The paper leans on a movie cult from the 1960s, Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni, of which a famous sequence is often mentioned, the one in which the protagonist, the photographer Thomas (considered here as a "conceptual character"), repeatedly enlarged the photographs he made in a park, in order to find an answer to the mystery surrounding the murder of a man: magnification which leads, on the one hand, to a gradual loss of definition of images, with the grain of the picture becoming more and more evident, but also, on the other, in the emergence, from the very material of the print, of a fundamental detail that will help solve the mystery. What interests is the link between indicative referentiality and evidence documentary, between degrees of definition and authentication powers. The paper also analyzes the links that intertwine, in the film, between the photographs of Thomas (by Don McCullin) and paintings painted by another character of the movie, Bill (directed by Ian Stephenson), but also, outside the film, with all a series of examples from artistic production and visual culture of the time: very low definition images of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas (the famous Zapruder Film), the portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald directed by Sigmar Polke by simulating the halftone technique, the war photographs of Don McCullin and David Bailey's Fashion Photographs, Random Earths Studies by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, Materialologies and Texturologies by Jean Dubuffet, as well as Zen for Film by Nam June Paik. Fimiani's text addresses also two contemporary installations which have tried to return to the issues from the photographic sequence of Antonioni's film: Blow-Up Blow-Up (2010) by Joan Fontcuberta and Portrait Landscape (from the Object Classifier series) (2015) by John Houck, an installation in which photograms of Blow-Up are analyzed through facial recognition software.

Just a Mess. Défiitions Analogies Dialectiques

Fimiani Filippo
2021-01-01

Abstract

The paper leans on a movie cult from the 1960s, Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni, of which a famous sequence is often mentioned, the one in which the protagonist, the photographer Thomas (considered here as a "conceptual character"), repeatedly enlarged the photographs he made in a park, in order to find an answer to the mystery surrounding the murder of a man: magnification which leads, on the one hand, to a gradual loss of definition of images, with the grain of the picture becoming more and more evident, but also, on the other, in the emergence, from the very material of the print, of a fundamental detail that will help solve the mystery. What interests is the link between indicative referentiality and evidence documentary, between degrees of definition and authentication powers. The paper also analyzes the links that intertwine, in the film, between the photographs of Thomas (by Don McCullin) and paintings painted by another character of the movie, Bill (directed by Ian Stephenson), but also, outside the film, with all a series of examples from artistic production and visual culture of the time: very low definition images of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas (the famous Zapruder Film), the portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald directed by Sigmar Polke by simulating the halftone technique, the war photographs of Don McCullin and David Bailey's Fashion Photographs, Random Earths Studies by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, Materialologies and Texturologies by Jean Dubuffet, as well as Zen for Film by Nam June Paik. Fimiani's text addresses also two contemporary installations which have tried to return to the issues from the photographic sequence of Antonioni's film: Blow-Up Blow-Up (2010) by Joan Fontcuberta and Portrait Landscape (from the Object Classifier series) (2015) by John Houck, an installation in which photograms of Blow-Up are analyzed through facial recognition software.
2021
9788869762512
Filippo Fimiani (« Just a mess. Définitions, analogies, dialectiques ») se penche sur un long-métrage cult des années 1960, Blow-Up (1966) de Michelangelo Antonioni, dont on mentionne souvent une séquence célèbre, celle dans laquelle le protagoniste, le photographe Thomas (considéré ici comme un « personnage conceptuel »), agrandit à plusieurs reprises les photographies qu’il a réalisé dans un parc, afin de trouver une réponse au mystère qui entoure l’assassinat d’un homme : un grossissement qui mène, d’un côté, à une perte progressive de définition des images, avec le grain de l’image argentique qui devient de plus en plus évident, mais aussi, de l’autre, au surgissement, à partir de la matière même de l’image argentique, d’un détail fondamental qui aidera à résoudre le mystère. Ce qui intéresse Fimiani dans cette séquence est le lien entre référentialité indiciaire et évidence documentaire, entre degrés de définition et pouvoirs d’authentification. Fimiani analyse aussi les liens qui s’entrelacent, dans le film, entre les photographies de Thomas (réalisées par Don McCullin) et les tableaux peints par un autre personnage du film, Bill (réalisés par Ian Stephenson), mais aussi, en dehors du film, avec toute une série d’exemples provenant de la production artistique et de la culture visuelle de l’époque : les images en très basse définition de l’assassinat de Kennedy à Dallas (le fameux Zapruder Film), le portrait de Lee Harvey Oswald réalisé par Sigmar Polke en simulant la technique de la demi-teinte, les photographies de guerre de Don McCullin et les photographies de mode de David Bailey, les Random Earth Studies de Mark Boyle et Joan Hills, les Matériologies et les Texturologies de Jean Dubuffet, ainsi que Zen for Film de Nam June Paik. Le texte de Fimiani aborde aussi deux installations contemporaines qui ont essayé de revenir sur les enjeux de la séquence photographique du film d’Antonioni : Blow-Up Blow-Up (2010) de Joan Fontcuberta et Portrait Landscape (from the Object Classifier series) (2015) de John Houck, une installation dans laquelle des photogrammes de Blow-Up sont analysés à travers des logiciels de reconnaissance faciale.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4766470
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