time in cinema and photography

Cinema and photography are both intimately associated with time—cinema with time in passing, the photograph with the lost moment. In Photography, Cinema, Memory, Damian Sutton explores time in both media to present a radical new understanding of the photographic image as always coming into being.

Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the crystal image to move beyond the tropes of immobility, stasis, and death, Sutton’s analysis reveals the open-endedness of time expressed in the photograph, either as a potential for an abundant future or as a depth of meandering remembrance. He presents an innovative taxonomy of time in the photograph, considering particular representations of time in the work of Nan Goldin, Eugène Atget, Andy Warhol, and others. He contrasts this taxonomy with representations of time in cinema since 1895, offering fresh readings of the films of the Lumière brothers and Mitchell & Kenyon, as well as more recent works, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Amélie, and A Matter of Life and Death.

Throughout this work, Sutton connects and grounds cinema and photography as starting points to comprehend how we come to terms, ultimately, with time itself as pure, immanent change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816647392
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	08/05/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Damian Sutton is a lecturer of historical and critical studies at the Glasgow School of Art.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 Cinema and the Event of Photography 1

2 Photographic Memory, Photographic Time 33

3 The Division of Time 65

4 Cinema's Photographic View 99

5 How Does a Photograph Work? 135

6 Becoming-Photography 169

7 The New Uses of Photography 201

Notes 237

Index 261