Animating the everyday: London on camera circa 1900

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 65-90

  Nead, Lynda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34347239955     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/378375     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. On the marvel of cinema for its first audiences, see Tom Gunning's influential article, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde," Wide Angle 8, nos. 3-4 (1989): 31-45
2. Leo Charney, "In a Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity," in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Leo Chamey and Vanessa Schwartz (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1995), p. 279
3. For a similar approach, see Ben Singer, "Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism," in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, p. 73
4. Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York, 1964), p. 410
5. For discussions of Simmel's work, see David Frisby and Mike Featherstone, Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (London, 1997)
6. David Frisby, Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin (London, 1985)
7. and Simmel and Since: Essays on Georg Simmel's Social Theory (London, 1992)
8. Guiliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton, N.J., 1993), p. 54
9. Simmel's essay is cited in a number of recent publications in relation to early cinema. See, e.g., Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema (Exeter, 1997), p. 144
10. Chamey and Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modernity, p. 2
11. Clark Arnwine and Jesse Lerner, eds., "Cityscapes: Introduction," Wide Angle 19, no. 4 (October 1997): 2
12. I discuss the statistical representation of London more fully in Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (London and New Haven, Conn., 2000), pp. 14-16
13. Mrs. E. T. Cook, Highways and Byways in London (London, 1902), pp. 54, 74
14. The technical developments in photography are given in most general histories of the medium. See, e.g., Helmut Gemsheim, in collaboration with Alison Gemsheim, The History of Photography from the Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century up to 1914 (London, 1955)
15. and Beaumont Newhall, The History! of Photography from 1839 to the Present (Boston, 1982)
16. For a nineteenth-century account of hand cameras, see "Detective and Hand Cameras. Issued as a Supplement to Photography. Compiled and Written by Walter D. Welford," Photography (23 May 1889), pp. 3-11
17. As quoted in Newhall, History of Photography, p. 489
18. The social and legal implications of instantaneous photography are discussed in the following excellent articles: Robert E. Mensel, "'Kodakers Lying in Wait': Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York, 1885-1915," American Quarterly 43, no. 1 (March 1991): 24-45
19. Tom Gunning, "Embarrassing Evidence: The Detective Camera and the Documentary Impulse," in Collecting Visible Evidence, ed. Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis and London, 1999), pp. 46-64
20. See, e.g., "Vanishing London," British Journal of Photography (hereafter BJP) (10 March 1899), p. 147
21. The implications of the embodied viewing of stereoscopic photography are fully considered in Linda Williams, "Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornographies and the 'Carnal Density of Vision,' " in Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, ed. Patrice Petro (Bloomington, Ind., and Indianapolis, 1995), pp. 3-41
22. Walter D. Welford, The Hand Camera and How to Use It (London, 1899), p. 79
23. On the limitations of studio and earlier outdoor photography in the context of instantaneous photography, see "Hints on Portraiture. Expression. By Joseph Mahlstick," Amateur Photographer (17 July 1885), p. 234
24. Benjamin Wyles, "Outdoor Portraiture and Groups," Amateur Photographer (2 October 1885), pp. 406-7
25. Women were targeted in terms of instantaneous photography's technical simplicity; its portability made it ideal for tourists on cycling tours. See Bill Jay, Cyanide and Spirits: An Inside-Out Vie of Early Photography (Munich, 1991), pp. 219-58
26. Walter D. Welford, The Hand Camera Manual: A Beginner's Guide to Photography in Its Connection with the Hand Camera (London, 1893), p. 6
27. Welford, Hand Camera and How to Use It, p. 86
28. See Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), pp. 2-3
29. On the low status of commercial photography in the period, see Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848-1871 (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1994)
30. On technology as prosthesis, see Tim Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study (Cambridge, 1998)
31. "Spirit of the Times," Photography (30 July 1891), p. 480
32. "A Point of Law," Photographic Times 26 (1895): 375
33. "A New Terror," Photographic News (11 August 1899), p. 498
34. "The Protection of the Public," BJP (14 July 1899), p. 438, which appeals to decorum. Correspondence in the Daily News and the Daily Telegraph in 1895 called for a new law
35. See Jay, Cyanide, pp. 230-31
36. For biographical accounts of Martin, see, e.g., Gernsheim, History of Photography, p. 342
37. and Flukinger et al., Paul Martin, passim
38. Paul Martin, Victorian Snapshots: Illustrated from Contemporary Photographs (London, 1939), p. 19
39. Editorial, BJP (23 December 1898), p. 818
