Chronophotography and series photography, c. 1860 - 1906

In ihren bisherigen Ausrichtungen hat die Fotohistoriografie dem Begriff "Serie" nicht den Stellenwert eingeräumt, der ihm gebührt. Zu oft hat man in der Fotogeschichte herausgehobene und entkontextualisierte Meisterwerke untersucht, anstatt sich der Masse der Bilder gewidmet, die das Medium Fotografie so kennzeichnet. Um die Produktion und Rezeption von Fotografien im vorigen Jahrhundert adäquat zu beschreiben, ist der Serienbegriff jedoch unverzichtbar.
Zwei Nuancen scheinen im Begriff "Serie" auf: zum einen die Fügung gleichartiger Dinge zu einem größeren Ganzen, zum anderen die Anordnung in einer Reihenfolge. Als erster Systematisierungsversuch werden in diesem Artikel drei unterschiedliche, jedoch strukturell verbundene Anwendungsbereiche dieses Begriffs dargelegt: 1. Die Fabrikation als Serie, welche die Popularisierung des Mediums ermöglicht, indem sie Fotografie vom teuren Einzelstück zum erschwinglichen Industrieprodukt macht. 2. Die Vermarktung als Serie, welche die nun massenhaft produzierten Fotografien nicht als Einzelstück, sondern als Sammlung vertreibt, was am Beispiel des Lieferungswerks ausführlich dargestellt wird. 3. Die Präsentation und Rezeption als Serie, also die Sequenzierung von Fotografien, um zeitliche Abläufe darzustellen. In diesem Sinne stellt die Serialität eine Antwort auf die Fragmentierung im 19. Jahrhundert im allgemeinen und im Medium Fotografie im besonderen dar. Der Begriff "Serie" ermöglicht nicht nur diese einzelnen Phänomene in ihrer Bandbreite zu erfassen, sondern sie darüber hinaus im Zusammenhang zu sehen.

One of the oldest, and surely the most obsessive, topics in the history of photography is the relationship between art and photography. In the past, efforts were made to prove that artists had used photographic models, the aim at the time being to ennoble the medium of photography. The 'influence' it exerted on art was to turn photography itself into an art. In contrast to this theoretically unreflective and unfruitful practice, an approach will be outlined here which shifts the focus of attention to the fundamentally historcial conditions that made the encounter between the two media possible in the first place.
Even though Muybridge's photograph series were not primarily intended as models for artists, they were bound to unleash a fierce debate among representatives of a painting bent on exact reproduction of physical reality. The supporters of traditional artistic representation lost no time in raising doubts about the veracity of Muybridge's photographs. However, once the authenticity of the photographs had been proven by (re-)animation, the question that was then raised was how painting should deal with a reality that was simultaneously visible and invisible. The ensuing discussion was characterised by two equally positivstic positions: the one position, taken by Muybridge, declared flatly that any representation that did not correspond to the instantaneous photographs was simply false, thus arguing in favour of an objective modus of painting free of conventions; the other position rejected instantaneous photography because it did not comply with what the human eye was capable of grasping of a swift movement and demanded that representation be in accordance with the physiology of perception. Photography became involved in this debate not via the aesthetic influence it exercised, but via a questioning of the epistmological character of painting. Only on the periphery could voices be heard that granted art the right to represent reality according to its own laws, above and beyond what was either sensually perceptible or knowable.

"A chronophotograph contains information about interval, duration, speed and other derivatives of space and time. This information can and has been used to answer questions about motion and mechanical efficiency.

Chronophotography is also a powerful metaphor for describing more abstract ideas of space and time. For example, time can be described as instants or planes of simultaneity and these can be likened to images in a chronophotographic sequence. Sometimes, these descriptions can increase our potential for understanding. I demonstrate how chronophotography can be used to better understand two of its descendents: animation and cinema.
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A critical microhistory of the final plate of Muybridge's Animal Locomotion.

Published in: At The Border of (Film) History: Temporality, Archaeology, Theories (Proceedings of the XXI Udine International Film Studies Conference, 2014) (Udine: Forum, 2015)

This volume explores a form of contemporary art that uses sequences of images to explore ideas of space, time, movement, and duration. “Chronophotographers” first explored these ideas at the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first, artists have found that sequences offer new opportunities for exploring the aesthetics at the intersection of time and space. This book contains a number of illustrated essays by international critics and theorists and discusses the work of a wide range of artists engaged in contemporary chronophotography.