40. Paul Martin, "Blocked-Out Lantern Slides," Amateur Photographer (6 November 1896), p. 374
41. T. C. Hepworth, The Camera and the Pen (London, 1897), p. 29. T. C. Hepworth was the father of Cecil Hepworth, a leading figure in British early silent cinema
42. George R. Sims, ed., Living London: Its Work and Its Play, Its Humour and Its Pathos, Its Sights and Its Scenes, vol. 1 (London, 1901), p. 3. For a concise account of Sims's work and of his urban motifs in particular, see http://www.chriswilIis.freeserve.co.uk/georgesims.htm
43. Asa Briggs, Mass Entertainment: The Origins of a Modern Industry (Adelaide, 1960), p. 9
44. On the attraction for audiences of local actuality films, see Robert C. Allen, "Contra the Chaser Theory," in Film before Griffith, ed. John L. Fell (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1983), p. 109
45. The literature on the Lumière cinema is now extensive. For discussion of Lumière actuality cinema, see, e.g., Robert C. Allen, "Vitascope/Cinèmatographe: Initial Patterns of American Film Industrial Practice," in Film before Griffith, pp. 144-52
46. Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, 1894-1901, pp. 87-107, 267-72
47. John Barnes, "Filming Scenes in the United Kingdom for the Cinèmatographe Lumière," in Cinema: The Beginnings and the Future: Essays Marking the Centenary of the First Film Show Projected to a Paying Audience in Britain, ed. Christopher Williams (London, 1996), pp. 60-62
48. Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History: of the Non-fiction Film (New York, 1974)
49. Richard M. Barsam, Non-fiction Film: A Critical History (Bloomington, Ind., and Indianapolis, 1992)
50. On the question of narrative and Lumière actuality films, see Marshall Deutelbaum, "Structural Patterning in the Lumière Films," in Film before Griffith, pp. 299-310
51. Dai Vaughan, "Let There Be Lumière," in Elsaesser and Barker, eds., Early Cinema, pp. 63-67
52. Alan Williams, "The Lumière Organization and 'Documentary Realism,'" in Film before Griffith, pp. 153-61
53. There is limited information on the complex questions of film distribution in its early years. Some general material on the Lumière company is given in Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History: of the Non-fiction Film (New York and Oxford, 1974). My thanks to Luke McKernan of the British Universities Film and Video Council for sharing his outstanding knowledge of the early film industry with me
54. Robert C. Allen, "Vitascope/Cinématographe: Initial Patterns of American Film Industrial Practice," p. 151
55. For discussion of the relationships between the Lumière Cinématographe and their earlier experiments with instantaneous photography, see Tom Gunning, "New Thresholds of Vision: Instantaneous Photography and the Early Cinema of Lumière," in Impossible Presence: Surface and Screen in the Photogenic Era, ed. Terry Smith (Chicago, 2001), pp. 71-99
56. and K. Baedecker, London and Its Environs: Handbook for Travellers (Leipsig and London)
57. Era (1 August 1896), p. 16
58. The interior space of the Empire Theatre was the subject of intense fantasy and social debate in precisely this period. Mrs. Ormiston Chant, a leading figure in the women's social purity movement, led an attack on the moral behavior of individuals in the promenade at the Empire and forced its closure for a period. See Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds., The Fin deSiècle:AReaderinCulturalHistory,c.l880-1900(Oxford and New York, 2000),pp.69-72
59. As cited in Steve Humphries, Victorian Britain through the Magic Lantern: Illustrated by Lear's Magic Lantern Slides (London, 1989), p. 170
60. See Burch, Life to Those Shadows, p. 17: "these images carry inscribed in them the need to be seen and reseen."
61. Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, trans. K. Hunter-Blair (London, 1986), pp.63, 113, 117
62. Tom Gunning describes the relationship between the stability of the frame and the contingencies of the events depicted as mesmerizing. See Tom Gunning, "From the Kaleidoscope to the X-Ray: Urban Spectatorship, Poe, Benjamin and Traffic in Souls (1913)," Wide Angle 19, no. 4 (October 1997): 35
63. See also his excellent discussion of framing and viewpoint in "Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the 'View' Aesthetic," in Hertogs and de Klerk, eds., Uncharted Territory, pp. 9-24
64. See Barnes, "Filming Scenes in the United Kingdom," p. 60
65. Cook, Highways, p. 285
66. For Henri Bergson's work on time as continuity, see Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (London, 1911)
67. For discussion of Bergson in relation to moving photography, see Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago and London, 1992), pp. 278-81
68. For different workings of the notion of rhythmanalysis, see Henri Lefebvre and Catherine Régulier, "Le projet rythmanalytique," Communications 41, no. 2 (1985): 191-99
69. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991) (first published as La production de l'espace [Paris, 1974])
70. See also Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1984)
71. The deathly aspect of the photographic image is famously described in Barthes, Camera Lucida. Laura Mulvey considers Barthes's work in relation to the uncanny in "The Index and the Uncanny," in Time and the Image, ed. Carolyn Bailey Gill (Manchester and New York, 2000), pp. 139-48
72. trans. Leda Swan and Jay Leyda, in Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, 3d ed., ed. (Princeton, N.J., 1983), pp. 407-8"